The Voyage of the Dolphin (4 page)

‘He's doin' Stiff Dog,' he cried over his shoulder.

McGregor slammed a calloused hand on the gunwale.

‘Pay no heed. Grab him by the ballocks if ye have tae!'

At that, man and hound disappeared abruptly from view, and there were sounds from below as of the thrashing of a large fish.

‘F--- sake.' McGregor made for the gangway, rolling up his sleeves.

While the skipper and his mate wrestled with Bunion, the ship's cook was coming to terms with the lizard in his kitchen. He tapped at the glass, causing Bridie to tense and regard him with her customary primordial contempt.

‘It's important that she stays in her little house,' Fitzmaurice warned. ‘If she gets out and you upset her, she will, in all likelihood, hurt you.'

The cook was from Antwerp and had the look of a figure from the background of a Flemish painting depicting the unsavoury nature of peasant life. He stared uncomprehendingly at Fitzmaurice, then drew back and resumed his supper preparations. Around his malnourished midriff he wore, like an outsized charm bracelet, a leather belt hung with ladles, knife-sharpeners and corkscrews that chimed and clanked as he walked.

Later, the ship's company (with the exception of the cabin boy) sat down to a horrifying soup-like stew in whose khaki depths bobbed nubs and gobbets of blubber and cartilage, and dumplings the texture of wet sand. Fortunately there was also bread from a local baker and beer for those that could stomach it. (The new arrivals exchanged glances to the effect that next time, presumably, the cook would be sober.) McGregor, meanwhile, enhanced the eating experience by regaling them, in funereal tones, with tales of terror on the high seas and icy death in extreme latitudes. It was clear soon enough that he was sceptical about both their mission and its leader, whom he addressed with a curled lip as ‘your Lordship'. Fitzmaurice, in the manner of his caste, was oblivious – ‘Really, there's no need to stand on ceremony in this day and age' – and, if anything, appeared to find him charming.

Afterwards, the skipper, showing no sign of the effects of his earlier intake, invited them down to the officers' cabin, where a fire had been lit in the grate. He poured them each a measure of Wee Jimmy Finest Scotch Whisky, then spread some charts out on the table. He and Fitzmaurice studied the route while the other two warmed themselves and listened to the wind plucking at the rigging. At length, the older man straightened up with a sigh and stared at each of them in turn. On receiving a kick from Crozier, Rafferty, who had been attempting to pick out
The Lass That Loves A Sailor
on his banjolele, stopped.

‘I'm going tae square with yis lads,' McGregor began. ‘Ma gut tells me this expedition is a load of old bahookie.'

‘Now hold on a minute.'

‘If I might just finish, “your Lordship”?'

Fitzmaurice's lip inflated.

‘Thank you. You've not a jot of experience between yis, no training tae speak of and, from what I kin see, very little chance of finding what it is you're supposed tae be seeking. There's also a risk – it's a
wee
risk but a risk nivertheless – that we could all be blown tae kingdom come by the Hun. I have tae ask… are yis sure yis want tae proceed?'

Fitzmaurice swept his hair back with emphatic hauteur.

‘Let me assure you, Mr McGregor, that we are fully prepared for this expedition in every respect and that we fully intend to achieve our aims and return home safely to reap our just rewards. There is no doubt in our minds.' He paused for an elongated sniff. ‘We are Trinity men after all. Perhaps it is
you
that wishes to reconsider?'

McGregor's moustache bristled to twice its original volume.

‘Not at all, “your Lordship”, I've no fears for my own part. I earned ma stripes long before any of yis so much as keeched in a nappy. I'm just making sure yis are aware of the dangers. The freezing…'

‘McGregor, we're fully aware of the…'

‘The freezing temperatures are only half the battle. There's an ocean of ice tae get through and…'

‘McGregor, please…'

‘And if the wild animals don't get yis, the natives'll…'

‘McGregor! Please!' Fitzmaurice reached out and gripped the skipper's arm. ‘Please. We'll be fine. Everything's going to be fine… Now I'd like, if I may, to propose a toast, to you, Skipper, to your handsome ship and your trusty crew, to my companions, who have risen, as I knew they would, to the occasion, and to the success of our expedition. Gentlemen,' he lifted his glass, ‘to the voyage of the
Dolphin
.'

