by Tom Murphy
I’ll die right here in the cabin and never see the sun again, nor my baby, nor California, either!
Shouts came from the upper deck, but Lily could not hear what they said. There was nothing solid in her world now. Only by clutching with all of her strength to the sides of the bunk did she prevent herself from being tossed about the cabin like a bit of dandelion fluff blown by a wanton child. She wondered how long she could hang on, and if it mattered.
The wind screamed in the rigging, and this screaming was punctuated by huge cracking sounds that were almost like cannon fire. The sails, Lily guessed, flapping loose, or maybe it was truly a cannon, maybe the captain was signaling their distress. And who would hear, far away as they were on the edge of the earth?
There seemed nothing to do but hold on. Lily doubted she could walk even the short distance to her cabin door and hope to remain upright. And she dreaded what a hard fall might do to her baby. The noise level grew, although that seemed hardly possible. Now the howling wind and the thunderclap of the flapping sails were joined by the mad clanging of the ship’s bell—summoning whom? To do what? Lily determined that if she was going to perish, she’d perish right here in bed. She closed her eyes then, and prepared to die.
The preparation lasted no more than half a minute, for it was quickly followed by outrage. Die, indeed! She’d swim like a fish if she had to! Whoever thought they were going to get Lily Malone’s life so cheap, had best think again. And her pregnant. If this was a trick of Fergy’s, she’d get her own back on that score, yes, and others too.
Lily sat up then, even though the Eurydice was still bucking and heaving like a wild beast gone mad. She staggered out of bed, splashing in nearly an inch of brackish seawater, fumbled until she located her rubber storm boots and heavy coat and a scarf, then made her way out into the corridor to meet her fate.
20
Lily fought her way to the door, lurching, staggering, groping, and all the way thinking about her own life and the life of the child within her. If Fergy wants me to join him down at the bottom of the ocean, by God, he’ll have to fight for me then, for ’tis a sure thing I’ll not go willingly!
The distance was only a few feet, but in the tossing, heaving, plunging blackness it seemed like miles.
Lily thought of all the good people she had known and lost, some to chance and some to death, and she wondered if by dying she’d see Ma again, or Big Fergus, Fergy, Sister Claudia. And are they all up there watching, waiting, calling me so soon? Lily wondered who’d miss her if the Eurydice went down, who’d say a prayer, weep a tear, or remember her at all. The list was not a long one.
Taking the greatest care for fear of damaging the baby, Lily moved across her well-known cabin with the stealth of a common burglar, feeling, holding on to any support as though her life depended on it, for in truth she felt it did. She had no real plan but to get out of the cabin. Somehow it must be safer up on deck, or in the corridor, even. Clutching, sliding, bracing herself for each new jolt, every inch that Lily gained was a small victory.
But here’s the cabin door, and haven’t I crawled through hell’s own fiery battlefield to get here! The nausea welling up inside her couldn’t diminish her joy at having made it safely this far. Lily reached for the brass door handle and turned it, bracing herself against the doorframe to steady herself as she opened it.
Just then, quick as prearrangement, the Eurydice gave a mighty lurch, plunging like a dropped stone. The bow struck the raging sea with an impact that set every beam and timber vibrating. Lily was flung hard against the opposite wall of the narrow corridor. She heard several crashing noises, and the loudest of these was her own bruised shoulder striking the mahogany wall.
Quivering, half bent over from the pain and surprise of it, Lily reached out with one leg and braced herself for the next jolt. And she wondered if it was such a fine idea after all, to leave her little cabin.
The hall was pitch-black, and nothing could be seen at either end of it. They must have sealed the hatches against the waves. Lily knew those hatches could be bolted from above and from below, and a new fear came rushing at her: We could be trapped down here with no way out, should the ship go down. Lily had never swum a stroke in her life, but now she swore she’d die trying, if only she could make it to the deck. And there were the longboats, for whatever good they’d be.
She inched her way down the hall.
Suddenly she stopped. There was a dancing, uncertain shaft of light. Sophie! Sophie’s door had opened just a crack. It was as though the sun had come out after a long cold winter. For there stood Sophie, somehow majestic even in the shared terror of the ship’s mad gyrations, wrapped in a green kimono of scintillating Chinese silk, richly embroidered with green and blue and gold flowers. She held up a whale-oil lamp, high and steady for all the bouncing of the ship.
“Lily? Come in, child, for I’ve been worried about you.”
Trembling, half in fear and half in gratitude, Lily inched her way into Sophie’s cabin. It was bigger than her own, and in some disarray. But Sophie made a place for her in an upholstered armchair, and carefully set down the lamp on a low table and braced it with two fat books, one of which, Lily was pleased to notice, was a Bible.
For a moment they sat there in silence, listening to the awesome noises from above and all around them.
Finally, in a small voice, Lily spoke: “I have never been so frightened : is this a very bad storm, Sophie? It being my first sea voyage, there’s no way for me to measure it.”
Sophie laughed, an astonishingly light and youthful ripple, considering the crashing violence all around them. “Yes, my dear, you may rest assured this is a very bad storm, far and away the worst I’ve been through.”
“How can you be so calm?”
