The Sot-Weed Factor (39 page)

Presently, however, despite the mildness of the night and the protection provided by the cliff against the westerly breeze, they found their resting-place too cold for comfort and had to search for better shelter until their clothes were dry. They made their way northward along the beach and were fortunate enough to find not far away a place where the high sandstone was cut by a wooded ravine debouching onto the shore. Here tall wheatlike weeds grew between the scrub pines and bayberries; the castaways curled together like animals in a nest and knew no more till after dawn.

It was the sand fleas that roused them at last: scores of sand fleas hopped and crawled all over them -- attracted, luckily, not by hunger but by the warmth of their bodies -- and tickled them awake.

Ebenezer jumped up and looked unbelievingly about. "Dear God!" he laughed. "I had forgot!"

Bertrand too stood up, and the sand fleas -- not really parasites at all -- hopped madly in search of cover.

"And I," he said, hoarse from exposure. "I dreamt I was in London with my Betsy. God pox those vermin for waking me!"

"But we're alive, at that. 'Tis more than anyone expected."

"Thanks to you, sir!" Bertrand fell to his knees before the poet. " 'Tis a Catholic saint that saves the man who ruined him!"

"Make me no saint today," Ebenezer said, "or you'll have me a Jesuit tomorrow." But he was flattered nonetheless. "No doubt I had better drowned when Father hears the news!"

Bertrand clasped his hands together. "Many's the wrong I've done ye, sir, that I'll pay in Hell for, anon -- nor shall I want company in the fire. But I vow ye a vow this instant I'm your slave fore'er, to do with as ye will, and should we e'er be rescued off this island I shall give my life to gaining back your loss."

The Laureate, embarrassed by these protestations, replied, "I dare not ask it, lest you pledge my soul!" and proposed an immediate search for food. The day was bright, and warm for mid-September; they were chilled through from exposure, and upon brushing the sand from themselves found their joints stiff and every muscle sore from the past night's labors. But their clothes were dry except for the side on which they'd slept, and a little stamping of feet and swinging of arms was enough to start the warm blood coursing. They were without hats, wigs, or shoes, but otherwise adequately clothed in the sturdy garb of seamen. Food, however, they had to find, though Ebenezer longed to explore the island at once: their stomachs rumbled, and they had not much strength. To cook their meal was no great problem: Bertrand had with him the little tinderbox he carried in his pocket for smoking purposes, and though the tinder itself was damp, the flint and steel were good as new, and the beach afforded driftwood and dry seaweed. Finding something to cook was another matter. The woods no doubt abounded with small game; gulls, kingfishers, rails, and sandpipers soared and flitted along the beach; and there were certainly fish to be caught in the shallows; but they had no implements to hunt with.

Bertrand despaired afresh. " 'Tis a passing cruel prank fate plays us, to trade a quick death for a slow!" And despite his recent gratitude, the surliness with which he rejected various proposals for improvising weapons betrayed a certain resentment toward Ebenezer for having saved him. Indeed, he shortly abandoned as hopeless the search for means and went to gather firewood, declaring his intention to starve at least in relative comfort. Ebenezer, left to his own resources, resolved to walk some distance down the beach, hoping to find inspiration along the way.

It was a long beach. In fact, the island appeared to be ot considerable size, for though the shoreline curved out of sight in both directions, its reappearance farther south suggested a cove or bay, perhaps a succession of them; one could not locate the actual curve of the island's perimeter. Of its body nothing could be seen except the line of stratified cliffs, caved by the sea and weathered to various browns and oranges, and the edge trees of the forest that ran back from the precipice -- some with half their roots exposed, some already fallen the sixty or a hundred feet to the beach and polished like pewter by salt air and sand. If one scaled those cliffs, what wonders might one see?

Ebenezer had been at sea nearly half a year in all, yet never had he seen it so calm. There was no ground swell at all: only catspaws riffling here and there, and laps of waves not two hands high. As he walked he noticed minnows darting in the shallows and schools of white perch flipping and rippling a few feet out. Crabs, as well, of a sort he had never seen, slid sideways out to safety as he approached; in the water their shells were olive against the yellow sand, but the carapaces he found along the beach were cooked a reddish-orange by the sun.

"Would God I had a net!"

