The Voyage of the Dolphin (12 page)

‘So Bridie, for no apparent reason, broke out of her cage, made her way up through the ship – climbing several sets of ladders, mind – forced her way into the wheelhouse and viciously attacked you and Doyle? Is that what you're telling me?'

‘That's about the height of it, yes “your Lordship”,' Harris said, examining his savaged hand. Beside him, the bosun dabbed at the bald strip of skin above his eye, marvelling at its coldness.

‘Then you managed to get away from her but she pursued you and you only escaped with your lives by climbing that mast. Is that correct?'

‘We were in fear of our lives, that's right, “your Lordship”.'

Fitzmaurice stood for a few moments in puzzled silence, then leant down and gathered the iguana up in his arms.

‘Don't worry, sweetheart, daddy's got you,' he crooned. He looked back up at the mast, but the two men were no longer paying attention to him or his pet. They were gazing around at darkness visible once more, jaundiced clouds and prickling stars, the fog flying away like smoke from a bonfire. And they were feeling the wind shivering through the rigging and hearing the first fat drops of rain spatter on the deck.

The storm arrived with an abrupt, pent-up fury, as though it had grown frustrated searching for them. No sooner had Harris and Doyle climbed down than the sky convulsed and thunder shook the
Dolphin
from stem to stern. Within seconds the rain had become an icy monsoon and a gale was roaring overhead. The ship began to pitch and roll on drumlin-sized waves. ‘Harris, reef that sail,' McGregor yelled, emerging from the hatchway. ‘Prepare to heave to.' He hurried towards where Crozier, Rafferty and Phoebe had joined Fitzmaurice. ‘Go below all of yis and tell the crew tae get up here,' he told them. ‘But stand by – I might need yis.'

Down in the mess, Fitzmaurice swaddled Bridie in a blanket and dandled her on his knee while Rafferty attempted to revive the embers of the fire. Crozier crashed around in the galley, eventually emerging with a pot of tea which he sloshed into cups and handed round along with pieces of hardtack. Above them they could hear, amid the howling of the storm, shouted commands and the bangs and clankings of what they imagined were hatches being secured and halyards tightened. Phoebe had retreated to her cabin.

‘Bit of a change in the weather,' Crozier observed.

‘What I want to know is, what the bloody hell they were doing with my iguana,' Fitzmaurice muttered. ‘She was in a fearful rage.'

He hugged her closer and she peeped up at him like a tiny beshawled crone. He rubbed her under the chin. Crozier choked slightly on a shard of biscuit.

‘I mean, what if she'd slipped overboard?' Fitzmaurice said.

‘Oh I'm fairly sure they can swim,' Rafferty said.

‘What?'

‘Iguanas. Good swimmers. I read it in Darwin.'

Fitzmaurice glared at him. He was frisking the lizard along its length.

‘My God, she's shaking like a leaf, she'd better have her hot water bottle. Here, Rafferty, take her while I fetch it.'

‘I will not.'

‘Crozier?'

‘I haven't finished my tea. Just set her down, she'll be fine.'

‘Oh, for Godsake.'

The ship pitched and Fitzmaurice was propelled into a stumbling run towards the galley. After he left the room the other two gripped their chairs and sat without speaking. The
Dolphin
was groaning deep in her timbers, and each plunge into the trough of a wave produced a jarring thump from the bow. The wind whistled in the pipes. The fire guttered.

‘Doyle's going to look very silly with only one eyebrow,' Crozier said.

‘I know,' said Rafferty. ‘And did you see the state of the first mate's finger?' He shuddered. ‘That really should be stitched. What on earth were they thinking?'

‘I told you what they were thinking. I just didn't believe they'd try it. But remember, Fitz mustn't find out. He'd go mad.'

Fitzmaurice leaned out of the galley. ‘Who'd go mad?'

‘Just saying, Doyle will be furious when he sees his missing eyebrow.'

‘Serves him bloody right,' Fitzmaurice sniffed. ‘They were up to something very rum, the pair of them, and I mean to find out what it was.'

He disappeared again. Overhead, the booming of the wind was like the erratic beat of a monstrous drum, counterpointed by the rumble of huge weights of water falling on the deck.

‘For Godsake, Crozier, be a good fellow and give us an auld prayer or something.'

Crozier was staring into the faint glow of the hearth.

‘Why don't
you
,' he said, ‘give us “an auld prayer”? Or something.'

‘Don't know any.'

‘Really?'

‘Not off by heart, no.'

