Moon Island (25 page)

Her eyes filled with tears at the mate’s words and she whispered, ‘I am glad I am found out, because I do not think I could have borne this life for many more days. What will happen to me, Matthias?’

He told her, ‘That is for the Captain to decide. But he is a good man, as you well know, and he will see that you come to no further harm.’

While he waited with his back turned and his eyes sternly fixed on the other astonished occupants of the forecastle, she hurried into some clothes without leaving the shelter of her bunk. Then she slipped upright and, seeing the size of her and the fragile curve of her arm and shoulder, Matthias wondered how he had ever been blind enough to have taken her for a man.

The Captain was waiting in his cabin. Shock and disbelief made his mien sterner than was usual and the poor sick girl began to shiver with fright as well as fever. ‘Sit down,’ he said, indicating the chair opposite his. ‘And you had better stay here, Mr Plant.’ Seeing her shivering Mr Gunnell took the rum bottle from its resting place and poured her a good measure. ‘Drink this. It is hardly the refreshment to offer to a lady, but I suppose you are used to it by this time.’

She took the tot and downed it, and they saw that her hands were well shaped, although badly roughened by the heavy work she had been doing for so many weeks.

‘What is your name?’

‘Sarah. Sarah Corder, sir.’

‘Well then, Sarah, you had better tell Mr Plant and myself what you are doing aboard my ship disguised as a green hand.’

‘I did my work as well as I could, sir, and as well as any of the others. Matthias … Mr Plant… will tell you that.’

She turned her face in supplication, looking to Matthias as her friend.

‘It’s true, Captain.’

‘I have no doubt. But you must tell us how you come to be here in the first place.’

Sarah took a deep breath. As she began her explanation they could see it was a relief to tell her story to listening ears that were at least half sympathetic.

It was a sad tale, but in the end the two mariners were not so very surprised by it. It was only Sarah’s bravery and determination that left them wondering.

She was a young woman of good family, from Portsmouth, Massachusetts. Her mother had died when she was a child, and she had been brought up by her elderly and somewhat strict father. When Sarah was eighteen she went to stay with some relatives of her mother’s who lived up at Portland on the sea coast of Maine. While there, she met a young man. He was a friend of a friend of the son of the family and had therefore been introduced into their circle without anyone having much knowledge of his history or connections. He was an attractive and lively young fellow, and his manners were plausible enough, so he was made welcome as such men often are when there is a need for dancing partners.

Sarah and Robert Hanner soon fell deeply in love. He begged Sarah to marry him, but he also explained that he was waiting to inherit some money from an ancient and infirm relative who lived in New York. The bequest was dependent on Robert appearing to remain just as he was, an attentive and dutiful bachelor with a care for his ailing great-aunt. Notwithstanding this, however, Robert claimed he could not live without his love. Even though they would not be able to marry just yet, for a matter of but a few weeks because it was certain that the great-aunt could not survive beyond that, he begged Sarah to accompany him when the time came for him to leave Maine and return to the city.

‘I know now that I was a fool,’ Sarah told her audience across the Captain’s polished table. ‘But I loved him and I believed what he told me with all my heart.’

The young couple ran away to New York together. No more was heard of the elderly relative. Robert Hanner did not marry Sarah, and within a matter of weeks he abandoned her and disappeared. Sarah’s father and family had cut her off, and she was alone in the world. She had a very little money of her own, and used it to try to find her lover. In the end she had hired a private detective, who traced Hanner to a shipping office where he had declared himself ready to go a-whaling.

The Captain and Matthias Plant gravely nodded their heads. In their time they had encountered many a blackguard who had taken to sea as a way of evading enemies and creditors too numerous or too troublesome to escape by a less demanding route.

‘And then?’ asked Captain Gunnell.

Her voice was soft when she answered but from the flash in her eyes neither of the two men was left in any doubt of the steel beneath Sarah’s tender skin. ‘Why, I determined that I would follow him to whichever end of the earth he had chosen. And when I found him I would make him marry me, because for all that I am a fool and a lost woman I have my strength and my wits to depend upon. God help me but I still love him, and I believe that we would make a good partnership.’ It was only at the last words that her voice wavered and the tears started to her eyes once more.

