Through Caverns Measureless to Man

by D G Rose

  “Is this the Captain of The Wedding Guest?” Said I, advancing to face her.

  “Supposing it be the Captain of The Wedding Guest?” She replied.

  I held out my scrap of paper. “I’m to ship on The Wedding Guest. I was told to present this to the Captain.” My use of the word ‘ship’, in this context, as a verb struck me as odd, but right.

  She opened my paper and read it for a long while. “I’m the third mate. Name’s Flask.” She shook the paper and it made a crisp snap. “Says here that you’re working for your passage. That right?”

  “That’s right.” I confirmed.

  She lifted an arm and waved at a sailor. “Daggoo! Come take this greenhorn off my hands!”

  Daggoo was as tall as Flask was short, and side by side they made a comical pair. In addition to his unusual height, Daggoo had a nose that could not be ignored. A great cratered thing, enormous and veined and fabulously ugly.

  Daggoo took me below to the crew’s quarters, ducking his head the whole time to avoid knocking himself senseless on the low beams. “Ye stows yer gear an’ ye meets me on deck in ten.” Daggoo gestured to a trunk that I took it would be made available to me.

  “I, literally, have nothing except this package.” I held out the package as if he might want to inspect it. He did not. He just shrugged and turned away. So, I put my package in the trunk and sat on my lumpy bunk for ten minutes before I went on deck.

  I found tall Daggoo quick enough and presented myself to him. “I’m ready to work.” I said.

  Daggoo looked me up and down. His disappointment was plain on his face.

  “Dost know nothing at all about sailing, I dare say—eh?”

  “Nothing sir.” I replied, “But I have no doubt I shall soon learn.”

  Daggoo spit over the rail. “I’m no sir! I’m an honest man. A seaman and a harpooner.”

  “A harpooner?” I asked, in surprise. “I thought this was a merchant ship.”

  Daggoo spit again. “Marchant service be damned. Talk not that lingo to me. Dost see that leg?—I’ll take that leg away from thy stern, if ever thou talkest of the marchant service to me again. Marchant service indeed!”

  And though I was afraid for my leg, I pressed him again. “Is The Wedding Guest a whaler?” I had some vague idea that I didn’t want to sail on a whaler, although I had not even a vague idea what I thought I would do if the ship turned out to be a whaler.

  “Tain’t no whales in the Sunless Sea.” And he shook his head. “Marchant service.”

  Daggoo found me a place where I would be out of the way as the ship cast off. The sailors cheered and sang as we cleared the harbor and let down the pilot and his boy to their dingy. Soon we were on the open sea.

  Then a strange thing happened. I mean another strange thing, maybe no stranger than other strange things that have happened recently. What happened is this: In front of my eyes appeared floating words, in a kind of semi-translucent script. And the words said: 'The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared, Merrily did we drop, Below the kirk, below the hill, Below the lighthouse top.’

  I read them, not really sure what they meant. What is a kirk? I turned to Daggoo, to ask him if he saw them too, but I found myself unable to make a sound. I gagged and hacked and coughed and spit, but I couldn’t talk.

  “Are ye a’rite?” He asked me.

  I pointed and gestured to the floating script, but he gave no sign of seeing anything unusual.

  “Out wit’ it!” He demanded.

  “The ship was cheered.” I said, surprised at my production. “The harbour cleared.” And I strained to pronounce the ‘ou’. “Merrily did we drop, Below the kirk, below the hill, Below the lighthouse top.” And as soon as I’d uttered the last syllable I felt free to speak my own words, again.

  Daggoo slapped me on the back. “Ye’ll get yer sea legs quick enough!” Daggoo soon passed me on to Stubb. Seemed nobody wanted to be saddled with a greenhorn. Stubb was an easy going sailor of indeterminate age. His skin was so lined and weathered, it was as if someone had sliced it off, tanned his hide to leather, and stitched it back again.

  Stubb set me to untangling a pile of rope. The lowest work available. I felt useless and unused, like a foreign coin or a pocket on a pair of woman’s jeans.

