The Star of the Sea (16 page)

That was the only time she had ever struck him; maybe the only time she had ever struck anyone. He had stood like a statue while she slapped his face, bearing her blows without saying a word. She didn’t know how many times she must have slapped him. If she’d had a knife, she would have murdered him then. Gashed him in the throat like a slaughterman felling an ox.

It still shocked her to think about it. The violence of that moment.

Not the way she had slapped him. But the way he had let her.

Even under attack, there were rules.

T
HE
EIGHTH
DAY OF OUR
V
OYAGE: IN WHICH
THE
G
OOD-HEARTED
C
APTAIN MAKES A
DANGEROUS ACQUAINTANCE (
THOUGH HE DID NOT
K
NOW IT AT THE TIME, NOR UNTIL IT WAS TOO
L
ATE
).

Monday, 15 November, 1847
Eighteen days at sea remaining

L
ONG
: 26°53.11′W. L
AT
: 50°31.32′N. A
CTUAL
G
REENWICH
S
TANDARD
T
IME
: 00.57 a.m. (16 November). A
DJUSTED
S
HIP
T
IME
: 11.09 p.m. (15 November). W
IND
D
IR
. & S
PEED
: N.E. 47°. Force 5. S
EAS
: Tumultuous. H
EADING
: S.W. 225°. P
RECIPITATION
& R
EMARKS
: Big weather. Intermittent severe showers of sleet since dawn. This day we start into our second week out of Cove.

This dreadful day fourteen steerage passengers died, making a total of thirty-six since commenced this voyage, and were buried according to the rite of the sea. Four of those who expired today were infants; one of those had lived only twenty-one days on this earth. A fifteenth passenger, a poor fisherman of Leenaun whose brother fell asleep in Jesus yesterday, lost his reason and took his own life by drowning.

May God in His forgiveness have mercy upon their souls.

Eight suspected of Typhus in the hold this night. One suspected of Cholera.

A piglet was today stolen from the cages on the upperdeck. No doubt the First-Class passengers shall somehow survive the deprivation of his flesh. I have ordered all the beasts to be guarded from now on.

This evening I was walking near the fo’c’sle at dusk, oppressed by a heavy mood of melancholy. The deaths of any are hard to bear, but the deaths of the young, the little children especially, seem almost a ridicule of our lives. I confess it is difficult at such painful moments to believe that Evil does not govern the world.

I was attempting my prayers in contemplative silence, as is my preferred custom of years, when I came upon one of the steerage passengers, on his hands and knees by the First-Class gates, and most violently ill from the sea. This is a curious and noteworthy character, his behaviour oftentimes odd. Though badly afflicted with a deformed foot, he is fond of walking the ship by night, and is known among the men by the sobriquet of ‘The Ghost’.

On seeing me approach, the poor polliwog rose quickly and went to the rail, where he leaned over very far, and was soon in a state of substantial misery, saying good morning and good day again to his supper. I gave him a pint of freshwater I happened to have about me in a flask, and an observer might have imagined it were vintage champagne from his gratitude. A more pleasant fellow I never met in my life, though a little strange in his appearance, his hair particularly.

He said he was finding the voyage vexatious to his economy, never having been into open seas previously. His father had been a fisherman in County Galloway in Ireland but had never ventured far out from the land, the waters in that part being so abundant with fishes and crustaceans that he never had need. His father, said this amusing little fellow, was known in the locality as ‘
the fisherman who never went to sea
’. At that I gave a laugh. And as I laughed myself, he laughed too, and began to look more relieved in his countenance.

He and I conversed for a time about matters of the weather and such and such and he was agreeable, not taciturn at all, despite what the men say about him; speaking English in a most melodious and charming way. I asked if he would teach to me a couple of examples of his own language; for example ‘good morning, sir’, ‘I bid you good day, madam’, ‘land’ or ‘sea’ and various other ordinary things. And I would note them down in a phonetical way; for I had oftentimes wished to have a few phrases of that tongue, so as to be able to speak them to passengers as a little sign of friendship and thereby put them at more of their ease. ‘Awbashe’ and ‘murra’ are
the words for the sea. ‘Glumree’ means ‘the waves’. ‘Jee-ah gwitch’ is ‘good-day’. But they have two score and upward of words for land, depending on what sort of land is being spoken of.
¹
‘Tear’ is one of them (pronounced in a fashion so as to rhyme with ‘year’). ‘Tear mahurr’ is ‘my father’s land’. He took from the pocket of his greatcoat a handful of soil which he shewed me. It was a handful of his father’s land at Connermara. ‘Tear mahurr Connermawra’ I ventured, and he smiled. It was a matter of good luck to have carried it along with him. I said I thought it a pleasant custom and indeed hoped it might bring him fortune (though it were better he trusted to prayer than to fetish).

