He cleared his throat. “We are gathered here today to say goodbye to Mister Jones and commit his body to the sea. He carries with him his secrets and dreams. He carries…” Adamiah wiped his face and blew the beads of perspiration from his lips. “He carries his unfulfilled hopes and memories, both the pleasant ones and the not-so-much.”
Adamiah paused, swallowed, then continued.
“Let us each ask ourselves about our own lives today. What will we take when it is our time to go? Will it be gold? Will it be the rotten fruits gathered along a winding path of sin? Or will it be the fortunes of a prudent life well lived?”
Adamiah rested his fingers on the dead man’s chest. “Anyway,” he said. “He was a good enough sailor and friend. God take Mister Jones now. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Salt tears back to the salt sea.”
(My apprentice had done me proud, I thought. Barely missed a beat in his speech. Perhaps there was yet hope for him as a preacher.)
Adamiah stepped away and then gestured to the two men standing at the ready. They lifted the head end of the plank and the cadaver slipped out from under the sheet and dropped over the starboard wall.
A ghostly blur passed before us – the quick glimpse of a lifeless shell heading to a wet variation of an everyman’s end.
One considered one’s own soul.
Shplunk!
Then the man with the mouth organ blew forth a threnodial air.
ANYONE WATCHING THE DAILY doings aboard Cloud would have thought we were chumming for sharks. Since departing San Francisco, we had left in our backwash many the part, or whole, of a cadaver. No doubt word was out among the man-eaters lurking in the shadow of our hull – Cloud was a drifting buffet.
A troubling lottery seemed to be in play. We were running low on Joneses. So who next would take their place in this damnable roll call of fate? Glancing over at my Bible-perusing companion, I hoped it would not be Adamiah. Peering next into the mirror on the wall, I hoped doubly it would not fall to that newfangled fellow reflected therefrom.
The ship floated like a bung plug on a stagnant pond.
I stayed largely busy, tutoring Adamiah and discussing Prudence during the day, keeping watch over Angeline in the night.
I tried to force all the aforementioned morbidity from my thoughts, employing, to this end, many a whimsical musing on my companion’s fiancée. This did not feel entirely wrongful to me at the time, although I have since realized it as somewhat counter to my resolve to make a change in my overall personality. True, I reasoned, The Commandments forbid us to covet another man’s wife. But Adamiah and Prudence were not yet married, and so I figured until they were, I was not in violation of any sacred rule. Spiced with only this most negligible smidgeon of guilt, I freely indulged in my delectable daydreams as a way to distract from my worries and sate my mounting hunger for feminine entanglement.
It was only in the off-idle moment, when my guard was down, that my brain leaped back to the lucid omen I had been vouchsafed on the eve of our voyage.
I see a little death, the soothsayer had presaged. I see a little death.
The eerie echo of her words honed an indelible edge to my nerves. My own forewarning vision of a watery termination had been leaking back slowly into my fears.
I could not rightly say why these premonitions had become so pressing because, in truth, my current fortunes were not all that dismal. I was, after all, the best friend of a rich man. Certain benefits from that relationship would surely come to fruit in my near future. Already, since becoming Adamiah’s tutor, I had been granted a privileged standing on Cloud – one full of goat milk, tasty biscuits, and amicable camaraderie. Likewise, as Angeline’s caretaker, I was afforded comforts greatly preferred to the irritations suffered by the regular crew.
Of all these dispensations, I came to appreciate most of all the freedom to sleep away from the regular seaman’s quarters. It turns out that rutabaga soup, when shoveled daily into the gaping gullets of men, can ferment to a most vile and ill-fragranted wind. Add to this the potpourri of two-dozen unbathed sailors, and the funk in the forecastle could be said to rival the skunkish fetor of Mephistopheles’ cellar. Good Gracious! If said flatulence could have been harnessed for nautical purposes, Cloud might have easily overcome its doldrums, set its sails wing on wing, and been blown to Shanghai in all of a fortnight.
