The Unknown Shore (15 page)

‘Now,’ said Tobias, the seamen having gone, ‘I think that I shall bandage him with a cingulum colchicum: hold that end Jack, I beg.’ Tobias wound the bandage round and round his patient. ‘How did you come by this wound?’ he asked, looking at a remarkable scar on his back.

Lewis hesitated, but the impulsion to tell the truth to a medical man is very strong, and when he was the right way up again, he replied, with a blush, ‘that it was a ostrich, sir, if you please.’

Tobias nodded, and went on with his bandaging. There was a short silence.

‘What I do not understand,’ said Jack, ‘is how a cove can be such a muffin-handed slob with a rope, and yet be so handy with a bandage.’ The cingulum was as neat as basket-work, and Tobias patted it with some complacency.

‘Which it was a cock-ostrich,’ said Lewis, who had a painful feeling of being disbelieved. ‘A wery tall old bald one.’

‘You shall tell me about it directly,’ said Tobias. ‘But we must prop you up first, and give you a little rum to fortify the tubes. Can
you take rum, Moses Lewis? It is not unpleasant, and it will improve your general condition, if you can get it down.’

In a faint invalid’s voice Lewis (Old Sponge among his friends) thought that he might manage to swallow a little, to oblige Mr Barrow; and as soon as the tot was gone he said, in his usual strong rumble, ‘It was when they laid me off of weeding in the Emperor’s garden.’ He was feeling quite well again now, expansive, benign and communicative, and upon being desired to begin the history of his wound at the beginning, he delivered himself of it thus: ‘It was when I was in the old
Trent,
Captain Burton, and we left the Cove of Cork in November for to convoy some store-ships and transports down to Gib and to see the India trade on their way as far as the south of Goree, along of the
Suffolk,
seventy, the
Exeter,
sixty, and the
Diamond,
forty – Captain Anson commanded her in his time, as my sister’s husband could tell you, being he was cox’n of the gig – my brother-in-law, as you might say. The swab.’ Lewis stared and snorted, moved by some remote villainy of his brother-in-law, and it was only with some pains that he could be brought to continue his voyage, to leave the transports bound for Gibraltar off Cape St Vincent and to stand to the south-west in dirty weather that grew dirtier with the December moon. ‘But we was all right, being she was a tight ship,’ he said, ‘and I remember thinking that before I turned in, I would have a little bit of toasted cheese. I said to William Atkins, who was outside me on the yard, “I will have a little bit of toasted cheese, before I turn in.” He was in the starboard watch too – a Plymouth man, and a wheelwright by trade. Well, we had the first watch, and it turned out very black – wind veering north-west and plenty of rain. The captain come on deck when it turned squally, but he soon went below, only telling the master to make what sail he could and not to lose sight of the commodore, no not if he carried all away. But about six bells it come on cruel and we laid aloft to hand the main tops’l: we was under our courses by the end of the watch, and so was the commodore, we reckoned, because he was right ahead, bearing south and the wind west-south-west blowing hard, but his light did not gain, as I said to William Atkins as we went below.

‘It was not long after that, which I know very well because only one side of my cheese was toasted, that we struck. Cor love you,’
he exclaimed, with the old amazement renewed in his mind, ‘we could not tell what it was. The
Suffolk
run foul of us, or what? Because we was a hundred miles off of the land, we thought. Then she struck again, went over to port, almost on her beam ends, and you could hear her driving over the rocks like thunder. I got on deck, and when I got there she struck for good. You could make out the rocks two cables’ lengths away, and she was lying with her broadside to windward and the sea making a breach over her: and between us and the shore it was all white water. The masts went by the board, she beat so hard, and all the ship’s people were main anxious, I do assure you: but Captain Burton told us it was all for the best. “Ha, ha,” says he, in his hailing-trumpet, “it’s all for the best. Don’t you see as how we’re sheltered from the sea? Bear a hand there, and get everything over to the larboard, or she will heel off else.” So we got everything over, and the cant of the deck sheltered us, do you see? But God’ a mercy, what a sea it was. It come up green over her broadside, curling up there the height of the to’garn crosstrees, and it come down fit to split her. Dear Lord save me from such a lee-shore again.’

‘Amen,’ said Jack.

