Saltskin (5 page)

The bronze-clad brigantine, the Unicorn, was mighty. With her sails at full
mast and the trade winds behind her, she plunged through the sea like a bucking
animal. Captain Angus ruled a crew of the most lawless men ever conceived.
A stew of misfits: villains, traitors, murderers, poachers and rustlers, highwaymen
and failed pirates, wife- abandoners, orphans, runaway boys, escaped convicts,
circus freaks, mercenaries, thieves, rogues, bootleggers, blackbirders and
vagabonds. Each man was on the Unicorn for a different reason, and all had
a sense of displacement and loss about them like exiles.

Angelo endured the first week of the sea journey to
the new world of New Zealand by being sodden drunk
on a substance the colour of muddy water but made of
all things inferior. Under the influence of the crude drink
and the sickening sway of the ship as it crested and fell,
he was as useless as a baby on laudanum. He trembled
and quivered on deck with the harsh sea air, his jaw
clenched spasmodically, he sweated horridly, his eyes
rolled backwards, he vomited so often all that came out
was curdled spit.

On those black nights when even the Eastern Star
was opaque, Angelo lolled on his back-curling hammock,
feeling he were in the bowels of a monster. Inches from
his nose, the ceiling of the cabin suffocated him. The
creaking ship, with its mysterious gurgles and frightening
oscillations, shunted him this way and that so that even
lying down his muscles were tense. His mind turned to the
hope, the conviction, that out in the wide sea he just might
find his mermaid.

He saw her waiting. He clutched his breast pocket with
the drawing and the letter like a medal of St Christopher
and by journey's end they were losing their ink, yet indelible
in his memory. He saw her in his mind, swimming in the
sea blissfully, innocently naked, with him, her hair scarlet
and silken spread around them, swirling in the currents.
He'd have her smile for him, she'd hold his hand and
laugh a tinkling laugh and they'd frolic in the waters of his
delusion. Then he'd vice her in his embrace.

Sometimes he'd drift off to sleep and when he next
looked she had vanished, and he could not break the
surface of the ocean for it was sealed over, an impenetrable
skin of glass. And he'd mewl in his seasickness, writhing
under the stiff grey blanket, host to the bodily emollients
of countless sailors before him: sweat, piss, tears, shit and
salty spunk. Through the boards of the ship the fishy tang
of the sea seeped in.

Davy never once believed Angelo wouldn't make it,
even though other sailors had bet coins, tobacco and tools
that he would be chucked off before the Unicorn reached
Jacob's River. One of the crew, Jake, whose blackened gums
hosted only two (rotten) teeth, tormented the delirious
Angelo. Whispered, 'Die, die, die,' in his ear.

Jake was a blackballed pirate who hated for hate's sake.
A small man with a mean streak in a fatless body tightly
coiled with muscles like a circus contortionist. His body
was bald of hair, as if he had come from a pod, and his
fingernails were stubs he'd gnawed down to the quick, the
surrounding skin raw and jagged. He had tattoos on his
arms of snakes writhing in skulls and naked maidens trussed
and gagged. He liked to wipe the sweat under his armpits
and smell it, and had a following of men who feared him.

The captain of the Unicorn knew the calibre of his men
only too well. There was nothing Angus had not seen. He
had crewed whaling vessels since the age of twelve and he
could see into men's minds. He could tell if a man had sealegs,
and could see Angelo did not, and into the bargain he
couldn't handle his drink.

On the seventh day of sailing the captain hailed Davy
and said, 'That mate of yours has got to go. We'll be
dumping him at the next port.'

'No, he'll be all right, Captain.'

'We dump him — or would you rather he walked the
plank? That might be more fun, eh?'

As he spoke, a sailor high up in the mast cried out as he
toppled from his perch. He grabbed the great flapping sail to
save himself but his weight dragged on the canvas, ripping
it a fair distance before he lurched to a stop, dangling way
out over the whitecaps of the vast ocean. All the sailors
looked up, stunned. They gasped, waiting spellbound for
the sail to rip further and the man to plunge to his death.

