"Yes, Sir. As I recall."
"Well, then, according to simple arithmetic, you are trying to swindle His Majesty out of four yards of cloth and thirty inches of piping, because you already have a uniform and we only need cloth for five."
"The Captain said six, Sir."
"Cloth for five uniforms," says the Deacon, firmly. He writes in his ledger.
"It isn't fair, Sir," I says. "I already paid for mine and it isn't fair." I sulks for a moment. "Shall I tell the Captain you've changed his order, then?"
Instantly, I regrets my cheek.
"Shall you relieve yourself of your pants and bend across that bench while I give you several dozen, then?" hisses the Deacon, holding aloft his metal yardstick, which would be a very serviceable switch. "Shall I, then, you insolent young pup?"
"Oh no, Sir!" I bleats, falling to my knees and hanging my head and cursing myself for my stupidity. Out of the corner of my eye I see Benjy lookin' wary and easin' away from the bench I may be stretched across, as he don't want to be included. I clasps me hands 'neath me chin and looks up at the Deacon with me best street-orphan-supplicatin'-teary-eyed look and cries, "Beggin' yer pardon, Sir! I didn't mean it! Please, Sir, no switches. Five uniforms it is, Sir!"
***
"You should have seen our brave Jack down on his knees before the Deacon," crows Benjy when we're back up aloft. He falls to his own knees and mimics my craven performance. "Please, Sir, please don't make me drop me drawers and bend over that horrid bench, Sir!" My so-called mates are all laughing and rolling around holding their sides.
"Pleadin' for his life over a simple switchin', he was!" Benjy plows on. "Like he was bein' lashed to the grating for a proper lashin' with the Cat-O'-Nine-Tails like poor Miller last week. And a bloody mess he was, but he didn't cry out, no he didn't, he took it till he passed out, he did."
Yes, he did, and I had to beat the drum for it, when the call went out for All Hands to Witness Punishment, and I had to watch 'cause I had to know when the flogging was about to start so as to start the drumroll, and when to stop it when it was done, and it was all I could do to keep from throwing up on my drumhead.
The lads all jeer and hoot at me for my cowardice, but I don't care 'cause I seen Davy and Tink get theirs before and they howled and cried and begged for mercy, just like me. I'd rather beg my way out of a beating than actually take it. If that makes me a coward, then so be it. I never was very brave, anyhow.
The Deacon let me out of the switching and he credited me back the cost of my uniform, so it all worked out. 'Cept now I got to learn another fifty lines of Scripture. I'll be a bleedin' preacher, I will, before I get off this barky.
I don't hold it against the boys, though, all their teasing and stuff, 'cause they don't know about The Deception and all.
Maybe I would be braver if I was an actual boy and wasn't so worried about discovery.
The Deception
I've done some thinking on why I've been getting away with The Deception so far.
In the first place, men and boys are used to thinking of females as all pink and white and powdered up. I, however, am tanned brown as a nut, at least the parts of me that show, which is my face, neck, arms, and legs to my knees. I've been rolling my pants up over my knees 'cause it's hot. My shins are just as scratched and scabbed as any of the boys.
In the second place, I read a lot. I always have a book in the kip and I have one next to me right now in the foretop, An Account of a Voyage to the South Seas by a Captain Cook, and girls ain't expected to be scholars. They're never sent to school, at least the poor ones ain't, and the rich ones only sometimes. So someone sees a person reading a book, they think boy.
Third, as I have just shown, I can curse as well as any sailor. The fact that I don't know what most of what I say really means don't seem to matter.
Fourth, I keep my hair cut as close to my head as I can get it. The lads are all letting their hair grow into the long pigtails like the other swabs, but not me.
Fifth, I have a thin sharp face. I'm not at all round-faced and girlish, and my lips are thin, not pouty like Polly's and Judy's and Nancy's and Emily's before she died, back in London. They all looked like girls from the day they were born and could never have passed as a boy for a minute, but not me. What that means for how I'll look as a lady, I don't know. Will anyone fancy me? There's a mirror that's hung up at the foot of the foremast, for the men to use for shaving, and I stare at my face in it for a long time. Is there anything in this face for a boy to admire? Davy once pointed me out to another sailor, who was looking for me to assign to a work detail, as "that rat-faced little runt over there." Rat-faced? It's true my nose is more pointed than most, and if I put the palms of my hands to my face it is rather thin, sort of like an axe blade. But rat-faced? Is it because I'm so plain that I'm getting away with The Deception? I don't know. Would Jaimy fancy me if he knew? I hope so, but maybe ... I don't know.
I like the sewing. Its simple nature, the same thing over and over, soothes my mind. Plus, when I'm finally put off the ship, which must happen some day, I'll have something I can do to pay my way. Maybe playing the whistle, too, with a cup in front of me. I wonder how Arabs feel about girls playing pennywhistles on street corners.