‘Well, after a time some of the starboard watch begged leave to adventure for it in the cutter – no, I tell a lie: it was the jolly-boat. And though they was told no boat could swim, they would try: and they went down before they could even shove off. Eight of ‘em. All the other boats was stove in, so when we saw she was stuck fast, no hope, we made a raft with capstan-bars and gratings and what spars we could come at: but most of the people were drunk by then, and it was a sorry old botch of a raft.’

‘Drunk?’ cried Tobias.

‘In course we was drunk,’ replied Lewis, looking at him with surprise.

‘They had struck, you see,’ said Jack, as if that explained everything: but seeing that Tobias still looked blank he explained that once a ship had gone aground, and when everything that could be done to bring her off had been done, then it always happened that the crew would get to the spirit-room and start every barrel and bottle there, to die drunk if die they must.

‘And they put on their best clothes,’ added Lewis. ‘It is the custom,
like putting pennies on a dead man’s eyes, or dressing a corpse up pretty. I had a spotted nankeen waistcoat and a round beaver hat. And when I woke up, stone-cold sober, I was still there and it was the next day: the sea had gone down a little, and them as could swim was a-swimming, because there were Moors standing there on the black rocks waving to them to come ashore, as who should say, “I’ll help you ashore, mate.” So I laid hold of a piece of the starboard trailboards – she was going all to pieces for’ard – and chanced it on the back of a wave, and the minute I come ashore a fellow in a nightshirt hauls me up the roc before the sea can pull me off. Well, I make as if to thank him, and he whips off my neck-cloth. “Avast, brother,” says I, quite surprised, and he whips off my spotted nankeen waistcoat. And when I look displeased he shows me a dagger at my throat, while an old party in a blue frock and veil (his grandma, I believe) trips me up by the heels to get at my shirt. They were doing it all along the shore, and nobody had the spirit to resist ‘em, being so cold and wet. They stripped us naked every one, and would not allow us more than an old piece of sail that came ashore to make a tent from the cold and the rain.

‘When the tide began to make the sea grew worse again, and the ship ran all to pieces, pounding and beating most horrible to see, and about high-water she broke. The fore-part turned keel up, and the midships went all abroad; but the after-part of the poop held fast for a while. About thirty men there were for’ard, and they all went, but for a few people we could pull ashore; and they mostly died from the beating of the surf. On the poop there was the captain and close on a hundred and fifty more, and every time a big sea come up fit to sweep ‘em off, the Moors all laughed and capered. We looked to see them go any minute, and once the fife-rail carried away with five or six men; but they held, and when the tide was at half-ebb, the sea grew a morsel less, and the armourer, name of Coleman, well-nigh the only man left aboard as could swim, came ashore with a line – touch and go, but we haled him in when he was nearly spent. So we got a rope fast to the rocks, and they began to warp themselves ashore. But the captain would not come, there being some hands as were either still dead-drunk or too fearful to venture on the rope; and the officers called out to him, that it could never hold, once the tide of flood began to make. But come he
would not, not until the cox’n of the barge crossed back and in a manner of speaking obliged him to warp ashore: which was very hard, seeing the captain could not swim and was so wore out that he could scarce hold on neither. So he came ashore, and we was right pleased. The flaming blackamoors looked for to strip him too, but that we would not abide, not the captain; and presently they sheered off.

‘We had a fire, and the purser served out the drowned turkeys and hens, which was the first thing we ate in four and twenty hours; and we turned in all in the one tent, sitting up close, with the captain in the middle, it being judged warmer there. The next day the wreck was gone, broke to pieces and not another soul left alive. Then an officer of the Moors, called a bashaw, came with a troop of horse and marched us all off: and there were camels – very strange. We never rightly knew, the lower-deck, what was to do, but there was a Danish gentleman settled in those parts, a merchant, as sent us some blankets – we was naked else – and a French doctor as dressed the wounded, and right handsome it was in him, we all said, seeing how we had set about to vex his nation. Some said the king of those parts, the emperor, or sultan, as they say, was at war with King George, and we should all be slaves, like the poor swabs captured by the Algerines; and some said it was not so. But howsoever, this bashaw marched us off, with camels, for days and days, and on the way we fell in with the crew of the
Tartarus,
which had been wrecked too, the same night; so there was close on four hundred of us, counting three women belonging to the
Tartarus
and a baby one of them had brought ashore, holding its clothes in her teeth. And all the way whenever there was a village the Moors threw stones and dirt, and spat in the water they allowed us: we grew mortal tired of being made game of. And when at last we come to the city where this sultan was they set us to work, while he made up his mind whether he was at war with King George or no. The captain was very busy, as we did understand, with interpreters and letters to the Governor of Gib, and he often came to the place where we was kept to tell us to keep our hearts up, we should be took care of, and he would not leave us in the lurch: but for the work there was no help for it, and they set me and William Atkins to weeding. Some of the people was set to building up a huge old wall that had fallen
down, and some to cleaning the camels’ stables, and some to carrying water to make a pond where four of our midshipmen rowed about in a wherry, with the emperor sitting on a velvet chair, a-watching of ‘em.

