Chapter Seven: At Sea

As soon as they realized what was happening the princess urged him to jump, to swim to shore before they were too far out. He was a fair swimmer. A small pond near his home provided much-needed relief during the hottest part of the summer, but this was different. He didn’t know how deep the water was, what unknown creatures lurked beneath the waves. He froze and the harbor grew smaller and smaller until it disappeared entirely, leaving Throp stranded, surrounded by water that seemed to stretch on forever.

The princess was immediately apologetic, the guilt in her voice apparent, but Throp was too angry and panic-stricken to listen. He stormed off to find the captain, to beg him to turn the ship around or find some other way to get him to shore. He hadn’t seen the princess or Agnes since.

The Trident had been out to sea for four days and Throp had been seasick for all of them. His only reprieve came when he slept, smooshed on the floor between two cots occupied by brusque sailors who stepped on him as they got out of bed each morning, and the occasional moment at night when he could stare at the full moon and take deep breaths, concentrating on something other than being sick.

Those moments were rare, though. The captain was unhappy about having another unexpected passenger on board - the crew was thin enough as it was - and told Throp he would have to earn his keep or be thrown into the brig and treated as a stowaway.

Throp had never been afraid of hard work. When told to swab the deck or turn the capstan, he did it without question. He was often tasked with pulling, winding and tying off the ropes that managed the sails, although he couldn’t say he understood how it all worked. After a few days the captain’s sour attitude towards Throp softened.

“Perhaps you’ll consider staying on. I could use a man like you,” he told Throp one day. The captain gave him a hard slap on the back and laughed. “Once you’ve got your sea legs, that is.”

Away from the dirty port town, Throp had come to appreciate the salty smell of the ocean but thought it unlikely that he would ever get used to the constant tilting of the ground beneath his feet as the ship rode the waves, even if he did overcome the nausea that kept him perpetually on the edge of losing his daily ration of bread. And he did manage to find one pleasure on the ship. That was the singing. At least three times a day one of the men would break out in a sea shanty. The men nearby would pick it up and it would spread throughout the deck until everyone was singing. They sang several different ones and Throp had picked up most of the lyrics to a few. His favorite was about a mermaid who saved a sailor from his sinking ship.

It would be another two days before they landed in Port Baston, three more to load the ship with cargo and set sail again, and another six to make the trip back to Portsmith. Two weeks before he would be home.

His mother must be worrying herself sick, he thought as he ran a dirty mop across the deck.

He felt something brush against his foot and looked down to see the fuzzy black tip of a tail.

“Nib!” He hadn’t seen Nib since the first day either, losing track of him when he went in search of the captain. Nib paid him no mind and scampered across the deck, stopped at feet of a short, thin crew man and climbed up his pants leg. Throp was surprised. He wouldn’t have expected Nib to approach a stranger like that. But what surprised him more was when the crew man grabbed Nib and dropped him onto his shoulder.

“Uh,…” Throp tapped the crew man on the shoulder and the crew man turned around.

It was the princess.

“Princess!” For a moment he didn’t recognize her. She wore a pair of ragged men’s pants and a loose-fitting shirt. Her hair was hidden beneath a gray knit cap. Her face was filthy but her eyes sparkled as always.

“Shh!” she said, looking around warily. “It’s Gus if you call me anything.”

“Gus?”

“Get back to work boy,” the second mate barked.

“Aye, sir!” the princess immediately responded, speaking in an affected baritone voice that, to Throp’s ears, sounded so phony it was almost comical.

“Come to the princess’s quarters tonight, okay?” she whispered to Throp before picking up a coil of rope and disappearing below deck.