‘Not even the Lord's Prayer?'

‘Of course. But we're not at that stage yet. I hope.'

Crozier flicked a crumb from the table into the fireplace.

‘Well, you know, if someone hadn't left the cabin door open –
again
-- and a certain dog hadn't eaten my books, I could've read to you from Psalms about the people that go down to the sea in ships and behold the Lord's wonders in the deep.'

‘You're not
still
moaning about that, are you?'

‘Not at all, simply stating a fact.'

‘Sounds like moaning.'

‘There's only one whinger around here.'

‘Really? And who would that be?'

‘You.'

‘Is that so?'

‘Yes. You're never done whingeing and whining.'

‘Really? About what exactly?'

Crozier could see the gleam of Rafferty's spectacles in his peripheral vision.

‘Nothing.'

‘Come on. What about?'

‘Nothing.'

‘Go on, spit it out.'

‘Oh, for Godsake,' he twisted around so he was square on. ‘You know what I'm talking about: about how the British Empire abused and oppressed you and stole all your potatoes, and how you'll never be free and nothing's fair.'

‘Sound like legitimate complaints to me.'

‘Says young Master Bourgeois of Phibsborough, studying medicine at Trinity College.'

‘Sorry, that's relevant how?'

‘Well, you don't appear to me to be overly oppressed.'

‘My personal circumstances have nothing to do with it, the problem lies with centuries of colonial exploitation.'

‘Ireland isn't a colony. How many British colonies have representatives in the English parliament?'

‘I don't want representation, I want an
Irish
parliament.'

‘That's nonsense. You know as well as I do that if England didn't exist… hadn't existed… it would be… would have been necessary for Ireland to invent… England.'

‘
What?
'

‘Never mind. Look, you took my hairbrush.'

‘You used my toothbrush, that's worse.'

‘That was an accident. You left the cabin door open and Bunion…'

‘It was my cabin in the first place and, now we're on the subject, I don't remember actually inviting you…'

‘Ha! I knew it! I knew you didn't want me in there.'

‘Why would I? You leave your things all over the place.'

‘You're the untidy one.'

‘
And
you snore.'

‘I do not snore.'

‘Yes you do, you sound like a f—ing grizzly bear.'

‘Take that back.' Crozier was on his feet, leaning on the table, his chin jutting.

‘No, I won't. And while we're at it, perhaps you should also try adjusting your attitude.' Rafferty pushed
his
chair back and stood up.

‘What's that supposed to mean?'

‘Well, let's face it, you're a bit holier-than-thou.'

‘I am not.'

‘Yes, you are, you're always acting as though you know best.'

‘Nonsense.
You're
the one that thinks he's always right and the rest of the world is wrong. You're incapable of seeing beyond your own opinion, just like every other armchair nationalist I've ever met.'

Rafferty was breathing noisily through his nose.

‘It's her, isn't it?' he hissed. ‘You're jealous.'

‘Who? Jealous of what?'

‘Phoebe. You're after her, admit it.'

Crozier stared.

‘What if I was? What's it to you, you don't stand a chance any…'

Rafferty struck the first blow, catching Crozier on the ear with a knuckley half-fist that hurt them both equally. Responding by instinct and through blurred lashes, Crozier landed a straight right to Rafferty's chin that sent the Dubliner reeling backwards. Bridie raced past him in the opposite direction. Rounding the table, Crozier met Rafferty as he bounced back off the wall and the pair of them, neither used to physical combat, began slapping and flailing at each other like outraged dowagers.

Their bout was not made any easier by the motion of the ship, which caused them to totter at speed first one way then the other, temporary advantage being given to whoever was at the top of the slope. Fighting words were exchanged. Cups were knocked off the table. Bridie darted back and forth, dodging out of the path of their stumbling feet, at one juncture halting proceedings with a raised palm while she discharged a startlingly loud sneeze. Fitzmaurice reappeared and, wedging himself in the galley doorway, watched as two grown men attempted to conduct a boxing match on a giant see-saw, refereed by a lizard in a hairy cowl. Before long the struggle to stay upright was lost and they collapsed to the floor in mid-grapple, rolling over and over in a flurry of cold sweat and snot.

‘What the hell?' Fitzmaurice reached down and detached Crozier, jerking him to his feet and pushing him away. He helped Rafferty up.

‘What do you think you're playing at, you bloody eejits? Don't you realise we're in the middle of some kind of hurricane?'

