The Wish House and Other Stories (75 page)

‘I
never allow it in any command of mine,’ Baeticus spoke quietly. ‘The cowards give the order, and the captain bears the blame.’

Quabil looked at him keenly. Sulinor took advantage of the pause.

‘We were in harbour, you see. So our Greeks tumbled out and voted to stay where we were. It was my business to show them that the place was open to many winds, and that if it came on to blow we should drive ashore.’

‘Then I,’ broke in Quabil, with a large and formidable smile, ‘advised pushing on to Phenike, round the cape, only forty miles across the bay. My mind was that, if I could get her undergirt there, I might later – er – coax them out again on a fair wind, and hit Sicily. But the undergirting came first. She was beginning to talk too much – like me now.’

Sulinor chafed a wrist with his hand.

‘She was a hard-mouthed old water-bruiser in any sea,’ he murmured.

‘She could lie within six points of any wind,’ Quabil retorted, and hurried on. ‘What made Paul vote with those Greeks? He said we’d be sorry if we left harbour.’

‘Every passenger says that, if a bucketful comes aboard,’ Baeticus observed.

Sulinor refilled his cup, and looked at them over the brim, under brows as candid as a child’s, ere he set it down.

‘Not Paul. He did not know fear. He gave me a dose of my own medicine once. It was a morning watch coming down through the Islands. We had been talking about the cut of our topsail – he was right – it held too much lee wind – and then he went to wash before he prayed. I said to him: “You seem to have both ends and the bight of most things coiled down in your little head, Paul. If it’s a fair question, what
is
your trade ashore?” And he said: “I’ve been a man-hunter – Gods forgive me; and now that I think The God has forgiven me, I am man-hunting again.” Then he pulled his shirt over his head, and I saw his back. Did
you
ever see his back, Quabil?’

‘I expect I did – that last morning, when we all stripped; but I don’t remember.’

‘I
shan’t forget it! There was good, sound lictor’s work and criss-cross Jew scourgings like gratings; and a stab or two; and, besides those, old dry bites – when they get good hold and rugg you. That showed he must have dealt with the Beasts. So, whatever he’d done, he’d paid for. I was just wondering what he
had
done, when he said: “No; not your sort of man-hunting.” “It’s your own affair,” I said: “but I shouldn’t care to see Caesar with a back like that. I should hear the Beasts asking for me.” “I may that, too, some day,” he said, and began sluicing himself, and – then—What’s brought the girls out so early? Oh, I remember!’

There was music up the quay, and a wreathed shore-boat put forth full of Arlesian women. A long-snouted three-banker was hauling from a slip till her trumpets warned the benches to take hold. As they gave way, the
hrmph-hrmph
of the oars in the oar-ports reminded Sulinor, he said, of an elephant choosing his man in the Circus.

‘She has been here re-masting. They’ve no good rough-tree at Forum Julii,’ Quabil explained to Baeticus. ‘The girls are singing her out.’

The shallop ranged alongside her, and the banks held water, while a girl’s voice came across the clock-calm harbour-face:

‘Ah, would swift ships had never been about the seas to rove!

For then these eyes had never seen nor ever wept their love.

Over the ocean-rim he came – beyond that verge he passed,

And I who never knew his name must mourn him to the last!’

‘And you’d think they meant it,’ said Baeticus, half to himself.

‘That’s a pretty stick,’ was Quabil’s comment as the man-of-war opened the island athwart the harbour. ‘But she’s overmasted by ten foot. A trireme’s only a bird-cage.’

‘Luck of the Gods I’m not singing in one now,’ Sulinor muttered. They heard the yelp of a bank being speeded up to the short sea-stroke.

‘I wish there was some way to save mainmasts from racking.’ Baeticus looked up at his own, bangled with copper wire.

‘The more reason to undergirt, my son,’ said Quabil.
‘I
was going to undergirt that morning at Fairhaven. You remember, Sulinor? I’d given orders to overhaul the hawsers the night before. My fault! Never say “Tomorrow”. The Gods hear you. And then the wind came out of the south, mild as milk. All we had to do was to slip round the headland to Phenike – and be safe.’

Baeticus made some small motion, which Quabil noticed, for he stopped.

‘My father,’ the young man spread apologetic palms, ‘is not that lying wind the in-draught of Mount Ida? It comes up with the sun, but later—‘

‘You need not tell
me
! We rounded the cape, our decks like a fair (it was only half a day’s sail), and then, out of Ida’s bosom the full north-easter stamped on us! Run? What else? I needed a lee to clean up in. Clauda was a few miles down wind; but whether the old lady would bear up when she got there, I was not so sure.’

