To the Ends of the Earth (39 page)

No—
moderare mihî!

So there I had a hexameter and a pentameter, what you might call an elegiac couplet. The effort seemed temporarily to exhaust not so much my Latin as my invention. Having besought Miss Chumley to take care of the seas for me there seemed little left for her to do except—

No. I would not touch that innocent image with the furthest off intimation of physical desire!

If we should reach land; and if at some time in the future I should reread this book—if we should reread it together, oh, devoutly to be desired! Shall I believe what I now set down as the plain truth? For it was only when I sat back and relaxed the tension consequent on my poetic endeavours that I remembered Latin was not in the list of accomplishments with which Miss Chumley had favoured me! It was English or nothing, for my French was
certainly
not up to verse!

Turned into English my first efforts at the lyric seemed on the thin side. I had read much poetry in an endeavour to understand a side of life which I thought closed to me by the extreme rationality of my mind and coolness of my temperament! I had heaped other men’s verses up and 
“struck them down below” as we Tarpaulins say, as if mere quantity of lines was anything to the purpose. Now, with my first glimmer of its real purpose and source, here I was, reduced by fate to puttying together the elements of a dead language, when only a living one had any use. The effect was plainly to be read in these Latin lines. Now indeed I understood those strictures on my tasks which I had accepted so carelessly and with no real
intention
of amendment—

“No no, Mr Talbot. The lines are constructed
according
to the rules but Propertius would never have written them!”

So much for the rules. With what a moved
understanding
did I now see that poetry is a matter of enchantment. It is folly but a divine folly.

That is impossible, that is nonsense, but that is what happens, is as the clear and inarticulate voice of every young fool who has been struck by lightning, had all his
previous convictions
cancelled, erased; and let us add at last in the tail of the number, Edmund FitzHenry Talbot,
MAGISTER ARTIUM
!

It was evident I had shot my poetic bolt. It was only then that I made another discovery which set me laughing like a jackass. I had asked Miss Chumley to flatten the seas for me when the poor girl was even less able to avoid
mal de mer
than I myself! She might in her turn have been more likely to address her lines to Sir Henry! I returned to her little paper and quickly knew the simple sentence by heart. I turned it over and reread the few words I had so laboriously made out there.

Another few words met my gaze. These were not of blotted ink. They had been—and as if to escape me they vanished again—they had been pressed into the page, 
pressed through a previous page by a lead or silver point, which was why they became visible only when the paper was held at a certain angle.

Who had left the ship? The only people to have left the ship were Wheeler—and Benét! Was he—could he be—had he been—

Benét was personable. He was far more personable than I. He was a poet—his hair—his fair complexion—his agility—

An impressionable girl—malleable—and with no
prospects
but what lay in marriage!

I started to my feet. It was an infatuation! Nothing more! There was, however, and before I had abandoned and forgotten this lamentable episode, one person who might throw light on the situation. I went quickly to the waist. The clouds had lifted and Mr Benét’s new course meant that the ship was labouring indeed but more
regularly
. The horizon was dense blue and clipped all round in little curves as by a pair of nail scissors. Mr Benét himself was now returned from his “bite to eat” and stood by the mainmast talking to a seaman. The ship seemed to be all festooned by ropes, cables, lanyards which lay mostly on the fo’castle but led down from it also. Mr Benét finished his colloquy, turned, saw me and came to the break of the quarterdeck with his usual agile run. He seemed
beamingly
happy.

“All goes well, Mr Talbot. Soon we shall be able to experiment with the dragrope and after that get on with Mr Summers’s frapping.”

“Mr Benét, I wish to speak to you on a serious matter.”

“Well, sir, I am at your service.”

“A schoolgirl, you said—”

“Did I? I’m sorry, Mr Talbot, but my mind is all tied 
up in the dragrope if you see my drift. Were we talking of my sisters?”

“No no.”

