The Mermaid's Treasure -5- (Patreon)

Gammon opened the big door without a key and showed me a room divided in two by a partition and what I had to assume was the butt end of the mizzen mast he had mentioned. It was a large room, the width of the ship and about the same measure deep. Large windows filled the squared off end with the sea visible through them. One side, port, held a desk, a couple of chairs and an enormous gun. The other larger side held a bed, cupboards, another equally huge gun, a thing like a free-standing bathtub four feet high and a door that appeared to lead outside. Huh?

“Where does that go?” I asked, nodding at the anomalous door. 

He looked at me the way you look at a four-year-old who asks Skippy the dog can’t have a plate at the dinner table, too. I decided not to forgive him for his earlier crassness after all. 

“Quatah galley,” I thought he said but he also amplified, “Captain’s head.” Oh, the bathroom. I imagined a little balcony hanging off the side of the ship where the captain could do his business directly into the ocean. I wasn’t far wrong.

Two scruffy sailors with bare feet and pigtails blackened with tar arrived carrying steaming pails of water which they dumped into the bathtub. They looked at me sideways as they scuttled around us standing in the doorway but they didn’t say a word. “Two more trips,” said Gammon to their backs after looking in the tub.

“Sit,” he said to me, indicating the bed. It was low but soft and I sat gratefully. I wanted a bath soon, exhaustion was not far away. I hiccoughed twice which earned me a snicker from Gammon but I ignored that.

He bustled around, opening a trunk and laying things from it on the bed or a small shelf. “This chest we found airly this morning. From the wreck. Mayhap it be your own things?” The trunk was big enough that I could have probably gotten inside, if I folded myself up carefully. It was brown, made of leather wood and brass but I didn’t recognize it at all. “It’s not mine,” I said.

“Ah, well,” he grunted. “’Twas too much to hope for, p’haps. We’re still finding things, we may discover your own goods. ’Til then, these are the only ladies’ goods on board. And ’tis fine stuff, well-made and good material.”

I didn’t want to look at it, no matter how good it was so I glanced around the room for a distraction.

“Is that a fireplace?” I asked as I noticed something I didn’t expect to see—not exactly a fireplace, more of an iron box lined with brick, half stove, half open fireplace with tongs and tiny shovel. Fireplaces are not common in Florida except as decoration and I hadn’t thought of one on a sailing ship.

“A hearth,” said Gammon. “Don’t worry, it’s properly banked and bunkered with a smoke-sail chimbley and will not set the ship ablaze. In calm weather, the captain can heat the room or even cook his own meals. Coals are there.” He indicated a box of what looked like charcoal briquets. Gammon for all of his leering and popo-patting was efficient and trying to be informative. 

He kept smiling at me and I kept smiling back in a reflex I wished I could quash. It was confusing.

Looking at the hearth had distracted me from my situation and I marveled at the ingenuity of it but there were a lot of clever devices on ships I learned. I considered that Captain Venable might cook hot dogs and hamburgers, maybe some corn-on-the-cob or zucchini on the tiny grill. Obviously, there must be a larger hearth somewhere to heat the water the men were bringing and to cook meals. Was there a spit somewhere to turn a roast or a haunch? Whatever a haunch was….

Gammon brought me back to reality, showing me, again, the things he had laid out on the bed and table. Included were combs, brushes, soaps and perfumes, though I didn’t think I would be using the last. Some of the men, Gammon included, could sure do with something to improve the way they smelled, though.

There was even a jewel box displayed, full of gewgaws and doodads, as Ariel might have described them. Ack, mermaid reference! Quick, look at something else.

On the bed lay several dresses, though he called them gowns, along with other garments that perhaps neither of us knew the name of. Not exactly an improvement. I had trouble imagining wearing any of it but if I was right, they certainly expected me to be wearing that stuff. Some of it was ridiculously fluffy, frilly or lacy or all three.

I must have looked dumbfounded because he suddenly offered, “If you need help getting dressed, I can send in the chaplain.”

The chaplain? I shook my head. That took a weird turn.

“He’s the only man on the ship who I’m sure wouldn’t, uh…be a problem with, uh, with the captain.”

The captain? Again I shook my head. 

I was still boggling at the display of feminine finery. I didn’t recognize any of it, of course, but there sure was enough of it to make a good go at being a full wardrobe for someone. Someone who wasn’t me because all of it was exceedingly girly, in an eighteenth century way.

