by Craig Cliff
‘What is it about me you so despise?’ I asked Swenson one day as I handed him a new brace block I had carved, which he was to install aloft.
‘You’re not a sailor,’ he said.
‘And what does it take to become a sailor in your eyes?’
He laughed coarsely. ‘We’ll talk once you’ve crossed the line, eh, Tenderfoot?’
As the Agathos entered the doldrums, those humid, windless latitudes, I found time to remove Vengeance from the bow to complete her refurbishment. Once she was back on the fo’c’sle deck, I noticed the new shoulder I had fashioned and affixed before we set sail had already become jagged and raw. The sailors gathered in a circle around me once more and something of that light-hearted mood from the docks returned.
‘Time for some rouge and lipstick, is it?’ the cook asked.
‘I’ll have to fix her shoulder first,’ I said.
‘Anything to soften her embrace,’ said someone behind the first ring of onlookers.
‘While you’re at it,’ another voice said, ‘could you address her . . . anatomical deficiencies?’
The men roared with laughter.
‘Aye,’ Boag added, ‘it’s a long time between drinks out here.’
‘It is the least a lady could do,’ Kulke said.
‘I’m afraid she’ll not stand up to such alterations,’ I said, adopting the false airs and rising inflexion of the crewmen.
‘’Tis a shame, ’tis a shame,’ Boag said and pummelled my shoulder with the heel of his large hand.
‘Why waste your time on the shoulder?’ young Tim asked from beneath the arm of the cook. ‘We’ll only pick it fresh.’
‘You all did this?’ I asked.
‘Aye,’ the men proclaimed.
‘But why?’
‘For luck, of course,’ Boag said and produced a splinter of pine from his trouser pocket. The other men reached into their trousers and waistcoats and socks and retrieved their splinters, holding them out to me as if they were gun sights and I the target.
Even Meiklejohn was there holding out his splinter, though his eyes were focused somewhere over my head.
‘All of you—’ I began.
‘I’d be surprised if Captain Bock doesn’t have a chip himself,’ said Tim.
I looked around but saw neither Bock nor Basil Porter. I was angered by the injury inflicted upon Vengeance, but also, I suppose, because I had not been invited to take part in the superstition. I still wanted dearly to become a sailor, despite the pageant of grotesques and madmen that went by such a title aboard the Agathos. Once I was a sailor, I thought, my hardships would ease and the adventure would truly begin.
‘Go on, Carpenter,’ Boag said, as if reading my mind, ‘take a chip yourself. You’ll need the luck when we cross the line.’
Tim held out a grimy spoon, which must have been the tool he’d used to acquire his own splinter, but I shook my head. ‘I’ll use my own tool, thank you.’ I took up a gouge with a shallow curve and pressed it inside one of the vertical grooves until I lifted out a piece of wood the thickness of a matchstick. I took the splinter and put it in the breast pocket of my shirt and the men let out a cheer before bursting into song:
Oh, the sea’s a fair old mistress,
The land’s a withered shrew,
Oh, the sea’s a dainty mistress,
And we’re just passin’ through.
Oh, the sea’s a fair old mistress,
We have our own a’bow.
Oh, the sea’s a dainty mistress,
But our lady’ll do for now.
I ran into Porter later that day as he ascended to the quarterdeck for the evening watch.
‘I finally got Vengeance painted,’ I said.
‘I heard a rumour. I’ll have to take a look in the morning.’
‘She took longer than I expected,’ I said slowly, looking to the bow. ‘The repairs to her shoulder . . .’
‘Ah,’ he said and began his salesman’s shuffle. ‘I didn’t want to agitate you when we were just setting out. It’s a tradition. Would you rather the men threw their earrings and acorns and wren feathers overboard and abandoned hope? We’d be done for, Mr Doig.’
‘Aye, dinnae fret.’ I reached inside my shirt and withdrew my sliver of Vengeance. ‘I need all the luck I can get.’
Porter gave his singular, high-pitched laugh and for the first time I noticed the tinge of nervousness in it.
