The Mermaid's Treasure -4- (Patreon)

I dozed on the trip to the ship but kept starting back awake as the water in the sinkhole closed over me. Would I be facing such visions for the rest of my life? Was this PTSD?

And there was always that second shock, of realizing that yes, I was a girl now and not dreaming that. It was hard to ignore the feel of my body under the coat I kept snugged against me. And everyone around me was a man, most of them looking at me the way a mastiff looks at a pork chop.

David sat on one side and the Captain on the other and they were a little less”ogley” if that’s a word. The sailors openly leered at me if the captain was not looking directly at them.

And Mr. Delay sat directly in front of me, staring with what amounted to a creepy fascination. I pulled the coat closer to me. He might be a doctor but I didn’t think I really wanted to be alone with him.

“We’ll get ye a rinse with some seawater to remove all the sand ye’ve acquired,” said David. “Once we get ye aboard, lass. But a real bath in freshwater will have to wait till the next time we reach a port.”

Captain Venable chuckled at this which I didn’t see as funny at all. He probably didn’t have sand in his… well, no, cause he didn’t have one of those. But I did now. I hadn’t seen my new delicate parts but the evidence of their existence was right under my nose in the breasts I wore. Which brought up another complaint. 

“My b-back hurts,” I said. It did too, the lower back right up to near my shoulder blades ached like nothing I had experienced before. I suspected the masses on my chest to be to blame. How much did such accessories weigh?

My butt had spread out when I sat down, too. I was aware of the men on either side of me, their legs against my thighs. I thought I felt greater heat from David’s side but that made no sense.

Mr. Delay looked interested in my report of back pain and I regretted having said anything. But it was the captain who spoke.

“We can do better than a rinse, I expect. The men will set up a hipbath in my cabin, we can fill it with hot seawater and you can have a proper soak. They even say that a salt bath is good for the skin. As a mermaid, I ‘spect you could tell us if that’s true?” 

He looked at me, smiling again at the repeated joke, but then he glanced at my chest. “You’re probably missing your stays. A—a healthy young woman such as yourself is probably seldom without them.”

Stays? Like guy wires or something? An image came to mind, me with enormous breasts being pulled down to earth by men with ropes, like a blimp or a Macy’s parade float. Disturbing in so many ways.

The wind in the open boat was cold and I wanted another sip of the warming hot toddie but first, I didn’t want to ask the creepy Mr. Delay for it and second, it would mean opening my coat to stick an arm out and probably flashing all the sailors. I needed clothes. Be careful what you wish for, I told myself. They are probably going to try to get me into a dress. 

We reached the big ship which at least relieved us of the wind’s full force but it loomed over us like a wall that bowed outward. Men from our little boat scrambled right up the side and other men on the deck above threw down ropes. How was I going to get up there? Scramble up a rope like a nightmare version of gym with my… my tits hanging out?

The Captain must have seen my expression because he said, “I’ve had the men prepare a chair to hoist you aboard, Miss Pennwarden. No need to worry. And my steward has been instructed to find or make clothing for you from ship’s stores.” He smiled and I felt grateful for his consideration. He seemed to be a nice old man, despite the wolfish eyebrows and bony jaw. About that time he stood up to grasp a rope himself and barked orders at the sailors in no gentle tones at all.

Things got confusing with people shouting, ropes hanging here and there and David trying to give me instructions I could not understand because of unfamiliarity, his accent, the noise and my own anxiety.

I thought of something and tried to ask David a question. “Are there any w-women on the ship?” I almost said ‘other’ women but wasn’t quite mentally there yet.

David didn’t hear but one of the men holding a rope replied with a snort. “The Adeline is a warship, lassie. No women allowed on board. Ye’ll have to be locked in a cabin some’rs and a guard put over ye.”

“I.... What?” They were going to lock me up? I almost started crying again but they quickly had me strapped into a contraption they called a lubber’s chair. With a couple of turns of rope around my arms and body right outside the coat, they commenced hauling me into the air.

The whole operation was swift and efficient and I hardly had time to be afraid of the height or the motion. Soon I was being unwound and unstrapped and David helped me to stand on the deck. Twice I almost lost the coat, to the immense satisfaction of the sailors who caught glimpses of my naked charms.