  But feeling the ship rocking beneath me, I was taken with an impulse to try the rigging and I found I had a natural talent for it, as if I’d been a sailor all my life, as if I was remembering, rather than learning. Soon, I was a regular member of the crew. I set the sails and kept them in trim. I worked the ropes alongside the rest of the crew. I stood my turn at watch in the crow’s nest.

  Stubb told me that the ship held 30 crew (although I feel sure that I met 43). The Captain was named Peleg, though I never saw that august personage. He never left his cabin, relaying all commands through the mates or the helmsman. It was rumored that he was ill.

  For boredom, nothing beats travel by ship, when all goes well. The work, and there is plenty of it, is dull and the off-hours are just as boring. We ran two shifts and while one shift slept, the other worked. My bunk, which I shared with a sailor on the other shift, was as uncomfortable as could be. Whether that mattress was stuffed with corncobs or broken crockery, there is no telling, but I rolled about a good deal and could not sleep for a long time.

  Off shift, we played cards, down in the dimly lit and smoky crew’s quarters, they used a queer deck whose suits were Poppies, Ice, Falcons, and Hands with extravagantly drawn faces and too many cards in each suit. As my losses mounted, one player casually asked me what my lay was. I told him that I had no idea what a lay even was. They explained to me that the sailors were paid no wages, but that each hand received a certain share of the profits and that these shares were called lays. One by one the players revealed their lays. One had the 777th lay (and though 777 is a large number, yet, when you make a teenth of it, it is something a good deal less), another the 200th and yet another the 275th. I heard a rumor that Daggoo, as harpooner, got the 100th lay.

  So, when I told them that, as far as I knew, I had no lay and I was working just for my passage, the game was closed to me and I spent the rest of my off-hours watching Daggoo practice his harpooning.

  Soon after I was shut out of the card games, I took sick. Not seasickness, I’d felt at home on the ship almost as soon as I set foot on her deck, but some terrible stomach ailment that may have been caused by the hard wormy biscuits that made up a good part of our meals each day. Hearing that I was sick, Flask came to see me in her capacity as the ship’s medical officer. Judging me sufficiently ill to stay in bed, she dosed me with a bottle of medicine that she pulled from a small leather bag. I promise you that never in the history of the world of foul medicines has anybody swallowed a dose of medicine as foul as what came out of that little brown bottle.

  “Ack! What the hell is that?!” I asked as Flask released her grasp on my nose.

  She held the bottle up to the lamp and gave it a shake. “A little tobacco, a little cod liver oil, a little bit of gunpowder and a secret ingredient.”

  I sputtered trying to get the horrid taste out of my mouth. “And will it make me better?” I asked, incredulous.

  “I’ve never seen it fail.” She replied. “Except for those that it’s killed.”

  And sure enough, the next day, facing the choice between another dose of her medicine and working while ill, I reported to work.

  One morning, as I polished the deck with holystone, still somewhat sick, I saw a sailor approach. He moved almost jerkily and once he stood in front of me, I saw his eyes scanning the empty space between us then he open his mouth to speak. “The Sun came up upon the left, Out of the sea came he! And he shone bright, and on the right, Went down into the sea. Higher and higher every day, Till over the mast at noon—“

  And looking up I saw the sun! “How strange to see a sun, sailing on the Sunless Sea.” I commented.

  The sailor gave a shrug.
“Poetic license.” He said and smoothly walked away.

  From that moment, we had a regular cycle of night and day, with the sun climbing higher and higher until it was, indeed, over the mast at noon. Which I took to mean that we were at the equator, or whatever served as an equator here.

  Then another sailor came near. “And now the STORM-BLAST came, and he Was tyrannous and strong: He struck with his o'ertaking wings, And chased us south along.”

  And sure enough, a storm came up behind us. It blew up from the north with sheets of rain and flashes of lightning and wind-whipped waves so tall they were like pillars holding up the sky. All the reciting and poetry and divination gave me the feeling that I was part of a play, a set-piece, but it did little to calm my fears as the terrible storm tossed our ship.

