To the Ends of the Earth (22 page)

I thought for a while.

“I have no official standing in this ship.”

“Oh, come, Mr Talbot!”

I thought again.

“I will make a statement and sign that.”

Captain Anderson looked sideways up at me from under his thick brows and nodded without saying
anything
. I drained my glass.

“You mentioned informants, Captain Anderson—”

But he was frowning at me.

“Did I, sir? I think not!”

“You asked Mr Summers—”

“Who replied there were none,” said Captain Anderson loudly. “None at all, Mr Talbot, not a man jack among them! Do you understand, sir? No one has come sneaking to me—no one! You can go, Hawkins!”

I set down my glass and Hawkins took it away. The captain watched him leave the stateroom, then turned to me again.

“Servants have ears, Mr Talbot!”

“Why certainly, sir! I am very sure my fellow Wheeler has.”

The captain smiled grimly.

“Wheeler! Oh yes indeed!
That
man must have ears and eyes all over him—”

“Well then, until the sad ceremony of this afternoon I shall return to my journal.”

“Ah, the journal. Do not forget to include in it, Mr
Talbot
, that whatever may be said of the passengers, as far as the people and my officers are concerned this is a
happy
ship!”

At three o'clock we were all assembled in the waist. There was a guard, composed of Oldmeadow's soldiers, with flintlocks, or whatever their ungainly weapons are called. Oldmeadow himself was in full dress and unblooded sword, as were the ship's officers. Even our young
gentlemen
wore their dirks and expressions of piety. We
passengers
were dressed as sombrely as possible. The seamen were drawn up by watches, and were as presentable as their varied garments permit. Portly Mr Brocklebank was erect but yellow and drawn from potations that would have reduced Mr Colley to a ghost. As I inspected the man I thought that Brocklebank would have gone through the whole of Colley's ordeal and fall with no more than a bellyache and a sore head. Such are the varied fabrics of the human tapestry that surrounds me! Our ladies, who must surely have had such an occasion in their minds when they fitted themselves for the voyage, were in mourning—even Brocklebank's two doxies, who supported him on either side. Mr Prettiman was present at this
superstitious ritual
by the side of Miss Granham, who had led him there. What is all his militant Atheism and Republicanism when pitted against this daughter of a
canon of Exeter Cathedral? I made a note as I saw him fretting and barely contained at her side, that
she
was the one of the two with whom I must speak and to whom I must convey the kind of delicate admonition I had intended for our notorious Freethinker!

You will observe that I have recovered somewhat from the effect of reading Colley's letter. A man cannot be
forever
brooding on what is past nor on the tenuous
connection
between his own unwitting conduct and someone else's deliberately criminal behaviour! Indeed, I have to own that this ceremonious naval occasion was one of great interest to me! One seldom attends a funeral in such, dare I call them, exotic surroundings! Not only was the
ceremony
strange, but all the time—or some of it at least—our actors conducted their dialogue in Tarpaulin language. You know how I delight in that! You will already have noted some particularly impenetrable specimens as, for instance, mention of a
badger bag
—does not Servius (I believe it was he) declare there are half a dozen cruxes in the
Aeneid
which will never be solved, either by
emendation
or inspiration or any method attempted by
scholarship
? Well then, I shall entertain you with a few more
naval cruxes
.

The ship's bell was struck, muffled. A party of sailors appeared, bearing the body on a plank and under the union flag. It was placed with its feet towards the
starboard
, or honourable side, by which admirals and bodies and suchlike rarities make their exits. It was a longer body than I had expected but have since been told that two of our few remaining cannon balls were attached to the feet. Captain Anderson, glittering with bullion, stood by it. I have also been told since, that he and all the other officers were much exercised as to the precise nature of the
ceremonies
to be observed when, as young Mr Taylor expressed it, “piping a sky pilot over the side”.

Almost all our sails were
clewed up
and we were what the
Marine Dictionary
calls, technically speaking—and when does it not?—
hove to
, which ought to mean we were stationary in the water. Yet the spirit of farce (speaking perfectly exquisite Tarpaulin) attended Colley to his end. No sooner was the plank laid on the deck than I heard Mr Summers mutter to Mr Deverel:

“Depend upon it, Deverel, without you aft the driver a handspan she will make a sternboard.”

