Against the Wind Read online

  “Keep yer mitts off, young’n! Tear up just one more thing you’ve no business touchin’ in the first place, an’ I’ll haul you off to Mr. Johnson to get yerself thumped good an’ proper!”

  “Stop that!” Emily demanded. She rapped the old man smartly on the shoulder with her dainty pink parasol, which was currently serving as a woefully inadequate umbrella. “There’s little enough amusement to be had on this filthy boat, and my brother’s done no harm that I can see. We are, after all, paying passengers on this loathsome vessel.”

  Caleb began shinnying up a long rope. “Yes, and it’s not anything like the fine ship my sister’s going to take to England.”

  Emily agreed, vehemently. “My brother is absolutely correct. This boat of yours isn’t fit for decent passengers. And it smells. Terribly! We have found it impossible to sleep, with the stench that fills our cabins at night.”

  The old man tried to pull Caleb down, and was rewarded with a nasty kick. He scowled and reached for the boy again, his temper rising.

  “Ye’ll all find it a sight harder yet to sleep with the seat of yer britches on fire, missy, And that’s just what’ll come to ye if Cap’n McAllister hears ye badmouthin’ the Liza, and treatin’ ‘er crew the way ye have.”

  “How dare you speak to me in that manner,” Emily fumed.

  Denton grinned, showing more toothless gaps than teeth. “It won’t be me darin’ it, lady. The Liza’s no pleasure ship, and the Cap’n don’t hold with the sort of tomfoolery this boy gets hisself up to. Nor your own, come to that. You’d best keep the youngster in hand, lest one of the crew sees to him theirselves.”

  At this point, another passing crewmember joined in the complaint, and this time, it was the burly sailor named Murphy, a man with whom Emily had already exchanged unpleasant words.

  “And I’m just the man to see to him!” Murphy boomed, taking hold of Caleb’s arm and lifting the boy high up off the deck. “I’ll box the brat’s ears for him, teach him what’s what on this—”

  “You’ll do no such thing!” Emily cried. “Take your hands off my brother this instant!” She swung her parasol as hard as she could, and struck the sailor a sharp blow directly behind his ear. With a whoop of pain, Murphy dropped the boy in order to paw at his injured ear. When his grimy hand came away covered in blood, he lunged furiously at the startled girl, and grabbed a handful of her skirt hem before she could dodge away.

  “Leave me be, you disgusting swine!” Emily shrieked, flailing at the man’s head and shoulders with the battered parasol. Only a few of her blows found their mark, but on the rain-slick deck, Murphy still went down with a crash. Although he was on his hands and knees and swearing a blue streak, he managed to get one grubby fist around Emily’s ankle, and yanked her off her feet. Emily screeched in pain and outrage as she landed on the icy deck, rear end first. Freed now, Caleb threw himself on the sailor’s back and began to pound at Murphy’s bleeding head with both small fists. Murphy reached back, groping for the boy’s legs to pry him loose, but Caleb held tighter, sinking his teeth into the embattled sailor’s uninjured ear. While Murphy attempted to dislodge his attacker by whirling in a maddened circle and howling obscenities at the top of his lungs, Emily scrambled to her hands and knees and viciously whacked the back of his legs with her parasol.

  Suddenly, a tall man whom Emily had never seen before appeared behind them and strode quickly to where the melee was in full progress. With one strong hand, he pulled the screaming Caleb off Murphy’s back, and swept the boy under his arm as easily as he might a sack of potatoes. Murphy drew back his great hairy arm, preparing to strike Emily across the face, and might have succeeded had Captain Ethan McAllister himself not collared the swearing seaman and thrown him backwards to the deck.

  “For God’s sake, Murphy!” he roared. “Leave them be, and get below to clean that ear! You’re bleeding like a stuck hog.”

  Murphy snarled at Emily, his fists clenched, eager to get in at least one blow.

  “I ain’t laid a finger on her, Cap’n! Not yet!”

  “Just go, damn it!” shouted the captain. Reluctantly, Murphy limped away, holding his bleeding ear and muttering under his breath.

