alone a written one.
“No cabin boys?” As she understood, taking young boys to sea was a well-steeped tradition.
“Certainly,” Nathan replied. “Have to be a dundering oysterhead to aweigh without. Millbridge there is one.” A hand waved in the direction of the ship’s patriarch.
“But…he’s…?”
“Too old to do aught else,” Nathan finished bluntly, but with a certain affection. “The men—and me, of course—desire to keep him about, but those old bones won’t stand much abuse, so he’s the easiest job aboard.”
“Easy” wasn’t ordinarily the first word that came to mind when referring to cabin boy. To be one meant to live at the beck and call of every hand aboard. A combination messenger, servant, and valet, they were required to perform any and all menial tasks. It hardly seemed the role for a person verging on antiquity.
“But, I’ve never seen him in the—” Cate began.
“Not likely to either,” Nathan cut in. “He can’t abide women. Some long, lost love doing him wrong, or some such stuff and nonsense, but it stuck with him all these years. Never known him to so much as lift a brow to a whore, let alone be in the same room with one, willingly at any rate. No offense,” he added as a rather late-coming afterthought.
“None taken, I think,” she said, still trying to sort out the image of Millbridge being anyone’s lackey.
“Jensen was taken on initially to serve as Kirkland’s lad, but he’s never allowed the boy over the galley coaming.”
Jensen was the youngest in years, but held seniority over many. That edge didn’t save him from being the brunt of practical jokes and ribbings. Bright-faced and good-natured, he eagerly faced every menial and dirty task that came with being the youngest aboard. His ability to accept it all in the spirit intended, often laughing the hardest, had endeared him to everyone. Now the tender age of seventeen and at sea for a few years, it was painfully clear that Jensen wasn’t a natural seaman. It was suggested, often and none so gently, that perhaps his talents laid in farming, with dirt under his nails as opposed to tar.
“Reminds me of meself,” Nathan sighed wistfully one day. “Of course, I wasn’t so cod-handed.” He winced, indicating perhaps that wasn’t quite the entire truth.
“But no regular cabin boys?” Cate asked.
Nathan smiled tolerantly. “Best not have the men see the captain waited upon: sets a bad image. Besides, the lads can be a bit…without defenses,” he finished with a strained tone.
It was another arrival upon dangerous grounds, and many of those there were. She was coming to wish for a chart by which to track such hazards.
Life, however, was far from idyllic. A few souls made it eloquently clear they desired no part of her, her presence an affront. She felt their thinly veiled malignant looks, their comments always uttered loudly enough for her benefit alone. Scarface, or Bullock as his name turned out to be, was always among them, his voice as recognizable as Nathan’s. A ringleader, if ever she had seen one. His presence was as pressing as the trade winds. She took careful note of him and his cohorts at all times.
Besides the uncertainty of her fate—Nathan being still slippery on the matter—the issue of quartering was a growing concern. Upon her unceremonious arrival, she had been deposited in the captain’s berth. After the first several nights, she had anticipated being relocated to one of the cabins below, but Nathan had insisted she remain where she was, “Seeing as how it was finally clean to your exacting standards.”
He was, of course, referring to a rather unfortunate incident one morning, when…Well, the mattress needed airing desperately! There had been cross words and perhaps some hurt feelings—not that ingratitude for his hospitality had been her intention—but her goal had ultimately been met: the oakum-stuffed mattress spending the day on the hatch grates in the sun and smelling much the better for it.
The issue of sleeping arrangements was precipitated not quite a week of her arrival, when she found Nathan one night at the table, the logbook his pillow.
Cate came in the next morning to find him as clear-eyed and insufferably perky as ever—and yes, perky was indeed the correct word, for the man positively bubbled. She, on the other hand, met the day with considerably less gleeful aplomb. He took an unseemly joy, by her estimation, in making example of that not-so-small contrast. He met the sun like it was an elixir, whereas it did no more