(1/3) Go Saddle the Sea

by Joan Aiken

  Even now that the cargo and stores had all been stowed in the hold, there was very little deck space. We had to pick our way carefully between coils of rope and various pieces of gear. Sam tried to explain the sails to me—there were two mainsails as well as topsails—but his explanation was so complicated that I could not follow. The rigging seemed all a mysterious tangle. I began to feel a fool in every possible way—a self-willed, unthinking dolt, to have cast Sam into this dangerous predicament—and besides that, a thick-skulled dunderhead who could not even grasp the principles of seamanship. Sammy patiently went on to point out other features of the ship: the helm, at present being manned by the tall captain, who gave us a cold glance as we came near him, but said nothing; and the compass, set in a square case and balanced in two copper frames.

  Two of the sailors were busy making fast the sheets and seeing that all the rigging was in good trim; they, likewise, spoke to each other but not to us.

  "Reckon they wish we wasn't on board," Sammy murmured to me.

  They could not have wished it any more heartily than I did myself.

  If only there were somewhere on board where we could be private! But on such a small ship there did not seem to be a single space where we would not be overheard. Sam suggested that we ask the captain if we might go down to the hold to sleep among the stores, but by this rime the ship was rolling and pitching with such a violent motion, as it breasted the waves, that my stomach felt likely to heave its way through my teeth at any moment. I could not bear even the smoky, fishy atmosphere of the caboose, let alone the idea of some dark, cramped enclosed den, where we might perhaps be shut in if we fell asleep.

  "No," I said urgently, gulping, partly from nausea, partly from dejection at our plight and my stupidity in bringing it about. "Let us not go below. I'd sooner stay in the open."

  "Cheer up, lad!" said Sammy, laughing at me, but not unkindly; he never was that. "By tomorrow you'll ha' got your sea legs an' be ready to give the cap'n a hand wi' the steering. Maybe there's sense in your choice, though; sides, a night on deck is as good to me as a month's wages; takes me back to old times. We'll make us a nest up for'ard."

  Which he did, with his cloak, and a piece of canvas which he found in a sail locker, first asking the captain's permission to use it (which was granted by one surly, silent nod).

  Here, huddled together, we were somewhat protected from the icy wind by a part of the ship which Sam, with a yawn, told me was the cutwater. He then fell peacefully asleep, his head pillowed on a coil of rope, and soon began snoring as if he had not a care in the world. I marveled that he could take his plight with such calm. Suppose the crew, who seemed so hostile to us, knew that Sam had an enemy in England who would be glad to have him thrown into jail? Might they not, out of sheer revengefulness, hand him over to the authorities when we reached Falmouth? True, it seemed unlikely they would know about Sam's history—unless they were acquainted with any of his previous shipmates.

  Then, my thoughts switching in another direction, I thought: Perhaps, after all, these men have no wicked designs on me. Perhaps it is merely chance that I was offered a berth on their boat. Perhaps Sam need not have risked his liberty to come and warn me.

  But this hope was short-lived. Not long after, as I lay wakeful, listening to Sam's snores, I was alerted by the sound of voices.

  They were those of the captain and the Doctor.

  "Where are they?" said the captain. He spoke in French.

  "Yonder, asleep, as you may hear," replied the Doctor in the same language.

  Thinking, I suppose, that even if we were awake we would not understand them, they did not particularly trouble themselves to whisper, but spoke in low tones which I could hear clearly enough.

  "What shall we do about the Englishman?" the captain asked. "We dare not kill him—he has too many friends in Santander, and it is known that he is aboard the Guipuzcoa. We should be putting our necks in a noose. Besides, I do not like to kill."

  "Eh bien—do as he asks, then," said the Doctor indifferently. "Deliver him to Ireland. Make your passage to Ireland first, before you go to Falmouth. Then, after he has landed at Achill, I can do my work on the boy."

  At his words, my skin crept, and my blood ran like ice.

  "Suppose he wishes the boy to land with him?"

