Free My Bonny Light Horseman by L.A. Meyer Page A

his face expressionless. "I was visiting an old mate, Sir," he says. I, too, get to my feet.
    "Joseph," I cry, "this is none other than David Jones, my brother from the Dolphin, from when we were ship's boys together!"
    "I know who he is, and he don't look much like a boy to me," says Jared, his voice cold. "Get yourself gone, Jones."
    "Aye, Sir," says Davy. He grabs a line and goes to haul himself up into the high rigging. I catch his eye and wink, tapping my clenched fist on my right hipbone, over my tattoo, to show him I know how things stand and that the Dread Brotherhood of the Dolphin still exists, at least for me. Before he goes up, he does the same, showing that the same goes for him, too. Oh, it is so good to have another friend aboard!
    "Can't leave Puss-in-Boots for a moment, can we, before our little Pussycat's snugged up with another Tom," says Jared, who had not missed that last exchange of signals.
    I hit a brace. "That's not worthy of you, Joseph, and you know it," says I, suddenly angry. "He was a good friend of mine when I was a child, and he is a good friend now. I do not abandon my friends." I go to the edge of the foretop. "I believe it's time we went down for lunch."
    "Ah, nobody owns Jacky Faber, is that right?" He hooks his arm around my waist.
    "That is right, Mr. Jared, and don't you forget it. Nobody but me." I spin out of his grip and launch myself over the side of the foretop, grab the backstay, and go down, hand over hand.
    "Please don't do that again, Miss," says Private Keene, visibly sweating under his high leather collar, plainly relieved to see me hit the main deck and to have me once more in his direct custody.
    "Oh, don't worry, Patrick. I'd cover for you, and I'll be good now, I promise," says I, taking his arm. "You may lead me down to the Gun Deck."

    I am escorted through the throng of officers gathering for their midday meal and put into my room. I receive my lunch and I eat it. Before I am taken back to work in the Doctor's lab, I search through my seabag and pull out an ivory disk, the kind I use for making my miniature portraits and slip it into my vest.
    When I get to the lab, the Doctor is not yet there, so I take a piece of paper and begin work on the frontispiece for his folio. I've decided the nine-inch-by-twelve-inch size will be best for this thing, since that is the size of paper that seems most available here. I shall have to ask Davy to see if the Sailmaker can make us a leather folder to protect the drawings. I look about at the paintings I've done so far that have been tacked to the wall and that plainly won't do. The Doctor may have a keen scientific mind, but he certainly has no notion of order—nor any sense whatsoever of how to advance oneself in the world of Academia and Publishing. Or how to make any money from it all. I will show him.
    One thing about my art—while the quality of the work I have done must be judged by others, there is one thing I know—I am fast. Having painted many pictures of fidgety children, impatient men, and flighty ladies, to say nothing of being in houses of mourning to paint funeral portraits, I have learned to be fast and accurate.
    The Doctor comes back into the lab, so I slide the frontispiece out of the way, without him seeing it. I finish off the drawing of the vile gut I had been working on before, and then ink in the words the Doctor wants put under it, describing what the thing does and what poor thing it came out of, and suchlike. I now appreciate Miss Prosser's Penmanship classes back at the Lawson Peabody.
    That done, I am given a butterfly, a dead one stuck on a pin.
    "Ah," I say, looking at the design on its wings. "That is quite beautiful. This will be a joy to do."
    "I am glad you think so," says the Doctor, "as we have many of them to do. The Lepidoptera are one of my special interests."
    I turn to my work, while the Doctor turns back to his microscope, his sharp face in profile. I sketch in the shape of the butterfly's