“I’m not, Lily, if the truth were known. But here we are, aren’t we? If I thought that by screaming and tearing my hair I could stop the wind, then there I’d be, screaming and tearing. As it is…well, I am far from brave, Lily. Life often deals us strange cards, and we must play them as best we can. As for tonight, I am glad of your company.”
The noises got louder, and now there was a dreadful scraping sound from the main deck above them, as though some giant were dragging his foot slowly across the tortured boards.
“I believe,” said Sophie gently, “that the loudest crash was one of the masts breaking off, and what we hear now is the same mast rubbing across the deck. Usually they try to cut it free.”
There was knocking on Sophie’s door. She rose, clutching furniture, and opened it. There stood Mr. Parker, the first mate, dripping in oilskins, holding a storm lantern, and peering into the cabin. There was something almost comical in the little man’s appearance, but his voice held assurance.
“I am glad to find you ladies safe and well,” he said quietly, as though someone might possibly be asleep on the rampaging clipper. “The worst of it seems to be over, and a fearsome storm it was. We lost our mainmast, and four good lads were swept overboard, and many small leaks have been sprung. But the pumps are working, there’s no other major damage, and thanks be to God, the winds are diminishing. There’s water in your cabin now, Mrs. Malone, but I’ll have the men pump it out within the hour. If you could rest here until then…”
“Of course she can, and spend the night, too, if it’s necessary.”
Sophie’s voice seemed used to authority, nearly as much as any officer of the ship. Lily sat back then, and for the first time in hours felt a little relaxed. Then maybe we won’t go straight to the bottom. Maybe I’ve cheated the albatross, or Fergy, or whatever it was wanted to get me. Just faintly, for she still felt queasy, and still the ship rolled and shuddered, Lily felt herself smiling. Mr. Parker told them about the emergency measures the captain had put into effect, how there would be no regular meals topside, but rather covered dishes delivered to their cabins when and how they could, and how the passengers were to stay below until summoned, for some of the ship’s safety railings had been bro
ken, and there was danger of falling overboard. Then he wished them good night and left.
“Good night, Mr. Parker.”
He left, but Sophie paused in the doorway for a moment looking after him, the lamplight flickering on her flowered robe until the blossoms almost seemed alive.
“As good as his word, is Parker. Here they come now, to pump you out. I’ve been in fine hotels, Lily, where you don’t get such service.”
“It was kind of him to come in the middle of the storm. I do feel better now.”
“Storms are no fun,” she said, closing the door at last, “but the very worst is fire. Which we’ve been having regular as clockwork in San Francisco, especially in the old board-and-tent days. Decimated, we were, in 1850, Lily. Who would believe one little shantytown could rebuild itself so fast there’d be time for three major fires? But three there were, in May, again in June, and again in September. But we just all pitched in and put her back together again, and now we’ve got fine brick and stone buildings, good as anywhere, fireproof too, the shells anyway, and some of the most dashing gentlemen’s fire brigades you’ll find in any city in the land.”
“My father died with a volunteer company, putting out the great fire of 1842, in New York. The Red Rovers, they were, and a fine outfit.”
“A sad but gallant end, I’m sure. Well, San Francisco’s like that, Lily, up and at ’em, pastes itself back together somehow and gets on with it.”
“I like that. I’m sure I’ll like San Francisco.”
“I’m sure you will. Now, what say we see if those lads have you dry enough to get a few winks of sleep, if there’s any sleep left in this godforsaken night.”
Sophie led the way down the bouncing hallway with her lamp. The sailors had done their work quickly, but well. All of the water was gone, although the cabin still smelled of damp. Sophie showed her friend how to make a barrier sop of rolled bed linen, then stayed while Lily lit her own oil lamp.
“Good night, my dear,” said Sophie, smiling. “Don’t worry about the storm, or anything else. Our luck has beaten your old albatross, at least for the moment.”
Indeed, it had leveled off, although the motion of the ship was still very rough.
Lily, too, managed a smile. “Thank you, Sophie, for taking me in. It was foolish of me to venture out at all.”
“Sleep well, Lily. Tomorrow’s another day.”
“Good night.”
Lily closed the door and turned to her bunk, feeling as though she had been scrubbing floors for a month without rest.
She turned out the lamp and set it on the little chest by her bunk, then climbed into the bunk and pulled the blankets right up to her chin. They were clammy at first, from the damp that pervaded everything in the cabin. But soon they got warmer, and Lily drifted off into an uneasy sleep.
Daylight seeped through Lily’s porthole, wet and gray and discouraging. She stirred and opened her eyes and wondered if it had all been a dream. One look at the disorder in her cabin told her it had been all too true.
It took Lily longer to dress than she could ever remember taking, but finally she was ready to go out and inspect the damage.
The minute she got on deck Lily wished she had stayed below.
