The Far Horizon by Gretta Curran Browne

elbow, her expression disbelieving as George Jarvis and Joseph Bigg carried the captain through the mess-cabin to his new sleeping quarters, still shouting as many orders as he had breath to voice.
    ‘Avast! Avast! Avast! ’
    ‘Bloody ‘ell, what does that mean?’ she heard Joseph Bigg exclaim frustratedly.
    ‘Stop,’ she heard George reply. ‘Avast is naval language for stop, Joseph.’
    ‘Look, stop wittering and avast heaving I say!’ Pritchard roared. ‘Have a care for my larboard side! Now hoist together. Hold on … hold on – you must heave me in at the larboard side! Now hoist! Now slew me round to starboard! Steady... steady …’
    Some minutes later, Lachlan wearily stepped through the adjoining door and looked bleakly at Elizabeth, the captain's voice behind him, still haranguing George Jarvis and Joseph Bigg. Nothing anyone did or said could please him.
    Lachlan pulled the door firmly shut behind him. ‘At least he is now bedded.’
    ‘Is he to remain here with us throughout his illness?’
    ‘I'm afraid so.’
    She buried her face into the pillow as the captain's voice roared on.
    Lachlan untied his neckcloth and sat down on the berth beside her. ‘This,’ he said tiredly, ‘has been a very bad night.’
    She sat up and put her lips to his shoulder. ‘My poor darling,’ she murmured.
    He glanced at her. As usual she had taken down her bronze hair and brushed it, long and loose, over the shoulders of her white nightgown. She did not look like the Elizabeth of the day. In the day, in the eyes of all watchers, she was always the strait-laced and sensible Elizabeth. But once in the privacy of their rooms, that side of her known only to him unfolded itself.
    In the adjoining cabin the uproar continued, Pritchard shouting to Joseph Bigg to fetch his own servants, then roaring at George to ‘Come back here Jarvis! I told you, I must NOT be left alone! ’
    Lachlan sighed. ‘Everyone else, perhaps, but his temper will not faze George.’
    Both listened as the captain's voice barked on through the thin wood-panel of wall that divided them.
    ‘No, Jarvis, I don't want any medicine! Put it down! And to hell with your cursed calmness! I've been watching you for weeks, my lad! You have the manner of someone above your true station! Dressed like a gentleman you may be, but you're nothing more than a brown-skinned galley slave!’
    ‘We are all mere puppets of our heavenly master.’ George's voice sounded amused.
    ‘Damnation, Jarvis! Are you always so calm? Do you never get vexed or befuddled?’
    ‘What we shall be is written, and we are so.’
    ‘Well, drot! Is that what your great prophet Mohammed says, eh?’
    ‘No, Captain, those are the words of a Persian Poet who lived six hundred years ago. Omar Khayaam.’
    ‘There you go again! As cool as a whore's heart! I don't know why or how Macquarie tolerates you.’
    ‘In life as on ship,’ George's voice sounded resigned, ‘we must tolerate those we must tolerate.’
    Lachlan frowned at Elizabeth. ‘I don't merely tolerate him.’
    ‘George knows that.’ She let out a gentle breath and lay back on the pillows. ‘But tonight we are all tolerating the captain.’
    The hurricane lamp on the wall threw its usual shadows around the room, moving slightly from side to side with the ship's gentle motion. A black streak of shadow had fallen on her bronze hair, reminding him of the skin of an Indian tiger cub.
    He bent down and kissed her.
    *
    They awoke in the morning to the blissful sound of silence.
    ‘I suppose,’ Lachlan said as he dressed, ‘I should go in and enquire of our neighbour.’
    ‘If you must.’ Elizabeth looked at him tiredly. ‘But if he starts his shouting again I will go in and box his ears, I will.’
    Lachlan gently tapped on the adjoining door, and then gingerly opened it, but the bird had flown. The cabin was empty.
    Up on deck, the ship's first lieutenant wearily explained what had happened. ‘As soon as your people