The Seven Gifts (7 page)

High up on the swaying yardarms snow and
sleet whistled out of the darkness to clutch at the seamen's frozen
fingers, as they fought to subdue flogging, ice-laden canvas. The
ship was overwhelmed. Sail had to be furled and lashed to the yards
before the screaming wind ripped the masts out of her. If it did,
that would be the end. To stay off the shore, she had to keep
sailing, somehow.

Great creaming waves hissed and tumbled out
of the night, roaring like thunder, to curl and break in torrents
on the heaving decks. The little ship staggered and struggled to
pull herself free of the tons of foam and spuming water which
roared the length of her decks, ripping away stanchions and lockers
as it went. The men working in the waist leapt for the lifelines,
hanging on grimly as each wave washed over the ship. As it poured
away, spent, through the open scuppers, the men would drop back to
the deck and heave away again on the braces, trying desperately to
trim the few remaining sails to the wind.

All through that long nightmare the seamen
worked without pause - trimming braces and sheets, heaving on
buntlines and securing frozen gaskets round sails that were as
stiff as wood. And all the while the wind screamed incessantly and
plucked at their hands and oilskins like a living creature. And the
sea plucked at the ship, flinging her here and there like a
cork.

Throughout it all the Captain stood alone on
the windswept poop, numb with tiredness. One arm was deep in the
pocket of his oilskin, the other hooked firmly round the weather
mizzen rigging. It was the second night of the storm and he had not
moved since it began, save to gesture orders to the Mate. It was
impossible to shout against the screaming wind. Impossible almost
to move. Impossible almost to breathe at times.

In twenty four hours, he estimated, they had
struggled perhaps half a mile from the coast, most of that at the
beginning of the first night, before the storm had reached its full
ferocity. Now, he thought they were losing ground. It was hopeless
to try and navigate in those conditions. Only his years of
experience enabled him to sense the ship's progress. And it was
that experience which had kept his ship and his men safe for the
last twenty four hours.

No-one could calculate which sails to set,
which course to steer; which waves to drive into, which to ease her
over gently. No formula could tell him when to push and when to
give a little. He had to feel, sense the delicate balance which
would keep the ship off the shore without smashing her up against
the inhuman forces of wind and sea.

He stood alone, apparently oblivious to the
wind that screamed and dragged the very breath from a man's mouth;
oblivious to the waves that reared out of the blackness and fell in
great swirling, foaming torrents onto the deck of his tiny ship;
seemed barely to notice the faint, drifting cry of a man dragged
bodily from his grip on the yardarm, blown away like a feather into
the inky nightmare around them.

While the Mate and his men fought in that
hellish wind to control flailing, murderous canvas high up the
masts, the Bosun's party struggled grimly on deck, up to their
armpits in swirling water, to handle braces and sheets and keep the
few remaining sails trimmed so that the little ship would sail. The
Captain stood apparently unaware; thinking, feeling and hoping.

Four men fought with the huge wheel, trying
to steer and trim the ship to just the right angle with the wind
and sea; tried to feel out that delicate, indefinable course that
just might take their ship and her crew to safety.

The Bosun remembered it all vividly, right
up to that big wave. There had seemed a strange lull in the wind
and he had looked up from the deck, into the blackness to windward.
But it was no longer black. Reaching almost to the truck of the
mainmast, barely a ship's length away, breaking, foaming, cascading
like a torrential waterfall, gleaming white with hundreds of tons
of boiling spray and spume and water, was a wave. The eternal
nightmare of every mariner, it was the chance meeting of perhaps a
dozen wave-trains, each crest piling atop the others till the
weight of water could no longer be sustained.

Momentum brought the top of it curling over
to fall on the game little ship. Masts, yards and sails splintered
and crashed to the deck. The pilothouse ripped from its coamings
and was smashed out through the bulwarks. Hatches and deckbeams
caved in under the sheer weight of water, and broken men floated
like dolls in the swirling foam. The Bosun was washed clear through
a gaping hole in the bulwark and never saw his ship again. His last
sight was the Captain still standing, unmoved, on the poop.