Hardly had he said this when there came a heavy and rhythmical thudding from the ship's hull under water as if
Davey Jones
was serving notice or perhaps getting
hungry
. Deverel shouted orders of the
warrarroohoowasst
! variety, the seamen leapt, while Captain Anderson, a prayerbook clutched like a grenade, turned on Lieutenant Summers.

“Mr
Summers
! Will you have the sternpost out of her?”

Summers said nothing but the thudding ceased.
Captain
Anderson's tone sank to a grumble.

“The pintles are loose as a pensioner's teeth.”

Summers nodded in reply.

“I know it, sir. But until she's rehung—”

“The sooner we're off the wind the better. God curse that drunken superintendant!”

He stared moodily down at the union flag, then up at the sails which, as if willing to debate with him, boomed back. They could have done no better than the preceding dialogue. Was it not superb?

At last the captain glanced round him and positively started, as if seeing us for the first time. I wish I could say that he
started like a guilty thing upon a fearful summons
but he did not. He started like a man in the smallest degree remiss who has absentmindedly forgotten that he has a body to get rid of. He opened the book and grunted a sour invitation to us to pray—and so on. Certainly he
was anxious enough to get the thing over, for I have never heard a service read so fast. The ladies scarce had time to get out their handkerchiefs (tribute of a tear) and we
gentlemen
stared for a moment as usual into our beavers, but then, reminded that this unusual ceremony was too good to miss, all looked up again. I hoped that Oldmeadow's men would fire a volley but he has since told me that owing to some difference of opinion between the
Admiralty
and the War Office, they have neither flints nor powder. However, they presented arms in approximate unison and the officers flourished their swords. I
wonder
—was all this proper for a parson? I do not know, neither do they. A fife shrilled out and someone rattled on a muffled drum, a kind of overture, or postlude should I call it, or would
envoi
be a better word?

You will observe, my lord, that
Richard is himself again
—or shall we say that I have recovered from a period of fruitless and
perhaps
unwarranted regret?

And yet—at the last (when Captain Anderson's
grumbling
voice invited us to contemplate that time when there shall be no more sea) six men shrilled out a call on the bosun's pipe. Now, your lordship may never have heard these pipes so I must inform you that they have just as much music in them as the yowling of cats on heat! And yet and yet and
yet
! Their very harsh and shrill unmusicality, their burst of high sound leading to a long descent that died away through an uneasy and prolonged fluttering into silence, seemed to voice something beyond words, religion, philosophy. It was the simple voice of Life mourning Death.

I had scarcely time to feel a touch of complacency at the directness of my own emotions when the plank was lifted and tilted. The mortal remains of the Reverend Robert James Colley shot from under the union flag and entered the water with a single loud phut! as if he had been the
most experienced of divers and had made a habit of rehearsing his own funeral, so expertly was it done. Of course the cannon balls assisted. This subsidiary use of their mass was after all in keeping with their general nature. So the remains of Colley dropping
deeper than did ever plummet sound
were to be thought of as now finding the solid base of all. (At these necessarily ritualistic moments of life, if you cannot use the prayer book, have recourse to Shakespeare! Nothing else will do.)

Now you might think that there was then a moment or two of silent tribute before the mourners left the
churchyard
. Not a bit of it! Captain Anderson shut his book, the pipes shrilled again, this time with a kind of temporal urgency. Captain Anderson nodded to Lieutenant
Cumbershum
, who touched his hat and
roared
:

“Leeeoonnawwll!”

