by Carol Birch
‘What are you doing, boys?’ said Dan, elbowing us aside. ‘Don’t you know how to light a fire? Useful knowledge, boys, useful knowledge. Just watch me.’
They passed over from the other boat a shoulder, a leg, some ribs. We stuck them with knives and tools and held them in the fire, and the juices ran down and made the flames spit and fed the fire. We cooked everything as well as we could, but we couldn’t wait long enough. The smell was driving us mad. They’d started their own fire over there now and stuck the hog’s head, eyeless, on a stick over it. The sun was beginning to go down and our fires were warm and lovely and made homely trails of smoke rise up above our boats. Among our sails hung wonderful hides, marbled pink and white with flesh and fat.
The ears cooked in no time. Wilson cut them off.
‘Who gets these?’ he asked.
‘Cut them in half and let the lads have them,’ the captain replied. That was Skip and John and me and Tim. Skip cried when he got his. Sat there chewing with a runny nose. My God, hog’s ear is food for gods. It’s tough, you can suck and chew and gnaw and it lasts for ages. Next came the tail, Simon got that, then the feet, and when at last I got my teeth into a real ham, it was pink in the middle and eating it hurt. Agony in the pits of my cheeks, sharper than the sting of salt in the sores erupting like volcanoes on my legs. We ate the lot, guts and all, apart from the hides and some strips of pork hung up to dry. It was glorious. The captain said we could have an extra ration of water, just for tonight, to celebrate the killing of the pig and our tenth day in the boats.
‘We have done splendidly,’ he said, his ringing tone restored. ‘Splendidly!’
We have food enough. We have water for a good time yet, we have our spirits and we are sure of our salvation in God’s hands.
He led us in a small prayer of thanksgiving.
We were at peace like big cats after feeding. There was a moon. The ocean was beautiful. Simon played his fiddle. We sang ‘The Black Ball Line’, ‘Santy Anno’, ‘Lowlands Low’. Yan sang something from his country and Dag sang something from his. John sang the filthiest version I ever heard of ‘My God How the Money Rolls In’. And we sang ‘Blood Red Roses’, a song of many moods. For every occasion there is a verse to suit. For the crashing storm and galloping wind, we would roar at the tops of our voices:
Our boots and shoes is all in pawn
Go down you blood red roses, go down!
It’s fucking draughty around Cape Horn.
Go down, you blood red roses, go down!
And for now, a time of content and full-belly warmth:
Oh, my dear mother she wrote to me,
Go down, you blood red roses, go down
My lovely son, come home from sea –
Go down, you blood red roses, go down …
… sweet and teary, some of us thinking of the mothers they’d never had, some of the one they had or the one they’d had and lost. Even my memories of home and Ishbel and Ma and everything made me happy. All we lacked was a smoke.
Tomorrow, perhaps, a sail.
But we got no sail. Not tomorrow or the day after or the one after that, and it went on.
‘Once,’ Mr Rainey said, ‘these seas were full of whale ships.’
The wind shifted to the north. We ate the marbled flesh from the hides till they started to turn a funny green and the captain said it was best not to take any chances, so we chucked them over and were back on the salty hardtack and warm water. The taste and smell of the hog stayed on the edge of sense, the warm slip of the blood down the gullet, the juices. Having drunk, I was drier than ever, my mouth a wretched, clamouring place. Ever east towards South America. Much talk of islands. There should have been islands. The captain and Mr Rainey often put their heads together and murmured over the quadrant.
‘I can remember a time,’ Mr Rainey said, ‘when you couldn’t sail more than a few days without there’d be another whale ship.’
There should have been islands and there should have been ships.
‘True,’ said Gabriel, ‘the whaling’s done for.’
‘Jaf.’ Tim’s voice, careless. ‘What if we’ve sailed into another world?’
‘There’d still be islands.’
‘What if it’s a world without islands? What if it’s a world where there’s nothing anywhere except one great big ocean?’
By the fourth night after the hog, I was beginning to think he was right. We had sailed into another world, something running along next to ours, something that had always been there but invisible. It consisted only of ocean. It couldn’t be our world. Everyone knew the Pacific was full of islands. Where were the whale ships? What use were the compasses and the quadrant and all of the captain and Mr Rainey’s reckonings and consultations if they could not bring us in reasonable time to one of these islands or steer us into the shipping grounds?