The adventurers hoisted their drinks high.

‘THE VOYAGE OF THE
DOLPHIN
!'

McGregor reached for the whisky bottle.

‘… skin yis like seals and f---ing eat yis.'

Crozier had never seen a chicken being sick before. Forgetting his own misery for a moment, he clutched the top of the coop and watched as the bird, red of eye and damp of feather, performed a solo
do-si-do
in time with the pitching of the ship, its wings raised in the manner of a baptist preacher at full tilt, and then, with convulsions of its sweaty neck and a series of strangulated burps, hunched over and relieved itself of several days' worth of corn. Its companions, including a poleaxed cockerel, were slumped in a corner of the run in a collective trance, their time having come and gone.

An image of eggs glistening in a frying pan flashed in Crozier's mind and his gorge rose. Further back in the darkness of the hold a joist groaned and something shaken loose by the swell skittered across the floor. Struggling to stay on top of a ballooning heave, he held tighter to the woodwork and splayed his legs for better balance. Another unknown object clattered in the shadows. He edged his way along the stack of cases until he located the box marked ‘Spices' and, rummaging through it, withdrew a package of powdered ginger – the only half-effective remedy for seasickness, according to Harris, aside from an infusion of black horehound. Or death.

Above him, in their turbulent cabins, Fitzmaurice and Rafferty were both very much regretting having gone to sea, and in the case of the latter, curled on the floor hugging a wooden bucket, having been born. ‘I swear, I have nothing left to give,' he sobbed into the maw of his pail. Fitzmaurice, though not yet quite at the depths reached by his friend, was nevertheless holding onto the sides of his cot and flailing from side to side with his eyes screwed shut, like a chimpanzee strapped to a nightmarish fairground ride. In the passageway, the ship's dog, which had been vomiting at regular intervals since leaving port, had long since collapsed, the only sign of life being an occasional shiver through its stubby legs.

It had been an unfortunate start to the voyage. Intending to avoid the Atlantic's prevailing southwesterlies and the danger of seasonal gales, McGregor had elected to sail east out of Queenstown and head north through St George's Channel. Almost immediately, however, they had hit a powerful swell that persisted for nearly six hours. Even the crew, veterans most of them and therefore more confident the horror would eventually pass, would later concede that it had been a particularly testing stretch. The only one unaffected was McGregor himself, braced at the wheel with his captain's hat on. ‘Ye'll feel better if ye sit under a tree' was his helpful advice to anyone who happened to lurch by.

In the early afternoon the chop began to abate and, his stomach restored to semi-equilibrium by Harris' hot-water-and-ginger trick, Crozier ventured up on deck. The sea was a muscular grey-green, with scurrying white-caps disappearing in the direction of the Waterford coast. A scattering of gulls busied themselves above the ship's wake. The bearded twins, tending to the tautness of various ropes, looked up and bade him a stereophonic ‘Skål!', but it lacked the cheer of the previous evening.

After the torrid morning below, the stiff breeze was immensely refreshing and Crozier found himself gulping down ravenous lungfuls, until eventually he felt much better and even began to countenance the possibility, at some distant point in the future, of food. The
Dolphin
, still pitching, was a solid craft, he thought, listening to the thump of the hull against the waves, the crack of the breeze through the rigging. He felt relatively safe on her. He gazed up at a complex geometry of buntlines and ratlines, the crossbeams dark against the creamy blankness of the sails. She smelled good too: ancient wood, long seasoned; forest and ocean; turpentine and spice; a thousand cargoes loaded under hot suns.

As he stood there being filled by these pleasant sensations, some of his misgivings began to fall away: perhaps he
had
been right to put his studies to one side (it was only a year after all and it would be an opportunity to think things over); maybe the trip
would
be a success (and the making of him, as his father would say,
test him as a man
); and, who knew, perhaps there was a small chance that Fitzmaurice wasn't, in fact, stark raving mad… At that moment, the ginger wore off without warning, and leaning over the rail with a groan of resignation, he gave the seagulls something to fight about.

