Joan Makes History Read Online Free PDF Page B

blinking women who was short of a boot or two. I will make history, and the devil take all those men and their red coats and strutting, I cried and, breasts swinging loose so the women blinked more, went to the hatch where in fine weather we could take in turns the pleasure of a faceful of fresh air and the kiss of spray on our dirty cheeks.
    It was too high for me to climb through, but I was about to make history and would not be held back by any such feeble physical obstacle as a bit of height. Dot, I shouted into Dot’s unblinking face, which was aghast at my flesh shaking before her in all its majesty, You can make history too, Dot, give me a leg up. Dot had never heard of history, you could tell by the way she looked scared and opened her mouth as if to understand this difficulty by eating it. But even Dot, big feeble Dot, knew what a leg up was, and was frightened enough by the way I wasshouting and gesturing at her to make her hands a calloused cradle, and be my clumsy midwife into the new world.
    You will go and drown, Agnes said in her lugubrious way. You will drown, Joan, when you hit that water, or be swallowed by something, some eel. But eels did not frighten me as much as the prospect of an adventure caused the blood to pulse in my veins. Damn the eels, I cried, and Agnes, I was a mudlark when you were slime in your mother’s belly and I can swim like a fish, watch if you dare!
    All the same, when Dot’s hard hands propelled me up and out through the hatch and there was nothing but air, sun, blinding water, and the alarming sound of nothing but space, for a moment I was jammed by my hips in the hatch, which had not been made with the egress of large-hipped women in mind, and I was afraid. I felt them pushing and thrusting at my feet: now it felt as if they were eager to push me out, conspiring to expel me, and all at once I was not so sure I wanted to be expelled: that vile hold seemed like home and was for a moment preferable to the bright unknown beyond.
    I hit the water shrieking, for in the end I burst out of that hatch like a cork out of old beer, head first and flailing into water that was a shock like a shout on my skin. The water was an explosion of blue, of wet, of clean, so that I screamed as it took me in and I felt the silver bubbles caress my cheeks. There was terror, too, in being weightless, unbound, in nothing but space, for the first time in so many months. The great cry that only the blue water heard was the cry of a being in bliss and fear, bursting into some new world or other.
    When I came up and breathed air again the ship was black and sullen, sitting on the water full of the vomit and anguish of months. On the deck a man or two pointed at me, and therebelow them at the hatch were the pale moon faces of the women. I could hear feeble piping shouts, and a shrill cry from one of the women at the hatch, that had an encouraging sound, although birdlike and unclear to my water-filled ears.
    I turned away from that dark and wormy hulk sitting on the water, and struck out boldly, my breath coming short and painful with the excitement, and with the exercise I was unused to, so that I began to splutter and take some of this large blue bay into my gullet, and had to float for a moment on my back, fighting the panic of liberty. I reminded myself of my destiny, which was to be the first foot to touch the rim of this land, and I remembered the pinnace they had been readying for the Captain and his lantern-jawed officers, who would be after me if I did not shake a leg.
    I shook a leg, then, and floundered towards a bit of yellow sand between the trees, until, groaning and coughing, feeling hot blood in my aching shoulders, I knew my feet with their long and filthy nails would touch bottom if I put them down now. I did, and felt with my unsavoury toe the Great South Land.
    We had the continent to ourselves for a short while: briefly it was just myself and the people who lived there, whom I