Jane by Robin Maxwell

acknowledge that I saw this flaw in his character and mildly disapproved.
    So far, while my tactic had not provoked anger from him, neither had it improved his disposition. But what was one fault in a man? Would not such a partnership be the perfect antidote to my mother’s soul-killing idea of marriage to an effete, upper-crust Englishman?
    Father had already boarded the Evangeline, claiming the need to make ready our cabins for the journey. “Out into the sea on a large ship” was one of my firsts. I’d rowed many times on the River Cam, sailed on Lake Como on a trip the family had taken to Italy, and even taken a ferry across the Channel to France. But this was a proper voyage. Two weeks on board. Crossing the Bay of Biscay into the wild Atlantic. Stops at several ports along the way—the Canary Isles and Sierra Leone. Away to another continent and to a clime that was as unfamiliar to me as a fish to desert dunes. The heat, my father told me, could be stifling and unrelenting, many times worse than the hottest English summer. Another first. I relished the thought.
    “Idiots!”
    I was blasted from my reverie by Ral Conrath’s rude outburst. I turned back to the ramp where four stevedores were grappling with a long wooden crate, one corner of which was about to hit the concrete pier. The dockworker who had let the thing slip used his prodigious muscles to catch it before it crashed to the ground but overcorrected, tilting the crate to vertical.
    “Damn you!” Ral shouted. “Keep the thing horizontal!”
    “It’s horizontal you want it?” said the Scouser who had mishandled his corner. “I’ll give you horizontal, ye little turd.” With a nod to his mates they all let the crate drop with a rattling crash and, saluting their taskmaster with a barrage of rude gestures, sauntered away without another word.
    I could see a distinctly murderous look in Ral’s eye, but the moment he caught sight of me staring at him he began to compose himself. I likewise set my features into an even expression, neither disapproving nor joking.
    “The contents of the crate must be quite valuable,” I said, striving for a tone of equanimity.
    “I’ll say they are.” Ral pulled a small pry bar from his work belt and began opening the box to the tune of screeching nails. “If they’ve damaged it, I’ll wring their filthy necks.”
    Now the treasure was revealed, and it came as quite a surprise to me.
    “Gatling guns don’t run cheap,” he said. “Their mechanisms are more delicate than you’d think.”
    I squatted down and examined the immense gun and the folded tripod legs upon which it would stand. I knew Ral was regarding me with interest, I in the most unladylike of postures, taking keen interest in the most masculine of objects.
    “The Gatling gun is a rapid-fire weapon,” he said, as a lecturer would speak to a student, “the most important invention of warfare in hundreds of years, used to great effect in the American Civil War. It shoots eight hundred rounds in a minute.”
    “Why on earth do we need such a thing on our expedition?” I demanded to know in the moment before I realized he might take offense.
    An offense was, indeed, taken. I could see it blazing in his eyes. But as he had done moments before, he reined in his emotions. Ral managed a crooked grin.
    “How you do love to second-guess me, little lady,” he quipped.
    Then setting the top back on the crate, he pulled a hammer from his belt and nailed it shut with all the force I imagined he would have liked to hammer in the skulls of those dockworkers.
    “Do me a favor and keep your eye on this,” he said. “I need a word with the captain of this tub.”
    Ral stood and with a polite tip of his head strode up the gangway and bordered the Evangeline.
    I stood, unsure whether I was pleased to be given the responsibility as a member of the team, or irked by this raw, churlish fellow. Perhaps, I thought, it was not worth debating.
    It was simply