The Drift

by Lloyd Kropp

  It was two o’clock when he stood on the deck of an old scow and looked across to the three clipper ships at Driftsend. The nearest one, listing slightly to starboard, faced north and south, while the other two, resting their sterns against the starboard side of the first, fell together into a kind of arrow pointing east. All three were very different from the older boats he had explored with Pao. They were lower, more streamlined, and their rigging was of heavy wire instead of rope. He noticed that no one had taken any of the sails for clothing and that the deck ropes were still coiled near the masts where the crews had left them. Apparently no one had boarded any of them for a long time. For how long, he wondered, had these ships been forbidden in the mythology of The Drift?

  He hesitated for a long moment before boarding the first ship. Three of its sails were partly unfurled, and they billowed now in the waning wind. The ship heaved with the billowing, like a sleeping giant dreaming of a journey.

  The clipper seemed in good condition from the outside, except for one of the masts that had collapsed across the scow he was standing on. Years ago someone had planed it flat to form a walkway. Slowly he moved across, careful not to look down until the mast broadened at the base, and then leaped to the deck of the first ship at Driftsend.

  For a moment he stood in that new silence, not knowing where to go. The boards creaked under him. He stood in the shadowy yellow light of a half-furled sail, listening to the faint wind and to the blurred shouts of children and women who seemed a thousand miles away. It was like the feeling he had had on board the old caravel that he and Pao had explored. He regretted now that she was not with him. Strange, he thought, how the atmosphere of the old boats affected him. It was as if they were haunted.

  Slowly he walked across the deck. He noticed that many of the lines were still intact, although they had rusted very badly. Occasionally he would pull one to see the point of a sail begin to unfurl, or to hear a wooden spar groan under the sudden weight.

  Then on the poop deck he saw something that almost made him cry out in delight: a large screw propeller with two blades missing and a long section of the drive shaft. So there was an auxiliary engine, and that meant gasoline. He thought for a moment he could smell it somewhere in the depths of the ship.

  The nearest hatch revealed a wide stairway that led down to a wooden landing, then doubled back upon itself into the darkness of a long wooden corridor. He lit a match. The tilting corridor led down further toward midships. There, probably, would be the galley and the sailors’ bunks. The other way led back to a series of rooms that looked like officers’ quarters.

  He lit another match, his last, and walked slowly along the passageway, sometimes balancing himself on the slanted floor by holding one hand against the wall. Slowly his eyes adjusted to the dim light.

  The first room he entered was very large. An enormous map of the world showing sea currents, winds, and depth soundings covered most of one wall. The map, set in a fluted mahogany frame, was made of varnished yellow paper marked with a fine network of cracks and small peelings. From the opposite wall, diffused columns of yellow light poured through large portholes. The floor was littered with maps, newspapers, books, pieces of leather, and a dozen wooden chairs lying on their sides and backs. In the center of the room stood a long oak table. At one end of it he noticed an iron astrolabe, and at the other end, a beautiful astral globe set in an elaborate bronze stand. By turning wheels near its base, it could be tilted to any angle. The globe was painted in black and the stars and planets in silver. The belt of the constellations ran through its center, each figure outlined in a different color. A bright blue silhouetted the figure of Sagittarius the Archer; his arrow shot far out into the painted curve of the cosmos, out beyond The Northern Cross, beyond Cepheus, The North Star, and Andromeda.

  He took a deep breath. His mind had been turning inward like an Archimedes’ spiral, and for a few seconds he had forgotten where he was. He straightened up and looked around him. A piece of newspaper responded to a sudden wisp of wind from one of the open portholes. It drifted for a moment like a ghost in the yellow air. He bent over and picked it up. It was The London Times, July 22, 1900.

  He stood in the middle of the room and listened to the creaking of the boat. He thought again of the arrow of Sagittarius on its way past The North Star. The starry god and his arrows, trapped on the curve of a starglobe like the figures on the urn in the Keats’ ode.

  Then he heard a noise somewhere down the corridor outside the room. A door closing. Perhaps, he thought, it was the wind. He listened. Somewhere in one of the rooms he heard the thud of footsteps, and then quite suddenly, an impossible jangle of sounds, like a chorus of xylophones terribly out of tune. It seemed much louder and somewhat different at this close distance, but it was still unmistakable: the music of The Hatchmaker.

  An unreasonable panic swept over him, and then almost immediately he felt very foolish. Whatever the sound was, it was almost certainly nothing dangerous. He could not believe that the ship was really haunted, or even inhabited. Slowly he made his way down the corridor until the noise was very loud all around him. But where did it come from? He opened one door after another, but they revealed nothing but cabins and storerooms, long since deserted. Perhaps, he thought, it came from another level of the ship somewhere below or above him.

  He found the old wooden staircase again and walked down to the third level, the dark hold of the clipper ship. For a long time he groped around in a black labyrinth of boxes and kegs in a broad, uncompartmented area that seemed to take up most of the hold. Many times he stumbled into things he could not recognize, things that clattered across the floor when he kicked them, or fell over like corpses or sacks of grain. In some places water had seeped through the boards and collected in large pools.

