Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [325]
As he turned back to his work, he saw a young woman, just coming down above the quay. She was the sort of girl called “bonny”—not beautiful, but lively and nicely made, with something about her that took the eye.
Perhaps it was only her posture; straight as a lily stem among the hunched and drooping backs around her. Or her face, which showed apprehension and uncertainty, but had still about it the brightness of curiosity. A darer, that one, he thought, and his heart—oppressed by so many downcast faces among the emigrants—lightened at the sight of her.
She hesitated at sight of the ship and the crowd around it. A tall fair-haired young man was with her, a baby in his arms. He touched her shoulder in reassurance, and she glanced up at him, an answering smile lighting her face like the striking of a match. Watching them, Roger felt a mild pang of something that might have been envy.
“You, MacKenzie!” The bosun’s shout pulled him from his contemplation. The bosun jerked his head aft. “There’s cargo a-waitin’—it’s no goin’ to walk aboard by itself!”
Once embarked and under sail, the voyage went smoothly for some weeks. The stormy weather that accompanied their exodus from Scotland quickly diminished into good winds and rolling seas, and while the immediate effect of this on the passengers was to make the majority of them seasick, this ailment also faded in time. The smell of vomit from the steerage subsided, becoming only a minor note in the symphony of stinks aboard the Gloriana.
Roger had been born with an acute sense of smell, an attribute he was finding a marked liability in close quarters. Still, even the keenest nose grew accustomed in time, and within a day or so he had ceased to note any but the most novel stenches.
He was fortunately not subject to seasickness himself, though his experiences with the herring fishers had been enough to give him a keen appreciation of the weather, with the sailor’s unsettling knowledge that his life might depend on whether the sun was shining that day.
His new shipmates were not friendly, but neither were they hostile. Whether it was his “teuchter” accent from the Isles—for most of the Gloriana’s hands were English-speakers from Dingwall or Peterhead—the occasional odd things that he said, or simply his size, they regarded him with a certain watchful distance. No overt antagonism—his size prevented that—but distance nonetheless.
Roger wasn’t disturbed by the coolness. He was pleased enough to be left to his thoughts, his mind ranging free while his body dealt with the daily round of shipboard duties. There was plenty to think about.
He had taken no heed to the reputation of the Gloriana or her captain before signing on; he would have sailed with Captain Ahab, provided only that that gentleman was bound for North Carolina. Still, from the talk he heard among the crew, he gathered that Stephen Bonnet was known as a good captain; hard but fair, and a man whose voyages always turned a profit. To the seamen, many of whom sailed on shares rather than wages, this latter quality plainly more than compensated for any small defects of character or address.
Not that Roger had seen open evidence of such defects. But he did see that Bonnet stood always as though an invisible circle had been drawn around him, a circle that few were bold enough to enter. Only the first mate and the bosun spoke directly to the Captain; the crewmen kept their heads down as he passed. Roger remembered the cool green leopard-eyes that had looked him over; little wonder that no one wanted to attract their notice.
He was more interested in the passengers, though, than in either crew or captain. Little was seen of them normally, but they were allowed on deck briefly twice each day, to take a bit of air, to empty their slop jars over the side—for the ship’s heads were woefully inadequate for so many—and to carry down again the small amounts of water carefully rationed to each family. Roger looked forward to these