Just great, just great, I thought. Sexual harassment had been all in the news lately and it looked like I was going to get to experience it first hand. And no one to report it to since the captain had done a share of it, once I was on his boat.

Captain Venable was already aboard and another man he introduced as Hammond or Common or Gammon or something. “My steward,” he explained. “He’ll take you to my cabin and prepare you a bath. Mr. O’Reilly, arrange a guard on the door to my quarters and make it two men, one elder and one younger. They are to have knives and staves but no guns to hand.”

“Aye, sir,” said David, he immediately picked two men to follow him and started off. I watched him go with some regret, he’d become a sort of protector in my mind.

The captain spoke to some others. “Someone fetch the quartermaster and the first mate to the wheel, we need to confer. One of us will have to give up his berth to the young lady. It should be O’Reilly, but he’s already sharing quarters with the Sailing Master.”

“She can have my cabin and I’ll sleep in the cockpit with the junior officers,” Mr. Delay offered. 

The captain shook his head. “You’ve no bed, Mr. Delay, nor room to put one. I don’t think she wants to sleep in a hammock. Find Chips and send him to our meeting too.”

Gammon put a hand on my backside and propelled me toward the rear end of the ship. “This way, Missy,” he said. “I found a crate of women’s clothes in the hold, so you’ll have something proper to wear.” He grinned at me and I marked him as another type to avoid if I could. I really didn’t like him touching me there. Worse, he gave me a little pat before trotting off ahead of me.

And why did they have a crate of women’s clothes if they had no women on board? What happened to the women who had owned those clothes? I didn’t ask as the steward hurried me along, touching me on the shoulder or butt again to steer me or when I slowed down.

But I was right, they definitely were going to try to make me wear skirts. What if I just refused?

Gammon kept up a stream of noise as we traveled, leaving no room to get a word in edgewise. “We’re passing amidships,” he said as he took a short detour around the enormous mast in the middle of the ship. “That’s the mainmast,” he added. “Forward is the foremast and aft, that’s toward the back of the ship, aft is the mizzenmast.” 

We passed a sort of open pit in the deck with men on a lower level doing things like mending clothes, dozing, carving wood or even braiding each other’s hair. “That’s the waste and the wasters, the men who are off duty,” he said. I found out later that he meant “waist” and “waisters” which seemed like a level of wordplay you wouldn’t expect from a bunch of crude sailors.

We went up a short set of steps then turned and down a longer one, into the next level of the ship. “This is the aft castle,” he explained, “officer cabins and such.”

A series of doors lined both sides of the hallway, or corridor as Gammon called it. “Wardroom,” he said by one door, “it’s where the officers mess and it’s the surgery when we’re at battle stations.” Battle stations? A privateer was a kind of warship, wasn’t it? I half remembered a history lesson from somewhere. A privately owned warship?

Other doors were identified as “Chartroom. Cockpit, Mate’s cabin, Master’s cabin, Quartermaster’s cabin,” he paused at the end. “Captain’s quarters are through here.” He indicated the larger door at the end. Day cabin port side, sea cabin sta’b’d.” By his gestures these meant right and left which seemed wrong.

“Isn’t the port side the left side?” I asked. I did know a tiny bit about boats as does anyone on the Florida coast.

He looked at me with pity. “We’re facing aft,” he said.

Duh. I felt stupid and silly. I didn’t mean to giggle but I did and that made him smile at me. Which for some reason made me smile back. I didn’t really like him, what with him patting me on the butt all the time, but smiling back was kind of a reflex.

My smiling at him seemed to put him in a good mood though and he actually laughed. “I would’n expect ye to know that much about ships, miss,” he said. “Even if the usual place to find a mermaid is on the prow of one.” And he laughed again.

Another mermaid joke. When Gammon wasn’t looking, I checked the sides of my neck to see if I had gills there. I didn’t find any, of course. Or maybe not of course. Did mermaids have gills? If I were a girl now, instead of a boy, how could I be sure I wasn’t a mermaid, too?