First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women by Eric McCormack

napped a little. Around six o’clock, I woke and could tell by the ship’s motion that something was different. All I could see through the porthole was pitch darkness. But I guessed from the way the hull was heaving and straining that the
Cumnock
had left the sheltered passage of the river. We were at sea.
    I was starving, and wondering if I’d ever eat again, when there was a rap at my cabin door and a gruff shout:
    “Dinner’s ready!”
    My first visit to the mess hall was an experience I won’t forget. Not only because I could feel the rolling motion of the ship, by now, in the pit of my belly; nor because I sat ata table with the other passenger: an elderly woman who seemed preoccupied and who sometimes mumbled to herself in a language I didn’t know, and who was dressed in an ankle-length green dress with a pattern of wilted yellow flowers; nor because I saw the crew members assembled at a long table at the far end of the mess: grizzled, elderly men who seemed very unfriendly, except for the bearded man who served the meal; nor because of the meal itself: a stewed beef that gave off a sweet smell unlike any stew made in Stroven.
    These things were memorable enough in their way. But there was something else.
    We’d all begun eating (in my case, pretending to eat; I picked out a few potatoes, but my hunger wasn’t as strong as my suspicion of that stew) when the sliding door of the mess-room opened. At first I couldn’t see whoever had opened it, for he stopped to talk to someone in the passageway and only his right foot on the raised entranceway was visible. The cuff of the trousers rose a few inches above a black shoe, showing a dark sock with a pattern of intertwined yellow snakes round an anchor. The man finished his conversation and came into the mess hall. He was a heavy, fair-haired man. He wore a uniform and had a hat tucked under his arm.
    He slid the door shut behind him and without looking around went to a little table in the corner. The bearded sailor who’d served our meals got up from the long table and went over to him.
    “Good evening, Captain Stillar. Now, how would you like something to whet your thirst?”
    In this way I discovered that the man who was the mysterious painter of women in the Hochmagandie Hotel was also the Captain of the
Cumnock
.
    The ship was steaming towards the tropics, but those first days of the voyage were anything but tropical. The skies were leaden, the winds seemed to have northern ice in them, the seas were swollen and flecked with grey crests. There was rain, rain, rain. And I was sick, sick, sick. I kept to my cabin for two days, eating nothing at all. My stomach had begun to heave during that first night at sea, and even though I emptied it totally of the few gobbets of potatoes I’d eaten, I didn’t feel at all well unless I lay flat on my back.
    Lying there, a little feverish, I thought what a strange man the Captain of the ship must be. And I thought about how strange it was to be on such a voyage: how time passed, hour followed hour, day followed day, but the ship might easily have been anchored just out of sight of the land, its movement only an illusion caused by the sea’s motion. All of us on the
Cumnock
were like the inhabitants of a little town, except that our roots were in water. But I had learnt enough to wonder whether even towns like Stroven, firmly rooted in earth, were any more stable than this ship afloat on an endless ocean.

Chapter Ten
    B Y THE MORNING of the third day at sea, I was feeling a little better, but my stomach was still too queasy for me to get up. At nine o’clock, there was a knock at my door. The sailor who’d served the meals in the mess hall looked in. His eyebrows were very bushy, and his long grey hair was wild.
    “Good morning,” he said. “I’m Harry Greene, at your service. I’ve given you a day’s rest. Now let’s have a look at you.” He was wearing a white apron and carrying a small tray covered with a