  "My good friend! You are paid to use your head as well as your ship! Some accident may be contrived— a swinging boom, a dropped block—or a drop of my liquor in his podrida; then the young man may be carried ashore, unharmed but senseless, and handed over to his friends; after that we may anchor in some quiet creek and deal with the boy. And if the man later inquires what is our tale? We landed the boy at Falmouth, as he asked us, and know nothing more."

  My breath seemed caught in my chest, cold as snowflakes.

  "Oh, very well," the captain said at last in a surly tone. "I shall be losing money, though; I had planned to drop my cargo at Falmouth first and take on elixir of honey there to carry to Black Harbour; this way I lose trade; also my customer in Falmouth will be angry, for I shall be a week later than I promised."

  "Do not disturb yourself," said the Doctor calmly. "I am sure our patron will see that you are reimbursed if necessary."

  He used the French word patronne in the female gender, and I thought: Saints save me! That must be Dona Isadora. For what other woman in the world wishes evil to me?

  The two men moved away, and I lay shivering, remembering the various pranks I had played on Doña Isadora: sprinkling snuff in the folds of her fan, or grit in the toes of her slippers, hiding her missal, slipping a pinch of salt into her chocolate before Bernie took it in. These tricks seemed very childish now, and I could hardly blame her for being angry at the time—but still! For such stupid pranks, what a dark and terrible revenge she seemed to have planned!Ay de mi, thought I, if ever I live in a civilized household again, I vow that I will never put salt in any old lady's chocolate—not so much as a single grain!

  Then I bethought me to have a discussion with God on the subject.

  "Please listen to me, Father in heaven, for this is important!

  "I know it was very bad of me to play jokes on Doña Isadora—and it was stupid and headstrong not to take Sam's advice in Santander. And, if you think this danger I am in is a just punishment for these faults, bueno? (I always talked to God in Spanish.) "—Though I, for my part, consider it decidedly harsh of You, and it is more than I would do to someone who had behaved in such a way. Besides which, You have involved Sam in my punishment, and that is wholly unfair, for I don't believe he ever committed a wrong action in his life."

  Then I felt I was wandering from the point. I said, "All this, Father, is beginning to upset the better notion of You that I have had since leaving Villaverde. Can Father Tomás have been right about You after all?

  "Now listen, Father. I don't want to think worse of you again. For it had seemed to me that You must be better than anybody—better than the best person I know—which is Sammy—and he certainly would not do such a thing to You.

  "So I do hope and pray that you will graciously suggest some means to get us—or at least Sammy—out of this pickle."

  Then I considered for a while and wondered if I was being unfair to God—in a way, almost obliging Him to help us; so I added, "Nevertheless, not my will, but Thine be done," to show him that all the teachings of Father Tomás had not been entirely thrown away upon me. And then I lay in the dark waiting for His answer.

  It took a long time coming. Meanwhile the Guipúzcoa rushed onward like a thing pursued—up the huge sides of waves, up, up, and up, until we seemed about to topple off the edge of the world; then down, down, even deeper down, boring, as it seemed, to the utter depths of the ocean, until I was holding my breath for terror, since it seemed as if some great curving weight of water from over our heads would crash upon us, and we should never be able to climb out of the trough.

  Also, with the wind battering her starboard quarter as it came hissing out o
f France, the ship leaned so for to port as she fled away that sometimes it seemed as if her mast must dip right into the waves and she turn upside down. But this did not happen, and we sped on, on, through the darkness, while Sammy slept peacefully beside me on the slanting deck.

  And then God put a notion into my head.

  Wriggling out from under the coverings, without disturbing Sam, I quietly made my way back to the caboose, clinging to every rope and stay on my perilous course. The Doctor and his assistant were still murmuring together at the foot of the mast; I went sofdy by on the other side without their observing me; indeed, this was not difficult, for the sound of the wind in the shrouds drowned all other noise. The captain was once more at the helm, and he was directing two sailors to trim the ship by reefing some of the sails; he did not appear to notice me.

  I slipped into the caboose, where the turf fire was all but out, damped down to a smoldering glow. The third sailor and the old cook both lay asleep, huddled between some of the stores and the angle of the wall. The iron soup pot, covered with a heavy lid, had been set aside, slung in a wooden cradle so that the motion of the ship should not cause it to spill.

