The Solitude of Thomas Cave (2 page)

I think that we all felt the better for that hunt, our fretful spirits exercised, released after the pent days of fog — all
of us but Cave that is, who for some reason I did not then know, whether someone had spoken to him amiss or whether some thing
else untoward had occurred, bore a scowl set deep on his face all the rest of that evening, a blackness, I know now, that
was brewing in him, that was to come out later beside the fire.

It must have been near midnight though the sun still threw its low light across the mountains and the sea. We had built this
great fire on the strand and sat close about it because of the coldness of the air. We had eaten of the fresh meat, a fatty
meat but tasty, the liver in particular having a fine flavour, and in celebration of the turn in weather and the hope of a
corresponding turn in the fortune of the season, we had broken open a new cask of brandy and it loosened the men's tongues
so that if they had been in a tavern and enclosed with walls and ceilings you would not have heard yourself think for the
noise.

William Sherwyn in particular ran with stories. He was an oddity, Sherwyn, odd to find him at sea. He might as easily have
plied his trade anywhere, in a workshop with a street outside and all kinds of folk and dogs and boys coming in and out stepping
through the sawdust on the floor. But he had an eye for strange things and marvels; I guess that was what set him on the move.
He packed up his chest of tools and left whatever town it was and took ship and came to see the world, and he had this knack
of gathering curiosities to him wherever he went, even when we had visited the very same place as himself and found only the
common and the ordinary. In Bergen I recall he had seen the work of a master clockmaker from Italy, a clock fitted into the
form of a magnificent castle with eighteen bells which chimed to bring in the hour. And when the first stroke came, two doors
would open, and two angel sentries spring up and blow on their heavenly clarions, and through the opening would enter a form
that seemed to be the actual living Christ, and He would stretch out His hands and invite all onlookers to come to Him, the
form of His humanity so convincing that women in the crowd were seen to cry with joy at the miracle of His coming. There was
debate amongst us on that. Only clockwork, someone said, a mechanical marvel. A work of illusion, said another, the Italians
had a famous talent for illusions. All a gross exaggeration, said Carnock, the women must have been either witless or drunk
to be so moved; if only he had been present he would have seen through whatever device it was in an instant.

He did not tolerate others easily, Mister Carnock. William was a harmless fellow, a shy one at heart I think who talked to
fill a silence or to entertain and never meant to upset a soul. Yet more than once I saw Carnock take issue with him on the
accuracy of his tales. I saw no need for that, nor did any other of us. I believed that the things he told us were substantially
true, that he did indeed have an exceptional eye and ear for the wondrous, yet that is not to say that I did not at times
suspect that his marvels had grown at the least a little more marvellous in the telling.

It was another story of William's that night that set off the wager. It all came out in passing, as such things do. Neither
William nor any one of us might have predicted the consequences of what he was to say, which was the mention only of how he
had met in Amsterdam a Dutchman who claimed to have lived an entire year on Jan Mayen - this was an island much frequented
by the whalers of that nation and some distance to the south of where we were. And this was a story which I believe William
told very straight. Indeed, I think he needed no embellishment for the plain facts of it were strange enough to catch the
mind.

It would appear that the crew of this Dutchman's whaleboat had been left accidentally stranded at the end of a late season,
unable to rejoin the ship as it escaped the fast-closing ice, and they had no choice but to upturn the boat and make a house
out of it and try to endure there through the dark months of winter, contriving a stove somehow and hunting down whatever
scarce game was to be found, but meagrely, until one by one they succumbed to scurvy and the body of each was disposed of
in turn, laid out on the frozen soil and covered over with rocks as was the sailor's common way of burial in those places,
or wedged into some crevice inaccessible to scavenging bears, until there remained only this single man, an exceptionally
wiry and determined fellow who would not stop for the scurvy to take hold but sought endlessly all the long spring for fresh
food, for bear and game and the bitter but lifesaving grasses that were at last uncovered beneath the snow. When he was found
by a returning whaler he was barely alive, barely able to drag out from beneath the boat the body of the last of his companions
and lay it wrapped tight in sailcloth on the beach. And at that season's end they had brought him home and now he would not
go back to sea but lived raggedly by the portside in Amsterdam, making his home again, but not such a cold one, in a capsized
boat, and supported by those to whom he told his tale so that he need never seek out a hunk of bread or a drink again.

