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As I try to walk away he snags me by the hips and pulls me back into his lap. I land on him with a thud and a yelp.
Before I can say anything, the sound of radio static echoes through the room. The captain stiffens beneath me and not in the good way as a crackly voice sound. Something about a typhoon? I can hardly make it out.
“Typhoon,” Clunk says firmly and moves to the console to the left. He taps away on it as the captain looks at the console around me. “It’s three hundred miles north, we could miss it.”
“Not necessarily. The wind is blowing south, it will carry. Is it definite?”
“Looks like it.”
“Shit.” Captain presses his forehead to my jaw and cups my cheek with his hand. As he smooths his thumb over my cheekbone he barks at Clunk, “How long until it hits?”
Clunk scribbles on a piece of paper, a blur of sums I don’t understand as he takes numbers from the various screens. “Two days, at most.”
“Can’t we go around it?” I ask softly, looking out of the window at the grey sky.
“Unfortunately, not,” Captain replies. “We can’t go any further south.”
“And the fucker is around eight hundred miles long.”
“Eight hundred miles?” I squeak. “So not like the one we saw the other day?”
“That was a kitten compared to this giant snarling pride of panthers,” Clunk replies as my heart races and my blood pressure rises. I want to correct him and say panthers don’t run in prides but I have a feeling it’ll fall on deaf ears.
Captain squeezes my side gently. “You’ll be okay so long as you stay in my room.”
Before he can move me from his lap I grip his shoulders, gulp and admit quietly, “Captain… I can’t swim.”
“You won’t have to swim,” he promises. “But there are life jackets if you’ll feel safer and the room is watertight, for the most part.” When he smiles softly, I feel a tad better about it. I mean really, how bad could this get?
“Well, you know what that means?” Captain grins, looking normal considering how worried he was a moment ago.
“What?” I ask and the bridge cheers loudly, a chorus of cries from all of the men.
“Party time,” Captain whispers in my ear, kisses it and stands with me still in his lap. “Drop the anchor!”
There’s an anchor?
“Get the whiskey!”
There’s whiskey?
“Turn on the music and the lights!”
There’s music?
“What are you doing?” I ask, following him out of the bridge and down the stairs. “Party time? Shouldn’t we be preparing for a storm?”
He stops, grins at me, wags his eyebrows and shouts, “Tomorrow we prepare, tonight we dance.”
“Dance?”
“Dance.”
The sirens blare and everybody stops. Clunk’s voice then replaces them, instructing everybody about the typhoon tomorrow. We’re to nail down everything that can move.
Captain helps people tie things, I watch him weave intricate rope and watch his arm muscles bulge as he tugs to ensure they’re tight enough. And then, after an hour, everybody starts cheering again when loud music plays through the speaker and thick, metal barrels are filled with coal and lit along the deck.
I’m taken back to Captain’s room and handed a pile of clothing that I recognise as the clothes I wore here.
“I had them fixed, cleaned and ironed.”
I touch the pile gently and smile at him. “Thank you.”
“I know they aren’t new…”
“They’re perfect.” I take my fixed bra from the front of the pile and sigh gratefully. “I have missed this.”
“I’ll leave you to get dressed.” He bows his head and turns, only stopping when I place my hand on his arm. His gaze flickers from my fingers to my eyes and he raises a questioning brow.
“Thank you.”
He bows again and, this time, I let him go.
The second night falls the music gets louder, the men rowdier and the alcohol more frequent, secret stashes are brought out and I’m offered many a drink. Some I can’t even pronounce.
I settle on a blackcurrant-flavoured gin that a man called Larry offers me and mingle with Geoffrey for the most part. Captain drinks from a bottle of spiced rum like your stereotypical pirate, on a chair that rests on a platform just higher than everyone else. He’s surrounded by his most trusted men, laughing and chatting loudly amongst them. He looks at peace, at ease, despite the looming storm.
Nobody speaks about why they have such a huge gathering before a storm but I figure it out anyway. It’s a send-off for if we sink which terrifies me but also makes me want to join in. If I’m to drown tomorrow or perish somehow, I want to do it knowing I lived my last day a happy captive.
The thought makes me giggle which pulls Geoffrey from his conversation with Larry and Smeg.
Yep. Smeg.
“What are you laughing at?”
