The Highwayman

by F. M. Parker

  Swallow nodded and gripped the tiller with both hands.

  Patrick braced against the gunwale, and holding to the stay that supported the mast from the bow, dropped the mainsail and lashed it fast to the boom.

  The invisible river of the mighty wind caught the boat up and shoved it pitching and tossing across the southern Pacific Ocean toward Antarctica.

  CHAPTER 29

  Rime ice clung in a thick glaze to the mast and gunwale of the boat and the canvas covering the forward part of the craft was stiff with an inch of it. Not a gasp of wind stirred. The sea lay like a pool of oil undulating but slightly beneath the deep Antarctic freeze. The sky was empty except for the red sun sinking like a drop of congealed blood behind the horizon in the far northwest.

  Only Patrick moved in the frigid world. His hands pained from the endless work with the oars and his feet stung from the bite of the frost. He rowed with feeble strokes and cursed the sun that held no heat. His course was to the northeast for that was his best guess as to where New Zealand lay.

  The wind had driven the boat through days of snow squalls to 47degrees and 46 minutes south latitude. Patrick had measured this with the sextant by shooting the noonday sun. He worried about the boat’s longitude. The wind had blown mostly from the north, but sometimes shifted to come from the northeast and northwest. He believed they were somewhat west of New Zealand, but that could be wildly wrong. Should they miss making landfall on the island and blunder into the broad reach of the Pacific, they would surely die of thirst and starvation.

  This was the thirty-sixth day at sea and they had eaten the last of their food nine days before. The final cup of water was shared three days past. On that same day he had found a ball of whale blubber large as his double fist floating on the sea. He had fished the blubber out of the water, and upon examining it found that it had once been partially melted and contained a cindery residue. From that Patrick knew the blubber had been shoveled overboard from the boiling fire pots of some whaling ship.

  Swallow had refused to eat his portion of the oily gobbet gritty with ash and insisted on Patrick taking it. Patrick wanted to wolf the blubber down, but he made it last two days. Since then he had lived off his own flesh.

  His strength was spent, worn away by starvation, the cold, and the oars. For the past three day, he had been rowing through the Antarctic calm, laboring the daylight hours away and then resting huddled under the canvas with Swallow during the dark, coldest hours.

  He was dreadfully thirsty. He eyed the ice on the canvas, a mixture of snowmelt and seawater, but better than nothing. He struck the canvass with his hand and broke loose several fragments. He sat shivering and sucking on the ice for a time and watched the sun drown itself in the sea. He gathered a handful of the ice shards and knelt down to look under the canvas at Swallow.

  “Here’s some ice for water,” Patrick said.

  “I don’t want any.” Swallow’s voice was a raspy croak. “I’m freezing already.”

  “You’ve got to have water.”

  “Maybe later.”

  “Try one piece.”

  “No, later.”

  “All right then.”

  “Patrick, we’re not going to make it, are we?”

  “We’re still alive, and as long as we are there’s a chance we’ll make it. I’ll rest a little and then row some more.”

  “How can you keep going without food? And you must be as cold as I am.”

  “I don’t have any other choice.”

  “I knew you were the one to take us to New Zealand if anyone could. We would’ve made it too if God had been on our side and made the wind blow right.”

  “God!” Patrick said angrily. “There’s no God. So don’t say that word to me.”

  “Yes there is. So don’t make him mad.”

  Patrick looked up at the gray heavens and shouted out. “Mad! Hell, I’m the one that’s mad. God, if you do exist, I want to tell you that I’m really a mad sonofabitch and pissed off at you for the way you’ve treated us.”

  “Patrick, please don’t do that.”

  “All right,” Patrick said in a softer tone. “You can have your God.”

  “I’ve got this feeling that I’ll never get to England and see my wife and little girl.”

  “Don’t say that, and don’t give up.”

  “Patrick, I’m going to die and I’m afraid.”

  “You’re not going to die. We’ll still make it. With or without your God’s help.”

  Swallow did not reply.

  “Rest now,” Patrick said.

