~Chapter 3~

Elanor had been in the same spot for five hours. Her legs were cramped and itchy, and her hair was a mess. She was sweating buckets, and she had three holes in her dress. The moon was out now, and Elanor wanted to go see Brian. But he had gone into a door and never come out. She would have to wait and follow him.

After another hour, he emerged carrying a book and whistling. It sounded like a pirate song. Elanor groaned and waited for him to pass by her hiding place. "Brian!" she hissed. He looked around, searching for the source of the noise. She groaned again, grabbed his wrist, and tugged him down next to her.

"Elanor!" he cried in surprise. "What are you doing here?"

"Shh!" she shushed him. "They'll hear you." Elanor motioned to the crew, still hard at work in the moonlight.

"What are you doing here?" Brian repeated in a lower voice.

For a moment, Elanor considered telling him what she had told Diane earlier, but she decided against it. Instead, she said, "You're not the only one who can go on adventures, you know, Brian."

"But you can't be on here. A ship isn't any place for a lady. Look at you; you don't look anything like you do when you're up in your room when we're talking. You could get hurt."

"I know the captain. He owes me a favor."

"I know that, but how big of a favor? Surely not one this size. What exactly is running through your head right now? Were you jealous or something?"

"Ehm.sort of. But no one can know I'm here except you and maybe Captain John."

"Even he wouldn't allow this, Elanor. Get off while you can. We don't sail until tomorrow, so you can go now and be rid of the hardships of being a sailor or a stowaway on a journey like this."

Elanor bristled. This conversation was not going anything like she had planned. "Are you saying girls can't take the hardships of sailing or stowing away?"

"Now that you mention it, yes, that is what I'm saying. Please get off, Elanor, I'm thinking of you. Your father will be terribly worried, and what of Diane and Augusta?"

"Diane knows and Augusta will just have to deal with it."

"We could be gone a year or so. Do you really want to be away from your family that long? Do you think they want to be rid of you that long, and maybe forever? From what someone I met said, he thinks we're never coming back."

Elanor hadn't thought of this. Nevertheless, she straightened up as much as she could crushed between the edge of the ship and a barrel. "I'm going, Brian. Help me find a place to stay, please?"

"You should have thought of that before."

"Brian!"

"All right, all right. Come with me to my chambers."

"Why?"

"The first mate, Scaggs-"

"Scaggs? What sort of a name is that?"

"It's short for Scagley. Tibbon Scagley. He told me that every chamber has secret passageways. We can explore mine and find where one leads. Maybe it'll lead to an empty chamber. Sound good to you?"

Elanor pursed her lips. "Fine. Now we have the matter of finding how to get past all these uncouth seadogs without letting them know I'm a girl."

Brian looked at her. "You should have thought of that before stowing away on this cursed ship."

"What's the matter with it?"

"Nothing, just some of the crew isn't as nice as they could be, and I met someone who also isn't as nice as he might be. You know, the one who I said told me that we'd all die."

"Sounds like he has a negative outlook on this quest you're going on. Any ideas to get into your cabin?"

"I can stroll on in my cabin. I'm Isupposed/I to be here."

She pursed her lips at him again. "Fine," he said. "I have an idea, but you won't like the sound of it much at all."

~*~*~*~*~

"That was bloody awful," Elanor complained, once in Brian's quarters. "You rolled the barrel to your room. Do you think anybody will believe that?"

"They'd think less of that than if I guided you to my room and let them see it. I rolled the barrel so you could crawl along behind it. Besides, I saw Thomas, and if he would have seen you, you'd probably be thrown overboard."

"That's who you met earlier?"

Brian nodded. "Now for that secret passage. Tap on the walls and see if you hear any hollow parts."