John Copper woke us up screaming in his sleep, said he thought there were horrible wormy things with biting teeth running up his arms and sides.
‘It’s him!’ he said, shuddering as if someone had just thrown a bucket of raw fish all over him like in the old story. ‘Poking me. He’s driving me mad.’
‘Not this time,’ said Skip, ‘I didn’t.’
‘You did,’ Simon said. ‘I saw you.’
‘No, you didn’t.’
‘My head’s killing me,’ John groaned.
‘Skip, you’re causing nightmares.’ Proctor rubbed his face. ‘For God’s sake, man, pull along with the rest of us.’
Wilson Pride chipped in. ‘This ain’t fair,’ he said, ‘and it ain’t wise. They should have him for a bit.’
‘You’re right,’ the captain said. ‘Yan, change with Skip.’
‘Oh Jesus.’ Gabriel lay down and covered his head.
‘Beg pardon, Captain, I’m not so sure that’s a good idea,’ Mr Rainey said.
‘Why not? The way things are carrying on, if he stays over here he’ll end up done away with. We need respite.’
‘Very well, sir,’ Mr Rainey replied stiffly, ‘but I won’t answer for him.’
‘No more need you, Mr Rainey,’ the captain said. ‘He can look to himself. Skip, I hope you’re listening to all this. Pull yourself together.’
‘Yes, Captain,’ Skip snuffled meekly, raising himself up and groping his way towards us.
‘Skip,’ said Mr Rainey, ‘if you poke one person – even once – do you hear? – I will personally throw you overboard.’
‘It’s my fault,’ said Skip in a small voice. ‘It’s because I killed the dragon.’
‘You didn’t kill the dragon!’ roared Rainey.
‘I did. I set it free so it died.’
‘How do you know it’s dead?’ said Tim. ‘How do you know it didn’t get home and it’s sitting there right now on its little island with its grandchildren at its knee telling them all about its big adventure amongst the madmen?’
‘Sit down, Skip,’ said Dan. ‘Don’t open your mouth again.’
Mr Rainey came down with a bad head cold. His eyes watered constantly and his nose ran like a tap. ‘I’ll be coughing next,’ he said, ‘it always goes to my chest. You lot better keep away from me.’
Fat chance.
‘Remember, lads,’ Dan said, dispensing our water, ‘for every day that passes we are one day closer to rescue.’
‘Aye, by God,’ Rainey agreed, wiping his nose on his sleeve.
We drank a little then baled some more, till Dag gave a shout and we saw dogfish between the boats. Gabriel reached for his spear. Shining fins, three, four, came and went. It was no good. We couldn’t get anywhere near close enough. We stalked them as well as we could for the best part of an hour before they left us, heading west in a line. Darkness fell complete, no moon, no stars. It was Tim’s watch, then Dan’s. I slept. When I woke, Mr Rainey, coughing irritatingly, was talking with Gabriel.
‘The boat’s gone, Jaf,’ Tim said in a wonderstruck voice.
‘What do you mean?’
&
nbsp; ‘Gone.’
‘What? The other boat?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How?’
‘It was just gone when the light came up.’
I sat up. The sea was empty. Skip woke up and raised himself slowly, blinking. No one spoke. There was nothing to be done. We drank our ration. Mr Rainey spewed his back up, nearly flinging himself overboard in the action.
‘Lie down, man,’ said Dan.
‘How can they be gone?’ asked Skip in a puzzled tone.
I tried not to think.
‘I think I will,’ Rainey said, blinking. His forehead was bright red, dripping.
‘Where have they gone?’
‘Hush, Skip.’ Gabriel put a hand on his shoulder. ‘There’s no answer to it. It’s not a question worth asking.’
‘Give us your knife, Gabe,’ I said, ‘I want to cut my toenails.’
‘Don’t cut your toes off, boy.’ He handed it over.
‘Can’t look for them,’ Dan said. ‘Nothing we can do.’
‘They’ve got the quadrant,’ I said, setting about my nails.
‘And the matches,’ Skip added.