“Ah—now I remember! You were asking my opinion of young Marion, were you not? She is entirely undeveloped, sir, as they all are. She is a sporty girl though, I give you that. Why, as man to man”—and here Lieutenant Benét looked round briefly then back again—“had little Marion not detained her ‘uncle’, as they agree she calls Sir Henry, with some plea about the conduct of the ship—she wanted sail reduced, I think—I don’t mind telling you I should have been a devil of a sight nearer being detected
in flagrante delicto
than I was!”

“She knew! She understood! A criminal connection!”

“She was accustomed to keep
cave
for us.”

There was what might be called a
moderate roar
from the companionway to the captain’s quarters. Lieutenant Benét answered it as cheerfully and promptly as he had answered me.

“Immediately, sir!”

He raised his hand towards his forehead, gave what is fast becoming a kind of “salute to be employed at sea”, then with his usual cheerful agility raced away along the sloping deck.

My own hand was lifted too. The scrap of paper with Miss Chumley’s message on it escaped from my fingers. It went whirling aloft to cling shuddering in the shrouds. With a savage passion I determined to let it go—go, go! But without an order given a seaman put aside his swab, scrambled aloft as quickly as Mr Benét might have done and brought the paper back to me. I nodded my thanks and stood there, paper in hand. How had I made a
phantom
out of thin air? How had that phantom become the most important thing in the whole world? It was driving me, a sane and calculating man, to acts of sheer folly—
versifying—dragging unwelcome truths out of such as Lieutenant Benét—why (and this was a new dash of poison in the mixture) she might well be devoted to the man himself and he not know it in his foolish obsession with a woman old enough to be his mother!

“Get out, Wheeler! Devil take it, man, are you to be always under my feet?”

“Sir.”

“In any case, Phillips should be serving this side of the lobby!”

“No, sir, with respect. The first lieutenant said as we was agreed, Phillips and me, the arrangement could stand since you changed cabins, sir.”

“You’ve become too devilish long-faced for me!”

I flung out of the cabin, nearly brained myself on the mizzen and shouted for Phillips. But it was unnecessary, for he was making a careful way along the lobby to the saloon with a broom.

“Phillips, you may return to serving me.”

The man looked round the saloon for a moment.

“Can I speak private, sir? It’s where he died, sir.”

“Good God, man—men must have died everywhere in this old ship.”

Phillips nodded slowly, considering.

“But then, sir, Mr Colley was a latiner.”

With that he knuckled his forehead and took his broom out of the saloon. I sat confounded. It was more and more evident that Mr Smiles was right. Here was one more madman. Wheeler made another. The truth appeared to me that I myself might well make a third. The horizon snarled at me, then disappeared. I did indeed have a mad feeling! I too was a “latiner” and perhaps it was the
unappeased
“larva” of Colley creeping about the ship like a filthy smell which was the “motus” of our idiotic decline into phantasy! 

I marched into the saloon and shouted for Bates and got a further supply of brandy. Later still I ate yet more cold beef; and once more, as it might be a labourer eating his midday crust under a hedge, saved the meat at the cost of smeared pickles even on my unmentionables. Oldmeadow, the young Army officer, came and shared that meal with me and I remember a confused conversation we had about the
meaning of life
. He became quite disguised, poor fellow, not having as hard a head as I. When at last I helped him to his hutch we both went sprawling. I nursed a bruised elbow in my own hutch for some time (“that will be all, Wheeler”) and did not object when he first assisted me into my bunk. Being, however, a little flown with drink I engaged the man in conversation, during which he elucidated the mystery of his desire to haunt my cabin. He had not informed on Billy Rogers but the people forrard thought he had. They would “do” him if he did not stay close to the gentlemen. It was a misunderstanding, of course. No, they had not thrown him overboard. He had in fact slipped, lost his footing. He was accusing no one. And did the officers think that the ship would sink? One way and another he was fairly at a stand to know what to do—

I am very vexed to think that elevated as I was I did not behave with that degree of circumspection which should be employed in dealing with all but the most devoted and trustworthy of servants. I even entered into a kind of
bargain
—he might “haunt” me, provided he told me the true story of what had happened to Colley! He consented on the understanding that his information should be revealed to no one so long as he was in the ship. The information was of such a nature that I do not propose to commit it to this journal.

