My shirt, however, is not my problem as you could still play a tune on my ribs had you the proper hammers and musical training. No, the problem is with my pants. They are getting tight across the rear. When first I put on poor Charlie's pants, there was room enough to spare and I had to roll up the cuffs several times to keep them from flopping around my feet. What with the three full meals a day that I've been getting and what we've been cajoling out of the cook, my haunches have filled out and are getting right round, which is not good in the furthering of The Deception. I've got a little taller, too. I only roll up the cuffs once now.
But I am some skilled in the sewing now and I resolve to make new pants. Baggy ones. I go to see Liam and he tells me I'm to go see the clerk, Deacon Dunne, down in ship's stores, and draw some cloth and thread against my wages, and off I go.
Deacon Dunne casts a wary eye on me. "Jack Faber, is it?"
"Aye, Sir."
"Two yards of white duck?"
"Aye, Sir."
"This essentially uses up your pay so far. What with the mess kit you were issued when you came on board lacking one. That's charged against your name, too."
"I know, Sir," says I, still marveling that I get paid at all.
Deacon Dunne nods to his assistant clerk who goes to get the cloth and thread. "Have you been reading your Bible, Jack?" he asks, drilling me with his gaze.
"Oh yes, Sir," say I, and put on a face of all honest innocence, "and I find it a great consolation and solace. A balm, even."
He looks at me doubtfully, but he delivers the goods.
I am good at the sewing and I am prideful about it. I can sew a straight seam and I can cut the shapes out of the whole cloth and see how it's all going to come together and and how it's going to fit and hang. The boys are not good at the sewing. Willy is too clumsy with the needle and Davy and Tink and Benjy lack the patience and Jaimy considers it beneath him. We'll see when his clothes turn to rags on him just how far beneath him it is, the snob.
Within a day and a half I have a new pair of trousers. They have a drawstring at the waist, lots of room in the butt, and wide cuffs so I can roll the legs up above my knees for the deck washing and such.
I also have some cloth left over, so I make myself a pair of underdrawers, the first I've had since That Dark Day. Then an idea comes to me, an idea so wonderful in its cunning and boldness that I am grinning and giggling as I carry it out. I take a piece of the remaining scraps of cloth and roll it up into a sort of soft tube. Then I fold another piece up to make a soft round pad. I sew the tube onto the pad and then take the two of them together and sew them in the front of my drawers, so that if anyone is ever checking out the front of my pants for evidence of male equipment, I won't be found lacking.
I am well rigged out.
The north coast of Africa is all dull, barren brown rock broken up by patches of sandy desert with dunes that come all the way down to the edge of the sea. The sand whips up into clouds that reach all the way out to us sometimes and we can taste the grit in our mouths. We chase what we think to be pirates, but they always slip away from us, dodging into tiny harbors or running into waters too shallow for us to go. It makes the crew mad, 'cause they're hungry for plunder and prizes. But not me. I don't care if we ever catch a pirate.
The seas roll by and the months do, too, and I do my duties and loll about in the foretop under the sun with the boys, and I practice my pennywhistle and do my sewing and study my lessons and grow lazy and sleek. I have seen Morocco and I have seen Tripoli. Egypt, too. All from five miles out. I marvel at how far I have come since the days in the streets and I dream of how far I might yet go.
So sail on, Dolphin, I say, weave your way in this watery world and keep on sheltering this poor orphan girl as long as you can.
I have four tunes by heart now: "The Tenpenny Bit," which was the easiest one, the one Liam showed me first, and "Dicey Riley," and "The Pigtown Jig," all of which are good for the dancing, which I can now do a bit of. Liam showed me the heel-and-toe action of the feet and I caught on right fast. The Scots on board say I should dance with my arms folded in front of me, and the English say one hand on the belly and the other on the small of the back, and the Irish say it must be done with the hands held rigidly to the sides, but it's all one—it's the feet what do the work, anyway.
I know a slow and sad song, too, and it's my favorite, called "Down by the Sally Gardens." Like most of the slow tunes, it's about a poor and trusting girl who is led astray by her false true lover, who asks her to go riding with him and she goes with the scoundrel only to have a knife thrust in her dear and lovin' and trustin' heart and her heart's blood does flow and she's tossed in a lonesome grave with only the wild birds to mourn. But it's a lovely tune, anyway, and the whistle has a way of sounding sad and far away on the slow songs, even when it's right up against your lips.
I caught on right fast to the dancing and playing because I have this thing in me that loves to show off and be in the center of things. I try to fight it 'cause I know it's dangerous to The Deception, but I don't always succeed.
A month or so after I made my pants, I wheedled some more cloth out of Deacon Dunne with the promise that I'd learn some Scripture by heart. This time I got a bit of blue cloth as well as the white and a length of white piping, and I made me a shirt. It's white with a drawstring on the bottom and a blue flap on the back, and I stitched the white piping around the outside edge of the blue flap, about an inch in, and then above that, on the bottom edge, I stitched in hms DOLPHIN in white thread.
