To the Ends of the Earth (33 page)

Someone was shouting in my ear.

“This is no place for passengers! Get back while you may! Come now—make a run for it!” 

It was a voice with extraordinary authority. I did run, splashing through a few inches of pouring water as the deck came momentarily up to the horizontal, then
continued
to swing over in the other direction. My feet slipped and I should have performed a glissade which would have smashed my bones in the opposite scuppers had not the man running beside me grabbed my arm and fairly lifted me onto the stairs leading up to the afterdecks. Here he pushed me against the rail, made sure I was attached, then stood back.

“You were nearly gone, sir. Mr Talbot, I believe.”

He pulled off his sou’wester and shook out far more golden locks than a man ought to have. He was smaller than I. But then—so are most people! He smiled up at me with great cheerfulness as a volley of spray shot past us. I had an instant impression of blue eyes, pink cheeks and ruddy lips which seemed by their delicacy to have evaded the wildness of the weather and even the touch of the tropic sun.

“Thank you for your assistance. To tell the truth my strength has not yet come back. But you have the
advantage
of me.”

“Benét, sir. Lieutenant Benét with one ‘n’, and an acute accent on the second ‘e’.”

I was lifting my free hand to take his politely but as I did so he raised his head and his face changed to one of anger. His eyes seemed to sparkle as he stared forward and up into the rigging.

“Francis, you careless bugger! If I see you slip out of the strop to save yourself trouble I’ll have you at the grating!” He turned back to me. “They are worse than children, Mr Talbot, and will kill themselves heedlessly where you might well have done it through ignorance. You must allow me to conduct you to your cabin—no, no, Mr Talbot, it is no trouble—” 

“But you are employed about the ship!”

For answer he glanced up at the rigging again.

“Mr Willis! Although you are mastheaded you may consider yourself in charge of the work there and the men employed about it. Contrive not to lose the mainmast. Now, Mr Talbot—run for it!”

To my surprise I found myself obeying this young man with an alacrity which even Captain Anderson could not have produced in me. What is more I jumped into the lobby with a sense of what a jest it all was!

“That will be all, Wheeler. Mr Benét, pray be seated.”

“You are a sick man, sir. I am not sick in body, though perhaps in mind it is a different story. Grief fills my sails.

I worked that out and more of the like during the last dog. Oh, I remember now. It went

The lines were wrenched from me. They came all in one piece.

The feather is particularly felicitous, is it not?”

A painful suspicion grabbed at my heart.

“You are from
Alcyone
!”

“Where else in this waste of water?

Do you approve the alliteration? We shall meet again of course. But I am summoned to a conference with the first lieutenant in the hold.” 

He withdrew briskly. I shouted for Wheeler who as usual was near my hutch. He got me out of my oilskins.

“That will be all, Wheeler.”

A young man with golden locks, fair face and weeks of access to Miss Chumley! Now I experienced all that anguish which I had thought exaggerated by poets!

I came to myself again to hear unusual noises in the hutches on my side of the lobby. They came nearer and at last, with a knock on my door, revealed themselves to have been caused by the carpenter, Mr Gibbs, who had curious leather pads strapped to his knees.

“Sorry to trouble you, sir, but I have to follow the run of the planking.”

“What on earth for?”

Mr Gibbs scratched in his sandy hair. At a distance of about a yard I caught a whiff of strong drink.

“The fact is, sir—pardon!—they say she’s moving a bit which is what you’d expect seeing she’s so long in the tooth—”

“She’s ‘rendering like an old boot’.”

Mr Gibbs seemed gratified by my comprehension.

“Just so, sir. Just that and nothing more. Nothing to worry the passengers. It’s surprising when a gentleman like you as has been at sea no more than a dog watch knows what’s what. Mr Brocklebank when I did his cabin didn’t hardly understand what I was on about though he did give me a drink for my trouble—”

Mr Gibbs paused and eyed my bottle of brandy but I did not respond. He knelt down therefore and began to extract my two drawers from beneath my bunk which was not easy to do in that confined space.

“What the devil are you doing, Gibbs? Careful! Those are my shirts!”

“I won’t dirty your dunnage, sir, but I just has to get my hand—ah!”

“Can’t you hear me under there?” 

“I got to get my hand where they’re butted—”

His speech turned instantly into a kind of squeal. He backed out, put his fingers in his mouth and sucked them, rocking from side to side and moaning.

“What have you done, Gibbs?”

He went on rocking and moaning, one hand holding the other to his mouth.

“Brandy!”

“Help yourself if you must. Good God, man, you’ve gone sallow!”

Mr Gibbs did not trouble himself with the nicety of my tumbler. He took the bottle out of its hole in the shelf above my canvas washbasin, pulled the cork with his teeth and stuck the neck in his mouth. I believe before he took another breath he had swallowed a quarter of the bottle.

“You’ll be drunk as an alderman!”

He put the bottle back in its hole, flexed his fingers and blew on them.

“After all these years to be caught that way like a ’
prentice
! Oh yes, she’s what you might call rendering. Some might call it that, sir, and some might call it something else but it don’t matter, do it?”

