We, the Drowned

  Bewildered, the Kanaks knelt around their captain, as if awaiting his orders. Could they not see that Jack Lewis lay dying right in front of them?

  For a moment I wondered if they considered him immortal because his actions were guided by the same unpredictable cruelty shown by their own gods. He'd sliced an ear off one of them, and I'd never heard him address them in anything other than a tone of command. He'd used them as pawns in a game that brought them no profit yet might have cost them their lives, and he'd sacrificed them without explanation. So why not consider him a god? After all, this was how gods behaved, wasn't it? With an inscrutability that was indistinguishable from arbitrariness? Believers might offer prayers and even sacrifices, but none ever found a method of worship that ensured their prayers were answered.

  When I saw Jack Lewis stretched out on the deck, with the bloodstain blossoming across his shirtfront, I realized that he'd become my god too. He'd promised to deliver me to my papa tru. Instead, he'd taken me to an uncharted island where I witnessed mysterious transactions and a terrible massacre, on a ship with a cargo of human beings he insisted were free men.

  I'd sailed with him to solve one puzzle, only to discover another.

  I was just like one of his Kanaks. But I was also a white man, and I felt he owed me an answer to the riddle. He was about to die, and I wanted that explanation before it was too late.

  I ordered one of the Kanaks to take the helm, and went over to Jack Lewis. I'd never seen a human being die before, unlike my papa tru, who had been to war and seen men all around him blasted to pieces as the Christian the Eighth headed for disaster. I'd seen men fall overboard and disappear into the sea, but that was different. Swallowed up by the waves, they were already lost from view by the time they began that lonely journey into the depths. They didn't die in front of your eyes. They just left your field of vision.

  Jack Lewis was about to die, I was certain of it. Just as I was certain that now, as he lay on the deck like the statue of a deity toppled from its plinth, his stony façade would crack and reveal the naked human inside. Bleeding from his wound, he'd soon be exposed as human just as James Cook was in Kealakekua Bay.

  But as he stared at me, I realized that I'd been wrong to think that. Jack Lewis might be a toppled god, but he was still a god. There was no fear in his eyes, and I didn't know why I ever thought I'd see it. Was there grief, then, at all he'd have to bid farewell to? Or regret, for all he'd no longer achieve? Or was there just pure rage?

  I'd seen him lose his self-control when he was forced to use his precious pearls as bullets. Was that how he viewed his own death? As the waste of a pearl?

  I was young and I'd never given death a second thought. Can the feelings that another's death prompts in you provide a forewarning of what you'll experience when you draw your own last breath? I was about to find out.

  "Fetch the whiskey." He had to swallow between each word, but Jack Lewis's voice still retained its old authority. He patted the deck with a feeble hand, as though inviting me for a final drink in his cabin. "And Jim."

  I stared at him.

  "Are you deaf?"

  Perplexed, I shook my head and went to his cabin to carry out his order. Unwrapping the ghastly head from its cloth, I placed it next to Lewis. Then I opened the whiskey and poured some into my palm. I'd never treated a gunshot wound before, but I vaguely recalled that you cleaned them with alcohol.

  "What do you think you're doing?" Jack Lewis snarled.

  "I'm going to wash your wound."

  "My wound!" he exclaimed. "My wound isn't thirsty. I am. Fetch two glasses."

  When I returned with the glasses, Jack Lewis was scrutinizing Jim, as though he'd just asked him a question and was now awaiting the reply.

  The Kanaks stood rooted to the spot in the middle of the deck. The helmsman had let go of the wheel: I shouted at him and he returned to his post. But he kept turning around. It wasn't the dying captain his eyes kept roaming toward, but the shrunken head in his hands.

  "Is this wise?" I said to Jack Lewis.

  "That's none of your business." His voice was thick with contempt. "Of course, it's bloody stupid to show a shrunken head to a bunch of cannibals whose blood's just been roused. But I'll be gone in a moment. And then it's your problem, not mine."

  A gurgling noise came from his chest, and he bared his teeth in a grimace that might have been a smile.