The next day, my nineteenth aboard the Agathos, a pack of soft, low-slung clouds had been dealt across the sky. The ship sat on the surface of the water, its close-reefed topsails the only canvas out to catch the breeze. From time to time a darker cloud would pass over us and let go its contents. These downpours would last a minute or two, the rain falling in vertical streams rather than individual droplets. The men ran out into the showers to wash, some stripping to the waist, others taking the chance to eke the salt from their clothes while they were still on their bodies and wringing out their rough laundered vests and shirts and trousers when the rain stopped.
I stood beneath the eaves of the deckhouse, alongside Jarrell and Burton, the two apprentices who, like me, had never been this far south. After the first two showers, we joined the men on deck. The water was warmer and softer than any rain I had felt before, but still a wee bit salty.
Our shirts, vests and waistcoats were draped across the gunwale and the sun was shining bright as new copper when Porter emerged from the ’tween decks, sweat beading on his brow.
‘Waterspout weather, if ever there was,’ he said.
I looked out to the horizon. Aside from two lighter patches where the rain was falling, the sea appeared slick, harmless.
‘Aha,’ Porter said and made for starboard. I gathered up my clothes and followed.
‘See that darkening, there, a mile off? Just you watch.’
Before our eyes a dark triangle began to descend diagonally from the cluster of nimbus clouds. The corner of the triangle then stretched out into a thin white finger that pushed down to the surface of the water, becoming thinner and thinner until it was no longer a finger but a scalpel, poised for the first incision. I noticed now that the sea itself was not a flat plane: a small cone of water and mist was rising, twisting up to meet the descending cloud. The Agathos must have been drifting towards this phenomenon, or the clouds were edging towards the ship, as it appeared to grow, its form becoming clearer with every passing moment. When the sky cone and the sea cone connected, a white, ghostly veil was whisked up at the base of the vortex.
‘See the wake it traces?’ Porter said. The spout was indeed tracing a rippled line across the oily water, not unlike the wake of the Agathos, though its edges were parallel rather than V-shaped.
‘There,’ Porter said, pointing over the bow, ‘another one.’
The funnel of this new spout had not fully formed and I turned back to the first, interested in its movement across the water. By concentrating on its base, I was able to observe the halting rhythm of its motion. The spout would cover a good distance in a smooth sweep before pausing over one spot, as if catching its breath before continuing. The rhythm was instantly familiar. It was a carver’s rhythm: gouge stroke, pause, stroke, pause, adjustment, stroke. Perhaps it was the superstition of the men surrounding me but a shiver ran down my back. It seemed a sign.
The veil of mist at the base died down and the connection was broken. It looked as if the spout were being erased from the bottom up, scrubbed out like a sketch another soul was never meant to see.
‘Crikey,’ Porter said. I turned and saw him pointing through the rigging at three dark funnels that had already formed and the finger of a fourth reaching towards the water less than a hundred yards from the ship.
‘Trouble?’ I asked.
Porter grabbed Burton’s bare wrist. ‘Sound the bell.’
The mate directed the sailors on deck to hoist the topsails. I threw on my shirt, leaving it unbuttoned, and dropped the rest of my clothes. I uncoiled a buntline a
nd released the belaying pin that held it in place, but before I could haul upon the rope a waterspout collided with the port side of the Agathos, causing her to jerk from side to side. The sound of the vortex itself was no more fearsome than the beating of a fly’s wings, perhaps a few dozen flies, but it was accompanied by the cracking of braces and stays against spars and the zip-zoot of the topsails being rent to shreds. Fortunately the funnel passed across the deck in a single stroke and did not pause to consider its next move.
‘You men get aloft,’ Porter shouted over the flutter of the spout as it meandered away. ‘We’ll need to get these sails down. Tim, fetch Mantzaris. There’s work enough for him now.’
‘Should I—?’ I asked, my eyes slowly moving up to the topsail yards.
‘Carpenter,’ Porter said in the same storm-piercing voice, ‘survey the decks for damage.’
I nodded and hurried to the storeroom to retrieve my tool belt. When I emerged back on deck the waterspout that had passed over the Agathos was all but erased. The dark cloud at the top of the funnel had developed a lighter bulge. On cue, this gave way: the water that had been sucked into the sky was free to return once more, falling in a single crumpled sheet that smacked the surface of the sea and disappeared.
