To the Ends of the Earth (53 page)

“Good God! For Heaven’s sake! What has happened?”

Now his head did turn, jerkily.

“Charles old fellow!”

His lips quivered. I sat by him quickly and set my hand down on the back of his. A drop of sweat rolled off his brow and fell on my fingers.

“It is I—Edmund!”

His other hand came up and he smeared it across his face, then put it down again.

“Tell me, for God’s sake! Are you hurt?”

Still nothing.

“Look, Charles, the news is good! They are setting sails on all three masts!”

Now he spoke.

“Obstruction.”

“What obstruction?”

“Obstruction. That’s what he said. I am to cease my obstruction.”

“Anderson!”

He shook as if with cold. I took my hand from him.

He muttered.

“I can feel her moving. He was lucky, wasn’t he? A flat calm for the work and now—the wind again. An extra two knots, Anderson said. He gave me reasons. Coldly.”

“What reasons?”

“For his words. Obstruction. I am—I did not know it was possible to be so brought down. The dragrope—but it tore away part of the keel. Who knows? And now—for a knot and a half, for two knots, Benét has stuck red-hot irons through wood and left them there!”

“He says they will no more than coat the inside of the channels with charcoal.”

He stared into my eyes.

“You saw the man? You spoke with him?”

“I have—”

“I must not obstruct him, do you understand? A brilliant young officer—and I! Dull, superannuated—”

“He could not say so!”

“In defence of his favourite he would say anything! He will take no action yet but I am to watch my step—” He paused for a moment, then hissed with a fury of which I should never have thought him capable—“
Watch my step!
”

“I swear to you he shall be brought down! I will—I will raise the whole government of the colony against him! I will—”

He drew his breath in sharply, then whispered:

“Hold your tongue. It is mutiny.”

“It is justice!”

There was a pause. He put his face in his hands. I could hardly hear what he said for the grief in the sound of it.

“I do not desire justice.”

For a while neither of us said anything. Then—

“Charles—I know I am a passenger—but this
monstrous
—”

He laughed, bitterly.

“Oh yes, you are a passenger, but you may still put yourself in peril! And if it were possible to do what you have just said, do you suppose I should ever be employed again, let alone promoted?”

“Benét is a kind of meteor, a passing flash. Meteors always fall.”

Charles sat up and hugged himself with both arms.

“Do you feel how she moves even in this light air? He will nigh on double our speed. And, mark my words, every knot he adds will double the intake of water!”

“He is writing an Ode to Nature.”

“Is he so? Well, tell him Nature never gives something for nothing.”

“I will tell him, though the statement will come oddly from me. I believe he would recognize the source.”

A trace of colour had come into Charles’s lips.

“Bless you, old fellow—may I still say that?”

“Heavens! Whatever you like.”

“You are a true friend. It is like you to come looking for me with what comfort you could when no one else—Well. Forgive me. I have been less than a man.”

“You are worth a hundred Benéts—two hundred Andersons!”

“Is that my lantern?”

The question disconcerted me. I followed his eyes, lifted my right hand with the lantern in it.

“No. In fact—”

I did not feel like going on. After a moment or two Charles shrugged.

“Dockyard issue. Well, what does it matter?”

Suddenly he struck one fist into the other palm.

“It was such a humbling, such a shaming rebuke! It was so unjust—for all I did was differ in opinion from my subordinate!”

“Did anyone hear him?”

He shook his head.

“He observed the forms. I am helpless therefore, you see. When we reached the quarterdeck he addressed me formally. ‘Oblige me by stepping into my cabin, Mr
Summers.’ There he faced me. He lowered up at me under his thick eyebrows and projected his jaw at me—”

“I know! I have seen!”

“‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but hard words won’t hurt me.’ A rhyme for children. What he said tore at me like hooks.”

“You are better for talking about it. It has been searing for you, I can tell that. But I have sworn to see right done, justice—fair play! You remember?”

“Oh yes! A long way back, in Colley’s time.”

“Now what is to be done at the moment? I believe you are able to smile!”

“Did you feel that? The wind is increasing. Well, the captain and the officer of the watch—let them manage between them. Only think, Edmund, if this wind had come a couple of hours earlier—I can hardly believe in my own iniquity! I found myself wishing—no, no. The mast is repaired, our speed is increased and I am glad of it!”

“We must all be glad.”

“But I tell you, Edmund, with that fire in the shoe—I will have a watch kept there as long as there is a trace of heat left in the iron. Other than that, there is nothing to be done. I must swallow everything and live out the commission—why are we such creatures that a few sentences from an angry man should matter more to me than the prospect of death?”

“At all costs no one must know—”

“What—in this ship? I have never been in one that so echoed and resounded with rumour!”

