Sense And Sensibility And Sea Monsters (36 page)

For her part, Elinor’s satisfaction, as the
Rusted Nail
navigated south-easterly from the Station to the swampy Somersetshire inlet where
The Cleveland
was moored, was entirely positive. The waters were piloted smoothly by Mr. Benbow; the sea air was fresh and clean; and the only threat of attack was swiftly dispelled. This peril was from a school of monster-fish unlike anything Elinor had ever seen: a pack of floating eyeballs, each as big as a man’s head, all trailing long tentacles behind them like hideous jellyfish, and blinking terribly as they floated for several nautical miles behind the
Nail
. But a single perfectly aimed shot from Two-Eyed Scotty’s blunderbuss neatly pierced one of these ocular horrors, exploding it in the water and scattering the rest.

Each day at twilight, the crewmen drank their daily allotted jigger of bumboo, roasted a pig, and scared each other with terrifying tales of Dreadbeard. At the uttering of his name, all men present, blasphemous and God-denying mercenaries to a one, crossed themselves and looked skyward; Dreadbeard, captain of the
Jolly Murderess
, was the most infamous of pirates. While most gentlemen of fortune became so for a love of plunder; and some for a love of the seas and for killing the monsters that dwelt therein; Dreadbeard’s motivations (they whispered) were all for blood and the love of killing. His own piratical crewmen, pressed into service from among the crews of plundered frigates, trembled in fear of him, as they were keelhauled or dropped to dance the hempen jig at the
slightest insubordination—or, Dreadbeard’s favourite, thrown naked and screaming to the sharks, whom Dreadbeard purposefully kept trailing his ship by tossing bloody bits of flank steak off the stern at odd intervals. He was a madman; a murderer; and, it was whispered with particular meaning to Elinor and Marianne, he saw no distinction between fellow pirates and honest lubbers, men and women, boys and girls.

“If a creature has a coin, I’ll snatch it,” went the cold-eyed captain’s nefarious motto, which the crew of the
Rusted Nail
could recite in whispered unison. “If a creature walks a deck, I’ll kill it and eat its heart like salmagundi.”

Marianne listened to these tales with wide eyes, drinking in the stories of press-ganged swabs and men murdered in their bunks with a flushed cheek, barely disguising a frank delight that such a creature as Dreadbeard could live; Elinor, for her part, retained sense enough to be feared of such stories, but to remain skeptical of the sordid details. Mr. Palmer, Elinor noted with some curious interest, never spoke on the matter, lapsing into his customary black silence as his crewmen whispered their lurid tales of Dreadbeard, passing them around with their cups of bumboo, each night as the yellow sea-sun disappeared beneath the horizon line.

The second day brought them into the coast of Somerset, and in the forenoon of the third they arrived at the Palmers’ four-and-forty foot houseboat,
The Cleveland
. As they climbed aboard, the Dashwoods and their companions bade a hearty good-bye to the crew of the
Rusted Nail
; Mr. Benbow and his company hoisted anchor and set sail, top guns loaded and Jolly Roger fluttering, on hard lookout for Dreadbeard.

The Cleveland
consisted (rather marvelously) of a spacious, well-built two-story cottage, in the country style, with French windows and a charming verandah—all serving as the cabin atop a wide-decked river-ship; the ship was piloted, when it left its moorings, by a giant captain’s wheel which sat just beyond the front, or bow-ward, door of the cottage; through a trap at the stern connected to the holds, below. Marianne
climbed aboard the houseboat with a heart swelling with emotion from the consciousness of being only eighty miles from Pestilent Isle, and not thirty from Willoughby’s lair at Combe Magna; and before she had been five minutes in
The Cleveland
’s gently listing parlour, while the others were busily helping Charlotte to show her child to the ship’s maid, she quitted it again, went ashore and clambered atop a charming mud dune. Marianne’s eye, wandering over a wide tract of country to the southeast, could fondly rest on the farthest ridge of hills in the horizon, and fancy that from their summits Combe Magna might be seen.

In such moments of precious, invaluable misery, she rejoiced in tears of agony to be on
The Cleveland
; and as she returned by a different circuit to the houseboat, feeling all the happy privilege of country liberty, she resolved to spend almost every hour of every day while she remained with the Palmers, in the indulgence of such solitary rambles.