  By now, others had heard the commotion. Gideon Fowler rushed on deck, in the company of a number of other passengers, and stared in disbelief at his two disheveled offspring, now in the custody of the enraged captain.

  “Captain McAllister,” Gideon cried. “What are thee doing?”

  “Is this yours?” McAllister bellowed. He dumped the wriggling Caleb on his feet, but held firmly to the back of the boy’s torn coat collar. Caleb swung his fists in a futile effort at punching the tall captain.

  “Yes, Captain. That is my son Caleb,” Gideon exclaimed. “And the young woman is my daughter.”

  McAllister “Well sir, in the future, I’d appreciate it if you would keep your offspring off this deck and away from my crew.” He gave Caleb a push in his father’s direction. “And please do me the immediate favor of taking this brat below and giving him the thorough hiding he deserves.”

  Gideon flushed. “Forgive me, Captain, but I cannot do that. We do not hold with the physical punishment of children.”

  Ethan shook his head in disgust. “In that case, Mr. Fowler, I believe I can guarantee that any member of my crew will be pleased to do your duty for you, by relieving the young gentleman of his trousers and laying a cane across his backside, here and now.”

  “Papa!” wailed Caleb, darting to relative safety behind his father’s back.

  During this exchange, Emily had gotten up and straightened her rumpled skirts. Now, she walked boldly up to McAllister, her tattered parasol at the read.

  “You are a bully, sir,” she said coolly, “and a shameful brute to pick on helpless children. As long as I have breath in my body, I swear that no person on this ship shall raise his hand to my brother.” She pulled off one fur-lined glove with a dramatic flourish and struck the captain’s chest. Had she been taller, the gesture implied, she would have slapped him across the face and challenged him to a duel.

  McAllister smiled.

  “Are you an adept swimmer, Miss Fowler?”

  Emily was taken aback by the seemingly irrelevant question. “What?”

  “I asked if you swam well, because, if you do not wish to swim the remainder of the way to Halifax, I suggest that you go below immediately, before I feel compelled to throw you overboard.”

  Emily was neither impressed, nor intimidated. “And for that outrage, sir, you would most certainly be arrested, thrown into irons, and quite probably hanged, as you well know.”

  McAllister thought for a moment. “Ah, yes, but by then, you will have been well and thoroughly drowned, and dinner for the fishes, ensuring us all some small degree of tranquility for the final days of this voyage. I call that a fair proposition, either way.”

  “You insolent beast!” Emily cried. She took a furious swing at the captain’s head with the ruins of her pink parasol, but McAllister caught her wrist in midair and pried the frilly weapon from her hand before it found its intended target. Then, with the practiced ease of a man who knows his way around and under women’s skirts, he flung up the tail of her woolen dress and petticoats and used the shattered parasol to deliver a deft, stinging swat to the seat of Emily’s warm flannel drawers. The Reverend Mr. Fowler’s gasp of disbelief could be heard quite readily over the babble of curious onlookers.

  At the first shock of thin metal and shredded silk biting painfully into her tender bottom, Emily yelped in shock, and threw her free hand behind her, but the defensive measure wasn’t quick enough to spare her three further blows with the twisted remains of her own parasol. Bits of lace and silk and thin metal rods flew across the deck as the frail object came apart, leaving only its wooden post and delicate pearl handle. McAllister raised the tattered skeleton as if to lay one last good swat across Emily’s thinly covered backside. Instead, he turned and hurled what was left of the parasol over the
side.

  The incident had happened too quickly to prevent, and now, Gideon could do little more than stare with horror at the spectacle of his proud daughter, her skirts tangled about her waist, sputtering with rage as she rubbed her smarting hind-quarters. When Emily did open her mouth to speak, McAllister pressed one finger firmly to her lips in warning.

  “I will make you a promise, Miss,” he said quietly, his words intended for her, alone. “If you utter one more word here, I will personally see to it that you are placed across that barrel there.” He pointed to an enormous black cask a few feet away. “With your skirts over your head and your drawers in full view, to have your rude, disrespectful little rump strapped long and hard by as strong a hand as I can find on this ship. Do you understand me? I advise you to mull your answer over very carefully. I am not a man to make idle promises.”