“The thing must be forgotten.”

“The voyage will surely be remembered, for it bids fair to be the longest in history.”

“Well, you, at any rate, must not go down as anything but the lieutenant who by and by was Captain Summers and, after that, a famous rear admiral!”

Charles had coloured deeply.

“That is a dream and I fear must remain so.”

“When you saved my reason by providing me with dry clothes—did you know I itch no longer?—I spoke of Glaucus and Diomede. I doubt the story will have come your way any more than the parts of a mast or the niceties of stellar navigation have come mine. Well. There was a battle and in it these two enemies found they were related—”

“So you said. As I told you once, I have no relatives at all and prefer that to being related to Benét or Anderson!”

“Come! That is better. That is humanly bitter. What a turn up for the book it would be if you found you as well as Benét was a frog! But these two warriors I liken to you and me.”

“Oh! I am sorry.”

“They stopped fighting and exchanged armour for remembrance. The gods took away their wits so that they never noticed that bronze armour was being swopped for gold! I used to take that as no more than story for the sake of story—but do you know, Charles, I now understand it as a profound allegory of friendship! Friends will hand over anything that is needed and think nothing of it!”

“Yes indeed!”

“I
think
your gift of seaman’s slops was golden armour! Now here is my bronze! The first ship that returns from Sydney Cove shall carry not just my journal in which you are described with such admiration but a letter to my godfather giving reasons and declaring that you deserve to be made ‘post’ on the spot!”

The colour came and went in his cheeks.

“I thank you with all my heart. Of course, it is
impossible
. Luck and promotion have passed me by.
Can
you do so?”

“Exactly as I have said.”

“Well—I will try to believe it. I
will
believe it! You see, I am so unused to—what? To privilege—to—”

“To getting your desserts.”

He stood up.

“It is like that time when Admiral Gambier had me made midshipman!”

He stretched out his hand to the shelf and touched a book—a prayer book by the look of it.

“I do not think I can face my fellows just yet.”

“What will you do? Oh, I see! You wish to, to
meditate
.”

“And you, Edmund—will you stand the middle?”

“Of course, I shall. Why, I have already slept in
preparation
!”

Suddenly I reeled and fell on the bunk. He laughed.

“We have the wind, you see! This will test his foremast!”

“I think—yes, I think I had better get out into the open.” 

I went cautiously out into the wardroom. Webber was polishing the corner of the long table with unwonted and indeed useless industry, for the wood was much too stained and hacked to take a polish. I clambered up to the lobby and was glad to get into the waist and hang on by the mainstays. We were indeed making way. Things must have been even more propitious while I had been down below with Charles, for stuns’ls were being struck on the mainmast in preparation for a further increase of wind. I could see quite a spread of light before our bow, but astern of us huge crenellated clouds seemed to be not so much sweeping forward towards us as towering upwards into preposterous castles of storm. I might have taken another bath but did not. I kept under shelter but looked out until I saw the first savage lash of rain beat along the decks and leap back from it. This was followed in what must have been less than a minute by hail, so that the duty part of the watch huddled in what shelter they could get or cowered with arms hiding their heads. One man I saw had climbed into the belfry and crouched there laughing at the others. The hail vanished even more quickly than it had come. It was followed—as if a curtain had been drawn back in some theatrical presentation—by wind, not rain. In only a few minutes the world was
darkened
and the sea dirty grey. Then, astonishingly, all this was wiped away and we were in wind and sun, bright
sunlight
, evening, sunset light, a hard, bright yellow sun shorn of its beams and lying down on the horizon like a golden guinea. But this faded as it dropt, thin clouds coming up between us and it, so that staring back along
the ship’s side at the break of the aftercastle I saw that the sun lay out to the north at an angle as it set. I was aware of thin cloud, high at the zenith and appearing to move
forward
slowly while the wind was moderate but constant, seeming made whole with a great deal more to come.

The bell rang for the end of the first dog. The ritual completed itself in the wind and newly rocked ship. Mr Smiles and Mr Taylor came down from the quarterdeck.

“Well, Mr Smiles. What have you to say about the weather?”

But apparently Mr Smiles had nothing to say at all. I went, as by habit, to the passenger saloon.

Bowles and Pike were sitting at the long table under the great stern window. Through long custom the central position looking
forrard
had become my own, I cannot tell why. I had sat there at the beginning and it had been so ever after that. Bowles in a somewhat similar way sat at the starboard end of the table and faced along the length. Pike, on the other hand, was a movable object and sat where he could. Just now he was sitting in
my
seat!

“Move up, Mr Pike.”

He had his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands. His beaver was on the back of his head. When he heard me he began a kind of shuffle on the bench, his elbows still on the table. His whole body moved unhandily towards Bowles.

