In The Belly Of The Bloodhound (43 page)

It warn’t so bad, and after a while, when the heat was off, I went back down to join my friends in our kip.

“And that’s the end of that story,” I say, taking another invisible bow.

“Jacky, weren’t you just the cleverest[_ thang,”_] I hear Clarissa say by way of snide comment on my little tale.

My face burns at that, but I say, “How ‘bout a round of applause for our Hughie here for bein’ the real hero of the piece?”

“Hear, hear!” and hands are clapped together and I’m surprised to find that some of the girls know how to whistle.

When the cheering subsides, Hughie, who I know is blushing mightily back there in the hatchway, says, “That was real nice, Mary. Now tell us about when you had the baby.”

Well,[_ that_] gets a rustle out of the girls, for sure.

“Yes,[_ Ma-ry,”
] comes Clarissa’s slow drawl out of the gloom. “Please do tell us about when you had the[
bay-bee.”_]

I heave a sad sigh. I hadn’t told anybody about Jesse, not even Amy. He was just the[_ best_] little boy, and it was true that, for a short while, he was mine.

“Well, of course, I didn’t[_ have_] a baby—I was only about eleven at the time. I found him in a garbage can.” I get up and start the story.

I was out on my own that day and I thought I’d check out a rubbish bin where I’d found some pretty decent apple cores the week before. I slipped up the alley and was on the pile in a minute, tearing away at the useless stuff, when I pulled away a bundle of dirty rags, and there he was. I don’t know how he got there—prolly left by Muck to die after he’d taken the poor dead mother off to the anatomist’s to sell. I know his mother wouldn’a left him in a garbage can if she could help it.

I don’t know how he got there. I only know he was there and reaching up at me and sayin’, “Ma-Ma…”

I’m down at the Rat Hole again that night, having been awakened at one fifteen and ready in my black rig to go out at one thirty. We’ve found this is the best time for me to be out ‘cause the watches have changed and everybody’s back to sleep—including most of them that’s on watch.

I gave Clarissa a good shake on my way down, and I soon find her here by my side in the candlelight as I make ready. Beatrice, who had been on watch on the Stage, had lit the candle and taken down the Rat Hole boards before I got there. Then she had gone back up on watch.[_ Good girl._]

“What are you plannin’ to do out there tonight?” Clarissa demands.

“I’ve got to start disabling the other lifeboat so’s the crew won’t be able to chase us when we make our break. That ship we saw yesterday showed us that we’ve got to get moving on this or things will get out of our control and we can’t have that. The fuse is five links from being done. We could go the day after tomorrow if the weather holds.”

“I’m going out with you,” she states firmly.

“No, you are not. You don’t have a black rig and there’s no time to make you one. Besides the[_ Bloodhound_] only needs one Black Ghost.”

“It’s not fair that you should have all the glory.”[_ Glory?_]

“Look, Clarissa, I know you are brave and bold, but this is not the time for it. Too much is at stake to pander to your sense of adventure. Your time will come, believe me, when we break out. Haven’t we talked about your role in that enough?”

“Humph,”
she says. “A little bit of playactin’...hardly seems heroic enough.”
p. “The success of the whole venture depends on that bit of playactin, Clarissa, and don’t you forget it. You’ve got the starring role and, if you must know, I’m a bit jealous.”

She smirks at this. “Yes, you would be, wouldn’t you, bein’ the shameless show-off hussy that you most plainly are.”

“Come on, Clarissa, we’re all in this together, and when this is over and done with, we can go back to being the best of enemies.”

“Well, still, I’m going with you to the top of the first ladder, anyway. I will act as sentry. No one will see me there,” she says, and I have to agree to that. “What do you plan to do in the boat?”

“I plan to drop the oars over the side and slit the sails so they cannot follow us by either rowing or sailing. I would get rid of their rudder, too, but as that hangs outside the canvas covering, the fact that it’s missing might be spotted, and so we can’t chance it. No, the rudder will have to be the last thing to go, on the night before we escape.”

“Suppose they discover the slit sails and the missing oars?” she asks. “Won’t they blame it on us? Won’t they conduct a thorough search?”

“No, they will blame it on the Black Ghost. He’s gonna leave footprints there tonight. I’ll explain later. Come on, let’s go.”

