* * *
Maria couldn’t believe it. Philip had snuck on board to be with her.
It made her feel like, like . . . reaching into his throat and pulling out his intestines. Not that his intestines were the root of the problem, anatomically speaking. Teenage boys, arggh!
She admitted to herself that it made her feel good that he was so interested in her. After all, she was ten years older than him.
But did he have any idea what sort of position it put her in? The crew and colonists would have had difficulty enough accepting an up-time woman in a position of authority. But the up-timers all acted as if they were nobles. Maria was educated, and of good family, but not of the nobility, nor someone whose past achievements would force them to overlook her gender. The captain had only grudgingly accepted her, after witnessing her kayaking stunt . . . not that the demonstration had the slightest bit to do with her competence as a botanist, a healer, an artist, or a geologist!
And now the captain would be wondering if this trip to the New World was just her excuse for eloping with Philip. Why, everyone else on board would be wondering the same thing.
Well, she was going to have to have a little talk with Philip. Once she had calmed down enough not to throw him overboard and make him swim back to Hamburg.
But it was nice to know that he thought she was attractive.
* * *
Carsten Claus sat on a capstan and watched the sailors going about their work. The other colonists had decided that the water was a bit too rough for their taste, and had retired to the zwischendeck. Carsten, however, had once been a sailor himself, and he had quickly recovered both his sea legs and his “sailor’s stomach.”
His fellow colonists were mostly Dutch and Germans, displaced by the war. Happy people don’t pack their belongings and make a long and difficult journey to a wilderness reportedly populated by cannibals and savage beasts. Even if rumor also had it that there is gold to be found somewhere in that wilderness. The practical Dutch and Germans just didn’t put much stock in stories of El Dorado. So the colonists were people with problems back home that they needed to escape, or with more than their fair share of wanderlust.
Of course, there was a third possibility. A few could be spies, or agents provocateurs. Carsten was an organizer for the Committees of Correspondence (CoC), the revolutionary organization that, with American encouragement, had spread across much of central Europe.
Andy Yost had briefed Carsten on how important it was to have a colony that could export rubber, bauxite and oil to the New United States. Oops, Carsten meant the United States of Europe. Just before the expedition left, the once-sovereign NUS had become a member state of the USE.
In Carsten’s opinion, some of the CoC members greatly exaggerated the ubiquity of Richelieu’s spies. In fact, at a CoC meeting, Carsten had once rapped on a closet door, and yelled, “Cardinal, come out right this minute.” That had a gotten a laugh, albeit a somewhat nervous one.
Carsten had to admit that it was at least conceivable that the colonists had been infiltrated. So one of Carsten’s jobs was to check their bona fides. By now, Carsten was sure that they were all okay. Well, reasonably sure.
He had also made some progress with respect to his long-term business, which was “education.” Gently indoctrinating them in democratic principles, and forming a new CoC cell to make sure that the colony didn’t venture onto dangerous ground. Like slaveholding.
When their ship entered the dangerous waters between Cape Finisterre and the Cape Verde Islands, he had reminded the colonists that these were the haunts of the Barbary Corsairs.
He acknowledged that they couldn’t have a better captain than David de Vries, who was famed for having fought off the Turks when they outnumbered him two-to-one. But he asked them to pray for his fellow sailors who were less fortunate, who had been forced to surrender and whose families could not ransom them from slavery. They did so, and if they added a prayer or two for themselves, he couldn’t blame them.
And then, as they prayed, he asked them to pray for the Africans who had been enslaved in the New World by the wicked Spanish and Portuguese.
When one of the colonists was bold enough to retort that the Africans couldn’t expect better treatment, being pagans, and probably cannibals at that, Philip had hotly complained that putting chains on the blacks wasn’t the best way to teach them about the benefits of Christianity. As an up-timer, Philip’s opinions were accorded respect, despite his youth and inexperience.
So Carsten, at least, was glad that Philip had joined their expedition.
* * *
The ship was running before the wind, which meant that the captain’s cursing was carried down the length of the ship. The crew was practically tiptoeing.