To the Ends of the Earth (52 page)

“We are the witnesses. Oblige us by stepping back.”

Benét obeyed at last and a murmur rose from the crowd and passed away. Miss Granham was standing by the bunk, level with Prettiman’s shoulders, and all at once a simple idea occurred to me—so simple that it seemed no one had thought of it. Prettiman lay with his head to the stern!

Miss Granham put back her veil. It is, I think, unusual for the bride to face the congregation—but then,
everything
was unusual. Her face was pink—with
embarrassment
, I suppose. The colour did not look like fard.

I now have to report on a series of shocks which Edmund Talbot experienced. To begin with, after she had put back her veil, the bride shook her head. This set her earrings in motion. They were garnets. I had last seen them ornamenting the ears of Zenobia Brocklebank
during
that graceless episode when I had had to do with her. I remembered them distinctly, their little chains flying about Zenobia’s ears in the extremity of her passion! This was disconcerting; but I have to own, and it may have been the influence of the general air of lawful lubricity, that I found the fact flattering.

Miss Granham carried a bouquet. She did not know
what to do with it, for she had no bridesmaids and the only publicly
plausible
recipient was Miss Brocklebank, now declining in her cabin. The bouquet was not made of cloth as were the favours which some of the congregation wore. It consisted of real flowers and greenery! I know that. For in the absence of a bridesmaid, the bride looked round her, then thrust out her arm at me and forced the bunch into my hands! All the world knows what will
happen
to the lucky girl who gets the bouquet, and there was an exclamation from Oldmeadow, then a howl of laughter from the congregation. At once my face was far redder than Miss Granham’s. I clutched the thing and felt the softness and coolness of real leaves and flowers. They were, they must have been, from Captain Anderson’s
private
paradise! Benét must have induced the sacrifice. “
I think, sir, the whole ship would be gratified if you was to honour the lady with a flower or two from your garden!
”

The next and last shock was delivered by the captain to everyone who heard it. He raised his prayer book, cleared his throat and began.

“Man that is born of woman—”

Good God, it was the burial service! Miss Granham, that intelligent lady, went from pink to white. I do not know what I did but the next time I looked at my bouquet it was sadly damaged. If any words followed this awful mistake I never heard them in the shrieks and giggles of hysteria which were followed by a rustle as our Irish contingent crossed themselves over and over again. Benét took a step past me and I had to haul him back. Captain Anderson
fumbled
with his book, which he had opened so thoughtlessly or which had opened itself at the fatal page, and now he dropped it, picked it up and fumbled again. Even his hands, accustomed to all emergencies and dangers, were trembling. The roots of our nature were exposed and we were afraid.

His voice was firm and furious.

“Dearly beloved—”

The service had been taken flat aback and was some time in returning to an even keel. Mr East, muttering what may have been an apology, pushed in past me and Anderson and placed the bride’s hand in his. Benét was trying to get in and I held him back, but he hissed at me:

“I have the ring!”

So the thing was done. Did I detect a faint trace of scorn in the bride’s face as she found herself literally being handed over? Perhaps I imagined it. Everyone held their peace as far as possible. No objections having been raised, this spinster and this bachelor were now both of them cleared for the business of the world and might do with each other what they would or could. Anderson neither congratulated the groom nor felicitated the bride. There was a sense, I suppose, in which such an omission was proper, seeing how little joy the two had to expect of the marriage. However, he leaned down over the writing flap and fiddled with documents. He opened the ship’s log, signed papers on the opened page, then held the book open over the sick man. Prettiman had a sad job of signing his name upside down. Miss Granham, not according to custom, signed her new name, Letitia Prettiman, firmly and legibly. I signed, Oldmeadow signed. The captain presented her “lines” to the bride rather as if he had been giving a receipt. He grunted at Prettiman, nodded round, and left with the ship’s log which I have no doubt he felt had been rendered a little ridiculous by the unusual entry.

We had now to complete our business. I felicitated Mrs Prettiman in a low voice and touched Prettiman’s hand. It was cold. Rivulets of perspiration coursed past his closed eyes. When I remembered my great idea to improve his situation I opened my mouth to explain it. But a hearty shove from behind told me that I was in the way of Benét and Oldmeadow crowding forward. I turned resentfully,
hoping for a quarrel, though it is difficult to understand why. The congregation were trying to crowd in and I had some difficulty in getting away from the bunk. The people had no knowledge of the proprieties and seemed to desire only to press the dying man’s hand. Indeed, the first one tried to kiss it but was prevented by a faint rebuke from him.

