I close my eyes and hold my breath, as if that could hide me from view. Even my blood stops pumping.
He completes his circuit. “Bring her down.”
The grinding of a motor and the clink of a chain unspooling herald my descent into the jaws of destiny. Sounds echo off the shaft closing around me, and the light changes.
Rolling out from under the car, I scramble to the edge of the platform and look wildly around for a ladder. It’s on theotherside. My wet fingers slip against the glossy car frame as I swing myself into the seat and scoot across. To my horror, before I can grab a rung, the wall ends.
The platform descends at a walking pace past a room with benches and tables filled with passengers—third class, by the looks of them. Some stare at me dropping from the ceiling, still clinging to the car seat. Nearby, a uniformed crewman chats with a woman, his back to me. Can’t get off here. I hold my breath and wait for the platform to pass from view.
At the next level, the shaft becomes enclosed once again. I step up onto the seat, then grab the center chain. Clenching my boots around the chain, I use my legs to propel myself up, trying to climb faster than my stage is falling. The crane brakes, giving me a few precious seconds to scale higher, the chain digging into my hands. Then on it goes, rumbling to life again. I inch up, cursing my skirt for impeding my progress. Sweat blinds me. My limbs scream in anguish. I pass the large room. If anyone notices me, no one protests.
At last, the ladder appears and I hoist myself high enoughto place my foot on a rung. Grabbing the ladder, my skirt tears, but at least I’m no longer headed down. I rest, catching my breath.
Then I climb, rung by rung, until sunlight kisses my face.
I peek over the framed opening. Forty feet away by the base of the crane, the sweaty crewman who had admired the Renault has pulled back his navy beret and is looking up at a seagull. No one else is on the well deck. I imagine myself as invisible as the breeze, then hook a leg over the edge. As quietly as possible, I roll onto the pine deck.
With a loud caw, the seagull swoops in my direction, and the crewman wheels about.
Sod off, you screechy tattletale.
The crewman places a hand on the crane base to steady himself, then draws closer, his bloodshot eyes nearly pouring from their sockets. “Wh-where did you come from?”
I scramble to my feet, feeling a breeze through the tear in my skirt. The sleeve of my jacket collects around my elbow. I must look a fright.
Behind the crewman, the superstructure stacks up like the layers of a cake, at the top of which stands a man with a white beard and a proud bearing, the gold braids on his navy sleeves gleaming like bracelets. Even from fifty feet away, I recognize the face in all the brochures: Captain Smith, the king of this floating palace. He spreads his fingers against the rail and bends his gaze in our direction.
I squeeze a toe down on my panic, which, like a tissue-thin handkerchief in a strong wind, is in danger of cutting loose.
The crewman’s nostrils put me in mind of the double barrel of a gun. “I said, where did you come from?”
As the Chinese proverb goes, the hand that strikes also blocks. Straightening my hat, I put on the haughty look Mrs. Sloane used with inferiors, eyes hooded, nose tipped up like a seal’s. After months of assisting the tough old nut, I could do Mrs. Sloane better than she could. “My mother’s loins. And you?”
Someone utters a short laugh. Behind me, leaning against a staircase up to the forecastle, I recognize the slender American woman from the first-class gangway. A fresh cigarette dangles from her red mouth.
The crewman’s eyes narrow into slits. He points a thick finger at the cargo shaft. “No. I saw you come from the hatch. Else why’s your jacket torn like that?”
“Are you suggestingIclimbed out fromthere?” I snort loudly. “I can’t even walk on this slippery deck without falling. Look, I have ripped my jacket.” I crook a finger at his bulbous nose. “You’re lucky I didn’t break my neck.”
Lookouts stationed in the crow’s nest halfway up the foremast peer down at us. I half expect them to start clanging the warning bell from their washtub-like perch. But then an officer emerges from a doorway under the forecastle, his boots jabbing the deck, and I forget all about the lookouts.
A noose of a tie hangs from a severe white collar, and a jury of eight brass buttons judge me from a humorless field of navy. A uniform like that could have me thrown off this boat for a final baptism. “Something the matter here?”
The crewman mops some of the sweat off his face with his sleeve. “Officer Merry. She climbed out of the hatch.”
Officer Merry folds a clipboard into his chest and glares at me. Shapeless eyebrows overhang a dour expression, perhaps caused by the pressure of living up to a name like Merry.
With my hand to my chest, I laugh, but in my nervousness, it sounds more like the honk of passing geese. “Of course I did. Right after I dropped in from my flying balloon.”
“Who are you?” asks the officer.
He will ask for papers. The ruse is up. My leg shakes, but I clamp down on it, forcing it into stillness.
“Should I call the master-at-arms?” asks the crewman.
“For goodness’ sake, I saw the whole thing.” The American with the cigarette sashays up from behind me, her suit as fitted as if it were sewn around her. I’d nearly forgotten about her. “She was just taking some air, same as me, and the poor thing stumbled but caught herself on the lip of that hatch. Lucky for you, she has good reflexes. An accident right before launch could hardly be good press.”
I try not to gape at her.
