Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [64]
As though this had been a signal, Jamie’s hand cupped itself, and a slight shiver communicated itself from him to me, as the coolness struck his bare back.
“I didna really do myself credit earlier,” he said softly. “But if you’re sure there’s nothing troubling your mind just now …”
“Nothing,” I said, watching the glow from the window touch the line of his head and neck with gold. His mouth was still wide and gentle, but he didn’t look fourteen any longer.
“Not a thing, just now.”
8
MAN OF WORTH
“God, I hate boats!”
With this heart-felt valediction ringing in my ears, we swung slowly out into the waters of Wilmington harbor.
Two days of purchases and preparations found us now bound for Cross Creek. With money from the sale of the ruby in hand, there had been no need to sell the horses; Duncan had been sent with the wagon and the heavier goods, with Myers aboard to guide him, the rest of us to take a quicker, more comfortable passage with Captain Freeman, aboard the Sally Ann.
A craft of singular and indescribable type, the Sally Ann was square-beamed, long, low-sided, and blunt-prowed. She boasted a tiny cabin that measured roughly six feet square, leaving a scant two feet on either side for passage, and a somewhat greater area of deck fore and aft, this now partially obscured by bundles, bags, and barrels.
With a single sail mounted on a mast and boom above the cabin, the Sally Ann looked from a distance like a crab on a shingle, waving a flag of truce. The peaty brown waters of the Cape Fear lapped a scant four inches below the rail, and the boards of the bottom were perpetually damp with slow leakage.
Still, I was happy. Cramped conditions or no, it was good to be on the water, away—if only temporarily—from the Governor’s siren song.
Jamie wasn’t happy. He did indeed hate boats, with a profound and undying passion, and suffered from a seasickness so acute that watching the swirl of water in a glass could turn him green.
“It’s dead calm,” I observed. “Maybe you won’t be sick.”
Jamie squinted suspiciously at the chocolate-brown water around us, then clamped his eyes shut as the wake from another boat struck the Sally Ann broadside, rocking her violently.
“Maybe not,” he said, in tones indicating that while the suggestion was a hopeful one, he also thought the possibility remote.
“Do you want the needles? It’s better if I put them in before you vomit.” Resigned, I groped in the pocket of my skirt, where I had placed the small box containing the Chinese acupuncture needles that had saved his life on our Atlantic crossing.
He shuddered briefly and opened his eyes.
“No,” he said. “I’ll maybe do. Talk to me, Sassenach—take my mind off my stomach, aye?”
“All right,” I said obligingly. “What is your Aunt Jocasta like?”
“I havena seen her since I was two years old, so my impressions are a bit lacking,” he replied absently, eyes fixed on a large raft coming down the river, set on an apparent collision course with us. “D’ye think that Negro can manage? Perhaps I ought to give him a bit of help.”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t,” I said, eyeing the oncoming raft warily. “He seems to know what he’s doing.” Besides the captain—a disreputable old wreck who reeked of tobacco—the Sally Ann had a single hand, an elderly black freedman who was dealing alone with the steerage of our craft, by means of a large pole.
The man’s lean muscles flexed and bulged in easy rhythm. Grizzled head bowed in effort, he took no apparent notice of the oncoming barge, but plunged and lifted in a liquid motion that made the long pole seem like a third limb.
“Let him alone. I suppose you don’t know much about your aunt, then?” I added, in hopes of distracting him. The raft was moving ponderously and inexorably toward us.
Some forty feet from end to end, it rode low in the water, weighed down with barrels and stacks of hides, tied down under netting. A pungent wave of odor preceded it, of musk and blood and rancid fat, strong enough to overpower temporarily all the