Partial Eclipse by Lesley Glaister

Author:Lesley Glaister
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497694149
Publisher: Open Road Media

CROSSING THE LINE

Night fell suddenly in the southern seas. The sun paused for a moment, big, hot, tensed and then sank like a stone and the stars punctured the navy-blue sky. If you knew the secret, you could steer your way by the patterned stars, the tiny ones, the huge ones, big and fuzzy as teazles.

Peggy hardly ever saw the darkness of the sea-sky. The convicts were stowed away by nightfall. They fed on saltbeef or mutton, biscuit and a lump of currant pudding. They drank their ration of cloudy lukewarm water, of porter if it was a Saturday, and they were battened down till morning, till the sun burst raw and dripping with salt-light from the east. Then, if they were lucky, they were brought up for exercise or work.

Peggy lay with her head in Hester’s lap. There was something amiss on the ship, nothing clear enough to be put into words, not among the women. Peggy’s ducking had not had the desired effect, rather it had increased unrest among the convicts and the temperature was rising among the men. Factions were developing with convicts and crew rounding on their own. Never had the captain, it was said, had such an unruly ship. Almost daily they were treated to the terrible sound of the knotted leather cat biting into the flesh of some poor wretch or other. But the mutterings and rumours of uprising and mutiny did not cease. Among the convicts, and between the convicts and crew there was a secret language of twitches and nods. The rest of the crew was wary, the officers alert, the guards bristled weapons. The convicts spent more time below, but in the heat they might have died if they had been kept down all day, so unhealthy and thick was the atmosphere.

A new rumour had spread among the convicts this day, strange words rustling like a breeze through corn. Partial eclipse were the words whispered from one woman to another. A partial eclipse of the moon.

‘He means to quell the mutiny through prayer,’ jeered Rose in the dimness. ‘But we are crossing the line tonight.’

‘The line?’

‘The line … the girdle round the centre of the world. There should be a festival on board, and celebration. But not tonight. Tonight there will be preaching in its place. That is the captain’s thought.’ She chuckled.

‘Hush!’ said a voice from a higher bunk.

‘Mutiny?’ said Peggy.

‘Don’t fret. Just follow. The less you know, the better for you.’

Rose put her finger to her lips and winked.

The convicts were led up on the deck. They gasped in the air which seemed hardly cooler than in the oven-heat below. It was strange to be on deck in the near darkness. It was oddly quiet. The decks were packed with figures, the male convicts ranked and heavily guarded. Above them, on the poop stood the captain and his officers and the surgeon superintendent. It seemed almost as if the ship itself slept and the activity aboard was its own dream.

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