To the Ends of the Earth (36 page)

Later still I came to myself with something of a headache and a foul taste in my mouth. Wheeler was still in my cabin but standing up. I muttered at him but he did not go. I sat up and found that I could deal more or less with the movement of the ship.

“I think, Wheeler, you had better explain yourself. But not now. Hot water, if you please. Get me out a clean shirt—what are you waiting for?”

He licked his lips. The ship lurched in a daunting
interruption
to the relentless movement of the pendulum. Wheeler reeled. He would have fallen had he not grabbed the edge of my bunk.

“What’s the matter with you, man?”

“Sorry, sir. A clean shirt, sir. This drawer—here, sir. But the hot water—”

“Well?”

“The fires is damped down, sir. I doubt that water would come more than warm.”

“Coffee, too. Hot.”

His eyes had focused far away. Whatever it was he imagined, it would seem he did not like it.

“Wheeler!”

“Sir. I might ask Hawkins to put a pot on in the
captain’s
galley.”

“Very well.”

What a world a ship is! A universe! This was the first time in our whole voyage that I had considered the simple fact that hot water, to say nothing of a hot meal, implies a fire; and a fire implies, oh, firebrick, metal, what have you, some sort of chimney or flue! All these weeks the 
crew had gone about their business in the knowledge of which I was innocent! Only today, or was it yesterday, parts of the ship had come into my view for the first time—and now and then almost upside down as in a
telescope
!—the chronometers in their beds, the magazine, pumps aft of the main and forrard of the main—I who had determined once long ago to become master of “the sea affair”! I was irritated with myself for allowing Wheeler to give me the paregoric, as a man might be
irritated
who has forsworn liquor and now finds himself
suffering
from the effects of a debauch. I felt that I needed cleaning! There in a ship which might be the death of me, I felt soiled by real dirt, by paregoric, by my inability to shape circumstances—and all because of the distant vision of Marion Chumley! We might sink; but my mind returned upon Marion Chumley!

Wheeler came back but empty-handed.

“What is it now?”

“The captain’s fire is out, sir.”

“What the devil—I mean, why is it out?”

“Seeing we’re likely to be at sea longer than expected, the captain said to put the fire out and save fuel for the ship’s galley, sir.”

“Captain Anderson? Doing without fire for the sake of the passengers?”

“For the crew, Hawkins said, sir.”

“I never would have thought it!”

“Captain Anderson is a good captain, sir, nobody denies it.”

“You are going to say that his bark is worse than his bite.”

“No, sir. His bite is a deal worse than his bark and that’s bad enough. So no drink, sir. I came to tell you. I’ve asked Bates to get some from the ship’s galley but it won’t be more than lukewarm.” 

He withdrew but I am sure went no further off than the lobby. I sat in my chair and waited in a confusion of head and circumstances. There was my dirt, inside and out. There was the movement of the ship, the pendulum which if it did not still nauseate me was a wearisome trial, minute by minute. There was Dashing Jack Deverel now loose where I so desperately longed to be, in that other ship, that beautiful, wild creature—

There was a strange feeling in my naked feet. It was true, good God, the planking was alive! There was a
creeping
and almost muscular movement! It was a realization even more disconcerting than the brutally uneven
movement
of the whole ship as the waves passed under her.

Wheeler came in and presented me with a mug of coffee. It was hardly lukewarm but I drank it. He poured a little water into my canvas bowl and I abandoned the coffee in my haste to wash myself. Carried away by a veritable passion for cleanness I scrubbed myself all over in water that soon became at once dirty and stone-cold—as if by so doing I could get rid not merely of my soiling of one sort and another but of the ship’s dirt and of the ship’s
confused
and daunting circumstances. As I wrapped the clean apron and tail of my shirt between my naked legs I felt more nearly myself than I had done since first a “starter” struck me over the back and head. I dressed, then opened this book and looked briefly through what I had written there. I even took the parcel containing an account of the first part of our voyage from the drawer, and weighed it in my hands, debating whether I should open it and read critically all I had written. But the prospect of repacking it daunted me.

