Into the Storm

by Avi

  “Where did you see this man? Patrick asked, keeping his voice low. There was muffled shouting from behind one of the doors.

  “At the far end,” Laurence answered.

  “Do you think he came from the outside?”

  “I don’t know.” Laurence looked at the stateroom doors, wondering if the man he’d seen was behind one of them.

  “We might as well try that way,” Patrick said, pointing at the forward door. He crawled to the far end of the galley. Laurence struggled to calm himself. Over and over again he kept seeing the one-eyed man.

  Patrick noted the water at the threshold of the forward door. “I think this one goes out,” he whispered. “You man must have been coming in. Help me open it.”

  The boys pushed hard. Wind and rain burst upon them. Laurence tried to duck back, but Patrick, just behind him, shoved him forward. “Go on,” he urged. “It’s the only way.”

  Leaving the protection of the galley, the boys discovered a murky gray world flooded with water. From above poured the rain, raw and cold. Foaming waves crashed over the bulwarks and washed across the deck.

  Instantly drenched, pawing at their eyes in order to see, the boys struggled to stay together.

  “Which way?” Laurence shouted into Patrick’s ear.

  Patrick tried to determine where they were — not far from the steps that led down to the steerage deck.

  “We need to get to the other side!” he shouted, pointing.

  Laurence nodded to show he understood.

  “Stay close to me!” Patrick cried. Struggling, he edged away from the doorway. His bare feet made the going slippery. Laurence followed just as a massive wave struck the side of the ship, a mountain of foaming white water that rose up, then crashed down upon the deck. Patrick who was not putting his full weight on his hurt leg, stumbled. The deck water lifted him bodily and, as the vessel pitched to one side, swept the helpless boy along as it began to sluice overboard.

  Laurence sprang forward and threw himself on Patrick, trying to hold him back. Thoroughly entangled, the two went tumbling, only halting when they crashed into the bulwarks.

  Groggy, spitting water, Laurence staggered to his feet. Wiping his face clear, he held Patrick, who sought to stand.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you saved me,” Patrick sputtered.

  “Can you move toward the door again?” Laurence asked.

  “I’ll try.”

  Bent almost double against the wind, the boys inched back toward the steerage door. This time they had much more distance to cover. And when they finally reached the door, they discovered it had been lashed shut with a great knotted rope.

  As Patrick — his teeth chattering, his foot throbbing — clung to the wall, Laurence began to pick frantically at the knot. Again and again he had to wipe water from his eyes just to see his own fingers.

  Strand by strand the knot began to give. When at last he pulled it apart, the door flew open. Caught by the wind, it swung wildly against a wall and began to bang like a drum.

  Patrick dived forward, all but falling into the stairwell. Holding tightly to the guide rope to keep his balance, Laurence came right behind.

  The steerage deck was dark, the foul air thick as molasses. Groans, whimpers, and murmured prayers rose from everywhere. It was impossible to move without stepping on someone.

  “How many people are here?” Laurence asked in astonishment.

  “Too many,” Patrick answered between gritted teeth.

  Patrick found their berth. “Maura,” he called.

  Maura — who had been dozing fitfully — sat up immediately and looked down on her brother. She hardly knew what she felt, anger or relief. “And where have you been?” she demanded.

  A sleepy Mr. Drabble peered down at the boys too.

  “I got caught out on the deck,” Patrick said. “And almost washed away. Laurence saved my life.”

  “Laurence?” Maura repeated. She stared at the English boy.

  Trembling with the wet and cold, Laurence lifted his face and grinned sheepishly.

  Though Maura felt the urge to tell him to go away, to leave her brother alone, she restrained herself. “Sure, it was a kindness you’ve done,” she said instead. “May you be blessed for it.”

  Only then did Patrick confess, “I’ve hurt my foot.”

  “And how did you do that?” Maura asked, the anger finally breaking through.

  “Something struck it,” Patrick answered evasively.

  “How bad do you think it is?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Patrick O’Connell, you’ll be the death of me!” Maura cried with exasperation.