 

‘That really is a most unwholesome creature,' Fitzmaurice said. ‘It's rather putting me off my eggs.'

The other two turned to look at the ship's dog, which was perched on its hindquarters on the floor nearby attending noisily to its testicles. Alerted by a flicker of jungle-sense it paused, glared at each of them in turn, suppressed a belch, and returned to its work.

‘What sort of a breed is it anyway?' Rafferty asked.

‘Not sure,' Crozier said. ‘Could be a bit of bulldog in there. Or Staffordshire terrier. It's definitely got those funny little ears. What's that thing on its chin though? Is that the bunion?'

‘No, that's not a bunion. A bunion – or a
hallux abducto-valgus
to give it its scientific name – is a deformity of the big toe. That's just some kind of horrible wart.'

A becalmed sea and a good night's sleep had revived everyone onboard and some had even managed to hold down the Antwerpian's version of porridge, which appeared, mysteriously, to have had prolonged contact with the frying pan. The crew had disappeared about their duties, leaving the late-rising non-sailors to linger over their breakfast.

‘My grandmother had a bunion,' Fitzmaurice said. ‘Frightful thing it was. Size of an apple. Very hard to look at.'

‘Was it painful?'

‘Extremely – pass the teapot would you – my grandfather accidentally hit it with a croquet mallet once and I'd say they probably heard the scream three counties away.'

‘Anyone want the last bit of sausage?'

‘All yours, old man. Anyway, she didn't speak to him again for years. I think it put her in a bad mood for the rest of her life.'

‘Is it just me, or does that dog look a bit like Mc—'

Just then Bunion jumped up and stared at the door, and a moment later McGregor entered with the bosun and the cabin boy, who had been absent earlier. They sat. McGregor ignited a Navy Cut and leaned back in his chair.

‘Right, having been on the bridge the whole night I think I've earned the right tae a bit o' kip so I'm going tae retire to ma cabin. Which brings me tae the wee matter of you young gentlemen and how yis're going tae earn your salt.'

Three sets of eyes flashed in his direction.

‘Obviously, yis cannae be doing anything that would endanger the lives of the rest of us, so for the time being yis'll busy yourselves with the cleaning and maintenance of the ship.'

‘Just a minute,' Fitzmaurice broke in. ‘May I remind you…'

‘I'm afraid, “your Lordship”, every man has tae pull his weight at sea, regardless of his position on land. You're in my jurisdiction now.'

Fitzmaurice noted the Scotsman's tone, hesitated, and settled for a semi-inflated lip.

‘The deck will need scrubbing and the bilge pumped, and there's a whole length of ship could do with sanding and varnishing. Yis'll also need tae take it in turns helping out in the galley. Doyle there will assign your duties from day tae day.'

The bosun said nothing, but moved his fearsome eyebrows up and down, twice.

‘Now look here, McGregor,' Fitzmaurice said, ‘I'm really not sure about this bilge business. Isn't that the cabin boy's job?'

The boy in question, an intensely self-conscious sixteen-year-old with a bubonic neck, stared down at the heavily-bandaged hand that was not engaged in foraging for leftovers. McGregor doused his cigarette-end in a teacup.

‘Cabin boy's lucky he's not danglin' from the f---ing yardarm.'

 

During the morning the wind strengthened in their favour and they began to make up lost time, fairly scudding along the coast of Wexford, the shore gleaming white in the distance. Crozier and Rafferty, side by side like a couple of old plough horses, set to scrubbing the planks, while Fitzmaurice made an ill-tempered start on the first six inches of several miles of brightwork. Around them people came and went, attending to mysterious nautical tasks. The hen coop had been hauled up from the hold and its inhabitants, revived by the fresh air, were finding their sea legs, the cockerel even venturing a tentative strut. Crozier and Rafferty conversed for a while but the noise of the wind in the sails, and the heat of the spring sun on their backs, made it an effort.

