“Found it on the foredeck the watch after he was picked up,” said Singleton. “There’s marks on it like writing.”
“There’s all kind of odd fishing weights,” said Podmore, tossing it back. “It ain’t gold, that’s for sure.”
One of the men said the shipwrecked man had been clutching a piece of gold treasure, but had gripped it so tight nobody could get a proper look. Discussion of that would come after the wreck.
“MacWhirr was captain of Ly-ee-Moon,” said Bell thoughtfully. “He’s been ploughing these seas twenty years, but he’s not one to go around a typhoon when he can go through and that’s a risk.”
“Ly-ee-Moon was an A.S.N.C. ship,” said Podmore. “They don’t take fools for skippers.”
“MacWhirr’s got Nan-Shan now,” said Singleton. “That new ship from Dunbarton. I don’t know who had Ly-ee-Moon after MacWhirr.”
“Wasn’t it Webber?”
“He was cashiered after he took to drink in Hong Kong.”
“The other Webber, the Scot who was first mate on Princess Marie.”
“No, he went to Canada.”
“Not that Webber …”
They argued like children, stubbornly, loudly, and with frequent repetitions. The conversation bounced around with everyone offering an opinion, as it will with men who have a time on their hands and nothing at stake, chewing at it like a dog with an old bone. Such arguments could last half a day before smouldering out, only to break back into flame a week later. They went through rosters of names and debated who was master of which vessel now, and whether the Australian Steamship Navigation Company had ever had an unsuitable captain, and how well Ly-ee-Moon would weather a typhoon if she sailed through one.
The debate had subsided to a wrangle between Podmore and Nilsen over how many Webbers there were at the A.S.N.C., when O’Neill came back. The forecastle fell quiet.
O’Neill shook his head without speaking, sat on his bunk, and relit his pipe. He took a long pull and looked round to see if his audience was listening.
“Sure, and it’s a queer business,” he said, exhaling smoke.
“What happened?” demanded Podmore.
“I don’t know if I’ve the right to tell ye,” said O’Neill.
“Blast the man,” said Podmore. “Why not?”
“He’ll tell,” said Charley, sitting down on a sea chest by O’Neill’s berth. “He’s just wafting the savour from the pot so we get an appetite for it before he serves. Isn’t that so, Dublin?”
“Well now…” O’Neill began, gesturing for the others to come closer. They gathered obediently round his berth. Only the cat flicked its tail and stayed where it was.
“There was just Butcher and the old Man, and my own self there,” he began. “And Yang, going back and forth and dawdling and listening when he could. And this castaway, a strange fellow with tattoos down his arms. He was no more Polynesian than Charley or I. And I would know, seeing as how I was ashore in Papeete a spell myself.”
Papeete was notorious for its colony of European beachcombers. Some of them were travellers or artists, but most were sailors who’d jumped ship in the hope of living in paradise. They said you could live for free there on fruit and fish, they said the women were beautiful and friendly, they said that a man had nothing to but decide whether to lie in the sun or the shade all day as the fancy took him. O’Neill had told them all many tales about his time there. He said he had eventually given in to the call of the sea and the lure of the open ocean and joined a ship again. Others suggested that lack of coin played a part. Life in Polynesia might have been cheap, but not quite as free as the stories said, and with no money at all it was as hard as anywhere else.
“And where was he from?” asked Podmore.
“Ah well, that’s the thing,” said O’Neill. “I could see he was no Polynesian, but we tried out one language after another, me and Butcher and the old Man, all to no use. In the end my ear caught something familiar, and do you know what it was?”
“Just tell us, man,” said Podmore.
“Nothing more, and nothing less, than simple pidgin,” said O’Neill. “But with such an unholy bad accent that of the three of us it was only myself could make out what he was saying. And of all places, the fellow is from the island of Ambrym.”
“That’s in the New Hebrides,” said Singleton.
“It is that,” said O’Neill. “He’s light-skinned for a New Hebridean, as pale as Nilsen there, and that’s what fooled the old Man. Now, this fellow is very excited when he sees me, because of this.” He held up the silver crucifix which hung around his neck. “He thinks I’m a priest, and he’s after falling all over himself trying to tell me the whole story.”
