Between Two Seas Read Online Free

this early hour. Everyone seems to be in a hurry. I cross the road, picking my way between the piles of horse droppings, and narrowly avoid a laden cart drawn by two scrawny-looking horses. Their load is fish by the smell of it.
    It takes me only a few minutes to walk along Cleethorpes Road, past the Albert Memorial, to the docks, the route I have walked so many times before. I can’t quite believe that this is the last time I’ll walk it. I ought to feel sad, but my fear of the journey blots out all other feelings.
    On board the Ebba the crew is busy readying her for the trip. Captain Larsen hails me as I approach. A younger man with the same sandy hair as the captain helps me climb onto the boat and takes my bag. He is a skinny, slight young man with an unremarkable face.
    ‘I am Jens,’ he says. He seems friendly. ‘I show you the cabin,’ he tells me, in strongly-accented English. ‘You need to stay there until we are coming out of the harbour—not get in the way.’
    So there and then I look back at Grimsby, and bid England a hasty and silent farewell. All my memories are here on these shores, but my hopes for the future lie across the North Sea.
    I follow Jens across the sloping wooden deck to a small hatch, and watch him climb down a ladder. Wrapping my skirt tightly about my ankles, I struggle down after him.
    I have never been aboard a boat before. I had no idea how dark and cramped it would be below deck. Or how strong the stench of fish and slop buckets would be. The prospect of sharing this space with four men for several days and nights appears suddenly indecent. I blush to think I proposed it. The sleeping quarters are merely low bunks tucked into odd spaces around the living area, which in itself consists only of a table with benches.
    Jens shows me that he has hung a blanket before my bunk, so that I have some degree of privacy. He has hung another blanket across the corner where the slop bucket serves for a lavatory. But a blanket offers no protection from sounds or smells.
    ‘I need to help now.’ Jens points up on deck and then disappears up the ladder again. By the sound of it they are losing no time in casting off from the quay. Ropes grate against the side of the ship and thud as they land on the deck. As the men thunder about above me, calling to each other in Danish, I sit down and open the package Mrs Forbes gave me. There’s a seed cake and some home-baked biscuits inside. She’s kind. I shall save them. I’m too nervous to swallow even a mouthful this morning.
    The boat sways as we leave the quayside. I feel strange almost at once: light-headed. As we leave the harbour and head out to sea, I have a shock. I was entirely unprepared for the effect of the motion of the boat. It is a bright, clear day with a brisk wind, not stormy. But as the boat begins to plunge in the swell, my head begins to ache. It becomes more difficult to sit up. It doesn’t take long before I crawl into my cramped bunk and curl up. The relief is only temporary.
    I’m shivering and suffering cold sweats. At every lurch or roll the boat makes, my mouth fills with saliva as fast as I can swallow it. My stomach begins to heave. I hear Jens quietly placing a bucket by my bunk. I’m vilely ill. Time passes in a haze of endurance and sickness. I notice at one point that the bucket has been swilled clean with seawater. Jens makes no comment. I’m too ill and too embarrassed to thank him, but I shall never, ever forget his kindness.
    The men come in and out of the cabin, sometimes to sleep, sometimes to slice bread, fry fish, and smoke their pipes. The smell is unbearable. At night I drift in and out of sleep, but never for long.
    When daylight comes, the boat seems to move less. Jens tells me we’ve arrived at the fishing grounds, that the nets are now out, and invites me on deck. At first I decline, not daring to rise from my bunk.
    ‘The fresh air will help,’ he insists.
    It takes courage to leave the bunk. The