When it came to the reckoning I was shocked at how much I had lost: it took all my aplomb to crank onto my face the careless smile of the English milord who has lost a country estate on a hand of écarté.
“You play a capital game of backgammon, Mr Van Cleef,” he said, clapping the board shut. “I trust you will indulge me in this innocent pastime again. And here, I fancy, is my dear spouse, refreshed with such innocent dissipations as the town of Bonchurch has had to offer.” Sure enough, Blanche entered, throwing off her boat-cloak, smoothing her rumpled hair and astonishing me with a smile so unguardedly amorous, yet so enigmatic, that I stumbled as I rose, then stumbled worse over my polite goodnights.
“Yes,” said Peter, as we tumbled into our bunks, “there was a little something of a subscription ball and a dice-raffle — it was quite diverting after ship-board life but the women, oh, burst me, the women, they were like so many poll-parrots swathed in last year’s organdie. A sorry sight. No, I ‘didn’t dance with Mrs Knatchbull; indeed, I don’t remember seeing her after the first few minutes. I have the impression that Lubbock carried her off to call on some friends in Ventnor, just down the coast.”
“Goodnight,” I said. He sat up.
“Have I said something to vex you?”
“Of course not, Peter. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
If the wind in the English channel veers far enough to the west you may be sure that it will back again just so soon as the barometer rises. The Second Mate told me this while I nodded sagely, for, clearly, it meant something. What happened in the event was that the rain stopped the next day, the wind changed from the SW to the S and then to the SSE and soon we were battering our way down-Channel, close-hauled on the larboard tack, the sails booming and rigging screaming and sheets of spray knifing across the deck. It seemed a frightful storm to me, a very act of God; I did not want to drown like a rat in my cabin, I fled out. From the Second’s cabin, next door, came a noise of snoring — should I rouse him and give him time to make his peace with his Maker? The crash of a sea hitting our side made me selfish: I rushed on deck, looking wildly about me, threaded my way between thinly-clad sailors who, all oblivous of their peril, were heaving at various ropes, chanting strange words as they stamped the deck with their bare feet; and after many a drenching with spray fetched up in the shelter of the galley. Inside, the doctor was fisting out great lumps of salt pork from a keg and roughly slicing them into a pan full of frying onions. He was braced against the side or bulwark of his galley and deftly tilting the pan each time it threatened to spill over, singing a deep-voiced and barbarous song.
He rolled a kindly yellow eyeball at me.
“Hot roll in the oven, Mr Cleef, sah. Only jess the one, if yo please; rest’s fo’ the Captain’s table — Maz Lubbock’s supping in de Cabin tonight.”
This gave me two other things to think about beside a watery grave: Lubbock and a hot roll. Unwilling to offend the Doctor, I fished one out, dancing it between my fingers until I could split it open. As I did so the Doctor reached over and spooned some hot onion and pork gravy onto it; I clapped the roll together and, feeling like a schoolboy, crept out of the galley and braved the wild winds and the weather-oh until I was back in the cabin. Peter was there, towelling his naked body, some dry clothes ready beside him, the soaked ones dripping from a piece of cod-line he had rigged from the edge of my bunk to a nail in the bulkhead.
“How uncommonly thoughtful of you, my dear chap,” he said, twitching the roll from my fingers, “you are clearly learning the ways of the sea, for you know enough to greet a mess-mate coming off watch with a bite of something hot and tasty.” I did not rob him of his illusions; I fumbled in my tin box for a Thin Captain’s biscuit to gnaw while I asked him whether our frail barque would survive the dreadful tempest. He spluttered a little: I believe that, had his mouth not been full of hot bread crammed with fried onions and delicious pork gravy, he would have laughed.
“I think,” he said gravely, having swallowed the last exquisite morsel and pulled on a fresh pair of drawers, “I think that we have ridden out this particular Act of God: Indeed, for some twenty or thirty hours we may have little more than a fresh wind until we sight Ushant.”
“Ushant?” I quavered. “What is that? I supposed that we were bound for the Indies and the China Coast. Why are we going to this Ushant?”
“We are not going there, Karli, we are looking for it. So soon as we see it we shall know where we are and shall leave it, God willing, on our port quarter. It is merely a headland which we must weather, d’you see.”
“Ah,” I said in an intelligent way.
“After Ushant we shall drive sou’west across the skirts of the Bay, of course.”
“Of course, Peter. This Bay is …?”
“Biscay,” he said solemnly. “Biscay. The weather there is often calm, mild and a joy to sailors.”
“Capital!” I cried.
“But never at this time of the year,” he went on. “At just this season the seas are as high as mountains, the winds seem the bitter enemies of man and many a tall ship has sunk without trace, dragging all hands down with her to Davy Jones’s Locker.”
“But, surely …” I began.
“Yes, surely, our little ship is well-found, well-officered and well-manned: we shall probably cross Biscay with the loss of but a few of us — and we can replace the spars which will be carried away with a few weeks of labour.”
“I see,” I said nonchalantly, fumbling in the tin box for another Thin Captain’s. My voice was perfectly steady.
“That is, of course, unless we fall in with the Portuguese sardinho-fishers,” he said.
“And what might they be?” I asked, my voice still steady. He lowered his voice, leaned towards me, his eyes wide.
“Fiends incarnate!’ he whispered. “Promise me, Karli, that you will put a bullet in my head rather than let me fall into the hands of those fiends!”
“I promise,” I quavered, a fragment of Thin Captain’s falling from my nerveless lips. He burst into laughter and staggered about the floor, incapacitated by mirth. Slowly I realised that this had been an English joke. I retrieved the piece of biscuit and munched it sternly. When Peter had recovered he saw my expression and was at once contrite, for he had a kindly nature, except in dealings with his own heart and health.
“Forgive me, Karli,” he cried, “we sailors reckon that we have a right to tweak the tails of landsmen: It helps us to endure our hardships, don’t you see, and it helps you to come to terms with the sea.”
“Of course,” I said stiffly. We Sephardim are proud people, you remember, we do not carney like the base Ashkenazim of the East. For my part, I have always been a supple man and slow to take offence, but I do not care to be made ridiculous. Except when I have chosen that rôle. There was a long silence, then Peter slipped out of the cabin. I remained standing up, anger and something else taking the place of my fear. My shoulders were braced against the edge of the upper bunk, for the ship was leaning over in that direction and was also pitching, rolling and yawing erratically. I no longer cared. A tear formed in my right eye; the room was smoky from the slush-lamp. I wiped it away with a corner of the blanket. I began to think of my mother, God knows why, and found that I needed the corner of the blanket again.