The White Rajah (1961)

by Monsarrat, Nicholas

  It grew lighter; the sea paled, the fleecy clouds turned from grey to pink, and then to gold. On board the Lucinda D, shapes and shadows regained their lost dimension, and became spars and bulwarks and people. Men stretched, shrugging off the night, girding themselves for the day; Nick Garrett set his watch to shifting canvas and tending the slack braces; the cook, peering out of the galley in the waist of the ship, greeted the dawn with a yawning grin which split his black face unexpectedly into two halves, his teeth a startling shaft of white in between.

  Richard called out to him: ‘Sam!’

  ‘Suh?’

  ‘A mug of coffee here.’

  ‘Aye, suh.’

  ‘And a spike of rum in it.’

  After the long night, he was stiff and cold, and conscious of the fatigue which endless hard days at sea must bring. But as he walked to and fro across the poop deck, to ease his cramped muscles, he was the very figure of command. His face was bearded now, and darkened by many suns; he walked with a roll, and his body, sinewy and tough, proclaimed its own authority. In his ear, a single gold earring gleamed – it was his affection, his badge of contempt for the dull world which was not Richard Marriott, and must conform to sober patterns … The twin pistols, which he called Castor and Pollux, and still cherished, were carried in ornamental holsters at his belt. He had fired them many scores of times, in his ten years away from Marriott, and there was not a man on board the Lucinda D who would doubt his readiness to fire them again, at any time, whether for honour, for anger, or for sport.

  Sam, the Negro cook, who was as good a man with a cutlass as with a skillet – indeed, a much better man, so the crew complained – gave him his earthenware mug of coffee laced with rum, and he drank it in great gulps, without delicacy. The days of Sheffield plate and Wedgewood china were far behind him now … Then suddenly he cocked his head on one side, and sniffed the raw air. Mingled with the shipboard smells, of tarry hemp and brine cask, of the breakfast cracker hash and the sludge that served for coffee, of sweet Negrohead tobacco, there was now another smell, the smell of the land.

  He sniffed again, and again he caught it. Somewhere, borne on the freshening breeze, was the familiar reek of Far Eastern islands; the waft of dried or rotting fish, of palm oil, woodsmoke, hot sand. It was as different from the smell of a ship as dog was from cat. He called sharply to Garrett, busy in the waist: ‘Soundings!’ and then, throwing back his head: ‘Masthead, there! Masthead!’

  A faint hail answered him. ‘Masthead.’

  ‘D’you see anything?’

  ‘Nothing. All clear ahead.’

  ‘Watch out to starboard – upwind.’

  Now James Singleton the leadsman, up in the chains, half turned his head as he reeled in his dripping line, and prepared to make his cast again. ‘No bottom – no bottom at thirty fathom!’ he shouted.

  ‘Keep sounding.’ Richard commanded. ‘We’re closing something.’

  Then, as an eddy of wind pushed aside the mist that clung to the surface of the water, they all saw it at the same instant. Their will-o’-the-wisp light had become a lighthouse, a lighthouse on stilts, two or three miles away to starboard. By a trick of the mist, it seemed to grow awkwardly, even grotesquely, out of the sea; a squat tower on spindly legs, with a fringe of bearded coconut palms at its base. Even as they stared at it, the mist came down, and hid it again.

  ‘Back your topsails!’ Richard ordered swiftly, and as the watch jumped to the task, the helmsman, knowing his business, spun the wheel to bring the ship into the wind. Within a few moments, the Lucinda D, nicely balanced, came to a gentle stop, hove-to.

  ‘We’ll stay where we are, until full daylight,’ said Richard, when their movement ceased, and the only sound was the water running and lapping against their hull. ‘When the sun gets up, it will soon burn off this fog.’

  They did not have long to wait. Presently, parted by the breeze, thinned by the sun still below the horizon, the mist began to disperse, and the long-legged lighthouse appeared again. Now it could be seen to be stationed on a flat, low spit of sand, to which the palm trees clung precariously; but away to the right there was more land, well treed, green with vegetation, and dotted here and there with huts from which thin drifts of smoke sometimes spiralled upwards. As far as the eye could reach, the land rose in gentle sloping tiers, till the air grew hazy and it was lost in the mist again.