All this was still sharply etched in the
mind of the old Bosun as he lay in the darkness on what felt like a
sandy beach. Waves washed over him, but they were small ones -
expended remains of ocean growlers that had broken themselves
against the land elsewhere. Miraculously, he was somewhere
sheltered, somewhere hidden from the rocks that he knew fringed the
shore that had been to leeward when the ship went down. He lay
there in the darkness for a long time, spluttering occasionally as
a wave passed over his head, but unable to move. He gave thanks to
God for his deliverance then passed out.

When he awoke it was daylight. The clouds
still tore across the sky, but they were breaking up into patches
of blue. The wind was easing, and gradually shifting to blow off
the land. It was turning into a nice day.

The Bosun felt carefully all over his body
and was relieved to find that, apart from a few cuts and bruises,
he had escaped the wreck unharmed. He sat up gingerly and looked
around him. He was lying on a small stony beach between two
headlands, beyond which he could see just the wild sea, tumbling
away into the distance. He appeared to be in the lee of something.
An island perhaps?

Inshore of the beach was a scraggy cliff
tufted with sparse grass. That was all he could see. There was no
sign of any life, not even seabirds. All inland away from the
storm, he decided. Perhaps there were houses and people. With this
hope he pulled himself wearily to his feet and headed slowly
towards the cliff, looking for a pathway that would take him to the
top. He was too exhausted for rock-climbing.

The Bosun was no longer a young man, but
neither was this his first shipwreck. What he lacked in strength he
made up for in experience and resilience. In his own gentle way he
was a tough man; as so many gentle people are. He had learnt that
himself, over the many years he had spent in fo'c'sles of ships
trading far and wide for the merchants of the Snow Queen. The
Captain he had just watched go down, standing calmly on his
poopdeck, had been such a man - a type found so often at sea. A
gentle, unassuming man, with a backbone of steel; firm when he had
to be, and scrupulously fair. His first concern had always been his
ship; his second his men. For himself, he took nothing.

And now the Captain was dead, along with
most of his men. Drowned while carrying silks and satins home for
preening princes and courtiers. But these thoughts no longer
angered the Bosun. The contempt he had felt for such men in his
youth had turned, over the years, to pity. He and the Captain were
the lucky ones, he reflected, to have such clarity of thought as
only the sea could give. To see life in its simple forms,
uncluttered by all the confusion of riches and social graces; and
the obligations and blindness they create. The Captain had found
peace, and so, one day, would he.

The Bosun found himself on an island - a few
windswept acres of scrubby moorland, surrounded by the
white-flecked seas. Way in the distance he could just see the high
peaks of the mainland, as unattainable as Heaven itself. But he was
too old a hand to let the disappointment hurt. Shelter and food
were the immediate essentials, and he set out to explore his new
home: a home, possibly, for the rest of his life. To think of this
island as a home was a natural reaction to the old sailor. All his
life home had been the particular ship he had been on. In the
absence of his ship, this desolate little island would do. It
wouldn't occur to him to see it as a prison - that was the
city.

Dusk found the old Bosun comfortably
ensconced in a brushwood shelter, a rabbit roasting over the fire.
He leaned contentedly against the pile of firewood, whittling
himself a simple spear with the seaman's knife that had survived
with him. Beyond the crackling of the fire he could just hear the
muted roar of the surf. The sound of the sea made him feel more at
home. He was lucky. It seemed highly unlikely that anyone else had
survived. Why he should have done he didn't know. He simply
accepted it.

Later, with the rabbit reduced to bones that
he carefully preserved for making into fish-hooks, the Bosun drank
his fill at the nearby stream, then stretched out peacefully on a
bed of old leaves. To a shipwrecked mariner it was sheer luxury. He
closed his eyes and fell into the deep, untroubled sleep of a
child.

The next morning was clear and windless. As
he wandered the island searching for firewood, the Bosun could see
that they were no more than about three miles from the mainland.
This was a busy trade route and he might well see a passing ship
working its way through the straits on a quiet day. Hopeful of
possible rescue, he spent the day building a huge bonfire with
which he could signal a distant ship.