‘Be passing Dublin port soon,' Rafferty observed at length. ‘Last chance to do the sensible thing.'

Crozier grunted. In his peripheral vision he could see that Rafferty had stopped scrubbing and was resting upright on his hunkers, gazing towards the horizon. He wondered what it felt like to be a Dubliner, what it must mean to be an unwilling subject in the second city of the Empire. In his mind's eye he tracked upriver along the quays towards the centre, picturing the sunshine on O'Connell Bridge, hearing the clatter and clack of carriages and trams, the cries of the gurriers and the flower sellers. He thought of Daniel O'Connell, the great emancipator of Irish Catholics, further up the street on his plinth, impervious in his stolidity to pigeon droppings, weather, the passage of time.
‘…The alternative
to live as slaves or die as free men.'
Rousing words. And yet,
‘The altar of liberty totters when cemented
only with blood…'

It occurred to him that they had made no provision for religion on the voyage and that Rafferty, a modest attender of Mass, was in a tight minority. Though the Antwerpian was more than likely a Catholic. A recruitment poster flashed in his mind. ‘Remember The Women Of Belgium!' Another small Catholic country, already overrun, its womenfolk defiled by the drooling Hun in his jackboots and
pickelhaube.

He recalled dinner at the Rafferty home before they left for Queenstown: a handsome terrace in Phibsborough, on the city's north side; crucifixes, the Child of Prague in the entrance hall, a framed copy of Batoni's ‘Sacred Heart' on the wall of the dining room where they sat down to boiled ham and parsley sauce, conversation that was itself like two sets of best crockery laid out for mutual inspection. Rafferty's mother, a wiry, confident woman, did most of the talking and that was the way his father, a large, slow-moving man with a country complexion, seemed to like it.

It was Rafferty's mother who had gone to the bishop to secure dispensation for her son to attend the Protestant university (‘You'll have as good an education as
they
have or I'll die trying'); his mother who had straightened his tie and spat on a handkerchief to rub dried soap off his cheek as he waited to be interviewed by the Fellows; his mother who wept with pride when he was accepted into the School of Medicine.

Crozier knew all this because Rafferty had told him after a particularly maudlin session in the Bailey during his first term. He had also confessed to fear verging on panic when confronted with his first cadaver in the high-vaulted anatomy room that smelled of formaldehyde and disinfectant: a man freshly dead of heart failure, shades of pink and blue, the puckered skin peeled back ‘like a joint of pork'; how he realised, as his vision fizzled and the room became distant –-- the professor repeating his name, demanding an answer –-- that he could not bear the sight of blood.

‘Goodbye Walter, we hope you'll come again when you're back from your trip.'

‘I'd like that very much, Mrs Rafferty.'

He remembered her turning to her son, her reproachful ‘Frank, are you mad altogether?' tinged with fear and admiration, the flush of withheld emotion below her cheekbones, and ‘I'll light a candle for you'; his father's brisk, formal handshake and ‘Sure, it'll keep you out of trouble here' delivered with a look that warned,
break your mother's heart and
I'll break your…

There was a sudden stink, like burning guano, and the two deckhands turned to find Fitzmaurice sitting astride the capstan puffing at his pipe. He gave them a cheery salute.

‘Ahoy me hearties.'

They joined him. Rafferty, struggling against the wind, lit a cigarette.

‘Life on the ocean wave, eh lads?' Fitzmaurice said. ‘Lets you see the world afresh, don't you think? Look at that sky, smell that air.'

‘All I can smell is that filthy pipe,' Crozier grumbled. ‘What on earth are you putting in it?'

‘Now, now, there's no need to be dour. The sun is shining, the wind is in our sails and we're heading for adventure. That, my friend, beats sweating over books in a boring old library any day.'

His companions concurred and all three took their ease for a while, enjoying the breeze. A voice called from the quarter-deck.

‘Mr Fitzmaurice?'

It was Doyle, his eyebrows at full mast. He held up the bilge bucket.