Louis A. Meyer - The Wake of the Lorelei Lee: Being an Account of the Further Adventures of Jacky Faber, On Her Way to Botany Bay

HARCOURT
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Boston New York 2010

Copyright 2010 by L. A. Meyer

All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections
from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing
Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

Harcourt is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

www.hmhbooks.com

The text of this book is set in Minion.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Meyer, L. A. (Louis A.), 1942
The wake of the Lorelei Lee : being an account of the adventures of Jacky Faber on
her way to Botany Bay / L.A. Meyer.
p. cm.(A Bloody Jack adventure)
Summary: Now rich, Jacky Faber has purchased the Lorelei Lee to carry
passengers across the Atlantic, and believing she has been absolved of past sins
against the Crown, she docks in London, where she is arrested and sentenced to
life in the newly formed penal colony in Australia.
ISBN 978-0-547-32768-6 (hardcover: alk. paper) [1. Sex roleFiction.
2. PrisonersFiction. 3. Seafaring lifeFiction. 4. OrphansFiction.
5. AustraliaHistory19th centuryFiction. 6. Sea stories.] I. Title.
PZ7.M57172Wak 2010
[Fic]dc22
2010008686

Manufactured in the United States of America
DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
4500248881

As always, for Annetje

and for Katy Kellgren and the fine staff at
Listen & Live, who so eloquently brought
Jacky to life in the audio world.
Thanks, also, to Elaine Jimenez and her troops
on the Bloody Jack Boards, they who keep
Jacky's flame glowing.

She is beautiful.

She is trim in the waist and youngonly sixteen years oldand frisky as a new filly.

I have been all over her, trying to find her wanting in some respect, but found nothing to diminish her in my eyes or in my heart.

I have swum with her in the harbor and felt her bottom and it was smooth and sound. I have thrust my knife into her knees and into all her cracks and crevices and found nothing but good, solid bone.

I have been with her at sea and found her there to be the most amiable of consorts. She was as spirited and wild as any mermaid as we splashed headlong through the waves, a bone in her teeth, and her tail to the wind.

She belongs to me and I love her and her name isLorelei Lee.

April 1807
Boston, Massachusetts
USA

"Must you have your grubby hands on her chest, Davy? Must you? I swear you are just the dirtiest little !monkey!" Davy Jones is leaning over the bow and has a grimy paw on each of the girl's breasts.

The rogue grins hugely, but does not change his grip. "Gotta hold on to somethin', Jacky. We wouldn't want to drop her in the drink now, would we?"

"You drop her in, Mate, and you're goin' in after her. Tink, take a strain. John Thomas, swing her in and hold her. There. Good."

"She's in place, Skipper."

"All right, pound 'er in."

Jim Tanner swings the heavy mallet and drives in the thick pegs that will hold the girl in place on the bow, under the bowsprit. Then we all step back to admire the figurehead.

My, my ... Look at that, now ... She is absolutely beautiful.

I had hired a master woodcarver to carve her because my ship lacked such a figurehead, and I felt we needed one to guide us on our watery way; and a real master he turned out to be. She is carved of good solid oak and positively glows in her new paintluminous pink skin with long amber tresses that wrap around her slim body. Her back is arched to match the curve of the ship's stem; her breasts thrust proudly forward, peeking out through the thick strands of her hair. She smilesher red lips slightly parted, as if her voice were lifted in songand her hands hold a small golden harp, a lyre, actually, which conveniently, and modestly, covers her lower female part. When we'd discussed the sculpture, the carver, Mr. Simms, thought it would be just the thing if the piece looked like me, and I agreed. The Lorelei Lee is my ship, after all, and so I posed for himin my natural state, as it were. All who know me know that I am not exactly shy in that regard. Plus Master Carver Simms is an old man, so what's the harm? I must say Mr. Simms succeeded most admirably in capturing my particular features, and I am most pleased with the result.

And, oh, I am so very pleased with all the other parts of my beautiful ship, as well.

She is called a brigantine, having two sturdy masts, square-rigged on the foremast, with three fore-and-aft sails off the front and the mainmast rigged with a fore-and-aft spanker as mainsail. She is, in dimensions and sail rig, much like my first real command, HMS Wolverine, which was a brig; but in elegance and spirit, she is much more like my beautiful Emerald, who now sleeps beneath the sea. I like saying brigantine better than brig, as it sounds more elegant. And, oh, she is elegant. I fell in love with her at first sight, lying all sleek next to Ruffles Wharf, looking as if she wanted to shake off the lines that bound her to the land and go tearing off to sea. It was from there that we did take her directly for her sea trials, and she performed most admirably, running before the wind like a greyhound, dancing over the waves and pointing up into the weather like she wanted to charge directly into the teeth of the gale itself. Glory!

I had purchased the Lorelei Lee from a Captain Ichabod Lee, who had named her after his daughter. I decided to keep the name, the mythic Lorelei being something like a mermaid who sat on a rock on the Rhine River in Germany and lured poor sailors to their doom with her singing. So it seems appropriate, somehow, my having been something of a mermaid myself in the near past, as well as my being a singer of songs, though I wish no doom on any poor sailor.

How could I afford such a splendid craft, you ask? Hmmm? Well, that's where the mermaid bit comes in. Earlier this year I had been sent by British Naval Intelligence on a treasure hunting expedition, diving on a Spanish wreck off Key West in Florida. It was entirely against my will, but my will or wishes don't seem to matter much in this world. The wreck was the Santa Magdalena, and she had yielded up much, much gold and silver, so much so that it didn't seem quite fair that King Georgie should get all that loot and that I should get none. No, it did not. I, who was the one who risked life and limb and peace of mind by diving down into those horrid depths to bring up all that gold from the Santa Magdalena. No, I did not find it fair at all, not by half, so I squirreled away a few of the gold ingotswell ... actually about fifty of themin the hold of my bonny little schooner, replacing part of her ballast, and after the diving was done, hauled it all up to Boston.

And speaking of ballast, I have in my hold right now the selfsame diving bell we had used to get me down two hundred and fifty feet into the Caribbean Sea. I had the thing on my little schooner the Nancy B. Alsop when we were detached to return to Boston, and since no one was here to claim it, I stashed it, under cover of night, of course, deep in the hold of the Lorelei Lee. It's as good a ballast as any dumb lead bars, and who knows, it might prove useful someday.

So anyway, we got back to Boston, revealed the golden stash to the astounded Mr. Ezra Pickering, my very good friend and lawyer, and he set about converting the gold into cash, lines of credit, and whatnot, hiding it all very cunningly in various dummy corporations and holding companies, so that King Georgie wouldn't find out and perhaps be a bit miffed. Clever man, that Ezra.