Cinnamon and Gunpowder (13 page)

To forestall being spotted by navy patrols, the deck was kept fairly dark. The lanterns the men carried were blinded on the sides to pour light only on the tasks before them. I made my way to the forecastle where they sat in a circle mending rope. The first part of my plan involved placing a large pot of soup in the middle of that circle.

Many of them had wads of Mary Sweet in their cheeks. A single scrap of Sweet could last a man as much as an hour. In this way it served like chewing tobacco, and tasted about as good. As soon as I lifted the lid of the pot, the men spat into their hands and chucked the meat into the darkness.

The soup was little more than a thickened court bouillon, but in the strange light reflected from the pot, I could feel the hunger of the men gathering like a squall. I had roasted the fish bones, head, and tail of my noble cod in a Dutch oven while at the same time caramelizing thinly sliced onions very slowly until they were almost syrup. To this I added anchovies and the milk of ten coconuts. I simmered this broth uncovered until it reduced by a fifth and added cubed potatoes last, being sure not to cook them to mush. With a splash of seawater for salt, a pinch of pepper, and a squeeze of lime, it was done: the commonest food I had thrown together in years and yet, I knew, the men would lick the pot.

“Moonlight stew,” I said, forcing myself to speak confidently. “I don’t know how you have survived Conrad’s porridge. Mabbot told me the leftovers were mine to do with what I want. You’ll have to share bowls, though.”

The crew, holding the loose ends of the rope with their bare toes, leaned in with the tin bowls I had brought. A voice stopped them.

“Mabbot’s orders?” It was Asher speaking, a handsome man with cleanly shaven cheeks, whom I’d seen shouting at the lesser seamen when the bosun was below deck. Around his neck was the whistle that conferred upon him the rights of sheriff and taskmaster.

“We could wake her,” I said. “But I thought you were in charge of the graveyard. I was going to ask you if I could give some to the helmsman.” I waited, with my head lowered in an almost imperceptible kowtow.

“I suppose it’s all right,” he said imperiously, then smiled like a schoolboy when the men gave him a cheer. I took this opportunity to pass a flagon of straight rum to the man immediately to my right, who, after a quick swig, passed it on. By the rules of the ship, these men generally drank nothing stronger than Madeira wine and now slurped at the flagon as greedily as I had hoped. The only thing more soporific than a hearty stew is a splash of strong spirits to boot.

Utswali, whose face bears the mesmerizing patterns of ritual scars, clapped me by the belt and pulled me down to share his soup with him. It was overcast—the darkness so thick that I nearly gave up my plan entirely for fear of venturing alone into such a void. A swig of rum helped steel my nerves.

“I’m off to sleep after I give a bite to the man at the wheel. Good night, gentlemen,” I said.

The circle lifted their bowls to me in a heathen salute as I filled a tin cup and took it aft to the helmsman. He swallowed the contents in one gulp and burped “God bless ye.”

It was time. With the men thus clustered about the soup pot at the head, I would have the stern of the ship to myself for a few minutes.

I made my way to where Mabbot’s personal pinnace,
Deimos
, was swaying in the darkness. I trusted that the lookout had his eyes on the horizon, and besides, I could hardly see my own hands to work. I figured I had at least ten minutes of safety before the men started wandering the deck again.

I worked at loosening the knots of the davit lines, feeling my way around the stubborn knobs and bundles. What had seemed clear before was now a tangled mystery. I lost precious moments trying to be sure I was not, in fact, freeing one of the jiggermast stays, which would have brought the sail monkeys running when they heard the unmistakable sound of the canvas luffing, like a calf coughing for its mother.

My heart drummed so in my ears that I was sure I heard the thumping of Mabbot’s boots behind me, and I lost even more time turning to scan the shadows.

I climbed into the boat to feel my way around the davit blocks and stashed the waxed sack that contained my provisions and this journal securely under the foremost seat of the boat. By the insistence of the mist against my face, I guessed the
Rose
was moving at a fair clip.

The voice from the mast froze me with panic, until the actual words made their way into my ears: “All’s well.” An hour had passed already. The call would no doubt rouse the men back to work. Further, I was all too aware that the sun was racing the last length of its invisible track and that I had to be well and away before the morning crew stirred. I cursed the time I had lost sitting with them. It was probably near sunrise. I could not postpone this, for my ruse would not work again.