  He had assumed that his eyes would eventually adjust to the dim light; he realized now that he was in almost total darkness. That and the sloshing of the water made him very uneasy. How incredibly stupid he had been to come down here without a lamp. He turned back, trying to retrace his steps, but soon realized he was lost—lost in the black, watery vaults of an ancient ship where no one ever went. He cursed himself again as he felt the darkness closing in upon him. He was alone now with the sound his feet made in the water and a vague smell of oil and gasoline and decaying potatoes.

  Suddenly he realized that for an uncertain time—a minute or perhaps a half hour—he had not heard the music of The Hatchmaker. Even that would have given him some sense of direction, something to move toward. For a while he wandered about in the dark, slowly growing more desperate. Once he thought he heard footsteps somewhere behind him.

  Suddenly he cracked his head on a door and stumbled into a small room lit by three lamps. The sudden light confounded him, and he raised his hand to his eyes and sucked in his breath. He listened fearfully, waiting for something ominous to descend upon him, but he heard only the creaking and gurgling of the ship.

  The room appeared to be an officer’s cabin. A single bunk stood in one corner, a bookshelf on the opposite wall, and a model of a whaling ship on a large desk near the center of the room. At one corner of the deck, steam rose from a plate of beans and fish that someone had left unfinished. The odor of the warm food filled the room. It was true then. Someone actually lived at Driftsend. He took a step forward into the room, stopped and listened. Then, for the second time, he heard footsteps, this time very close. They came from just beyond the door on the other side of the room. He knew that in a moment the door would open and he would find himself face to face with—the inevitable answer came unbidden into his mind—The Hatchmaker.

  But the door did not open and the footsteps faded away into another corridor. Peter had no heart to follow them. He took two of the three lamps and went back into the dark bowels of the ship. In a few minutes he found the stairway, climbed it, and emerged with an infinite sense of relief into the cool, early evening. There was no sound anywhere. The wind had vanished with the sun across the
horizon.

  The next morning he told his story at breakfast.

  “You must have been terrified,” said Bright. “Just terrified.” Her eyes were very wide. Her hands seemed almost to tremble as she gathered the breakfast dishes on a large wooden tray.

  “It was frightening,” said Peter. “I’d heard the stories about The Hatchmaker, but I didn’t really expect to find anyone.”

  “Is he more than twelve feet tall?” said Michael, his voice shrill with excitement.

  “He didn’t really see The Hatchmaker,” said David. “He only heard footsteps. Why don’t you listen with your ears?”

  “Did he sound more than twelve feet tall?” said Michael.

  “Some say The Hatchmaker is like a snake,” said Reuben in a kind of rattling sotto voce. “And when he uncoils himself, why he’s longer than the boat he lives on at Driftsend.”

  “Even longer than that,” said Javitt.

  Rose smiled. It was the first time Peter had ever seen her smile. “He’s only a man,” she said sleepily. And then she closed her eyes and put her hands over her forehead, and when she spoke again it seemed to be from a great distance. “Tall,” she said. “Yes. Very tall with black hair like Benjamin. And such a fine musician!” There was a strange enthusiasm in her quavering voice.

  Tabor looked at her with sudden interest. “Rose, when did you know The Hatchmaker?” he asked. “How long ago?”

  “Did he live with one of the clans?” said Michael.

  But the old woman did not answer. She sat motionless, her fingers pressed against her forehead.

  “She’s going on The Long Journey,” said David in a whisper. “She doesn’t need The Circle of Elders so much now—she can do it all by herself.”

  Bright smiled at the boy and nodded, and then turned back to Peter. “But what were you doing at Driftsend in the first place? Didn’t you know it’s a forbidden place?”

  “No, I didn’t,” he lied. “I was just curious about The Hatchmaker.”

  But when the talk had ended Tabor led him out onto the deck, out of earshot of Bright and the others who lounged in the morning sun. “What were you really looking for?” he said.

  “Gasoline.”

  Tabor was silent for a moment. He looked very sad. “You still intend to leave then?”

  “If The Outlanders don’t wreck or steal my aluminum dinghy.”

  “I think it’s safe for the moment,” he said.

  “It’s not safe at all,” said Peter, who did not understand why Tabor was smiling. “Everyone knows where it is now.”

  “It’s safe for the moment. But I strongly suggest that you don’t try to leave The Drift. People will get very angry. They’ll even try to stop you.”

  Together they walked up toward The Cliff and stared out over the sunlit ocean. Peter could feel the anger rising in his throat. What business was it of Tabor’s, he wondered, what business was it of anyone’s, what right did any of them have to stand in his way? It was bad enough that no one helped, that no one in all these years had ever repaired any of the boats for sailing.

  “I did come here by accident,” he said, choosing his words very carefully. “And my whole life is back in The United States. I’m not getting in anyone’s way by rescuing my own boat or borrowing some sails from a deserted ship that belongs to nobody. I really don’t see that you have anything to say about it.”

  “There are very strong traditions against leaving The Drift,” said Tabor. “Every year all the clans meet and review the common law. Every year they say that it’s forbidden to sail out beyond the horizon because the world is an evil place of storms where men fight and kill each other and waste their lives on vanity and ambition. Eventually, they say, the outside world will find peace, and when that happens a great man in a white ship will discover The Drift and lead everyone back to land. But until that time everyone must wait.”

