To the Ends of the Earth (43 page)

“It was in your old cabin when we were concerned with Colley. I said, ‘I have no patron.’ You answered immediately, ‘Do not be so certain, Mr Summers!’ Those were your very words! Deny it if you choose!”

“But that was not an offer of patronage! It was an expression of esteem, of my sincerely proffered friendship! I am as far beneath the possibility of exercising patronage as I thought you was above it!”

“Say no more. I have mistaken us both. I will wish you good day.”

“Mr Summers! Come back!”

There was a long pause.

“To what end, sir?”

“You compel me—we are down among
embarrassments
. And the ship may sink, good God! Are we not laughable? But enough of that. The journal which I kept for my godfather and which you suppose to contain
nothing
but a description of our good captain’s injustice—you may read it if you choose. It will lie before my godfather, 
a nobleman of much influence in our country’s affairs. He will read every page. Take it away, sir, slit the canvas, read every word. I—you will find there a positive hymn in your praise. There can hardly be a page on which your name, your conduct and character is not set down in terms of admiration and dare I say—esteem and—
affection
. That was all I could do for you and it is what I have done.”

There was now an even longer pause. I believe we did not look at one another. When at last his voice answered me, it was hoarse.

“Well, now you know better, Mr Talbot. I am not worthy of your admiration or regard.”

“Do not say so!”

We were facing each other, each, as usual, with one leg straight, the other bending and stretching. Despite or
perhaps
because
of the high seriousness of our exchange I could not but be aware of a certain comedy in the situation. But it was no time for pointing this out. Mr Summers was speaking. His voice vibrated with emotion.

“I have no family, Mr Talbot, and I do not believe myself inclined to marriage. Yet my attachments are deep and strong. Men, like cables, have each their breaking strain. To lose my place in your regard, to see a younger man, one with all the advantages which were denied me, achieve on every level what I could never hope for—”

“Wait, wait! If you were only aware of my meanness, my attempts at manipulation, let alone a self-esteem which I now perceive to be—I cannot explain myself. Measured against you I am a paltry fellow, that is the fact of the
matter
! But I would be honoured above all things if you would agree to continue my friend.”

He took a sudden step forward.

“It is more than I could hope for or deserve. Oh, do not look so distressed, sir! These clouds will pass. You have 
been sorely tried of late on several counts and I am much to blame in adding to your cares.”

“I am learning too much, that is the fact of the matter. Men and women—I beg you will not laugh but I had
proposed
myself a political and detached observation of the nature of both, yet in my association with you and her too and with poor Wheeler—these tears are involuntary and the result of my repeated blows to the head. I beg you will disregard them. Good God, a man of—”

“
How
old are you?”

When I repeated the figure, he cried out.

“No more than that?”

“Why so astonished? How old did you think I was?”

“Older. Much older.”

The forbidding distance in his face disappeared, to be replaced by quite another expression. Hesitantly I held out my hand; and like the generous-hearted Englishman that he is, he seized it with both his own in a thrilling and manly grip.

“Edmund!”

“My dear fellow!”

Still conscious as I was of a certain comical element in our situation, it was a moment at which reserve was no longer possible and I returned the pressure.

I must record here in this same folio an explanation and apology for the abrupt ending of my journal. A possible reader—a dear reader—might tease himself or herself endlessly in pursuit of that explanation without ever
coming
to the right one. The reason for my abandoning my pen was in a sense trivial and even vexing, yet at the same time the cause of much hilarity. Now I am safely ashore and have got back my landlegs I have begun to suspect—though it may seem unkind to say so—that our hilarity was a kind of madness throughout the ship as if the sailing master, Mr Smiles, had been right!

Briefly then.

While I and my dear friend Charles Summers were
ridding
ourselves of a foolish misunderstanding
Cumbershum
came off watch. I myself was not witness to what followed, for the suicide of poor Wheeler before my very eyes came to work on me strongly and I was forced to retire to the cabin Charles had found for me and lay there for a long time shuddering as if the blunderbuss had wounded me in addition to killing Wheeler. But I was given an exact account of what occurred.

Cumbershum was buttonholed in his descent by Mr Jones, the purser. Mr Jones, increasingly concerned for his property in the ship, begged for a few moments of Mr Cumbershum’s time. Later Mr Cumbershum related the interview to Charles Summers and the other officers with every evidence of enjoyment.

“Mr Cumbershum, I beg of you. Will the ship sink?”

As luck would have it, Cumbershum was one of the
most heavily endebted officers. He shouted with laughter.

“Yes, the bloody ship will sink, you yellow-bellied
bastard
, and death pays all debts!”