By the time I was confident of which lines were which, my arms shook with exertion. My mistake was to lean out over the water with one of the lines in my teeth to get a better grip on the block, for just then the
Rose
rolled and the pinnace dumped me out like a dumpling from a spoon. I was falling.

I saw, even as I dropped, the smug boat swaying but secure as an earring on the ship. Everything had the clarity usually reserved for nightmares. I had plenty of time to think as I plummeted:
My diversion was too good. Not one will see me fall.

Then the water smacked the wind from my lungs and left me croaking like a frog. I saw then how quickly indeed the
Rose
was moving. By the time I had recovered my breath, the ship was already a dozen yards away. I tried to swim after it but my clothes bound my shoulders and knees. I kicked off my boots and struggled to remove my shirt, an effort that took considerable concentration, only to find the ship had doubled its distance.

I swam as if the devil were after me, putting my face full in the chilly water as I had been taught, for speed. But when I lifted my eyes, I was no closer.

“Haaalp!” I screamed. “Overboard!”

Could I hope she was awake and scanning the water from the cabin windows above her bed? What did I look like, a scrap of lint on black cloth?

“Haaalp!”

The ship disappeared into the endless pitch.

My prayers came forth as bubbles as I swam. I lost my direction but kept swimming. I swam until my arms were burning logs and my lungs a tangle of mucus. The waves came out of the darkness and I crawled up those low hills only to sled down the other side again and again. As I swam, I pleaded to the Trinity and to the Mother and to all of the saints starting with Augustine and not forgetting even Saint Gertrude, who eases fear of mice, or Medardus, patron of toothaches.

The east became a smear of pink.

With daylight upon the water, I saw the untouched waste of the second day of creation. The waves calmed and revealed a lathed horizon in every direction. Not a ship, nor land, nor smoke, nor evidence of man. The sea was clean of hope. I had become a crumb on the vast expanse.

When my arms went numb and stopped moving of their own accord, I heard myself pleading with the
Rose
herself, spurned madam. I would give anything to hug her dry planks, to be stashed safely in my gloomy chamber, close and damp as a lover’s mouth. If allowed, I would make the
Rose
my permanent home. It was world enough for a humble life.

By the height of the sun in the sky, it was eight or eight-thirty. Mr. Apples might not see fit to open my chamber door to find me missing until ten or so. Even if they figured out what had happened and for mercy or vengeance decided to come about, they would be tacking against the wind, taking six times longer at least to retrace their course.

I was barely afloat then, using the last scraps of my energy to keep my lungs full and buoyant, kicking as little as needed to keep my face in the air.

The yawning void above me was matched by the depths below. Looking down, I felt vertigo, as if I were perched on the sharp lip of the moon. Indigo forms shifted in the fields beneath me like clouds herded by the wind. My eyes fixed on a pale dot no bigger to me than a beetle but unthinkably distant and therefore massive, directly below me. As I watched, it seemed to move and my eyes bugged with horror. If the thing came up, I would die of fright before it even touched me.

But was it moving or was it a trick of my brined brain? I resolved not to look down again and floated on my back. My ears filled with water, and this was strangely soothing.

A menu unfolded in my mind with the various modes of death and their relative degrees of agony listed beside. None of them cheap. Was dying of thirst less tortuous than dismemberment by shark?

As I paddled, something touched my outstretched hand, and I practically climbed out of the water shouting like a fool. But it was only a large mat of floating kelp. I pushed myself away before thinking better of it and returning to tear at the thick strands. I tied dozens of gas-filled bladders to my upper arms, around my torso, and stuffed more into my pants. Thus I was carried easily upon the surface and I no longer had to consciously control my breathing nor thrash with my feet. I hoped too that the dangling vegetation might fool passing sharks.

By now I was shivering almost constantly, though from fear, fatigue, or the cold I could not distinguish. My teeth chattered like tea service on a carriage. There were periodic pockets of warmer water, and though I tried to remain within them, they came and went without any regard to my efforts, and I only shivered harder at their passing.

