He used to be lonely – well, he's not anymore, is he? This little thing. Scrap of life – shock of blond hair, and eyes too brown, almost – great large things, they are. She cries as though her heart is breaking, though. He's got a wetnurse for the little scrap – his daughter, his child, born of her Russian mother who saved him, then snatched from her mother's husband, the man with the greedy eyes.
That creature will never touch his little girl.
Hush, hushabye baby. He's never really loved till now.
And soon she's big enough to eat solid food – and he takes her on the ship, because he must keep moving, and the crew are handpicked, so they love her. Someone watches her at all times. She can sing shanties before she can talk, knows the name of every sea bird before she can spell her name. This little thing, with the broken eyes, she learns to play the fiddle, climb the rigging, holds out her arms to the wind and laughs.
One day, when she's eight, she runs her finger is the air, and his heart breaks when she says she's painting with it.
Her mother's dead, of course. And the marquis who was her mother's husband will come looking for her, too, if John isn't careful.
But he's always careful.
She dances on the decks, smells a thousand spices in oriental ports, learns to paint in Paris, Philosophize in Germany. She has her first kiss in an Italian port, breath steeped in burgundy, rides a barge down the Nile, sees rainbow painted birds on the Ivory coast. She shoots a man when she is twelve, kisses one when she is fifteen, and tries to kill herself when she is ten.
And thirteen.
Then he settles back in England, but no more does she attempt the leap of faith into deep blue sea – now it's the violent scarlet slash, whenever she's left unattended, so it's back to the sea, again, him and his little heart beat, the only thing he has left to love.
She has her mother's eyes and her screaming, hysteric madness, too.
But she is his daughter. She flirts with the sailors, runs wild when they reach new land, has eyes that want to taste the world.
He and his daughter – John Smith and his little Meg – they are things of the sea and sky and salt. They have saved each other.
And on they go – always moving with the wind.