She finally managed to convince them that she was a wealthy widow from the country who was a little eccentric. She had heard about this new technology and she did so want to own one, she of course didn't mean to operate it, she would certainly hire some of the local men to do that. If they would just give her a book on how to fly it so that the men she hired would be able to figure out how to run it. The men were very condescending but her money was good so they sold her the dirigible with the promise of availability within a month since it's construction was almost finished. She knew enough about shady business that she made them take her out to the ship field and inspect both the dirigible and the work that was being done on it. That shocked them a little, it being believed that women knew nothing of business, but then the decided it was just her crazy whim and wrote it off.
The ship was nowhere near New York and it took her a couple of days to reach it, first by train, and then with the help of a very well paid off man with both a horse buggy and a row boat. He had been told in very graphic detail what would happen to him if he dared tell the authorities about where they were. He didn't even know who they were really, he thought they were smugglers who were avoiding customs, and they allowed him to believe it. Smuggling didn't count as a hanging offense.
Once on the ship the business of clearing things up began. First they took everything off of the ship that they wanted to keep, mostly only personal items and the treasure they had amassed. They didn't want to keep anything that would remind people of what they were and what they had been, not if they were going to be stuck on land for a month. With bags and packs on their back, suitcases, trunks to be sent later by express men, they set the ship on fire and pounded holes in the bottom to make sure that it would sink once it had burned.
Once they had burned the ship the men who had decided to go back to honest lives left them. They were paid off with their fair shares and in exchange gave many promises never to talk about what they had done or mention any names. For all accounts and purposes Neriena's ship had never existed, had never made it to the United States and the crew had simply appeared on the soil of America again.
Neriena enjoyed the next month greatly, and from what she saw so did all of her men. They traveled as a group for the most part, though when Neriena went with them she was disguised as a man. It would have caused far too much comment for a woman in finery to be traveling with a group of obvious sailors. There was no way to hide her men for what they were, they had been on the ocean for years longer then she had been alive in some cases, they were sailors to the bone and the breathed out the ocean when the spoke. She drank with her men as a sailor, stopped at a fancy hotel as a fine lady, and lived like a normal person almost for the first time since she had been fourteen.
Then the dirigible was done and the company contacted her at her address at the hotel. She went to the air field, signed the papers, handed over the money having been satisfied with the quality of the ship. Her men showed a few hours after she took possession and they set to learning the running of their new home. It was a lot to learn since most of the men considered the only place to sail to be water. There was more mental adjustment that had to be done then anything else, though there was also a lot of information to digest.
Since no one knew them to be anything but legitimate they were able to wait another month before actually taking off in order to learn everything they needed to know about the dirigible's working. It was useful to be right there on the air field because they could ask the men who created it about any details they were unsure about. Neriena was always very careful not to be the one who approached the men, she pretended to play the part of the rather stupid woman who was simply curious. It was the men of the crew who were sent to ask about this detail or that one, Neriena was starting to remember how society worked, she might not like it but it could be worked around.
The inside of the airship was a palace compared to the ship , there were enough individual berths that the crew each got their own space, an incredible thing to all of them. Neriena still took the great cabin but it wasn't a large difference and certainly wasn't grander since it had originally been meant as the crew's bunking area. Since they weren't carrying passengers however the crew was placed in the passenger area rather then having to share a room.
To be continued...
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