‘No matter. We can dead reckon.’ Dan smiled bravely. ‘Valparaiso, here we come.’
We would miss the fiddle. I concentrated on my toes. My eyes filled. Our friends over there, their faces always glimpsed sideways, the captain big and owly, Yan’s handsome, slanted cheeks, Simon brooding, Wilson stoic, Dag’s blond shock of hair. And poor, worried John Copper biting his lips. Never see them again? They weren’t dead though, not like those other ones, and now I must number them again, for to forget is death. I laid the knife by. I was blind, full of tears. Billy Stock, Henry Cash, Martin Hannah, Abel Roper, Joe Harper, Mr Comeragh, Felix. Who else? Sam. How could I forget old Sam? If I closed my eyes he was there. If I closed my eyes anything was there: Ishbel, Meng’s fireplace with its meerschaum pipes, the corner of Watney Street.
We sailed blind all day and all the next.
‘How far away do you think it is to Chile?’ asked Tim.
Dan laughed. ‘A little way yet.’
‘At least two weeks,’ said Gabriel.
Mr Rainey had ripped his shirt open at the front and, still sleeping, was scratching fretfully away at three red sores the size of shillings that had formed a triangle on his hairless chest.
It rained. The weather at sea is like running paint. All the sky smudges. The shades of sky move in a dance, run along the curving horizon, take on form. The east was a shining slate and shimmered at us like a god. Mr Rainey slept in the rain. It cooled our sores. We held up our faces to catch the drops and it ran in our eyes and washed all sweat away, singing like a choir, millions of voices in perfect harmony. The boat began to buck and prance. Big waves rolled under us.
‘It’s coming. Down sails,’ Dan said.
The gale raged all night and all the next day and all the night after that. There was nothing to be done with the boat. We lay low, all huddled together in the bottom. When darkness came we held onto each other, every man clutching a fistful of cloth, a hand, a shoulder, an elbow. Every few minutes sheet lightning flashed across the sky, and we’d see each other’s ghastly lit-up faces, big-eyed and stark.
On the third morning the wind dropped and the sea calmed, and we raised the masts again and sailed no more than an hour, before a sound like a gunshot reached us from a great distance. It was on Tim’s watch and he cried out: ‘It’s them! It’s them!’ and all of us rose and stared against the glaring sea.
I saw nothing.
‘It is!’ exclaimed Gabriel. ‘I see them.’
Then we all saw the tiny dark stain very far away, west, and Mr Rainey took out his pistol and fired once into the sky. A faint roar was our reward.
We cheered, hurt our throats.
‘Impossible,’ Dan said. His hand gripped my shoulder, trembling. Though he smiled like a madman, he looked scared. His watery blue eyes, never blinking, were fixed with something akin to horror on what approached, and it jumped into my head that the boat would reach us and we’d see it was full of dead men still going about their business. Their sores would have run mad, covering every inch of them. Their eyes would be ghastly.
‘Mr Rainey!’ the captain hailed us.
We could see their faces now, their good old ordinary faces: Captain Proctor, Wilson Pride, Yan, Simon, Dag and John. All smiling.
Mr Rainey pulled himself together and called across that we were all fine and dandy over here and in very good spirits.
I was on watch one day when something hit the sail and fell into the boat.
Fish. Another. Another.
There was a scramble.
A whole host of fish. Beautiful things, flashes of silver leaping from the sea and flying like shearwaters, some the size of a finger, some as long as a foot, skimming close to the surface, touching down from time to time, only to take off again. They had bird’s wings at the front behind their heads, and little finny ones vibrating at their tails. A dozen or so landed in our boat – three or four of fair size and lots of tiddlers. We gorged, raw. It was like eating the sea.
‘See?’ said Dan. ‘See? Providence,’ pulling bones from his teeth.
‘Providence!’ Gabriel laughed. ‘Providence can go either way.’
‘So it can,’ said Dan. ‘For now it’s with us. Rainey, are you all right?’
‘No. I’m bloody not all right. Do I look all right?’
He’d gone all bug-eyed. Since we’d eaten the other hog he’d been getting terrible headaches and spent a lot of time rubbing his forehead and the backs of his ears. Dan was pretty much our skipper now. A month had passed. Heat, sudden, heat by day, cold by night.
