“He knew his children, he said,” said Isaac. “Five of them, for three of the twenty-two years. Imagine! Five grown children. Never knew their father. Only tales of the sea. Then what comes back? A father? No, I think the sea comes back, Francisco.”
“I agree,” said the Mexican.
“The Temporal Sea, before it slips my mind,” said Isaac, opening his journal.
“What of it?”
“That Captain Turner. She mentioned it back in Boston. Men have written of the Temporal Sea yet out of the realm of sailors and whalers most consider it an exaggeration.”
Francisco nodded. “I have skirted their bounds. I have seen them rage but was never embroiled in them like Turner. Incredible woman.”
“Aye,” said Isaac. “What did you see?”
“The fishing is almost magical there, right before the outskirts of the southern sucking winds. There is a price to pay Isaac.”
“How so?”
Francisco raised a skin from which he sipped some ungodly drink. “As tomorrow there will be a price to pay for this. There is always a price,” he said, taking another swig.
“And what was the price for the Temporal Sea?”
“So it is as if playing with fire; men will bring bounty that would otherwise take a lifetime to accrue. Tuna, though Turner swears there are none, Right, Minke, Blue and Sperm whale. Oil and blubber and bone! Also crabs that skirt the surface like fleas as to make good eating by merely dipping a bucket overboard. They say you hear the winds first and then all bulkheads shake. Except there are no trees, only blue. As an eternal windstorm with no end to the howling gusts, like phantoms, screaming in an unyielding eternity.”
“I see,” replied Isaac. His head was down and his pen busy.
“And once you’re inside,” Francisco went on, “you’d have a better chance escaping the eye of a tornado. Men go mad from the ceaseless howling and jump overboard to their dooms. The seas are so buoyant that men sink like stones, their wailing faces looking up, then they are gone. Like stones, Isaac.”
“Awful. How did she escape, then?”
“Through the wind tunnel which opens but once per moon. Parts like the Red Sea upon the staff of Moses. To get through her you must pass over the sea of blues which run with their pointed fins, like sailfish, only with razor teeth and long angular jaws. One the size of three regular blues, and in a deathly obsession. And the eyes, red like fire. She led them through and lost only five.”
“Overboard?” asked Isaac.
“No. The fish cast themselves out of the waters, high as the riggings and mast. They tear at men’s faces with a calculation not fitting for any fish. Men stay clung to the riggings anyway because the sailing is so difficult there.”
“They may have felt like Odysseus sailing past Scylla, by God,” said Isaac.
“Eaten alive by the raving blue fins. Only skeletons still gripping the riggings amidst their howling surviving brothers beside them. I merely skirted the cursed sea but men all about recited the Lord’s Prayer as the blue shapes jumped from the water like deathly mini whales. The clouds sailed by, milky white ringed with yellow.
“My god!” Isaac exclaimed.
“Indeed, however God was not there, Isaac. Perhaps Turner should have joined us. We got the head start on this journey, yet many are behind us. And if we hit the Barbarys first, we will be no match for their wrath.”
“Surprised I am indeed that the surviving Barbarys are not at each other’s throats. Or sold off to the highest bidder.”
“Some secrets stay between shipmates, Isaac. Even when we enter the sandy ground and walk towards the valley of death. This is true even among scoundrels. Some things will always stay between shipmates. What happens on the blue cannot be judged as men are judged on the hard earth. They are two different worlds. The sea does not betray her secrets.”
“Aye.”
A space passed for what seemed to Isaac an eternity until all the voices below deck hushed.
“Time for the two of you to get some sleep in the hammock with your feet up,” came Herb’s distinctive voice. He lumbered toward the bow in the dark and before his image cleared his towering elephant gun did in all its glory.
“You need not bring that absurd weapon everywhere,” said Francisco.
“On my watch she goes where I go,” replied Herb.
“Then to sleep with me,” said Isaac. “And may I dream of a forest filled with furs and an ocean of silver too.”
