“Edmund! I hear you rescued young Willis!”
“I, Charles? Never believe such a story! I am a passenger and would not for the world interfere with the running of the ship. I merely told Lieutenant Benét that I thought the young fellow looked deucedly comatose. Benét did the rest—as usual.”
Charles looked round him. Then he drew me to the rail away from Smiles.
“You chose the one officer who could venture a difference of opinion with the captain and not be rebuked for it.”
“That was diplomacy.”
“You do not like Benét, do you? I too have differences with him. The foremast—”
“I admire Benét. But he is too perfect.”
“His intentions are good.”
“He is nimble in the rigging as a midshipman! But, Charles—do you realize that after all these months at sea I have never climbed a mast? Today, although the motion is unsteady it is slight compared with what it has been!”
“Is it? I am so habituated to the motion of a ship—”
“Oh, I am sure you could walk up the side of a house and not lose your balance. But the wind will get up, will it not? Now is perhaps my only chance of finding out what it is like to be a common sailor.”
“I will take you as far as the fighting top.”
“This will be a most valuable experience. Suppose me—as may befall—to be a Member of Parliament. ‘Mr Speaker. To those of us who have actually climbed into the fighting top of a man of war at sea—’”
“The Honourable Member for Timbuctoo should pipe down, lay hold of the ropes and swing himself round. Gently! You’re not a midshipman playing tag through the rigging!”
“Oh my God, this is no place for seaboots!”
“Feel the rung with your boot before you put your weight on it. Don’t look down. If you were to slip I should catch you.”
“‘Safe in the arms of the Lord.’”
“Your casual blasphemy—”
“I beg your pardon, Bishop. The exclamation was forced from me. It was my seaboot swore, not I, as Euripides might have said but did not. It missed a rung.”
“Now then. No nonsense about climbing out round. Up through the lubber’s hole.”
“If I must indeed choose the easier path—you insist?”
“Up with you!”
“Oh, God. It is commodious. Half a dozen good fellows might live up here provided they only used the vast hole I climbed through for purposes of necessity. ‘For sale a villa. Luxuriously fitted, wooden construction, sea view—and a nautical gentleman with his eye sweeping the horizon!’”
“Fawcett. Now that Mr Willis has—vacated the masthead you may resume your lookout at that position.”
The seaman knuckled his forehead, shifted his quid from one side of his mouth to the other and clambered out of sight.
“Well. How do you find it?”
“Now I dare to look down, I see that our ship, though she is a seventy-four, has shrunk. Really, Charles! Monstrous timbers such as this mast should not be stuck in such a rowboat! It is impossible that we should not be overset! I will not look—my eyes are shut.”
“Inspect the horizon and you will feel more the thing.”
“My hair is so erected it is pushing off my beaver.”
“It is no more than sixty feet down to the deck.”
“‘No more!’ But our yellow-haired friend slid all that way down on a rope.”
“Benét is an active young man, full of spirit and ideas. But how would you go on if you was mastheaded?”
“Like poor Willis? Die, I think. Smiles said it is a time for dying.”
I sat up cautiously and held on with both hands to the comforting ropes which stayed the fighting top. The sensation was agreeable.
“That is better, Charles.”
“You were worried by what Smiles said?”
“Did he mean the Pikes’ little girls?”
“They are somewhat better in fact.”
“Davies, that poor, senile midshipman? Mrs East? She must be better, for I have seen her with Mrs Pike. Does he mean Miss Brocklebank, I wonder?”
“Mr Brocklebank says she is very poorly. A decline.”
A thought occurred to me which set me laughing.
“Does he mean Mr Prettiman, our testy political theorist? Miss Granham told me that her fiancé had suffered a severe fall.”
“You find him comic?”
“Well. He cannot be entirely despicable or an estimable lady such as Miss Granham would not have consented to make him the happiest of men. But comic! He is wicked! Why—he is ill-disposed to the government of his own country, to the Crown, to our system of representation—in fact to everything which makes us the foremost country in the world.”