Crozier and Rafferty scowled at each other, the latter reattaching his mangled spectacles, which were dangling from one ear. Fitzmaurice scooped Bridie up and whisked her off to the galley; at the same time Phoebe entered by the main door, wrapped in many layers of Savage Newell, a rough woollen scarf around her neck.

‘What's been going on here, boys?'

‘He started it,' one grumbled.

‘Bloody didn't,' said the other.

Phoebe regarded them through one half-closed eye. They reconvened at the table and sat in silence, the pugilists probing various abrasions. Fitzmaurice returned, examining a large pocket watch.

‘Damn, it's stopped. I wonder what time it is.'

‘What does it matter?' Phoebe said.

‘It matters,' Fitzmaurice pouted, ‘to the meticulicity of my expedition log.'

‘
Meticulicity?
'

‘Yes. It's important that historical documents are accurate.'

‘Isn't that Sir Crispin's watch?'

Fitzmaurice looked momentarily shifty, then recovered himself.

‘It is. It's a memento. He would've wanted me to have it.'

‘It's very tasteful.'

‘Yes.' Fitzmaurice peered at the timepiece, which had on its dial a hand-painted depiction of a nymph and a satyr engaged in indistinct but unmistakable congress, and became teary. ‘Poor old Uncle, he always…'

The door to the mess was flung open and Harris stood there, glazed and dripping.

‘Skipper wants all hands on deck.'

Above, all was tumult: a reckless, destructive force broken loose from some great vault of inner space, warping the masts, ripping at the cordage, snatching away anything that wasn't lashed down and flinging it into the foam-streaked darkness. High banks of black water surged about the ship. Waves were thrashing against the bridge, the mid-deck awash in seething foam. With each pitch, the vessel toppled into enervating emptiness, each time meeting another solid wall of sea.

The four of them, having forced their way out of the snapping hatchway, stood clutching each other for support, blinded by the onslaught, unable to hear anything above the shrieking of the gale. Rain flooded in at the necklines of their Savage Newell oilskins, chilling their flesh. McGregor materialised out of the murk and put his mouth to Fitzmaurice's ear. Even at such proximity his words were swallowed by the wind.

‘I want you tae… go tae Kinsale… get me a ham sandwich,' he yelled. ‘And stop f—ing around.'

Fitzmaurice searched the skipper's eyes, which were pink with brine and gleaming with an odd light.

‘A…
ham
sandwich
?'

McGregor again pressed his lips close.

‘I want you tae brail up that sail with a Buntline hitch,' he screamed, ‘…stop it flogging around.'

He put a length of rope into Fitzmaurice's hand and pointed at the foremast. He seized Crozier by the shoulders and, leaning in led him to understand, after a hoarse and prolonged to-and-fro, that he and Rafferty were to relieve the twins in the engine room. Phoebe was sent down to man the bilge-pump.

Making their way through the ship, Crozier and Rafferty were flung from side to side, grasping at guardrails and doorhandles to steady themselves. Water had entered through a loose hatch and was rippling the length of the main alleyway like a miniature tidal wave. At the foot of the staircase to the lower deck they encountered the cabin boy cowering under a bench, babbling to himself. He barely noticed them as they passed. ‘Poor kid,' Crozier said, but Rafferty didn't hear him over the thunderous pummelling on the hull.

The ladder down to the engine room was slippery and, as Crozier stepped off it, Rafferty arrived behind him with a clang and rolled sideways across the iron-plated floor. The twins turned from the crimson glare of the boiler, the coal dust on their faces giving their eyes an unnatural whiteness, and seeing reinforcements, leant on their shovels and swabbed sweat from their foreheads. There was steam leaking from the cylinder housing and it gave the air a harsh metallic taste. In all the dark corners there was a sense of movement, the clattering motion of the piston rods stirring up the shadows like glar in a pond. Mikkel or Magnus took Crozier by the arm and led him to a cluster of dials affixed to a plate above the boiler. ‘This one,' he shouted, indicating with a sooty finger the needle on the steam gauge. ‘He must stay here. Not to go below. If he here, no good.' He was nodding – ‘Ja?' -- his expression half-crazed, sweat dropping like beads of solder from his oily beard. Crozier nodded back. The Norwegian pointed again at the left-hand side of the dial and made a throat-cutting sign.

