The Stolen Heart (4 page)

 

 

“I'm sorry, son. I shouldn't have mentioned it. I know how worried
you are about your brother.”

 

 

Flustered by his touch, she avoided his penetrating golden gaze and
said quickly, “It is all right, sir. I need to know the truth about
what he's facing. What we're both facing if we're to have a career
as whalemen. I’ll just go get the boys and some food, and see you
soon.”

 

 

She hurried from the cabin and his mesmerizing presence, and
reminded herself that Adrian was older than she, and a boy too. He
would just have to be a man about it. He had longed to follow in his
father's footsteps. Service on the
Dolphin
would toughen him
up, and make him realize it wasn't all fun and adventure at sea.
Once they got him transferred aboard the
Trident
, he would
be safe, and be able to learn from Jared. They just had to keep
pressing on until they located the other ship.

 

 

As soon as Al had scuttled from the cabin, Jared wanted to kick
himself. The poor boy had looked so appalled at his tale of Captain
Smith. He would have to think of some good cheerful sea stories
instead to tell while they sat together that evening, so he wouldn't
worry about his brother so much.

 

 

 

CHAPTER FOUR

 

 

Al went up on deck and gathered the greenhands together for the
Sunday evening social. “If you’re not on watch, then the captain's
waiting for us all below.”

 

 

“Great,” Bob, the oldest of the greenies at eighteen said.

 

 

“Can’t wait,” enthused Tom Lawrence, a large blond raw-boned farm
lad of seventeen.

 

 

“I'm going to go get some hot food first. I’ll be down soon.”

 

 

“Aye, we saw the Mate giving you a hard time. You need to try to
change boats, get in the second mate’s with us, Al,” said George, a
small ferret-faced lad of sixteen who was superb at his ship-board
duties, but always seemed to be hungry and angry.

 

 

“Believe me, I'd like nothing better. But it was the Captain's
suggestion for me to get toughened up like a greenhand, rather than
just act as a cabin boy, so there's not much I can do about it now.”

 

 

George shrugged. “You're doin' your best. Anyway, go on and get your
dinner, lad. We’ll see you in a minute.”

 

 

She smiled at him warmly, glad he was not going through one of his
moody phases. He reminded her a lot of her brother Adrian when he
was like that.

 

 

She headed to the galley and got a plate of lobscouse, salted beef
and biscuit all mashed up into a type of stew, a potato, and some
pease porridge. It certainly wasn't very good, though the short,
wiry blond Cook did the best he could with what he had to work with.

 

 

But without any way of preserving the food, or securing fresh food
until they got to the next port apart from the few animals they
carried with them to slaughter as a rare treat, it was the finest
they could expect.

 

 

Almira sighed. She had little cause to complain. At least she was
eating regularly, three times a day. It was more than she and her
family had done toward the end, when her mother had sickened and
then died.

 

 

She was convinced it was because her mother had been giving what
little there was to the children, and had starved herself nearly to
death. A simple chill had taken the poor woman off in the end.

 

 

Or had she died of a broken heart, missing her father? They had
always sailed together, from the time they had been married over two
decades before, all except that last fateful voyage. Her father had
insisted on them remaining behind in order to improve Adrian’s
educational and employment prospects, and her own chance of securing
a good match to a worthy husband.

 

 

Almira couldn't imagine being married, let alone to a landlubber.
But her father had feared she would get herself talked about if she
remained on the ship much longer.

 

 

His second mate had also formed an unsuitable attachment to her
which her father had disapproved of on the grounds that the man was
an incorrigible flirt and liquorous.

 

 

She sighed again. She had not liked the man very much either, but it
had seemed unfair that she had had to remain on shore when she had
done nothing wrong.

 

 

Now Father was missing, Mother dead, Adrian on a hell ship, and the
family completely broken up.

 

 

But she couldn't complain about her own lot in life. Thanks to the
wonderful Jared Starbuck she had food, warm clothes, a good berth,
and a kind captain. And she was at sea, the best part of all.
Sailing from port to port might seem a curious definition of home,
but she felt truly alive on board ship.

 

 

Perhaps too alive,
she thought to herself, wincing as she
moved her stiff arms. The numbness of grief over her parents had
gradually been wearing off. There was a future to be faced, with or
without them. She couldn't let her sisters down, no matter what fate
had befallen her father and Adrian.

 

 

She finished eating the salty supper in order to keep up her
strength, then took her pewter plate back to the galley, washed it,
and put it back in the cupboard along with the rest of the now dry
dishes sitting on the sideboard. Cook gave her a grateful wave, and
she smiled and headed below once more.

 

 

When she got back down to the Captain’s main cabin, they were all
engaged in play except George, so she joined him at the cribbage
board.

 

 

“Winners play winners. Losers play losers to determine placement,”
the Captain told her as she sat on the opposite side of the room
from him.

 

 

She had to remind herself that she spent enough time with him as it
was without having to always sit next to him. Often she simply
couldn’t help herself. He was like a lodestone to which she was
continuously drawn.

 

 

She won her first two games easily against George and Tom, but found
herself matched with the Captain in the next round. She put the red
and blue tinged pegs back into the zero holes, and they began.

 

 

He was a very good player, but the cut card, and the two discards
from each of their hands forming the extra hand, or ‘crib’, which
they alternated between each other, offered just enough luck and
chance to make a relatively mundane hand or pair of cards worth so
much more.

 

 

She looked at her hand; two aces, a three, a five, a six, and a ten,
and discarded the three and six.

