The Stowaway

XXX

"Travel does not exist without home....If we never return to the place we started, we would just be wandering, lost. Home is a reflecting surface, a place to measure our growth and enrich us after being infused with the outside world." Josh Gates, Destination Truth: Memoirs of a Monster Hunter

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XXX.

Eliza held her breath as the Atlantis approached the Plymouth dock. The landscape, which had once been so familiar to her, seemed strange and distant, though welcome.

Tom had regained back a conservable amount of his strength, and so he stood beside her as she watched the crew from the upper deck, throwing the mooring ropes down to the pier below.

"My house is about a mile and a half that way," Eliza told Tom, pointing in the right direction. "You can see the ocean from my window. In fact, if I were in my bedroom at this moment, if I squinted, I might see the crow's nest of this ship in the distance."

She knew that Tom's anxieties and worries about the differences between them had only increased as they drew closer to Plymouth.

Eliza understood his concerns, and his male pride. But there was a solution and there need not be any prolonged stress. She knew the characters of her parents better than anyone, and she was certain that her father would acquiesce to her request after thorough begging.

Eliza was confident that once this issue was settled, there could be nothing preventing them, and she hoped, she prayed, that their courtship, if that is what it could be called, could resume.

"Would you come with me?" she asked, turning to face him.

Tom met her eye, and she saw his hesitation. How she wished she could reassure him. He would only know it once he was acquainted with her parents.

"I cannot," he replied, shaking his head. "I have business, my job is not complete until my cargo is safely delivered. I must also see that Captain Frost is surrendered to the Navy." Taking a deep breath, he said, "But would you meet me back here?" Looking at the position of the sun, he added, "In about six hours, at five o'clock?"

Eliza realised that might have been a better plan. That would give her parents enough time to yell and then to calm down before she proposed her plan and introduced them to Tom.

"Do you need any money to see you home?" asked her quietly.

Eliza shook her head. "No, the walk will help to allay my sea legs," she joked.

But he didn't smile, and her heart sunk a little. Instead, he bent down and kissed her forehead, his lips lingering for a moment, before he released her. "Go home to your family," he said after a moment. "I will see you later."

Eliza nodded, shaking away any of her own anxiety. She turned her back and descended onto the lower deck, before walking down the ramp onto the pier.

The pier was the same as she had left it, filled with officers, Navy ships, and townspeople going about their business. Eliza certainly looked very out of place among the women. Seeing English finery once again made her truly appreciate just how much she had enjoyed donning breeches these last several months.

But she did not stay to observe long. She started off home with a purpose, rehearsing in her head what she would say to her parents when they met once more.

"Dearest Mama and Papa, if you had bid me marry that horrid parson, I would have set my wedding clothes on fire," she thought aloud as she walked. "I am so sorry Mama and Papa for disappointing you, but ..." Eliza trailed off. "I am so sorry, Mama and Papa," she settled on. There could be no excuses. She would have to endure the shouting if she had any hope of persuading them to her cause.