To the Ends of the Earth (34 page)

“Kindly tell me where Lieutenant Deverel is, Mr Askew, and I will withdraw from these premises since I do not seem to be welcome in them.”

Mr Askew continued to puff without saying anything. Suddenly the lights and shadows, the insane, balletic dance of the lanterns, which was a counter-image of the ship’s uneasy motion in the sea, took me by the head and throat and stomach and knees.

“If you don’t mind—”

I staggered forward, grabbed the table and fell onto the bench. The evil smoke curled round me and I felt the sweat start out on my brow.

“Not feeling quite the thing are you, Mr Talbot? Not quite so much the ‘lord’ these days?”

This was too much. I swallowed whatever was in my mouth.

“I may not be a peer, Mr Askew, but I am
commissioned
to serve His Majesty in ways you probably never heard of and would not understand. You will oblige me by paying my position the respect due to it from a warrant officer of the Navy, however senior.”

Mr Askew continued to puff. Under the deckhead the 
smoke now hung, bellying as if a chimney needed
cleaning
. His face had turned a dusky red, but not, I think, as Mr Gibbs’s had done from his potations. One puff of smoke rolled insolently near my face. When he spoke his voice was cracked and tremulous.

“It’s ’ardly—hardly lovable, is it?”

“Lovable?
Lovable
?
”

“The carry-on. The swaying about. The hoity-toity. Since we have got so far and there is no one to hear.”

I glanced significantly at Mr Davies, still silent, still bound by the spell. Mr Askew removed his pipe and wiped the stem with a yellow and horny thumb.

“You see I liked the way you took those blows to the head and come up all set to be a hero. To do what you could, I mean. He’ll be a man one day, I said to myself, if someone don’t kill him. Only you don’t know nothing, do you? In the entertainment when Joss read that bit about ‘Lord Talbot’ if you’d stood up and bowed with your hand on your heart and a smile on your face we’d have took our corn from your hand as sweet as a miller’s
donkey
. Only you puckered up like. Oh, I know it’s hard when you’re young—”

“I am more than—”

“You’re young, you see. There’s officers and warrant officers and petty officers and seamen of this and that— captains of tops and captains of heads and the poor bloody seamen what don’t know sugar from shit as they say in Pompey—”

“I will not allow this to continue in front of a witness! Make a private conversation of it, sir, and I shall know how to answer you!”

“Witness? Who? Martin? Bless you, Martin won’t give trouble. Why—listen!”

He nudged the old man, then leaned sideways and spoke close to his ear. 

“Sing, Martin! Good Martin!”

He paused. The lanterns danced, there were water noises and the creak and stretch of timber.

“Sing, Martin.”

With a reedy, quavering voice, the old man sang: “Down to the river in the time of the day—”

It was the beginning and the end of his song. It was the endless end, over and over again.

“He’s the real bottom of the barrel, isn’t he? I suppose he might have rose to be a lieutenant if he’d had luck or a shove up the bum from an admiral. But it don’t matter to him now, does it? Not what he was or might have become. He’s had it all and gone home, sir. He don’t hear us, isn’t here.”

“I—I don’t know what to say.”

“Brings a man up against it, don’t it? Less trouble to stop a round shot in the guts if you ask me, though now there’s no war to speak of except this Yankee sideshow there’ll be a sight too many people living a sight too long if you ask me—which you have not done. But he’s no trouble. Hasn’t dirtied himself yet as far as I know. All right, Martin lad. Stow it.”

My jaw must have dropped. I gulped my own spittle.

“Does everybody—”

“Bless you, no, sir. It’s living and dying in ships. He’s gone home like I said. The likes of me, well we’re hard as the ship’s bitts never having known what it is to have parents and all that gear. But Martin, you see, he could remember his parents so he has in a manner of speaking a home to go home to, I don’t really mean go home but when he’s like this it’s the same really.”

To my own astonishment I fell into a spontaneous fit of swearing. When I had done I had my face in my hands and my elbows on the table.

“Well I never, Mr Talbot. And you living among lords 
even if you wasn’t one of them. I’ve heard of being drunk as a lord but for really strong language—well there!”

“I ought to tell you, Mr Askew, that Mr Gibbs obtained strong liquor from Mr Brocklebank, then more from me without an offer on my part.”

“Ah. I did wonder if he was at it again.”

“As you know, Mr Askew, I have been—unwell. Now I am on my feet again I have come down to offer Mr Deverel such comfort and assistance as I may without prejudice to the ‘customs of the sea service’. Where is he?”

There was a long pause while Mr Askew continued to add to the fog lying under the deckhead.

“A good question, sir. I know you’ve been keeping your bunk but I’m surprised you never heard seeing he was such a friend of yours.”

“‘Was’? He cannot be dead!”

