To the Ends of the Earth

by William Golding

  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.

  Bowles went to his cabin. Mr Brocklebank, wrapped in his coach cloak, came and sat by me. He gave me a description of the processes involved in engraving on stone, copper, zinc, together with the various difficulties attendant on these operations. I did not hear above the half and at last the old man heaved himself away. Every now and then a wave would strike the ship explosively.

  At about nine o’clock of a dark night
I got to my feet and walked with care to my newly painted cabin. Webber was there, pretending to straighten the coverlet but in reality waiting so that I should give him money for doing his duty.

  “Thank you, Webber. That will be all.”

  To my surprise he did not go.

  “This is where he done it then. I’m not surprised.”

  “What do you mean, Webber?”

  “A place gets right greedy after the first taste and would have him, you see, once it knowed what he had in mind—”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Wheeler. Joss, we called him. He was my oppo among the stewards.”

  “Be off with you!”

  “Once they have it in mind there’s no stopping them, is there? He told me it was like a kind of comfort. He was a queer one, Joss. I believe he must have lived among gentlemen before he came to sea. He had a way of saying things—said he had lived among collegers until he relinquished that employment.”

  “He never said anything to me! Now—”

  “He said there’s a hole kind of. ‘It’s always there, Webber,’ he said. ‘It’s kind of a hole and you know that if the weather gets too rough you can use the hole, get into the hole, hide and sleep,’ he said. ‘It’s always there. For I won’t drown, not again.’”

  “Good God! He said something like that—something—”

  “But then, why here? The answer is the cabin drawed him. It knowed, you see.”

  “Get out, Webber!”

  “I’m going, sir. I wouldn’t stay here, not in the night, not if you paid me, sir—which you won’t, of course.”

  He paused for a moment, still looking, but I gave him nothing and he left. Yet it was difficult after he had shut the door. I went out again and worked my way to the entry to the waist and peered round the edge. The waves were organized in lines that might have been ruled they were so straight. The light of a waxing moon lay along the completely marshalled crests and turned them to lines of steel.

  (5)

  “Mr Talbot, sir.”

  Phillips carried candles in one hand and a lighted lantern in the other.

  “In there, Phillips.”

  “Will you be wanting a light now, sir?”

  “Yes—no! Not yet. See here, Phillips. Never mind the candle. Leave the lantern.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t do that, Mr Talbot, sir! You know the passengers isn’t supposed to have lanterns but only candles because—”

  “Because if candles are overset they douse themselves? Yes, I know. And you know me, don’t you? Wait a moment. Now. This buys the lantern off you. I wish to keep a lantern as a memento of the voyage.”

  An expression of comprehension rearranged Phillips’s customary wooden face.

  “Sir.”

  “Hang the lantern on that hook. Turn down the wick.”

  Of course a ship never sleeps. There was always at least a part of the watch on duty, to say nothing of the officer of the watch and his doggy. I got into my oilskins and made my way through the moonlight to the quarterdeck. Lieutenant Benét was leaning over the forrard rail.

  “Come up, Mr Talbot! How do you like this wind? It is bustling us along capitally, is it not?”

  “How does the ship like it?”

  “She is making more water, of course. That is to be expected. I have been thinking. We ought to rig up some kind of windmill to pump her out.”

  “Oh no! Not again! Do not terrify us with some new contrivance! Dragropes, ironwork, red-hot rods—Have a care of us, Mr Benét. We are precious!”

  Mr Benét tore off his oilskin headgear and spread his arms wide.

  “Look about you, Mr Talbot! Is the view not magnificent? The moonlight on these moving waters, the silvered clouds, the unguessable distances up there—those brilliant bodies sparkling above us all! Where is your poetry? Does not the danger, the fear we all feel, give a keener edge to this intoxicating delight?”

  “If it comes to that, where is your poetry? In days past you have been only too anxious to stuff it down my throat!”

  “You are a severe critic. Then take a utilitarian view. This moonlight means that we may well have a clear horizon at dawn and take helpful star sights.”

  “I thought there was some difficulty over the navigation—erratic chronometers or something.”

  “You do pick about, sir, do you not? But at least we may find our latitude, which is nearly half the battle though not quite.”

  “Is that Mr Willis there? I hope you are recovered, lad. Mr Benét—cannot Mr Willis assist you in navigation?”

  “I take that as a pleasantry, sir. Will you excuse me now? I am occupied with an Ode to Nature, a subject of such amplitude and depth I can scarcely get into it—or out of it!”

