NOVEMBER 16

Here’s a conundrum. I sit in the dying light though it’s not yet noon. All I can hear is pounding hammers.

B. came in, looking serious and stern, to tell me that the men will be battening the windows, as we are already shipping seas over the bow, and the barometrical instruments, including the one B. has in his head, prognosticate rough weather ahead. There. They have fit the canvas over the first one and hammered the boards into the frame.

“Must we?” I wanted to say, but of course, I know we must. Sophy is sitting among her blocks gazing up curiously. “Legs,” she shouted when the two sailors arrived, hauling their lumber, for that was all she could see of them. B. says we’ll have the skylight, so we won’t be in utter darkness – though of course we will be, once whatever is coming for us comes for us.

Because this sea is dark, though sometimes it sparkles gaily, and it is often angry.

And we are nothing to it.

This morning before it got so choppy, the fog lifted and I took Sophy up. B., coming off his watch, escorted us for a stroll along the deck. He keeps the same rule his father did – no sailor may stand between the captain and the wind – so it’s amusing to watch the Germans, who have somehow been informed of this rule, which, being Germans, they embrace wholeheartedly, being careful to stay on the lee side of the “old man.” B. says of our ship that she is only a fair sailer. He would like to open the hatches to ventilate the cargo, which is volatile, but now is not the time.

We are barreling along before a west wind, very choppy sea now. Our ship’s bow thwacks the waves as she rams through them. Now they have the canvas on the second window and are hammering away. I can hear their voices, but, of course, don’t understand what they are saying.

We’ll have to light the paraffin lamps at dinner. B. is in a confab with Mr. Richardson in the main cabin. They are anxious because, with Mr. Lorenzen down, we are shorthanded.

And now I must lay down my pen, as Sophy is weepy and the dimly lit cabin in which I am sitting has commenced to roll.

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 613