I've done now with measuring Davy and Tink and Willy, and now I'm doing Benjy. While I'm putting the tape to him, I'm thinking about yesterday and how it was Sunday and we had the singing and dancing in the afternoon. It was going to be my first time playing the whistle in front of the crew, and I'm dreadful scared and nervous, but Liam says to just go out and do it, lad, and Snag says, "Lets have a tune, Jack-o," and so I goes out and begins "The Tenpenny Bit" 'cause it's the easiest. I don't play it good at first, but then I warms up and it starts to sound good and Sanderson gets up and starts dancin' and soon some others and Liam joins in with his concertina, and it's all grand. Then they clap and whistle when we're done with that tune, and I loves the clappin' and we plays the other dance tunes I know and others are playing fifes and whistles and even a fiddle, and I puts down me whistle and starts to dance a jig in the Irish fashion and there's more whistlin' and clappin' and singin' and more songs and more dancin' and when it's over and I heads for the passageway to the kip, all sweaty and flushed and happy, Sloat grabs me by the arm and pulls me aside in the dimness.
"Ain't you just every man's darlin' now, Jacky?" he whispers, his breath hot on my cheek. "Darlin' Sportin' Jacky, the pretty little sailor boy."
I tries to jerk my arm away and run, but he holds me fast. His eyes are wild and feverish and they bore into mine.
"We'll have to set down for a talk some day, won't we, Jacky?" he says. "A nice long talk, just you and me."
With that, he loosens his grip and I runs off, but not before he gives me a slap on my backside.
"Soon, Jacky, soon," he promises, laughin' low.
I gets back to the kip all shaky and breathless and my skin's all crawly and shudders run through me and I wish I could take a bath. I curse myself for all the showin' off. I must be more careful or I will dance my own destruction.
I'm measuring Benjy's shoulders and the boys are again bragging about how they pities the poor foolish pirate who dares to take up arms against the Brotherhood. They're waving their pretend swords around, cutting and slashing and parrying and thrusting. Just abaft of the mizzenmast is a rack with hundreds of cutlasses in it, but they are locked through their hilts with a long chain and the Master-at-Arms is the only one with a key. A good thing, too, otherwise the idiots would be hacking at each other for real.
Jaimy's talking about how fine it would be to be an officer on a man-of-war, and the others agree that there's nothin' better in the world than to be a man-of-war's man, officer or seaman, but I speaks up with, "Wouldn't it be far better to have a merchant ship and you could get rich by taking stuff from a place what's got a lot of that stuff and taking it to a place where they ain't got a lot of that stuff and would be grateful for it? In doing it you'd be sailing around the world and you'd get your Bombay Rat and your Cathay Cat and you'd see the Kangaroo and have your adventures, instead of swashbuckling about, trying to blow the head off another poor mother's son.
"Wouldn't that be just prime?" I sighs.
They all snort and jeer and tell me I'd just be carrying coals to Newcastle and I say, "If Newcastle wants coals, I'll haul 'em," and they jeer and say, "That's where coals come from, ye twit," and I say, "I don't care if it's fish heads, a cargo is a cargo," and I will increase and prosper, they'll see.
Now I get to measure Jaimy.
Chapter 14
Nothing else matters now, because I am dying. Everything was going along fine. The uniforms are almost done. I've been staying out of Bliffil's way. I've avoided Sloat's evil eye. The music is a joy to me heart. I love the boys of the Brotherhood. I'm learning lots about navigation and science and arithmetic. I am happy with my station in life. All that doesn't matter now because I'm dyin' of some horrible disease and it will soon all be over.
Two days ago I started to bleed. Down there.
It's lucky I had me drawers on or I'd been discovered right then for sure, taken to the doctor and found out, and then put off on shore amongst the Arabs, to die without a friend. At least here I'll die among me mates.
I thought at first that I had snagged myself on something, but no, that warn't it. I took myself down to the hidey-hole where I takes care of necessary things, and I cleans myself up and washes out my drawers. I rips up the smaller of my two old shifts and takes a strip of it and runs it between my legs and takes another strip and ties it around my back and belly holdin' the first strip in place, and then I pulls the drawers back on wet 'cause I can't have 'em hanging out to dry with the fake cod on it and all. Then I heads back to the light.
This has set up a powerful worry in my head and I been mopin' around all down in the face. I can't think of nothin' else.
"C'mon, Jacky, cheer up," says Davy kindly. "Things could be worse."
Easy for you to say, Mate, when you're not dyin of some awful plague, your insides turnin to mush and runnin' out of ye. But I just say that I'm not feelin' good, so sod off and let me alone.
I know it's my insides what are turnin' on me 'cause me belly hurts, too. I've gone down to look through the Professor's books but couldn't find nothin' that spoke to my condition. The Doctor's books are all in Latin, so they're no good, neither.
"Just don't give it to me," says Davy.
Nor bloody likely, Mate.
It's the third day of The Problem and I am weary of the worry. I decide what I'll do if it don't stop is wait till I'm weak with the loss of blood and then go see the Doctor and beg to be put off in some decent port 'cause ain't I been good and done my work and all and made the uniforms and never been switched? The Doctor ain't a very warm type and would probably just want to drop me over the side, but it'd be the Captain's call and maybe he'd be kind. It is a plan and I feel better for having a plan.
The talk among the sailors is that we're low on water as it hasn't rained in months and so we'll have to make port soon. That would be good for me, since we wouldn't be going to an Arab port for the water.