 

Fitzmaurice's hands were shaking so much he could hardly hold the rope let alone tie a knot. The sea was at ankle-level on his rubber Savage Newells as it boiled through the scuppers, and the buffetings of the gale were like flurries of punches from an invisible assailant. He managed to get a grip of the wildly flapping sail but then couldn't differentiate in his mind between hitches: Buntline, Clove or Boom? Or Camel? He glanced back over his shoulder towards the glimmering light of the bridge hoping for guidance and noticed Bunion's head poking round the side of the hatch door. It was followed, after a struggle, by the rest of the mutt's bulbous body. Disoriented, his little ears flittering like pennants, he clumped out onto the deck and stood peering around. At the wheelhouse window McGregor spotted the dog and began to open and shut his mouth in Fitzmaurice's direction. ‘Bunion!' Fitzmaurice shouted but he knew it was futile. He let go of the yardarm and started towards the animal, keeping low and angled into the wind. Bunion shook himself and sat down, froth eddying around his haunches.

As he edged up the rolling slope, Fitzmaurice felt himself slipping into a dream-like state of detachment, his whole consciousness folded into a tiny chamber of calm within the rushing din of the gale. He looked up to check his progress, blinking away the rain, and in the next moment his legs were swept from under him and he was hurtling across the deck in a torrent of ice-cold sea. He landed with a smack against the bulwark and, hoisting himself upright, soaked to the skin, struggled to catch his breath. The remains of the wave that had caught him careered on towards the bow, the bulk of it having sloshed up and over the gunwale, taking the ship's dog with it over the side.

 

Down in the belly of the
Dolphin,
alone and in scant lamplight, Phoebe listened to the ocean's unfathomable threats through the timbers and contemplated for the first time the possibility of death. She had faced danger before – some of the stunts she had staged for the suffs had put her in the path of serious violence – but the odds this time were beginning to look grievous. The prospect struck her matter-of-factly. They would be just another vessel swallowed by the sea, another news item. She conjured a headline --
ARCTIC EXPEDITION SHIP FEARED LOST WITH ALL HANDS
– and pictured their photographs in a row before she remembered that she wasn't even officially on board, hadn't in fact officially existed for several years.

How long would it take for her name to emerge? Would her family miss her, she wondered.
Were
they missing her? She'd had only one letter from her mother since she left England, most of it a fret about her brother's travails with the beleaguered 9th Essex Battalion on the Western Front, the rest cool in tone and freighted with rebuke. Disappointment, sadness, that was all she had given them, after all they had done for her: the love, the happy home, the education. She'd wanted for nothing and had the best of everything. And she
was
grateful – she really was – for what she had received. But it wasn't enough. What they wanted in return for their gifts she hadn't been able to give: she could not keep from shaking the bars of her cage.

She realised that she had stopped pumping and the water in the well had risen again. It was higher than she had ever seen it. Black and glittering, and choppy from the lurching of the ship, it smelled of sulphur and urine and all manner of evil. It was fortunate that Doyle had repaired the pump's valve claque the previous day (using a particularly leathery leftover from one of Victoor's stews) because the bucket would have been useless against such volumes. She heaved on the handle, the downstroke requiring most of her weight and strength, and the mechanism gurgled and wheezed like a corrupted lung. Beyond the gleam of the lantern, running water ticked and popped all around the hold, heavier splashes hinting at bright little eyes in the darkness. She shivered. If
she
had created the world, she thought, she would probably have left a few things out — just off the top of her head: rats… smallpox… Brussels sprouts. She wondered whether a female creator would have made the universe a simpler or more complex place, then chided herself for patriarchal thinking.

Another jarring blow, as of the impact of a huge body throwing itself from a height, shuddered through the hull. She could hear the run-off sizzling through the scuppers even at this remove. Surely the
Dolphin
couldn't withstand seas of this size? How was the rudder even still attached? All it would take, she thought, was one big wave over the top, and that would be the end of everything. She saw all the faces of her past float by in close-up and then those that would join her on the spiral into the dark, and an ache of tenderness passed through her at one face in particular…

 

‘
For he commandeth and raiseth the stormy
wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof
,' Crozier intoned. ‘
They
mount up to the heavens, they go down again to
the depths.
'

‘What are you
saying?
' Rafferty shouted.

Crozier shook his head. He stepped back from the furnace and wiped sweat and grit from his brow. Were they in hell? The darkness, the heat, the noise. They had been cast down.
Their soul is melted because of trouble
. Where were the twins? Someone was needed to trim the coal, narrow the gap. His lower back ached and his lungs burned from the fumes. He glanced at the gauge which had fallen and listened to the systolic thump of the engine. Was it slowing? The ship heeled and both he and Rafferty staggered backwards.
They reel to and fro, and
stagger like drunken men, and are at their wit's
end
— As they picked themselves up, the ladder shook and one after the other, the twins dropped out of the ceiling. ‘Not to be going below!' Magnus or Mikkel yelled, pointing at the gauge and holding a shovel aloft.