  The fierce winds pushed us so far south that the blinding rain turned to blinding snow and mist obscured the water and ice coated the lines.

  “And now there came both mist and snow, And it grew wondrous cold: And ice, mast-high, came floating by, As green as emerald.” Quoth the next sailor, pronouncing ‘emerald’ so that it rhymed with ‘cold’. More of that poetic license, I guess.

  And sure enough, Icebergs emerged from the mist, mast-high, and emerald-green. They were beautiful and majestic; I was terrified. I mean, one of these things took down the Titanic, and The Wedding Guest was a considerably less resilient vessel. But, I guessed, if this was a scripted tale, we would probably be OK.

  The next one said, “The ice was here, the ice was there, The ice was all around: It cracked and growled, and roared and howled, Like noises in a swound!” I mean, swound? It’s not even really a word, right?

  The storm still drove us on, until the sea became a slush and we were soon locked in solid ice. And the ice cracked and growled and roared and howled, precisely as predicted.

  But, instead of feeling comforted that all was going according to plan, I was distressed to see the boards of the ship warped and buckling and threatening to crack under the pressure exerted by the ice. A feeling of doom pervaded the crew and it was no play acting. We had food and water for some weeks, but not enough to last an Antarctic winter. Even if we survived to the thaw, the ship’s planking was unlikely to spring back to shape following months deformed by the crushing ice. So it was slow death by starvation or months surviving harsh conditions followed by a quick drowning as the ship sank. I was beginning to think that I didn’t much care for the story arc of this play.

  I was aloft in the crow’s nest, searching for a potential gap in the ice, when the words appeared again. I had gotten used to the various sailors doing the recitation and I felt a little silly having to read the word, aloud, with no one there to hear. Still, experience had taught me that the words were not to be ignored, and I wasn’t under the impression that the sailors were doing it willingly either. So: “At length did cross an Albatross, Thorough the fog it came; As if it had been a Christian soul, We hailed it in God's name.”

  Just then the giant shadow crossed over my head, close enough that I could feel the wind as it passed. I ducked down, instinctively. The albatross, of course. I didn’t have time to wonder if it was the albatross, the zombie albatross, because they had seen it below, too, and all the sailors called out to the giant bird for succor, and so did I.

  They put food out and the albatross lighted on the deck to eat. I scrambled down, because, frankly, it was the most exciting thing to happen in days.

  “It ate the food it ne'er had eat, And round and round it flew. The ice did split with a thunder-fit; The helmsman steered us through!” It ne’er had eat? I felt like that was taking poetic license a bit too far; switching from past to present like that in a single phrase. But, since it promised an escape from the ice, I didn’t complain. I’m not sure who I would complain to anyway. I had yet to meet the director of this nautical farce.

  As soon as it ate its fill, the bird took off and flew in lazy circles around the ship. I was about to head back aloft when the ship lurched and the ice split with a thunderous crack. A path opened before us and the helmsman steered us through.

  I was beginning to feel a little hum-ho about the whole thing. I mean, ok, yeah I’d been frightened when we were trapped in the ice and it looked like the whole ship would be crushed. I think I’d mostly taken my cue from the rest of the crew, who had seemed genuinely afraid. But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like the crew were only puppets. I’d been thinking that they knew more than me; but maybe they knew less. Maybe I was the only one who knew the extent to which this voyage was being controlled by outside forces because I was the one who was getting all the messages. I never saw crew members reciting to each other – they all came to me and I had to recite even when no one else was around.

  “And a good south wind sprung up behind; The Albatross did follow, And every day, for food or play, Came to the mariner's hollo!”

  And, of course, a friendly wind came up behind and the albatross, sure enough, did follow. I decided to try a little experiment. I mean, it was clear that when the words showed up, I was obligated to recite them, just like everybody else, but when the words predicted action on my part, could I resist?

  So, the next morning, I thought, what if there is just no ‘hollo’? But, resistance proved futile. At first, I was unable to speak, as with the words, then I was unable to even move until I called out to the bird and tossed it a crust of bread.