“He is in a bad way none the less.”
“No great loss if he leaves us. I am only sorry for Miss Granham, for though she has bitten my head off on several occasions, I repeat, she is an estimable lady and seems genuinely attached to the man. Women are very strange.”
Someone else was climbing the rigging. It was Mr Tommy Taylor, who appeared with a monkeylike dexterity, swinging himself over the outer edge of the fighting top instead of coming the easier and safer way up through the hole in the middle.
“Mr Benét’s compliments, sir, and Mr Willis seems comfortable. He is asleep and snoring.”
“Very good, Mr Taylor. You are the watch?”
“Yes, sir. Mr Smiles, sir. His doggy, sir.”
“You may return to the quarterdeck.”
“Excuse me, sir. Watch changing now, sir.”
Indeed the ship’s bell was ringing out the time.
“Very well, you are off watch. Come and be a schoolmaster. Mr Talbot here is by way of thinking he would like to learn everything there is to know about a ship.”
“No no, Charles! Pax!”
“For example, Mr Taylor, Mr Talbot would be interested to know what kind of a mast this is.”
“It’s a mainmast, sir.”
“Are you trying to be witty, Mr Taylor? What is its construction?”
“It’s a ‘made’ mast, sir. That means a mast which is all separate bits. Not ‘bitts’ of course. Bits.”
Mr Taylor laughed so loudly I concluded he intended a witticism. Indeed, the boy was always in such high spirits I believe he found our desperate situation in a crippled and possibly sinking ship a joyous experience.
“Name those bits for Mr Talbot, Mr Taylor.”
“Well, sir, the round bits on either side are the bolsters. Then there’s the trestle trees which hold us up. Under them there’s the round cheeks to keep the trestle from sliding down the mast. Mr Gibbs, the carpenter, he said—”
The boy broke into a loud laugh at the memory.
“He said, ‘Every made mast has two lovely cheeks, young fellow, which is two less than what you’ve got, innit?’”
“After that sally, young man, you may take yourself off. You have a dirty mind.”
“Aye aye, sir. Thank you, sir.”
The boy departed with an offhand agility very suitable to his age and sex. The sight of him diminishing down the same rope which Mr Benét had used made me giddy. I looked up, fixing my eyes for security on the foremast which stood up between us and the bows.
“Charles! It is moving! There—see! No, it is still again. The top, I mean—there it goes, it is making a small circle, an uneven circle—”
“You knew that surely? We had thought it was sprung—a kind of greenstick fracture, but in fact the foot of the mast has broken the shoe and we have had to take measures. Come, Edmund! There is nothing to be done.”
“It should not move like that!”
“Of course not. It is why we have spread no sail on the foremast or the mizzenmast since they are supposed to balance each other. Do you see the wedges where the foremast passes through the deck? No, you cannot—but they keep being forced out by the movement. We have made the mast as secure and motionless as we can.”
&
nbsp; “It makes me sick.”
“Do not look then. I should have remembered how obvious the lurching is from up here. Oh no! Look! not at the mast but past it at the horizon! The wind, the south wind, the one we did not want!”
“What will it do?”
“Cold weather. We shall be able to haul round to the east, which of course is where we want to go, but we also want to get far south where the constant strong winds are. We must go down. Come. I will go first.”
We climbed down to the deck and I stood in the lee of the starboard mainstays to watch as our old hulk lumbered round on the starboard tack when the south wind reached us. It had none of the softness which we associate with “south” in happier climes. Charles stayed on deck to watch Mr Cumbershum and Captain Anderson achieve the change of course. He was about to walk off forrard when I buttonholed him again.
“Can you spend another moment or two with me? I know how busy you are and do not want to interfere in your scanty time of leisure—”
“A first lieutenant is more at leisure in the middle of a voyage than at either end! But I must be seen about the ship and detect such awful crimes as a hammock left slung or a rope uncheesed—that is a properly cheesed rope, for your information. Well. Let us walk up and down in the waist as we used to.”