*****
I made my bed on a square of sailcloth draped over a soft mound of straw. It was like a little nest, and I a comfy cock.
Angeline reclined in her cage across the room.
With one eye open on the goat, and an ear tuned to my environs, I lay down my head on my pillow.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Some slow leak in the casing.
Since the winds had died, Cloud no longer groaned and creaked, but just drifted without sound on the flat Pacific.
Cruising fishes fanned their fins just inches beyond the sidewall; one imagined them slipping past like ghosts.
Moonlight spilled through the cracks overhead.
Angeline clicked her teeth, and then sighed in the shadows.
All was well.
I soon felt myself sinking into a half-dream state of slumber. My mother’s smiling face floated through my thoughts, and then the lovely face of Prudence. Within the throes of my growing somnolence, the two faces joined until I could not say where one ended and the other began.
“Bonne nuit,” I whispered, and snuggled into my bed.
And then the Maman-Prudence amalgam hummed a lullaby I had not heard since I was a boy.
La-loo la-la La-loo…
Such a contentment settled over me.
Such a timeless sense of peace.
I sank further into my sleep, the lullaby voice pouring
into my soul
like cool water
into a bowl.
The music changed the deeper I dropped; it became operatic, androgynous, a solo Farinelli singing a watery aria of love
Stars…
Longing…
Poesy…
and…
Brump!
Scraaanch!
I awoke; it was as if Bosco’s crook had reached down and yanked me from my sleep.
The whole ship shuddered.
I sat up.
The room tipped.
I heard voices above, and footfalls.
“Blah-ah-ah,” said Angeline.
“Yes.” I jumped to my feet. “I will go and see.”
I sprang up the stairs. The others had all come on deck and were gathered at the portside rail, staring down into the sea. Had we run aground? The ship shivered underfoot, and then gently rocked.
“Look there!” cried a crewman.
“Oh!”
“Blimey!”
I moved to the gunwale and peered over the side.
I was not sure at first what I was seeing – a large shape, seemingly alive, shining in the moonlight. It slopped in the water under the boat, and then, with a loud blast of air, sent up a spray of vapor into our downturned faces.
“Whale!” muttered a man beside me. “And a big one.”
And so it was. I had seen them in the distance as a boy, while standing on the bluffs outside Cherbourg – titanic creatures from another world – their black backs rolling far out in the waves.
“It’s trying to scuttle Cloud!” shouted a man, and then he ran off in a panic.
“No,” laughed Bosco. “No. She only wants to rubby off the barnacle bumps from her backy side.”
We all watched the gentle monster. What Bosco had told us seemed to be correct. There was no sense of malice in the beast’s act. The ship shuddered and lightly rocked, but we did not feel ourselves to be in danger. Quite the contrary. There was something smacking of a miracle in the encounter. The whale – a being from the deep mystery over which we daily passed – seemed to be blessing our ship. All the earlier dread that had befallen the ship was promptly dispelled. We were not d
amned; we were fortunate. The gentle rocking of our ship felt like the comforting sway of a child’s bed.
Out of the cradle endlessly rocking…
The whale rolled onto her side. Her moonlit eye peered up at us all gazing down from Cloud like sleepy boys stirred from our wet water dreams.
She then uttered an ululatory warble – a soothing, primordial lullaby resonating with all the wonder and mystery of life.
A general tremor passed through our group.
A moment of reverence.
Until the man who had run away came back to the rail, leaned over the side of the ship and – Powp!
He fired a pistol into the great beast’s back.
*****
The whale screamed.
She heaved, thrashed, and banged her leathery flukes against Cloud’s keel.
Then she dived, her enormous shadow plunging away.
A roil boiled up to the surface.
Do not go, I heard myself thinking. Please do not leave us alone.
Bosco leapt on the man with the gun, wrestling it from his grasp and striking him alongside the head with the pistol’s butt. The sailor sprawled across the boards. Bosco hurled the pistol far out into the sea.
