To the Ends of the Earth (47 page)

“It seems an elaborate way of getting rid of her spittle, Mr Benét. Commonly people do what young Mr Tommy Taylor describes as ‘dropping it in the drink’.”

“You are facetious, sir. It was the Salutation!”

“But Miss Chumley—you could not hear what she said?”

“I had been below, stowing my gear. When I heard the pipes I knew the moment had come—thrust Webber out of the way—rushed up the ladder—it was too late. The springs and breast ropes were in. You, sir, I doubt you have the sensibility to understand the completeness of separation between two ships when the ropes are in—they might be two separate continents—familiar faces are those of strangers at once. Their future is different and unknown. It is like death!”

“I believe I have as much sensibility as the next man, sir!”

“That is what I said.”

“But Miss Chumley did not speak?”

“She came to the rail, and stood there as
Alcyone
moved away. She looked woebegone. I daresay she was feeling seasick all over again, for you know, Mr Talbot, she was said to be a martyr to it.”

“Oh, the poor child! I appeal to you, Mr Benét. I will not elaborate on the nights of tears, the yearnings, the fear that some other man, the need to communicate with her and the present impossibility of doing so! She is bound for India, I for New South Wales. I met her for no more than a few hours of that miraculous day when our two ships were becalmed side by side—I dined with her—later I danced with her at that ball aboard this ship—was ever such a ball held in mid-Atlantic? And then I collapsed—concussion—fell sick—was delirious—but we had parted—if only you could understand how precious to me would be some kind of description of her time in
Alcyone
when you were—wooing Lady Somerset—”

“Worshipping Lady Somerset.”

“And she, Miss Chumley, I mean your acquaintance, even your ally in that reprehensible—what am I saying—that tender attachment—”

“The love of my life, sir.”

“For you know, that one day thrust me into a new life! The instant I saw her I was struck by, destroyed by
lightning
, or if you are familiar with the phrase, it was the
coup de foudre
—”

“Say that again.”

“
Coup de foudre.
”

“Yes, the phrase is familiar.”

“And before we parted she did declare that she held me in higher regard than anyone else in the two ships. Later still I received a
billet doux
—”

“A
billet doux
, for God’s sake!”

“Was that not encouragement?”

“How can I tell unless I know what was in it?”

“The words are chiselled in my heart.
A young person will always remember the time when two ships were side by side in the middle of the sea and hopes that one day they may put down their anchors in the same harbour
.”

Mr Benét shook his head.

“I find no encouragement for you there, sir.”

“None? Oh, come! What—none?”

“Very little. In fact it sounds to me uncommonly like a
congé
, if you are familiar with the word. You would
probably
call it a ‘congy’ or something.”

“A farewell!”

“With perhaps an undertone of relief—”

“I will not believe it!”

“A determination that the affair should end as
painlessly
as possible.”

“No!”

“Be a man, Mr Talbot. Do I whine or repine? Yet I have no hope whatever of seeing the Belovéd Object again. All that consoles me is my genius.”

With those words Mr Benét turned away and vanished into his own cabin. A tide of furious indignation
overwhelmed
me.

“I do not believe a word he said!”

For she was there, vividly—not the Idea of a young person, the lineaments of whose face I could never bring together no matter how I tried as I writhed in my bunk—but there, breathing lavender, her eyes shining in the darkness and her soft but passionate whisper—“
Oh no indeed
!”

Benét had not seen her so, heard her so.

“She felt as I do!”

So I stared out at the waters of separation until my anger subsided—but my grief remained! I heard a door open and close behind me, the brisk steps of Benét and another door open and close as he left the wardroom. I did not look round. Clearly the man was inclined to taunt me, and besides he was of the other faction. Even if Charles
forbade
the word he should not prevent me using it on his behalf to myself. He needed my support. With that thought I called for Webber and had him help me into my oilskins and seaboots. I then made a laborious way up to the waist and looked for Charles, who was nowhere to be seen. But what was immediately evident was that we had passed some invisible boundary in the open sea. There was a clear green tone in the water rather than blue or grey. The air had indeed become colder and a few drops of spray which struck my cheek felt as though they had frozen there. The wind was from the southwest now and we were reaching towards the southeast. It was no longer a gale but a strong wind marshalling the waves on our beam. Under the low clouds strands of mist were
beginning
to stream past us from the invisible western horizon. Our ship once again had begun that swift roll which was the result of our shortened masts and inadequate sail area. But at least she did not seem to pitch and the cables which Charles had passed round her belly remained taut and motionless. The crew were busy. I do not mean that part of the watch which stood by for sail changing and which supplied the lookouts and quartermasters for the wheel. I mean the other part, which was busily rigging lifelines from the break of the fo’castle to the bitts of the mainmast
and then from there to the aftercastle and the stairs ascending to the quarterdeck. This was suggestive. As I watched, I saw Charles Summers come out of the fo’castle and stand talking with Mr Gibbs, who presently knuckled his forehead and went into the fo’castle again. Charles came aft to the foremast, examined the wedges and then talked with the petty officer who was directing the men at the lifelines. He then examined the lines,
putting
his weight on them here and there. There was an argument for a while about one point of attachment but finally Charles seemed satisfied. He climbed up and spoke to someone by the belfry on the fo’castle, saw me and raised his arm in greeting. I answered in a like manner but did not go forrard. Charles busied himself with some other people on the fo’castle. Then he turned away and came briskly along the waist to me.