“He thinks you’re a priest!” said Charley. “That’s a good one.”
“And the nut of it is this,” O’Neill went on. “He’s called Matthew—or Mattoo or Matu, but it’s all the same. He’s living in a little village somewhere on the coast of Ambrym. A fisherman with a canoe, like most of the islanders there. It’s all fish, and cocoanuts, and bananas and taro and kava to drink…it’s an easy life, I’m telling you, the land of milk of honey. But the only thing is, you see, the religion. Every village in Ambrym has its own ways: most of them are Protestant, some Catholic, and a few other odd ones about the place. But there’s a few where the church has been abandoned, and the old ways get their hold back, and his village is one.
“They’ve a sort of a fish-god there, and a whole nation of fish-men under him who live in the sea, so they say. And every seven generations this village has to give the most beautiful young woman to be the bride of the fish-king to replenish the blood of the fish-kingdom.”
“And he told you all this, in pidgin?” asked Podmore. “How did he tell it?”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” exclaimed O’Neill. “Will you not just let me tell the tale in my own words? You can pick over the bones afterwards as you like. Now, where was I?”
“Giving a bride to the fish-king,” prompted Singleton.
“Exactly so,” said O’Neill. “Now Matthew has a sister, with hair as black as the raven’s wing, and eyes that sparkle like the sun on the sea, and the rest of her as young and wholesome and ripe as a papaya ready to fall off the tree. Those native girls! Boys, if you’ve not been to the islands, you don’t know paradise.…Anyway, he might be a good churchgoing pagan, as you might say, but our fellow loves his sister and doesn’t want fish for his in-laws.”
“Blasted heathens!” said Podmore. “What did they do with her?”
“According to their tradition,” said O’Neill, “the high priest, in all his vestments and regalia, takes her out to a reef a mile out from the shore. All the village come out in their canoes to see. And the priest says his blessings and Ave Marias and calls the fish-king and declares them married. And the attendants of the fish-king come and takes her away.”
“Gah,” said Podmore, “I know this old story. It’s George and the Dragon, ain’t it?”
“That’s what the old Man himself said to it,” said O’Neill. “Maybe they’ve been offering up virgins for thousands of years.”
“Hold up there a spell, mate,” said Nilsen. “Dragons in fairy stories I understand. But this fish-king—he’s a man dressed up, is it?”
“Matthew swears the fish-men are real,” said O’Neill. “He’s seen them, though never their king. They live under the water like fish and they come up on dry land and walk like men. And they hunger after land-women something terrible.”
“This is nonsense,” said Nilsen. “It’s a man dressed up. Like when someone makes up as King Neptune and his retinue when we cross the line.”
“Plenty of good men used to swear they’d seen mermaids in the old days,” said Podmore. “In the clear light of day, sunning themselves on the rocks. I’ve met old hands who would swear to that.”
“Mermaids!” said Nilsen. “You can pull the other one too, and listen to the bells ringing. Educated men should have noth
ing to do with these superstitions.”
“I’m only telling you what I heard,” said Podmore.
“There are peasant stories in my country too,” said Nilsen. “Count Magnus summoning his strange companion from the sea, and other weird stuff. But scientists have never found evidence that mermaids exist.”
“I’ve seen waves taller than the mainmast of this ship,” said Podmore hotly. “With my own eyes. And your scientists say they don’t exist. I believe my eyes, not your scientists!”
“They talk about Sea-Morgans in Somerset,” said Singleton. “They say those breed with men, and the children …”
“But scientists—” started Nilsen.
“Whatever you say,” interrupted O’Neill loudly before the conversation could fragment, “Matthew who lives on Ambrym swears to fish-men, and that’s at the heart of this story. So the wedding is all arranged and the preparations made and all. Our man wants to send to Port Resolution for the law—”
“It’s only a naval commission,” said Podmore, “New Hebrides is neutral territory, there’s no governor.”