The spout had passed amidships, leaving the boats and the chicken coop untouched. One of the chests that sat hard against the base of the mainmast was missing its lid and two of the dead-eyes that braced the foremast shrouds had come free from the base of the bulwark, but the decking and the bulwarks themselves appeared to have withstood the test.
The damaged chest stored spare sets of oilskins and I found a few items strewn about the deck. Its lid was over at the foot of the quarterdeck steps, hinges still attached. Back at the base of the mainmast, I had to move the lid to the left to avoid the chewed-out holes left by the screws when they were wrenched free, which meant I’d have to make further adjustments to ensure the lid would be watertight. I gave a sigh, looked aloft and saw the men working to untie the robands that bound the sail to the yards. The topsail was torn in at least three places but it hung limply in the still afternoon air. There were no signs of further waterspouts. I could hear men whistling, others talking in a rattle of vulgar words. Everyone was glad to be occupied after two days becalmed with little to do.
I returned my attention to the final hinge. I did not enjoy carpentry: the need for measurements, spirit levels, all that metal to bind and separate wood. The rhythm of the waterspout had crystallised my thoughts: where carpentry fought against nature, carving sought to work with it. A carver learnt to understand every piece of wood, to follow its grain deep into the heart of a block and find the shape the wood wanted to become. Carving was an art, carpentry a collection of chores—often fiddly and mathematical, but chores nonetheless. My father had randered along similar lines when I was a child in his workshop. When Porter had carried my sea chest across the gangway and I followed in his wake, I did not expect to dislike the work to this degree. I was working with wood, after all. And I was at sea, experiencing the world in a dozen different ways every day. Such were the thoughts, Avis, that jangled in my head when the sky went dark and I was laid out flat.
The next thing I can remember was being in a bunk, grasping for consciousness. It felt as if time were sluicing through the hole in my head. That I was being pummelled by the unremitting passage of time and if I were to ever get up from my bunk I would be greatly aged. Perhaps this was the onset of the Doig family affliction, hastened on by external forces. Perhaps it was my time.
I recalled Porter beside my bunk at some stage in the night, perhaps more than once, but the effort to recall his words was too much for my aching head. What had happened? How long had I been laid out?
When I let my mind unclench a tide of phrases rolled in and receded.
Rest. As long as you need. Rest. A heavy blow. As long as you need. Rest. Didn’t know you were there. As long as you need.
Others came. A man with a wolf’s head. The cook’s assistant with hard tack and grog. Doctor Stanley. Tim with fresh bandages.
You’d best recover smartly. Rest is my prescription. The men are talking. Best get above decks smartly. I don’t believe it’s serious. The men, they grumble.
Where were the others, the apprentices, Meiklejohn, Mantzaris, the cook? I was not in my bunk, I realised, not in the deckhouse. I was below decks. Some kind of infirmary.
The men are talking. A heavy blow is my prescription. Recover smartly. A smarting blow. Och, you are nae use to anybody! The men, they grumble.
Eventually, the flow of time began to relax and no longer coursed through my head.
I was on deck, I thought, fixing the chest. A waterspout had crossed the deck, a spiral swarm of flies, the airy finger of the Almighty. The Doig affliction. No. I was fully awake. Aware to the point of heightened consciousness. I was alone. There was no one snoring in an adjacent bunk. No one picking at a Jew’s harp. I was alone. The door at my feet remained closed, untested by wind or spray. A ribbon of light cut through beneath it. I was enclosed in this wee space, an envelope of wood alive with the sounds of wood. From the slightest mouse squeak to the deepest rolling groan. I fought hard to banish the ghosts and woodland creatures that the creaking ship conjured in my mind and tried to focus on the wood itself. What part of the ship made such a noise? Where was the pressure coming from? In what strength and at what velocity? What sort of wood or woods? How might the grain affect the sound?
My head effervesced but my body ached, felt encrusted, as if a skin of bark were forming, a coarse grain trickling through my flesh, knots taking shape, my form hardening.
