All The Stars to Sail

Chapter 2: Object Lessons

The next several weeks passed by in a blur for Jane as the Legacy was undergoing repairs, with most of the crew berthed in the Naval Barracks to keep them out from underfoot of the workers. Only the captain, Arrow, Jane, and various groups of sailors and officers being called back to the ship to complete various duties on it. The ship, when she came aboard that first day, had been a hive of activity. The crew had caught on quickly to the news of the refit and had begun what seemed to Jane like the most industrious spring cleaning endeavor she had ever seen. Even amidst the bustle and hum of the port the ship had managed to outdue all the other lesser dins around it with the sound of straining winches, bellowing crew, and various other sounds whose origin she failed to readily identify.

She and Amelia alighted from the coach and, as the captain turned to speak to the driver, Jane moved to stand alongside the large ship's curved wooden hull to escape the heat of the day. The young woman let her eyes drift across the sea of faces and bodies that moved around the parked coach, but she gradually lost interest in them and gained more interest in the activities of the ship above her. Jane glanced at the gangway a few feet to her left and then back at the captain who was still involved in her conversation, and Jane found herself in the midst of indecision. Her upbringing told her to stay where she was until the captain told her otherwise; her curiosity told her to take the opportunity that lay almost literally in front of her. It was curiosity that, as it usually does, won out; Jane moved away quietly from the ship's hull with a firm grip on her bag and umbrella lest it hit the hull and give her away. She walked toward the gangway, keeping an eye on Amelia out of the corner of her eye, before lifting up a foot and placing it on the sloped wooden ramp. No alarms were sounded, no voices yelled at her to stop, so she took another step, and another, and so on until she reached the top of the gangway and suddenly found herself on the outskirts of a swirling hive of activity.

The middeck was a madhouse, the domain of some frantic many limbed creature that resisted classification. Bodies swarmed across the deck this way and that, hauling barrels and boxes, and dodging around the winches that were hauling large crates from the ship's hold to the jetty. Jane looped her umbrella around her wrist, pulled her sketchpad from her bag, and quickly rummaged at the bottom of her bag for one of the well worn pencils that habitually dwelt there. Finding one with a point she quickly took to sketching the scene, separating the undulating beast in front of her down to its' component parts, and transferring them all to the page in front of her. So intent upon this task was she, however, that she failed to notice the footsteps moving up the gangplank behind her until she heard Amelia's voice. "Entertaining yourself, Ms. Porter?"

Jane spun around rapidly, her mouth opening wide in surprise, and the sketchbook falling from her suddenly nerveless fingers. Amelia's hands, however, were much surer and one shot out to grab the sketchbook before it fell. The captain reversed the book and held it up to study the sketch Jane had been making for several moment, then shut the book with a snap and held it out to Jane. "Impressive work, Ms. Porter, but I hope you'll confine it to your own time. You are now officially on my time, and I plan to make good use of it."

Jane took the book and, with careful deliberation, put it and the pencil back in her bag before stepping backward to make room for Amelia. The captain strode onto the deck, glanced around her, and sighted on a larger man in a red coat. "Mr. Arrow!" she called in a voice of carrying power, and the man turned around to reveal a rocklike countenance that was so unlike anything Jane had ever seen that she could feel her hand reaching for her sketchpad again but managed to suppress the urge."Yes, Captain?" the rockman boomed as he raised an arm in salute, which Amelia returned, before indicating Ms. Porter. "We have a guest, Mr. Arrow. I will be in my cabin with her until further notice; disturb me only if absolutely necessary." The man nodded and saluted again. "Understood, Captain." Once Amelia returned his salute the man turned and began resuming his previous duties; the captain then glanced over her shoulder at Jane and nodded toward the upper deck. "Come along, Ms. Porter. We've got a lot to talk about." Jane nodded silently and followed the other to the rear of the ship.