  Emily’s mouth opened, then closed quickly. When she nodded in agreement, her teeth were clenched. But that wasn’t enough to satisfy the captain.

  “I’ll have a civil answer, Miss, unless you wish to sit on a sorely welted bottom for the remainder of this voyage. I ask you again. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes!” she hissed.

  “Yes, what?” Holding her by her upper arm, he delivered a light, cautionary slap to Emily’s still tingling rear end.

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Yes, Captain, sir!” he corrected her.

  She repeated the words, but glared at him with open malevolence.

  He released her, and waved the rest of the gawkers away. As the small crowd dispersed, McAllister took Caleb’s arm and drew him aside.

  “Your father is a man of God, boy, and I’ll not make him go against his belief by whipping you. You’re a good lad, but a ship in high seas is a dangerous place, and you’re in my care as far as New Scotland. There’ll be no more warnings. Have I your word that you’ll behave as a proper seaman?”

  “Yes, sir, Captain, sir!” Caleb said proudly.

  “Good, Now get below, Tomorrow’s an early day, and if you’ve a mind to be a member of this crew, I’ll have your good friend Murphy himself teach you your knots, when he’s been sewn up a bit.”

  “Yes, sir! Thank you, Captain, sir!” The boy skipped away, then stopped, and turned. “Sir? Would you really have walloped my sister, sir?”

  McAllister grinned. “Would that offend you, then, Master Fowler?”

  “Oh, no, sir. Not at all, sir! Everyone would be very pleased, I’m sure, and I think it’d be a very fine thing to see! A fine thing, indeed!”

  Ethan laughed. “Well, it’s turning out to be a long voyage, Caleb. We shall see what happens. Go below now, and turn in. It’s late.”

  That evening, the talk at the captain’s dinner table quickly turned to Emily Fowler.

  “So, Ethan,” First Mate John Turner remarked, “I understand you met the Fowler brats, earlier today, and I must tell you, the crew’s had rather a good time spreading the tale.”

  Ethan groaned. “The son’s nothing more than high-spirited, but my God, what a little shrew the daughter is. I swear to you, if she weren’t female, I’d have turned her over to Johnson for a good hiding with that awful great strap he keeps in his quarters. I’ve never seen a youngster who needed it more.”

  The second officer shook his head. “Not such a youngster, Captain. I saw the passenger manifest. That ‘youngster’ is twenty-seven years old.”

  Turner nodded in agreement. “You’ve been at sea too long, Ethan, my friend. However, I understand from the story going ‘round, that you dealt with her more from the waist down than otherwise. I must tell you that from what I’ve seen, she has a buxom and excellently formed set of breasts on her, and I’m quite a fair judge of things like that, if I do say so myself.”

  McAllister was plainly astonished. “Our meeting was short, and she had on a heavy coat, but still—I would have thought closer to twelve. Are you certain about her age, John?”

  “Indeed, I am,” cried Turner. “On the very day we sailed from Nantucket, I managed to drop her silly bag, and she called me a ‘clumsy oaf’ and struck me on the shins with the very same parasol I gather she wielded in today’s skirmish. You might be interested to know that she’s on her way to Halifax to marry that fop heir to the Withers fortune, so it would appear that you’ve insulted a very wealthy young lady.”

  “Lady, my ass,” McAllister grumbled. “I’d whale the tar out of her if she were a fiancé of mine.”

  The second officer sighed. “Alas, Captain, I’m afraid the times have changed. We’re not permitted to spank young ladies, however attractive the thought.”

  Turner chuckled. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that, Keaton. Not at all. I, myself have two older step-sisters, and both of them were soundly spanked until they were seventeen or thereabouts. I know this because I contrived to watch the event at every opportunity, and to listen at their doors when I wasn’t able to watch. My father generally swatted them rather demurely over those voluminous petticoats women wear, but their dear mother was made of sterner stuff, and always lowered their drawers and bent them over a chair before wearing out a switch or two on those rosy buttocks. It must have stung like blazes, the way they shrieked and kicked! It was a lovely thing to behold, I tell you!”