‘But we was set to weeding: and one day we was in a little court with walls all round, a-weeding of it and talking, when suddenly a voice says, “Now, cully, what are you a-doing of?” We were quite at a stand, because it was in English, as good as you or me: presently I find that it come from a lattice window, so I makes my duty towards it, and says, wery civil, “Weeding, ma’am, if you please.” And I says as how we was took prisoner and brought up to this city and set to weeding.

‘ “Would you like a nice cup of tea?” says she, and hands a little brass cup through the lattice. So we passes the time of day, and she turns out to be the queen of Morocco. Or one of the queens. For rightly speaking the Moors have many wives.

‘She was the daughter of an English renegado, and she had kept Christian tastes and a liking for a chat: she was quite old, but spry and well-disposed, though sharp at times. “Are you happy in your work, my good man?” she asks. “No,” says we, “we ain’t.” “Why is this?” says she, and we tells her as how the black quartermaster, or head-gardener or whatever, comes down on us cruel hard if so be he finds a weed, or if we touches a plant; and we, being sailormen, cannot tell the little weeds from the little plants, so we are banged and thumped like a couple of drums, every day. “Tut-tut,” says she, “ain’t you got no more sense that you can’t tell weeds from plants, damn your eyes?” “No, ma’am,” says we. “No more than you could tell a davit from a dead-eye.” “Well, what a precious pair of loobies you must be, to be sure, ha, ha,” says she; but when William Atkins, who is not a married man, chafes at this and says he does not care, or damn their old weeds, or something disrespectful like, she flies out wery sudden. “You stow your gab, William Atkins,” says the queen, shrill and high, “damn your blood, you wall-eyed scrub – prating to your betters day and night with your davits and your dead-eyes, strike me down.” But I told her he was wanting and foolish in his mind, and presently she calms down and says perhaps she can do with a man or two, to look after the poultry… did you hear that?’

It was the deep, unmistakable thud of a distant gun that came down the scuttle on the fresh air, and Jack was out of the sick-bay before Tobias had changed the current of his mind from the Emperor of Morocco’s poultry yard to the question in hand. He reached the quarter-deck rail in company with Campbell: Cozens and Morris were already there, being on duty. Two miles over the sea to windward there was the little high-masted
Tryall,
whose station was outside the line, and as they watched the signal broke out and the gun was repeated. Morris was already on his way aloft with a glass and now he hailed the deck: the signal was the numeral twelve.

‘Ay,’ said the gunner, as if he personally had arranged it. He was the officer of the watch, and stepping up to the captain he touched his hat and reported, ‘The
Tryall
signals soundings, sir.’

‘Very good, Mr Bulkeley,’ said Captain Murray. ‘We will set the deep-sea line going at once. The Abrolhos: I had not expected them today.’

‘I had, sir,’ cried the gunner, wagging his head complacently, ‘and to the very hour I was right.’

Tobias appeared on deck, blinking in the blaze of the sun. It had suddenly occurred to him that perhaps the Spaniards were upon them – that the gun was the first of a bloody combat – and he remembered with a mixture of exhilaration and alarm that Jack had told him many a time that it would be most unfortunate if they were forced to fight this side of the Horn, that they were too laden to give a good account of themselves until they were in the Pacific. Jack had also told him many a time not to gossip with people on duty, not to accost them, even; but he still found it difficult to tell those on from those off, and now he hesitated, slowly grinding his nightcap round and round on the top of his head.