Our obedient vessel started to turn as she moved forward and lumbered clumsily towards her original course. The ceremonially ordered ranks broke up, the people climbed everywhere into the rigging to spread our full suit of sails and add the stun's'ls to them again. Captain Anderson marched off, grenade, I mean prayerbook in hand, back to his cabin, I suppose to make an entry in his journal. A young gentleman scrawled on the traverse board and all things were as they had been. I returned to my cabin to consider what statement I should write out and sign. It must be such as will cause his sister least pain. It shall be a
low fever
, as the captain wishes. I must conceal from him that I have already laid a trial of gunpowder to where your lordship may ignite it. God, what a world of conflict, of birth, death, procreation, betrothals, marriages for all I know, there is to be found in this extraordinary ship!

There! I think the ampersand gives a touch of
eccentricity
, does it not? None of your dates, or letters of the
alphabet
, or presumed
day of the voyage
! I might have headed this section “addenda” but that would have been dull—far too, too dull! For we have come to an end, there is nothing more to be said. I mean—there is, of course, there is the daily record, but my journal, I found on looking back through it, had insensibly turned to the record of a drama—Colley’s drama. Now the poor man’s drama is done and he stands there, how many miles down, on his cannon balls, alone, as Mr Coleridge says, all, all alone. It seems a different sort of
bathos
(your lordship, as Colley might say, will note the amusing “paranomasia”) to return to the small change of day to day with no drama in it, but there are yet some pages left between the rich bindings of your lordship’s gift to me, and I
have
tried to stretch the burial out, in the hope that what might be called
The Fall and Lamentable End of Robert James Colley together with a Brief Account of his Thalassian Obsequies
would extend right to the last page. All was of no avail. His was a real life and a real death and no more to be fitted into a given book than a misshapen foot into a given boot. Of course my journal will continue beyond this volume—but in a book obtained for me by Phillips from the purser and not to be locked. Which reminds me how trivial the explanation of men’s fear and silence concerning the purser proved to be. Phillips told me, for he is more open than Wheeler. All the officers, including the captain, owe the purser money! Phillips calls him
the pusser
.

Which reminds me again—I employed Phillips because
no matter how I shouted, I could not rouse Wheeler. He is being sought now.

He
was
being sought. Summers has just told me. The man has disappeared. He has fallen overboard. Wheeler! He has gone like a dream, with his puffs of white hair, and his shining baldness, his
sanctified
smile, his complete knowledge of everything that goes on in a ship, his
paregoric
, and his willingness to obtain for a gentleman
anything
in the wide, wide world, provided the gentleman pays for it! Wheeler, as the captain put it,
all over ears and eyes
! I shall miss the man, for I cannot hope for as great a share in the services of Phillips. Already I have had to pull off my own boots, though Summers, who was
present
in my cabin at the time, was good enough to help. Two deaths in only a few days!

“At least”, said I to Summers with meaning, “no one can accuse me of having a hand in
this
death, can they?”

He was too breathless to reply. He sat back on his heels, then stood up and watched me pull on my embroidered slippers.

“Life is a formless business, Summers. Literature is much amiss in forcing a form on it!”

“Not so, sir, for there are both death and birth aboard. Pat Roundabout—”

“Roundabout? I thought it was ‘Roustabout’!”

“You may use either indifferently. But she is delivered of a daughter to be named after the ship.”

“Poor, poor child! But that was the mooing I heard then, like Bessie when she broke her leg?”

“It was, sir. I go now to see how they do.”

So he left me, these blank pages still unfilled. News, then, news! What news? There
is
more to be recorded but germane to the captain, not Colley. It should have been fitted in much earlier—at Act Four or even Three. Now it must come limping after the drama, like the satyr play
after the tragic trilogy. It is not a
dénouement
so much as a pale illumination. Captain Anderson’s detestation of the clergy! You remember. Well now, perhaps, you and I
do
know all.

Hist
, as they say—let me bolt my door!