Gammon shrugged. “If you have trouble, just ask. The chaplain’ll be glad to help. He used to be a dresser in a… in….” He trailed off, looking a bit uncomfortable. What in the world might he have been about to say?

I didn’t want to wear any of that stuff. Just looking at it made me feel like trying to shrink out of existence like Ant-Man. “You couldn’t find any pants my size? Or some shorts?” I asked looking at the stuff on the bed. 

His expression was almost worth the cost of admission. “Heh, heh,” he choked on a laugh. “No, no, that would hardly be right, missy,” he managed as an explanation. “A young woman on the ship wearing pants? The men would take ye for a… a….” He couldn’t say it but this time I could guess what he meant.

I glared at the dresses but figured I would have to wear something. And somehow, I was a girl now and in this time girls did not wear pants. I remembered old family photos of my grandmothers with them always in dresses unless they were riding horses or something. I wanted to cuss but decided I probably better not. Men tended to think poorly of women who used bad language—and I would have to be aware of that.

Crud. Could I say ‘crud’ safely?

I blinked several times, wanting to cry but fighting it. That would seem really girly. Was I going to be stuck for a lifetime wearing frilly skirts? And one of the skirts on the bed was nothing but frills and lace.

About that time the men with the buckets of hot water delivered their third load. “Ah!” Gammon seemed relieved. “The bath is ready for our mermaid.” He grinned at me. Like almost everyone else I’d met, except David, Gammon was missing teeth and that combined with a scar on his lip, a scruffy beard and a generally froggish face made him truly repulsive when he grinned. Which was better than him simply smiling because his grin did not trigger my smile reflex. Wuff!

And did everyone have to make that same joke about me being a mermaid? I tried to make a joke of it to myself. Get found one time naked on a beach with a set of hooters hanging out and you were a mermaid, apparently. I made a sour face at Gammon.

“Oh,” he said quickly, “take your time, Missy. The water will get cold if’n you take too long, but since ‘tisn’t fresh water, no one else will be using it and we’ll just pour it into the scuppers when you’re done.”

I did know what scuppers were but—used bathwater? I hoped I never had to use someone else’s bath water but I nodded as if I understood. Gammon took a large mirror out of a cabinet and hung it on the side of the mast (which made part of the wall between the two cabins of the Captain’s Quarters) and then he got one more pat on my ass before he left.

If I ever got the opportunity, I decided, I would keelhaul him for that, once I found out what keelhauling was.

He left and I heard him locking the door between the sea cabin/bedroom and the day cabin/office. I was alone with my bath. And a mirror. Steam rising from the bathtub suggested that I might want to wait a bit for it to cool down. Besides, the mirror was more tempting just then.

I couldn’t see myself from where I was sitting on the bed so I got up and cautiously approached. I sort of eased into view like someone getting into a cold swimming pool. I didn’t know what I would see.

I saw the pretty face of a young girl framed with lots of black hair. She had blue eyes and a very pale complexion with a few freckles across her cheeks. Full lips, a small nose, dark brows, a pointy chin and a high forehead. A pretty girl and she moved when I did so I knew she was the new me. The face in the mirror appeared about twelve, my own real age but otherwise looked nothing like me except around the eyes.

I quit cringing and stood there staring for a while. I practiced a few expressions. A smile, a frown, an angry face, a pout. Wow. That pout was killer. I giggled thinking about how some girls could use a pout like that. Could I learn to do that? Did I want to? Oh, boy.

The blue eyes were the only part that looked like me, except the lashes were darker. I’d had eyes that same bright ocean blue. I could almost see myself looking back out of them, the old me. The boy who had fallen into the sinkhole.

I moved in front of the mirror which was about half as tall as the new me and half of that wide. Gammon had hung it at a height that if I stood the right distance away, I could see both my head and my feet. I still wore David’s coat which hung below my knees and I held it closed from the inside.

I dropped the coat and stared. 

First of all, everything had a little sand stuck to it. Second, those were some really big boobies. They each looked bigger than my face, almost as big as my head. No wonder my back hurt. 

I had a slender neck which made it look longer than it was. My shoulders were narrow and almost bony. My slender arms looked almost too thin and my hands were small and delicate looking.

The oversize breasts hung on a narrow chest. I turned a bit sideways and I could kind of see my ribs just before my torso narrowed to a small waist and an innie belly button. Then a Kardashian-sized set of hips. I did not look twelve anywhere below my neck.

Still turned sideways, I saw the big round ass I had felt under me before. It had dimples. “Oh, lord,” I whispered. “Oh lord, why did you give me such a big butt?”