Elanor obeyed grudgingly. The two of them went to either sides of the room, tapping on the walls, listening for any difference in the echoes. Brian finally found a patch on the wall that sounded like nothing was behind it. The only problem was that it was way up high, so Brian could barely reach it and Elanor couldn't at all. Brian stood on top of a cupboard to get to it. It had tiny, almost invisible hinges that creaked when he swung open the door to reveal a passage just large enough for a human being to crawl through. "In you go, then," he said, balancing on the cupboard.

"I can't reach," she complained.

"Climb up here," he told her. "You can do that, can't you?"

"I doubt it. I'll make a fool of myself."

"Elanor!" he cried in exasperation. "Who is in here to make a fool of yourself in front of? You can't make a fool of yourself unless someone important is watching."

Elanor took all the courage she possessed and climbed up beside Brian. "It's dreadfully high," she said, looking at the ground.

"The trick is to not look down. Just like with seasickness, you never look at the water. Go on, get in. I'll follow."

"We'll need a better way to get through here later," she said, sticking her head in the hole.

"But for now this works. Up you go." Brian lifted Elanor's feet into the tunnel, and then he lifted himself in behind her. "Move, you're not going to be sleeping in this part of it, are you? It's all dusty."

Elanor began to crawl, achieving another rip in her already tattered dress. "How far does this thing go?" she hissed over her shoulder at Brian.

"I don't know, Elanor, just keep going!"

"Shouldn't you go ahead of me? Make sure nothing dangerous is on the other side, you know?"

"There's no way I'm going to be able to get ahead of you. If you haven't noticed, this tunnel's barely thick enough for you alone to fit in, and I can't go over you. So just keep it moving, all right?"

They went another few yards before Elanor backed up into Brian. "Ouch, what are you doing?"

Elanor seemed frozen. Her mouth looked like it was trying to say something but it wouldn't move anywhere.

"What is it, Elanor? Is something wrong?"

"S-s-s-s-s-s-spiders," she stammered, backing up further.

"What of it? They're spiders. Just as long as they don't have red spots on the top of them, they're fine. Keep moving."

"B-but I don't like s-spiders. They're icky and nasty and they have eight legs."

"Just go, they won't notice you."

Elanor attempted to go past without touching a spider at all, but that failed when she squashed one with her knee. She screamed loudly, trying to rub the poor spider carcass off her dress. Brian caught her by the shoulders and put a hand over her mouth. "Quiet," he growled in a low tone. "Someone will hear us."

She struggled to get his dust-covered hand off her mouth. He finally let her go when he had guided her across the spiders' path, and she spit against the side of the wall. "Better than eating spiders, though, isn't it?" he said.

She stayed silent and crawled on. She had expected him to be overjoyed to see her, and be caring about her, but instead all they could do was bicker. Maybe she didn't know him well enough to love him. He had seemed so different at her window. And on top of all that, if she left, he'd think she was a cowardly girl, so she couldn't. And then there were the spiders, which she absolutely detested. The best spider was a dead spider, and even then they weren't so lovable. She continued along the dirty tunnel, which she noticed smelled of rotten fish.

After some yards more, the tunnel opened out into a room. An empty room that no one knew about, by the looks of it. "All right, do you wish to stay here?" said Brian. "I know there's no bed, but the floor doesn't look all that bad."

"Bad? It's covered in dust, and I'll bet there will be spiders come nightfall."

"It is nightfall, Elanor. That's what it's called when it's all dark like this."

"You know what I mean! If you're not going to provide any further assistance, then you may leave. I guess this'll have to do."

"Well, beggars can't be choosers. Stowaways either." Brian pulled himself back into the tunnel and started his long trek back to his room.

Elanor sat on the floor, in the absence of a bed. Things definitely weren't going the way she had planned. She lay down on her back and it popped, hurting but at the same time feeling good. She had been cramped and in odd spaces for the past five and a half hours, and it was nice to finally have some room. She was beginning to doze off when she heard a creak. For the second time that day, a hand clamped over her mouth. "Quiet, there, missy, I wouldn' want Brian to be gettin' worried about yeh. Follow me."