To the Ends of the Earth (35 page)

“No.”

“You will find it curious, I think. For example a ship bound for India would not take the direct route from the Cape across the Indian Ocean but would make a great curve taking her nearly to Australia—”

“We might come across
Alcyone
again!”

Charles smiled but shook his head.

“I am sorry, Edmund, believe me! But we shall not. They will use the wind and bend with it as we must. The course we must take from our null point takes us south again in the great Southern Ocean. There the prevailing winds will alter and blow from the west. It will blow us to Australia. So you see, by consenting to what must be we may reach our destination.”

“It will be like going downhill, Mr Talbot, when you cannot go up but in any case wish to go down. We shall go downhill all the way to the Antipodes!”

“I see. No, gentlemen, I believe I really do see.” 

“It will be a long voyage, Edmund.”

“And we may sink?”

The two officers looked at each other. Then Charles turned to me.

“I can trust you? Then yes. We may sink.”

I said nothing but tried to digest this naked
information
into a feeling and succeeded more quickly than I had anticipated. I froze as I had done when Jack Deverel had furnished me with a cutlass. But Summers laughed a little.

“Come, Edmund! It is not today or tomorrow and may be never—with God’s help!”

“And the chronometers, sir. Do not forget the
chronometers
!”

Charles Summers ignored the young man in a way that persons unaccustomed to the sea service would have found offensive.

“We do not think that this information should be made widely known among the passengers and emigrants.”

“But we behaved well enough when we set up a defence against what proved to be
Alcyone
!”

“That was sudden, desperate and soon over. This is a danger of a different degree. It will wear down all but the strongest spirits—as if the effect of this motion was not trial enough!”

“I agree, Charles. But this puts me in a fix. I am to report back to that idiotic committee, cannot ignore them—but now I know too much!”

“Perhaps, sir, Mr Talbot might adopt my metaphor and tell them we propose to go downhill all the way?”

Charles smiled at him pallidly in the light of the lantern.

“A degree of ignorance among the gentlemen is certainly desirable at the moment and Mr Talbot adequate to the task, I believe.”

“But devil take it, what am I to say?” 

“Why that we shall alter course to the south and they will feel easier—”

“I submit, sir, that Mr Talbot should mention the
dragrope
.”

“If I say that we cannot reach either Africa or South America they will rightly fear the worst. If I say that Captain Anderson simply will not, they might well believe me and blame him for arbitrarily submitting them to this trial and real danger!”

“It is a difficulty. Perhaps the task is beyond you—oh, do not lift your chin at me in that Roman way, Edmund! I trust you to do your best but believe me that best would be a description of your own ignorance—”

“What the first lieutenant means, Mr Talbot, is that you should darken counsel a little and rely only on assuring them that all will be well and that we do the best in the circumstances. I must own the prospect of the Southern Ocean daunts me! There we shall get on with a vengeance. The reports make awesome reading. They write of seas the like of which are known nowhere else in the world. Even in a well-found ship—”

“We are rendering like an old boot.”

Charles actually laughed but it was not a merry sound.

“Their lordships made do with what they could find. By the inattention of your friend Mr Deverel, we have no tops’ls, a sprung foremast and a ship that has been badly wrung.”

He held out his two hands and demonstrated a wringing movement.

“Captain Anderson should have refused to command her!”

Mr Benét shook his head.

“A captain who refuses a ship will not get another.”

Charles turned to him.

“Observe, Mr Benét, that I have no criticism to make 
of Captain Anderson. He is a fine seaman. You are
fortunate
, Mr Talbot, to find yourself in the hands of such an officer. If you wish to apportion blame, aim it rather at the clerks of the Admiralty who indifferently thrust you into this, this—”

“I heard Mr Talbot use the word ‘hulk’, sir.”

“Just so, Mr Benét. Mr Talbot used the word.”

“What must I do?”

“Explain that we shall turn away a little from the wind and make what speed we may to the south where we may get a steady wind on one quarter or the other.”

“And the movement will be easier?”

Again the officers exchanged glances.

“The first lieutenant would agree that it will be
different
, Mr Talbot. He would agree you should use the word ‘different’.”