He then said that he had seen me before, on the decks at night, and had sometimes thought to approach and to greet me, but that I often seemed preoccupied by cumbersome thoughts. I explained that I was in the habit of walking the deck in the evening to say my prayers in a private manner, that we brethren of the Society of Friends place a weight on silent reflection and scriptural reading rather than ritual or ceremony. At that, he took from his greatcoat pocket a small leather-bound book which he shewd to me. Imagine my humility when I saw it was a little bible, so perfect and neat.

‘Perhaps Your Honour and meself might read together for a moment,’ he said.

At those words I own I was taken aback, in the first place that he was able to read at all, and in the second that he wished to read with myself; but how could I disagree? We sat down in a nook together and he quietly commenced to share with me from the First of Paul to the Corinthians, on the theme of Christian charity to our fellows. I was moved almost unto tears, he read so simply, and yet with such sincere devotion to the Word. Truly I felt the Spirit of Light come down. For those few moments there was such blessed peace between this stranger and I, with no shallow and worldly sense of myself being Captain and he frightened passenger; rather of both trusting to that same Admiral of Ages whose providence shall pilot all good pilgrims through the tempests of doubt. How preciously remarkable are the ways of the Saviour, that an unfortunate man so down on his luck might find nourishment and sustenance in the immutable verities of the scriptures. When we who have so much for which to be thankful so often want in gratitude to Our Father which gave it. How ashamed I was now of my weakness and self-pity, traits which in men are disgraceful.

‘William Swales’ is the name of this poor distorted man, so I discerned, for there it was inscribed, on the frontispiece of his bible.

I said I had never heard that surname on an Irishman before and enquired if it was characteristic of Connermara, his impoverished homeland now left far behind. He smiled gently and sadly and replied that it was not. The most frequently occurring names among the people there were ‘Costilloe’, ‘Flaherty’, ‘Halloran’ or ‘Keeley’. The name ‘Nee’ was well known in a place called Cashel; the name ‘Joyce’ in a townland called the Recess. ‘Tis Cashel for Nees and Recess for Joyces’ was a thing often said in that locality. Indeed, he smiled again, one could truthfully say that everyone in that little corner of the world had been a Nee or a Joyce at some time in his past. (All those appellations I had heard many times before, and have uttered the words of burial over scores of their bearers, alas.)

He told me an interesting thing: that the surname ‘Costilloe’ is derived from the Spanish noun ‘Castillo’, a castle. And that in the time of the Armada a great ship of Spain was lost and wrecked on the coast of Galloway County, many of the sailors remaining in
Ireland thereafter, but I do not know if it is true. In fact I think it is probably not, but a captivating yarn whether yea or nay. (Nevertheless it is conspicuous that a portion of those in steerage do indeed have the dusky features of the Iberian peoples and in their mode of thinking are as remote from our own English race as the Hottentot, Watutsi, Mohammedan or Chinee.)

The more we talked, the better friends we became; and at length he asked if he might speak to me candidly about a certain matter. I said I would be happy to assist him if I could. He said his aged father was extremely indisposed back at home in Galloway, and he hoped soon to raise the necessary to convey him from that place of destitution and into America. I said that was an admirable and Christian plan; respect for the aged conferring dignity on giver and receiver, the both. He then expressed a great interest in any paid work that might be available on board, such as cleaning the First-Class cabins or staterooms or any other duties of that nature. I said regretfully we had no need at present but would bear him in mind should any such opportunity arise.

At that he looked most crestfallen and said he truly was in need of an opportunity. He was loath to ask for charity and vowed he never should. He realised he had the shameful aspect of a beggar at this present hour, but he had been a proud man in former times (before his injury). He was accustomed to the company of fine people, he said, having once been a manservant to a baron in Dublin (a gentleman named Lord Nimmo, of whom I had not heard). No, he had not a testimonial on his person at present, his papers and pocketbook having been stolen by vagabonds at Liverpool, but he was sure his skills must be of use still. And now he came to the meat of his point.

If, for example, our esteemed passenger Lord David Merridith were to need assistance of that kind (or any other kind) on the voyage, perhaps I might be pleased to recommend him as an honest sort. No fine gentleman such as Lord Merridith should be without his personal man, he averred. Perhaps I might accentuate that he, Swales, was a scion of Connermara like Lord David himself; one who had always esteemed Lord Merridith’s family, particularly his late mother, a saint amongst women and greatly revered among the impoverished of that country. Would I please say to His Lordship, poor Swales asked me, that he was a man who had fallen on hard
times through injury, but was neither afraid of labour nor loyalty. Even that impairment which had disfigured his body had served only to strengthen his valuation for the gift of life. And now, by the grace of Almighty God, he had almost succeeded in overcoming it compleatly, and could walk and work like a luckier man. It would be the greatest privilege to assist Lord Merridith, he said. He believed he could do him very good service if only permitted that honour and boon. Merely to be close to him he would consider a blessing.