Marianne returned just in time to join the others as they quitted the house, on an excursion through its more immediate premises, and was promptly upbraided by her sister for the lack of sensible caution shown by such a venture.

“Is it your earnest desire to be murdered by rapacious pirates?” demanded Elinor. “After such a narrow escape from the destruction of Sub-Marine Station Beta, can you be so foolish as to risk your life by wandering so directly into harm’s way? Did you forget the tales of Dread-beard whispered by the men upon the
Nail
?”

Marianne was preparing to respond, when Mrs. Palmer broke in with her happy laugh.

“In fact,” said she, laughing lightly, “we are as safe here as possible, and can fear nothing in the surrounding country.”

In response to Elinor’s puzzled inquiries, Mr. Palmer gruffly related that, indeed, Dreadbeard was the fiercest of the pirates who plied these waters, and the one most feared as murderous and vengeful. But Palmer, or so he explained, had once served alongside him when both were but boys and sailors in His Majesty’s service, on a fire-serpent hunting mission
off the coast of Africa; Palmer, seeing where his shipmate had fallen into the sea, clambered out onto the bowsprit, leapt into the water, and rescued the other boy—just as he was about to be consumed bodily by a crocodile. If there was one code respected by Dreadbeard (and, as far as could be discerned, there was but the one) it was that a man who had saved his life would never fall under harm by his hands, and to the contrary would live under his protection.

And so, upon his retirement, Palmer had moored his houseboat here, off Somerset Shore, where others would be
most
afraid, but where he and Mrs. Palmer could live the most securely—safe not only from Dreadbeard but also from any other murdering freebooter, none of whom would dare to harm anyone whose safety was guaranteed by the most merciless of buccaneers.

“If I had never pulled that lunatic from the crocodile’s mouth, and Dreadbeard were to discover us here, having heaved anchor in the very bosom of his territory, he would slaughter us all and cook us for stew— but only after having his unsavory way with the women and torturing every man slowly, for the sheer pleasure of it,” Palmer concluded grimly.

“Ah!” laughed Mrs. Palmer. “How droll!”

“Wouldn’t it be a tremendous thing, though,” sighed Marianne rapturously, “To encounter such a character, if only for a moment …”

“Marianne!” said Elinor, aghast at her passionate-minded sister’s lack of sense.

Mr. Palmer shook his head gravely—dismissing with one gesture Marianne’s romantic enthusiasm for pirates and Elinor’s sensible fear of them. “There are worse things in the world than pirates,” he muttered cryptically, before descending down the trap. “Far worse indeed.”

The rest of the morning was easily whiled away, in lounging round the kitchen, examining the astonishing varieties of meat, from venison to vulture jerky that were kept aboard for shipside mess—and in visiting the below-deck, where Mr. Palmer was persuaded to show off the variety of mushrooms he cultivated in the dank of the ship’s hold.

The morning was fine and dry, and Marianne had not calculated for any change of weather during their stay at
The Cleveland
. With great surprise therefore, did she find herself prevented by a settled rain from going out again after dinner. She had depended on a twilight walk to the mud dune, and perhaps all over the grounds, and an evening merely cold or damp would not have deterred her from it; but a heavy and settled rain even
she
could not fancy dry or pleasant weather for walking.

Their party was small, and the hours passed quietly away. Mrs. Palmer had her child, and Mrs. Jennings her carpet-work, and they talked of the friends they had left behind. Elinor, however little concerned in it, joined in their discourse; and Marianne, who had the knack of finding her way in every house to the library, soon procured herself a satisfyingly gory book of shipwrecks.

Nothing was wanting on Mrs. Palmer’s side that could make them feel more welcome. Her kindness, recommended by so pretty a face, was engaging; her folly, though evident was not disgusting, because it was not conceited; and Elinor could have forgiven everything but her laugh.

Elinor had seen so little of Mr. Palmer, and in that little had seen so much variety in his address to her sister and herself, that she knew not what to expect to find him in his own family, aboard his own houseboat. She found him, however, perfectly the gentleman in his behaviour to all his visitors, and only occasionally rude to his wife and her mother. His only direct interaction with Elinor, however, came a few days after they had arrived, when he suddenly came upon her on the verandah, where she stood breathing in the marshy air, and asked with abruptness: “Are your relations still on Pestilent Isle?”