“—but his father, who is a very pillar of the community and friends with the priest, approves of the match, and his wife is of the same mind. The girl, dutiful daughter that she is, wouldn’t dream of opposing her father’s wishes. So there’s nothing for the authorities to do anyway. And Matthew can’t get her to run away. So he has to find another way.”
“Kill the fish-king,” said Singleton.
“No, he takes the cunning way. The high priest’s regalia, his golden headpiece, is draped out on the village altar in full view. They’ve no chests or safes on this island, and even the walls are made of leaves. Nobody would ever dare touch sacred things, so they should be safe. But the night before the wedding, Matthew creeps up to the altar and steals the priest’s regalia, and gets in his canoe and paddles like the blazes. The priest can’t hold the wedding, you see, without his sacred jewellery. That’s the way it is with these pagans.”
“Should have buried it instead,” said Podmore.
“Thrown it into the sea,” said Singleton, “nobody would ever know.”
“No, no, no,” said O’Neill warmly. “He says the fish-men would sniff it out in no time. They can find it from miles away, like a shark following blood in the water.”
The crew digested this intelligence, each thinking about how he would attack the problem.
“Break it to pieces and bury them separate,” said Podmore.
“The volcano…” started another.
“Give me a twelve-pound sledge and an anvil,” said Nilsen.
“Matey,” said O’Neill, “they’ve no hammers in these villages except stones. Let’s suppose Matthew knows his business. So he sails and paddles like fury all night and all day until he’s on the open sea—and this is a fellow who’s never been more than a league offshore in his life. And that’s when the Ly-ee-Moon comes across them—”
“Making the Fiji-to-Sydney run, like a blasted cattle ferry,” said Podmore.
“—and he’s shouting and hallooing, and they pick him up. Our fellow throws himself at the captain’s feet and begs and sobs and pleads with him. He wants to take the gold to the Christian god, because the Lord Almighty is the only one more powerful than their fish-idol.”
“And the captain didn’t throw him straight back,” said Podmore.
“He did not,” said O’Neill. “He said he could stay on till Sydney if he worked their passage. Seems the ship was a couple of hands short and this sturdy fellow was manna from heaven to Captain Webber.”
“I said it was Webber,” said Nilsen. “The drunkard.”
“You’ve finally got us on board the Ly-ee-Moon with this tale,” said Podmore, “and it’s took you long enough the course you took. What we want to know is what happened to her.”
“To be sure,” said O’Neill; “that’s where I was bound next. Our fellow is signed on to Ly-ee-Moon for his passage, shovelling down with the firemen like a Trojan for his passage. The sea is fair and all well with the world. But on the third night there’s a terrific crash. Ly-ee-Moon is grounded bad on rocks, listing terrible, and there’s hands running around all over. Our man Matthew is in a boat with two other men, and they’ve barely cleared the davits before the Ly-ee-Moon breaks in two. The aft section slides under with a terrible roar and belching smoke and steam—just like the volcano back on Ambrym.”
“What about the other boats?”
“None of them made it away. It was dark and the sea was high. There were men on the aft section who might have made it to shore, but the waves were too much and they rowed the boat further out to get off the reef,” said O’Neill.
“But what happened to the Ly-ee-Moon?” demanded Podmore.
“Fish-men,” said O’Neill. “Our man swears he saw them leaping off the Ly-ee-Moon as she was going went down, like seals into the water. He says they must have clambered over her, done mischief with the rudder or the screw or some other piece, steered her into the rock.”
“Fish-men,” said Nilsen. “I don’t believe it.”
“Men used to go overboard after mermaids,” said Podmore. “And the sirens lured ships on to rocks in olden days. They’re more dangerous than you know.”
“So what about these other two men that was in the lifeboat?” asked Singleton.
“So they’re rowing away,” O’Neill continued, “looking for the other boats or survivors in the flotsam. Then something breaks the water alongside, and a fish-man grabs one of them by the arm and pulls him into the water. Then there’s more fish-men swarming all over and grappling with the other sailor. Our fellow Matthew lays about him with an oar like Samson fighting the Philistines, battering them about the head and knocking them back into the water.”