  He crawled under the canvas and pulled Swallow close against him. He wrapped the damp blankets around them both.

  *

  Patrick awoke in the dark to the boat pitching roughly. He slid from the blankets, tucked them in around Swallow, and crawled out into the night.

  A westerly wind was rising. He hastily raised the mainsail and jib. As he secured the halyards to the cleats, the wind began to fail. In a handful of seconds it was gone and the sails hung slack and empty. The boat but bobbed on the stillborn waves.

  “You Goddamned contrary thing, come back here,” Patrick shouted at the wind. He caught his futile anger and fell silent. He mustn’t break, mustn’t give way to despair. The forces that ruled the world were brainless things and care not what they killed. A man must grab his strength and courage and wrap it around him and refuse to die no matter the conditions in which he was caught.

  As those thoughts ran through Patrick’s mind, the wind came alive again. Within seconds it was blowing a stiff breeze and hustling the boat along. Patrick adjusted the sails and guided the boat northeast into darkness. An hour later, the wind grew to a strength that forced him to reef the mainsail down to a tiny triangle.

  Near the middle of the night, the wind slackened and Patrick raised the entire mainsail to catch it. The wind died to nothing as he retook his seat in the stern. He leaned exhausted over the tiller.

  Swallow groaned and called out in a frightened voice. “Patrick, help me out from under here.”

  Patrick ducked under the canvas, lifted Swallow up, and moved him into the open section of the boat. He brought the blankets and wrapped them around Swallow.

  “That better?” Patrick asked.

  “I feel awfully strange. I think I’m dying and wanted to be out in the open where I can see the sky.”

  “Now hold on, my friend. You wouldn’t leave me out here on the ocean all by myself, would you?”

  “I’m trying to hold on. But, God, I’m weak. Fate has played us a damn shabby trick, Patrick. Do you think a little prayer would help turn things around?”

  “Your God might be listening so it couldn’t hurt.” Patrick had never prayed in his life.

  Swallow forced himself to his knees. Holding to the gunwale to keep upright, he began to mumble in a low voice. Now and again Patrick made out the word God. From Swallow’s tone he seemed to really believe God would help him. After a full minute, Swallow lowered himself back down on the boat’s bottom and pulled the blankets around him.

  “There, let’s see if he was listening,” Swallow said.

  “Just rest there while I’ll row some. Talk to me for that will help the time to go better. In the morning when you see the sun, you’ll feel stronger.”

  “I hope you’re right for I’m about done in. If I don’t make it tell my wife and daughter that I died trying to return to them. The last address I have is 136 Samson Street there in London. Can you remember that?”

  “Samson Street number 136. I’ll remember it.”

  “If you get to London don’t let them end up in the poor house.”

  “I have money in a bank in London, and I had shares in two trading ships. The ships should have returned to London years ago. I don’t know how much the shares earned, but whatever the amount, the bank was to put at interest with my other money. I’ll give your wife and girl half of all that I have.” He owed Swallow that much for gambling with him on an escap
e by sea.

  Patrick unshipped the oars and began to row. He waited for Swallow to say something but the man remained silent.

  Patrick tried to think of something that would start a conversation, but nothing came to mind. He watched the stars and moon creep across the dark heavens and waited for the wind to come again and push them onward.

  Swallow moaned, the sound coming from the very core of him.

  “Hold on.” Patrick said. He feared the man wasn’t long for this world. He dreaded the thought of losing his friend.

  “I’m still in the land of the living,” Swallow’s voice was thin as mist.

  In the dark before the dawn when man’s vitality is at its lowest ebb, Swallow cried out, “Patrick!” Then in a very low voice, “Patrick.”

  Patrick quickly shipped the oars and knelt by Swallow. Lack of food and water had eroded Swallow’s face to that of a skull with the eyes sunk deeply under their brows and just black holes in the frail moonlight.

  Swallow caught Patrick by the hand with a soft touch. “Mates to the end,” Swallow whispered.

  “Yes, always mates,” Patrick said.