Carnock laughed at that point, a lone hard laugh. 'And what did you give him for his fine tale?'

William looked about, surprised at the intervention. 'What I could. It's not so far off a possibility that I could not imagine
such a thing might befall to myself, to any one of us here. Of course I gave him something.'

'God's Truth, William, I'll wager you did, and every guilder of it was tricked out of you. You of all men might have seen
through such a fraud,' said Carnock, with that scornful way he had that could make even the least criticism he spoke come
across like an insult. How he survived so long as Mate, with that aggressive manner and the power he had over us, sometimes
amazed me, that he was not found some day beaten in an alley round the back of some harbour or simply gone overboard in the
night.

'What do you mean by that?' William came back, and Carnock did not see fit to stop there.

'I had thought, William Sherwyn, that a man such as yourself was especially well placed to recognise the invention that goes
into the telling of tales.'

At that William bridled. Like many talkers, he was a nervous man, slight and quick, precise with his hands and his tools,
and he had a ginger temper to him. I would not have given much for his chances against a man the size of Carnock if it had
come to a fight. Yet it did not come to that for Cave intervened, intervened with a quiet authority that directed all attention
on to him and let William shrink back small and soon forgotten.

'I have met this fellow myself, heard him talk. I am convinced of the truth of his story.' Cave's voice came through strong,
all the richer for being not too often wasted.

Carnock turned to find Cave's face across the fire. 'What are you saying, man? You have experience of these regions. You know
sure well as I do that no man of flesh and blood lives a winter this far north.'

'And yet it is my conviction that he spoke the truth. I heard the details of his story and I saw the look in his eyes.'

'Then he's a fine actor and a finer liar than our friend William here. Because any fool knows that what he says is an impossibility.'

'Not at all.' Cave spoke calmly against the Mate's swagger. That calm in his voice gave it power, and I was drawn to it and
forgot all else as it ran on into philosophy in that stark midnight light. I remember the eeriness of the light and the coolness
of his voice: 'A man never knows what is or is not possible until he has tried it.'

'Some things a man is wise enough not to try.'

'Men who think like that gain no wisdom. They have beliefs, prejudices, superstitions; they may think they have certainty
but they have no wisdom. Wisdom lies in finding out for yourself.'

Carnock was losing his depth. 'Say what you like, any man left a winter up here would be mad by Christmas and dead by New
Year. Mad from the cold and the dark and the lights in the sky, dead from scurvy and starvation.'

'Not if he is strong and free from fear. If he cleanses himself of superstition. If he is a practical man, if he has reason
and self-discipline, and if he has God's help and a little luck.' There was something elevated about the way Cave spoke, as
if he knew something we did not, like the priest in the pulpit with the ignorant populace beneath him. Carnock did not like
to be spoken to in such a way.

'In God's Name then, do it yourself.'

'I might.'

'You
might?
The scorn in his word cracked the air. 'Hear that, lads? Our Mister Cave says he
might
spend a winter here.'

Every one of us fell still then. Slowly chat and movement had been dying down as all the rest of them came to take notice
of the argument. Now in the pause not a man moved and you could hear the burning of the fire before us. The flames were bright,
the smoke carried the fishy taint of blubber. Even on a summer's night we each of us knew inside the fear we had of those
lands. Even on the brightest morning when the sun's rays came hot through the thin air and burned our faces and we worked
in our undershirts, we had the sense that this was not a place that God had made for man, that no man surely was meant in
His plan to set foot on its land or sail its seas, that we were overbold to come there and hunt in the way that we did. In
this place the very days did not have the form God had given them in the habitable regions, nor the seasons either, it being
possible to experience the most extreme cold and blizzard even at the height of August; in its heavens we saw weird apparitions
and lights that were not meant for our eyes, and in its sea we saw extraordinary beasts akin to the creatures of myth. Recognising
that, we were touched with dread even when the sun shone, and each day we spent there in the North came to seem a transgression.
To suggest remaining an entire year seemed the utmost temptation of fate.

