The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow

by A. J. Mackinnon

  There is a moment in one of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books when the children are about to go into great danger, from which it is likely that none of them will come out alive. ‘Let us go now,’ says one of the characters, ‘and take what adventure Aslan sends us.’ An adventure! To see Death in this way seemed an admirable and comforting way of viewing things. If only my bowels and bladder would come on side, I thought, all would be well. Meanwhile, time hovered at the brink.

  And now having built all that up, though as honestly as I can, let me now confess that this is where the anti-climax starts. I trust readers will not be too disappointed with the outcome. For on my refusal to cross the ford, the sneering horseman looked at a loss. After some thought he held up three fingers, said something that might possibly have been ‘kilometros,’ another thing that might have been ‘Kapitan,’ and indicated that I should wait there. Then he turned back across the ford, spurred his horse and trotted off up the rise into the trees.

  ‘Righto!’ I called after him. Then precisely seventeen seconds after I had watched him disappear from sight, I turned and ran like blazes back down the path. Twenty metres down the path I stopped short, changed my tactics and ran straight off the path and into the trackless forest. Ten metres and two blackberry swathes in I changed plan again and bolted out of the thicket and back to the ford where I stood quivering like a jack-rabbit, wondering what the hell I had been playing at. It was a purely animal reaction, the bolting to and fro of a released creature fuelled by pure adrenalin and few brain-cells. Now that the adrenalin was leaching out of my system, I was at a loss. I collapsed into a drift of leaves and began to think.

  My theory that the cruel-eyed horseman was the King of the Gypsies and intending to rob or kill me seemed a little shaky. True, he had my bag and all my valuables, but his cavalier abandonment of me in the forest with the expectation that I would calmly await his return was puzzling.

  I thought again. If I bolted back to Jack and took off down the river, I would do so without passport, wallet or money. So be it –my captors were welcome to them. But what if I had been mistaken? I still thought that the horseman was a cold-eyed killer, but what if this Kapitan he spoke of was a more genial man, a sort of Robin Hood of Romania, who after a fire-lit meal of venison pasties would return my possessions with a mocking bow – minus a small donation for the widows’ and orphans’ fund, perhaps – and send me on my way again to tell the world of his magnanimity? Or something along those lines?

  I decided that my best course was to adopt the age-old strategy of schoolboys and princes alike and climb a tree. There was a very good one just by the ford, a sturdy oak well screened from the path by broad leaves. There I would hide, wait until I had assessed the situation further when the horseman returned, and either reveal myself or continue hiding as I thought best. Yes. That is what I would do. So up that tree I climbed still clutching my oar and sat down to wait in my leafy bower. As my heartbeat slowed and the blood stopped chugging in my ears, the silence of the forest stole over me and with it came a sort of calm. Far off I heard the life of the forest going on around me: some largish animal – a deer or a wild boar, perhaps – was scuffling a quarter of a mile away, and something unseen was working its way along the bank of the muddy creek in a rustle of grass and reeds. So quietly did I sit that a nuthatch, its plumage in neat cashew and slate grey, came pecking its busy way up the oak, creeping up the trunk to within a foot or two of my hand and would have started on my oar if I had not swiped at it viciously to just bugger the hell off out of there.

  Man Up Tree With Oar

  Clearly my nerves were still scraped raw.

  Half-an-hour later I was so intent on peering through my screen of leaves at the ford in front of me that I was oblivious to all else. Then there came a polite cough from behind and below me and I nearly fell out of the tree in pure shock. A small party of men had approached from the opposite direction to the ford – they were within ten yards of my tree, and I was in full view of them. One was in the smart green uniform of a police officer, while the others were in various items of khaki. They were looking up at me with the sort of gaze you too would use if you found a man up a tree with an oar. ‘Humour him,’ the looks said. ‘He is possibly confused.’

  I turned in alarm, nearly fell once more from my perch, caught myself in time and clambered hastily down, brushing twigs and leaves from my hair and attempting to rub moss-stains from my trousers. At a word from the officer, one of the men stepped forward warily and took the oar. Another helped me down the last five feet. The game was up.