‘She did.’ Sulinor rubbed his wrists again. ‘We were towing our longboat half-full. I steered somewhat that day.’

‘What sail were you showing?’ Baeticus demanded.

‘Nothing – and twice too much at that. But she came round when Sulinor asked her, and we kept her jogging in the lee of the island. I said, didn’t I, that my girt-hawsers were on deck?’

Baeticus nodded. Quabil plunged into his campaign at long and large, telling every shift and device he had employed. ‘It was scanting daylight,’ he wound up, ‘but I daren’t slur the job. Then we streamed our boat alongside, baled her, sweated her up, and secured. You ought to have seen our decks!’

‘Panic?’ said Baeticus.

‘A little. But the whips were out early. The centurion – Julius – lent us his soldiers.’

‘How did your prisoners behave?’ the young man went on.

Sulinor answered him. ‘Even when man is being shipped to the Beasts, he does not like drowning in irons. They tried to rive the chain-staples out of her timbers.’

‘I got the main-yard on deck’ – this was Quabil. ‘That eased her a little. They stopped yelling after a while, didn’t they?’

‘They did,’ Sulinor replied. ‘Paul went down and told them there was no danger. And they believed him! Those scoundrels believed him! He asked me for the keys of the leg-bars to make them easier.
“I’ve
been through this sort of thing before,” he said, “but they are new to it down below. Give me the keys.” I told him there was no order for him to have any keys; and I recommended him to line his hold for a week in advance, because we were in the hands of the Gods. “And when are we ever out of them?” he asked. He looked at me like an old gull lounging just astern of one’s taffrail in a full gale.
You
know that eye, Spaniard?’

‘Well do I!’

‘By that time’ – Quabil took the story again – ‘we had drifted out of the lee of Clauda, and our one hope was to run for it and pray we weren’t pooped. None the less, I could have made Sicily with luck. As a gale I have known worse, but the wind never shifted a point, d’ye see? We were flogged along like a tired ox.’

‘Any sights?’ Baeticus asked.

‘For ten days not a blink.’

‘Nearer two weeks,’ Sulinor corrected. ‘We cleared the decks of everything except our ground-tackle, and put six hands at the tillers. She seemed to answer her helm – sometimes. Well, it kept
me
warm for one.’

‘How did your philosopher take it?’

‘Like the gull I spoke of. He was there, but outside it all.
You
never got on with him, Quabil?’

‘Confessed! I came to be afraid at last. It was not my office to show fear, but I was.
He
was fearless, although I knew that he knew the peril as well as I. When he saw that trying to – er – cheer me made me angry, he dropped it. Like a woman, again. You saw more of him, Mango?’

‘Much. When I was at the rudders he would hop up to the steerage, with the lower-deck ladders lifting and lunging a foot at a time, and the timbers groaning like men beneath the Beasts. We used to talk, hanging on till the roll jerked us into the scuppers. Then we’d begin again. What about? Oh! Kings and Cities and Gods and Caesar. He was sure he’d see Caesar. I told him I had noticed that people who
worried Those Up Above’ – Sulinor jerked his thumb towards the awning – ‘were mostly sent for in a hurry.’

‘Hadn’t you wit to see he never wanted you for yourself, but to get something out of you?’ Quabil snapped.

‘Most Jews are like that – and all Sidonians!’ Sulinor grinned. ‘But what
could
he have hoped to get from anyone? We were doomed men all. You said it, Red.’

‘Only when I was at my emptiest. Otherwise I
knew
that with any luck I could have fetched Sicily! But I broke – we broke. Yes, we got ready – you too – for the Wet Prayer.’

‘How does that run with you?’ Baeticus asked, for all men are curious concerning the bride-bed of Death.

‘With us of the River,’ Sulinor volunteered, ‘we say: “I sleep; presently I row again.”’

‘Ah! At our end of the world we cry: “Gods, judge me not as a god, but a man whom the Ocean has broken.’” Baeticus looked at Quabil, who answered, raising his cup: ‘We Sidonians say, “Mother of Carthage, I return my oar!” But it all comes to the one in the end.’ He wiped his beard, which gave Sulinor his chance to cut in.

‘Yes, we were on the edge of the Prayer when – do you remember, Quabil? –
he
clawed his way up the ladders and said: “No need to call on what isn’t there. My God sends me sure word that I shall see Caesar.
And
he has pledged me all your lives to boot. Listen! No man will be lost.” And Quabil said: “But what about my ship?’” Sulinor grinned again.