  The lantern flame burned dimly behind its talc screen.

  And there, just as I had remembered it in my mind's eye, hung the wicker-covered flask, from a nail in the wall.

  "Give the young gentleman a bit of bread and a mouthful of spirit," the captain had said, nodding at it.

  And old Luc had said—what had he said?—"That liquor is not good for the young lordship," and had given me some from his own flask. Because he was afraid of me and thought I might be related to the spirits of drowned sailors.

  Moving slowly and deliberately, as if I had a perfect right to do it, I took the wicker-covered flask, uncorked it, lifted the lid from the soup pot, and poured in most of the contents of the flask, which I then recorked and hung up on its nail again.

  The two sleepers did not stir, and I left the caboose without, being noticed. Then, even more carefully than I had come—for the ship was now pitching with a motion like that of my bad-tempered mule—I edged along to where Sam lay and settled down once more.

  I felt quite calm.

  Perhaps the liquor in the flask was no more than brandy—in which case it would have little effect on those who drank the soup. There was nothing to do now but wait; and with this resolved in my mind, I soon fell asleep.

  9. The battle on the ship; the snowstorm; what became of the Comprachicos; our arrival in Falmouth

  I was awakened by the sound of a wild yell. As I lifted myself confusedly on my elbow—having come abruptly out of a heavy, dream-filled slumber, in which Doña Isadora was chasing me with one of Bernie's frying pans, and I was dodging to avoid the drops of boiling fat and hissing fishes from it—I saw that some considerable time must have passed, for the sky was much lighter—a pale, leaden gray—and could readily be distinguished from the sea, which now looked as if it were covered by a dark, oily skin, seamed by a thousand wrinkles.

  Beside me, Sam shot upright, his keen sailor's nose having detected an odor that I, unaccustomed to the sea, had not yet taken for a menace. Smoke!

  "Hey! Are we afire?" Sam was on his feet in a second, tottering as his weight came onto his weak leg. I sprang up and took his arm to balance him. We both looked aft along the cluttered deck. My first thought was the caboose—the fire in its clay box—could my interference with the soup have somehow caused the fire to burn up—? But neither flame nor smoke came from the doorway.

  Then we heard more yells, and beheld the most amazing sight.

  A man appeared from behind the mainsail; he was dancing on the caboose roof. He seemed to be waving a banner of live flame.—Then I saw that he held a great fragment of tarred canvas, which was alight; it burned furiously, with tongues of fire leaping away from it, breaking away and taking flight on the wind. And he danced up and down, singing some mad song, in Basque and French and his own language. It was the bearded Irishman, and, so far as I could make out, he sang that he was Coullain, the Hound of the North, and that he would slit the gullets of all Queen Maeve's enemies.

  "I learned my swordsmanship in the Land of Shadows!" he bawled. "I received my weapons from Scath, Queen of the Witches, and I can hurl a spear farther than any man in the West. Where is Queen Maeve's champion, where is Ferdia? Let him come hither, for Coullain is waiting to give battle!"

  "What has got into that lunatic?" yelled the captain furiously. He was at the tiller, but could not leave go of it, for the ship was careering along, even faster than last evening, it seemed, between the piled and evil-looking crisscross waves.

  "Matthieu!" called the captain. "Luc! Abdullah! Catch hold of the idiot and knock him senseless with a marlin spike before he sets fire to the ship!"

  "Eh eh, he'm in a proper frenzy," muttered Sammy, watching the dancing madman. "If he were a Malay—I had one as a shipmate once—I'd say he'd gone amok. I've seen him wild like that when the fit took him.—We'd best try to head him off at this end, lad—if he burns the ship, we'll all go to the bottom together."

  And he took a length of rope from a coil beside us and formed it into a noose, then said to me, "Do you move that way, lad, and I'll go this side, and we'll see if we can edge him towards the stern."

  The other three men were now at the after end of the caboose, and the captain, beads of sweat rolling down his face, was steering so as to try and keep the mainsail away from the dancing madman, who continued his wild capering, waving the burning banner, and roaring that he was King Conor's trusty watchdog who would rend any man that touched a hair of his head.