‘I don’t think I can take much more of this,’ Gabriel said dreamily.
‘My face feels funny,’ I gobbed.
‘It’s all right, Jaffo,’ Tim said.
‘No.’
‘It is. It is all right, you know.’ He had a curious, stiff smile.
‘Yes,’ I replied. My tongue stuck to the back of my teeth with a bitter, gummy slime, which gave off a vile stenchy taste as rank as a Bermondsey sewer.
‘Ah, landlord,’ he mugged, ‘a flagon of your best!’
‘You’ll get your ration soon,’ Dan said.
Our mouths would have dripped if they could.
‘Do you remember when we caught fish under Tower Bridge, Jaffo?’
‘Me, you and Ishbel,’ I said.
‘Fried in a bit of butter,’ Tim said.
‘Wonder what Ishbel’s doing now?’
‘She’s washing her feet,’ he said.
The thought of Ishbel washing her feet filled me with joy.
‘Do you think so?’
‘Oh yes. She wonders about us.’
‘She’d have come if she could.’
‘I know.’
Mr Rainey started sneezing convulsively, over and over again.
‘He’s for the chop,’ Tim said.
Seemed likely.
‘He’ll be the first,’ I said.
‘Likely.’
I yawned till tears wet the corners of my eyes. Immediately they dried. No clouds.
‘Can’t swallow properly,’ I said. ‘I keep trying.’
‘Don’t try,’ said Dan.
‘I want to get off this … this …’ Gabriel, a great sigh. ‘Sick of the whole fucking …’
Rainey fell asleep and started snoring hoarsely.
‘He’s had it,’ Dan said. ‘Poor man.’
‘Nearly time for the sun to sink,’ said Skip.
‘Where are the others?’
‘There.’
A ghostly grey boat that dogs us always, bearing our shades, hollow-eyed.
Dan gently woke Mr Rainey. The captain’s boat came nigh, the faces of Yan and John and Simon and Wilson and Dag. Dag’s broad face was the colour of teak, his hair white as Lancashire cheese, his whiskers wild and wiry. The captain and Mr Rainey gave out our portions.
‘Reached for a chicken, got me a goose,’ sang Gabriel. The sores on his lips had cracked and were running into one another. His forehead shone.
‘Here, get this in.’ Dan trickled water from his fingers through my lips. My tongue unstuck.
‘I’m going in,’ said Skip.
‘I wouldn’t,’ Dan said. ‘You get salt in them sores you’ll be screaming.’
‘Can’t make a difference,’ Skip replied, ‘I’m salt all over anyway. Long as it’s cold I don’t care.’
‘Me too,’ Tim said, ‘I’ll come too.’
‘Don’t let go the side,’ said Dan.
So they went over, softly sinking in the cool sea, their heads bobbing alongside. It was funny. They didn’t know whether to groan for the salt sting or sigh in ecstasy as the water cooled their blood. So they laughed instead, looking at one another and giggling like children.
‘What’s it like?’ I asked.
I would have gone, but I had a feeling that if I left the boat, I’d never get back, so I just hung over and dangled my hands. Then Gabriel too slid over the side. Had to, he said, he was burning up. Not me, said Dan. The sun would soon sink, then we’d feel cold enough.
The boats came together. Soon after, up goes the cry from Skip that there’s shells under the boat, hundreds of them, and they start pulling them off and cracking them and stuffing their mouths with the flesh from inside. It went dark, sudden like it does, and all you could hear as the lanterns were lit were the splashes in the water and the shouts of excitement. Both boats were covered. We passed over the buckets, and when they were filled and not a single shell left under the boats, the boys were too weak to climb back over the side, struggling to raise a knee or haul themselves up with an arm, like kittens going upstairs, pathetic and funny, laughing at themselves. All of us laughing as we pulled them in like heavy nets, eating the barnacles or winkles or whatever they were. Beautiful, soft and succulent, plucked living by the white neck from the brown shell. We said we’d save some, but we ate the lot in one. All except Mr Rainey, who said he couldn’t fancy them. Couldn’t fancy them! Offer me a worm, I’d have given it a go.