“No, no, my good fellow! We are all equal!”

I squirmed away. I needed air. I had the crushed bunch of leaves and flowers in my hand. One flower was strangely foreign—what they call an orchid, I think. I got into the open air to throw the thing away but could not. Phillips, my servant, was coming from Prettiman’s hutch.

“Phillips. Put these in water. Then leave them in Miss—Mrs Prettiman’s cabin.”

He opened his mouth, probably to object, but I went past him into my cabin and shut the door. I changed back into my seaman’s rig, then sat at the writing flap. I could not think what I was doing there. I leaned my head on it for a while, then reached out for a book, leafed it and put it back. I lay on the bunk, fully dressed, thinking of nothing and doing nothing.

I have just looked at those last two words. How strange they are, how foreign! They might be Chinese or Hindoo—doing nothing, doing nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. I laughed aloud. It was a genuine “cachinnation” which sprang of its own accord from my lungs. Charles had assured me that Miss Chumley would not forget me. Miss Granham—Mrs Prettiman—had given me the real omen. She had thrown me her bouquet! I should be the next one to be married!

Nevertheless, as I lay there on my back, slow tears ran from the corners of my eyes and wetted my ears and pillow.

And then I fell asleep! The reason was the wholly
unexpected
behaviour of our world. We lived with noise of one sort or another. There was always the sound of the sea
outside
the hull, ship noises, feet on the deck, pipes,
somewhere
a loud and male voice cursing, squeaks and knocks from the rigging, groans from timber, sounds at that time all too frequently of a quarrel from one part of the ship or another—once, a fight. But what helped me into a deep sleep was nothing more than silence! Perhaps in our part of the ship people were exhausted by the wedding, but I cannot tell that. Charles gave the crew a “make and mend”, keeping the very fewest number of the crew on watch. As seamen do in these cases, the rest slept, I as well.

What brought me back to the real world was the sound of Deverel being put in irons! I started up and then
realized
that this metallic banging came from right forrard in the eyes of the ship and must be Coombs, the blacksmith, at his forge! It was the moment! I was fully dressed and I leapt out of my bunk, pulled on seaboots and hastened into the waist. The sea was spread out like watered silk, light blue, and a faint haze reduced the sun to a white roundel much like the full moon. There was not a breath of wind. Benét and the captain had found their flat calm! I fetched my lantern from the cabin and lighted it, then turned the flame down. I descended the ladders—past the wardroom and down again to the gun-room. Here for the first time I found it was empty except for the ancient
midshipman
Martin Davies, who grinned emptily at me from his hammock. I smiled back, since it was impossible not to, and then proceeded to make my way forward. At once
I had to turn up the light. It was a dripping, a moist progress, but this time, mercifully steady. Why, even those balletic lanterns in the gun-room had hung still, and now what with my lantern and the flat calm I could have run along the narrow planking between the stacked stores. I saw things previously I had only felt or smelt or heard—a huge pillar which must have been the warping capstan, the dull gleam of twenty-four-pounder cannon, all “tompioned, greased and bowsed down” and beyond them again—for those were but iron barrels—the flat gleam of water and the gravel of our bilges. Two walls, wooden for the most part and irregular, packing cases, boxes, bags, sacks of every size, some seeming pendant above my head—but there is no way of describing that hold, half-seen, partly understood, with a narrow way of planking which led through it along the keelson! Here was a ladder on my right that Mr Jones had lashed in place as an entry to the kind of loft which he had taken over as his sleeping quarters, living quarters and office! I chose to ignore it and made my way onward to the vast bulk of the mainmast and the pumps—

“Stand! Who goes there?”

“What the devil?”

“Gawd, it’s the Lord Talbot, Mr Talbot, I mean, sir. What are you doing, sir? You nigh on got a baggynet in the guts, sir, if you don’t mind me saying so, sir.”

“I’m making my way forrard—”

There came a thunderous banging from ahead of us. I had to shout.

“I’m going forrard!”

The corporal had to shout back.

“Orders, sir. Sorry, sir!”

The banging ceased for a moment or two.

“Look—the first lieutenant must be forrard there. You ask him!”