“I have to tell you, sir, that Mr Deverel is aboard of
Alcyone
and like as not by this time he’s the other side of the Cape.”

“But I thought—”

“You thought he’d put his head in a noose? It’s what comes of not knowing the rules where you are, sir. I don’t mean the articles of war. I mean what goes on. Ever since that lieutenant got himself hanged by that captain—I
forget
the names—in the West Indies it was—captains, to say nothing of their lordships, has been walking on tiptoe. So there’s the rules of the service and there’s what goes on in ships. It was an exchange, you see.”

“Lieutenant Benét!”

“Now you see, don’t you, sir?”

“It cannot be within the competence of mere captains to decide such things!”

“Mere captains? The saying is, once a ship’s out of sight of land a captain can do anything he likes to you but get you in the family way. Sir Henry wouldn’t want to put 
Mr Benét out of the ship just like that, seeing as he’s a watch-keeping officer. No, sir, he arranged an exchange so nobody would have cause to complain. Very anxious to keep officers happy are their lordships. So Captain Anderson having an unhappy officer to dispose of and Sir Henry having an officer to get rid of as was too bleeding happy, we lost Dashing Jack who was very eager to go and we got Lieutenant Benét who knows far more about everything than a gentleman properly should. They say Captain Anderson can’t do enough for him. It’s Mr Benét’s idea to bring the chronometers up one deck
whatever
Mr Summers thinks and damn the rating. Very
popular
Mr Benét is with officers, old ladies, children and midshipmen—let alone powder-burnt old horses in charge of the ship’s artillery.”

“Deverel! Dashing Jack Deverel! Handsome Jack!”

“Just so, sir. If you ask me, Sir Henry is out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

“Ladies! He must have—oh no. Lady Somerset is a fine woman and it is true his inclination does lie that way—”

Mr Askew laughed.

“If you’re thinking of Jack Deverel it’s any port in a storm with him from a lord’s lady to a little girl what still bowls her hoop.”

“A girl! A young girl! Deverel!”

“He’s a rare one is Jack.”

I found I had got to my feet. A lantern was poised perilously near my head.

“So you see, sir, it isn’t any use looking down here for Mr Deverel, or anywhere else unless you can swim faster than she can sail. Come to that, there’s one or two of us aboard would be very glad to get news of Dashing Jack so as they might have some hope one day of being able to ask for their money back.”

“Mr Benét!” 

“You’ll find him with Mr Summers forrard there, aft of the mainmast and the after pump. God knows what they’ll do to poor George if they want advice on how much she is moving and send for the chippy. You done him proper, Mr Talbot.”

“As I told you, Mr Askew, he did himself.”

It was dark indeed. On my previous visit to these nether regions I had been afforded the services of young Mr Taylor as my conductor. Moreover in those days we had been gliding gently through the waters of the tropics. Now I was in a frantic ship, and feeling my way. Two yards beyond the lights of the gun-room and there might never have been in my world such things as light and direction. By the time I had gone five yards I was more thoroughly lost than I had ever been in a covert! All I knew was sound, much creaking and gritty straining, but there were sounds of water as if I were crouched on a gravel beach! I waited for a while in the hope that my eyes by habituation would adjust to the darkness and was thus only too able to listen to our predicament! Yet my assessment could not be professional and ignorance turned what had been a natural apprehension into something like terror. There were what might be called the subsidiary splashes, drips and trickles of the water in our hold but these were not the worst. There was more beyond and below these local
suggestions
. I put my hand in a wetness and water poured over my fingers from where I could not discover and fell where I knew not. My one hand laid hold of a wooden edge, the other, some fabric stuff. My walkway was no more than a plank wide, so I crouched and waited until the awful, cold fact that underscored our lumbering progress forced itself into my understanding. There was a rhythm down here which was not to be heard on deck or in my cabin among the wilder sounds of wind and sea. It was a pouring sound which commenced at some distance—somewhere towards the bow, for what that was worth and if I had the right
direction. I stopped in my tracks and crouched, using ears instead of eyes. There approached me with increasing speed all the complicated sounds of a breaking wave! It passed by me yet without an increase in the local wetness. It went on, back the way I had come, diminishing in
volume
so that once more I could hear near me the dripping and trickling of random water. Then, as my right hand tightened instinctively on wood to take my weight, water poured across under me from one side of the ship to the other—and here, returning, was the first wave, surely
travelling
the ship’s length! I began to claw round, fell over rope and knelt for a moment on what might be sacking. Then there was blessed light above me as if the deck had opened and the sky looked in.

A voice spoke. “Who is it?”

“It is I!”

But then I could see I was looking up at the purser’s contrived office. He was standing in the opening and had pulled the canvas aside to look down.

“You cried out. Once again, who is it?”

“It is I, Mr Jones, Edmund Talbot.”

“Mr Talbot! What are you doing down here? Pray come up.”