The deck of the clipper Eurydice looked like a war had been lost there: the sleek, quick vessel that had been was no more. It’s great thrusting mainmast, more than a hundred feet high, had been splintered off twenty feet above the deck. She could see the crude ax marks where the dragging mast had been hacked away to prevent the Eurydice from capsizing. The deck itself, usually immaculate and precisely ordered, was strewn with debris that might have been left behind by an army in fast retreat. There were unrecognizable fragments of wood everywhere, bits of rope, rags of canvas, splayed kegs, one empty boot, half a Bible, and innumerable dead fish, their glassy eyes staring dumbly at Lily as if in supplication, as if she could forestall the sad irrational fate that had already befallen them.
Only the forward mast was fully operational. The mainmast was gone, and the stern mast broken too, she now realized, but broken higher up, leaving the two bottommost cross braces intact. They had furled all but the sky-sails, for the storm was far from over.
And the proud Eurydice, built to fly, now limped awkwardly toward the indifferent refuge of the Chilean coastline.
A few dispirited sailors were listlessly cleaning up the deck. These same men, Lily well knew, could move like monkeys up the ropes, balance on a high boom like jugglers at P.T. Barnum’s museum, furl or unfurl a giant sail in seconds. But now they moved heavily, like drudges, even as the ship moved. Without purpose.
“Valparaiso.” Everywhere, she heard it: Valparaiso was the only place equipped to make such extensive repairs, Valparaiso, where they’d planned to put in in any event, for fresh water and provisions, Valparaiso, a thousand miles up the inhospitable coastline of rocky, wretched Chile. And they would creep those thousand miles, down at heart, dismasted.
Lily stood at the rail and clutched it until her knuckles turned white, and tried to see the coastline. It was hidden behind a wall of huge gray rollers.
She felt dizzy again. She’d seen enough; she should have waited below. Mr. Parker said they’d be having meals in their cabins for the time being, anyway. Cabin. She must get back to the cabin. And rest a little. But not just yet. Lily stood gripping the rail as if her very life depended on it. Could she move at all? What was this dizziness, this fuzzy-headed feeling, the burning at her temples?
She stood at the rail feeling almost a part of it. Lily looked into the forbidding gray sky, half-expecting to meet her albatross once again. But the sky was empty, sullen, heavy with menace. And suddenly, instead of looking for a bird, Lily felt she was one, light and free, such a lightness, floating! She let go of the railing and floated toward the deck.
The voices came through a filter, came from far away, ghost voices.
“Mrs. Malone’s fainted.”
“Get Erikson. Take her below. The lady’s ill.”
But I’m not ill, I am flying. Soaring. Now I see the funny little ship, broken, with its broken-off masts, its funny people, down there, white ship in the gray sea, so this is how it feels to be an albatross!
Then Lily went soaring into silence, and darkness, and forgot about being an albatross.
It was warmer now. Very warm on her forehead. Burning, nearly, and there was something someone—Sophie!—had said about fires, about many fires. There were many fires now, and within her. Yes, fires, in, down, on her skin, in her belly. Lily could feel the sweat on her forehead, and the deep soreness in her arms and legs, an aching in the joints as though she’d been working too hard, scrubbing floors, maybe, a thing like that. Her lips were very dry. Where was she?
Suddenly there was a coolness, blessed, comforting, and a special smell. A lovely springtime smell. Flowers. She was dead, then, and they’d sent flowers? But who would send Lily Malone flowers, alive or dead? She wasn’t dead, then. But…what? Another of Fergy’s tricks, to get her off her guard, to lure her into a place where he could do for her well and truly. Him and his damned albatross.
Her eyes fluttered.
Sophie! Lily tried to form the word. “Sophie?”
She wasn’t dead, then, or mad.
The vision answered. “My dear child. Poor Lily, we’ve been so worried. You have quite frightened us out of our wits, Lily.”
“Where am I?”
“Still on the Eurydice, my dear, but you have been very ill. Jungle fever, Lily: the captain thinks you’ll be well soon, but it is a very serious thing.”
“Fever.”
“Lily, you must tell me something.”
“Of course.”
“When is the baby due?”
Lily closed her eyes. The baby. She’d forgotten about the baby.
She felt a great shudder run the length of her body, and it was sudden and uncontrollable as the ship pitching in the great storm. So the secret is known now, and my other secrets wi
th it! Here was the worst thing Lily could imagine, worse even than death itself, and somehow, in ways she could not understand, having it known was a relief to her. Lily sensed that the secret would be safe with Sophie Delage. When she answered Sophie at last, her voice was small and seemed to come from some lonely place far away.
“I think…the end of October.” She couldn’t tell how much time had gone by. She could only hope.
“Then we should be in time. We’re in Valparaiso now, Lily, and the ship is being repaired. It will be some time, maybe two months. But we should make it. You must rest now, child. Get lots of rest, and think happy thoughts.”
The coolness came again. Cologne! It was Sophie’s cologne. Lily would buy her a bottle, a huge bottle of it, when they got to San Francisco, even if it cost the earth!
“Thank you, Sophie…very much.”
“Sleep well, Lily, and don’t worry about anything.”
“Good night.”
Lily’s “good night” came drifting out of some dark distant place, barely audible.
Sophie touched the young girl’s forehead with her handkerchief, soaked in the finest French cologne, and smiled. Lily would get better now. The baby would be born well. The two weeks of nursing would not have been in vain. Or however many weeks more might be necessary.