  Sam crept closer and closer, keeping the sail between himself and the maniac. I was on the other side of the ship, and the wind blew from the madman to me. Every now and then I had to duck as a piece of flame whirled past me. The man saw me and his eyes seemed to bulge; they were reddened in frenzy and the veins on his neck and forehead stood out like writhing snakes; he was a truly frightening apparition. He made as if to jump down on me, then suddenly turned in the other direction, and with a great shout;

  "Wait for me, Ferdia! I will fight you at the Bridge of the Leaps!" he bounded off the roof with a spring that took him right into the ship's well. Sammy, at that same moment, very adroitly hurled his rope, noosing the man's arms to his body and stopping him in mid-leap, so that he fell helpless to the deck and lay stunned. Matthieu and Abdullah instantly flung themselves on him, snatched away the burning canvas, and tossed it overboard.

  "God be thanked!" said Abdullah. "Another minute, and he would have set fire to the sail."

  "Tie him up!" said the captain grimly.

  "No need, Capitano. He has knocked himself unconscious. He will be sane when he recovers, doubtless."

  "Tie him up just the same.—That was well done," said the captain, curtly, to Sam, as if he regretted having to be under an obligation; and, turning back at once to Abdullah, he asked, "What got into Shaemus? Had he been drinking—or taken hasheesh?"

  "No, Captain, not to our knowledge," said Abdullah, removing Sam's noose in order to rede the man's hands in front of him.

  By now daylight was near, and a faint band of light appeared eastward over the lead-colored sea. I looked around the ship, wondering where the Doctor and his assistant had passed the night; and, as if summoned by my thought, they made their appearance at that moment, emerging from the hold and climbing the ladder. The small swarthy man led the way, and, seeing his face, recollecting how I had been brought aboard the Guipuzcoa, I thought what a stupid gull I had been. I felt older now by twenty-four years, not hours.

  The Doctor and his assistant were paying me no heed just then.

  "What is to do?" said the Doctor, looking at the body on the deck.

  "The Irishman has run mad," growled the captain, "and burned our spare vela menora; we shall have to pray that God does not see fit to damage the one we are using. You had best give the idiot an opiate, Doctor, to prevent his doing any further misc
hief."

  "Let me have a look at him," said the Doctor.

  But as the Doctor and his assistant bent over Shaemus, the latter recovered from his brief spell of unconsciousness. Dragging his wrists from the hold of the startled Abdullah, he roared out, "Ferdia! Well met! Now we shall see who is master!" and, showing all his teeth, he flung himself on the Doctors assistant. Wholly unprepared for this onslaught, the small man staggered backward; Shaemus seized him by both arms and shook him as a bird shakes a worm. The smaller man, however, was quick to recover, and, spitting out some furious Basque oath, he whipped a knife from his stocking and jabbed it at the Irishman's ribs. This served only to inflame the latter's fury and, yelling with pain and rage, he too pulled out a knife and with a flickering upward motion drove its blade at the other man's throat.

  "Stop them!" shouted the captain furiously. "Here—Matthieu—take the helm, damn you—I'll soon stop them"—for the two men, now engrossed in their fight, had jumped up onto the deck and were ducking, feinting, and stabbing at each other as if they were lifelong enemies, all the time drawing toward the forward end of the ship.

  Matthieu took the helm and the captain, drawing out a knife of his own and snatching up a heavy wooden spike, went after the two men and circled round them, watching for a chance to stun the Irishman. "Hey—you! You seem to have some sense!" he bawled at Sam. "Help me put an end to this madness!"—for the Doctor, shrugging as if he saw no recourse but to let the men kill each other, had returned to his original position and sat down at the foot of the mast.

  Sam picked up his noose again. I was afraid of what might happen if he came too close to the fighting pair. With his lame leg he could not move quickly. And already the captain, aiming a blow at the Irishman's head with his spike, had received a savage slash on his arm which made him retire a step, • cursing, and tie his kerchief over the cut, which was pouring blood. The deck was already spattered and slippery from the blood of the two combatants, who had given each other various wounds, which they treated with as much disregard as the utter lack of reason for their battle.