I pulled myself over the massive knots which secured the ladder to some even more massive crossbeam.

“You have been poorly, Mr Talbot, since we last met. Pray take a seat. That box will do, I think. Now what can I do for you, sir? You surely have not filled the folio I was able to sell you!”

“No indeed. I was—”

“Lost?”

“Confused.”

Mr Jones shook his head and smiled benignly.

“I could tell you exactly where you are in terms of the ship’s construction but I believe that would not help. You 
have just felt or fumbled your way past the stalk of the after warping capstan.”

“No, it does not help. I will get my breath back, if you please, then go on my way. I am looking for Mr—”

“Mr—?”

“Mr Summers—or Mr Benét.”

Mr Jones peered at me over the half-moons of his steel spectacles. Then he took them off and laid them down on his desk.

“You will find both gentlemen through there, on this side of the pump, which is in turn on this side of the mainmast. They are in some sort of conference.”

“Are they debating the question of the ship’s safety?”

“They have not confided in me and I did not enquire.”

“But surely you are as concerned as anyone!”

“I am insured.” He shook his head and smiled,
apparently
in admiration—“I’m odd like that, you know.”

“But however that may secure the comfort of your dependants—”

“I have no dependants, sir. You mistake my meaning. My personal safety I have put in the hands of those I take to be most useful in a crisis—powerful seamen, skilled in their trade.”

“That applies to us all!”

“No, sir. Why should I concern myself with us all?”

“You cannot be so selfish and you cannot be so secure!”

“Words, Mr Talbot.”

“If your security is more than imaginary we ought all to share in it!”

“That is impossible. How many of the people in this ship could lay their hands on one thousand pounds? You perhaps, sir. No one else.”

“The devil!”

“You see? I have an agreement, properly signed. At least, they have made their marks. Should there be an 
unhappy end to the ship I am worth one thousand pounds to some of the strongest and most skilful seamen in the world. The Bank of England is no safer.”

Now I did indeed laugh aloud.

“That a man of business, of affairs, should be so simple! Why, sir, in the event of a catastrophe, they—may I say we?—should preserve the lives of women and children before such as you were even considered!”

Mr Jones shook his head with what seemed like pity.

“You cannot suppose that with the ship sinking round us I should count out gold and give each man his portion? You do not understand credit, Mr Talbot. I do not have any dependants, but my seamen have. The money is there for them ashore when they get me there, no sooner. Good heavens, Mr Talbot, the boats we have would not hold a tenth of our people! Without some such arrangement as I am accustomed to make, the whole of our life at sea would be no more than a lottery!”

“I am dreaming, I think. There cannot be such—and even reckless men such as sailors are commonly supposed to be—they would not set your life at a higher rate than their own!”

“My boat is up there on the boom, Mr Talbot.”

“But Captain Anderson—”

Mr Jones appeared to stifle a yawn, then once more he shook his head, and smiled as if at some remembered pleasure—his own oddness, perhaps.

“I will hold the canvas aside for a while after you have gone down. That should give you enough light until you see theirs.”

This
congé
left me surprisingly without speech. I tried to infuse a degree of contempt into a slight bow as I edged past him, but cannot feel that he took any notice. He was right in one thing. Before I had passed into complete darkness again—and it was strange how the light seemed 
to diminish the pouring sounds of our internal wave, our tiny internal wave!—I caught the glimmer of another light beyond what might be the sacking-wrapped body of a coach.

“I say! I say! Hullo! Is anybody there?”

There was a pause and no sound but the glutinous
cluckings
of appetite from the water within us. Then through the intestinal wash of our wave I heard a familiar voice.

“Who’s there?”

“Charles? It is I, Edmund.”

There was a brief pause, then the glimmer brightened and became a lantern held aloft by young Mr Taylor. Its light fell on coach wheels, harness, a shaft, all packed round with full sacks, against which the ship deposited me as water poured from one side of the ship to the other. I was by what looked like a hut.

“Mr Talbot, this passes everything! You must leave at once!”

“With respect, Mr Summers, is that wise? Mr Talbot is an emissary—”

“If you please, Mr Benét. I am still first lieutenant of this ship and shall remain so until their lordships see fit to declare otherwise!”

“With respect again, sir, since he bears a message from the committee—”

There was a pause while the two pale faces peered at each other. It was Charles Summers who moved first, lifting his hand in what looked like a gesture of defeat.

“Roberts, Jessop, report back to your stations for duty. Mr Taylor, leave the lantern here and report back to Mr Cumbershum. Don’t forget to thank him. Now, sir; oh, for heaven’s sake, Edmund, sit down! On that bale. You have been sick and are in no case to stand about when she is moving.”

“I will lean against this cabin—” 

“Against the magazine, you mean. Now do not, I beg of you, continue to use that box as a rest for your feet. It is the bed in which our three chronometers are kept.”