Oh, that self-confident young man who had come aboard, serenely determined to learn everything and control everything! In prospect he had treated this awful expedition, this adventure, as resembling that in a 
stagecoach, its end as surely to be predicted as that between London and Bath! He was to reach Sydney Cove moving at an even pace over a level sea in some
masterpiece
of naval construction. But the war had ended, the ship had proved to be rotten as an old apple, Deverel and Willis between them had allowed the apple—the ship—the coach—to lose a wheel,
Alcyone
had overhauled him and struck him with lightning so that he now knew the pangs of passion, of separation, of jealousy—

“Deverel! Handsome Jack!”

After some time, I do not know how long, I came to myself like a diver returning to the surface. I stared into my small mirror at a too much altered face. I thought to myself then, as I inspected the wan and haggard visage there, that my godfather would be at once amused and condemnatory of me. Edmund in love with the wrong girl—with the impossible girl—why, the old
cynic
would have preferred me to attempt Lady Somerset! Then, on top of that, Edmund quite likely sinking in the wrong ship—

As if the wrong ship knew that I had insulted her, the planking under my feet fairly bounced.

“Surely—”

I stopped. I said silently to myself that there was
something
I did not understand behind this half-uttered “surely” which had escaped my lips without my volition. It was not so much a thought as a feeling that “I” ought to be able to do something about “it” and that if “I” could not, then “somebody” ought to be able to! Believe it or not, my thoughts began to centre on our glum captain! And after all, a committee, however
ad hoc
, had wanted me to interview him! I had obeyed my own instructions and seen Charles Summers, now I would obey theirs! I shouted for Wheeler who opened the door almost before the word was out. He huddled and strapped me into my 
oilskins. I stepped in my rubber boots through the door, and the whole ship slid away. I stumped, tilted like a
seaman
towards the waist. I do not know if it was my
imagination
or not but I thought I heard someone sobbing in the last of the hutches on my side of the lobby. I stood in the waist, holding on to the break of the poop. Our ship was indeed quicker in her roll. Her movement was a
constant
fret, with now and then a jerk in it which seemed like impatience or furious anger rather. Rain and spray flying horizontally over the windward rail stung my face like birdshot. The ship heaved at each wave as if she might get forward but then came upright in much the same place as before. The sails, rain and spray streaming from the clew, spread as they were on the mainmast alone and huge, now seemed a pitiful response to the wind’s impulsion. Yet despite all this wild weather there was much activity with ropes of various sizes on the fo’castle. They were trying, it seemed, to perform some operation with cables, though I was quite unable to understand what it was. They seemed to spend quite a deal of their time under water and I was glad to be a passenger and not an officer, let alone a seaman. I turned and began to climb towards the poop. Above and aft of the wheel with its two glistening quartermasters, partly visible over the forrard rail of his deck, stood Captain Anderson. He wore a shabby oilskin and sou’wester and as one indifferent to a
capful
of water was staring moodily into the eye of the wind. I was working my careful way round the men at the wheel when the captain noticed me. He smiled! It was a dreadful sight, a momentary glimpse of a few teeth, as if someone had thrown a yellow pebble into his glumness. I opened my mouth but he was already turning away. I followed, riskily running up the ladder to detain him, but by the time I had reached the deck he had
nipped
down his private companionway and disappeared. The message
was plain. Keep off! Yet he had smiled at me, however briefly and artificially, a thing not known before.

As in a dream, I imagined yellow hair, a fresh
complexion
, and heard the voice of Mr Benét say:
I submit, sir, in this difficulty you should habitually greet the passengers with cheerfulness. Once they feel the captain himself has cause for concern they will be no end of trouble
!

Would he dare? Oh yes, I believe a young officer who would “attempt” handsome Lady Somerset while her
husband
was no more than walking his rounds must be bold to the point of foolhardiness!

Our little sailing master, Mr Smiles, had the watch. Now that the captain had gone below he moved over from the starboard side and stood facing the wind.

“Well, Mr Smiles, I am recovered as you see and would not be anywhere else for one thousand pounds!”

Mr Smiles examined my face in a distant way as if it had been at the horizon. His eyes were red-rimmed from the spray. He lifted one finger to his lips as if to command silence.

