Tales of the New World: Stories

by Sabina Murray

  “Nearly hanged for being governor of Jamaica at a time when Mill and Carlyle wished to engage in debate. They wished to play tennis. I was merely the ball, battered and practically irrelevant.”

  “I don’t understand,” says the grandson, and he lands his leather oxford deep in manure, which is funny to Eyre: only a gentleman—because, recent development, that’s what his descendants are—would wear such shoes in a cow pasture.

  “Let me explain it clearly,” says Eyre. “I was governor of Jamaica. A Baptist minister, a colored man named George William Gordon, started a rebellion, which I put down quickly and effectively. That should have been the end of it, but Mill thought to make of me an example. To him, I was an aristocrat who felt himself beyond the reach of the law, when I was neither aristocrat nor criminal. Carlyle came to my defense. The case was brought to court three times, and each time the charges favored no trial.”

  “Surely there is more to it than that?” asks the grandson.

  “It was as I’ve stated,” says Eyre. “What ought to have been a small legal matter tried in relevant courts in Jamaica became an English circus. In the Jamaica Committee, there were Mill, Bright, Darwin, Huxley, Hughes, Spencer, and nine thousand more. John Stuart Mill, with his rights for women and all others weak and defenseless, chose to attack me, as if I were their scourge. On my side, I had Carlyle, whose knowledge of the French Revolution made him something of an expert on rebellion. I had Dickens, who wondered at the ability of men like Mill to champion the cause of distant negro rebels when the streets of London were choked with diseased prostitutes and their starving children. I had Ruskin, whose eloquence exposed the unchecked lawlessness of gentlemen in England, and therefore the hypocrisy of my persecutors. And Tennyson, who . . .” And here Eyre struggled, because he knew that Tennyson wrote poems, none of which he’d read, and thus seemed a weak note to end on. Who else had come to his defense?

  “Charles Kingsley came to your defense, Grandfather.”

  “And made a hash of it.”

  “And Hamilton Hume wrote a book of your accomplishments.” “Which was filled with so much false detail and conjecture that I came to be questioned on matters that had once been accepted as truth.”

  They were now reaching the brace of trees that marked the final descent to the riverbank.

  “The truth is the only thing that matters, which is why I pursue it, Grandfather, with you, who is the only one I trust to make it clear.”

  Was Eyre really as old as all that, to make his grandson press this case with all the doggedness of one who may never get the chance again?

  “Mill vilified me, and I was exonerated, and then the courts, the people, whoever ‘they’ are who have such power, vilified him. If you wish to know the truth, know this: I am an explorer who started as a cattleman. I was never a gentleman, not one to receive the deference accorded, nor the criticism. I did best when alone.”

  “Which is why you’ve settled here,” says John. He gestures about as if Devonshire is a wilderness, not a patchwork quilt of this farm and that pasture, as if Dartmoor, with its ponies and left-and-right-sloping vistas, edges the abyss of unknowing, as if they are blanketed in the silence of the Maker instead of hearing the blast and blast as hares expire at the hands of hunters.

  Eyre sets down his tackle box and, stashed in the bushes, finds his three-legged wooden stool. He sits and opens the catches of the tackle box, sees the neat compartments and their temptations of glass-eyed chubs, kidney-shaped metal lures, even a fur-covered mouse lure, and the four treble Devonshire lure, which he ought to try, being in Devonshire, but thinks too fancy for him. “When I was sixteen,” says Eyre, choosing the fluted spoon, “my father suggested that I go to Australia. My choice was between that and purchasing an army commission. Both were good options for a man in my position, the son of a vicar, but the army was filled with people! Australia, to my understanding, was not.”

  “Well that is true,” says John.

  “Not entirely,” says Eyre. “There were people there, people like me, young enough to desire hardship and experience. And there were others, government officials and the like—gentlemen! Although often poor, or perhaps not sophisticated enough to be of value in India: gentlemen adequate to the task of governing in Adelaide and Albany and Wellington.” Eyre hears the bitterness creeping into his voice and looks to see if his grandson has noticed it, which he has. “And there were natives!” he hastily adds, although there was nothing more important to Eyre. “But when I arrived in Sydney, at the age of sixteen, younger than you—”

  “Not much,” John protests, flattered his grandfather knows his age.