I get into the lifeboat without incident. Leaving Clarissa on the lower level with a warning not to do anything daring or stupid or both, I gained the deck, looked, and saw that the entire watch was huddled on the quarterdeck, no doubt a bit fearful of going off alone to possibly encounter either a ghost or a once-human heap of seaweed, neither of which would be much to their liking. As before, I loosen the line holding down the canvas cover and crawl in.

From the inside, I slacken the canvas on the outboard side and carefully put five of the six oars over the side—they are long enough so that I can just about touch the water with them, such that when I let them go, they slip into the water with nary a sound.

Having done that, I pull out my shiv and silently but thoroughly slice up the mainsail and the jib. That job finished, I put my shiv back in my waistband and pull out the oilskin wad I had also tucked in there before leaving the Hold, then open it up. I’m glad enough moonlight is shining in so I can see to do this work.

Earlier in the day I had taken a rag, soaked it down good, and on it I sprinkled the powder I’d made by crushing the red cake of dry watercolor from my miniature-portrait-painting kit. I added a touch of brown pigment to bring the color to reddish-brown, the same shade as dried blood.

Then I folded the rag and mashed it and kneaded it till the color started to seep through. Opening it back up, I saw that I had a nice, blood red printing pad. I wrapped it in the piece of oilcloth where I stored my brushes and put it away for later.

Now I lay the open ink pad on the lifeboat’s rear seat and ball up my fists and start making baby footprints—I take my clenched right fist and press its right, or pinkie, side onto the pad and then push it down on the deck. Then I put the tips of my right-hand fingers on the pad and then push them all down, in a slightly curved way, on the top of the print I had just made, and behold, a perfect little child’s footprint…or a perfect little ghost’s…

I do the same with my other hand and place this print to the left and a bit ahead of the other one for the left footprint, and so on up the deck from the rear seat to the next, and then on top of that seat. Then I stop, as if the creature who made these tracks disappeared into thin air.

I learned this little number from Rooster Charlie back in the Blackfriars Bridge days.[_ Oh, Charlie,
] I think fondly,[
always the trickster you were, always laughing and joking to give us cheer when we was all gathered together in the kip and maybe down a bit on account of bein’ cold and havin’ nothin’ to eat. You, Charlie, who said, “Now, ladies, you never can tell when these little tricks’ll come in handy…” Right you were, Charlie, and right you are…_]

I refold my pad and stow it away. I retie the boat’s outer canvas and peek out through the opening on the near side, the way I had come in. I see no movement. The coast being clear, I crawl out, tie down the canvas, and head back for the hatchway.

There,
I say to myself,[_ by leaving tracks I have covered my tracks._]

I slink around the corner of the hatch and[_ Damn!_] I am confronted by two men who have plainly gone up on some errand and were afraid to go alone.

“Good God!” gasps one. The other is scared speechless. I see only eyes wide with terror.

I am just as terrified as they, but I make myself think,[_ You see them as men, but they see you as a black shadow, a black demon,
] and I reach up and pull myself to the ratlines, curling my arms about myself in imitation of a black spider. I twist those same arms in weird ways, and I reach deep down in my throat and rumble out,[
“Taboo…taboooo…taboooooooo…”_]

They cannot move.

I, however, can. After I have uttered the last[_ taboooooo,_] I leap from the rigging to the rail, and then, seeing them transfixed, I drop over the side.

I do not, however, drop into the ocean. No, I drop onto the anchor, which I know is hanging there by the side. I quickly clamber up the anchor shaft and onto the chain and into the hawsehole, the opening in the bow where the anchor chain is drawn. It’s a very tight squeeze and I leave a good bit of skin with the barnacles that cling thereto, but I make it in. Sitting on the pile of chain, I put my ear to the hawsehole.

“D-d-disappeared, it did, right into thin air. You saw it, don’t say you didn’t.”

“Nay, I saw it go right down into the sea, and it grinned a hideous grin at me as it went under and…Oh,[_ my God! We is lost! We is lost! We seed it, we did! We seed the Black Ghost, we did!”_]

And chaos rules on the[_ Bloodhound._]

These two run back to the quarterdeck, shrieking out their story, and the ship’s bell starts ringing and ringing, and I know a very unhappy Captain’s gonna come roarin’ out of his cabin, shoutin’ out death and destruction to any who would disturb his sleep. I climb blindly over the piled-up chain in the anchor-chain locker to find my way to the door, where I can see light around the edges, and I wait there, crouched and fearful, ‘cause I know the whole crew has been roused. A lamp has been lit in the kitchen and I hear shouts of[_ “Muster on the quarterdeck!”_] and feet pounding out of the crew’s berth. Then, when I don’t hear nothin’, I wait for another second, open the latch, which, thank God, opens from the inside, too. When I look out, there’s no one around.