“Well, I am willing to do anything in this emergency. Do you wish me to keep the tone of the passenger saloon amiable and pleasant? Cheerful?”

“For heaven’s sake, Mr Talbot, I can see you going round the ship with such an air of demented cheerfulness you would dreadfully disconcert the whole company!”

“What can I do? I cannot do nothing!”

“Let there be no alteration seen. Be as you were before your—injuries. The only result will be congratulations on your recovery.”

“Be as I was? How was I?”

There was a pause and then suddenly Charles and Mr Benét were laughing, Charles, it seemed, with a touch of hysteria. I had never seen him so before. Tears flashed on his cheeks in the light of the lantern. Head on his knees, he reached out a hand and laid it on mine. I flinched at the unaccustomed contact so that he snatched his hand away again and smeared the water from his face with the back of it. 

“I beg your pardon, sir. Your present mood of
cooperation
, or perhaps I should say complicity, had made me forget how prickly you can be. Mr Benét, how would you suggest that Mr Talbot should conduct himself in order that our other passengers should detect no change in his demeanour?”

Mr Benét’s grin broadened. He pushed back his yellow hair with both hands.

“My acquaintance with the gentleman has been short, sir, but I have heard of ‘Lord Talbot’. A lofty, not to say toplofty demeanour—”

“Well, gentlemen, I see you are determined to roast me. Indeed it is not easy for a man of my inches to hit off the right bearing in this world of deck beams and squabby tars. If he goes about concealing his height he is bent down like an ancient cripple whereas if he stands up straight as God meant him to and lives with his own eye level he is always cracking his skull and stumbling over—you damned squat creatures, confound you!”

“This voyage will be the making of you, Mr Talbot. At moments I even detect a strong streak of humanity in you as if you was a common fellow like the rest of us!”

“Since we are all common fellows, allow me to share more information. There was mention made of chronometers.”

“Yes indeed. You know that the chronometers enable us to measure our movement east and west? Our
longitude
? With the ship in such a state we are discussing the advisability of bringing them up one deck. But—”

“The wave!”

“What wave?”

“Why the one we—she—has in her. The one I heard as I scrambled towards you!”

“There is no wave inside her, Edmund. Before we allowed her to reach such a state we should have the whole crew pumping—” 

“And the passengers, sir, watch and watch—”

“We should have had sails fothered over her bottom and be busy throwing the guns overboard! That was no wave. We have been heavily rained on. Our decks spew oakum. Some of the rain has found its way through the deck—for all rainwater and spray does not run straight into the well. It will puddle at one level or another and wash about, making for discomfort but nothing more. It is a small
matter
compared with the real danger that faces us.”

“There was the corn, sir.”

“We ditched a few tons of it, Mr Talbot. It was wet and swelling. We have trouble enough without that.”

“Mr Talbot could also mention the dragrope, sir. The prospect of an increase in speed will go some way towards making their discomfort tolerable.”

I looked at Charles levelly.

“I was deceived in thinking she makes so much water that between pumpings a wave washes to and fro in her bilges?”

There was a long pause. Charles Summers put his hand to his mouth, then took it away again.

“There was no wave. Your ears deceived you.”

Now it was my turn to pause. Then—

“And the dragrope?”

“Mr Benét has persuaded Captain Anderson that we may use the dragrope here in the open sea to get weed off her. In that respect I do as I am ordered. After that we shall see about my own proposal to frap her hull with what cables we can spare for it. Frapping, carefully adjusted, will diminish her rendering to the seas.”

“I see. An interminable period of nagging danger—the prospect of a catastrophe, perhaps. Well, so much for a career! And heigh-ho, so much for—but is there really no more to be done?”

“You could pray.” 

“As Colley did! I will not be bullied to my knees!”

I got to my feet. Light appeared beyond the mainmast like a dawn.

“What is that light?”

“It is the change of watch. Men under punishment are come down to pump for fifteen minutes at the beginning of it.”

The light brightened. The men ranged themselves at long handles projecting on either side of the mast. They began to move the handles up and down with a kind of bend-and-stretch movement.

“I thought pumps clanked.”

“When they suck dry. These are lifting water.”

“I must thank you gentlemen, for taking me into your confidence. It shall not be abused.”