“What’s the matter with you, Pike—Richard, I mean?”

Bowles answered for him.

“Mr Pike unfortunately indulged too freely last night, Mr Talbot.”

“A thick head, eh? Good God, you was not used to drink at all! Well, we have taught you something! Bunk is the best place for a thick head, Richard—”

But Mr Bowles was shaking his.

“What is the matter, Bowles?”

“The moment is not propitious. What do you think of our weather, sir?”

“Mr Smiles, if you are able to believe me, had nothing portentous to say.”

Mr Bowles shook his head moodily.

“I did not think I could be so hungry and yet accept the fact! I did not think I could come to terms with a settled state of dread!”

“Like Wheeler.”

“I do not envy you your cabin, sir.”

“I do not chuse to be separated from my charges by pandering to superstition.”

“Insensitivity must be of assistance. What charges?”

“Insensitivity? Allow me to tell you, Mr Bowles—”

The ship heeled suddenly and as suddenly came back again. Mr Pike’s beaver fell off the back of his head. He made no attempt to retrieve it.

“What charges, Mr Talbot?”

“That is my affair, Mr Bowles!”

After that we were all three silent. The only movement was made by little Pike. He closed his eyes.

Bates came in, splay-legged against what was now the constant movement of the vessel.

“What do you think of the weather, Bates?”

“It’ll be worse before it’s better, sir.”

He collected the two lanterns and disappeared with them. There was a rattle of rain or spray across the wide window.

“That’s what they all say.”

“‘They’, Bowles?”

“Everyone—Cumbershum, Billy Rogers, now Bates.”

“So we are in for it.”

There was a long pause. Bates came back with the two lanterns. One of them was lighted.

“Which side will you have it, gents?”

Bowles had one elbow on the table. He pointed upwards with a finger of that hand. Bates brought the lighted lantern to the starboard side and hung it up, then took the other and hung it opposite. Our shadows began their
merciless
movement on the unfestive board. It seemed as if the movement was amplified moment by moment.

“At least the masts—”

“—are firm. Yes, Mr Talbot. It was a brilliant concept and a brilliant piece of execution on the part of a young officer. I believe we passengers should ensure that it does not go unrewarded.”

“Let us leave the Navy to look after itself, Mr Bowles.”

“Has that always been your opinion, Mr Talbot?”

The ship bounced. Bates reappeared.

“I have to serve the ladies in their cabins, gents. Would you be having your pork and beans in the ordinary way?”

“What do you think, Bates? Bring it here!”

I turned in my seat, shielded my eyes from the lantern and tried to make out the shape of the sea. There was a great deal of white scattered over it. None of us had anything to say.

Bates came back with plates of pork and beans. Pike staggered up, went reeling and fell on the bench which was set aft of the smaller table. He put his elbows on it and sank back into the position he had previously endured. I examined my portion with disfavour.

“This is confoundedly small, Bates!”

Bates did a little dancing step which maintained him upright in the same place.

“Ah, but then, sir, it’s very hard, sir, and will take you twice as long as the same quantity would at home, sir.”

“Go to the devil!”

“Aye aye, sir. What is it, Mr Bowles?”

“You had better take the pork away again, Bates. I am not equal to it.”

“Beg pardon, Mr Bowles, but you better, sir. It’s what we got, sir, and so long as you can keep it down, you better.”

“Brandy for me, Bates.”

“The brandy is all right, sir. We have plenty of brandy. The ale is gone though and we have to make do with the small beer, sir. Would you want the brandy to improve the water, Mr Talbot?”

“Can anything?”

“Mr Cumbershum uses the brandy to improve the small beer, sir.”

“I’ll try that. Good God! This pig must have been made of iron!”

Bates, to my astonishment, ran backwards! At the end of his run, being now a little higher than those of us seated at table, he ran forward again. Bowles clapped his hands over his mouth, stood up, then sat down again with a thump.

“Are you all right, Bowles?”

Bowles snarled.

“What a damned silly thing to say!”

He stood up again and staggered away. Bates opened the door for him.

“I think, Bates—”

I too stood up, then worked my way carefully to the door. I managed to get to my cabin without vomiting but then changed my mind and staggered to the entry to the waist. I held on to the mainstays—I call them mainstays and sometimes I call them the chains, both terms being inaccurate though not contradictory. I never bothered to understand the complexity of that part of the rigging except to say that it held the mainmast up and to some extent could be adjusted to circumstances. I used to hold on to anything available. This time it was a huge wooden thing with a hole in it, called a
deadeye
, I think—or
perhaps
not. I hung there and saw a dim horizon ahead of us
tilting now this way, now that. The wind had increased but not to any great extent. It had now been increasing for hours but slowly: and I began to feel in this inexorable approach the reason for the moody and apprehensive answer to that question we passengers were asking.