Well then—Deverel told me. He has begun to drink heavily—heavily that is in comparison with what he did before, since he has always been intemperate. It seems that Captain Anderson—fearful not only of my journal but also of the other passengers who
now
with the
exception
of steely Miss Granham believe “Poor Colley” was mistreated—Anderson, I say, rebuked the two men, Cumbershum and Deverel, savagely for their part in the affair. This meant little to Cumbershum, who is made of wood. But Deverel, by the laws of the service, is denied the satisfaction of a gentleman. He broods and drinks. Then last night, deep in drink, he came to my cabin and in the dark hours and a muttered, slurred voice gave me what he called necessary observations on the captain’s history for my journal. Yet he was not so drunk as to be unaware of danger. Picture us then, by the light of my candle, seated side by side on the bunk, Deverel
whispering
viciously into my ear as my head was inclined to his lips. There was, it appears, and there is, a noble family—not I believe more than distantly known to your
lordship
—and their land marches with the Deverels’. They, Summers would say, have used the privilege of their
position
and neglected its responsibilities. The father of the present young lord had in keeping a lady of great
sweetness
of disposition, much beauty, little understanding and, as it proved, some fertility. The use of privilege is sometimes expensive. Lord L——(this is perfect Richardson, is it not?) found himself in need of a fortune, and that instantly. The fortune was found but her family in a positively Wesleyan access of righteousness insisted
on the dismissal of the sweet lady, against whom nothing could be urged save lack of a few words spoke over her by a parson. Catastrophe threatened. The dangers of her position struck some sparks from the sweet lady, the
fortune
hung in the balance! At this moment, as Deverel whispered in my ear, Providence intervened and the incumbent of one of the three livings that lay in the
family’s
gift was killed in the hunting field! The heir’s tutor, a dull sort of fellow, accepted of the living and the sweet lady and what Deverel called her curst cargo together. The lord got his fortune, the lady a husband and the
Reverend
Anderson a living, a wife and an heir
gratis
. In due course the boy was sent to sea, where the casual interest of his real father was sufficient to elevate him in the service. But now the old lord is dead and the young one has no cause to love his bastard half-brother!

All this by an unsteady candle light, querulous remarks in his sleep from Mr Prettiman, with snores and farts from Mr Brocklebank in the other direction. Oh that cry from the deck above us—

“Eight bells and all’s well!”

Deverel, at this witching hour, put his arm about me with drunken familiarity and revealed why he had spoken so. This history was the
jest
he had meant to tell me. At
Sydney
Cove, or the Cape of Good Hope, should we put in there, Deverel intends—or the drink in him intends—to resign his commission, call the captain out and shoot him dead! “For”, said he in a louder voice and with his
shaking
right hand lifted, “I can knock a crow off a steeple with one barker!” Hugging and patting me and calling me his
good Edmund
he informed me I was to act for him when the time came; and if,
if
by some luck of the devil, he himself was taken off, why the information was to be put fully in my famous journal—

I had much ado to get him taken to his cabin without rousing the whole ship. But here is news indeed! So
that
is why a certain captain so detests a parson! It would surely be more reasonable in him to detest a lord! Yet there is no doubt about it. Anderson has been wronged by a lord—or by a parson—or by life—Good God! I do not care to find excuses for Anderson!

Nor do I care as much for Deverel as I did. It was a misjudgement on my part to esteem him. He, perhaps, illustrates the last decline of a noble family as Mr
Summers
might illustrate the original of one! My wits are all to seek. I found myself thinking that had I been so much the victim of a lord’s gallantry I would have become a
Jacobin!
I? Edmund Talbot?

It was then that I remembered my own half-formed intention to bring Zenobia and Robert James Colley together to rid myself of a possible embarrassment. It was so like Deverel’s
jest
I came near to detesting myself. When I realized how he and I had talked, and how he must have thought me like-minded with the “Noble
family
” my face grew hot with shame. Where will all this end?

However, one birth does not equal two deaths. There is a general dullness among us, for say what you will, a
burial
at sea, however frivolously I treat it, cannot be called a laughing matter. Nor will Wheeler’s disappearance lighten the air among the passengers.