I got out early into the waist, having been roused by the shouts from the deck.

“Fairly the fall about! Hazard the handybilly Rogers!”

And then the answering cry came from forrard—

“Lie all down handsomely together!”

She was there plainly to be seen on our starboard bow!
Alcyone
! She was dismasted completely, the masts lying about her, white sails spread on the water, the sailors hauling away and singing. The chant came to us clear over the waters.

“Where have you been all the day, Billy Boy?”

We drew somehow alongside her. Our sailors were miraculously dextrous in shortening sail.

“Stun the royals there!”

Sir Henry had climbed the shrouds of what was left of their mizzen.

“Anderson, you see all this? My cursed first lieutenant has fairly fucked us. ‘Bellamy,’ I said to him. ‘Eat the main course or you’ll have the masts off us.’”

And She was there on the deck, her arms outstretched! Tears of joy streamed down her cheeks! She came towards me! We merged—

It was Miss Granham. She had no stays—I wrestled with her but could not get away. No wonder the two ships were laughing and I was unclothed—

It was morning and Wheeler stood by my bunk. He had a cup of coffee in his hands.

“I have got it quite warm, sir.” 

My head felt constricted and my stomach queasy. Wheeler had his gaze modestly lowered in a proper servant-like manner. I opened my mouth to tell him to get out and then changed my mind. He helped me to dress though I shaved myself. The motion was regular. I left him to clean the cabin and made my way to the passenger saloon. Mr Bowles was there. He apologized for the
non-appearance
of the committee though to tell the truth I had forgotten that such a gathering had ever been constituted. He said that Mr Prettiman was in great pain and Mr Pike preoccupied with the state of his children. I said little, but grunted merely where it seemed appropriate. I believe Mr Bowles (a man of some intelligence who will prove to be useful, I think, when we reach Sydney Cove) seemed to understand my disinclination for speech. It was from him that I discovered I had missed an interesting
operation
in seamanship. This was another reason why I regret having got, not to put too fine a point on it, confoundedly drunk. I should have liked to follow what Lieutenant Benét had accomplished or been instrumental in
accomplishing
! At the time when I and Oldmeadow had been at our potations he had caused to be rigged something never rigged before! The crew had operated a “fore-and-aft
dragrope
”. Thus they had removed weed from the “shadow of the keel”. Mr Benét had proposed and invented it. My information is that it was a most elaborate affair. It entailed a simultaneous “bowsing and binding in” of the cable and a “fretting fore and aft” which had necessitated a positive orchestration of the ship’s company under the orders of my friend Lieutenant Summers. This
information
illuminated an observation I myself had made when Oldmeadow and I were
at it
in the saloon. For glancing now and then out of the stern window I had on at least two occasions seen a patch of dark weed (not like the green weed of our waterline) rolling over and over in what
wake we had. It occurred to me with something like envy that if Mr Benét continued as he had begun he would finish the voyage in command of us!

By the time I had assimilated all this information from Mr Bowles I was feeling more the thing but in need of fresh air. I went oilskinned, therefore, to the waist and then to my usual lookout by the rail of the poop. The ship seemed still festooned with rope but this time no more than the forepart of her. There were gangs of seamen and contingent officers by a single cable which was being laid out on the fo’castle and rigged with what I suppose were called lanyards. Mention of a rope calls to one’s mind the kind of thing used to secure the cover of a hayrick or of a roof which is being rethatched. But this I saw was of a different nature altogether. It was of a knotted texture, curiously woven and twisted so as to present what I can only call a “toothed” appearance. There were the lanyards at frequent intervals, each, it appeared, in the charge of two men. The difficulty of the operation may be gauged when I saw that it entailed threading this cable from one side of the ship to the other but under the bowsprit and through freeing ports on either side of the waist. It was easy, apparently, to lower the rope but by no means easy to draw it along and this was what they were doing or trying to do. The ship’s movement did not help them. I made my way along the windward rail to examine the operation more closely but Mr Benét, coming from aft, stopped and spoke to me.