  Mr. Drabble climbed down and, with help from Laurence, got the dripping, shivering Patrick onto the platform. Once there, the actor examined his foot. Maura hovered close.

  “He had best stay where he is and not move,” Mr. Drabble urged Maura.

  She crawled to the foot of the platform to relay the news to Laurence. “And have you been hiding?” she whispered.

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “Are you alone?”

  Laurence nodded.

  “You need to know,” she said, “that the sailors and that first mate, Mr. Murdock, come through from time to time. Is it you they are looking for?”

  “I think so,” Laurence said. “Can I say a word to Patrick?”

  “If you’ll be quick about it.”

  Laurence climbed up at the end of the platform. Patrick was lying on his back, eyes closed. Sitting next to him was Bridy. She stared wide-eyed at Laurence.

  “You can see how crowded we are,” Maura said.

  “Who’s she?” Laurence asked, pointing to the child.

  “A friend,” Maura replied, reaching out to touch Bridy’s hand.

  Briefly, Laurence and Bridy exchanged looks.

  “Patrick,” Laurence called. Patrick opened his eyes and looked around. “I’m going back below,” Laurence said. “I have to. There’s no choice.”

  “Do you know your way then?”

  “No.”

  “You’ll need to use the steps in the middle of the ship. Then there’s the ladder. Only you’ll have to open the hatch.”

  “I’ll do it,” Laurence said. He slid down to the floor. After a final look at the O’Connells’ berth, he began to make his way back along the steerage deck.

  “Why did you send him away?” Mr. Drabble asked Maura.

  “Sure, Mr. Drabble, you know yourself there’s no room for him here,” she replied.

  “But didn’t he just save your Patrick? Ah, Miss O’Connell, you can be hard.” The actor sighed.

  Stung, Maura turned to look after Laurence, but he was already lost in the darkness.

  The storm on the Atlantic continued unabated. Hatchways and doors remained sealed to prevent the flooding of the lower decks. With no one permitted out, the steerage deck grew more and more polluted. No food or water was distributed. Steerage passengers had little choice but to go thirsty and hungry. The ones who did have extra provisions, such as the O’Connells and Mr. Drabble, fared better. But when other passengers saw that some of their company had food, they begged and pleaded for a portion — anything. Maura shared as much as she dared but made sure she kept enough for their own needs and Bridy’s too now.

  After four days the winds slackened, the seas flattened, the rain gentled, and the air grew mild. The crew threw open all hatches and doors and ordered the passengers — first class as well as steerage — out on deck. Extra water and food, they announced, would be available. There was a rush to get to fresh air.

  “You better go first,” Patrick told his sister. “With my foot, I’ll need time.” He’d hardly stood on it for four days.

  “All right then,” Maura agreed.

  As she climbed down from their berth, she felt a pull on her skirt. It was Mrs. Faherty.

  “Miss O’Connell,” the woman urged in a low frightened voice, “it would be a kindness if you’d step down the wa
y. It’s me husband. He’s faring poorly.”

  With a nod, and wrapping her shawl tightly around herself, Maura followed.

  She remembered a big full-faced man with thick curly hair. It was a shock to see Mr. Faherty now. Lying full-length upon the bare platform, he clutched his gaunt shivering body as though trying to keep warm. Now and again his hands moved listlessly to scratch himself. What she could see of his body was covered with sores. By his side, the two Faherty boys huddled. While they did not look as ill as their father, their expressions too were strangely vacant.

  Unsettled, Maura was afraid to draw too close. “How long has your husband been this way?” she asked in a hushed voice.

  “The man was none too well when we came aboard,” the woman confessed. “Sure now, with so little food, he gave what he had to the children. Then with the storm, and no food or water at all, he hardly ate a thing. Hasn’t it made him worse then.”

  “I heard someone say a doctor was on board,” Maura told her. “You’d best be speaking to him.”

  “And do you think, miss,” Mrs. Faherty asked bitterly, “any doctor would be coming to help the likes of us, who haven’t the least penny for his fee?”

  Maura hardly knew what to reply.