“You are still dry?”

“As you see—and wearing oilskins as much for warmth as dryness. The air is much colder.”

“The ‘roaring forties’. We have found them at last but distinctly farther south than they ought to be!”

“The change was sudden.”

“It always is, we are told. Waters have their own islands, continents, roadways. This is a continent.”

“The lifelines are ominous.”

“A precaution.”

“You seem cheerful.”

“I ought not to be but am. For—may I whisper?—forrard there, below decks, Coombs is making charcoal, which will take him days. Add to that the weather which as it gets rougher will render far too dangerous any
tinkering
with the foremast—”

“Our faction is in the ascendant!”

“Do not use that word!”

“I am sorry. I forgot.”

“What sort of reputation would you carry to the
governor
if Captain Anderson told him that you had made trouble in the ship?”

“He will not do that so long as he remembers my
journal
which will lie before my godfather!”

“I had forgotten. How long ago all that affair seems! But to please me, avoid words which might suggest a
division
among us. All I meant was that I am happy because an unnecessary hazard has been postponed.”

“I own I was looking forward to an increase in our speed. But that was before I understood the possible cost.”

“May I advise you? Only wear oilskins for their proper purpose—keeping yourself dry. Inside them you heat up and sweat. Then before you know where you are all the good work of your rare bath will be undone.”

He nodded meaningly, then strode back along the deck and into the fo’castle. I muttered to myself.

“A nod is as good as a wink. I used to stink.”

I became aware that old Mr Brocklebank was standing within two yards of me. He was in the shelter (for what it was worth) of the starboard mainstays and had his right arm hooked through a bight of rope. Somewhere he had found or been given a large coach cloak which was ancient, worn and dirty. He had arranged this round his body so that it presented a kind of sculptural effect. His beaver was tied on by some material passed over the crown and fastened under his chin. I believe it was a lady’s stocking! His plump face was melancholy as he gazed at nothing or perhaps into
himself
. I decided that I did not want any conversation with him, for he, at least, was unlikely to be able to add anything to what I knew of Miss Chumley. I went past him,
therefore
, with no more than a nod and into the passenger lobby. The door of the cabin to which I had planned so nobly to return was open. As I approached, Phillips came out with a brush and bucket and went to the larboard side of the waist.

I had not entered that cabin since Wheeler had chosen the place for his last, tragic and criminal act. With a
sudden
determination to get on with the business I opened the door and stepped inside. All seemed as before, except that the place was cleaner and brighter. For the
bulkheads
, the ship’s side and the deckhead—or better, the walls and the ceiling—were now covered, not with the dull mustard-coloured paint which seemed to be the best the Navy could do for passenger accommodation, but with glossy white enamel. That was cheerful enough. I touched it here and there and found it dry. There was now no excuse for not returning. I sat down in the canvas chair and willed the place to be ordinary and not
connected
to its history. I could not succeed. No matter how hard I tried, my eye would return to that eyebolt in the ship’s side so near the head of the bed. There the rigid hand of the dead man had hung, his body dinted as if leaden into the furnishings of his bed! My mind flinched away from Colley, only to imagine at once Wheeler
standing
by me, his head raised, the golden goblet of the
blunderbuss
only an inch or two from his face—there was no flinching from that! It was as if the man’s misdirected courage in facing the shot of self-destruction held me too, chin up, staring up, his last sight of anything my last sight, nothing but the massive and worn timbers of the deckhead.

I went cold for all my seaman’s clothing and oilskins—cold with more than the weather. White paint however carefully applied can conceal a corner but not the shape of a deformation. The beam most central to the deckhead was deeply pocked above the place where Wheeler’s head had been. Some brains and a skull are little obstacle to a charge propelled by gunpowder at a range of an inch or two. In one of those pocks into which the brush had worked white paint it none the less could not conceal the
point of a small, knife-like object which projected from the bottom of the hole. The seaman who had busily worked his brush into the hole had therefore painted the surface of this hideous
memento mori
. There were other traces I now saw and soon my eyes supplied a detailed knowledge which I could well have done without. I became
seized
of the explosion and the trajectories, knew intimately how the head had burst. This was no place to sleep. Yet sleep there I must, or be laughed at throughout the ship and later throughout New South Wales!

The deck moved under me, a sinewy motion lifting one seaboot and sliding away from the other. There came a moaning cry from Prettiman’s cabin. Anguished as the sound was, I was almost glad to be reminded of the world outside this hutch. Fool Prettiman! Philosopher so called! Well, thought I, turning my attention away from dead men, he is paying for his folly. To which faction would he and his fiancée, Miss Granham, belong? My thoughts became mixed between the two cabins. If so
strong-minded
a lady consented to make Prettiman the happiest of men—But then again, he was a man of substance and such are always in danger of being married for their money. At all events, if
she
had to sleep here she would do so and stand no nonsense! The thought braced me in those morbid surroundings so that I got to my feet and out into the lobby. Through the opening to the waist I could see that at least part of the deck had a sheet of
seawater
sluicing from one side to the other. We were
beginning
to get that weather we had looked for! This time I found myself walking splay-legged and glad of a hand on the safety rail of the lobby, let alone the rail of the stairs down to the wardroom.