Only Angelo moved. In his quick way he climbed
the lower shaft of the mast with his long arms and legs.
Angus watched as Angelo climbed fearlessly up, moving
out from the centre mast as if on the branch of a great tree,
sat down and, to the gasps of the men, swung backwards
from his bent knees. He yanked on the sail, gathering it in
his hands, and in so doing winched the sailor up, grabbed
him by the forearm and swung him onto the bar. A cheer
went up in the crowd.

Davy beamed at the captain, both question and answer
in his eyes.

Angus said, 'You're to keep him off the grog or it'll be
you who walks the plank.'

'Aye, Captain.'

The burst of heroism went to Angelo's head. He felt
invincible. His earlier melancholy now turned to mania
and he sought out jobs to do, never still for a moment.
The first of the tasks he set himself was to mend the rip
in the sail. The captain had feared they would have to sail
with one less, and with a treacherous cape coming up he
was heavy with it.

Angelo had the sail down just far enough to reach the full
tear. He wielded the heavy iron needle deftly and the stitches were as fine
as Angus had ever seen. In six hours, just before dusk, the sail was back
up and billowing with a strong wind.

Captain Angus had sad eyes. Eyes that looked out from
a leathery face and saw only desolation and yet, since
the torn sail incident, every time he saw Angelo he felt
oddly heartened. Angelo seemed good — good in the way
only simpletons are, and yet with the smallest hint of the
majestic, like the unlikely beauty of a peasant's daughter.

He noticed the artistically slender hands, the erect, haughty
carriage. The way Angelo seemed to have supreme confidence in himself, in
his purpose, his reason for being. Angus sensed it and he recognised it as
rare and yet the old captain was certain that Angelo was moony in the head.
He watched him lurch from one group of men to another, from one topic to another.
Saw the way he irritated people and could not read their displeasure.

Anchored in the inlet of Jacob's River, near the southernmost
point of two islands, were nearly fifty ships, each with
a crew of a hundred men, all there for the whales. Longboats
with square rivets of bronze; barques with prows curling
upwards like a genie's shoe, some painted jet black, others
in varnished hues. Some had been despatched by whaling
companies, others were rogue operators, and still others
belonged to kings and queens who did not expect them
back for three or more years.

The ships sailed the trade winds and served as junkboats,
trading in whatever was on offer. They were whalers
and botanists, spice merchants, and blackbirders not above
tossing out barrels of whale oil to set shackles and chains
and trade in nut-brown slaves for the mines in Queensland.
Anything could happen; anything went.

From a distance Jacob's River appeared a hell-hole and
up close it was much worse: an exhibit of excrement. Horse
faeces around the hitching posts had piled as high as a
man's thigh. On the mud-crusted street, domestic animals
strolled and shat: pigs snorted; goats bleated; hens clucked;
sheep left their liquorice plops to steam with human slops;
a cow wandered, swinging her great bottom, and pissed
steaming urine, chewing with her mouth open so saliva
swung in green viscous dribbles; strange lizards moved
about like demi-demons.

After months at sea, Angelo roamed the town with the
inquisitiveness of a child. The fact there were no sewers,
no street lanterns, no established laws did not strike him
as a negative. He saw only infinite possibilities, and this
optimism blinded him to danger. For Jacob's River was
among the most debauched places on earth. It was a
whaling town geared to a surge of population in season,
there for the party and afterwards abandoned. Every shyster
out to make a quick buck, by means fair and foul, trading
in everything from alpha to omega, wicked or heavenly,
real or illusory.

False storefronts had crude painted signs erected so
badly they shuddered in the wind like the dappled thighs
of a jigging whore, and behind the façades hid wobbly,
windowless buildings selling dried beef, tools, oil, tallow
candles, pocket knives and soap. Jacob's River was a hellhole
as disgusting as a diseased testicle.

Hundreds of tents were in the process of being pitched,
large latrines dug, make-do huts erected from mud and
scavenged wood. There were Portuguese alongside German
alongside Irish, as though the Tower of Babel had just fallen
and the dust was yet to clear.

The Qualm's Arms tavern stood in the centre, and
beside it the Rusty Rose. Both buildings boasted exquisite
stained-glass windows of gothic proportions, with intricate
images of the act of coitus, both grotesque and glorious:
from behind, missionary, overlaid and upside down, and
some so contorted many stopped passers-by with their
head tilted this way and that to work it out.