Only Thomas Cave showed no awe of the place. His voice ran on into our silence, easy as if he spoke not there but on some
mild English shore.

'Yes, I say that, with God's help, I could spend a winter here.' And he looked about him, at the pale night, the mountains,
the slatey sea of the bay with the
Heartsease
at anchor.

'You'll die a fool'

'Better than living a fool,' said Cave, and I believe that the sting in his words was meant as much for himself as for Carnock
but Carnock of course did not see it that way.

'Do it then, Devil take you. What do you say, lads? We'll leave him ship's stores, musket, powder, all he thinks he might
need. And when we come back next year we'll see if he's still warm.'

And so the wager was made. He drew us in, Carnock, for we all were sided with him and against Cave on the one matter of which
we were sure: that no mortal man might live out the winter there. From one to the other of us he looked, and said, you'd bet
it wasn't possible, wouldn't you? And of course we meant that it was an impossibility but we did not intend that anyone should
take up the bet. It was an argument, theoretical, fed by the drink and the lightness of the night, no more. And yet there,
with the sun bleeding low over the horizon and the fire warm on our faces, it took on practical reality. Ten of us, ten pounds
each man, a hundred pounds in all.

The day before we sailed was one of those bright ones when the atmosphere alone is sharp enough to etch itself on the senses
and the memory. No need for that, since I was already tight with anticipation of our parting. In those few weeks I had come
to admire Cave more than any man, more even than Marmaduke, not for any heroics but for the bare dignity in him and the calm
with which he looked ahead. I think that I was moved the more because of our common past which gave me sight of the humanness
of him; but for that it is possible that I might have taken his impassivity for hardness and judged him without warmth of
either flesh or heart.

We took a short walk that last day, took what brief time as other things allowed. Cave had sought me out. I and some others
had helped him stow the provisions the Captain had allotted him for the winter in the cabin that was to be his home, and a
generous enough supply it was: hogsheads of oatmeal and barley, casks of beer and oil, breads, bacon and cheeses, salt, brandy,
spices, all that the ship could spare to be left behind, such a variety of things and such a quantity that the narrow cabin
came to resemble nothing so much as a grocery shop. And when all was done, and the three muskets that he was to be left with
and sufficient powder also safely and dryly put away, he singled me out and had me come with him.

We walked up the back of the beach to a place in the valley where there was a small dark tarn round and brown as a cow's eye.
Earlier I had seen snipe there, surprised them from the surrounding bog and known them in the instant by their sudden zigzag
flight, but the birds had gone.

'Flown south,' Cave said.

'Jonas Watson says they are the same birds we see at home, that they come here as we do only for the summer.'

'Could be.'

'Reckon it gets too cold for them soon. They'd die of cold.'

And as I spoke the thought stabbed me like a snipe's curved beak, and I wished that I had not said the words.

The brook that ran down from the tarn burbled faintly, its water and its little cascades soon to be silenced beneath a glassy
casing of ice. So silent it was there, heavy with the intense quiet of inland, the calls of gulls and of men loading ship
carrying now and then wavering and thin from the sea's edge.

Cave had planned what he would say.

'I'll have you take my share, boy. I have written it over for you, given my paper to the Captain. My portion of the sale of
the oil and the whalebone. Also of the unicorn's horn. The value of that is hard to tell but, believe me, it is great. It
is inestimably rare, said to be a most powerful antidote to poisons though of course I have no experience, no proof of that.
I have heard that such a horn may trade for twenty times its weight in gold. See that the Captain deals fair and gives you
all that is due to me.'