“I believe you should not be here, sir!”

“I will go back when I have satisfied my curiosity, and let the wind blow last night’s drink out of me. I propose never to drink again.”

“
Qui a bu, boira
.”

“Devil take it, Mr Benét, you speak French like a Frog! It’s un-English. But returning to the subject of schoolgirls—” 

“Oh, lord, no. I beg you, Mr Talbot. We may hope for another couple of knots I think. Do you notice how removing the weed from the garboard strakes has made a difference? I say a clear knot though Mr Summers does not think so. We shall know at midday, of course. He is cautious, is he not? Captain Anderson agrees with me. ‘A clear knot, Mr Benét,’ he said. ‘I shall enter it in the log.’”

“You are to be congratulated.”

“Before I leave the service and devote myself to the pen I hope to show the Navy that intelligence is not to be despised, sir, nor all virtue confined to senior officers!”

“Talking of virtue—”

“I beg you will not, sir. I have suffered from a
wearisome
repetition of Sir Henry’s opinion on that subject. My distance from him is the only consolation for my
distance
from Her!”

Mr Benét sighed. I continued: “Miss Chumley—”

Mr Benét interrupted me. “Have you sisters, Mr Talbot?”

“No, sir.”

Mr Benét said nothing but nodded gravely as if
confirming
something to himself. This and the remark he had made was so cryptic that I could find nothing to say.

“And now, Mr Talbot, I believe you must return to the break of the quarterdeck. This will soon be no place for a passenger.”

Charles Summers hailed from the fo’castle.

“Mr Benét! When you have concluded your
conversation
be good enough to return to your duties. We are
waiting
.”

I clambered back and held on to the rail by the entry to the lobby. The scene before me was not so much entertaining as confused. It appeared that Cumbershum had the charge of one side of the fo’castle and Mr Benét of the other. Charles Summers was in overall charge. There 
were seamen lining the rail in that part of the ship all
leaning
outward and facing away from me. I had the
nonsensical
impression that a good number of our tarry heroes were being sick into the sea. They were, I supposed, holding the cable which would serve as a dragrope. As I took this in, Summers shouted an order.

“Let go!”

The men lining the rail stood up. Benét and Cumbershum started to shout and their parties of seamen to move rhythmically. I cannot describe what they were doing more accurately because at the time I did not understand it. Now, I think, being wise after the event, they were moving the dragrope with a sawing motion. Nothing much seemed to be happening. I turned and looked up aft. The sailing master, Mr Smiles, had the watch apparently, with young Mr Taylor as his doggie. Mr Taylor seemed more subdued than usual and this may have been because not more than a yard or two away the captain stood by the forrard rail, his hands clasped behind his back, his feet wide apart. He watched the operation from the quarterdeck in silence.

There was a sudden commotion on the fo’castle. Cumbershum’s party appeared to fall in a heap and he could be heard swearing at them as they sorted themselves out. After that there was a long pause. Apparently one end of a necessary rope had been lost so the operation was to be done again from the start. Lieutenant Benét was arguing with Charles Summers who did not appear to be happy. It seemed to me that his customarily weather-beaten face was paler than usual—with anger perhaps. The fo’castle became a mess of ropes and blocks among which men did what I am persuaded they understood. It was a long wait. I turned and climbed to the quarterdeck where the captain acknowledged my salutation if not with amiability at least without an open expression of bad temper. 

“Good morning, Captain. But it is no kind of good day I think! Tell me—what are the crew doing?”

For a moment or two I thought he would not answer me. But then he opened his mouth and whispered. This I found was not secrecy but phlegm consequent on his
having
held his morose tongue longer than the constitution of a man was designed for. He walked to the rail, spat over the side, came back and stood by me without looking at me.

“They are rigging a dragrope.”

Well I knew that! But it seemed that the details of that interesting operation would have to be extracted from him one by one.

“How can you ensure that the rope clings enough to the hull? There must be many areas that are inaccessible.”

Unwittingly I had opened his mouth!