  “Young enough,” says Eyre. “But older, too.” Eyre scowls again. “Do you know what it is to ride for six months through the world’s roughest terrain, with no guarantee of grazing and water for your herd, of water for yourself and your horse? Do you know what it is to trust the morning to bring a day worth living, to trust the black man to share his knowledge, to share his friendship with you, to lay your gun upon the ground when faced with a dozen raised spears? Do you know what it is to lead when you don’t know where you’re going?” Is his grandson edging away? “I could tell you a story,” says Eyre, “that would give you nightmares.”

  “I’ll return after breakfast,” says John. “To hear it.”

  Eyre, smiling, has regained his solitude. No one’s interested in exploration. His memory of Wylie says expiration, and Eyre wonders if the food will be good.

  “Tell your grandmother,” Eyre shouts to John, who is quickly crossing the cow pasture, “not to concern herself with having me fetched for lunch.”

  Eyre is momentarily reflective. How could he know what waited across that other river, in those final meters that led—and at the same time—to both history and the future? How different is this river and its positive, reliable trickle, the silver fish within it, the splash of a frog returning to it, the reflected willow tree behind his bearded, gray, reflected face. He casts his line and the lure, sparkling, flips into the depths of the water. He draws it back slowly, but then loses the will to continue, his eyes trained on the horizon that presents itself on the opposite bank, a horizon of unnatural green meeting brilliant blue, flat, distant, and irrelevant, a horizon that he will never reach nor try to, just there to torment or comfort, just there to split sky from land, north from south, past from present. The white light across the bank begins to rob all color, and the elements—trees, grass, shotguns blasting—disappear, like stage props shifted by invisible hands.

  Full Circle Thrice

  Once!

  This earth: a ball, a plaything. The surface, in this age—Exploration teetering into Reason—a driving spit of black ink dividing solid and liquid. This America, claimed by Spain, raided by England, inhabited by natives. This beast of Panama, neck stretched, holding to the southern continent by its teeth. These trees, a fleshy mass heaving with monkeys, weighed down with garish, jewel-soaked birds. A red flag tied with ribbons raised high and in its wake, a host of thieves, men all marching and marching still, marching to sack Portobelo: burglary on a large scale. And in this host, our hero, William Dampier, who steps to one side of the column of men and sits on a rock. He squints up at the sun, and Lionel Wafer—his friend and fellow scholar-buccaneer—thinks he might be winking. At whom? At God maybe? And why not?

  “And why stop here, William?” says Wafer.

  “I have a stone in my shoe.”

  “A stone?” Wafer laughed. “When you must stop, you get such a look about you, as if stopping itself—the need to stop—were a constant stone in your shoe, your whole life, worrying your foot.”

  “There is no need to stop, Lionel. Magellan taught us that.”

  “So you would go round and round—”

  “And round again.”

  “And after that?”

  “Sit down somewhat dizzied by the accomplishment.”

  Darién!

  Dampier takes off his shoe and return
s the offending stone to its land of issue: Darién. He puts the shoe back on, shoulders his weapon, his twenty pounds of powder, his salted beef, his rum. He and Wafer rejoin the march, Dampier having aged in the last five minutes, wisdom adequate to that task, however irrelevant to much of his life.

  “What weighs so heavy on you?” asks Wafer.

  “On me? This weapon and the person I will use it on when we reach our destination. Why cannot man just travel? Why must one be a priest or soldier, or buccaneer? Why cannot one just board a boat to see what lies after the great remove of ocean?”

  “Would you have no profession?”

  “Can this really be called a profession?” Dampier thinks. “I march to attack the Spaniards, and after all this”—he gestures at the jungle as if it has sprung up merely to stymie his progression—“I look forward to having enough gold pieces to sign up for a similar venture. Or maybe we could camp awhile and, when the good people of Portobelo have managed to replenish their coffers, sack them again.”