Footsteps above. Hard leather on teak and tar, the vibrations passing through the layer of softwood and the dark space to my ears. Footsteps on the teak treads of the companionway, the creak of the teak handrail and the brass fixings. The give of the pine door against the teak jamb. Pine, I thought. It mustn’t catch the spray.
‘You’re awake.’ It was Porter.
‘What happened to me?’
‘The memory still no good, eh?’ He sat down on the edge of the bunk. ‘You were struck by a brace block that came away from the yard. It was a heavy blow, but softened some by the sail that came away before it.’
‘You’ve told me this before.’
‘That I have, Carpenter.’
‘I should get above deck. The men must be talking.’
‘You need to rest. You’ll need your strength when we get further south.’
With great effort, I hoisted myself into a sitting position and, as if it had been waiting for this very moment, time rushed back into the hole in my head.
It was four days before I could walk on deck and a further two before I resumed light duties. I’d been forewarned about the chilly reception I might receive from the men, but I assumed it would make little difference. What I hadn’t accounted for was the fact we were now in the Southern Hemisphere and I had missed crossing the line, the ceremony, the ritual humiliation of the first timers at the hand of the ship’s Neptune. In time I got the story from Tim: Jarrell and Burton, the two apprentices, knelt on the poop deck, the rusty razor, the two buckets of piss, the pledge to Neptune and the Order of the Waves—but I knew it all the instant I saw Jarrell: his downcast eyes, the cherry-red seam running down his cheek.
The men’s contempt for me, unvented, began to take on physical dimensions. Shoulders were thrust into me as I queued outside the galley, feet were left dangling to trip me as I exited. Hot tar was ‘spilt’ on my ankle as I crossed the deck.
The brace block had knocked nearly a week from my life, but I had suffered below decks, unseen. I never found out if it was the same block I had carved and Boag installed a few days earlier and, if so, whose fault it was that it had come away with the canvas. To the men, I had been standing in the wrong place. What fool would work at the base of the mast while the men replaced a damaged sail?
It was no use trying to argue with the men, to bring their rese
ntment to a head and move on. They just sat there, grunting or wiping their nose upon their sleeve, leaving their rebuttal for the next time I wandered in range of the jib-boom.
The Agathos entered the ice zone in mid-September. Her bow was pointed eastward and the Roaring Forties whipped her through the thick, scrambled ocean.
‘I suggest you keep your mouth shut with the men,’ Porter told me one night. We were standing near the stern, in the shelter of a deckhouse. I was in my oilskins, Porter in shirtsleeves. He had summoned me, was counselling me as a first mate rather than a friend. Should things get out of hand he would be responsible. I was back to full carpenter’s duties and performing them as best I could, given my limited experience and the antagonism of the crew—should I be laid out for any period of time, it was Porter who’d have to ensure my tasks were covered.
‘I see,’ I said. ‘I’m causing you trouble.’
Porter waited until I lifted my head and trained his eyes on mine. ‘I’m leaving the ship in Melbourne,’ he confided. ‘I’ve done my dash. I don’t want anything to go wrong the next few weeks, all right, Carpenter?’
I admired his honesty, though later I wondered if it was another calculated act.
‘Does Bock know?’
‘No. And he won’t, will he?’
I shrugged. It was not as if I had a regular audience with the captain.
‘I’ve got a cousin in Geelong. It’s not so hard to slip away from port. Or sign onto another ship that departs before the Agathos.’
‘I see.’ I began to unbutton my oilskin coat. ‘I’ve been thinking about my stramash with the brace block.’
‘Forget about it, Carpenter.’
‘I understand what happened.’
‘If you think there’s some conspiracy—’
‘No, nothing of the sort.’
‘If you want to avoid their attention, you could start by getting a little spray on your brow.’ He gestured at my cap.
‘It’s fine,’ I said and stuck my hand inside my coat. From my shirt pocket I retrieved the splinter I had taken from Vengeance. ‘Such a thing might be good luck for a sailor,’ I said, holding it up high to catch the flickering light of the quarterdeck’s lantern, ‘but I am no sailor. I am no sailor,’ I repeated and tossed the splinter into the ship’s dark wake.