Around a bend just past the place where they had crawled ashore he saw a startling sight -- all along the foreshore, below the line of weed and driftwood that marked high tide, were sheets of white paper; others rolled and curled in the rim of the sea. The thought that there might be people on the island made his face burn, not entirely with joy -- in fact, it was a curious relief he felt, small but undeniable, when the papers proved to be the tale of Hicktopeake, Laughing King of Accomack; but he could not as yet say plainly what it was that relieved him. He gathered all the pages he could find, though the ink had run so that only an occasional word was legible: they would, when dry, be good for lighting fires.

He started back with them, thinking idly of John Smith's adventures. Did this curious pleasure stem from the fact that he, like Smith, was in
terra incognita,
or was there more to it? He hoped they would find no Indians, at least, like the fearsome fellows Smith had found spearing fish along the shore. . .

" "Sheart!" he cried aloud, and kissed the wondrous Journal.

An hour later their dinner was on the fire: seven respectable perch, half a foot long after cleaning, roasted on a green laurel turnspit, and on a thin piece of shale such as could be picked up anywhere along the cliffs, four crabs, frankly an experiment, fried in their natural juices. The hard-shelled ones could not be speared, but in pursuit of them Bertrand had found these others -- similar in appearance but with shells soft as Spanish kid -- brooding in clumps of sea-grass near the shore. Nor did they want for water; in a dozen places along the base of the cliff Ebenezer had found natural springs issuing from what looked like layers of hard clay, whence they ran seawards across the beach on the beds of softer clay one encountered every few hundred feet. One had, indeed, to take care in approaching these springs, for the clay beds were slippery and in places treacherously soft, as Ebenezer learned: without warning one could plunge knee-deep into what looked rock-hard on the surface. But the water was clean and sweet from filtering through the stone, and so cold it stung the teeth.

To get full benefit of the sun they did their cooking on the beach. Bertrand, humbled anew by his master's inspiration, attended the meal; Ebenezer made use of a fallen tree nearby for a back rest and was content to chew upon a reed and regard the sputtering crabs.

"Where do ye fancy we are?" inquired the valet, whose curiosity had returned with his good spirits.

"God knows!" the poet said cheerfully. " 'Tis some Atlantic isle, that's sure, and belike not giv'n on the charts, else I doubt me Pound would choose the spot to plank us."

This conjecture pleased the valet mightily. "I have heard tell of the Fortunate Islands, sir; old Twigg at St. Giles was wont to speak of 'em whene'er her gout was paining."

"Well I recall it!" Ebenezer laughed. "Didn't I hear from the cradle how she stood watch all the voyage from Maryland, hoping for a sight of them?"

"Think ye this is the place?"

"I'faith, 'tis fair enough," the poet granted. "But the ocean swarms with isles that man knows naught of. How many times dear Anna and I have pled with Burlingame to tell of them -- Grocland, Helluland, Stokafixa, and the rest! How many fond hours I've pored over Zeno the Venetian, Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, and good Hakluyt's books of voyages! E'en at Cambridge, when I had better done other things, I spent whole evenings over ancient maps and manuscripts. 'Twas there at Magdalene, in the antique Book of Lismore, I saw described the Fortunate Islands dear old Mrs. Twigg yearned for, and read how St. Brendan found them. 'Twas there I learned of Markland, too, the wooded isle; and Frisland and Icaria. Who knows which this might be? Haply 'tis Atlantis risen from the sea, or the Sunken Land of Buss old Frobisher found; haply 'tis Bra, whose women have much pain in bearing children, or magic Daculi, the cradle island, where they go for gentler labor."

"It matters naught to me," said Bertrand, "so we be not killed by salvages. 'Tis a thing I've feared for since we stepped ashore. Did ye read what manner of husbands the wenches have?"

"I've shared your fear," Ebenezer admitted. "Some isles are bare of men; others, like famed Cibola, boast wondrous cities. Some are like Estotiland, whose folk are versed in every art and read from books in Latin; some others are like her neighbor Drogio, where Zeno says the salvages eat their captives."

"Pray Heav'n this is not Drogio!"

