He needed air. Maycomb had barely closed the door to his cabin when he heard his wife begin to sob once again within. The plaintive sounds made him champ his teeth and, for a moment, the black rage filled his chest and his vision grew bright at the edges. He had to prop himself against the cold timbers of the inner hull before his eyes cleared. The Virginian felt a relentless sense of guilt burning in him about leaving Eileen behind, but he'd spent the entire night trying to comfort her in their narrow berth and he'd failed for all his efforts. Today was their daughter Daphna's nineteenth birthday and Eileen was inconsolable.

Trevor Maycomb wanted a taste of the Caribbean sea breeze-to fill him with renewed vigor after five days and nights of lying in the small and poorly ventilated cabin, with the loud and drunken carousing of the sailors on board keeping him from any rest at all. As if the lice and rats and stench of bilge water weren't already bad enough on this damnable voyage. By now he was desperate enough for relief that he'd even put up with facing the scamps and pirates who navigated this creaking, leaking vessel.

"This pounding sea is cleaving my skull in two," he muttered before he went up. He wanted his pipe but there was no point in retrieving it. One of the men was a pickpocket who'd cut the strings on Maycomb's tobacco pouch minutes after he'd boarded. The irony was not lost on him that a tobacco farmer couldn't even have a decent smoke on this dreadful voyage.

"Rotters."

He'd come to America from England to raise his crops almost seven years ago. He'd brought Eileen with him though he feared the distance between them and Daphna might prove to be too great a burden. The girl had remained behind in a private school considered to offer the best in education, surrounded by relatives and given a greater sense of freedom than most girls her age. Though the Maycombs stayed in contact with their daughter via correspondence and made an annual trek back to Britain, the separation took its toll on all of them.