 

 

Jared cut the cards, and a nine appeared. She pegged well, earning
another seven points, and causing Jared to shake his head.

 

 

When it came time to count, her own hand was calculated as a total
of eight points, but the cribbage hand turned out to be worth a
great deal more, for Jared had discarded two sixes. “Eighteen
points,” she declared with a grin.

 

 

“You do have the Devil’s own luck, sometimes, Al,” he grumbled, and
picked up the deck to shuffle again.

 

 

He dealt her three queens and a five, and she happily discarded a
two and four. He discarded, and she cut the deck. The fourth queen
appeared. She giggled, earning herself a mock frown from the
captain.

 

 

"Anyone would think you worked on a riverboat, not a whaler."

 

 

"What is it they say about cards? Lucky at cards, unlucky in love?"

 

 

"Let's hope you have a better fate than that, lad, when the time
comes."

 

 

She was fairly sure she did as she looked at his stunningly handsome
face, especially his rare golden eyes. But his ample attractions
were still not enough to distract her from her game.

 

 

She pegged well, earning another six points, and then showed him her
hand.

 

 

“Twenty points,” she announced happily.

 

 

He ground his teeth together, and sighed. "If I didn't deal the
cards myself, I would think you were cheating."

 

 

"Never that, sir. It's all luck, and skill," she said with a grin.

 

 

The next hand few hands followed the same pattern, and on the fifth,
she pegged out before they even got to the counting phase.

 

 

“Just remind me to
never
play you for money,” he said with a
glum expression.

 

 

“Rematch, then?”

 

 

He shook his dark head ruefully. “No. I think I stand a slightly
better chance at the chess board. But only slightly.”

 

 

“Oh, no. I’ll do my problems, and you can play with Tom.”

 

 

“I would rather play with you,” he whispered. “You don’t confuse the
pieces and try to eat them.”

 

 

Almira laughed. “That was a bit unkind, sir. He's not
that
bad and you know it. Besides, we can play any time.”

 

 

“Very well,” he said, leaning forward and pointing at her slate to
make it look as though he was discussing the math problem with her.
“But I shall hold you to that after they've turned in.”

 

 

So she sat in the corner playing checkers with Bob, while Jared
taught chess to the boys who were interested, and a couple of them
tried to best each other at various card games.

 

 

Al tried not to win every game of checkers she played. In any case,
she found the navigation far more fascinating. She worked her way
through the problems and checked them twice, but was proud to see
that she had got them right the first time.

 

 

When they grew tired of games, they swapped stories of home. Al and
the Captain made sure everyone had a turn and felt confident enough
to participate.

 

 

Jared also did not allow them to tease each other, nor did he allow
any smutty talk amongst the boys. They would hear enough of that
from some of the older men, without encouraging them to think it was
acceptable in front of him or young people generally.

 

 

Jared knew he had been very fortunate in his upbringing, with two
devoted women looking after him, his mother and his aunt, who waas
his cousin and best friend Dare’s mother. They had been respectable
and God-fearing, true, but also warm and loving.

 

 

The two stalwart women had taught him to esteem the female gender in
all regards, not just treat them as objects to be enjoyed for a few
hours and then discarded.

 

 

He had grown up most circumspectly, but their example had also
influenced his decision to have as little to do with women as
possible. It was unfair to leave a woman ashore to pine and fret for
news for years at a time. To make her raise their children by
herself, and take care of all the household chores and business
alone for stretches which averaged three to five years.

 

 

He had never even considered the possibility of a woman coming
aboard a whaler, and still wondered if Dare’s wife Samantha was not
a little mad. Surely it had to be a bit odd for her to enjoy the
life as she did. Or to raise little Edward, named after Dare’s
father, on board a ship.

 

 

But before he had left Nantucket, he had seen them preparing for yet
another journey down to the St. Helena Grounds in the South
Atlantic, which were fruitful, but not so far that they could not
get down there and back with their greenhand crews in only about six
to eight months.

 

 

They trained them, brought aboard some oil, and then took them back
as experienced crewmen who could command a much higher share and
status on their next voyage. He had even hired one or two of them
himself and been most pleased with their contributions and thought
they had excellent prospects in the Starbuck fleet.

 

 

St. Helena was nice enough, and lucrative, but Jared had always
loved the Pacific Ocean, and the New Zealand Grounds in particular.
While he might normally have gone via St. Helena and the Indian
Ocean, he had promised Al he would try to get to the bottom of her
father’s disappearance.

 

 

For that he had to try to retrace Captain Hussey's route in reverse.
By all accounts Jed had been heading for the Horn the last time he
had been seen or heard from, and so the west coast of South America
would be the best place to start his inquiries.

 

 

As he looked across at Al busily working on her slate with enormous
concentration despite the other seven people in the room all making
noise, he wondered what had prompted him to take the tiny lad under
his wing. What prompted him now when he deliberately sought out his
companionship.

 

 

He felt a dreadful pang at the thought. There was a name for men
like that. He had met a few of them in his time at sea, and the
thought filled him with disgust.

 

 

His father had once said that there were all kinds of love in the
world. That some men aboard ship were as devoted as brothers, or had
quite parental relationships with their charges.

 

 

He and Dare could not have been closer if they had been actual
brothers, and Jared and his own brother Morgan adored each other
despite several years' gap in their ages.

 

 

But the thought of him desiring Al in an unnatural way filled him
with unease.

 

 

Out of all the lads who had served as cabin boy in the past, why
this one? Because of his father? His adorable little sisters? It was
all so confusing.