The emptiness was vicious. Not a fish, not a bird. I had never seen such a lifeless expanse. I had heard of men who, stranded at sea, lost their minds long before their bodies gave out, and I hummed to myself in an attempt to fill the space around me. When I realized I had been humming the Mary Sweet song, I stopped and crossed myself twice.

I have never been particularly afraid of the dark, but as the sun dropped toward the horizon, my chest became a Pandora’s box of panic and outrage. I finally saw sunset for the blood warning it had always been.

To my surprise, the temperature of the water did not change considerably when the sun abandoned me. Though it was clear that I would probably die of the cold, it appeared this would be a gradual death indeed.

The stars splattered themselves about me. I was grateful for the lack of moon. What tricks lunar light might play on me, I didn’t care to find out.

With my belly to the sky, I crossed my arms over my chest, and still my shivering shook me like a marionette.

Thirst came on suddenly and with savage intensity. There was nothing to do but feel my throat curing like a strip of bacon.

A ship at sea is a cacophony of humming ropes, bells, swearing, hoarse hails, and wooden planks moaning against one another. Now the silence was deep and broken only by the occasional splash of water meeting water. I could even hear the crackle of the shooting stars as they struck the bowl of heaven.

Senseless emptiness.

I wanted to sleep, but thirst was drawing a woolen scarf down my throat inch by inch. My shivering stopped, and gradually I felt the tips of my fingers and toes going numb. Like some foolish prince in a children’s tale, I felt myself transforming into a gnarled log of driftwood. Even with my seaweed buoys, I was obliged to kick and paddle occasionally, and increasingly my limbs refused to comply.

Sunrise pulled me from the underworld. It was unspeakably lovely, and all of my readiness to die vanished in that riot of light. It lasted forever. It seemed its own reward for the sweat and hand-wringing that fill our days.

Only a few hours later my joy had sunk again and I screamed my curses at the sun, that naked Satan. My chest was red as a boiled lobster and my lips split with every howl.

I must have slept, because I woke with the sense that someone was watching me. My wife, Elizabeth, paddled at the bow of a long black boat that stretched out to the horizon. Her hair shone with a brightness I could not look at.

“Take me into your boat,” I begged.

Her dark wings sighed like the bellows of a great furnace. “Do you have the fare, Blueberry?”

“What is the fare?”

“Satiety,” she said as she paddled off. Water from her paddle washed over my face and I opened my eyes. Her wings became the fin of a leviathan, the longboat the body itself. The whale sighed again, watching me. Then sank and was gone.

My thoughts turned philosophic. If I was not serene, I was, at least, surrendered. As a soldier broken on the field lies waiting, I waited. I was bitter and offended at the thought of my death, but there is a kind of freedom in having choice ripped away. Nothing more could be expected of me than to have the Lord’s Prayer on my lips. How burdensome breathing was!

I took my place in a parade of flotsam: driftwood, glass floats, corncobs tossed by some lucky revelers. The red ribbon around the neck of a corked jug caught my eye and I clambered toward it; the seaweed jewelry I had bedecked myself with made actual swimming a ridiculous effort.

The cork had been hammered into the jug and sealed with pitch. It took me minutes to pry it out with my teeth. Beer, wine, or poison, I would drink it. Tipping the jug back, though, I felt something dry meet my lips. Inside was a scrap of leather, hammered thin, bearing a message scratched with a charred stick:

MAROONED

SEND HELP

28S 98W

My giggles grew and soon I was laughing like a madman, my sore body wracked with spasms. Complaining about land beneath his feet—the entitled son of a bitch didn’t know how lucky he was. I returned the message to its bottle and thumped the cork in place with my fist before flinging the thing over my shoulder.

The noon sun watched me try to drink my own urine by aiming the arc. A botched farce. The tears too were wasted in the brine.

The sharks, small but persistent, finally found me. I tried to lie still and closed my eyes. One of them tugged at my seaweed robes like a playful dog. Another sank its teeth into my shoulder, which was numb as wax. I would have prayed, but my tongue had withered in my mouth. A merciful cloud shaded my face, then slammed into me. The sharks scattered momentarily.