Far From Home by Valerie Wood

blue as they headed towards the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. They looked towards the stumpy finger of land which they were told was East Florida, and came into the steamy air of the Gulf of Mexico.
    ‘Permission to take off my jacket, sir?’ Allen asked, perspiration running down his face. He’d brought Newmarch a glass of fresh orange juice, having squeezed the oranges which he had bought from the cook.
    ‘I should have brought a cotton jacket, Allen. These European clothes are far too hot. I’ll have to buy some more suitable clothes in New Orleans. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Keep your jacket on. It doesn’t do to let standards slip.’
    And so Allen sweated in his wool jacket, waistcoat and trousers, whilst Newmarch sat in his shirtsleeves beneath an awning on the deck and watched the colour of the waves change again as the muddy waters of the Mississippi river slewed into the sea.
    Their progress up the great river towards the old city of New Orleans was slow and took several days, hampered as they were by the mass of river traffic. Ships laden with foreign passengers steamed laboriously along the river between the flat landscape of the plantations where fields of cotton, sugar cane and the huts of the native workers could be seen above the embankment. As they neared New Orleans, flatboats and trading vessels coming down from Kentucky and Ohio bringing in ham, wheat and corn all vied for space along the levee, where merchants and traders piled high their cotton bales, sugar, and other commodities, ready to do business.
    ‘What does the river remind you of, Allen?’ Newmarch asked as they stood at the rails watching the ship dock along the riverbank.
    ‘Nothing, sir,’ Allen shook his head. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it, nor felt such heat.’
    ‘Why, the old Humber,’ Newmarch replied. ‘Doesn’t it remind you of that? It’s wide and muddy and full of ships just like this, and even the embankment to keep the waters out of the town is the same as along parts of the Humber.’
    ‘It’s called the
levee
, sir.’ Allen thought his employer had taken leave of his senses. The Humber was nothing like this. The Humber estuary had hidden sandbanks and rushing tides; the Mississippi was slow, had hidden tree roots below the surface of the water, floating branches and swathes of moss and bulrushes, not to mention crocodiles and the swarms of mosquitoes which were already sucking his blood as the butcher in New York had said they would.
    ‘I know what it’s called,’ Newmarch said impatiently. ‘Come on, let’s get packed, we shall disembark before nightfall.’
    Meaning, Allen grumbled to himself as Newmarch went to join some of the other passengers for a last hand of cards, get packing, Allen, and don’t forget anything. He emptied the cupboard which now contained only half a bottle of brandy and one or two books, and started to take his employer’s clothes from the drawer beneath his bunk. He carefully folded his jackets and put them in the trunk and did the same with the trousers. He put in his shoes and boots, shirts, handkerchiefs and cravats, leaving out one grey suit which was lighter in weight than the others, one shirt and one cravat. ‘He’ll probably want one of those that I’ve already packed,’ he muttered, ‘but I’ll risk it.’
    He laid the trousers on the bunk and put the jacket over the back of the single chair, for there was little hanging space in the cabin. As he did so, something fell out of the inside pocket. It was Newmarch’s bulging leather pocketbook. He picked it up from the floor and, after a single moment’s hesitation, opened it. He reached to put the chair against the cabin door in case Newmarch should return, and quickly flicked through the contents.
    It wasn’t the first time he had looked through his employer’s private things, but there was never much money in his purse. This, however, was packed with notes, bills of credit from the bank, documents and English