Show Me the Sky - Nicholas Hogg [41]
With these instructions I returned to my quarters, most anxious about my part in this drama, a game even, with myself as the most likely loser – either caught red-handed rifling my patron’s chambers, or accused of being the original thief of the books!
But it was a solemn oath that I swore to the capt., and find his scurrilous pages I will!
7 February 1834
The day to my drama began as usual: morning service followed by Fijian instruction for Rev. Stevens, before reverie above deck in the afternoon. But then, prior to the evening meal, I feigned a slight stomach ache to keep me from the table – thus free to skulk about the lower decks undisturbed.
Once the clatter of knife and fork commenced from the diners, I deemed it safe to leave my room and undergo the mission. Most of the cabin doors were unlocked, and little more than a silent turn of the knob was needed to enter.
On embarking the Caroline, each guest had been allotted a cabin and a large trunk – which I would now unlock with the master keys of the capt.
Curious, guilty, frightened of capture and the misunderstanding that would no doubt ensue, I searched through the missionaries’ belongings fruitlessly, discovering only possessions regular to all – diaries, bibles, medicines, and articles for use of the women only.
Where the other cabins gleamed with the polish and keep of a feminine hand, the room of Rev. Thomas lay as fetid and dank as a rat’s nest. I lifted and peered beneath his belongings with little care of replacing them as I had found, doubting the rev. himself would be able to recollect where they had been discarded. Once I was sure no books rested beneath his reeking undergarments and yellowing bed sheets, I took the final key from the ring and inserted it into the chest.
But where the other locks had fallen open, this one snagged the key and stuck fast.
Hearing chair legs scrape across the dining-room floor above, I was sweating through my breeches as I tugged at the key in an effort to work it free. Footfalls creaked their way along the corridor outside, and I realised I was trapped! If I was caught in the quarters of my patrons, and the capt. shied of revealing his intentions of my search, I would be shamed and flogged in the manner of the miserable cheese thief!
When the rev. turned the doorknob, and I stood up from the chest, I had not a reason in my head to offer why I was in his quarters.
But the capt. came to the rescue, a man of his word. Just as the door swung open he called the missionaries and wives above deck, insisting that they observe a particularly starry night sky. In the time he had them march on deck to be disappointed by a hazy vista, I wiggled the key loose from the lock, along with a knot of cloth that had been purposefully jammed in the mechanism! Without knowledge of this sabotage, a stuck key would foil anyone attempting to open the chest. It was not an obstacle that had occurred by mishap, and only the cunning of Rev. Thomas could have arranged it so.
Questions why only multiplied as I made my escape and ducked back to my room.
My brain races with this mystery, but I should try and sleep now, glad that I was not caught, tied to the mast and whipped!
8February 1835
On opening the library door this morning I immediately sensed the scroll had been moved. I took the key