The whole outfit looks smart as new paint, and I prance about in it in front of the boys, who hoot and holler and swear they'd never be caught dead in such a rig, and the next time we Beat to Quarters for exercising the great guns, I wear my uniform. The officers dress up for Quarters and battle, I think, so why not me?
When we first started doing the gunnery drills, we did them without firing the guns. We did them just to see how fast we could all get on station. It was a hopeless mess at first with everyone running into each other, but after a few weeks it all got worked out and everyone got to their spot lightning fast, even when the drill was in the middle of the night and everyone had to pile out of their hammocks in the dark. The Captain was satisfied, and the next drill, we knew we would really be firing the guns. I was all excited, but the first time the Captain yelled "Fire!" and I hit the drum, the tremendous crash of the full broadside sent me tumbling to the deck and my nose ended up between the Captain's black and shiny boots.
"Looks like the crew still needs a bit a work, Mr. Haywood," says the Captain to the First Mate, both of 'em lookin' down their long noses at me lyin' there in disgrace.
"Afraid so, Sir," says Mr. Haywood. At least the Captain don't kick me as I get up all red and shamefaced.
But I'm used to the sound now, and today after we'd had a number of rolling broadsides (each gun fires in turn as the target comes into its range) and gun number twelve (Jaimy's gun, hooray!) blows the target barrel to pieces, the Captain looks satisfied with the performance of his crew, and we secure from Quarters. I go to leave the quarterdeck, but the Captain stops me.
"What is your name, boy?" he asks, claspin' his hands behind him and rockin' back on his heels and peering at me quiverin' down below.
"Faber, Sir," I quavers, thinkin' I'm gonna catch it for somethin', I don't know what but..."Jack Faber, ship's boy," I manages to gurgle.
Please, Sir, no switches, please.
"Well, Faber. You are well decked out. Where did you get the uniform?"
"I made it, Sir."
"Good work, then. It's good to see spirit and initiative in the low ranks. Especially in the lowest of ranks," he says, and then calls, "Mr. Haywood."
"Sir?" says the First Mate, coming over to also tower over me.
"The boy has made this uniform for himself. Issue out enough cloth for him to make uniforms for the ship's boys. How many are there?" he asks me.
Six, Sir.
"Very well," says the Captain. "Cloth for six uniforms. They will make very presentable sideboys when we make port. Make it so, Mr. Haywood."
"Begging your pardon, Sir," says Mr. Haywood, looking at me as he would at an annoying kind of bug, "but the midshipmen usually are the..."
"Make it so, Mr. Haywood," says the Captain evenly. "Our fine midshipmen will have to deal with it."
So, for my troubles, I have received a commission from Lord Captain himself. Furthermore, I now know how our Captain feels toward our middies, and I tuck that away in a corner of my mind.
Chapter 13
"Hold still, Davy, I mean it," says I, crossly. To drive home my point I bring my fist up with the measuring tape in measuring the inside of his leg for the trousers and gives him a whack where he don't want to be whacked. He howls and grabs himself and allows that he always thought I was one of the sods the Professor was talkin' about today, and this was proof in front of God and everybody.
Mr. Tilden's words for today were buggery, sodomy, and pederasty.
"I give you these words only to protect you from the sin, the Sin That Dare Not Speak Its Name," he said, his mouth set primly, and then he commenced to tell us, in detail, what the words meant. "Now, you boys don't get caught in any situation like that. A pure mind in a pure body. Stay away from dark places. It's a hanging offense, you know."
Our mouths are hanging open speechless. Then the boys roar up and say they'd die before some cove did that to them. I am struck dumb. I am completely amazed and disgusted.
I may yet be hanged, thinks I, but it will not be for that.
"So watch yerself, sodomite," says Davy, as I again bring my tape to bear, and I, of course, have to follow that with a burst of my best and vilest curses to keep up my standing as a true lad.
It's funny about Davy and me—we look so much alike, sandy hair and pointy noses and chins, we could be brother and sister. Which is probably why we fight so much. More than once the others have said, "Why don't you two just shut up?" or "Stop with the bickerin' or we'll drop you both over the side."
We are up in the foretop and I am measuring the boys for their new uniforms and they are fidgeting around more than usual. I think they're a little resentful that I caught the eye of the Captain. Let 'em be jealous, thinks I, there's more than one way to promotion and pay, not just in the brave swinging of swords and in the hacking and hewing of your fellow man.
The cloth for the uniforms is in a neat pile in our kip, waiting to be measured and cut up. I went and got it this morning with Benjy 'cause he wanted to see what was down there. He stood gawking at all the cloth and ribbons and other fine things on the shelves in the small stores room, while I dealt with the Deacon.
"So. Eighteen yards of white duck, three yards of blue, fifteen feet of white piping, spool of white thread, spool of blue thread, two needles, one piece chalk. Is that correct, Faber?" Deacon Dunne looks over the top of his spectacles at me.
"Yes, Sir, it is."
Deacon Dunne checks a ledger and scrawls some figures on his slate. Then he looks at me with suspicion. "For your last foray into sartorial splendor you needed three yards white duck, one half yard blue, and thirty inches of piping in total. Am I again correct?"