“With your permission, sir, I will light Mr Talbot as far as the gun-room.”

“You are kind, Mr Benét.”

“Not at all, sir. Anything I can do for you, Mr Talbot—”

“And anything I can do for you, Mr Benét—”

Mr Benét beckoned me to follow him with much
politeness
.

“Lord, Mr Talbot, she is hogging like a wounded stick.”

“Hogging, Mr Benét?”

“Sagging, too, sir. The one after the other. Bent up amidships, then bent down amidships.”

“Like trying to break a sappy stick.”

“Just so, sir. Hogged on the crest and sagged in the trough.”

“I had not noticed.”

“Well, you would not. You must not expect to detect the movement as excessive unless you have made a study of it. It is like the movement of the moon, sir, which you probably suppose to be a simple curve across the heavens. But it is infinitely complex. I have sometimes had the 
fancy that the moon is a ship with all her timbers a-creak, hogging, sagging, rolling, pitching—wrung badly and therefore not even moving all of a piece—in fact like our present old load of trouble.”

“So that was why George Gibbs downed about a
tumbler
of my brandy and topped it off with another of rum! Following the run of the planking indeed! It is my belief he pretended to work where he knew there was drink,
having
got himself a thorough scare from the feel in his limbs of how the hull was working! Will he report to you?”

“To the first lieutenant, and should have done so already. I am the merest underling.”

“It is not obvious. Would you care to come to my—hutch, I was about to say—and take some of whatever brandy Mr Gibbs has left us?”

“I am on duty, sir, and must return to Mr Summers. But another time
avec beaucoup de plaisir
!”

He passed a hand through his locks, clapped on his hat, held his hand at the salute as if he were about to remove it—the lanterns of the gun-room as if imbued with the “customs of the sea service” all assumed the same angle as his hand—then turned away to clamber whence we had come. Mr Askew still sat against our wooden wall. He looked at me under his brows.

“I heard you let on to the officer about George Gibbs. George won’t be happy about that.”

I answered him as shortly as I have ever spoken, for the movement seemed to have increased.

“That’s not all he’ll be unhappy about!”

I made my way up the ladders which seemed so imbued with the spirit of the sea rather than the service, they had not so much to be climbed as wrestled with. The
movement
had indeed increased but I soon grasped the reason. Where we had held our conference in the bowels of the ship, we had sat round the chronometers which would be 
kept at the point of least movement. Now I was moving away from that point and subject to the wildness of wind, water and wood, being in my proper person by no means as precious an object as these delicately fashioned clocks! By the time I had reached my hutch my calves were aching and were only the most noticeable weakness in a body grown suddenly wearied by the stresses of the motion and of sickness and of a mind belaboured with too much event. As I approached the door I heard a sudden scrambling noise from inside. I flung open the door.

“Wheeler! What the devil? You are haunting me!”

“I was just cleaning, sir—”

“For the third time today? When I want you I’ll call for you!”

“Sir—”

He paused, then spoke in what I can only call his other voice, a voice with a curious trace of some other society in it, other places and customs.

“I’m in hell, sir.”

I sat down in my canvas chair.

“What is all this?”

Wheeler, unlike the other servants in the ship, had commonly a submissive not to say ingratiating attitude. He had never before raised his eyes to stare directly into mine but he did so now.

“Good God, man, have you seen a ghost? No! Don’t answer!”

All at once the pendulum’s movement against which I had been fighting, so far from the still centre by the chronometers, overcame me. I fairly threw myself at the bucket under my canvas bowl and vomited into it. For a time after that, as every sufferer from the condition will know, I was not aware of my surroundings more than that they nauseated me. At last I lay face down in my bunk and wished for death. Wheeler must have taken my bucket 
away. I know he came back with it and know that he stayed. I think he was urging me to try the effect of the paregoric and I must suppose that at some point I gave way and allowed the dose with its usual magical effect. I believe that Wheeler spent all the time I was unconscious sitting in my chair, for I have a dreamy memory of him there. The first time I swam up from the swathing visions of the opiate I saw him there. He was slumped sideways in the chair, his head resting on the edge of my bunk, in an attitude of complete exhaustion.