  “Better that than sink us out of hand.”

  “I suppose you are talking about the foremast. We shall commence the operation when we have enough charcoal and when this sea has gone down.”

  At this point the odd young man shook his long locks about his face and orated:

  “Spirit of Nature—”

  “Are you sure, Mr Benét? The last time—no, the time before that—it was Spirit of woman—you are thrifty.”

  Mr Benét ignored me.

  “Spirit of Nature, warm or hot or cold. Solidity—”

  “No, no, Mr Benét! I am unworthy of the treat—as is Mr Willis! Allow me to detach Mr Willis from you. He speaks prose.”

  “Take him. Do what you like with him. Oblige me by returning to me what is left. One never knows what will prove useful.”

  Willis followed me sullenly enough, up to the poop.

  “Well, Mr Willis. Are you quite recovered?”

  “I’m deaf in me right earhole where the captain clouted me. And if anyone tries to get me up a mast he’ll have to carry me up screaming.”

  “Good God, lad, your voice has broken! I suppose I should congratulate you. Not climb the mast again? Where’s your spirit, lad?”

  “What’s that to you? It’s my business not yours and I’m minding it.”

  “I’d be obliged for a little more courtesy from you, young man!”

  “Why? You’re a passenger. What in the Navy we calls a ‘pig’. I don’t have to take lip from you. Mr Askew, the gunner, said so. ‘They’re passengers,’ he said, ‘nothing more. This ain’t a company ship,’ he said, ‘and you need pay no attention to them, not even when they’re as high in the instep as Lord Talbot,’ he said.”

  “I’ll still require a little civility from you, Mr Willis, on the grounds that I’m older than you if nothing else. I’m sorry to hear that you were deafened but guess that the faculty will return to you. Good Heavens! Young Tommy was a bit lopsided after I cuffed him. Boys must be educated, you know! We all suffer! I doubt there’s a schoolboy or midshipman in the world who has not some temporary derangement of his faculties in one department or another. That’s how we are made, young fellow, and you should be grateful!”

  “Well, I’m not. I wish I was home. And I would be if Dad didn’t have an account with one of the managers in the docks and wished to make a gentleman of me. I’d still be serving sugar and happy with the tally wenches in the storerooms. Now the war’s over, they’ll have to decommission this rotting old lump of wood and then you won’t see my arse for dust.”

  The moon ducked into a cloud and by contrast the night seemed dark. Mr Benét sang out from the quarterdeck below us.

  “Mr Willis, oblige me by having the quarter lanterns turned up. When you’ve done that, you can tell me what happens at a half hour before sunrise.”

  “Aye aye, sir. Bosun’s mate—”

  I twitched Willis by the sleeve and murmured to him.

  “Half an hour before sunrise is the beginning of Nautical Twilight.”

  “Well, I know that! Did you think I was stupid?”

  Clearly the boy was proof against the advances of social amiability. I was about to dismiss him, therefore, when a positive party of men came to the quarterdeck.
Charles was with them. They brought a considerable quantity of gear up to the poop which seemed to include a sail triced up to a heavy yard, an enormous block of iron which needed three men to carry it, and coils of heavy rope.

  “Edmund! You are not yet in your bunk!”

  “Evidently. Do you never stop working? What is all this?”

  “It is a sea anchor.”

  “This is new to me.”

  “In extremely heavy weather a ship may ride to such an anchor—”

  “But this is our stern!”

  “Our circumstances are unusual. That is all. We may need to stream the anchor over the stern to check her way and ensure that she does not drive herself under. Oh, of course, not in this weather—it is moderating! But farther south, where the really heavy weather is—it is a precaution.”

  The men were tricing the gear to the rails of the poop.

  “The captain’s orders?”

  “No. I have sufficient authority for this myself. Mine is an ancient profession, you see, and the duties defined well enough. But the time is nigh on six bells in the first—Why are you not in your bunk?”

  “I—explanations are tedious! I am happy in my dry clothes and there was moonlight, to say nothing of a slight decrease in our motion—and so forth.”

  Charles looked closely into my face.

  “You have moved back to the passenger accommodation?”

  “Yes.”

  Charles nodded and turned to his men. He went round, as I saw, and personally checked the security of the lashing that held all this heavy gear ready for use. If care and forethought could secure our survival he would provide it! I had a sudden awareness of the two of them, Benét and Charles, the one brilliantly putting us at risk, the other soberly and constantly taking care!