“With all my heart.”
Charles and I proceeded then to pace briskly back and forth in the waist. We stepped over the taut cables of his frapping, strode past the mainmast with its white line, its complication of wedges, ropes, blocks and bitts, on towards the break of the fo’castle before which the stripped foremast described its almost invisible circle in the sky. The first time we reached it I paused and looked. The complication was as great here as at the mainmast. The foremast was no less than three feet in diameter and where it passed through the deck it was surrounded by a collar made of great wedges. As I watched I saw them move, slightly and unevenly. A seaman stood by the mast and leaned on a huge maul. He saw the first lieutenant watching and shouldered the thing, waited for a few moments, then let it fall on a wedge which was standing a little prouder than its fellows.
Charles nodded. I felt his hand on my arm as he drew me away and we resumed our walk.
“Is he doing any good?”
“Possibly not. But the appearance of doing good is better than nothing. At least it comforts the passengers.”
“That is à propos. Charles, I am deeply sensible of the courtesy you officers have extended to me in allowing me the use of one of your hutches—cabins, I would say! But all good things have an end and I must return to the passenger quarters, in short, to my cabin off the passenger lobby.”
“Did you not know? Miss Brocklebank has appropriated it! I have said nothing, since the poor lady is so sick. Surely you have not the heart to displace her?”
“She has squatters’ rights. I mean my other cabin.”
“Where Colley willed himself to death and where Wheeler committed suicide? You must not sleep there! Is our company in the wardroom—my company—become tedious to you?”
“You know it is not!”
“Well then, my dear fellow! A roughcut piece of nautical timber like I—such as me—might reasonably sleep there! But you—the place is dirtied.”
“I do not relish the idea, it is true.”
“Why then?”
“It is a case where I think I may say I have considered more deeply than you—indeed more deeply than you need, for it is wholly my affair.”
“I beg your pardon!”
“Oh no—I mean I alone am responsible. I do not in the least mind telling you everything. The fact is, you see, I shall be stuck for some time in the administration of the colony. What sort of reputation should I bring with me if it were known that I had been scared out of a cabin by fear of a haunting? You see? It is a form of service which I propose to myself just as you have promised yours to the King.”
“That is a proper attitude and does you credit.”
“I think so too.”
Charles laughed.
“All the same, you must not return there for a day or two. I am having the interior of the cabin cleaned and repainted and so on.”
“So on?”
“Come, Edmund—when a man has blown his head off in such a confined space—”
“Do not remind me!”
“You have a day or two to think it over. Well. This wind in the beam means the motion is easier, do you not feel? It also means the old tub takes in less water, which means less pumping.”
“One thing I cannot understand. Why with this wind do we not simply go about and sail north to Africa and the Cape? We could replenish our food and drink and other stores—get our foremast fixed, land our sick—most of all, we could stretch our legs on lovely, dry land! How I long for it!”
“This wind will not hold. It is too light and unseasonable. To sail before it would be to do what is called ‘chasing the wind’. A ship doing that may well go back and forth, round and round, and never get anywhere, like the Flying Dutchman. Take comfort in the three and a half knots we are making towards our goal. It is better than nothing—what is the matter?”
“Excuse me. It’s this damned itching. As a matter of fact I have a rash between my legs.”
“A rash. We all have them because of the salt.”
“My clothes are gradually becoming impossible to wear. Phillips took my shirt away for a wash and though I was fierce with him in the end I had to put it on damp.”
“Ah. That’s rainwater.”
“I thought rainwater was fresh.”
“What do they teach young men nowadays? Of course it isn’t. Well—rain may be fresh where you come from if you live far enough from the sea. Out here it is never less than brackish. Have you not been washing in it like the rest of us?”