  On their port hand there was nothing save open sea. The lighthouse, it seemed, marked the western tip of some island, their first true landfall for more than a week.

  Richard Marriott studied it, first with the naked eye, then with his glass. So far, it was like a hundred other islands; it might be big or small; the huts meant that it was inhabited, the lighthouse, tended during the night, meant that it was of some consequence – a Dutch settlement, or at least a calling place for ships. But the shape of it, and the land sloping up eastwards, stirred no recollection at all. To the best of his memory, he had never seen it before.

  He called out to Garrett: ‘Do you know it, Nick?’ but Garrett, also staring, shook his head.

  ‘It has the look of one of the Paternosters,’ he answered, over his shoulder. ‘But there is no lighthouse there like this one, that I know of.’

  Peter Ramsay, who liked to consider himself a navigator, said: ‘There’s a cape in New Britain has a light like that. Cape Gloucester, isn’t it? Towards the New Guinea coast.’

  ‘That looks north,’ said Richard briefly. ‘This is the western end of some island or other.’

  He spread what charts he had on the cabin top, and cast a careful eye over them. The charts were cracked, and weathered by seawater, and faded to yellow ochre by the sun; they were the best he possessed, which, in these waters, even in the up-to-the-minute world of 1860, was not to say a great deal. The best charting of the Far East had been done by the Dutch navigators, who regarded these parts – against the naval might of Britain or any other nation – as their own preserve; charts were kept secret, and jealously guarded, and no ship’s captain who was subject to maritime law was allowed to part with them. Those which Richard had, had been stolen from an East Indiaman wrecked on the Celebes shoals; but they were old, and often mistaken, and he had never come to trust them. Even so, they gave him no help now; there were fixed lights in abundance, all over this region; their ship might have been in China, she might have been in Timor … He looked again at the stilted lighthouse, and the land lying to the eastwards. It was clearer now, but still featureless, still unrecognized.

  He made his decision. The water on their port hand was clear. He would lay a course to pass the lighthouse, leaving it to starboard, and then turn and go eastwards till he found out where they were.

  ‘Up helm!’ he ordered. ‘Brace the topsails … Bring her round on west-nor’-west.’

  ‘West-nor’-west,’ repeated the helmsman. The spokes rattled through his hands as he let the wheel come over.

  They had gone a mile or so, and the lighthouse was drawing abeam, when Singleton, heaving the lead at fixed intervals, shouted out: ‘By the mark – ten!’

  Ten fathoms … For the Lucinda D, it still meant water and to spare. The ocean bed would naturally shelve towards the lighthouse. Even the next cast – six fathoms – did not cause him any anxiety.

  ‘What’s the bottom?’ he called out to the leadsman.

  Singleton bent his head, examining the tallow with which the lead weight was covered. ‘Clay,’ he reported promptly. ‘Clay and sand.’

  Richard held his course. The lighthouse came abeam; he was nearly ready, having weathered it, to make his wide turn eastwards. Then a sudden shout from for’ard brought him to urgent attention.

  It was Singleton again, ‘Shelving fast!’ he yelled at the top of his voice. ‘Three fathoms! … Less a quarter!’ And then, swiftly: ‘Coral!’

  Coral … A reef … Richard whipped round, shouting ‘Up helm! Wear round!’ as he did so. But he was too late. The ship, moving with smooth purpose throug
h the water, struck suddenly, with a shuddering crash which nearly flung him off his feet. There was a sharp cracking sound, of splintered wood, from aloft – the main top-mast, this time – and beneath their feet a terrible grinding of the hull as it rode up on to the coral reef – the most cruel sound a sailor could hear. Then the Lucinda D swung off wind, and came to a shaking stop, high out of the water, her keel jarring and scraping on the hidden peril below. They were fast aground, on coral rock likely to be as sharp and as fatal as a dagger.