I bolt down the passageway and down the ladder. Clarissa is still there.

“Damn!” she says. “What happened?”

“I got spotted! We’ve got to hurry! They’re mustering the crew, which means they’ll muster us, too! Hurry!”

We go through the storeroom and worm our way through the Rat Hole and hear the other girls starting to wake up from the noise outside.

Beatrice is there with the candle.

“Get the boards up quick!” I say, and pull off my hood and black shirt. “They’ll be down any minute!”

Clarissa and Bea get the boards up with one screw in the end of each, ‘cause there’s no time to do the others. We keep a little puddle of candle wax mixed with candle soot and brown color from my painting set next to the boards. Clarissa and Bea each take some up and thumb it into the screw holes to hide them.

Meanwhile, I’m strugglin’ out of my black boots and stockings when I hear,[_ “Lord, save us!”_] from above and I know that Sin-Kay and who-knows-who-else have entered our Hold.

“Bea,” I whisper, “leave the candle and get back topside! Cause confusion! Give us some time!”

She nods and goes to do it.

I pull off my black top and gather everything into a bundle and hiss to Clarissa, “We’ve got to get this stuff into the hidey-hole!”

The top board to the hidey-hole cache is off and I cram in my black rig.

“Inspection line!” roars Sin-Kay from up above. “Now!”

There are sounds of great commotion overhead. Feminine cries of “Oh,[_ my Lord,”
] and,[
“Saints preserve us,”
] and,[
“Please, God!”
] are heard, as well as Sin-Kay’s[
“Dammit! Line up! Get up from there! Get out of my way!”_]

The girls are doing a good job of obstruction, but will it be good enough, will we have time, will…?

My burglar gear bein’ in, I spit on my thumb and forefinger and snuff the candle and throw it in with the rest, and we put the top board back on. Screws in, sooty wax over the holes.

Now for my drawers and undershirt. It’s dark, but I know where I left them and I feel around and find them. “Hurry!” whispers Clarissa.

I figure out which one is the drawers and I try to pull them on, but I get them backward and have to twist them around and try again. I get them on.

“There’s two missing,” I hear Sin-Kay say. “That goddamned Faber and Howe, the two biggest troublemakers of the bunch!”

“Let’s check down below,” says a rough voice I recognize as belonging to Captain Blodgett.

Uh-oh…

The light of the lamp starts swinging toward the edge of the Stage.

“They’ll wonder what we’re doing down here,” whispers Clarissa. “They might decide to look at things real close…

Legs are seen on the stairs down into the Pit as the hand bearing the lamp comes down. No time for the shirt. I reach out and grab hold of her hand.

“They ain’t gonna wonder about nothing,” I whisper and fling myself down on my back. “C’mere! Lie down on top of me! Put your arms around me!” I know she does not understand, but she will.

I pull her down on me and I wrap my legs around her waist. I put my left hand on the back of her head and pull her face toward mine as I see the lamp bearer reach the bottom of the stairs. Then I push her mouth on mine and close my eyes. I feel her tighten up under my grip, resisting, but then…

Then I hear, “Wot the hell!” and I pop my eyes open in mock surprise to see Sin-Kay, Captain Blodgett, Chubbuck, and Sammy Nettles standing there looking in at us.

I release my hold on the back of Clarissa’s head so she is able to lift her face from mine.

“Lookee there, lookee there,” says Nettles, gleefully. “What the hell is going on here?” says the Captain.

“We are particular friends, Captain Blodgett,” says I, pretending to breathe hard. “We are merely looking for a bit of privacy so as to give each other some comfort.”

“Peculiar
friends if you ask me,” says the Captain, which seems to me to be a perfect case of the pot calling the kettle black, but I let it go. “Chubbuck, check it out back there barks our Captain.

I hold my breath as the Bo’sun parts the washing hung there and goes back by the Rat Hole and the Powder Hole and the hidey-hole, to inspect, but as he expects to find nothing, he discovers nothing.[_ What could a bunch of silly females be_] up[_ to?_] would go through what passes for his mind.