The result was not what Cumbershum expected. Mr Jones, in the grip of his ruling passion, hurried away, then returned with a handful of IOUs for which he demanded payment on the spot. Cumbershum refused, suggesting a use for the papers which I do not feel called on to particularize. The effect of this refusal was to throw the man into a kind of subdued panic. He hurried about the ship, heedless of her movement which sometimes put him in peril of drowning as if his own safety were the last thing in the world he was considering. In another man it would have been folly or heroism or both. He tried to call in his IOUs throughout the whole ship and met
everywhere
with a refusal sometimes even blunter than Cumbershum’s. I believe nothing, neither the arrival of King Neptune when we crossed the line, nor the
entertainment
given when we and
Alcyone
lay side by side, caused such general and on the whole beneficial
amusement
. For a while we were indeed a “happy ship”!

By the time I had recovered from my strange disability or sickness, whatever it was, it was my turn to be approached. Mr Jones presented me with an inflated account for candles and paregoric. I was inspired! I reduced the man to stillness and silence when I replied that I did not owe him anything. I owed money to Wheeler who was dead. I was prepared to pay Wheeler’s heirs and assigns in due course.

After much anxious expostulation on his part Mr Jones recalled our previous conversation.

“At least, Mr Talbot, you will pay me for the container you spoke of!”

“Container?”

“For your journal—to float it off!”

“Ah, I remember. But why should I pay you? Is not an IOU sufficient?”

The man gave a kind of whinny.

“No cash, Mr Talbot, no container!”

I thought for a moment. As the reader may recollect, it was true I had asked for something in which to put my writings and commit them to the waves but the
suggestion
had been made more than half in jest. It was typical of Mr Jones to remember the remark, take it seriously and determine to profit therefrom. A way opened before me of revenging Humanity on Inhumanity!

“Very well, Mr Jones. I will buy a container from you—on one condition. That you find room for it in your boat!”

There now ensued a passionate argument. At last Mr Jones agreed to carry the thing ashore and see it forwarded to the appropriate address. The first container he
produced
he called a pipkin. When I saw how small it was and that it was made of pottery I would have none of it.

“Suppose you and your boat are dashed on the rocks, sir. Why you might burst like a dead sheep in the sun and the pipkin with you!”

Mr Jones’s complexion took on a greenish hue. He would sell me a firkin.

“And what is a firkin?”

“A small wooden cask, sir.”

“Very well.”

The firkin when it came proved to be a barrel that had held eight gallons of some liquid or other.

“What the devil, man! This would go near to holding me myself!”

The price was exorbitant. I reduced it by more than half, using, I am compelled to say, some of that “hoity-toity” which had so displeased Mr Askew.

“And now, Mr Jones, you will swear to take this firkin ashore with you and forward it to the right address,
remembering that at this solemn moment we are both near that eternal judgement which awaits all men—Good God!”

I must own that this last ejaculation was out of my part however much it was in character. The fact is, years of religious lessons, thousands of church services and the whole mighty engine of the Church rose up behind me and I found it come near to clouting me over the head like a flailing sheet. I did indeed experience a touch of that judgement I had mentioned so frivolously and I did not like it.

“Swear.”

Mr Jones, touched possibly by the same feelings, answered tremulously,

“I swear.”

Devil take it, this was Hamlet and I felt downright uneasy! I could not but feel that the ghost of Colley was roaming the ship. Well—we were in mortal danger, and the mind plays tricks.

“And Mr Jones, if we should survive you will buy the cask back for what I gave for it—I’m odd like that, you know!”

Now it has to be added that if the ship was in a perilous state and I in a strange one, her company were in even stranger case. As if Mr Jones and Cumbershum between them had released among us something until then bound in and confined, the happiness of our “happy ship” changed in quality and became what I can only call a
communal
hysteria. Nor was it womanish as the word suggests. At its worst and most severe it could be typified as a kind of uncontrollable laughter at the most trivial of causes. At its best it was a peculiarly British sense of fun, of play. There was a little coldness in it, a contempt for life, even a touch of savagery. It came to me that at its best it might be
something
like that humour said to prevail among the victims of the French Terror before their martyrdom. At its worst it
had something of the blasphemy, wild humour,
debauchery
and fury which sometimes erupts in Newgate Gaol when the wretches confined there hear the last
confirmation
of their fate. I suppose, too, there were men and women who prayed. For by now there was not a man, woman or child who did not know in what a sad case we stood. The dragrope took off more weed and the business was finished but I do not believe many of the passengers or emigrants took much notice. By now we all saw too clearly.

So much, then, for the efforts at concealing the state of the ship from all but the naval officers! I thought my own joke was now over, but the truth is it got out of hand. Mr Gilland, the cooper, asking nothing for the service,
loosened
the bands of the firkin and knocked out the head. I placed the journal intended for my godfather inside and this same folio with it. But I had not realized how widely all was known. Good God, hardly a passenger or an
emigrant
but wished to have some message included, some small package, some object, a ring, a bauble, a book—a journal!—something, anything which whatever it was would seem by its survival to prolong a vestige of life. This is how people are, but if I had not had the
experience
I would never have believed it. Indeed so general was the demand for space in my firkin that Charles Summers was driven to protest, though amiably enough.