“Or maybe just the poverty of them both,” quipped Francisco.
“I think the sea has to run out of her gold,” said Isaac as he made for the ladder.
“There always be a price Jew,” said Herb. “Hell even I know that,” he said. “Saw it comin before the French and English, see when a man’s station be high in life there be a feelin like he made it to the highchair and then nothin else would ever change. Goes for nations too I assume.”
“Aye,” said Francisco. “As if a man’s blossomed will somehow freezes the universe around him. We take this beautiful bounty, of the wood, of the sea, and we lavish its flavors and songs.”
“Seems me and you see eye to eye on somethin. All I know is a reckonin be comin, make no mistake. It must, like the night comes followin the day, it must and it just is, nothin good or bad about it.”
A glistening dome appeared under the starlight, skirting under the surface in front of the bow, as if racing the slow-moving ship.
“What there!” shouted Isaac.
The hunter without hesitation took aim with the elephant gun and shot at the thing as it exploded and its remains turned belly up. “Turtle looks like,” he said.
“What!” came a roaring scream from below deck.
Francisco studied the hunter from the dark looking like a cat before a pounce. “A turtle, captain,” he shouted as he and the writer descended the ladder.
“Turtles be good eatin,” said Herb as if conversing with the sea. He looked at the man-sized beast as it rolled and shifted in the water, pieces of its broken shell separating and merging with the black icy flakes.
XXII
“I’ll be damned!” snapped the raven-haired captain.
“Captain Turner,” spoke Walsh. “No islands lay in the bay save for those held by the Inuit. No passages, no treasure, no hope. Only the delusions of broken men.”
“And women!” she screamed.
“What have you there?”
“Barely legible,” she said despondently. “A chart of sixteen and thirty, sometime, I think,” she said.
The two examined the chart under candlelight. Turner traced her finger around the unlabeled Baffin Bay, devoid of any markings or indications of whales or ships. “Nothing,” she said.
“Does not evince confidence for our current journey,” Walsh ejected. “But we are not looking for whales this time, are we captain?”
“Look you here,” said she, gesturing to two smaller adjacent charts. They both were less worn with age and filled with latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates, edged with a dozen names of ships French and English and Portuguese and Old Norse.
“Baffin Bay,” said Walsh.
“Aye. Whales fallen there before. Mostly by the Norwegians; their backyard. Not two hundred years ago Walsh. Nothing. Something awaits us there and it comes only as an ethereal speck in time. As Chief Panuk hinted during my time at Baffin Island.”
Voices erupted in cheer outside the hatch. Captain and first mate looked toward the revelry.
“I don’t want them stockpiling their liquor,” Turner said sternly. “This is a unique voyage. Tell them to down it when it’s given or not at all.”
“I will, captain. They are apprehensive.”
“As we were on the Temporal Sea. What comes next will free them from apprehension and labor forevermore, Walsh.”
“Chasing delusions then, are we captain! As well sail for Thule! Or perhaps the Merman will welcome us to a frozen death somewhere down below!”
“P
erhaps!” she screamed, slamming a wiry fist onto the table before her. The center of the olden chart ripped. “Damn!” she said, piecing the furrowed parchment back together.
Walsh’s eyes softened again. “We must consider turning back while provisions last. Already the men are at half-rations. This vessel was never meant for the arctic or her sister oceans.”
She glared up at him with brown eyes that burned like an autumn fire. “Desire you to butcher whales for the next two decades? Perhaps you would like to retire to a cotton mill and earn your dues.”
“Neither do I rush death. Let us reverse course. I will sail with you again. From Nantucket or New Bedford, or wherever the damn you choose! Whales are our bounty, not silver. Let us sail south, before the deep freeze of coming December makes this sea our icy grave!”
She threw down her quill. “Are you my brother? Did we not both come from an island? The same island? The Irish have never had a place in the new world, save as brawlers and sailors and stowaways.”
“We have always agreed on this.”