  “Maura O’Connell,” the woman went on, her voice breaking under the strain of her misery, “for Jesus’ sake, would you have the kindness to go to this doctor for him? I’d only get me anger up. It’d do no good at all.”

  “I can try,” Maura agreed, glad to be able to do something.

  After standing in line to get up the steps, Maura was astonished to see that the sky was a clear, brilliant blue. The seas were easy and seemed to sparkle. The Robert Peel, under full sail, drove through them with a steady rollicking rhythm.

  On the quarterdeck Mr. Clemspool was walking arm in arm with Mr. Shagwell, listening, always listening. On the main deck, where most of the emigrants were, long lines had formed. The longest were for the privies. But the lines for water, for the bread ration, and for the use of the fireplace were almost equal in length.

  Ropes had been strung about and passengers encouraged to bring out clothing and bedding to air. The ship looked like a rag shop.

  As Maura gazed about, she noticed Mr. Murdock standing at the foot of the steps to the quarterdeck. Despite his scowl, she went up to him.

  “Please, sir,” she said, “there’s a sick man below in great want of a doctor. His wife asked that I fetch him.”

  The first mate looked at Maura carefully. “What kind of sick?” he demanded.

  “Sure, he’s just lying there, all cold and shivery, with the look of the lost upon his face.”

  “Shivering, did yer say?”

  “So it seems to me, sir. In berth eighty-two. On the bottom.”

  Mr. Murdock swore an ugly oath. “Ship fever,” he said with loathing. “It comes from the way yer Irish keep yerselves. All that filth and squalor.” He spit on the deck to show his contempt.

  Maura wanted to object but held back. Getting the doctor to come was more important. “I wouldn’t know, Your Honor.”

  “Well, I know,” the officer said. “But having the fever won’t be all bad, Miss Paddy. Yer’ll get some good out of it.”

  “Faith then, and what might that be?” Maura asked.

  “If some of yer died, yer’d have more room.”

  When Dr. Woodham went down to the steerage level, not only was he frowning, he had placed a perfumed handkerchief to his nose. Mr. Murdock, lantern in hand, was by his side.

  “Pestilential place,” the doctor declared as he peered through the gloom made thick with tobacco and tea leaf smoke. “Can’t there be any better ventilation?”

  “Take my word for it, sir,” Mr. Murdock replied, “yer could put these people in the queen’s palace, and it would be a pigsty by the end of the week. I’ve seen it again and again. They don’t know better.”

  “If there is real illness here,” Dr. Woodham observed, “it will spread rapidly.”

  “Don’t I know it, sir. That’s why yer never see the captain here. Now, sir, if yer’ll just come this way, I’ll show yer the berth that’s got the reported contagion. Here now, make way for the doctor. May way!”

  Passengers hastily stepped aside. Maura followed in the doctor’s wake.

  “All right, mistress,” Mr. Murdock called to Mrs. Faherty when they had reached her berth, “we’ve had a report of sickness here.”

  From her place near her husband’s head, Mrs. Faherty shooed her two boys away, then attempted a clumsy curtsy. “If it please Your Honor, it’s me husband.”

  “Put the light on him,” Dr. Woodham ordered.

  Mr. Murdock aimed his bull’s-eye lantern on Mr. Faherty’s face, then his body. The face was swollen, as were his fingers and joints. A distinct, disagreeable odor — beyond the stench of the steerage — was discernible.

  “How long has he been this way?” the doctor demanded with revulsion, his handkerchief still held to his nose.

  “Please, Your Honor,” Mrs. Faherty replied, “from the second day of the storm.”

  “You should have reported it earlier,” Dr. Woodham said. “Has he had water? Food?”

  “Your Honor, there was none to be had….”

  Dr. Woodham frowned, lowered his handkerchief, and looked to Mr. Murdock for corroboration.

  “Not safe for them on the deck in a storm, yer know,” the first mate explained. “Liable to be washed away. Captain can’t allow it. As it was, someone managed to open the door to the main deck during the storm. We had to lash it down double.”

  Dr. Woodham nodded with understanding.