‘That’s true. I had forgotten the cursed passengers,’ Quabil confirmed. ‘But he spoke as though my
Eirene
were a fig-basket. “Oh, she’s bound to go ashore, somewhere,” he said, “but not a life will be lost. Take this from me, the Servant of the One God.” Mad! Mad as a magician on market-day!’

‘No,’ said Sulinor. ‘Madmen see smooth harbours and full meals. I have had to – soothe that sort.’

‘After all,’ said Quabil, ‘he was only saying what had been in my head for a long time. I had no way to judge our drift, but we likely might hit something somewhere. Then he went away to spread his cookhouse yarn among the crew. It did no harm, or I should have stopped him.’

Sulinor coughed, and drawled:

‘I don’t see anyone stopping Paul from what he fancied he ought to do. But it was curious that, on the change of watch, I—‘

‘No – I!’ said Quabil.

‘Make it so, then, Red, Between us, at any rate, we felt that the sea
had changed. There was a trip and a kick to her dance.
You
know, Spaniard. And then – I
will
say that, for a man half-dead, Quabil here did well.’

T’m a bosun-captain, and not ashamed of it. I went to get a cast of the lead. (Black dark and raining marlinspikes!) The first cast warned me, and I told Sulinor to clear all aft for anchoring by the stern. The next – shoaling like a slip-way – sent me back with all hands, and we dropped both bowers and spare and the stream.’

‘He’d have taken the kedge as well, but I stopped him,’ said Sulinor.

‘I had to stop
her
! They nearly jerked her stern out, but they held. And everywhere I could peer or hear were breakers, or the noise of tall seas against cliffs. We were trapped! But our people had been starved, soaked, and half-stunned for ten days, and now they were close to a beach. That was enough! They must land on the instant; and was I going to let them drown within reach of safety?
Was
there panic? I spoke to Julius, and his soldiers (give Rome her due!) schooled them till I could hear my orders again. But on the kiss-of-dawn some of the crew said that Sulinor had told them to lay out the kedge in the long-boat.’

‘I let ’em swing her out,’ Sulinor confessed. ‘I wanted ’em for warnings. But Paul told me his God had promised their lives to him along with ours, and any private sacrifice would spoil the luck. So, as soon as she touched water, I cut the rope before a man could get in. She was ashore – stove – in ten minutes.’

‘Could you make out where you were by then?’ Baeticus asked Quabil.

‘As soon as I saw the people on the beach – yes. They are my sort – a little removed. Phoenicians by blood. It was Malta –
one
day’s run from Syracuse, where I would have been safe! Yes, Malta and my wheat gruel. Good port-of-discharge, eh?’

They smiled, for Melita may mean ‘mash’ as well as ‘Malta’.

‘It puddled the sea all round us, while I was trying to get my bearings. But my lids were salt-gummed, and I hiccoughed like a drunkard.’

‘And drunk you most gloriously were, Red, half an hour later!’

‘Praise the Gods – and for once your pet Paul! That little man came to me on the fore-bitts, puffed like a pigeon, and pulled out a breastful of bread, and salt fish, and the wine – the good new wine. “Eat,” he said, “and make all your people eat, too. Nothing will come to them except another wetting. They won’t notice that, after they’re full. Don’t worry about
your
work either,” he said. “You
can’t
go
wrong today. You are promised to me.” And then he went off to Sulinor.’

‘He did. He came to me with bread and wine and bacon – good they were! But first he said words over them, and then rubbed his hands with his wet sleeves. I asked him if he were a magician. “God forbid!” he said. “I am so poor a soul that I flinch from touching dead pig.” As a Jew, he wouldn’t like pork, naturally. Was that before or after our people broke into the storeroom, Red?’

‘Had I time to wait on them?’ Quabil snorted. ‘I know they gutted my stores full-hand, and a double blessing of wine atop. But we all took that – deep. Now this is how we lay.’ Quabil smeared a ragged loop on the table with a wine-wet finger. ‘Reefs – see, my son – and overfalls to leeward here; something that loomed like a point of land on our right there; and, ahead, the blind gut of a bay with a Cyclops surf hammering it. How we had got in was a miracle. Beaching was our only chance, and meantime she was settling like a tired camel. Every foot I could lighten her meant that she’d take ground closer in at the last. I told Julius. He understood. “I’ll keep order,” he said. “Get the passengers to shift the wheat as long as you judge it’s safe.’”