Enmeshed

She lay at the bottom of the boat, wrapped in a piece of malodorous sacking, neither moving nor making a sound.
“Do she live?” one of the swarthy oarsmen asked of nobody in particular.
The oldest crewman spat into the black water of the harbour. “Course she lives, but she knows what us will do to her if’n she causes a ruckus.”
The youngest lad looked almost pleadingly at their unexpected cargo.
“We isn’t going to hurt her is we?”
“No. We ain’t. But them as we sells her to may not be so consid...