  “Please, Your Honor,” Mrs. Faherty asked in a low fearful voice, “is it what they call the ship fever?”

  “I suspect so, yes.”

  “Jesus have mercy,” the woman breathed, and reached out to touch her husband’s hand. Even as she began to weep, she looked up at the doctor. “Is there anything to be done, Your Honor?”

  The doctor stared again at the man’s flushed face. “It’s too late,” he answered brusquely.

  The woman groaned. “Is there nothing to make him easy?”

  With a curt shake of his head, Dr. Woodham turned and marched down the aisle, the handkerchief again pressed to his face.

  Mr. Murdock lingered by the platform. “Yer’ll want to keep me informed of any change,” he told Mrs. Faherty. Then he too left in haste.

  Even before the doctor had reached the steps, the words ship fever passed quickly among the passengers. At first there was a hush, then sounds of praying and moaning.

  Maura approached Mrs. Faherty timidly. “Is there anything I can do?” she whispered.

  “Would you be knowing if there’s a priest on the ship?”

  “Faith, I’ve not seen one.”

  “It’s terrible cruel,” the woman said with bitterness, as much to herself as to Maura. “He keeps asking for water. Other than a priest, it’s all he’s wanting.”

  “I’ll try to get some,” Maura said.

  Before she reached the water barrel on the main deck, the supply gave out. A second barrel had to be hoisted up. By the time she returned to the steerage deck with her can, a full hour had passed.

  As Maura approached the Fahertys’ berth, she saw that a crowd had gathered. Only when she’d worked her way through it did she discover that Mr. Faherty had died.

  His widow sat by his body. She seemed to be in shock, not crying, but staring bleakly before her. Her three weeping children were pressing close.

  A deeply distressed Maura came forward and held out the can of water. “I could get it no faster,” she murmured apologetically.

  Mrs. Faherty made a small nod. “Give it to the children,” she said. “They’ve been terrible thirsty too.”

  Maura looked at them. Bridy alone appeared relatively healthy.

  Maura offered the can to them. One by one they drank. Mrs. Faherty merely shook her head in mournful resignation.

  Ma
ura, not wishing to intrude, began to leave.

  “Maura O’Connell,” the woman called softly.

  Maura turned.

  “Sure, but it will be the same for me in quick time. Will you, for Jesus’ sake, be willing to take Bridy under your care? You know she don’t say much. And she promises to mind you.”

  Maura stared at Mrs. Faherty. The look in the woman’s eyes was exactly like that in her mother’s on the night Timothy, her brother, had died, the same as when her mother fled the Cork dock.

  “She’s only a child and will be needing someone.”

  “I’ll look after her,” Maura whispered.

  “A blessing on you,” Mrs. Faherty said, crossing herself.

  Two sailors appeared at the edge of the crowd. One carried a folded piece of sailcloth. The other bore a heavy sack over his shoulder. “Where’s the body?” one of them called. The crowd parted to allow the two men to step to the platform.

  “Forgive us, mistress,” one of them said with rough kindness. “Captain’s orders. The remains must be got rid of. He don’t want the disease spreading.”

  Mrs. Faherty remained unmoving.

  “Did you hear me, mistress?” the sailor asked quietly.

  This time she returned a tiny nod.

  The man beckoned to his companion, who quickly unfolded the sailcloth and stretched it full-length alongside Mr. Faherty. The other sailor, with a quick push, rolled the body onto it. Then he took from his pocket a leather case of sail needles and thread. Working together, the men folded the cloth over the body, then began to sew the edges of the cloth together with crude but effective stitches. Before closing it up, one of the sailors opened the sack he’d brought. From this he pulled some stones, which he stuffed by the dead man’s feet.

  “What’s that for?” asked one of the onlookers.

  “You don’t want him bobbing about for the sharks, now do you?” the sailor replied. “The weight will get him down quick and keep him there till Judgment Day.”

  Throughout this procedure Mrs. Faherty continued to stare vacantly before her. It was the sniffling children who watched the sailors intently, their eyes wide with fear.

  Once the body had been sewn into the cloth, one sailor asked, “Will you be coming, mistress?”