“Want to try?”
Oh, she couldn’t possibly … could she? In what ways could harm come to her? Aside from misfiring and blowing off her hands, of course. Or worse. Undoubtedly Sheffield would consider the loss of the gun worse. They were already short one cannon.
“You think I should?” She’d watched Dieter enough times to feel confident she could repeat his actions. From a purely theoretical point of view.
“It’s an important aspect of sailing.”
Harriet glanced at Sheffield sharply, realizing he had just repeated her words of last night, with no hint of mockery.
“Every crew member needs to know how to defend the ship,” he added.
She bit her bottom lip. “Well, if you insist.” She stepped to the starboard side, her stomach trembling like a Christmas pudding. As she got close enough to see the detailed workmanship of the gun’s stock, she barely maintained enough decorum to not run the last three steps. Sheffield spoke to Chang in Mandarin, and soon the gunner was handing his bag of charges to Harriet and showing her how to load the gun.
She dropped one of the charges and glanced back to see Sheffield’s reaction. His expression was impassive. Chang tapped her knuckles, drawing her attention back to the gun. She had to focus on the gun, on what she was doing with her hands. Just below, the ocean swooshed past them, threatening to take her stomach with it.
Harriet smiled an apology. This time she got the charge in place, aimed at the same fluffy cloud Dieter had used for target practice, and fired.
Boom!
Gunners must soon go deaf, she decided, her ears ringing, though she couldn’t help grinning. She restrained herself from jumping up and down on the deck. She’d fired the gun! And she still had all her fingers!
“You get powde’ in teeth, you smi’e dat way.” Chang flashed a grin. “Go boom is good, yes?”
Harriet’s cheeks hurt from smiling so wide. “Yes, going boom is good. Can I do it again?”
“By all means, Miss Chase. One never knows when firing a weapon will come in handy, especially on a farm.”
She didn’t care that this time Sheffield sounded like he was indulging her. She was having too much fun.
She soon understood why Chang wore two gold earrings instead of one, slightly bigger hoops of a thinner gauge than the rest of the crew wore. When he wasn’t firing, he took the protective wads of wax out of his ears and stowed them on his hoops. If she kept at this, perhaps she’d pierce her ears and do the same.
By the third shot, she didn’t need Chang’s guidance. And having good hearing was overrated. The only way her mood could be any better was if she’d been able to load an actual shot. What would that feel like?
Madame Zavrina would have had heart palpitations at the mere thought of handling such a weapon. Two weeks ago, so would Harriet. Perhaps dressing like Chang and Dieter made it easier for her to act like them. Heaven knew she’d drilled it into her students often enough how important it was to dress properly in order to behave properly.
Not only was it easier for her to act like the sailors, it was getting easier to understand Chang’s accent. All of the crew members’ accents, actually. More than once she’d overheard a conversation in two or more languages. All the men seemed to understand one another though each spoke their native tongue. How long did it take one to understand Mandarin? She’d struggled with advanced French grammar, but then she hadn’t been surrounded by native speakers.
“I’m going to update our position.” Sheffield spoke briefly with Jonesy, then headed below.
Harriet took his statement as an invitation to follow. Shooting lesson over. On to navigation.
She had time to settle herself at the table in the cabin, expectantly waiting for Sheffield to gather the logbook and chart from his desk and explain some of the baffling things she’d read in the book on navigation last night, before there was a perfunctory knock at the door.
Sheffield barked “Come!” and Flynn let himself in and set a tea tray on the table just as Sheffield sat down.
“Thank you, that will be—” Sheffield glanced up. “There’s no milk.”
Like a man who had almost escaped the gallows, Flynn slowly turned back. “Big Jim’s ’ands got ‘urt moving some crates this morning, and you know ‘ow Bessie is. Won’t ‘old still for no one else.”
By the grave expression and tone from both men, Harriet would have thought they were discussing being out of food. Or worse, rum.
Sheffield’s shoulders raised and lowered with a sigh. “Only one thing to do.” He poured tea in his cup, stirred in his usual two sugars and left the cabin, cup in hand.
Harriet followed.
They climbed down the hatch to the hold. She’d never been in the bowels of the ship before. Lanterns in gimbals swayed with each roll of the vessel, poor at dispelling the darkness but excellent at creating shadows since little daylight filtered down this far. Crates and barrels were stacked to the ceiling, lashed in place with ropes, crowding the aisle. Though her lungs struggled to take in enough air in the cramped dark space, she refused to retreat, and stayed at Sheffield’s heels.
He turned a corner and suddenly the hold became a barn, complete with straw bedding on the deck, nets full of hay or straw suspended from the ceiling, crates of grain stacked and strapped in place, a small milking stanchion, and three dwarf goats chewing their cud.