  "Fill up the glasses. Let's toast our onward journey. Mine's to the unknown. And yours will be as the newly fledged captain of a cannibal ship."

  I poured and passed him the glass, but he didn't have the strength to hold it: I had to support his head and raise the glass to his lips. He drained its contents with a groan, but it was impossible to tell whether it was from pleasure or pain.

  "The free men," I said. "I want you to tell me about the free men."

  "The free men were just like Jim here."

  "So they were a commodity?"

  "Yes," Jack Lewis said, and his eyes took on a remote expression, as though the conversation didn't interest him and his journey into the unknown had already started. I was going to have to hurry.

  "But what was the deal about?"

  "Grains of sand," he whispered. "Pebbles. Toys for children."

  His head slumped to one side and his eyes closed, as if he was falling asleep. For a moment I feared that he had died. Then he opened his eyes and looked at me.

  "We despise the natives because they allow themselves to be mesmerized by glass baubles. I don't know what they must think of us. We'll kill over a grain of sand covered in oyster scum."

  "What did you give them in return for the pearls?"

  "I paid with the free men."

  "So they weren't free. They were your prisoners."

  "No," Jack Lewis said and shook his head; again his shattered chest gurgled. "You still haven't got it. They weren't my prisoners. They were my students."

  "You're right. I still haven't got it. I think you've been telling me a pack of lies."

  "Listen to me." Jack Lewis was still lying with one cheek against the deck. When he glanced up at me again, it was with a teasing look that was hard to associate with a dying man. "The savages have no concept of freedom. They're free, but they don't know it. So before they can learn to value their freedom, they must first lose it."

  "And so you trapped them in the hold?"

  Jack Lewis grimaced, but whether it was in response to my slow wits or because he was trying to smile again, I couldn't decide.

  "No, I didn't trap them in the hold. I merely left them to their own fear. I made sure they never saw the light of day, and in the dark they conjured up all sorts of ideas about the terrible fate that was waiting for them. When I opened the hatch and allowed the daylight in, their education was complete. They understood instantly what freedom was, and they grabbed it."

  "What's that got to do with the pearls?"

  "The answer lies with the Morning Star," Jack Lewis said. "She was a blackbirder, a slave ship. She foundered and the slaves in the hold rebelled, killed the crew, and took over the island, which was uninhabited. There were women and children among them, so as far as they were concerned they weren't stranded on a desert island. They'd been given a whole new world, where they could start over. Their paradise was only missing one thing, and that's where I entered the scene."

  His face lit up in triumph, and it suddenly dawned on me why he was confiding all this to me. He was so proud of his cruelty that he couldn't bear the thought of dying with it unwitnessed. He'd turned his entire life into a mystery, but now he needed someone to know the full extent of a crime that he personally regarded as final proof—not of his cunning so much as his own unique insight into the human mind.

  He turned ugly in his triumph, and I let my eyes slide toward James Cook, with his flared nostrils and stitched-up eyelids. In that moment, I preferred his horribly distorted face to Jack Lewis's. Yet I had to continue with my questioning. Even if I feared that by listening
I might end up complicit in his crimes, I couldn't stop myself. I had to know the secret of the free men.

  "So what were the savages missing in their paradise?" I asked.

  "A change of diet," Jack Lewis replied, and his face contorted in a terrible grimace, which I took to be the dying man's attempt at laughter. The sound quickly curdled into a hollow, gurgling cough. He seemed to be choking, and blood leaked from his cracked, narrow lips. Slowly I realized what he'd said. My disgust must have been obvious.

  "They're cannibals, you see," he explained, as though to a child.

  "So you sell human flesh," I said. Again I was looking at Jim.