“Is there danger?”

“Rendering. You know, sir, being took flat aback didn’t do her no good at all. Yes, she’s rendering. I wouldn’t really like to say what’s going on in her one way and another—though when a man has stuck a spike into every piece of timber in the ship and had his nose to the planking like a dog after a bitch, why he gets her in his head—”

“Her?”

“Her whole shape more than if she was his own wife and neater than was ever drawed out in the loft. All the movement and every bolt—”

“Our ship?”

Mr Gibbs sat back on his heels. 

“Our ship as ever is. And after all that, a man can do with a bleeding drink or two.”

“We’re in danger then!”

Mr Gibbs focused his eyes on me, frowning as if it were a great effort. He scratched again in his short, sandy hair and seemed to come to himself. His face cleared and he smiled. The smile was not convincing, however.

“Danger, Mr Talbot? Now don’t you go worrying! I’ve knowed ships you might think was falling apart and they come home to lie up snug as if they was all seasoned timber and twenty-one shillings to the guinea. Not but what—”

He paused and sucked his fingers again.

“Go on, man. Tell me!”

Mr Gibbs smiled in my direction but vaguely.

“She’s seasoned all right, sir. There isn’t a bit of wood where it matters as isn’t older than any man in the ship unless it might be Martin Davies, poor sod. The real
danger
you see, sir, is when you get a mix, like—seasoned and unseasoned. When I was only
that
high I come across a bud sticking out of a knee—must have been dead, of course, but how was I to know that? I told the chippy’s mate but he took no kind of notice of it beyond giving me a clip over the earhole.”

Mr Gibbs gave my depleted bottle of brandy a thoughtful look.

“I would advise against more brandy, Mr Gibbs.”

“Ah well. I wasn’t more than a nipper but I had
nightmares
about that bud. Once I woke up hollering, having fell out of the hammock and felt about in the dark for the chippy’s mate—Gilbert, he was called, had me calling him Mr Gilbert—I felt about in the dark and of course I could no more than reach the underside of the hammock to give it a prod. ‘What the fuck?’ shouts he. ‘Mr Gilbert,’ I hollers, ‘that there bud, it’s a twig!’ He leans out of his hammock and gives me a clip where he thought I was, only I wasn’t. 
‘I’ll give you twig, you bit of grommet,’ he says. ‘I don’t like it,’ I says, ‘it’s putting out a leaf.’ He gives me a clip and that one took me fair between wind and water. ‘A leaf is it now,’ he says. ‘You can call me when it puts out a
fucking
flower.’”

Mr Gibbs seemed to find the memory pleasant, for he was shaking his head and smiling.

“There was a ship once, Mr Gibbs, put out so much greenery you could hardly see it for leaves.”

“You’re having a little joke, sir.”

“There was a vine grew out of the mast and it made everybody drunk.”

“The drunk part don’t surprise me at all, sir. What port was she said to come from?”

“She was a Greek ship, I think. Mythological.”

“That them lot used unseasoned timber don’t surprise me; but in those parts they don’t hardly drink at all! You’ll excuse me, I know—”

The man helped himself to another drink from the bottle.

“Well really, Mr Gibbs!”

“A nice drop, sir. I don’t think I’ll be in any case to work when it bites. Ah! Here it comes!”

Mr Gibbs, still sitting back on his heels, shut his eyes and swayed against the movement of the ship. There was a pause while he said nothing and my new passion returned upon me.

“Mr Benét seems a very pleasant gentleman. I imagine he might well make himself very pleasant to a lady.”

“Very pleasant all round, sir, though his parents is hemmy-grease. He wrote some poetry for the
entertainment
, though it was so high and mighty I couldn’t
understand
a word of it. The brandy is really biting, sir. I’d be glad if you don’t let on to the first lieutenant. Yes, very pleasant Mr Benét is and, Lord, he might be the other 
side of the Cape and making fifteen knots and a nigger if he hadn’t been so sweet on the captain’s lady!”

“Doubtless he—what did you say?”

“There I go again. Never did know when enough was enough. Everybody knows, only they didn’t say it above a whisper seeing he’s an officer. Caught them the captain did, him on his knees and she not trying to get away very hard.”

“Lady Somerset! And I, I feared that—but how was this?”

Mr Gibbs scrambled unhandily to his feet. He lurched against this table-flap at which I am writing. His face that had been sallow was now red and sweating. This together with his sandy hair made it easy to imagine a spirituous conflagration inside him! He touched his forelock in a way which I am sure is unbecoming in an officer even though he be no more than warranted. He staggered again, opened the door and went flying
downhill
, if I can so express it, half-way across the lobby. He returned backwards, thumped the next cabin, then was to be heard
diminishingly
as he made his way below. Wheeler, who must have been
appliqué’d
against the plywood bulkhead which formed the wall of our hutches, shut the door for me, then opened it again and announced submissively that he would replace the drawers. There seemed no room for me in my own cabin.

“Wheeler. The ladies must have found the movement of
Alcyone
insupportable.”

“Yes, sir. I dare say, sir.”