“Webber, help me out of these oilskins if you please. After that you can get my gear back to the cabin among the other passengers.”

“Sir, the first lieutenant said—”

“Never mind what the first lieutenant said. The paint is dry and I shall sleep there tonight.”

There was a fierce slash of water across the panes of the stern window.

“Getting up, sir, an’t it? Be rougher before it’s done.”

“Yes. Now do as I told you, Webber.”

“It’s the cabin where he done himself in, an’t it? And afore him the parson?”

“Yes. Now get on.”

Webber paused for a moment, then nodded more to himself I think than me.

“Ah.”

He disappeared into the cabin which had been loaned to me. There was no doubt about it. All things were
combining
to make me uneasy. But relieved of my oilskins I decided to try the passenger saloon though the hour was early for eating. Who should I find there but little Pike slumped over the table? As the ship rolled, a shot glass clattered along the deck.

“Pike! Richard! What is this?”

He did not reply and his body rolled with the ship. I found his intoxication disgusting; for no one is as
high-minded
in the article of strong drink as a reformed drinker! But that is by the way.

“Richard! Bestir yourself!”

No sooner had I said that than I regretted it. The truth is that the job of intoxication once done, the poor devil was best left to the sad oblivion he had chosen. Who was I to decide whether he should sleep or wake? A clerk, somehow able to pay the passage for himself, his wife and two small daughters to the Antipodes—two daughters quite possibly dying and a wife who was turning, by all accounts, into a shrew if nothing worse! No. Let him be.

The door opened and Bowles came in.

“Well, Mr Bowles? What news of the foremast?”

“You should ask rather for news of the charcoal, sir. They can only distil or brew or reduce—or whatever one does to wood to make charcoal of it—in small parcels. The fo’castle resounds with argument for and against.”

“You have been there, then.”

“Believe it or not, I was asked to advise on the drawing up of a will. Then, I suppose as payment, I was taken down and shown the foot of the foremast in the broken shoe.”

“The people are divided in their opinions?”

“Oh yes. The argument is high and not conducted with proper legal, or perhaps I should say parliamentary,
propriety
.”

“Do you agree with the first lieutenant or Mr Benét?”

“With neither. I am astonished at the ease with which uninformed persons come to a settled, a passionate
opinion
when they have no grounds for judgement.”

“I believe the attempt should not be made. It is far too dangerous.”

“Yes. The first lieutenant does think so. You should see the shoe! It is gigantic. So, I am afraid, is the split, and frightening too. So is the groaning of the mast as it lurches and grinds into the wood with that small, irregular—
unpreventable
—circle. I do not know what they should do. The place, though, is a tangle of temporary measures. Some the layman can understand, some are quite inscrutable. There are beams jammed between the shaft of the mast and the thicker timbers of the ship’s side. There are cables twisted about the mast so taut you would think them made of metal. Yet the mast moves, for all the beams and twisted cables, the blocks and tackles, crows, shores and battens. The sight is frightening. But then, when you see the small movement, the sight is more than frightening.”

“Can there be more?”

“Dread.”

He said no more but stared out of the stern window at the rising sea.

“Well, Mr Bowles, we have become a poor collection of mortals, I think. Here is Pike drunk and incapable. Oldmeadow is consumed with bad temper and chooses the company of his men rather than us. We have become—what?”

“Frightened out of our wits.”

“Prettiman keeps his bunk—”

“He does not. He is helpless in it. The fall was of extraordinary force. Since we have no surgeon aboard and only the matron of the emigrants to minister to him—”

“I cannot imagine that doing him any kind of good!”

“Nor I. But the seamen and emigrants would have her do what she could, which was confined, I believe, to the muttering of spells and the hanging of garlic round the poor man’s neck!”

“The seamen and emigrants sent her?”

“Prettiman is much respected among them.”

“Have I dismissed him as a clown too readily? Oh, surely not!”

Bates, the steward, came to provide us with what food there was for those who still had a mind to eat—salt pork, cold since the fuel must be conserved for making
charcoal
, soaked beans also cold and the notorious ship’s
biscuit
, which I herewith give my affidavit had no weevils in them, small beer or brackish water ameliorated by a dash of brandy. I ate and so did Bowles. Pike slumbered until Bates called Phillips in and the two men carried him to his cabin. Oldmeadow, I am told, ate a seaman’s portion in the fo’castle with his men. The sea got up and our
movement
was more violent. The daily business of the ship which must go on whatever else happened—the changes of the watch, the bosun’s calls, the bells, the tread above our heads of seabooted officers and the leathery slap of the
seamen’s naked feet on planking—this resounded about us, endless as the voyage, as time itself, while the anxious hours drew on. Bates—whether it was his duty or not, I cannot tell—took plates of food to the ladies in their bunks.