  "The world isn't a straightforward place," Jack Lewis said. "I don't sell human flesh. I sell the opportunity for victory. That's what's lacking in paradise, you understand. In every paradise. That's the flaw in its construction. The serpent isn't the enemy; he's just the tempter. I'm thinking of a real enemy, whom you have to fight or else be vanquished. I'm thinking of the chance to test yourself in battle, to win or die. That was the opportunity I gave those damned cannibals: not a shipload of human flesh, but a chance to prove their worth. For God's sake. They're savages. And they're men. They can't live unless they fight. I visited them once a year. I offered free men the opportunity to escape. And who won the battle once they'd swum ashore was none of my business."

  He fell silent, and again for a moment I thought that he'd died. His eyes were closed.

  "And then they discovered a new and better enemy," I said out loud, but I was talking to myself as much as to him.

  Jack Lewis opened up his eyes and gave me a reproachful look, as though I'd just reminded him of something unpleasant.

  "Some idiot sold them guns and ruined my business." He snarled and attempted to spit on the deck, but what came out was blood. "I had a good operation running there. It could have carried on for years. They got someone they could fight, and kill, and eat. And I got the pearls. And then that bastard turns up."

  "Who?" I asked.

  "None of your business." He spat more blood. "Get me another glass."

  I poured him another whiskey and held it to his lips. He coughed, and the whiskey trickled down his lower lip and mingled with the blood, which was now flowing in a constant stream. He sighed.

  "You'll inherit all this. A bag of pearls and a ship. A good start for a young sailor. More than you deserve."

  I didn't know what to say. I didn't want to take charge of this ship, which, regardless of what her owner said, was nothing but a blackbirder. Nor would I touch the pearls. Their pink sheen put me in mind not of grains of sand, but of dried blood.

  I said nothing. Though I had no respect for Jack Lewis, I respected the hole in his chest. He was dying, and you owe the dying your attention.

  "Paradise," he mumbled. "A paradise complete with everything, including enemies, ready to kill you." He glanced at the Kanaks and bared his yellow teeth. Blood was seeping out between them. "The moment your back's turned, they'll stick a knife in it. They can see me lying here. And they've met Jim. If they didn't know it before, they know it now: white men can die too."

  Jack Lewis closed his eyes again and sighed. He didn't move, and after a while I realized that he was never going to open them again. Despite those last words of warning, which echoed in my ears, there was no way that I could keep his death a secret from the Kanaks.

  I couldn't keep him on board, so I went down to his cabin to look for something to wrap his body in before surrendering it to the sea. A flag was what I had in mind, but I couldn't find one, so I took an unused strip of canvas. His shirtfront was soaked with blood, but I had no way of sending him overboard in clean clothes, and no urge to touch his body, with its sticky blood. So there he lay, wrapped in canvas bound by a piece of rope. A life had ended—though hardly a beautiful one, in my opinion. I didn't know much about Jack Lewis, but I knew enough not to mourn his death.

  I summoned the Kanaks, and together we eased Jack Lewis over the rail. He bobbed up and down in our wake for a while. And then he sank. No sharks circled his body before it went under. He'd regarded his fellow human beings as no more than meat on a butcher's slab, and I had no idea if he'd been a Christian, but I did him the honor of folding my hands and reciting the Lord's Prayer.

  I said the words in Danish. The Kanaks watched in silence. When they saw me fold my hands, they folded theirs too. I interpreted this as a gesture of respect, toward me as much as the deceased. I was their captain now. What they thought beyond that, I had no clue. Their dark, blue-tattooed faces gave nothing away. Was this the start of another Kealakekua Bay? Would the fate that Jack Lewis escaped befall me instead? Would they tear me to pieces, eat my heart, and smoke my head over an open fire? I wanted to hide in my cabin while I went through my options, but I felt that if I entered its protective darkness, I'd never emerge again, for fear they'd be waiting outside the door with their knives.

  So instead I took the wheel.

  I REALIZED THAT the first thing I had to do was overcome my fear of the Kanaks, which Jack Lewis had planted so cleverly. As long as I was in thrall to it, Lewis was still on board and in control. I had to issue my own orders and assume they'd be executed. I had to enter my cabin without dreading an ambush and to go to sleep safe in the knowledge that I'd wake up again. In short, I had to do what men have done on ships for thousands of years: I had to be the captain.