“Indeed; and awaiting our return, or so we understand.”

“So you
hope
.”

Of Edward, she now received intelligence from Colonel Brandon, who had been to Delaford to see him installed at the lake-side lighthouse. Treating her at once as the disinterested friend of Mr. Ferrars, and the kind of confidant of himself, Colonel Brandon talked to her a great deal
of the lighthouse at Delaford, described its deficiencies, and told her what he meant to do himself towards removing them. His behaviour in this, his open pleasure in meeting her after an absence of only ten days, his readiness to converse with her, and his deference for her opinion, and the way his tentacles danced gaily as they spoke, might very well justify Mrs. Jennings’s persuasion of his attachment. But such a notion had scarcely entered Elinor’s head. She knew the true object of the colonel’s affections.

On the fourth evening on
The Cleveland
, Marianne took yet another of her delightful twilight walks to the mud flat. She paused before a babbling brook where it ambled through the swamp, suddenly struck by how greatly it resembled the very stream where she had been assaulted by the giant octopus, before being so fortuitously rescued by the dashing Willoughby. Lost in the reflections such a sight engendered, pleasant and unbearable by turns, Marianne sank down to perch upon a log—which promptly spewed forth from a crag in its side a buzzing, furious swarm of mosquitoes. This humming devilish cloud soon entirely overwhelmed the flailing Marianne, who helplessly, uselessly, threw herself to the swampy ground and batted about as the insects covered every inch of her like a blanket. Again and again they sunk their tiny mandibles into her flesh, producing dozens upon dozens of deep stinging wounds—Marianne crying out all the while—until six or seven of the devilish buzzing things swarmed into her mouth and down her throat; the pain of which, combined with a single bite received directly in her eye, drove her past the point of consciousness.

Marianne was discovered, covered in suppurating sores, by a worried Elinor some three-quarters of an hour later, and put promptly into her bed. She woke the next morning with the swelling from the bites greatly decreased, but, alas, that major discomfort had been replaced by another—a set of the most violent symptoms. Prescriptions poured in from all quarters, and as usual, were all declined. Though heavy and feverish, with a pain in her limbs, and a cough, and a sore throat, headache, sweats, and vomiting, a
good night’s rest was to cure her entirely; and it was with difficulty that Elinor prevailed upon her to try one or two of the simplest of the remedies.

M
ARIANNE GOT UP
the next morning at her usual time; to every inquiry replied that she was better, and tried to prove herself so, by engaging in her customary employments. But a day spent shivering on a hammock with a book in her hand, which she was unable to read, or in lying, weary and languid, on a sofa, did not speak much in favour of her amendment. When at last she went early to bed, more and more indisposed, Colonel Brandon was only astonished at her sister’s composure, who, though attending and nursing Marianne the whole day, trusted to the certainty and efficacy of sleep, and felt no real alarm.

A very restless and feverish night, however, disappointed the expectation of both. When Marianne, after persisting in rising, confessed herself unable to sit up, and returned into the cottage and went voluntarily to her bed, Elinor was very ready to send for the Palmers’ apothecary, Mr. Harris.

He came on a swift boat from inland, examined his patient, and, once having heard of the mosquitoes’ bites, swiftly determined that Marianne had malaria.

Such a diagnosis gave instant alarm to Mrs. Palmer on the account of her baby. Mrs. Jennings, who was born and bred along a mosquito-plagued coast, had been inclined from the first to think Marianne’s complaint more serious than Elinor thought, now looked very grave on Mr. Harris’s report, and confirming Charlotte’s fears and caution, urged the necessity of her immediate removal with her infant. Her departure, therefore, was fixed on; and within an hour after Mr. Harris’s arrival, she set off,
with her little boy and his nurse, for the house of a near relation of Mr. Palmer’s, who lived a few miles on the other side of Bath; whither her husband promised, at her earnest entreaty, to join her in a day or two; and whither she was almost equally urgent with her mother to accompany her. Mrs. Jennings, however, with a kindness of heart which made Elinor really love her, declared her resolution of not stepping foot off
The Cleveland
as long as Marianne remained ill, and of endeavouring, by her own attentive care, to supply to her the place of the mother she had taken her from.