“So what think you lies back there?” said she, pointing aft at the bulkhead behind her. “An Irish life in Massachusetts, that’s what. We know what that is.”
“Think you a silver haul is there, truly captain?”
“I think men do not miss the shine of silver. And Inuit are not liars, that’s what I think.”
“Agreed on that.”
So would you follow me?” she said as she slammed a fist again.
“Aye, captain. Always, if that be your will.”
“And would you follow me as you did on the Temporal Sea. A year in the wailing winds, Walsh! Save no reward waited us there besides our own survival.”
“Always into the blue, captain. Here we are again.”
“You say always,” said she. “Yet you doubt me first, then the crew follows. I’ll be thrown into the sea. Maybe that’s what you want, Walsh.”
The man sighed and sat on the deck. “You mistake me, captain.”
The quarters were small, the captain’s desk but a raised sea chest with a plank affixed on which she scribed. No adornments filled the cabin, no porcelain or fine dishware. A silence passed as a hammock moved gently from the far corner, as did a whale-oil lamp which bounced light off the Irish faces in the room.
“An island of silver,” blurted Walsh. “Bloody silver.”
Soft laughs turned to breathless gasps. Outside, weary crew peered toward the hatch while others gambled with black die and tiny bird-bones strewn about the deck.
“Oh, what quests we have undertaken,” said Turner catching her breath. “What joy.”
“I fear, captain, that the sea will be my lot forever. On this world, and maybe the next too.”
She leaned back on her stool, her back resting against the bulkhead. “I learned a long time ago that we do not choose our lot in life,” she said.
“Very well, captain. Let us find this silver haul, before the damned pirate does.”
“Good. There is my old friend.”
“Aye. And the pirate. He left a full day before us. Smart man, though he doesn’t look it. We may cross paths. His sails are sturdy, and his instinct for the sea fierce.”
“We have not to worry about him, I do not think. I plan to barter if we meet. He is a crude man, still not above striking a deal, I think.”
“Aye. Aye Captain. Then let me see. Show me the way and I shall follow, as I always have. Speculation or not.”
“Hold course. North by Northwest,” she said. “And bring me a brandy, for God sakes.”
“Aye, captain,” replied Walsh. And he shifted out the hatch and closed it softly, where the men’s echoed orders rose and fell like a tide.
Icy rain fell hard onto the deck of The Roc.
“Tell me the truth,” said the captain.
Simon looked around him and saw unsympathetic eyes. “I know not captain.”
“The fucking whaleboat is gone!” yelled Francisco.
Off starboard where the second whaleboat once hung was now only a bent and twisted davit, as if a storm had assailed the ship in the night though no other damage was seen about the hull.
“Who stowed it last?” asked the pirate.
“It was never lowered captain,” said Francisco. “The Cree took the other, and now we have no vessel in which to tread to shore.”
“Bollocks!” said Herb. “He slept on watch.”
The captain nodded and motioned to the hunter.
“We would have woken from a berg,” said the Mexican. We would have fallen from our hammocks had ice pressed the hull.”
“I had liquor in me,” said the captain.
“I did not,” said Francisco. “Isaac did not. We played dice until midnight. I believe Simon was on watch by then. Right?” the Mexican said putting a hand in Simon’s face.
“Aye, yes sir I was.”
“So do not tell me a whaleboat fell from the gunwale while you paced stern to bow!”
“If you slept on watch brother tell us,” said Jerimiah.
Simon looked at the deck and wept.
Francisco nodded.
The captain looked at the Mexican in silence as Simon was dragged in front of him and thrown to the deck. His eyes were swollen red, his lips cracked. From behind the hunter and Jerimiah stood, irons in their hands hanging down toward the deck like some twin wardens of the sea.
“How long did you sleep?” asked the captain.
“After I heard everyone hush in the forecastle.”
The captain grasped the man by the chin and lifted him level to his own eyes.
Simon clasped two hands around the captain’s single bronzed fist, but it was futile.