O’Neill mimed the actions as he spoke, flailing about as though he were fighting off the fish-men left and right.
“He drives them off over the side, and he breaks their hands when they try to come over the side again and again. And after a terrific battle it’s finally calm again, and it’s just him on his own in the boat. He starts rowing as fast as he can, because he knows they’ll regroup themselves and come after him. And after a couple of hours it starts to get light, and what does he see but the good old Amaryllis steaming towards him.”
“And that’s when we picked him up,” said Podmore, as O’Neill paused to take breath.
“That’s the whole story,” O’Neill concluded.
“What did the old man say?” asked Singleton.
“He didn’t say anything,” said O’Neill.
If the old Man had not given his verdict, then the story, and even the sinking of the Ly-ee-Moon, were in doubt. It could all be a tall story.
“Likely Ly-ee-Moon lost the boat in a storm, and this Matthew found it,” said Nilsen. “They may believe all that stuff about fish-men on Ambrym, but I’m not having it. Fish-men!”
“I suppose you don’t believe in the Holy Spirit neither,” shot back Podmore. “Not until your scientists find him with a telescope.”
“Or—he stole the boat: that’s more likely,” said Nilsen.
There was a chorus of agreement about the thieving and lying tendencies of natives from the circle of listeners. Podmore shook his head, and O’Neill looked doubtful.
“Maybe that’s the story he told you,” said Charley slowly, in his deep West Indian voice, “but the whole thing sounds fishy to me!”
This was met by general laughter.
“That’s quite likely,” said O’Neill. “But then…he had a powerful way of telling it, no stopping to make it up. The old Man kept asking him to say again how the ship went down, and niggling him about the angle of list and where the boats were, and the noise the boilers made when they went under. And he couldn’t trip the fellow up once. And the other thing,” O’Neill added. “That jewellery from the priest.”
“What about it?” asked Podmore.
“It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen,”
said O’Neill. “It is wondrous stuff to be sure. It’s golden, a rare lustrous gold—like gold mixed with something even more precious. It’s made of little plates as big as your thumbnail, joined up with the finest gold links. And these plates are all etched with the tiniest, most delicate little pictures, every one of them different. The old Man was looking at it through a glass, and he said it was all scenes of fish-men and monsters and fish-gods.”
“It’s old King Neptune,” said Podmore. “He’s the god of the fishes. Poseidon of the Greeks, Dagon of the Philistines. Chalchulu to the old Aztecs. Davy Jones himself.”
“That’s not South Seas jewellery,” said Nilsen. “I’ve seen trinkets from those islands. They make them from coral and pearls and shells. Never gold.”
“This is gold for sure,” said O’Neill. “Solid gold, and quarter pound or more. It would grace the High Priest of Atlantis, it’s a mystery how these savages came into it.”
“I’ve seen pieces like that,” came a voice from the back. It was Miller, a Yankee. “A skipper in New England used to bring ’em back regular. It was scrap gold mostly, but a few of them was big, fancy items with pictures of frogs and fishes etched on them that he kept for his own.”
“Where did he get them?” asked Nilsen.
“He never said. But there wasn’t a Christian in his crew,” said Miller darkly. “Folks said he had a pact with the devil. Sent messages on a sinker down below. We didn’t care to deal with him or his.” Miller took a long draw on his pipe, choosing his next words carefully. “Some say his men kidnapped women, and he traded them for the gold in the South Seas. I cain’t say nothin’ about that.”
“Traded where, with who?” asked Singleton, but Miller just shook his head.
“Stories of mermaids among the spray on the rocks in the distance is one thing,” said Nilsen. “But mermen that climb on board?”
“I never saw the sense of mermaids,” said Singleton, to change the topic. “I mean, lower parts of a fish? What does a man want with that?”
“The fellow said they can walk like men,” said O’Neill. “And if their menfolk lust after our womenfolk, there must be a compatibility of the organs of generation, if you take my meaning.”
The Dulwich Horror & Others Page 26