  To my relief the officer looked not only competent but kind. He was a man of about my age, with a tanned face, fairish brown hair and clear grey eyes. The neat uniform suited his grave and courteous air – this was no tin-pot generalissimo running a racket. And to my relief, after one or two false starts we made the discovery that we both spoke French.

  The fact that he spoke French was reassuring. His first intelligible words, on the other hand, were not.

  ‘I must arrest you for espionage,’ he said kindly.

  The rest of the story is swiftly told. I was taken a little way through the forest to a bend of the creek where was moored a speedboat, surprisingly new. This took us up the log-jammed creek at a terrifying speed to where it petered out on the further side of the forest. Here a lonely police outpost stood surrounded by pigsties, and an office was quickly cleared of a small piglet and three recruits playing chess. Strong black coffee was ordered, my horseman was sent for to join us, and my interrogation as a spy began.

  The police-chief – his name was Florian – was as good as he seemed. Very slowly, very clearly, he questioned me about that afternoon’s movements. Very slowly, very clearly, I told my tale. When I had finished, he told me that there were one or two discrepancies he would like to clear up. The two fishermen, he said, claim that they found me on Romanian soil, that I am a spy. Is this true?

  No, I explained calmly but very clearly. I was certainly in the channel between the island and the shore – this is not a problem, the river is free to everyone, he reassures me – but I was certainly nowhere near the bank and had no intention of landing.

  Ah. He smiled. They, the rascals, have told the horseman (who is, by the way, a border-patrol policeman, not a Gypsy-King despite his dress) that they found me on Romanian soil and knew at once that I was a spy. For the love of their country and as good honest citizens, they had taken the first opportunity to seek out the police and hand their spy over to the proper authorities. There would, perhaps, be a small reward?

  No, added Florian to his narrative, but there might be a small fine. The two opportunists would be found and punished. Bit by bit we pieced together the events. We came to the conclusion that the two fishermen had hoped to take me somewhere quiet and rob me – hopefully nothing worse – but that their plan had been foiled by the appearance of the patrol-rider who had come along and seen them towing me and the distinctive Jack. Knowing that if there was any trouble, they would be the first to be questioned, they had quickly changed their plan. They knew that I had no visa and that I spoke no Romanian. Thus they quickly concocted a story about a captured ‘spy’ and spun it to the rider, hoping for a reward. (At this time of trouble over the border in Yugoslavia, the notion of spies was not as fanciful as it may now seem.) The rider accordingly had taken charge from that point on, perhaps over-zealously, and decided to bring me at gun-point to the Kapitan. It was ironic that I had in fact been perfectly safe from the moment the horseman had appeared – the appearance had been quite the opposite.

  But now the ordeal was over. We had another coffee – as gritty and black as ever, but oh! how I enjoyed it – and Florian handed me my belongings and accompanied me back to the speed-boat. Then there was another nightmare speed-race through the floating logs and low boughs of the secret creek until Jack’s bright buttercup hull and furled red sails came in sight, tethered where I had secured her several lifetimes ago. Then they kindly towed me out
into the main river, now a burnished gold in the late westering sun, and cast me off . The nearest town was Tutrakan on the Bulgarian side, some twelve miles down the river, they explained, before zooming off into the golden glare.

  Those last twelve miles were spent driving my boat along across a molten river under a molten sky with oar-strokes still fuelled with adrenaline. As the miles passed, the sky deepened to apricot, then carmine, and then dying-ember crimson until starry darkness covered the heavens from West to East. Slowly my pace slackened, steadied, and I fell to singing every deep, glad, solemn hymn I knew to keep time to the strokes. The lights of Tutrakan crept nearer and nearer, and I passed the last two miles improvising an anthem-like tune, Byrd or Palestrina in style perhaps – it was hard to tell. But the words were those of my favourite prayer, one that I knew from boyhood.

  Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord,

  And by thy great mercy,

  Defend us from all perils and dangers of this night

  For the sake of thy dear Son,

  Our Lord, Jesus Christ,

  Amen

  Amen, and again I say Amen!

  The Wings of the Morning

  He who does not know his way to the sea should take a river for his guide.

  —PLAUTUS, Poenulus

  Round the cape of a sudden came the sea,

  And the sun looked over the mountain’s rim:

  And straight was a path of gold for him,

  And the need of a world of men for me.

  —ROBERT BROWNING, Parting at Morning

  And so the long journey drew near its end. I calculated that there were 376 kilometres to go, or half that distance depending on which route I took. About forty kilometres down the river, a canal cut away to the right, heading straight for the Black Sea and emerging at Constanza on the coast. The longer route would take me further north before swinging eastward into the Danube Delta, where the river spread out into a maze of channels, any of which would take me down to the Black Sea. I was in serious doubt as to which of the two routes to take. The spirit of adventure, which should have cried out for the mazy wilderness of the Delta, one of the world’s greatest wetlands, was now nearly extinguished. I was tired and grubby, on the verge of madness from the sheer tedium of my own company, and I think the events of the past few days had shaken me more than I cared to admit. The straight canal to Constanza would have me finishing within three days, and I could be back in England by the weekend, sitting down in clean clothes among good company and never having to recite The Eve of St Agnes again. I decided to take the shorter route.

  Signing out of Bulgaria with the Silistra Police Chief that first morning was a surreal experience. Yes, the visa was in order, yes, I would have no trouble entering Romania, but the problem was with the boat. Where were her Ship’s Papers?

  Her what?

  ‘Her Ship’s Papers, Kapitan. Every vessel has Ship’s Papers and without seeing them, I cannot let you continue.’

  ‘Look, she’s only a dinghy,’ I explained, and led him out of his harbour-side office to peer over the jetty at the little tub floating below. ‘There isn’t even a motor.’

  He was unmoved. ‘As I say, every vessel has a set of Ship’s Papers, and I must see them. Otherwise,’ he added with a challenging stare, ‘how do I know that you have not stolen this boat?’

  What, and rowed it three thousand miles just to escape? I muttered under my breath. There are easier ways to acquire a boat. But I didn’t voice my thoughts out loud. The police-chief was a fat, smug man who looked content to sit there chewing tooth-picks for the next few decades if needs be, waiting for the Ship’s Papers so that he could stamp them for his records.

  After half an hour I had an idea. I dug out my pencil case and a clean sheet of paper from my sketchbook. I sat down on the sunny steps at his door and drew as a letterhead a rather nice heraldic crow entwined with an anchor. Then I wrote neatly in black ink:

  Name of Vessel: Jack de Crow

  Class: Mirror dinghy

  Reg. No.: 180463 (my birthday, by coincidence)

  Ship’s Owner: Alexander James Mackinnon

  Insurance: Oh, surely …

  Cargo: Tin-whistles, watercolour paintboxes, parrot-embroidered cushions, honey-pots, magic tricks, silken handkerchiefs, gossamer, autumn leaves.

  I did this while the Police Chief watched me through narrowed eyes, even getting up out of his chair to suggest a couple of curly mermaids at the top to flank the nautical crow. He nodded with approval at my artwork and went and resumed his seat behind his desk. I finished off , blew the document dry and went over to him once more. ‘Oh, Ship’s Papers?’ I said. ‘You mean these Ship’s Papers. Yes, here they are, sorry, wasn’t with you for a moment there.’

  He said ‘Ja, Ship’s Papers. I told you they’d be somewhere.’ Then he took them as though he had never seen them before, stamped them, copied the details, signed the copies three times, gave one to me, put one in a file, lit his cigarette with the third, stamped my passport and bid me farewell. ‘I’m a busy man,’ he said, and went back to his toothpick jar and his desk. I returned to Jack, showed her the proof of her new official status, and we sailed off down the river into Romania.

  Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

  I took the one less travelled by,

  And that has made all the difference.