  “Maybe the life of a buccaneer is not for you.”

  “It’s not for anyone,” says Dampier, a little laugh, “but I can speak like this and no one disagrees. It is a life without hypocrisy. Is that not worth something? Sacking without conversion. The good people of Portobelo ought to thank us for dropping in and not insisting on that final humiliation.”

  “We leave them as we find them.”

  “Although a little less well off, or dead.”

  Who is this William Dampier? An orphan. A failed businessman. A seasoned traveler, and still only twenty-three. I would like to say there is a sense of destiny about him, that greatness, like some buzzing halo, stands about his head; that the finger of God extends downward and then, one, two, three, pokes a rubbery staccato upon his stinking hair: this one, this one, this one. And the history writers flock and scribble. But it is not greatness, more a displaced refinement of intellect: a cunning. But strangely packaged. He is popular with other men. He likes to drink, but stays a good bottle of rum behind the others, and after the drunken fisticuffs and rough encounters with rough women, he is still there and not so poorly used—that weary smile and extended arm: he picks you up, cracks a joke at your expense, and then, hands firmly upon your shoulders, pushes you into a more productive hour. He is all right, this William Dampier. I like him well enough.

  I hover by his ear, a listener, conjurer, and spy.

  Dampier holds forth on a variety of subjects and Wafer fills, like a cup, to overflowing. Dampier, of whom Coleridge will say, “Old Dampier, rough sailor, but a man of exquisite mind,” then sit to pen his mariner’s tale. And Swift—a man not easily impressed—will have his Gulliver claim him, “Cousin Dampier,” kin. Over the buzz and thrum of insects and the incessant, succulent drip of jungle sweat, I hear his laugh: one note, loud, confident, yet not so humored as world-weary.

  “My dear Wafer,” says Dampier, “the sea is the great equalizer.”

  “Surely war,” says Wafer, “and not the sea?”

  “And so it is,” says Dampier, swatting something, this gnat, this thought, against his bare and sweating neck. “The sea, war, hunger, death, love, knowledge.”

  “Surely not knowledge. That’s naïve. And even hunger. Hunger must find one to equalize, and there are many people beyond the reach of hunger, although not appetite. And knowledge, William . . .”

  “True, true,” says Dampier, a tight-cornered smile on his face. “What are the many keys that unlock knowledge: reading, for one, a challenging companion,” and here Dampier nods at his friend, “and all of these tucked safe in Privilege’s pocket.”

  “Right, sir, right you are. Perhaps instead of knowledge, we can place the unknown.”

  “The unknown,” says Dampier, and he chuckles. “The unknown the great equalizer? The unknown will be mine.”

  “As you dispense with it.”

  “People want its perimeters—my favorite place to hang my hat.”

  Dampier lives to observe and his behavior defines this age.

  Lionel Wafer fancies himself something of a writer, and so Dampier has given him this Darién, this neck: the tough part of the bird. Dampier has no need of it, and, as observed by Wafer, Dampier is a man on the move and will doubtless have some other place to write about: a newer place to bind in vellum and sign his name. Wafer, being wise enough to recognize Dampier’s superior gifts, has accepted the Panamanian Isthmus with gratitude and acknowledges Dampier’s right to the rest of the world.

  Mindanao!

  When savages start stuffing you with food and keep you by the table, it could be something other than hospitality. Perhaps providence, and not your providence, their providence, for the pigs are all about and small, and this Swan, Captain Swan to be precise, really ought to be more careful. He could feed this village for a month, and, if he keeps consuming their food at the current rate, he might have to, for there will be nothing else to eat. And if the men keep at the village girls with the same enthusiasm, the population will double, and with villagers significantly larger—whiter too—than those standing about the doorways and animal pens, with hoes, sticks, and other primitive tools: things looking less like farm implements, more like weapons.

  “Sir!” says our Dampier. “Perhaps you are done with lunch and we might discuss our departure.”

  “Lunch? Isn’t it still breakfast? I just sat down,” says Captain Swan.

  “You sat down several weeks ago, a fact that has been noticed by the men and, of more concern, our host.”