“With respect, sir, kept for the time being.”

“How did you know about the committee and my message—my alleged message?”

“Do you suppose such affairs can be kept secret? As it happens, you have come upon the best place in the ship for a private conversation! Your precious committee should have foregathered down here.”

“With respect, sir, I will walk a step to make sure that Roberts and Jessop are not hanging about.”

“Do so, Mr Benét. Well, Edmund, shall I take your message as spoken?”

“They—‘we’, I suppose I should say, wish to make known their
opinion
that for the sake of the women and children the ship’s course should be redirected to South America.”

“Have you ever heard of a null point?”

“Not as far as I can remember.”

Mr Benét’s face reappeared, pale in the light of the lantern.

“All clear, sir.”

Charles Summers nodded.

“The sea, Edmund, which earlier peoples, savage peoples and poets such as Mr Benét, have credited with thoughts and feelings does sometimes exhibit
characteristics
which would still make the mistake understandable. Those who go down to the sea in ships can sometimes find themselves in a combination of circumstances which
produce
an appearance of malevolence! I do not refer to storms and flat calms, dangerous as they can be, but to small events and minor characteristics, to odd exceptions and unstatistical behaviours—you are listening, Mr Benét?”

“Devoutly, sir.” 

“—which soulless and material as they are can none the less produce a position in which men are conscious, strong, adept—and forced helplessly to watch a quiet destruction moving inexorably upon them.”

We were all three silent for a while as the hold dripped and trickled around us. Below me, it seemed, the wave passed once more.

“I was not prepared for this. What are these
circumstances
? Is this what I am to take back to the committee?”

“Understand the circumstances first.”

“I will try. But you have set my head spinning.”

“The null point. The term is sometimes used of a line where two tides meet and so produce motionless water where a current might be expected. I can find no better words for our situation.
Point non plus
, perhaps? You see it’s not a question of whether we will or will not stand towards South America. I suppose you mean the river Plate. We cannot proceed in that direction. What is more, we are satisfied that we cannot touch anywhere at the Cape of Good Hope. We have got ourselves too far south—”

“He, confound him, has got us too far south!”

Charles turned to Mr Benét.

“Observe, Mr Benét, that I express total disagreement with Mr Talbot’s remark about our captain.”

“Observed, sir.”

“But ships go further south than this! Good God, how do they—why, whalers spend years in the Southern Ocean!”

“You do not understand. Are you willing to—I will not say ‘to lie’—but to play down the seriousness of our
situation
as far as the passengers and indeed the rest of the people are concerned?”

“You had better explain.”

Charles Summers sat on a bale, Mr Benét sat on what looked like a bench end, I lay against my bale and the 
lantern stood on the bed of chronometers and lit us all three palely.

“It goes back to—oh, as far as the ship is concerned, as far as when she was built!”

“They say of these ships, Mr Talbot, that they were built by the mile and sawn off as required!”

“Defective building is only too common in warships, Mr Talbot. Copper through-bolts are sometimes no more than a dummy head outside and a pin on the inside. It saves all the copper in between, you see, and lines
someone’s
pocket. Commonly, of course, these things are not discovered until the ship is broken up.”

Mr Benét laughed sunnily.

“Or at sea, of course, sir, when the holes begin to squirt, but this is not often reported!”

“Can men do such things? Why—it is our—”

“We do not know if this ship has such defects. They have not revealed themselves in detail. But we feel she moves too much, has spewed too much oakum to be sound in her main frame; and she is old. Now add to that, Edmund, that the wind elected to change by no less than a dozen points at the very moment when an unworthy officer, your friend Deverel, had sneaked below for strong drink and left the con to a poor creature—a midshipman—”

“Willis.”

“—who will never make a seaman if he lives to be a hundred.”

“Would you care to continue, Mr Benét, or shall I—? That is not the half of it, Edmund. She was taken aback, when any competent officer could have prevented it. She was wrung and might have gone over if we had not lost our topmasts. Even so the foremast moved in the step and broke it. Watch the foremast, Edmund, and you will see the hounds—the top bit of what is left—describing a small circle. We cannot use the foremast and by reason of a 
balance of forces which will be immediately apparent to you, we cannot as a consequence use the mizzenmast either. Now observe. The same wind which lamed us drove us back, helpless as we were, into warmer water. We idled and weed grew. That makes us even more helpless. The upshot of all is that we have no choice, you see. We can only go more or less where we are driven.”

“What is going to happen? All is lost then!”

“By no means. By submission, by obedience to the forces of nature we may just outwit them.”

“Moreover as you know, sir, I propose we should take steps over the weed—”

“Shall I finish what I have to say, Mr Benét?”

“I beg pardon, sir.”

“Very well. Now, Edmund. Have you ever seen an atlas inscribed with lines showing the advised course for a ship between one point and another?”