The petty officer seemed doubtful but the corporal with him had a little more sense and sent one of his two men to tell Charles that I had appeared. He came back with word that I was to wait, at which I was not a little crestfallen but leaned against a convenient support—I do not know what it was—and waited, looking as nonchalant as possible. Casually, I blew out my lamp. The little party ventured no comment.

Forward of us there was light and noise. Some of the light was daylight, as if hatches and skylights had been opened in view of the importance of the operation. Some of the light was smoky and flared redly now and then. I even saw a spark or two float across what I was able to see of the open space where the work was going on. The work became a steady beating with a hammer on iron as if the ship was being shod. What with the smoky light and the metal noises I was overcome with a sudden return to the world of stables and harness and horses and the heat of a smithy fire! But it passed quickly, for the work took on another sound—a dull thumping as of a maul on wood. Peering into the light, and foolishly holding up my
extinguished
lantern—it is impossible not to hold a lantern up when you look, if you are carrying one—I could now see some of the structures which had been erected to stop the mast from moving. Those huge ropes which led so stiffly from the mast to eyebolts in the side of the hold were
staying
it. The baulks of timber which spread out at an angle on either side were wedging it. As I watched, the dull thumping stopped suddenly, there was a shout and one of the baulks fell, with a thunderous reverberation. It
frightened
me and it frightened everyone who heard it, for there rose a sudden clamour round the mast, but it was simply overborne by the captain’s famous “roar” which, to tell the truth, I was very glad to hear, for it suggested safety and awareness of what should be done. Presently—with a
brighter flaring and more banging on iron then wood—a second baulk came down but was received this time on a soft bed, for it did no more than thump. After that I waited for a long time while the smoky light brightened, then dimmed, then was extinguished.

There came the groan and scream of metal on metal. This scream was repeated again and again. Then silence. The light was beginning to die down.

Bang! It was metal contracting, I think. It was followed by the shriek of metal again and then another bang!

There was a sudden clamour which was interrupted by another “roar” from the captain. He was there—I could see him, see his tricorned head! He was down at the foot, the shoe, the heel, tenon, or whatever it was, and once more as the last baulk fell his roar overbore the sound of it.

“Still!”

Bang.

Bang.

Bang!

Silence.

The captain spoke in his normal voice.

“Carry on. Yes, Mr Benét, carry on.”

Benét’s voice.

“What do you think, Coombs?”

“Lat’un boide a whoile, zur.”

Silence again. The wail of contracting metal and a vast grinding and creaking from the mast.

Benét’s voice.

“Water. Roundly now!”

A fierce and continuous hissing! Steam was rising in the open space.

There was another pause, seeming interminable as the steam rose and cleared. The mast creaked and groaned.

“All right, lads. Carry on.”

One after another the dark shapes of men climbed the ladders. The captain’s voice could now be heard. It was loud and
meant
to be heard by all.

“Well, Mr Benét, you may congratulate yourself. I believe you was the originator here. You too, Coombs.”

“Thankee, zur.”

“I shall enter your names in the log.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Mr Summers. Come with me.”

I saw their dark shapes ascend the ladder just forward of the foremast. A seaman came peering for me.

“Mr Benét says you may come forrard now, sir.”

“Oh, he does, does he?”

I made my way towards the mast, then looked about me. Benét was there. Even in that light I saw he bore such an expression of rapturous triumph as I never had seen on the face of any other human being. I gazed about me with profound curiosity. Evidently the operation had been successful. I could only examine and try to understand the method of it. The huge cylinder of the foremast came down through the deckhead and appeared to enter a square block of wood. Since the mast was a yard in
diameter
, the size of the wooden block into which it was set may possibly be imagined. I suppose it was something like a six-foot cube. What a tree! I had never seen such a block of wood in my life. This in its turn rested on a member which ran the ship’s length above the keel—the keelson. Facing me on the after side of the shoe was a sheet of iron with huge bolts projecting. These then were the bolts of iron which had been made red- or white-hot in the midst of all this
tinder
like wood at the risk of
turning
the whole ship into a bonfire! On the top surface of the wood the wide crack made by the leverage of the mast was no longer to be seen. It had, if anything, more than closed! Good God, the mere force of cooling iron had
crushed the vast block of wood so that the surface had risen everywhere into parallel wrinkles! It was awesome. The words were jerked out of me.

“Good God! Good God!”

The expression on Mr Benét’s face had not changed. He was staring at the iron. Only his lips moved.