  At that, a gentle smile came upon Swallow’s face. He exhaled a feeble breath into the frigid moonlit air. His head rolled to the side and came to rest against Patrick’s leg. No second breath came.

  Patrick caught Swallow by the shoulders and shook him. “Swallow, don’t die on me!” he commanded. He knew as he spoke the words that they would not be heard. The game fellow was dead. Patrick had wanted Swallow to live so that he could keep his promise to get him to England.

  As he sat beside Swallow, the waves worked the boat around and the moonlight fell upon the dead man’s eyes and they glowed with a silver luminescence. Patrick reached out and closed the lids over the unseeing eyes. With that act of finality, Patrick felt the full weight of sorrow at Swallow’s death. He also felt guilt for he was responsible for Swallow’s death by convincing, almost forcing him to make the attempt to escape.

  “My friend, you were a brave fellow and died like a man,” Patrick whispered sorrowfully. “You never complained. I hope I can die as well.”

  He might soon get the chance to find out how he would end his life for he had an ever stronger premonition that the imprisoning sea was going to beat him, hold him captive until he died regardless of how much he struggled and suffered.

  Patrick took up the oars and rowed for it was better to labor than to think.

  When the rim of the sun poked timidly above the horizon and its first rays fell upon the sea, Patrick gathered Swallow’s body into his arms. He stared into the heavens and wished he believed as did Swallow that there was a God. Even if he didn’t, Swallow did and therefore a proper prayer should be said over his friend. He would say just what he thought. “God, if you truly exist and care about us humans, be kind to this man for his crimes were small ones.”

  He looked down at Swallow. “Goodbye. I’m sorry that I didn’t get you to London.”

  He lifted Swallow over the gunwale and let him slip feet first into the gray-blue water. Swallow vanished with hardly a ripple. Patrick pictured the body drifting down through the icy water, sinking ever deeper with the light fading. And lower still until the water was totally black. He didn’t like the picture. It wasn’t right for Swallow to die and be dropped into the sea. He should have died with his mourning family around him and buried in his native land with a proper ceremony and a stone to mark his passing.

  A great loneliness fell upon Patrick. He began to hum a dirge. He took up the oars and rowed while humming the doleful requiem. He rowed until he fell unconscious and hung like a corpse over the oars.

  CHAPTER 30

  The cry of a bird close above Patrick’s head brought him awake hanging over the oars. He forced his head up to look. A sea gull was perched on the top of the mast and looking down at him and squawking away in a raucous tone.

  He heard more bird noises off to his right and looked in that direction. A dozen or so of the noisy gulls were circling about and inspecting a tall, two-masted sailing ship not a quarter mile distant. It is just an illusion, Patrick told himself. You have wanted to find a ship so badly that how you imagine you are seeing one. He rubbed his sore, wind cut eyes and looked again. The ship still existed. A swoop of joy ran through him. He began to tremble with the realization that he just might be saved from the sea.

  The ship was making good maybe two knots under a reefed foresail and one jib. He quickly looked for a sign of her nationality. It would be hell if she flew the British flag. His spirits soared higher as he made out a tattered American flag at the masthead. Americans just might not look too closely at any story he told them of how it came about that he was on the ocean in such a small boat.

  Patrick could see no one on the ship’s deck or in the rigging. He called out with a voice coarse as a raven’s croak. “Hello, the ship.”

  No one appeared at the ship’s gunwale in response to his shout. He was still too far away to be heard. He waited as the ship came steadily on, dipping and rising to the ocean swells. If she held her course, she would pass a hundred yards off from Patrick. He wondered why so little sail was raised. In such a gentle wind, every sail she carried should have been hoisted.

  “Hello, the ship,” Patrick called again. His voice was weak, yet the sea was quiet and somebody must be aboard the ship and steering it and should hear him. But again there was no response.

  The schooner sailed slowly on close enough now that Patrick saw the peeling paint on her sides and the stained and much patched sails. She was a ship that had been a long time at sea and had weathered some ugly storms. This far south, the ship was either hunting whales for oil or seals for their pelts. Had she been a whaler with her holds full of oil, she would have ridden low in the water. She set high and that most likely made her a seal hunter.