  But I was young and I'd never commanded a ship before. I was alone with four Kanaks, one of them out of action, and we were in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I knew very little about the destination we'd been headed for, and I was aware that even if I skippered the Flying Scud to a safe haven, that wouldn't solve my problems. Who would believe my story?

  I was still weighing my prospects when I happened to look at the deck. There lay the shrunken head of James Cook, just where it had been when Jack Lewis bade it farewell. I steadied my voice and ordered one of the Kanaks to take the wheel. Then I picked up the shrunken head, carried it down to the cabin, and settled it on Jack Lewis's berth.

  I can't explain why I didn't throw it overboard immediately, because I had no desire to keep it or ever cast my eyes on it again. But when I cupped it in my hands and gazed out over the shimmering sea, something held me back. I'd unwrapped the head for Jack Lewis when he'd asked to see it for the final time, but I'd been so preoccupied by his imminent death that I forgot I was handling the horrifying remains of a human being.

  Now I became more conscious of the feel of James Cook's leathery skin and straw-dry hair, and the physical contact seemed to link me to the man he'd been before he'd been shrunk into a symbol of barbarism. I could ease my captain's dead body over the rail. But I couldn't do the same to James Cook.

  It wasn't just because Jack Lewis had told me Jim's true identity. Did I believe him? Yes and no. But ultimately it made no difference: the whole thing seemed completely unreal anyway. If this was indeed the head of James Cook, it should probably be returned to England—though I had no idea what the people of England would do with it. Keep its existence a secret because the whole business was somehow embarrassing? Hold a ceremony to lay it to rest? Even provide it with its own coffin, perhaps? But how many times can you bury a man? What if a foot was to turn up someday? Would the funeral have to be staged a second time?

  Naming this shrunken head Jim in the first place had seemed a malicious joke. But now the joke involved James Cook too. I thought it best to let him rest in peace, but his head was still here, the last vestige of a man who'd suffered a horrific death. I couldn't just toss it overboard like some broken object or a piece of meat that had started to smell.

  It was at that point that I understood the difference between me and Jack Lewis. To Lewis, Jim was a shrunken head. To me, he was a human being.

  I've often wondered whether Jim appeared more human to me than the Kanaks, whose individual features were hidden in the unfathomable darkness of the blue tattoos etched across their faces. I looked for something human in
their eyes, but I found nothing but foreignness, as if their eyes were also tattoos. I never heard Jack Lewis talk to them, and I was never to do so either. I gave my orders and they carried them out. When I bandaged the wounded Kanak, I noticed he was the one with the missing ear. He looked away when I tried to clean his wound, and continued to look away while I bandaged it. A line lay between us and it was never crossed. But as the days passed, my fear of them faded. The ship told us who we were: I was the captain, they were the crew, and the trade wind, which always came from the same direction and blew with the same strength, assured us every day that all was as it should be.

  It was under these circumstances that I started behaving in a way that I realized was strange. I started talking to Jim. I'd go down to the cabin, light the whale-oil lamp, and unwrap him from his cloth. Then I'd place him on the table in front of me, where the flickering light from the lamp lent his face an attentive expression. I could feel him concentrating, behind his stitched-up eyelids. But he never once talked back to me and I was glad of that. It would have been ultimate proof that I had lost my mind.

  I'd place the bag of pearls in front of him and take them out, one by one, to show him. Then I'd ask him if he thought I ought to keep them.

  My first impulse had been to throw them into the sea after Jack Lewis's body. Indeed, at times I regretted that I hadn't done so right in front of him, while he still breathed. That missed moment might have represented some sort of victory over him and the amorality he clearly believed he'd infected me with. But I'd hesitated too long. One moment had turned into several, and now I kept the pearls hidden next to Jim. Before long I would probably tuck the bag under my shirt and start guarding it with my life, giving the Kanaks a good reason for taking both from me. Why wouldn't they know the value of pearls, or want some of what the money could buy—freedom especially?