Read Minerva's Voyage for Free Online Page B

thrashing.”
    Proule looked from Fence to me and back again. Then he squinted at the page, one eye shut, turning it sideways and over and right side up. No question about it. He didn’t trust us, but he couldn’t read. The rogue was flummoxed.
    Fence stood up. “It’s mine! As I told you, it’s from the admiral. And if you don’t give it back, I’ll tell him you’ve stole it from me.”
    â€œYer shan’t if yer know what’s good for yer.”
    â€œI’ll do it, sir. I will.” God be praised. That boy had real guts.
    Proule flinched, then thrust his head forward. He opened his mangy mouth wide as a corcodillo basking in the sun. For a moment I was afraid he was going to snap his rotting fangs shut on Fence’s nose. But, “Yers, is it, yer cheeky dog? Don’t yer be wasting my time again, y’hear me? I’m an important man with important doings.”
    He ground the vellum into his palm, screwed it up, then tossed it away. As he ran up the ladder, taking his rancid reek with him, I crept over to retrieve the crumpled sheet. I smoothed it and stuck it in my shirt, relief flooding my veins. I had a sudden thought and took it out again, holding it beneath the open hatch. The moon illuminated the script for a moment, disappearing as the ship lurched and we tacked southwest into the dark night. But I’d had enough time to check my theory. I’d been right. What I had here was a cipher key. A real one, sure enough. Though as to what it was supposed to de -cipher, and how I or anyone else was supposed to decipher it, I had not a single clue.
    â€œTomorrow,” I mouthed to Fence, tucking the cipher away. “Tomorrow we will talk.”
    He nodded, and lay down right on the spot to sleep, one arm curled around a rung of the ladder, the hand of the other holding his candle stub. He looked amazingly peaceful, considering all that had happened.
    For the first time in my miserable joke of a life I knew that I had a true and gallant friend. It was a strange feeling, not entirely comfortable, like the prickly sensation I once got from an old woolen jerkin when I had no shirt to wear under it. But the jerkin, though itchy, had been warm. And the thought of having a real ally was both itchy and warmish too.
    I found a place in the wooden skeleton of the ship, two curved ribs with a narrow gap between them, in which to stow the cipher key. The next night, when the hold was dark and as quiet as it could be with its gaggle of voyagers, littler voyagers, and beasts, Fence and I took it out and examined it until the candle he was holding melted down and scorched his fingers. But I was a quick study and by then I knew the pattern of it off by heart. We still didn’t have the meaning, though, which it refused, quite obstinately, to yield to us.
    â€œThere is a meaning to it, though, I’m sure,” I whispered to Fence at noontide, knocking as many maggots as I could off a bloated piece of salt meat with an iron nail I’d found. Some of them held on tight, but I couldn’t bear to actually touch them.
    â€œRight you are.”
    â€œEach letter is represented by five x’s or y’s, or a mix of them. It must stand for something.”
    â€œIf we could get some of the other papers in the chest, it’s likely they’d give us clues,” said Fence, who had scarfed down his foul meat and biscuit, worms and weevils and all.
    â€œI’ve learned the cipher key down to the last x and y. It’s burnt on my brain.”
    â€œGood on you,” Fence grinned at me. A last shred of beef was visible on his tooth.
    â€œBut we should return the damn thing. We’re lucky Scratcher hasn’t noticed it’s missing, but he will, true it is, if we hold on to it much longer.”
    I shut my eyes tight, shoved the meat into my mouth, and swallowed it quick, barely chewing. I had to eat. My rags were so hanging off me that I