Two days have passed since I diffidently forbore to ask Summers to help me on with my slippers! The officers have not been idle. Summers—as if this were a Company ship rather than a man of war—has determined we shall not have too much time left hanging on our hands. We have determined that the after end of the ship shall present the forrard end with a
play
! A
committee
has been formed
with the captain’s sanction
! This has thrown me will-he,
nill-he, into the company of Miss Granham! It has been an edifying experience. I found that this woman, this
handsome
, cultivated maiden lady, holds views which would freeze the blood of the average citizen in his veins! She does
literally
make no distinction between the uniform worn by our officers, the woad with which our unpolished ancestors were said to paint themselves and the tattooing rife in the South Seas and perhaps on the mainland of Australia! Worse—from the point of view of society—she, daughter of a canon, makes no distinction between the Indian’s Medicine Man, the Siberian Shaman, and a Popish priest in his vestments! When I expostulated that she bid fair to include our own clergy she would only admit them to be less offensive because they made
themselves
less readily distinguishable from other gentlemen. I was so staggered by this conversation I could make no reply to her and only discovered the reason for the awful candour with which she spoke when (before dinner in the passenger saloon) it was announced that she and Mr
Prettiman
are
officially
engaged! In the unexpected security of her
fiançailles
the lady feels free to say anything! But with what an eye she has seen us! I blush to remember the many things I have said in her presence which must have seemed like the childishness of the schoolroom.

However, the announcement has cheered everyone up. You may imagine the public felicitations and the private comments! I myself sincerely hope that Captain
Anderson
, gloomiest of Hymens, will marry them aboard so that we may have a complete collection of all the
ceremonies
that accompany the forked creature from the
cradle
to the grave. The pair seem attached—they have fallen in love
after their fashion
! Deverel introduced the only solemn note. He declared it was a great shame the man Colley had died, otherwise the knot might be tied there and then by a parson. At this, there was a general silence.
Miss Granham, who had furnished your humble servant with her views on priests in general might, I felt, have said nothing. But instead, she came out with a quite astonishing statement.

“He was a truly degraded man.”

“Come, ma’am,” said I, “
de mortuis
and all that! A single unlucky indulgence—The man was harmless enough!”

“Harmless,” cried Prettiman with a kind of bounce, “a priest harmless?”

“I was not referring to drink,” said Miss Granham in her steeliest voice, “but to vice in another form.”

“Come, ma’am—I cannot believe—as a lady you cannot—”

“
You
, sir,” cried Mr Prettiman, “
you
to doubt a lady’s word?”

“No, no! Of course not! Nothing—”

“Let it be, dear Mr Prettiman, I beg of you.”

“No, ma’am, I cannot let it go. Mr Talbot has seen fit to doubt your word and I will have an apology—”

“Why,” said I laughing, “you have it, ma’am,
unreservedly
! I never intended—”

“We learnt of his vicious habits accidentally,” said Mr Prettiman. “A priest! It was two sailors who were descending one of the rope ladders from the mast to the side of the vessel. Miss Granham and I—it was dark—we had retired to the shelter of that confusion of ropes at the foot of the ladder—”

“Chain, ratlines—Summers, enlighten us!”

“It is no matter, sir. You will remember, Miss Granham, we were discussing the inevitability of the process by which true liberty must lead to true equality and thence to—but that is no matter, neither. The sailors were unaware of our presence so that without meaning to, we heard all!”

“Smoking is bad enough, Mr Talbot, but at least
gentlemen
go no further!”

“My dear Miss Granham!”

“It is as savage a custom, sir, as any known among coloured peoples!”

Oldmeadow addressed her in tones of complete incredulity. “By Jove, ma’am—you cannot mean the
fellow
chewed tobacco!”

There was a roar of laughter from passengers and officers alike. Summers, who is not given to idle laughter, joined in.

“It is true,” said he, when there was less noise. “On one of my earlier visits I saw a large bunch of leaf tobacco hung from the deckhead. It was spoilt by mildew and I threw it overboard.”

“But Summers,” said I. “I saw no tobacco! And that kind of man—”

“I assure you, sir. It was before you visited him.”

“Nevertheless, I find it almost impossible to believe!”

“You shall have the facts,” said Prettiman with his usual choler. “Long study, a natural aptitude and a
necessary
habit of defence have made me expert in the
recollection
of casual speech, sir. You shall have the words the sailors spoke
as
they were spoken!”