  So, predestination ruled and every day, we put out food for the bird. Somehow, even knowing that my actions were coerced, didn’t prevent me from enjoying my interaction with the giant bird. I mean, how often do you get a chance to get close to an albatross? So, we, the bird and I, became a kind of friends. I kept a sharp eye out for any signs that he was a zombie, falling feathers, greenish tint, shambling gait, but I never saw any hint that it was anything other than a normal bird. I trained him to take bits of biscuit from my hand. And we played a kind of dreadful game, where he would bring me a fish from the sea, still wriggling, and I would throw him the fish and he would catch it, in the air, and return it until it was quite dead and then he would eat it and fetch another.

  “The Sun now rose upon the right: Out of the sea came he, Still hid in mist, and on the left, Went down into the sea.”

  This passage didn’t seem to offer me any real information. It just told me what I already knew, that we were heading back northward and, though a passage was open before us, the ship still sailed wreathed in mist, and death, in the form of icebergs, still stalked us.

  Since the card games were denied me, and one can only play with a bird and a dead fish for so long before it gets eye glazingly dull, I asked Daggoo if I could try my hand at throwing his harpoon.

  Daggoo laughed, I think for the first time in our short acquaintance. “Arg, ye like as spit thy head as strike yer mark!” But he went below and when he came back he held a small cross-bow. Daggoo had set up his target along a rail, a broken plank scarred by many harpoon strikes. I took it as a sign of his confidence in his own abilities that, although his harpoon had no line, he betrayed no fear of losing it in the misty ocean below. He showed me how to hold the cross-bow, how to aim and how to release the bolt. Then he handed me the cross-bow. It didn’t seem that hard. My first bolt went well wide of the plank and soared into the sea below. Daggoo showed me how to cock the cross-bow and fit another bolt. My next bolt also murdered the ocean. But the third struck the plank. I admit it was well off center, but I was happy with any mark. The albatross, robbed of my play, kept me company, flying lazy circles over my head, now and then swooping into the sea for a tasty fish, as I spent the next few hours practicing, and I only lost one more bolt. Soon, I could hit the plank, in a part that was more center than not, most of the time. I should mention that being on a ship, we weren’t much more than 15 or 20 feet from the target.

  Here is what I want to say: I want to say that it was an accident. That it was the fault of inattention or incompetence or that, anyway
, it couldn’t have been helped.

  Here is what happened: With my cross-bow I shot the albatross.

  I ran to where his body lay, on the deck, surprisingly small and bloody, but Daggoo beat me to it. Then the words appeared.

  “With my cross-bow I shot the ALBATROSS.”

  Ah, the puppet master is a cruel and subtle bastard! I would have resisted. I would have lay paralyzed until the ship reached port. But the one time the foreknowledge would have done me good, it came too late!

  “Arg! Ye daft idjiot!” Shouted Daggoo. “I aver ye’ve killed the bird what caused the breeze to blow! T’wer better that ye’d spitted thy own head!” Daggoo gathered up the bloody bird and took it away to some hidden part of the ship.

  The next verse arrived as Daggoo stomped away. “And I had done a hellish thing, And it would work 'em woe: For all averred, I had killed the bird That made the breeze to blow. Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay, That made the breeze to blow!”

  So, even though the body was entombed somewhere in the woody heart of The Wedding Guest, word quickly spread and, soon enough, all averred I’d killed the bird that caused the breeze to blow.

  The next sailor arrived in the middle of the night, standing alongside my bunk until I was sufficiently awake to listen. “Nor dim nor red, like God's own head, The glorious Sun uprist: Then all averred, I had killed the bird That brought the fog and mist. 'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay, That bring the fog and mist.”

  But I was beyond caring. Let them aver whatever the hell they liked. I knew, in my heart, that it had been wrong to kill the bird, even if he had brought the fog and mist.

  And so, by the next day, it was seen that the fog and mist were clearing and soon we sailed on a smooth and open sea. Daggoo put his hand on my shoulder. “’Tis well that ye dins’t spitted thy own head. I aver ye’ve kilted the bird what brought the fog and mist! ‘Twas right such birds to slay, whats brings the fog and mist!”