It’ll be worse before it is better.

Once again it is a matter of Tarpaulin, that economical and expressive language! A man may say, “In for a bit of a blow!” or “It’ll make her bounce a bit!” But in the
foreboding
phrase there is an admission of ignorance as though these salted creatures are admitting that the sea can always do more than you expect and is in train to do it.

I turned round, and squinted aft past the break of the fo’castle on the larboard side. What was to come lay there, over that already invisible horizon. The wind was steady as the flow of time itself and as inexorable. Suddenly I felt a great weariness. It was not hunger, not seasickness. It was a dreary awareness of our peril and the greater test which our crazy old vessel was about to face. I desired nothing so much as oblivion, and there was only one place to go. I reeled back, tottered
down
the lobby and fell into my bunk.

I woke with my nausea gone, but stayed where I was, for the movement was much increased. At last I
gathered
myself together, went to the passenger saloon and crammed down a meagre offering. I was alone. I did not venture into the waist, for I could see the water running on the deck. At a few minutes to midnight when I made my way up to the quarterdeck I had recovered from my threatened nausea. I suppose the very few hours of motionlessness or comparative motionlessness, if such a thing can be, had reminded my limbs too much of the land and they had to readjust to the melancholy facts of our situation. The night was not dark, for although the moon was hidden the clouds were thin enough for that
luminary to shed her light dimly everywhere. This was not a white night such as had preceded it but a light night! That solid wind blowing endlessly from the west had increased in power and the successive waves were
outlined
at their crests with foam. Charles was before me and I stood aside while the little ritual of the changed watch was performed. When we were settled Charles hunched himself in the shadow of the poop. I went and leaned against the ladder up to the poop by him.

“Are you feeling more the thing?”

For a time he made no answer. He was looking in the direction of the bows, but I do not think he saw the ship at all.

“Be a good fellow, Edmund.”

“Surely! But how?”

“Leave the subject alone. Entirely alone. It is painful to me and dangerous to us both.”

“But how can I—”

“Leave it alone!”

“Oh, all right. If you wish.”

The ladder was convenient to my feet. I went up slowly to the poop. That diffused brightness now lit our cloud of sails on all three masts. There was no doubt that our old ship was doing her best to get us to Sydney Cove. There was a wave thrown out from her bow and another from about level with her mizzen. Her wake was visible, smoothed and swirling water which blunted the top of each wave as it reached us. Below me Charles moved out from shelter and went to the forrard rail of the
quarterdeck
. He stood there, his hands driven deep into the great pockets of his tarpaulin, his legs wide apart. Evidently this middle watch was to differ from the one before in more than weather. It seemed to me that Charles needed cheering up.

“How fast is this, Charles?”

He had not heard me approach, for he started at the sound of my voice.

“I do not know. Seven knots. Perhaps seven and a half.”

“About one hundred and eighty land miles in the twenty-four hours. Are we taking in more water?”

“The well fills in an hour. Nature is hurrying us along and presenting us with a bill for her assistance.”

“Should we not reduce sail then?”

“Are you not hungry like everyone else?”

“I see. Of course. What a devil of a fix to be in.”

“You have seen nothing yet, Edmund. There is
something
at the back of this wind.”

“How can you tell?”

“I mean a matter of scale. The time the wind is taking to increase—and the quality of the wind.”

“Now you are really worrying me.”

I said that to give him a chance of forgetting his own troubles in cheering me up. But I was not successful. Still looking away from me at bows which as far as I could see stood in no need of his attention, he nodded merely. It was uncommonly like what Mr Benét would call a “
congé
”. I went to the traverse board and examined the figures
written
there. Eight knots, seven and a half, eight and a half, seven and a half. Below decks they would be pumping, not on the watch but on the hour. As if reminded by my thought, the personnel of the quarterdeck performed the ritual of casting the log. Eight knots. The quartermaster reported his findings to me! I solemnly repeated the figure to Charles who must in fact have heard it as plainly as I did.

“Make it so, Mr Talbot.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

On the fo’castle the ship’s bell rang out twice and once!

“Charles! He has it wrong! It should be one bell!”

“For Heaven’s sake, man—have you never heard of ‘easting’? We gain an hour for every fifteen degrees of longitude we make to the east. About once a week we miss out one bell in the middle but start the watch off at three bells instead.”

“I suppose the people there in the fo’castle think they lose a piece of their life, just as when the Julian calendar was replaced by the modern one.”

“I am not interested in what they think. Let them do their duty and think what they like!”

“Mr Summers! Charles! This is not like you! Oh, come! Do not disappoint me, old fellow! I think of you as the personification of equanimity!”