‘I am sorry for you,’ said the Captain gently.

Sarah had travelled homewards again from New York, but only as far as Nantucket, from where she was advised by the shipping office that Robert Hanner had embarked. ‘I thought that once I was in Nantucket it would be easy to find him, or to discover which ship he had signed to. But I had no idea there were so many whaling ships and such crowds of sailors, or that the life they lived would be so rough and dangerous. By this time I had no money left nor anywhere to go, and so it seemed that my only course and the sole hope of finding him was to disguise myself as a man and follow the whales, just as Robert was doing. Even when this ship set sail I thought somehow our paths would cross, but I see now that I was mistaken.’

Matthias at last understood why she always scanned the faces of the crews when the
Dolphin
lay near other whalers and the reason for the deep sadness that had recently overtaken her. It was no brother she had been searching for. ‘But this is a bitter, cruel life,’ she added piteously. ‘I had determined that when we reached the next port I would slip away and try to make my way home again. Then I fell ill and you discovered me.’

From the manner in which Captain Gunnell cleared his throat before speaking Matthias knew that he was as affected as he himself had been by Sarah Corder’s story. ‘A whaling ship is indeed no place for a lady,’ he declared. ‘And I must put you ashore as soon as I can. My plan is to put in to port to take on water and supplies, then I shall place you in the care of the Consul at Rio de Janeiro. It is my only course of action, Miss Corder.’

‘I understand,’ she softly answered.

It happened that there was an empty stateroom next to the Captain’s quarters. On his orders it was rapidly cleared, a pair of his own sheets were placed on the bed and the young woman was allowed to rest there in some measure of comfort and privacy. The officers of the
Dolphin
saw to it that she was provided with what nourishing food their limited supplies permitted and were rewarded by her almost hourly improvement.

When she was somewhat recovered she thanked them with proper warmth. ‘The officers of this ship are true gentlemen and I am in your debt for ever.’ She had a pretty smile and modest ways, and soon the other men were as much under her spell as Matthias Plant.

The weather changed within a day of Sarah’s secret being revealed. A strong north-easter helped the
Dolphin
to landfall at Fernando de Naronha, where much-needed water and fresh food were taken on board, then a course was set for the mainland. For most of this time Sarah kept to her cabin, but from time to time she was persuaded to take the air up on the deck. Her behaviour when she met her erstwhile forecastle companions was a picture of modest goodwill.

Sometimes when Matthias had a spare hour they would pass it together in talk, for the good mate had no doubt that she was lonely. He learned much about her childhood and the friends and companions of those early days, but she would almost never speak of Robert Hanner. Yet notwithstanding her reticence, Matthias did not believe he was ever out of her mind for more than a minute at a time. He would come upon her when she was staring out to sea or down at the ruined skin of her hands, and she would be so lost in thought that his voice would startle her. He knew then that she was thinking of her betrayer and most likely still planning how she might discover him again. Matthias felt a dreadful weight of fear and anxiety on her behalf, yet there was determination and an iron will in Sarah, as strong as or stronger than any man’s, that in some way only heightened her very womanliness.

At Rio de Janeiro the Captain sent word to the Consul, and he soon received assurance that that gentleman and his wife would receive Sarah into their own home until such time as a passage home could be arranged for her.

The day came for her to leave the
Dolphin
. Her share of the oil taken amounted to some sixty dollars and this money the Captain arranged for her to have, together with a similar sum collected for her by the other officers and men, so she was at least not quite penniless. For his own part Matthias gave her his gold watch, and she put her arm around his neck and kissed him and sobbed that he had been kinder to her than any father or brother.

One of the boat steerers who was of similar height had given Sarah a white cotton shirt with a wide blue collar, and a pair of black broadcloth sailor’s pants, which fell smoothly to cover her low shoes. She had a broad-brimmed straw hat, tied with a black ribbon. She did not look like a lady of fashion, but she was neat and pretty in her makeshift clothes. The crew had gathered on the deck to see her off, and as the boat that was to row her ashore was lowered she shook the hand of each of them and whispered her thanks. Matthias waited until the last, except for Captain Gunnell.