The pirate pulled the man in close, face to face. “I’ll give you thirty damned lashes with the cat. Understand? thirty. Ever see an infected back at sea? Pretty thing it is. It will pass, you will live, and at twenty-three you’ll walk with a hunch for the rest of your life.”
“Captain,” said Francisco. “Perhaps justice can wait. We are short manned.”
“You are lucky the two Cree expired inland, said the captain. “You shall pay for this, make no mistake.” He threw Simon to the deck.
XXIII
The surgeon lowered his head and the men followed, save for the captain who grasped the helm white knuckled.
The men repeated the Lord’s prayer, Julius’s airy voice rising above all.
“Now despite my surroundings, the Lord is my strength,” Lukas preached. He gripped the head of his cane and leaned forward. “In both his love and his wrath, he is my strength!”
“Indeed he is!” shouted Jerimiah.
“And Christ is the rock on which I brace myself amid the swells around me!”
“Aye!” came a unanimous shout from the crew.
“And through Christ-”
“Shut the fuck up!” barked the captain. “Helms alee!” he ordered.
And all dispersed again as the sermon fell to silence.
Francisco eyed the starboard sea furtively. “We should wear ship,” he said.
“I concur with Mexico!” shouted Jerimiah halfway to the masthead.
“No!” shouted the captain.
“This isn’t the Pacific!” hissed the Mexican.
Suddenly Portside was a speck of grey, as seen the tiny island was merely a steppe of rolling rocks and stones looking like outward reaching stalagmites.
“Make sail yonder,” said the captain.
“Set course,” grunted Francisco. “Simon to the top.”
Simon made for the Jacob’s Ladder and Isaac shadowed him.
“No treasure here captain,” said Jerimiah. “Too close to the coast. It is said to be centered in the water northward of here. Too far south, captain, too close to the mainland.”
“We see what these Inuit say,” said the captain. “And I won’t open the fucking cans until we must, lest our bellies swell and we die in sleep. Our chow is dry. This be part of Baffin Island, methinks. I
n that case we will gain bearings and food from them or kill them all, whoever the motherfuck they are.”
“This is not Baffin Island. Yonder north is the western coast of the Greenland island captain,” corrected Francisco.
The captain grew red. All eyes on him.
“I’ll not sail circles around the godforsaken bay like we be in the Temporal Sea,” he snapped.
Francisco eyed the nearing island and shook his head rapidly. “Too close to drop anchor captain, too close.”
“We need to wade ashore, swim if we fucking have to!” replied the captain. “There be a fire yonder!” said he, thrusting his arm towards a low rising smoke funnel.
“There is little logic in this, captain,” said Jerimiah. “The Roc will be smashed in the tide.”
“Drop fucking anchor!”
The men dropped anchor, twirling the windlass like an image of somber children dancing about a maypole where rather than cries in the sunny spring they worked amid only the steady frozen winds.
“The Roc is yours,” said the captain squinting as he looked back at Simon. “Perhaps you can manage not to sour that duty.”
“Yes captain.”
The men jumped overboard as if their vessel were sinking. The crew groaned and swam as ancient volcanic black stone and jagged rocks soon became their footing.
“Miska!” came a scream from Simon on deck.
But the Newfoundland howled and dove overboard, swimming behind the men.
Figures emerged to meet the men before they were beached.
About and ahead were blackened rocks; some huge and towering, some covered with greyed Lichen, others sharp and cut into the earth as if trapped for time immemorial. They were colored of different hues beckoning time itself to challenge them. Most was hard stone save for tiny pools about the tiny island and a small expanse of rolling low dunes of black sand leading to a narrow cave higher inland.
“I am called Captain Hildale,” said a giant man extending a hand. His beard reached to mid chest and shined gold under the sun.
Francisco grasped the hand and was pulled up and out of the tide. Skeletal men behind the blond bearded leader helped the rest of the crew.
Sea of Two Suns Page 17