So the days passed for the Bosun; hunting
and fishing, making clothes from the skins of animals he caught,
and adding bit by bit to his bonfire. But he saw no ships.

He had been on the island about three weeks
by his reckoning when he first saw the skua. It was a Great Skua -
a big brown bird like an overgrown seagull, but with the cruel
hooked bill of an eagle. Whether it was looking for a place to
nest, or just over from the mainland hunting, he didn't know. He
saw it circling the small colony of seagulls that lived in a
stubbly patch of ground at the far end of the island. He often
visited the colony to collect a few eggs as a change from his usual
diet of fish and rabbits.

He stood and watched the skua for a while,
circling low down over the squabbling gulls. Then it dived,
disappearing behind the steep grassy bank separating him from the
gull colony. There was an almighty rumpus as gulls flew off in all
directions, squawking and screaming. The Bosun knew that skuas were
predatory birds, not above snatching the odd baby seagull, so he
dashed across to see what was happening.

As he topped the rise he could see the bulky
brown shape of the skua with its huge wings open, leaping up and
down stabbing and pummelling a small seagull. The gull lay on the
ground flapping its wings feebly, mewing like a cat. The Bosun ran
down the hill shouting and waving his arms. As he got nearer, he
stooped to pick up a stone and hurled it in the direction of the
marauder. It missed, but the bird was alerted. When it saw the
irate Bosun approaching at the run, arms flailing, it backed away
hissing, head low down like an angry goose. Then it opted for
discretion and took off, winging away in the direction of the
distant mainland.

When the Bosun reached the gull he saw that
it was badly injured and bleeding, so he picked it up and quickly
wrung its neck. Then he saw the egg nearby. The gull must have been
trying to protect it from the skua. He reached down and picked it
up to take home for his tea. But as he turned away, the sight of
the dead mother made him pause. She had given her life to save that
egg; it didn't seem right that he should simply take it home and
eat it, as the skua would have done. That made him little better
than the seagull's killer.

He felt the egg in his pocket; it was very
warm. The mother had obviously been sitting when the skua arrived.
It was right, he felt, that the baby should live, after its
mother's sacrifice. He wondered how near it was to hatching. He
thought for a moment, then came to a decision. Picking up the body
of the dead mother, he turned and walked rapidly back towards his
camp.

It would be something to do, he thought;
something more interesting than simply sitting around waiting to be
rescued. He had never heard of a seagull being reared from the egg,
but there was always a first time. All he had to do, he reasoned,
was keep it warm.

He soon reached his camp and entered the
lean-to hut he had built out of branches and driftwood. Dropping
the dead gull on the floor, he went straight to the smouldering
fire and stoked it up. He placed the still warm egg in a deep nest
of dry leaves close to the fire and covered it with more leaves and
earth. Then he sat back, wondering how long it took a seagull's egg
to hatch. Not that he knew when it had been laid, or the incubation
period for that matter. But at least it gave him something hopeful
to look forward to.

The egg stayed warm, and three days later it
started cracking. By the evening a baby seagull had hatched out,
and the Bosun was fussing around like an old grandmother. The
fluffy little chick crouched in its nest and yowled for food. But
the Bosun was ready.

On the offchance of the hatching being
successful, he had kept the head of the mother seagull, and he now
used it to feed the baby. The red spot on the beak, he knew from
past study, was a trigger that made the baby open its mouth for
food. The mother would then regurgitate half-digested fish into the
baby's open mouth. The Bosun did the same; chewing fish until it
was like paste, then poking it through the beak into the chick's
mouth with a little stick. And it worked.

The baby thrived; and it grew. The old Bosun
seemed to spend the better part of every day stuffing food down
that gaping, clamouring mouth. But he was happy; glad to have saved
the baby whose mother had died for it, and glad to have something
to do other than morosely watch for ships that never came. And
Charlie, as he had named it, was good company. He grew very fond of
him.