 

As Fitzmaurice lay panting against the bulwark he could see, even through the deluge, the anguish on McGregor's face as it flickered in the wheelhouse window. Fitzmaurice himself was shocked, and a little sorry, about Bunion, but he had more pressing concerns: namely the rapid encroachment of hypothermic death. He began hauling himself with clawed hands along the gunwale. His limbs were numb and the muscles so tight across his chest he could barely breathe. His heartbeats, and he could hear each one, sounded like rocks dropped into a well. He felt hot and sleepy. He edged along, his legs almost beyond his control. Turning to assess the distance to the hatchway, he girded himself: these were his last reserves. The ship was listing. Sea was slopping over and running in torrents. He put a boot forward and tested for grip. Everything was slippery. And
hot
. So very hot. He squinted up at the masts. Like palm trees swaying in a tropical breeze. Was that the screeching of parakeets? And this sweet summer rain, so refreshing…

McGregor tightened the cord of his sou'wester and shouldered his way out of the wheelhouse. Towards the bottom of the stairs he held onto the rails and braced as the ship righted itself. Fitzmaurice had slumped to his knees with his eyes shut and appeared to be singing. Or asleep. McGregor stepped down, and as he did so, another crest curled above the starboard gunwale and tipped forward, launching a torrent across the deck. Such was its velocity most of the wave left the ship almost immediately, surging up and over the port side. Deposited, however, on the planking in its wake was a spinning object that McGregor at first took to be a large white fish. As it came to rest, he shook his head and swiped at his eyes with a gloved hand. The thing twitched, spasmed. He blinked. With a wriggling, writhing motion, it twisted itself abruptly into a standing position. He stared. ‘Bunion, you wee bugger,' he breathed. ‘Even Davy Jones disn'ae want ye.'

 

Between them, the skipper and the first mate managed to drag Fitzmaurice down to his cabin. On the way they met Crozier and Rafferty who had been dismissed by the twins. Rafferty took one look at Fitzmaurice – raving through chattering teeth about the heat and struggling to discard his clothes – and ordered a hot water bottle and sweet tea. Harris had sustained a head wound which required dressing. Bunion was helped into Crozier's bed (‘That really
is
a Stiff Dog') while Victoor was located – in the galley trying to bake bread – and, after he had brought tea, was sent down to relieve Phoebe at the pump.

On the bridge Doyle was locked in combat with the wheel, his face sick and exhausted above the ivory light of the binnacle. He turned as Crozier and McGregor entered, his missing eyebrow making him look oddly clown-like. Several panes of glass had been knocked out and the wind was driving spray through the gaps. The floor was wet. Crozier leant against a ledge that ran along the back wall and braced himself with a hand on either side.

The ocean seemed even more mountainous than before, the ascents steeper, the plunges more vertiginous. On the way up the view was of dark sky, low and starless, on the way down, of black water and explosions of flying spume. Huge volumes of sea were battering the wheelhouse and Crozier began to fear the whole structure would be washed away.
Then they cry unto the Lord in
their trouble and he bringeth them out of their distresses
.
What was the next part?
He maketh the storm
a calm, so that the waves thereof are still.
Some hope
.
He pictured Rafferty clutching his rosary beads on the floor of the engine room: making his peace with God, securing passage. What comfort, Crozier thought, to believe in the hereafter, in continuity, in perpetuity. To be able to put it beyond doubt. To make the leap of faith. He had several times heard people declaring that they were not afraid of dying. This, he decided, was rubbish. They were fooling themselves. Or lying. Or they just hadn't thought about it hard enough. Terror, surely, was the only rational response, there was no…

He became aware of a change in the motion of the ship. She was still moving forward but with a smoothness that was strange after the hours of wild pitching. Something else was different too: the gale had ceased its howling and there was an unearthly quiet that his ears were having difficulty comprehending. Was the storm spent? The two men in front of him were standing stock still, transfixed by the middle distance. And then he saw it, having to glance away and back again to be sure: an enormous ridge of sea higher than anything that had come before, building and swelling as it approached, the foam on its crest like a luminous white seam unravelling at speed along its length.