  The schooner sailed steadily on. He felt a growing panic for if he couldn’t catch someone’s attention, the ship would leave him marooned on his tiny boat without food or water. He must intercept her, but the wind was wrong to use the sail. With his breath coming fast from fear of being left behind, he took up the oars. He rowed with every cold, tired muscle straining and aching.

  Patrick called up the dredges of his strength and commanded his arms to pull, pull. A wave lifted the boat and he missed two strokes. “Damnit, let me row,” he cursed the sea. The oars bit water and he heaved frantically on them. He had the certain belief that this would be his last chance to survive.

  Patrick was within a couple oar strokes of the schooner when its bow passed him with its figurehead of a pretty, half clad woman with large breast went gliding past several feet above his head. He shouted. There was no answering call, no face showed at the rail to look down at him.

  Pulling hard with his left oar, he spun the boat a quarter turn to bring it parallel to the schooner. The ship drove by with Patrick’s boat sliding along its curved wooden hull with a grating sound.

  In desperation, he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted up at the deck at the top of his voice. “Hello, the ship! Hello, the ship! Open your damn ears.” Anybody on aboard should hear him.

  But there was no answering call. The only sound from the ship was the slap of the waves against her hull and the creak and groan of her rigging.

  The ship had to be abandoned, or the crew all ill, or dead. He mustn’t depend upon someone hearing and helping him for the ship could be deserted. He had to save himself by getting on board by his own effort. His scanned the ship’s side for something to grab hold of and climb up to the deck.

  Not but a few yards away a rope dangled from the foremast boom that was swung out beyond the hull of the ship. But that wasn’t a way up for the swinging end of the rope was too high for him to reach from the boat.

  Patrick clambered upon the rower’s bench on the side nearest the ship. Here the bench was icy and he slipped and almost went overboard, barely catching his balance at the last second by thrusting a hand against
the hull of the moving ship. Even from the height of the bench, the rope was out of his reach a good yard. Balancing himself against the pitch of the boat, he waited desperately for the boat to raise and lift him high enough for him to snag hold of the rope. That lift must occur when he was under the rope. The boat drifted on stubbornly level keeled.

  The half-inch diameter rope swung by directly overhead. Patrick waited and watched as his last chance for rescue passed by. God! So close and then to fail.

  The bow of the ship cut through a wave and the crest of water came rolling along the hull of the ship. Patrick watched it approach. Hurry, he called silently to the sea. The wave lifted the bow of the boat, then hoisted the entire craft. Patrick squatted and leapt for the rope. His cold, stiff hands caught the end. He cinched down on the rope with a frantic grip.

  To his dismay, he found the hemp rope was sheathed in ice. His hands began to slide down the rope. He was going to fall back into the boat and there would be no second chance. He clamped down with the last ounce of his strength. Just above the end of the rope his hands came upon an unfrozen section and his grip held and halted his slide. He hung there in the air as the boat drifted out from under him and the sea waited to engulf him.

  He looked up at the gunwale of the ship’s deck some eight feet above his head. That seemed an unreachable distance from him in his weakened condition. He had come far, was he now to fall into the sea and drown?

  Dizziness seized him as the ship rolled to port and he was swung outward over the tossing waves. The ship stopped her roll and held there at an angle for what seem like an eternity to Patrick. Then she rolled to starboard and slammed him against her hard oak side with a bone-jarring impact.

  Before the ship could roll again he reached above the icy section of the rope and found another firm grip. And then caught another hold higher up. He climbed laboriously, his breath a tortured whistle between his clenched teeth.

  He made it to within reach of the cap rail, the topmost part of the gunwale, and clasped it to him and clung there gathering his strength. With every muscle quivering from the strain, he slung a leg up and hooked it over the cap rail. Inch by inch he dragged his body onto its top. He had climbed away from death and his heart surged with joy. He shoved away from the sea and fell like a stone down onto the wooden deck of the ship.