At the rear entrance to the Rusty Rose a man could
get his boots fixed or, indeed, a custom-made new pair in
the latest inventive style: one shaped for the left foot and
one for the right. The madam of the brothel hammered
the tiny nails into the soles of footwear with the gusto of a
chambermaid. Some of her work was as intricate as handpainted
miniatures.

Behind the town stood a great mountain, with steep
slopes clad with forest, unexplored, unmapped. Winding
through it all, a fat river tumbled in waterfalls all the way
to the inlet, whose beaches and bays lay open like a virgin's
spread thighs.

The crews set about preparing for the whales. Smaller
boats were despatched from the various vessels and sent
south to identify the positions of the approaching herd
from the Antarctic. The wind howled around the cape.

Captain Angus shouted instructions, his speech a rich gravy
of gibberish. It was as if he had learnt to speak from people who made up
their own language, salted by the sea and fattened by not only a lisp whistling
through gapped teeth but also an inability to modulate his tone, or indeed
open his mouth, so all the words that came out sounded to Angelo like complete
nonsense until his ear became accustomed. Angus' eyebrows, long and curled
like two fuzzy caterpillars, wiggled and arched, adding expression to his
words, which were spoken through a jaw as tense as an athlete's buttocks.
Angelo, having taken a liking to the captain, was never far from him, and
was the first to put his hand up for tasks requiring strength and bravery.

Angelo stood on deck of the Unicorn. Above him was the
guiding star of Venus, the first to shine in the sky, the
sailor's star, seeming to twinkle just for him. The flaccid
sails flapped like sheets on a line, making slapping sounds.
The night was blood temperature and the sea silver lava
as the ship lilted under Angelo's feet, a wooden bucket
shifting left and then right on the motion.

Most of the other men were carousing in the tavern and
whorehouse on shore. Angelo sucked in through his nose
in a big sniff; the air circled inside him, stinging fresh. The
sea breeze swept up his silver mane, grown shaggy, tangling
it in his orange stubble and blowing it about his shoulders.
He stood like a Viking on the crest of a hill, already
victorious. He gave a little skip, hopped up on the railing
and balanced himself with his arms wide. In the peripheral
vision of his good eye he beheld — and could not believe
he had not noticed before — a mermaid, lovingly handcarved
with mother-of-pearl eyes and cascading chiselled
hair as figurehead of the ship.

His hands clapped over his mouth in astonished delight
and he had to bend his legs to regain his balance. Despite
the danger, he climbed around the prow to get closer.
He held on with a claw grip as he lowered himself over
the side and inched along using the toes of his boots and
his fingers. His body poised precariously above the water
thirty feet down.

She was more temptress than saint. Angelo straddled
her breast and stared, entranced, at her face, as big as a
carriage wheel. Her lips were parted and, made of wood,
they had been polished to a high shine. They gleamed
succulently, glossy and wet. He daringly put his whole
head inside the opening of her mouth and withdrew it,
like a lion tamer. He ran one hand over her eyes, each the
size of the ship's soup pot, each lash clearly carved and
each iris a smooth ball. His heart tap-danced and a sweat
sprang upon his brow. His groin responded to his thoughts
as he ran his hand over her nose and cheekbones and the
gentle jut of her chin.

He manoeuvred himself so he was squatting on her hips, and
clutched her nipples, as large as doorknobs. He let his gaze drift down over
the swell of her belly to the provocative fish's tail it melded into, inlaid
with mother of pearl and abalone. He rode himself against the wood of her
body, sliding up and down her, pressing his groin and thighs into her —
fantasising that she was real as life — and his seed squirted in his
trousers.

The men stirred in their hammocks to the far-off sounds
of an approaching herd of whales. The mournful siren of
their lovesong echoed in the night, waking some from
their dreams and reminding them of loved ones they had
lost, of unfinished business, of mistakes and words they
could never take back, sharp and rounded memories that
soothed and tormented, lost in the ballads of regret and
reverie. It was as if the whales had been sent for such a
purpose. Their peeps and whistles echoed on the winds as
an ancient magnetic migration tuned them to approach
the islands from the south.