“There are indeed, Mr Talbot, though the underwater part of a ship is near enough semicircular in section. But a careful officer will exercise his wits in finding a way round such difficulties. The dragrope may be held from several directions, not merely from side to side but fore and aft. Mr Benét has proposed a plan which we think will work. The use of a dragrope in the open sea and when under weigh is most unusual. Indeed I do not know how often it has been done before. But in our circumstances—Mr Benét has already succeeded in removing weed from near the keel, something I believe unique.”

“You have profited by the exchange of officers.”

Captain Anderson lowered at me for a moment. But then it seemed to me as if the invitation to continue talking about his favourite was irresistible.

“I believe Mr Benét is determined to have us scraped as clean as if we was newly commissioned, Mr Talbot. We shall have tackles ’thwart ships and fore and aft and lifts from the yardarms. Mr Benét is a real seaman, sir, all 
ropes and blocks and canvas, sir. There is no
steam
about Mr Benét, sir. No chain cable or wire rope!”

“He is certainly using enough rope at the moment. I did not know the ship held so much.”

“What a captain cannot do with good officers, rope, canvas, spars and a willing crew cannot be done!”

“Well, Captain, I will not dispute with you. Mr Benét is a very energetic young man and I must take your opinion of his seamanship on trust.”

The captain spoke with positive animation.

“He will go far!”

“His French at all events sounds much as they speak it in Paris.”

“That is natural, Mr Talbot. His parents are émigrés.”

“Certainly his general appearance and air are very pleasing. Golden hair and a complexion which seems wholly resistant to salt—he is a veritable marine Adonis!”

The captain looked at me sternly as he tried the word in his mouth.

“Adonis. You will excuse me now, Mr Talbot. I am busy.”

Good God, the man thought he had given me my
congé
!

“Do not allow me to interrupt you, Captain Anderson. I am deeply interested to see what you do.”

What Captain Anderson did was to utter a kind of subdued snarl, turn, take a step to the forrard rail and hold it with both hands as if he would like to pick it up and use it as a club. He glanced up at the luff, roared at Mr Taylor who squeaked at the quartermasters who glanced at the luff then into the binnacle, rolled their quids as one man and moved the wheel a “handspan” which as far as I could see affected the ship not at all. I continued to watch the operation on the fo’castle. It was very slow going and even the captain gave up after a time and began to stump up and down on the larboard side of the deck, ignoring 
our rolling and pitching—and I suppose our hogging and sagging—in a way which spoke of the years he has passed doing precisely that. It seemed to me that he was capable, if the ship should capsize—which God forbid—of
marching
moodily over the side as she rolled, following the movement, then stumping backwards and forwards along her keel. He would wait for Lieutenant Benét to devise some cat’s cradle of ropes, blocks, spars and canvas to bring the ship upright again! He and his certainties were much like the movement of the starry heavens.

Little Pike was coming up the stairways. There were tears on his face. The wind tore them away and his eyes replaced them. He reeled as he came, fell against me, clutched me with both arms and wept against my midriff. He whispered.

“Phoebe! Oh, my little Phoebe—”

“Good God! Dead?”

The captain had stopped in his tracks. Now he came quickly across and stared down at Pike.

“Who is dead?”

“They say she is dying. Oh, my little Phoebe!”

“This is Mr Pike, Captain. Phoebe is his daughter. Pull yourself together, Pike!”

“Who says your daughter is dying, sir?”

Pike sniffed and hiccuped.

“Mrs Pike, Captain, and Miss Granham.”

“Come, Pike,” said I. “They are neither of them medical men, you know! I told you about my young brothers, did I not? Always in the wars and—”

“What do you expect me to do about your daughter, Mr Pike?”

Pike shook himself free from my grasp, reeled and clutched the rail.

“If you could only ease the motion, Captain! It wears them out, you see—” 

Captain Anderson answered him in what for him was a kindly voice.

“It is impossible, Mr Pike. I cannot go into the reasons but you must believe me when I say that no power on earth could stop the ship’s movement.”

We were all three silent. Pike smeared his face with a sleeve and then slowly, drearily
drooped
away below.