Silver (33 page)

As we came towards the coast at last, the trees ended and the land began to dip more steeply, but in a succession of shallow natural steps, which must have been carved by the wind as it carried off the soil from one layer of rock and laid it on the one adjacent. This rock was pure black, and inhospitable to all but the smallest plants, such as sea-campion and harebell; these had seeded in crevices, and now clung quivering as the wind blew across them.

When we reached the foot of the cliff we instantly recognised our sirens. The beach was narrow, and made of stones that had been rolled by the sea until they were almost perfectly circular. And
reclining on these stones was a colony of sea lions. Several were fully as large as the captain himself, with skin that was wrinkled and dark brown around their heads, but greenish as it became sleek on their bodies. The large males had whiskers that made them look very fierce, yet they seemed completely accepting of our approach; the females and especially their pups wore the most appealing expressions, with mouths set in a continuous smile, and eyes – large and clear – gazing into my own with remarkable kindliness.

When I say they were
reclining
, I hardly do justice to the posture of these creatures, since although each was forced by its lack of arms and legs to remain horizontal, each was nevertheless marvellously active with its flippers, and lumbered gleefully towards us as we approached.

‘I reckon they’ve not seen anything like us before,’ the captain said. He spoke quietly, since he did not want to alarm them, but was so obviously correct in his assessment, there was no question of us seeming a danger, even to the males. They trusted us completely, and sometimes even nuzzled us with their noses as we began walking among them. I could not help feeling this was one of the great privileges of my life, and wanted to praise God for granting it to me. I suspected the captain would think this excessive, so I confined myself to patting their tight flanks, and occasionally their heads, which always produced an eruption of barks and honks among the pups. Whether they thought we were very fine or very ridiculous, I did not want to decide.

The encounter gave us such a powerful sense of contentment, we continued strolling up and down the beach until we had greeted every family, and allowed every parent to introduce every child. And when we had finished our diplomacy, we still felt no appetite for a swift return to our own world and the troubles it contained. Without either of us needing to explain to the other what we were doing,
we sat on a rock with our baskets and sticks at our feet, and stared out to sea. We had no reason to do this, beyond watching the waves roll towards the shore, and feeling our minds turn into stones as smooth as those around us, and noticing how the sun kept its heat longer today than yesterday, and how the sea-birds fished, and other such important trifles.

When I had dallied in this way for long enough to wonder whether I might turn into a statue unless I moved, I suggested to the captain that we might like to swim and refresh ourselves. He looked at me sideways. When I asked him why, he told me (in a manner that was surprisingly awkward, considering our relative positions in the world) it was not because he feared any dangers in the water, but because
he could not swim
.

I told him I had heard this was common among sailors, which he did not deny, though neither of us liked to mention the reason or to think of Jordan Hands, and how he had proved the adage. But after sharing this embarrassment for a moment, and remaining beside him in silent contemplation of the waves, I nevertheless asked for his permission to go alone.

It was only when I had hobbled over the stones and reached the edge of the water that I noticed I had not seen any of the sea lions do as I was about to do. This, I told myself, was because their day was divided into separate activities, as a human community’s might be, and our arrival had coincided with their time for resting and not for hunting or playing. The minute I stripped off my shirt, however, and limped into the water, one of the larger pups – an animal about the same size as myself – decided I was proposing a game we might play together, and squirmed off his stones to join me.

It is a commonplace to say how creatures that are cumbersome on land are capable of great dexterity in their own element – and so it was with my companion. A body that had been heavy in rest
now became acrobatic in play, and a brain that had been sluggish or idle, now seemed very agile. My own body, by comparison, felt extremely
in
competent. This was because I was suddenly drawn into a powerful undertow, that ran where the waves drained back into the deep again, once they had broken on the beach.

Within a minute of entering the water I was at least thirty yards offshore, and doubted whether I had the strength to return. The change was as quick and shocking as that. I began to struggle hard, with no more result than a good deal of salt water flooding into my nose and panic squeezing my heart. For a moment, I really believed the price I would have to pay for my glimpse of paradise would be to see nothing more in this world. I began to say goodbye to my father and to Natty, and to revisit for the last time some of the places I had loved, such as the marshes behind the Hispaniola, which now appeared to me in vivid glimpses, tinged with their authentic blue light.

I supposed this was proof I must already be drowning – which was confirmed by what I could see of the captain. In a hazy distance that greatly diminished his height and bulk, he was running along the beach, flinging his arms about and shouting. This alarmed the sea lions so much, they began a formidable honking, which I heard in snatches whenever my head bobbed above the waves. He later told me he had been saying:
Let the current take you; don’t fight against it
– because he believed I would then be swept round the northern tip of the island, as my father had been in his coracle, and eventually come to a place where I might easily swim ashore. At the time, my confusion and fear were so great, I was not able to follow this sensible advice, but continued to pitch all my strength against the sea, although I knew it must soon drag me down.

By now I had entirely forgotten the fellow creature that had come with me into the water. But as my body began to tire, and a film
covered my mind, his shining head rode through the waves beside me. To judge by the friendliness of his expression, and the mewing noises he made, he found the game that I was playing to be highly entertaining – but at the same time sufficiently alarming (being accompanied by a great deal of splashing) to persuade him to keep at a respectful distance.

As my movements slowed, this fearfulness disappeared and he swam closer. I saw his eyelashes were beaded with water-drops, and heard his breath snuffling in his nose as his nostrils opened and closed. These, I genuinely believed, would be my last sights of the earth, apart from the dark-blue water into which I was sinking.