His voice died away. He appeared to see me at last and I do not think there had been any pretence about his abstraction. His face became that of a social man.

“Well, Mr Talbot. Do you understand what you see?”

“I suppose there is another plate like this one on the other side of the block—the shoe.”

“And the bolts go through both.”

“The wood must be on fire within!”

He waved a hand dismissively.

“For a little while, no more.”

“Do you mean to burn us all before any of our other dangers finish us? Or do you propose that this one should be held in reserve in case our other perils are successfully surmounted?”

He was kind enough to laugh a little.

“Be easy, Mr Talbot. Captain Anderson was under the same misapprehension, but by means of a model Coombs and I were able to convince him. The channels are much larger than the bolts. Air cannot enter. When the air is depleted of its oxygen—its vital air, sir—it will start to cool and there will be no more than a layer of charcoal inside the channels. But do you see the degree of force we have at our disposal?”

“It is frightening.”

“There is nothing to be afraid of. I have seldom seen
anything so majestically beautiful. The mast was moved upright in a matter of minutes!”

“So we may now use the mast. And the mizzen. Our speed will increase. We shall get there sooner.”

He was smiling kindly.

“It is beginning to penetrate.”

A testy reply was on the tip of my tongue, for I began to resent his condescension, but at that very moment there came a sharp report from inside the iron or wood which made me flinch.

“What was that?”

“Something taking up. It does not matter.”

“Was to be expected, in fact!”

My sarcasm missed its mark.

“The sound was the expenditure of moderate force.
Thy face is veiled, thou mighty form
—”

It was evident that Mr Benét was no longer disposed for conversation. Idly I laid my hand on the iron plate and snatched it away at once.

“The thing must still be on fire inside!”

“No, no. There is ample area. My first line is a
tetrameter
. How the devil did I come to think it was an iambic pentameter? We are lacking a foot!
Nature, thy face is veiled, thou mighty Form!
I shall have trouble with the rhyme now, because having personified Nature and mentioned ‘Form’ the whole thing becomes Platonic, which I did not desire.”

“Mr Benét, I realize you are in the throes of
seamanship
, engineering and poetry but should be glad if you would kindly continue our previous conversation. I know that one should not pry into a gentleman’s private affairs, but with regard to your time in
Alcyone
when you were acquainted with Miss Chumley—”

But the strange man was rapt again.

“Warm, swarm, corm. They would be an ear-rhyme. Or balm, calm, palm—cockney rhymes unendurably vulgar.
The dry the chill the moist the warm—why not the moist the dry the warm the chill—”

It was no use. The ironwork
banged again
, to be echoed dully from above. I set myself to climb the ladders into modified daylight, then out onto the deck where the sun was now completely obscured by clouds and the sea more than ruffled. The forrard part of the waist was crowded. Oldmeadow’s soldiers were grouped there by the rail on the larboard side. They had their Brown Besses. Oldmeadow threw an empty bottle as far as he could into the water, whereupon a fellow loosed off with a prodigious production of smoke and noise and made a small fountain of seawater. This drew shrieks of fear and admiration from the young women who were in attendance while the bottle floated very slowly away. So we were moving! I stared upward and saw that the sails on the mainmast were rounded. Fellows were swaying a yard up the foremast. Oldmeadow threw another bottle, there was another explosion and fountain of water as the second bottle followed the other one. I
suggested
to Oldmeadow then and there that he should attach a string to the bottle and thus be able to make do with the one but he ignored me. Companionship with the common and ignorant soldiery was doing his wits and his manners no good whatever. There were no passengers about. They had evidently decided that the best way to spend that upright and untroubled period was asleep in their bunks.

A little wind breathed on my cheek. I went back to the lobby and looked into the saloon. There was no one at either table—not even little Pike.

“Bates! Where is the first lieutenant usually at this time of day?”

“Couldn’t say, sir. He might have got his head down, sir.”

I went down to the wardroom.

“Webber. Where is Mr Summers?”

Webber nodded to Charles’s cabin and spoke in a whisper.

“In there, sir.”

I hurried to the cabin and knocked.

“Charles! It is I!”

There was no reply. But what is a friend? I knocked again, then opened the door. Charles was sitting on the edge of his bunk. His hands on either side grasped the wooden edge. He was staring at or through the opposite bulkhead. His eyes did not blink or turn towards me. His face under the tan of exposure was sallow and drawn.