  In my case those roads were actually watery streams, and they ran down either side of a little island in mid-stream, clustered with thick yellowing trees. I took the left-hand channel on a whim – a white egret had flapped slowly off down that side – and discovered twenty minutes later that what I thought was an island was in fact a peninsula, splitting the Danube into two. The branch I was on was the Borcea River, and it ran another sixty miles in a meandering course before it re-joined the main Danube – thirty miles beyond the Constanza Canal turn-off. It looked as though I was going to the Delta after all.

  I was not entirely unhappy about this. The lesser Borcea wound between sandbanks and green pastures where herds of fine-looking horses grazed. Tall clumps of poplars raised their golden towers like steeples over the landscape, and it reminded me vividly of my first days on the little Vyrnwy in the pleasant pastures of North Shrop-shire. Every now and then I saw the rising smoke of some settlement off in the trees, or closer to the bank large round conical huts made of larch-poles all leaning together to an apex, the gaps stopped with moss and grass. Everywhere was a great and spreading silence. Along the banks were fading sedges, bone-white and buff -coloured, and the only sound was the thin hiss and rattle of the breeze sifting through their stiff stems. Far, far overhead I could see three huge black and white birds, legs and necks outstretched in three great crosses. They were storks, sailing eastwards to the Delta. It did not seem far now.

  I moored one night on the outskirts of a dark and almost lightless town next to a rusting barge. The owners, Niko and Georgi, invited me to bunk down in a cosy cabin on board. We set off after dark into the town to find something to eat, Niko and Georgi each taking a stout club. I wondered why, but soon found out as we reached the outskirts. Two snarling dogs launched themselves out of the darkness in attack, but were sent yelping into the darkness by savage blows of the clubs. It was quite unnerving. Even more so was passing by an open concrete drain, one of the huge cylinders of concrete that you see forming culverts under roads. From inside a light was flickering, and as I stooped to glance in I saw a family living there: a mother wrapped in rags, two thin children and a baby, huddled against the curving concrete walls to avoid the slimy trickle of dampness that ran down the middle of this, their home.

  In the darkened town nothing was open, so we returned to the barge and I was plied with brandy. Communication was limited, but to my surprise Romanian was easier to guess at than any other language so far between France and here. I learned later that the Romanians proudly claim direct descent from Rome, the purest line there is, and their language reflects this. Here at the utter end o
f Europe we were back to Latin roots and a recognisable alphabet. By some accident of geography and history they had become islanded in a sea of Slavs, with whom they did not deign to mingle. They were a good-looking race, tanned and straight-nosed and clear-eyed with brown curling hair and frank grins – what could be discerned under the grinding lines of poverty, that is. For there was no doubt about it, Romania was crippled by poverty of an extremity I had not guessed at. It was hard to believe that they shared a continent with glittering Vienna or prosperous Frankfurt.

  One night followed sleeping on Jack under a rookery full of incontinent rooks, another in an almost identical cosy barge cabin on the invitation of another Georgi – I thought for a minute that I had gone in a large circle A day of racing winds and bright skies had me hurtling down the river through two large and surprisingly modern towns with gleaming white apartment-blocks, and I came at last to the very apex of the Delta. Tomorrow I would be in its wild heart, and the next day it would all be over.

  Jack and I stopped at dusk in the middle of a wild part of the forest. Here a gnarled willow tree thrust out old roots into the river to form a natural mooring spot, a promontory of earth and grass and fallen trunks behind which Jack could nestle. That night I gathered together great chunks of rotten wood and kindling, built a fireplace of stones and lit a fire. Soon I had a great blaze going, red against the blackness of the forest beyond, and over it I toasted some bread and cheese. It was not terribly successful – the chunks kept dropping off or charring – but I also opened the bottle of wine that I had been saving since Vienna. Alfons and Uli had given it to me, and I thought of their exquisite and spotless flat as yet another cheesy lump adhered to my shirt-front. They would be very polite, I thought, if they were here, and offer me a linen napkin. Vienna seemed a long way away.