  “The sultan delights in my presence,” says Swan. “And I delight in his.”

  “The men are restless and the monotony of the passing days is perhaps only interrupted by your visits to the ship, where you entertain by picking one from the pack to flog.”

  “You criticize me,” says Swan. “That’s insubordination.”

  “You are a captain who does not sail,” says Dampier. “That’s madness.”

  “You are a navigator who cannot bear stillness.”

  Swan offers Dampier a cushion on the floor beside him, a wooden plate, a stew of chilies, coconut, and chicken. “When we were still escaping the Pacific, all the men were patched with scurvy, blundering around the decks as if already dead yet still in motion. They were threatening to eat us—both of us, the officers! They are a mutinous lot. I know that look. You think you would have made a less attractive meal.”

  “True,” says Dampier, “I am as lean as you are lusty and fleshy.”

  Swan, as if to prove this point, licks through his fingers. “All the while, you had your eyes fixed on the sky, then on the horizon—that shift of ninety degrees held all the interest for you, because we were in motion.”

  “A navigator is one who navigates.”

  And through what treacherous waters has Dampier navigated? He has already been labeled “pirate,” and now must make his way through the straits of his life a criminal, but a necessary one, for who else dares to sail at the edge of knowing? And as he watches a sailor angled over the edge of the ship, line in hand, sounding for depth, our Dampier knows the true danger is not the coral clawing at the soft wood of the ship’s keel, but the wigged minions back in London—authority! justice!—keeping the benches of court warm with their fleshy arses, the air redolent with the belch and stink of money, meals, and privilege.

  Better to stay abroad, even if one’s company is drunks, sodomites, and thieves. Better to keep company with the blank page and the ink scratching on it, the lines, the turn and turn of sheets, the manuscript growing thick as Dampier catches the unknown, slams it onto the page as if he has killed an insect. He writes, “In this Island are many sorts of Beasts, both wild and tame; as . . . Guano’s, Lizards, Snakes, &c. I never saw or heard of any Beasts of Prey here, as in many other places.” He writes, “The Winds are Easterly one part of the Year, and Westerly the other. The Easterly Winds begin to blow in October, and it is the middle of November before they are settled.” He writes, “Here are also plenty
of Sea Turtle, and small Manatee, which are not near so big as those in the West-Indies.” He writes and writes and writes.

  Later, with Mindanao receding, Swan stranded, and the Spice Islands wafting their magic just over the horizon, Dampier has a moment to contemplate his future. Although it was not his idea to leave Swan behind, he will no doubt be held accountable for it. The British authorities condemn and punish with great enthusiasm: payback for those who dare to spend so much time beyond their reach and imagination. And who is this mad crew anyway? The surgeon has already tried to make off into the wilderness—the jungle filled with Indians and daggers preferable to this lot—but they kidnapped him back. But he was the surgeon. Surely the loss of a navigator will not bother so much.

  A Most Outrageous Storm!

  The storm came out of nowhere, a blackened margin thickening in the northeast, and the wind, which had been “whiffling” about from one part of the compass to the other, appeared behind the cloud: zephyrs, cheeks puffed, a curling blue-gray plume of wind extending from their puckered lips.

  “Sir,” says Dampier to Captain Read, his current master, “we’re in for it.”

  “In for what?” says Read, his little round nose twitching anxiously.

  Moments later, as Dampier is thrust this way and that, his greasy locks flattened about his shoulders, a horizontal dumping of water first at his right, then left, he feels “it” to be adequately described. He holds firm to the railing to avoid being washed away. In his mind, he composes, committing to memory, “. . . the Rain poured down as through a Sieve. It thundered and lightened prodigiously, and the Sea seemed all of a Fire about us.” The men are baling anxiously and Captain Read is scampering fore and aft. But something in this evil weather feels vindicating, and should one bother to look Dampier’s way (yet no one does, navigating being something of a luxury in the current circumstances), they would see his calm expression, although one eyebrow is merrily raised, his mouth pulled to one side—jaunty! Because he senses with the instinct that overrides reason, a quality of all true navigators, that they are blowing off the edge of the map.