He began raging at the man, towering over him with his fists clenched as if he were going to pound him into powder. Bosco bellowed and cursed, but one could only guess what he was saying. The big African had slipped back into his native language, and his words were none that I had ever heard before.
The whale shooter cowered in Bosco’s moon shadow.
Bosco reached down and yanked him to his feet, dragging him to the rail.
We all parted to let them through.
Bosco, although a sizeable man before, seemed to have grown a size larger with his fury. He thrust the man into space over the side of the ship, his mighty black arm flexing, his hand gripping the man’s throat. The sailor looked to be doomed. He kicked his feet in the air. He grasped at Bosco’s wrist, his tongue lolling out of his face, his eyes wide and moony with terror.
“Bosun! Bosun! Stand down now!”
We all turned to find Nilsson and Starkey on the bridge.
Bosco blew a loud blast of air through his teeth. He muttered nonsensically, but then regained his English. He shouted to the Captain. “This saily boy hurt the mother fish.” Bosco spat his words. “He bringy the jinxy luck to us all. To savey up the Cloudy ship, we need tossy him up to the sea.”
The doomed sailor was hanging limply in Bosco’s grip. He looked for all the world like a rag doll.
“There’ll be no more men going over the side, Bosun. Curse or no curse. You put that man back on board before you choke the life out of him and I have to clap you in irons.”
Bosco seethed. He looked at Captain Nilsson, the deckboards, and then the man at the end of his arm. He gritted his teeth and thrust the crewman high, as if offering him up to the big round moon.
“Ahharrrr!” he growled at last. And then Bosco tossed the man onto the deck.
The sailor rolled over the boards, and then, sprawled face down, he wheezed.
Bosco seethed, gathering his composure. He turned to the open sea. Again, in his mother tongue, he uttered what one took to be a prayer – a pagan’s plea. He spread his arms to the fish-peopled waters, and then to the moon watching down from above.
The rest of us stood back, quietly observing the drama, not wanting to get in the big man’s way.
At last, Bosco finished. He stepped over and glared at the man gasping at his feet.
The black man leaned down and hissed, “Fucky you!”
Then he turned on his heel and strode away.
A SINGLE SAILOR CLIMBED to the crow’s nest and took his turn at watch. The rest of Cloud’s hoi polloi milled about for a time, discussing the whale and the hullabaloo, but soon enough they dispersed and returned to their hammocks.
I found Adamiah in passing. He had been somewhat shaken by the commotion, but he was tired and had nothing much to say. After yawning and wishing me good dreams, he went back to his cabin to sleep.
I lingered for a while on deck, thinking about the whale.
It was the middle night, and dead calm.
The sea stretched in every direction without a wrinkle. A few bright stars glimmered at the sky’s perimeter, reflecting dimly on the water, but they were generally overpowered by the moon. It drifted lazily through our topmasts, casting shadows along Cloud’s decks, its milk-blue light overwashing our watery world to the edge of its foreseeable limits. I could not help but recall other moons I had known in my past. And other starry nights. This stirred in my pith a latent sense of nostalgia and devotion, although honestly, on that particular night, I would have been sorely pressed to say as to just what, exactly, I was devoted. For it seemed all my former devotions – to poems, to love, to words – were in the throes of an embryonic reconfigurement.
I leaned at the rail and, while admiring the magnificent sky, opened my trousers and passed water over the side of the ship.
“Mmmm.”
The moonlit air felt warm and agreeable on my protuberance, and I did not directly tuck him back away, but let the little fellow enjoy a much-needed stretch and airing out.
We stood like that for a while, a pair of mislaid souls, just trying to enjoy the moment.
“It’s a symphony, my friend, in the truest sense.”
I peered down at my sidekick in wide-eyed amazement.
For these words had not been uttered from my lips, and so I could only surmise that a lunar-powered miracle had just occurred, and my gnarled cohort had anthropomorphized to the point of striking up a conversation.
Most distressing!