“Of course I have, but the damned stuff will not lather. It gets covered in scum.”
“What soap are you using?”
“My own, of course!”
“Has Webber not given you the ship’s issue?”
“Good God, can that be soap? I thought it was a brick. I thought it was pumice or something for shaving in heavy weather like the ancients!”
“Trust you to know what the ancients used for shaving! But it is soap, my boy, saltwater soap!”
“I did not detect any scent.”
The first lieutenant’s laughter was almost as loud and prolonged as Mr Taylor’s would have been. Then—
“I suppose you think soap is naturally scented.”
“Well, is it not?”
But Charles was suddenly abstracted. He had his ear cocked. He wetted his thumb and held it up.
“What did I tell you? That wind has not even held for a dogwatch! Here we go again!”
(2)
I was still a guest of the wardroom when the next gale arose in the middle of the night and it woke me with a sense of the ship in ampler if not more violent motion. I lay for some time calculating the direction of the wind from the movement of the ship under me. She was over to starboard mostly and never came over to the larboard more than about to an even keel. Every now and then she bucked like a horse. Now and then she jibbed like one too—but not as she would have done with a wind over the bow. I reasoned sleepily that the wind was on the larboard quarter and we were moving in a southerly direction with increased speed. In a ship there is nothing which pleases so much as movement in the right direction! Our right direction was east, but southeast in search of the westerlies which are said to circle the earth in the high southern latitudes was a good second best. I lay awake therefore, thinking of our crew, one part of the watch pumping, one on deck with their eye on rigging and canvas, a lieutenant and a midshipman standing as officers of the watch—our moody captain emerging now and then from his quarters to survey the whole—and our blunt bows dividing the billows faster than a man could walk! We were getting on. Life would have been more than tolerable had it not been for the itch—and my hand reached down hardly with my v
olition. At times the itch seemed worse than our dangers.
The ship pitched heavily, a ninth wave perhaps. I sat up in my bunk with a jerk, for the movement had been followed by a cry from above me—from one deck higher towards the open air, up in the passenger lobby or from one of the cabins ranged along either side. I waited for a repetition but it did not come, so I lay down once more. But the touch of cooler air outside my bedclothes now made the damp heat beneath them less tolerable. I was itching again.
I swung my legs out of the bunk and stood reeling in the near-complete darkness. A faint snore came from the cabin next to mine where Mr Cumbershum was sleeping after his turn at the middle watch. I felt round and got on my greatcoat—the one with three capes and now by no means the elegant garment in which I had begun this seemingly endless voyage. A nightshirt and a greatcoat! I pulled on woollen socks, then thrust my feet into seaboots. I got out into the wardroom. The dim horizon slanted across the great stern window at an angle. The dawn itself was not visible and a more diffused light allowed me to do no more than detect the line between sea and sky. We pitched again—a little more violently this time, as if our ship had come across a wave left from a wind in some other direction. It was followed again by the cry from above me—a cry of anguish, there was no doubt about that. Scarce knowing what I did—hardly awake—perhaps connecting the anguish with my own itch—yet one woke unwillingly and half one’s mind was always tending bedward—I clambered up the stairs into the passenger lobby. But I had scarcely grabbed the rail outside our cabins when we pitched and the cry came again, and came from the cabin of our comic philosopher, Mr Prettiman!
Now the next door, Miss Granham’s, his fiancée’s, opened and the lady appeared. She held the rail, opened his door and disappeared inside. I hastened across the lobby—a feat helped by the ship which tipped to starboard again and set me for a moment or two positively tripping downhill! What had begun with a spontaneous attempt to offer help became a run at the end of which I thumped loudly into Mr Prettiman’s cabin door and only just contrived to heave myself off before Miss Granham herself opened the door from inside. She stood there, looking at me. She wore a white nightdress. Her hair was decently concealed by a night-bonnet, or whatever it is called, and a large shawl hung over both shoulders. Her face was not welcoming.