When it came to his turn to say farewell he took her small hand between both of his great calloused ones. ‘Sarah, if you do find who you are searching for, what do you truly believe will happen?’

‘I will make him marry me.’

‘And if he will not? Or cannot?’

Her wide eyes never wavered. Matthias felt a shiver touch him like the first intimation of a fever. ‘Then I will kill him like a venomous snake.’ Her hand slid from his grasp and she was smiling. ‘Good Matthias, you must not be anxious on my behalf. I am truly grateful for your kindness and I will always be your friend. Goodbye.’

So saying, she kissed his cheek for the last time and turned to Captain Gunnell at the taff-rail.

The men stood together watching as the boat carried her towards the shore.

‘Do you imagine that she will find him?’ Matthias musingly asked.

‘I am certain she will.’

‘And then?’

‘I would not be in that man’s shoes for any money.’

News of the woman who had disguised herself in men’s clothing and sailed on the
Dolphin
had travelled fast. A crowd of people were gathered on the dock, all waiting to catch a glimpse of her. Sarah stepped out on to dry land, handed up by her boatman, and the press of people immediately closed around her.

She turned once to look back at the old
Dolphin
. She took off her straw hat and waved it, the black ribbons fluttering on the crowded dock.

That was the last glimpse they had of her.

May yawned and scratched the mosquito bites on her ankle. She liked books and she was quite interested in the sad and gory whaling stories, because of the remote connection with the history of Moon Island, but she couldn’t imagine that Doone would have read much of them by choice. From the plain sections of the diary she knew Doone didn’t exactly have broad literary or historical interests. Maybe Hannah Fennymore had offered to lend her the books and Doone had accepted out of politeness. Perhaps there had been no other suitable book to hand, so Doone had used the
Dolphin
book as the base for her code.

May flipped idly to the front and scanned the introductory pages that she hadn’t bothered to read before. She learned that the book’s narrative was based on Matthias Plant’s journals. The old whaleman had continued writing his journal for the rest of the Sarah Corder voyage and the three voyages that followed it, until he retired at last in 1848. Finally, in old age he set up home with his wife in the village of Wellfleet on Cape Cod, to be near one of his married daughters. After his death his books and papers were stored with the rest of his keepsakes in a tin trunk, and there they stayed until they were disinterred in 1902 by his grandson.

This young man read the whaling diaries with the utmost fascination and passed them to a college friend who worked as an editor for a New York firm of publishers. So it happened that more than fifty years after they were written, the story told in Matthias’s memoirs was published by Charles Scribner & Sons under the tide
Voyages of the Dolphin
. When she looked at the front of the book again, May saw that Hannah’s book was the second reprint, dated 1909. Hannah must have owned the book for a long time. Or perhaps, May thought, she had found it on the second-hand shelves of the Bookhouse, Pittsharbor’s only bookshop. Her name was written on the blank first page in blue ink, but there was no date.

‘May?’ She looked up. John was calling her from the foot of the stairs. ‘Are you coming to watch the fireworks?’

May swung her legs off the bed, noticing as she always did the ugly way the flesh quivered inside the loop of her shorts legs. ‘Yeah, okay.’

John and May walked down the Pittsharbor road together. They hadn’t even waited for Ivy to materialise, knowing that she would have her own plans for the evening.

‘It’s a wonderful evening. We’re lucky,’ John said. Darkness was settling over the bluff and the first stars pricked the sky.

May wrestled with what she should say. The image of her father on the sofa with Leonie Beam remained obstinately stuck in her head. It jarred like a misshapen jigsaw piece with other graphic sexual images. A scene from a video she had seen long ago with Ivy. Ivy herself with Lucas. The old people, Elizabeth and Aaron long ago in the Captain’s House. Doone’s numbered words conjuring thick passion out of the pages of an old-fashioned book. They were images she didn’t want to see but they attacked all her senses. Sex was everywhere, roping around everyone but herself.