She sighed and shut the
spinet1, dusting the gold off her fingers. "There's nothing to tell, nothing at all. Come on, help me move these things into the middle of the room, so Daddy can pack them."
The voyage was a nightmare. Before the Wahine was out of Wellington harbor they were all
seasick2, and they continued to be seasick all the way across twelve hundred miles of gale-stirred, wintry seas. Paddy took the boys up on deck and kept them there in spite of the bitter wind and constant spray, only going below to see his women and baby when some kind soul volunteered to keep an eye on his four
miserable3, retching boys. Much though he
yearned4 for fresh air, Frank had elected to remain below to guard the women. The cabin was tiny,
stifling5 and
reeked6 of oil, for it was below the water line and toward the bow, where the ship's motion was most violent. Some hours out of Wellington Frank and Meggie became convinced their mother was going to die; the doctor, summoned from first class by a very worried
steward7, shook his head over her pessimistically. "Just as well it's only a short voyage," he said, instructing his nurse to find milk for the baby.
Between
bouts8 of retching Frank and Meggie managed to bottle-feed Hal, who didn't take to it
kindly9. Fee had stopped trying to
vomit10 and had sunk into a kind of
coma11, from which they could not rouse her. The steward helped Frank put her in the top
bunk12, where the air was a little less stale, and holding a towel to his mouth to stem the
watery13 bile he still brought up, Frank perched himself on the edge beside her, stroking the matted yellow hair back from her brow. Hour after hour he stuck to his post in spite of his own sickness; every time Paddy came in he was with his mother, stroking her hair, while Meggie
huddled14 on a lower
berth15 with Hal, a towel to her mouth. Three hours out of Sydney the seas dropped to a glassy calm and fog stole in
furtively16 from the far Antarctic, wrapping itself about the old ship. Meggie, reviving a little, imagined it
bellowed17 regularly in pain now the terrible
buffeting18 was over. They inched through the gluey greyness as stealthily as a hunted thing until that deep,
monotonous19 bawl20 sounded again from somewhere on the superstructure, a lost and lonely, indescribably sad noise. Then all around them the air was filled with mournful
bellows21 as they slipped through ghostly smoking water into the harbor.