"We shall climb to the cliff top when we've eaten," Ebenezer said. "If I can see the island whole, I may be able to name it." He went on to explain that, while the location and size of islands varied widely from map to map, there was some agreement among cartographers as to their shape. "If 'tis the form of a great crescent, for example, 'twill of necessity be Mayda; if a small one, 'tis doubtless Tanmare, that Peter Martyr spoke of. A large parallelogram would be Antillia; a smaller one Salvagio. A simple rectangle we shall know for Illa Verde, and a pentagon for Reylla. If we find this isle to be a perfect circle, we must look farther for its inland features: if 'tis cut in twain by a river we shall know it for Brazil, but if instead 'tis a kind of ring or annulus about an inland lake, the which hath sundry islets of its own, then Heav'n hath smiled on us as ne'er on Coronado, for 'twill be Cibola, the Isle of the Seven Golden Cities!"

" 'Sheart, may we find it so!" said Bertrand, turning the fish to brown. " 'Twere not like folk in a golden city to eat up strangers, d'ye think?"

"Nay, 'tis more likely they'll take us for gods and grant our every pleasure," Ebenezer declared.

"Marry, I hope and pray 'tis the Isle of Seven Cities, then; I shall have three and you the rest, to make up for losing Malden! Doth the book say aught of the women in these towns, whether they be fat or thin, or fair of face?"

"Naught that I can recall," the poet replied.

"I'God, let us make short work of these fish, sir!" Bertrand urged, sliding them from the laurel spit to the clean-washed slates they had found to eat from. "I cannot wait to see my golden towns!"

"Be not o'erhasty, now; this may not be Cibola after all. For aught we know it may lie in the shape of a human hand, in which case our goose is cooked: Hand-of-Satan hath such a shape, and 'tis one of the
Insulae Demonium
-- the demons' isles."

This final possibility chastened them sufficiently to do full justice to the perch and soft crabs, which they seasoned with hunger, ate with their fingers, and washed down with clam-shellfuls of cold spring water. Then they stuffed an extra soft crab each into their pockets, grease and all, and climbed through the ravine to the top of the cliff, whence to their chagrin they could see no more than open water on one side of them and trees on the other. The sun was still but forty-five degrees above the eastern horizon; there was time for some hours of exploration before they need think of dinner and a shelter for the night.

"What course do ye propose, sir?" Bertrand asked.

"I have a plan," said Ebenezer. "But ere I tell it, what course do
you
propose?"

" 'Tis not for me to say, sir. I'll own I have spoken out of turn before, but that's behind me. Ye have saved my life and forgiven the harm I've done ye; I'll dance to any tune ye call."

Ebenezer acknowledged the propriety of these sentiments, but took issue with them nevertheless. "We are cast here on some God-forsaken isle," he said, "remote from the world of bob-wig and dildo. What sense here hath the title
Poet Laureate,
or the labels
man
and
master?
Thou'rt one man, I another, and there's an end on't."

Bertrand considered this for a rnoment. "I confess I have my preferences," he said. "If 'twere mine to decide, I'd strike out inland with all haste. Haply we'll find one or two golden cities ere dinnertime."

"We've no certain knowledge this is the Isle of Seven Cities," Ebenezer reminded him, "nor do I relish walking overland without shoes. What
I
propose is that we walk along the shore to learn the length and shape of the island. Haply 'twill identify our find, or show us what manner of people live here, if any. Nay, more, we've paper aplenty here, and charcoal sticks to mark with: we can count our paces to every turn and draw a map as we go."

"That's so," the valet admitted. "But 'twould mean another meal of fish and soft crabs and another night upon the ground. If we make haste inland, haply 'tis golden plates we'll eat from, and sleep in a golden bed, by Heav'n!" His voice grew feverish. "Just fancy us a pair of bloody gods, sir! Wouldn't we get us godlets on their maiden girls and pass the plate come Sunday? 'Tis a better post than Baltimore's paltry sainthood, b'm'faith! I'd not trade places with the Pope!"

"All that may happen yet," Ebenezer said. "On the other hand we might encounter monsters, or salvage Indians that will eat us for dinner. Methinks 'twere wise to scout around somewhat, to get the lay of the land: what do a few days matter to an immortal god?"

The prudence of this plan was undeniable; reluctant as he was to postpone for even a day the joys of being a deity, Bertrand had no mind to be a meal for either cannibals or dragons -- both of whose existence he might have been skeptical of in London, but not here -- and so agreed to it readily, if not enthusiastically. They made their way down to the beach again, marked their point of departure with a stake to which was tied a strip of rag from Bertrand's shirt, and struck out northward along the shore, Ebenezer counting paces as they walked.