  Now all was shouting and swift movement; but it was orderly, with a set purpose. The Lucinda D had struck before – though never so harshly – and the crew knew their first tasks without any bidding. Henty, the ship’s carpenter, sped below to see what damage might have been done; the cook doused the fires, for safety’s sake; the watch on deck, and those others roused from their sleep, jumped cat-like into the shrouds, to take off all sail and cut away the ruin of rigging which surrounded the broken topmast. The leadsman, whose warning had come too late, began to take careful soundings all round the ship, to plot the shape of the reef and discover where safety lay. In the clear water, the reef itself could be seen, pink and green and black, encased with waving weed and mysterious sea anemones and crusted spikes of coral, as rough and cruel as it was beautiful.

  Richard Marriott stood his ground beside the helmsman. He was not yet dismayed, though the solid shock and the ugly grinding beneath their feet was enough to make a sailor’s heart sick. There was no pain, and no ordeal, like that of a ship ripped and tortured by coral. But the brigantine was soundly built, toughened and seasoned by years of battle with this and all other elements; she had proved her fortitude before, from the Breton coast to the shores of the South China Sea, and, unless their wound were mortal, she would do so again.

  Presently a noise distracted him, a thin cry nearby which was as unlike any of the shipboard sounds as the cry of a gull in a bear pit; and when he turned, seeking the strange interruption, it was to see Manina, the Malay woman, standing at the entrance to the cabin ladder, with the child tightly clasped in her arms.

  ‘Is he hurt?’ Richard called out, anxiously.

  Manina shook her head, cradling the boy who still whimpered. ‘He woke suddenly,’ she answered. ‘It was the noise.’ She looked about her, alarmed by the bustle and the strange angle of the deck; her wizened face was pinched by fear till it seemed like a shrunken nut. ‘What has happened?’

  ‘It is nothing,’ answered Richard. ‘We touched on a rock … Stay here on deck, and look to the boy.’ Coming closer, he fondled his son, who was silent now, looking about him with bright sharp eyes. It was only the sudden waking which had made him cry. ‘Stay where you are,’ he commanded again, ‘till we see what has to be done.’

  Henty, the carpenter, appeared now at the head of the ladder, blinking at the light. He carried a heavy caulking mallet and some strands of flax in his hand. As he approached, his bare feet left gleaming footmarks on the deck, and his legs were wet to mid-thigh.

  ‘We are holed,’ he said, matter-of-factly. In all the years on board, Richard had never yet seen him shaken or taken aback, and the moment of crisis had not dismayed him now. He might have been reporting a splinter in his thumb. ‘Close to the keel, on the starboard side. Six frames back, level with the foremast.’

  ‘How badly?’

  Henty spread his hands, as a man telling the size of a fish to a friend. ‘A foot, maybe. I’ve plugged the worst of it with sailcloth and tallow. But there’s four or five planks started, and two feet of water already. You must man the pumps, before it gains any more hold.’

  ‘Can we stay afloat, d’you reckon?’

  ‘Aye, if it gets no worse. But there’ll be more planks opening up, if we stay like this on the reef. You can feel how she’s working, all the time.’

  Nick Garrett, who had overheard, was already setting the pump’s crew, of three hands to either side, to man the heavy levers. Above their heads, silence was falling as the canvas was taken off and the two halves of the wrecked top-mast were lowered to the deck. The Lucinda D, under bare poles, sat awkwardly upon the reef, as daylight spread and the treacherous lighthouse which had lured them on to this peril, came up clear and stark against the bright sky.

  Richard considered their situation. They could not stay very long where they were; his ship, even in this sluggish sea, would grind to pieces if she continued to lie on the reef. Somehow they must coax her off into deeper soundings – but inside the reef, where shelter lay – and trust to the pumps to keep her afloat until they could find some bay or sand spit on which to beach her. Already it was clear that, before they could set sail again, she must be careened, in shallow water, so that they could patch up the hull properly and make it seaworthy.

  He called out to Singleton, the leadsman: ‘How deep is it, then?’