“My dear Edmund! You have so many clients that Webber who ought to be looking after the rest of the
wardroom
has become little more than your doorman!”

“What am I to do? The thing has become a bore and thoroughly out of hand.”

“You are now the most popular man in the ship.”

“If anything were needed to convince me of the volatility of the common people—”

“Speaking for us common people—”

“Charles, I will have no more of this modesty! I shall live to see you an admiral yet!”

“I will have it piped through the ship that papers may be brought to Mr Talbot but only during the first dog. The thing will die off in a day or two.”

He went off to continue his preparations for the “
frapping
”.

There was I, then, sitting like Matthew at the seat of custom for two hours a day. I do seriously believe that during one short period and before I had dressed him down, Webber was actually charging admission! Like the ghost of Colley, the spirit of Mr Jones was abroad. Nevertheless the great majority of those who came were simple souls. They divided sharply into two groups. There were those who giggled and hoped to share the jest against Mr Jones. There were those who were only too sadly in earnest. The white line which had been drawn across the deck at the mainmast was now, it seemed, washed clean away. I was to find this more than a simple fact—it was indeed a metaphor of our condition! But more of that at a later date. Suffice it to say my visitors were many and various. It might be a poor emigrant, his hat in one hand, his paper in the other, or a sniggering tar
holding
out an inch of his own queue or pigtail with the hope that I was “making the bugger sweat, sir”. Indeed my cask soon began to resemble the “bran tub” which we children used to enjoy at Christmas. God knows, in that ship we could have done with any enjoyment we could get!

I must say also that among the other frivolities which rose so preposterously from our danger was a series of catch phrases. A part of watch ordered by a petty officer to pick up a rope or the like would reply as one man—“Aye aye. We’re odd like that, you know!” There was even one occasion—and here I must implore the ladies, for after all poetry is their proper speech and prose means
nothing to them—I must ask them to avert their eyes from the following paragraphs.

Mr Taylor appeared noisily with even more than his usual high spirits. He could not stop laughing until I shook him. Knowing Mr Taylor I was prepared to hear of some monstrous piece of misfortune which had befallen someone and which seemed to him the height of comedy—but no. When at last I got him quiet and he had recovered from my shaking I demanded to know the worst.

“It’s a riddle, you see, sir!”

“A riddle?”

“Yes, sir! What—” but having got that far humour was too much for him and he had to be shaken again.

“Now then, my lad, finish what you have to say before I throw you overboard.”

“Sir. The riddle is: ‘What makes the ship roll so?’”

“Well, what makes the ship roll so?”

We had another convulsion before he got out the answer.

“Lord Talbot’s firkin!”

I dropped the boy and returned to my hutch. If the result of peril was to lower the ship to that level, I thought, she has no need to sink but has done so already.

After I had sat for a dog watch without a “client” I asked for Mr Gilland, the cooper, and summoned Mr Jones. When they were together before me I had Mr Gilland replace the lid and put back the bands. They were, I said, witness to the security of the container. I had the bung left open though the rest of the cask was sealed. I explained to Mr Jones that I might want to insert some dying wish or prayer when we were foundering and before he himself left the vessel. I must confess the joke had become tedious. It even turned sour when I contemplated all that remained of Edmund Talbot bouncing round the Southern Ocean in circumstances where its chances of
reaching the desired destination would be small beyond computation! More than that, I found myself suddenly deprived of my journals and with nothing to write or do except endure the antics and threat of our increasingly unseaworthy vessel.

The reader will have grasped that I, at least, survived the voyage. But like any possible reader, when I reread what I had written, the abrupt end of my journal—call it “book two”—troubled me and does so now. Indeed, to call it a journal is to stretch the term unduly. An attentive reader may well be able to identify the widely separated occasions on which I tried to describe what had happened during a period of days and so bring the thing up to date. I was often writing of the past when much was happening at the moment. A considerable length of time separates the ending of my journal proper and this
postscriptum
. I have been tempted to avoid the problem of the too abrupt
ending
by continuing the journal retrospectively so to speak, pretending to have written it in the ship. But the distance in time is too great. The attempt would be disingenuous. More—it would be plain dishonest. Worse than that if it were possible the attempt would be detected, for the style—I flatter myself I have a style, however threadbare—would change. Immediacy would be lost. When I reread “book one”—in the
next
volume you will find out when and why that was!—I found it had gained a great deal by the inclusion of Colley’s affecting if unfinished
letter
. For though the poor fellow may not have been much of a priest there was a touch of genius in his vivid and fluent use of his native tongue: whereas “book two” must rely on my own unaided efforts except where I report the actual words of other people. It is true, however, that what I now think to have been an ingenuous opening of my heart to the page is not without a force which I did not suspect until I came to read it much later. But to return to
the head of this paragraph. To add this
postscriptum
seemed the most reasonable solution to my difficulty.