“True enough, My Captain. A peaceful music to the ears. But I don’t care for the looks of it.”
That is when I realized I was within earshot of Captain Nilsson and Starkey, who were chatting on the high deck above me.
Oh!
Relieved, I quick tucked myself back into solitary confinement and then slipped soft-footed into the shadows below the captain and his mate. Doubtless it was wrong of me to eavesdrop like that, but as was my misguided wont, curiosity overwhelmed my otherwise usual decorum and I pressed myself against the wall in secret silence.
“We’ve endured slow weather before, Biner. It’ll pass soon enough.”
“It’s not the doldrums that has me fretted. It’s the stars. They’ve moved to an unfortunate position. Can’t you feel it in the air?”
Nilsson sighed. “I suppose so. There’s for sure something not quite right about this voyage. We’ve never lost so many men in such a short stretch.”
“And all newbies.”
“Aye. And now this sorry business tonight with the whale.”
“And the bosun’s curse.”
“Aye.”
They neither one spoke for a moment.
“We need to get that false preacher off our boat,” said Starkey. “It was a mistake to take him on with his load. He’s carrying a weight that wants to take us down.”
“Maybe so. Maybe so. How far are we from Eden?”
“We’re well-nigh there. Just at that south horizon. But without a breeze, we just as well be a thousand league out. We’ve bumped up against a latitude and it’s turned into something of a wall. Cloud just drifts along its edge, unable to cross on over.”
“Maybe I should have the crew break out the oars.”
“Something tells me they’re not clever enough to make that work. They’d probably just have us traveling circles.”
Nilsson laughed. “They do seem duller than most companies I’ve known.”
“Ship o’ fools,” muttered Starkey.
“Aye, Biner. Muttonheaded boys. But I ask you, if we’re their masters, what’s that make us?”
“Doomed, I’d say.” Starkey spat over the side of the boat. “Hopelessly doomed.”
*****
The two mariners talked for a while longer – about other crossings, about other ships
– but eventually they ran empty of words and wandered off to their quarters. I was growing weary myself, and was feeling eager to return to those good dreams Adamiah had mentioned. I stole along quietly toward my waiting bed-nest.
But alas!
I would not be snoozing directly.
My hero’s moment-of-truth had arrived.
I PADDED DOWN THE steps to the ship’s basement but stopped cold when I heard a loud whisper.
“Come here, you!”
I crouched and drew up my fists.
But I soon realized the intruder’s imperative was not directed at me; it was meant for Angeline.
He had not even noticed my presence.
I quickly judged the situation, squinting into the near darkness to where a pair of shadows danced about through the rays of down-filtering moonlight.
Uh-huh, I thought. Just as I predicted.
It seemed that contemplation of the goat’s assets had finally overcome the intelligence of some blue-balled sailor, and now, with all the charm of a bow-legged yob, he was trying to force his stiffened volition upon her orificial bounties.
“Hold still!”
“Blah-ah-ah-ah.”
Obviously, the demoiselle did not understand the impending threat to her innocence, as Angeline’s demure reply seemed inordinately blah-sé.
I slipped down the steps without a sound. I crept through the darkness toward my bed and groped under the straw until my hand wrapped around the cudgel I had hidden there for just such an occasion. I stood, swinging the stick a couple of times at the empty air, preparing myself for the intrepid combat I sensed arriving forthwith to my personal experience.
I inched forward, my weapon held before me in both hands, swallowing at the intense aridity that had seized the area of my upper larynx.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness so that I was able to make out Angeline’s silhouette, as well as that of the hunchbacked philistine positioning himself so purposefully at the goat’s back door.
My blood pulsed with trepidation. Being generally poetical by my nature – and pacifistical as a rule – I had never actually performed such a deed as the dreadful one I was about to engage in now, and the premonition of my bludgeon’s thud caused a trembling in my limbs that I had not anticipated, and which very nearly sent me into a swoon.
Fortuna and the Scapegrace Page 12