  Singleton came aft, coiling in his dripping line as he walked. ‘Twelve feet all round,’ he answered. ‘It is a flat ledge, and we are on top of it. But there’s deeper water ahead, if we can reach it.’

  Richard considered again. His ship, loaded as she was, drew fifteen feet of water; if she were now in twelve, she needed only a little more, in order to float off; they could, if necessary, lower a boat, lay out a kedge anchor ahead, and pull her out of trouble. With coral rock, however, it was a dangerous manoeuvre; their hull, moving against a chance cutting edge, could be sliced open like the rind of an orange. But there was another chance, of a different kind: if she had grounded at low water, a rising tide might float her off, without any effort on their part. For that, of course, they must wait their time; and waiting, while the ship pressed and worked against the coral ledge, had its own risks of disaster.

  Nick Garrett, his work temporarily done, joined him aft on the poop deck. ‘We should kedge her off,’ he declared, with an authority which Richard did not relish, as soon as he was within earshot. ‘We shall be torn to shreds else.’

  Richard shook his head. ‘She could be split, if we did that,’ he answered. ‘I’ve seen it happen, and so have you … I’ll wait for the tide.’

  ‘It could be falling. This could be high water, for all we know.’

  ‘It could be … Keep those pumps manned.’

  Garrett said sulkily: ‘We have run into trouble enough, without waiting for more.’ But he did not stay to argue, and Richard did not chide him for his insolence. In this hazard, tempers and nerves were taut enough already.

  A full half-hour passed, while the men toiled at the pumps, seeking relief every ten minutes, and the groaning and creaking of the hull continued without respite. Singleton took his soundings, and called them continuously, but there was no change in the depth of water; they had gone aground, either at the bottom of the tide, or at the top – and if at the top, their situation was desperate. The cook brought coffee, lukewarm, heated up on a makeshift lantern, and biscuits and salt pork to stay their hunger; the sun climbed over the horizon, and began its burning sentry duty; the crew, freed from their turn at the pumps, lay on the deck in patches of shadow, not talking, waiting for the good news or the bad. Henty, who was still busy with his patching, reported they were holding their own against the leaking planks, but only just – it would be a continuous struggle, perhaps a fruitless one, unless they could properly repair the damage. Only the little boy Adam, warming to the sun, free from such doubts and cares, crawled happily about the deck.

  Then suddenly there was a shout from Singleton. ‘The tide’s making,’ he called out cheerfully, from his position up in the chains. ‘There’s three or four inches more beneath us. It’s setting eastwards.’

  Richard remained impassive, though his heart leapt at the news. His guess had proved right; by great good fortune, they had struck at low tide. In an hour or two, they might be afloat again, though they must still find shelter and a safe careenage for their repairs.

  The water rose gradually, swirling and climbing over the top of the reef, while the Lucinda D lifted with it, and righted he
rself, and began to work loose from the grip of the coral. Presently her stern swung free, and she turned into the light wind, pivoting on a single point amidships. Richard set a light headsail, to steady her, and then a big mizzen sail to give her way over the reef. She began to creep forward, scraping and bumping across the rocks – but her solid, iron-shod keel, built for this rough treatment, was taking all the shock, and she was not coming to further harm. Presently she gave a shudder, as if shaking herself free of this indignity, and glided forward into deep water, while Singleton, with a new note of confidence in his voice, shouted: ‘By the deep – five fathom!’

  The water rippled and chattered musically under their forefoot as they gathered way. They were free at last, within a smooth, friendly lagoon which stretched before them in misty splendour. But (thought Richard wryly, as he gave orders to set the mainsail and lay a course eastwards), in their present case they were as free to sink as to swim.

  They sailed eastwards all day, coasting along the same strip of low-lying land which they had first seen from seaward, and which seemed to continue endlessly. It was a thin arm of the mainland, more than fifty miles long, enclosing a bay (or so it seemed, from the sheltered aspect of the water) whose opposite shore could not yet be seen. On board the Lucinda D, no man, young or old, came near to recognizing it; it was still an island, like any other island, and they still could not put a name to it. But as they voyaged onwards, they watched it, and studied it, and learned much about it.