  Ethan grinned. “I’m beginning to have serious doubts about your moral character, John.”

  “I was merely a healthy, growing boy, but I eventually did pay the piper for my dance,” Turner said, sighing deeply. “One morning, Father caught me looking in the window as one of the girls was undergoing an absolutely dreadful blistering. She was thrashing her legs so, and exposing herself so adorably that I simply didn’t notice Father approaching behind me. Whereupon, he dragged me to the barn and whipped my bare rump raw with a two-foot long section of leather harness. I’ve never since felt the same about horse-back riding, I swear to you.”

  Ethan poured another round of wine in his officers’ glasses.

  “A toast then, to a fair wind to Halifax, and to the quick and final off-loading of the annoying Miss Fowler. Our sincere condolences to her luckless bride-groom, and may he have the good sense to paddle her disagreeable little backside nightly, with our blessings!”

  Below, in the small cabin the Fowlers all shared, Chastity had been tormenting her older sister for the better part of the evening. Although she had not personally witnessed Emily’s humiliation, young Caleb had proven both eager and colorful in his reenactment of the afternoon’s events.

  “Oh, it was wonderfully funny, Mother, “ he exclaimed, giving his pillow several mighty swats to illustrate the climax of his narrative. “Captain McAllister gave her a good whacking, all right! Right on the seat of her drawers! The sound of it was like thwack, thwack, and then thwack, thwack again! I wish you’d been there to see poor Emily’s face! “

  “And then,” said Chastity, tugging at their miserably seasick mother’s sleeve to get her complete attention. “After he’d already spanked our poor, dear Emily as if she were a little child, in front of everybody, he threatened to do it again!”

  Emily shot her sister a look of contempt. “Please try to ignore them, Mother. It was nothing but a simple misunderstanding.”

  Chastity howled. “Misunderstanding, indeed! After it was over, I caught her looking in the mirror at her backside after she got back to the cabin. She has the most awful red stripes you can imagine on her precious bottom!”

  Emily hurled a book of poetry at Chastity’s blonde head, missed, and stormed from the cabin.

  Naomi groaned and covered her eyes. Surely, she thought, God must be punishing her for something of very great consequence.

  There was another storm that night, which threw everyone from their bunks, terrified, and sick as dogs. Above, the passenger cabins, the Liza’s decks were awash with inches of icy seawater that poured down the companionways, despite the crews’ best efforts to batten the hatches against the incoming flood. The bedding was soaked, along with anything that had been left on the p
lanked floors. By morning, misery was already a constant companion, made even worse as the weather turned freezing and the sea itself disappeared in a cold dense fog.

  With the worst of the storm over, Emily sloshed through the half-inch of chill water still remaining in the family’s tiny cabin, and crawled up the damp companionway to the open deck. Once there, she clung to the railing with one hand, wrung the hem of her skirts with the other, and shook her hair loose, hoping to dry it. The ship was rolling on a long sea, mounting each swell with a slow, profoundly sickening motion, and as she hurried to the bulwark to throw up over the ship’s heaving side, she felt immensely grateful that she had declined the unappealing breakfast of cold pork her mother had encouraged her to eat.

  Feeling somewhat better, she turned her face to the wind to breathe deeply, and to relish the bracing effect and clean smell of the freezing air. Then, after a quick look around to check for other passengers or crew, she bent over and raised her skirts, again, trying to wring more of the moisture from the hems of her drenched clothing.

  “Good morning, Miss Fowler,” a familiar voice said behind her. Emily shot up, dropped her dress, and wheeled around to scold the intruder. The captain was standing there before her, a slightly sheepish smile on his face.

  “I must apologize for the Atlantic Ocean, both for disturbing your sleep and for wetting you so thoroughly. You look pale, Miss. I hope you’re not about to faint. If you’re feeling ill, you should probably go below, for your own safety.”

  “I’m not in the least ill, Captain McAllister,” Emily snapped. “And I assure you that I never faint. It is simply not in my nature. I was born and raised on Nantucket, and am quite accustomed to inclement weather, thank you. Were I a man, I might well have chosen the sea as a trade, myself.”