The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor Read Online Free

pleasure of it wash over her.
    Captain Skinner beckons them to join him on deck and announces, with the flourish she’d come to expect of him, “By the grace of God and the skills of the good men who are my crew, we have weathered a mid-Atlantic storm.”
    Charlotte studies the man. She had thought him aloof, arrogant. But he had stood on the main deck while she and most others on board had huddled like frightened children in the dark. Who was to say what qualities made some good ship’s masters and some good butlers.
    Below, sailors are mopping up the filthy water and checking the hull for damage. Charlotte slips away to the stalls and finds Tommy rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
    “Get up,” she whispers. “No one has missed you yet.”

     
    B Y MID-AFTERNOON , they are fed, dried out and gathered on the upper deck for a reckoning of the ship’s condition conducted by the purser, Watkins, a stout man of perhaps forty who looks to Charlotte as though he’d be better suited to minding a haberdasher in Whitechapel. Food supplies, cargo, health status and injuries are to be determined. The captain announces, “The storm has mercifully pushed us ahead. We have passed the halfway point in my considered judgment and will find the shore in four more weeks.” Then the inspection begins. They hadn’t seen anything resembling fresh fruit or vegetables since the end of the first week at sea. The oatmeal, although damp and sticky, is still in ample supply, so are the dried peas. The biscuits are spotted with mould, as is the quickly diminishing supply of cheese, but the barrels of thick, sweet molasses will suffice. Potatoes, so filling, so easy to prepare, are still in abundance, but it is only a matter of time before their softening skins will rot and the supply is lost to vermin. The head count of livestock has suffered more loss during the storm than anyone had counted on. Two of the remaining three sheep and a dozen chickens suffocated and one of the steers, bawling and sick, has to be shot and thrown overboard. It is the water they worry about most.
    Two sailors emerge from below decks to whisper to Watkins, who looks concerned. He hurries forward to where the captain has resumed conversation with the first mate. The crew members arch their necks as the officers speak together in low tones. Man whispers to man that the storm had breached the water barrels. Watkins comes back, clears his throat.
    “Water is to be rationed,” he says. He pokes nervously and repeatedly at the bridge of his spectacles with one finger. “Any fresh water lost or befouled will mean a shortage. Henceforth,the captain orders that there will be no use of water for any such purposes as washing.”
    “What about the passengers?” a young man in a battered felt hat calls out.
    Watkins sets his small face with determination.
    “No one is to use water for any purpose but that set out by the captain, which is drinking only and the boiling of potatoes and meat and such.”
    “You know what happens?” All eyes turned to a weathered sailor at the back. “You know what happens when a ship runs out of water in them south Caribbean waters? You know how they go, them aboard? Like animals, they do, fightin’ for each ladle.”
    There is a buzz of agreement from the crew, who turn ominous eyes on the twenty passengers, who meet their gaze with shrinking confidence.
    “Not before they been in terrible awful torments,” another sailor adds, wagging his head gravely.
    Charlotte thinks there is a certain malicious twinkle in the eyes of both men, but the truth of the warning is not lost on her.
    “Yates!” Watkins barks at the boy, who had edged near Charlotte. “Why ain’t you countin’ candles in the hold?”
    “Didn’t know to do it, sir.”
    “You did, Yates. You’re a lazy rascal, you are. Get below.”
    “Yes, sir,”
    Other men emerge from the hatch to report on the state of the cargo, the tallow, the ropes, the barrels of pitch and