“What do you mean, Mr Smiles? A thousand pounds, I said. I tell you what, sir. After I had suffered a few bangs on the head I thought I must be out of my wits; but down below there is a real madman who thinks in all this salt turmoil that he can buy safety!”

Mr Smiles took his finger from his lips.

“There are ships, Mr Talbot, in which every man Jack is mad save one.”

“To tell you the truth I am coming to believe that all men who choose this awful waste as an habitation and profession must be mad so you may well be right! How she rolls—devil take it, I spend my time clambering like an ape from one handhold to another. I marvel you can so keep your feet and treat the movement with such
indifference
.” 

The sailing master did not reply. He returned to watch the sea. He seemed to be inspecting what could be seen of that vastly furrowed prospect as if he were choosing a path over it. It came to me that my conversation with the man was not just a casual infringement of the captain’s Standing Orders but a positive shattering of them. Perhaps that was why the man had laid his finger to his lips! Times and the weather had changed! But I did not wish to make our position any more complicated than it was. I nodded to Mr Smiles and made my way down to the lobby again, having had enough of the freshness of the open air.

I saw Wheeler slide into my hutch. I could not bear more to do with the man and used the rails on the walls of the hutches to get myself to the saloon. But the committee was not there, only little Mr Pike. I am sorry to say that I collapsed on the bench below the stern window and stayed so with my head on the table.

“You are sick as the rest of them, Mr Talbot.”

I grunted in reply. The man went on.

“I should not have thought it of you, Mr Talbot. But then you have been injured. I trust your head is better. I struck my own on the lintel when the ship rolled but it is better now. Have you seen Mr Summers?”

“Where is the committee?”

“The movement is too much for them. Mr Prettiman has had a heavy fall. But I will go and call them if you wish.” I shook my head.

“I will wait till they are recovered enough to appear. I believe Bowles to be a superior man. He has what the Romans would call ‘
gravitas
’. I am surprised.”

“You need not be, sir. He has studied law.”

It was quite extraordinary how quickly little Pike was able to bore one.

“You should be resting like the others, Mr Pike.”

“Oh no. I do not get flung about much, you see. As I 
am small and light, if I lose my footing I generally
manage
to scramble up. Not like poor Mr Brocklebank who dare not leave his bunk in this weather except to—You know, sir, I prefer sitting here, talking to you, rather than being with my family? That is dreadful, quite dreadful I know but after a while I simply cannot stand it no matter how anxious I am and no matter how much I love them.”

“Anxious? What on earth for?”

“They do not really rest, Mr Talbot. Every now and then they play in the bed—the bunk, the upper bunk, Mr Talbot, one at each end. They play like I said but then it is tears and seems to get worse. They don’t play for more than a moment but lie there—well, whining, I suppose, I had better say it though Mrs Pike does not like the word. She is not well herself, sir. What are we to do? Mrs Pike seems to believe I can do something which to tell the truth is why I am out here but I cannot. That hurts more than anything.”

I recalled Charles’s instructions to me.

“You should find her faith in you flattering, Mr Pike.”

“Oh no.”

“I must say, I would not be anywhere else for a
thousand
pounds!”

“Will you not call me Dicky, Mr Talbot? I know I have not, what you said the Romans would think of Mr Bowles—”

“‘
Gravitas
’. You should not worry, sir, some people have it, others not and are none the worse for the lack. I have been thought to exhibit a measure of the quality myself but it is nature, not nurture. Well, Mr Pike, I will call you Richard if it will make you happier.”

“Thank you, Mr Talbot. Do you prefer Ed or Eddy?”

“Mr Pike, you may address me as ‘Edmund’ in this emerg—in the situation which we find ourselves in. So cheer up, man!” 

“I will try, Edmund. But the children do not seem to get any better for all we can do.”

“Now there I can give you comfort. Good God, sir, my young brothers are for ever breaking their knees or elbows or both—all four I should say! They get colics, rashes, colds like puppies. It is growing up, Mr Pike, Richard, I should say, and a damned lengthy and painful business if you ask me!”