Except, as my descent began, and I lost my connection with everything in the light, my companion was no longer content merely to watch, but wanted to position himself underneath me. In fact, he had managed to stand
upright on his tail
in the water, with the whole length of his body pressed against my own. His skin felt slippery, but not so much that it was impossible for me to hold and grip him. I understood that he meant the next part of our game, which he had only this minute invented, should involve me putting my arms around him – which I did. He then gave another flick or shrug as he passed from the vertical to the horizontal, and I found that I was lying on top of him, with my head resting on his back, my body trailing along the ridge of his spine, and my arms joined round what I would have called his chest if he had been a man.

During the minute it took him to carry me back to shore, I was so preoccupied by coughing the ocean out from my lungs, and sucking the air into them, I was hardly able to notice anything about the journey. I do recall, however, that on the beach ahead of me the other pups were giving loud barks, which I took to be encouragement. Even more clearly, I remember the feeling of wonderment
rushing through me in successive waves, each of which had their own peculiar feeling of buoyancy.

I have called my rescuer a companion. Had he been such a thing in the usual sense, I should have thanked him with all my heart, and promised to do as much for him, should the need ever arise. As it was, no such things were possible. When he had brought me a few yards from dry land, where I could easily reach the stones again, he gave another quick shudder which released me into the shallows – while he withdrew into the deeper water. There was no particular look in the eyes, only the same blank friendliness for as long as the head stayed in sight, then the empty waves when it slid below. The action that to me meant life to my companion meant nothing – or nothing that I could understand. It was therefore not his but the captain’s chest I leaned against as soon as I was able, and into which I sobbed my relief and thanks.

The question is one of accommodation. How does a mind
create space
for so large a thing as the clear sight of death? It was not a question that troubled me while I lay on the beach, hauling the life back into my lungs. I was too exhausted for thinking. But as my breathing steadied, and the world became clear again, my thoughts began travelling in two different directions at once. One part searched for significance in what I had endured, and longed to know how it fed my affection for life – and especially my feelings about my father and Natty, who had appeared so vividly to me. Another part of me wanted to fix entirely on matters at hand – and for the time being, at least, this approach seemed best. The captain and I had work to do, and attention to detail was an essential part of it.

After we had retraced our steps to the
Nightingale
, the captain’s
first duty was to store our baskets and their contents in his cabin – in the same chest where he kept our pistols, which had a lock and key. Then he summoned me, along with Bo’sun Kirkby and other shipmates, to parley in the roundhouse. The history of my recent escapade did something to lift spirits, but once I had turned myself back from a fish to a man for the third or fourth time, the miracle of my rescue seemed commonplace; the unhappiness of losing both our treasure and Natty flooded over us once again.

I had never seen the men so listless and miserable as they were now. The cook, Mr Allan, whose talk generally bubbled like a boiling pot, stood by one of the windows and said nothing, but watched the rain-clouds that by now were sweeping across the wide grey mouth of the river. Mr Tickle even forgot to light his pipe, although he did sometimes pat his beard, as if fire might have broken out there by spontaneous combustion.

To give my friends the credit of seeming anxious as well as thwarted, I should also say they were preoccupied by thoughts of tomorrow, and how they would perform the roles allotted to them. Although the captain was very decisive in reminding everyone of their duties, we could not safely predict their result, nor entirely reconcile our wish to recover the silver with our wish to right the wrongs that had been done on the island. Maybe we would become barbarians ourselves, if we punished the barbarity of the pirates? Maybe we were no better than them, in wanting to gratify our desire for wealth?

Such questions, not always spoken aloud, passed between us as the day waned, and the afternoon downpour thickened into the customary evening storm, and candles were set on the table in the roundhouse that allowed us to look one another in the eye (or to avoid this sort of directness if we preferred). In several instances, and especially in the matter of how to divide the silver supposing
we obtained it, there was a great reluctance to reach firm conclusions; all our conversations ended in ‘We’ll see what happens’, and ‘It may not come to that’, and ‘God will decide’.

As night fell and I continued listening to my shipmates, I realised my own opinions about how our story would end were equally vague. When I gazed into the darkness I could see myself walking through the pine woods towards the stockade, see us approaching the outer wall, see Smirke rolling towards me – but after that, nothing. Not the dead men who lay around me, nor whether I might be among them. The question
were we liberators
? would be answered by our enemies and not by ourselves. The future depended on their reactions to us, not on the actions we took against them.

It was an uncomfortable truth, which I could not avoid remembering when the wind rose at last, and the rain eased, and the captain dismissed us with the opinion that we needed our beauty sleep, because we would be rising in just a few hours. He wished each of us to go directly to our cabin, but I pretended I had not understood and remained on deck for a while longer. I suppose our nightwatchman was at his usual place above me, gazing across the shining undergrouth – but as far as I was concerned, I was alone with my questions.

A few hours before, I had looked Death in the eye. A few hours hence – who could know? For the second time in the same day, my mind proved to be too small for the thoughts it contained, and I turned to look at the world instead: the river thrumming along our hull; the pine trees leaning away from the wind; and the moon buffeting the clouds, which seemed made of saffron and ebony.

All these things kept themselves to themselves, and had nothing to say to me. Nothing until, with no warning and no noise, a large bird broke out of the vegetation opposite, and floated directly over my head, turning down its face (which was like the face of a kitten)
to examine me before veering downriver towards the open sea. I thought it must be a species of owl, since the shape of the body and head resembled a barn owl, which I had often seen ghosting over the marshes at home. But this bird was larger, and shone bright silver, and seemed not in the least shy. In fact it turned to look at me again before it disappeared, like a person peering over their shoulder, and seemed to expect that I would immediately sprout wings myself and follow.