  “And is that what you believe?” said Peter. He could not suppress an angry smile. “Do you think that someday the world will heal itself of evil and a man will come in a white boat? Is that why you’re against my leaving?”

  Tabor looked out across the water. “No,” he said.

  “The world is full of good and evil, but I daresay it’s the same on The Drift. You have your Outlanders too. But that isn’t the point, really. The point is that everyone here is expected to think and feel the same way. It’s a kind of creeping, benevolent dictatorship that passes itself off as The Free Life simply because there isn’t much to do here and hardly anyone is responsible for anything. I’m just beginning to understand that, and for me it makes their whole thesis about The Drift as a retreat from an evil world look rather shabby.”

  “I’m not going to argue with you,” said Tabor. “But I think there is a kind of freedom here that is very rare in the outside world. Almost everyone who comes here finds it sooner or later. I think you’re finding it already.”

  “Well that’s just fine,” said Peter, who was not really listening. “I’m not allowed to go back to my own life because the natives are superstitious about boats. So much for my freedom!” But then he saw a strange look in Tabor’s eyes, a look of resignation and sadness that he did not understand.

  “I’m not trying to offend anyone,” he said helplessly. “You least of all. I just want to go home. Surely that’s not such an unreasonable desire, even from your point of view.”

  “No,” said Tabor quietly. “I suppose not.”

  Peter was surprised that he did not argue the point further. He wondered what Tabor was thinking. “There must be more to all this,” he said, trying now to sound interested. “There must be something you haven’t told me that keeps people here. What is it that everyone is really afraid of?”

  Tabor was quiet for several moments. He hunched over the bow rail of the boat, watched the seabirds, the slow movement of the ships, the glinting of the morning sun on the rivers of green water that moved slowly between the boats. “The open sea. Storms. Sailing out into the world,” he said finally.

  “But one must sail out into the world. There’s nothing else to do in life.”

  “Here no one sails anywhere. You’ve noticed that none of the boats are ever used as boats. But there is another ocean we sail here on The Drift, a stranger ocean that lies beyond the oceans that sailors know.”

  “And what do you use for sails on such an ocean?”

  Tabor smiled. “The mind is a kind of sail,” he answered. “The wind blows it where we wish to go.”

  “But what wind could there be in such an ocean? I mean, an ocean where nothing really moves and no one really travels anywhere, an ocean without commerce to real places?”

  “The things you touch with your senses are like the wind,” said Tabor. “That’s Pao’s way of putting it. She says that to see something truly is an act of perception and that when that happens, you move as if your sails were full of wind.”

  “That’s rather poetic, but I’m not sure—”

  “It’s a very simple thing,” said Tabor. “It’s only the difference between seeing something actively and seeing it passively. It’s what the children learn to do with metaphors in shadowgames. It’s the way Pao looks at things.”

  Peter thought again of Pao and the old caravel. Well, that had been a lovely afternoon, but it was not really relevant. The Drift was in many ways charming and mysterious, but surely the world was larger than a square mile of derelict wrecks; his part of it was over a thousand miles away. But before he could say anything further, Bright appeared in the hatchway of The Mary Strattford and began waving at them.

  “Hurry up!” she said. “You’re going to miss everything!”

  “Miss what?” said Peter. “I’m supposed to work this morning down in The Seafields. Reuben and Javitt are waiting for me.”

  “There’s no work today!” said Bright. “Reuben and Javitt are down at the meeting place with everyone else!” She was shouting now to make herself heard over the distance.

  Pete
r and Tabor made their way back toward The Mary Strattford. “I don’t understand,” said Peter. “What’s going on?”

  “Today is a holiday,” said Tabor. “I nearly forgot.”

  Then his two children appeared from nowhere and began tugging at his sleeves. “Come on, Tabor,” said Michael. “We want to see the trees and the monsters and everything. Is Pao going to take off her clothes this time?”

  Tabor began to laugh. “Hush,” he said. “You both talk too much.”

  “Hurry up!” said Bright as she went off with a group of Bluewater children toward the western side of The Drift. “You’ll miss The Dance of The Nine Islands!”

  Twelve

  THE DANCE OF THE NINE ISLANDS

  Tabor led him westward to a place midway between The Cliff and The Outland that Peter had seen before. It was the meeting place called Twoboats that Pao had showed him during his third day on The Drift. A platform nearly a hundred feet square had been made from the decks of two ships joined together by carpenters. The masts had been removed, a large area painted blue, and as he watched, some men arranged two layers of netting in a large circle across the painted space.

  At the stern of one ship he saw again the long slide that led down somewhere toward The Southern Edge.

  Within the blue circle of paint and netting were nine black tarpaulins which hid queer, lumpy forms that Peter could not identify. They were arranged in a kind of star shape that stretched about seventy feet from one side to the other. The netting was carefully laid around the edges of the tarpaulins. Once, for the briefest instant, he thought he saw one of the dark shapes move under its canvas covering.

  “What’s under the tarpaulins?” he asked.