“Miss—Miss Chumley must have spent the whole voyage out from England in her bunk.”

Wheeler said nothing. I was uncomfortably conscious of the impropriety of making such a remark to a servant. I tried again.

“Mr Benét—” 

The words stuck in my throat. I could by no means move towards the subject which was the source of such delight and anguish to me! Yet surely there was someone to whom I might confess—it seemed that “confess” was the word—that I was in love and desired nothing so much as to
talk
about the Beloved Object even though I could not talk
to
her!

“Wheeler—”

The man was looking submissively at a point below my chin. Now he lifted his eyes and seemed to examine each part of my face in turn curiously as if the face of a man was something new and strange to him.

“Very well, Wheeler. That will be all.”

For a moment or two the man continued to stare into my face, then seemed to “come to” with a slight start.

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“And another thing, Wheeler. You was a lucky dog, you know. It must have been a chance in a million! It would be proper to give thanks, you know.”

An extraordinary shudder shook the man from head to foot. He bent his head and got out of the door without looking at me again. Certainly there was no possibility of making a confidant of him—and somehow I could not feel that Charles Summers, so understanding in many ways, would be understanding in matters of the heart! It was Mr Benét or no one—Mr Benét who must surely know Miss Chumley—who was in love—who would
sympathize
—

How was I to follow him down into the hold?

Deverel!
Deverel my one-time friend whom sickness and love to say nothing of circumspection and dislike had driven from my mind! Deverel in irons! I would descend looking for him and come across Mr Benét and Charles Summers as it were accidently. I would open in that privacy not just the committee’s request but my opinion of 
it. I rebuked myself for my lack of consideration, my forgetfulness of a friend in need. Only my injuries and my “delayed concussion” could excuse it. Later, I would detach Benét from Charles and lead the conversation gently round to
Alcyone
and her ladies!

I made a lurching, zigzag progress down the ladders, rehearsing my various speeches as I went. The last time I had come that way I had been impelled, not to put too fine a point on it, by lust. Now that I was descending again through those shadowy, those heaving and creaking and dripping and trickling levels, I understood only too well the difference between that descent and this one. I felt the depth of my engagement! The penalty of a “level head”, of a politic and cautious habit of mind, is that the day of our first and last passion is delayed and all the stronger for being unexpected!

Picture me then descending to the low level of the
gun-room
which was yet the lightest of all. Those who make themselves the snuggest in a ship are the warrant officers and here they were using more light than all the becandled passengers together. No less than three lanterns swung from the deckhead. These three—not the cut bottles which the seamen fill with tallow but heavy objects of brass—exhibited a movement which you can find nowhere but in a ship unless it might be, of all places, the ballet. They swung exactly in time and to the same angle. Or rather—this is difficult to describe, I need Colley’s pen—they appeared to swing. It was the ship that moved, of course, while the lanterns by virtue of their loaded bases hung steady. It was unnatural and sickening. I looked away and found that by contrast with this brilliant illumination the corners of the gun-room were densely dark. Patches of shadow moved and changed as the lanterns
performed
their strange dance. As I came through the door the three presented me with their brass bottoms, then 
flipped back with a revealed glare of light, hovered for a moment or two, then swung back towards me again. It was enough to drive a man out of his wits, these lights dancing in a row. I had difficulty in keeping my head clear and the foul taste out of my mouth.

Mr Gibbs was nowhere to be seen. But opposite me on the other side of a fixed table sat Mr Askew, our gunner, with the ancient midshipman, Mr Davies, beside him. Mr Davies rested his wrinkled and veined hands on the table. His mouth was slightly open and he was staring at nothing. It was as if the constant inconstant lanterns with their flash then dark (huge shadows performing a similar movement over further parts of the great room) had kept him silent, and spellbound as one of M. Mesmer’s
subjects
—kept him with an empty head, waiting for some order which might never come.

Mr Askew looked at me bleakly. He had a glass before him. He did not seem glad to see me.

“And what might you want down here, sir? He’s turned in.”

He jerked his head towards a particularly dark corner. A sluglike object was suspended there from the deckhead by both ends.

“Mr Deverel—”

“That there, Mr Talbot, is George Gibbs. He come down here all of a twist saying you’d made him drink brandy to which his constitution is unused. He fairly tossed down his rum and was that far gone I had to sling his hammock and heave him into it. If we see him again any time between now and the middle you can call me Lady Jane.”

“I wish to visit Lieutenant Deverel.”

Mr Askew eyed me closely. Then he put down his glass and took out a short clay pipe. He fumbled about under the table. 

“Martin! What have you done with my prick?”

He nudged Mr Davies who rocked a little but did
nothing
otherwise. Mr Askew thrust his right hand into the midshipman’s left pocket.

“You thieving bastard, Martin!”

He drew out a long object wrapped in canvas and proceeded to cut a slice from the end of it. He crammed the slice into the bowl of the pipe, took a piece of “slow match” from a “half-bottle” and laid the glowing end on the tobacco. He puffed out a quantity of stinking smoke so that I gagged. I became aware that I was swaying between the doorposts, one hand on each in a way which must appear positively silly.