Peter came in, kicked the door shut and showed me the two hot rolls he had brought. They smelt ravishing. He proffered one but, like a fool, I jerked my head away and gazed in an absurd and dignified fashion at the ceiling.
“Karli,” said Peter, “I had to give the Doctor a shilling for these. Is it so hard to take one from your mess-mate, who meant no harm?” It became clear to me that I was being what an Englishman would call a silly ass. I took a roll with mumbled thanks and bit into its hot, crusty edge gratefully. My face I still kept turned away from him, for I did not wish him to see the traces of tears upon it; he might not have realised that they were caused by the smoke from the lamp. He said nothing more, he was that rare kind of man who knows when to keep his mouth shut.
CHAPTER EIGHT
What I found remarkable about the English Channel as we tacked lustily down it towards the fabled lights of Ushant, was that it was by no means a waste of cruel waters: it was more like the Strand on a warm Saturday night. Every kind of craft was running eastward or clawing westward as though the life of England depended upon them: wallowing colliers; big, fat, important Indiamen; slovenly hoys from Cornwall dripping China Clay; Breton crabbers; smacks and hovellers without number; the entire Brixham trawler fleet, hove-to and dancing on the green waves; a dangerous, rakish Excise cutter slashing along on some desperate errand and, a sight I would give a hundred pounds to see again, the Channel Fleet majestically making its way to Spithead in line astern under all plain sail. The Second explained to me that the snowy whiteness of the sails was because, on entering the Channel, the old, brown sails would have been taken down and the best suits bent onto the yards. As I watched, entranced, a stream of signal flags rose to the main-truck of the flagship and, like magic, her yards swung — you could hear the rattling boom of the canvas from our distance of eight hundred yards — and she went about on the other tack, followed, with terrifying precision, by each ship in her wake: I swear that the stretch of water on which they went about, one after the other, was no greater than a tennis-court. That was, I think, the moment at which I stopped laughing at the English.
I had another lesson to learn, however. As we came abreast of the flagship our Captain Knatchbull grunted orders to the First Mate about dipping our ensign.
“To the flagship, Sir?”
“To each ship in turn, Mister.”
“Aye aye, Sir.”
I blushed with shame at this silly impertinence, for we were, surely, but a common trading vessel and these lordly ships the might of the British Queen. My blushes, however, turned to a blush at my own ignorance and, yes, a flush of pleasure, as the flagship’s ensign dipped gravely to us in return, followed by the same civility from each man of war as she came abreast. Our men cheered heartily, swarming up the ratlines and waving hats and kerchiefs, but our Captain stalked to the other side and gazed fixedly at the coast. He was, I suppose, regretting something, as every sensible man must from time to time.
Hour upon hour I watched, entranced, the changing pageant of this English Channel, asking a hundred questions of anyone who could pause and explain to me. Some of the more spanking merchant-craft had, like the Royal ships, already bent on their best suits of sails, all snowy-white, but most were still under working canvas, brown and weathered, patches and discoloration telling wordless tales of thousands upon thousands of perilous sea-miles. The Second Mate pointed out to me, in one of his rare moments of fellowship, a particularly foul-seeming craft, its sails of an inexplicable filthiness. He explained that it was a whaler, wallowing back from the furthest Southern seas, and that the greasy grime was from the smoke of the “trying-out” fires which rendered down the blubber from the great beasts.
“A horrid trade, young man,” he said in his lugubrious way. “Permit an older man to give you a word of advice. If ever you fall in with a whaler’s man, buy him a pot of beer but quit his company as soon as you safely can. He will be fearfully strong, easily roused to anger and possessed of a long, sharp knife. Eschew his company; he will not be sane. These words of mine are worth a guinea a box.” With that he turned away moodily. He was a strange man, not one of whom one could make a boon-companion. He was unflagging at his duties. I think that, when not on watch, he either slept or wept. Perhaps both. Certainly, I never saw him eat or smile.
The doctor respected him, which was strangely reassuring.
The lights of Ushant, when Peter dragged me out of my bunk to admire them, seemed no great thing — merely a distant twinkle on our port bow. The beauty of them, it seemed, the thing to be admired, was that we had sighted them at just the time the Captain had predicted and at just such a distance as enabled us to “weather them with plenty of sea-room” as Peter lucidly put it. After an hour or so — but it seemed longer — they were on our beam and, finally, they were but a remote glimmer on our quarter. We did not tack to port for, I was told, that would have driven us deep into the dreaded Biscay Bay itself. (I did not complain: I had no especial longing to tack to port and would have had less had I known what the phrase meant.)
We braced our yards so that we were sailing as close to the wind as our yare little ship could stand, every scrap of canvas and cordage and timber booming and shrieking and groaning as though intent on frightening the very guts out of me. Since there seemed to be little I could do to help, I retired to my bunk with an air of philosophical detachment. Biscay held no terrors for me: I was proud. There was some small difficulty attached to staying in my bunk because of the ship’s erratic and wanton motions: resourcefully, I fished out the absurd slabs of woollen underclothing from my chest and wedged them in such fashion that I could no longer fall out. I slept well.
In the dawn I was awakened by a curious dream in which I had been standing on my head. When I came to my senses I found that I was indeed doing so, although still flat on my back. My head was pressed firmly against the head-board of my bunk, taking the whole weight of my body. I realised that the ship was standing on its nose and that my last hour had come. Before I could decide what to do I found myself standing almost upright on the footboard of the bunk, although still flat upon my back. The ship was now, quite clearly, sitting on its stern. I was not to be seen at a disadvantage again and, in a few minutes, when Peter slid into the cabin, I was fully clothed and as nonchalant as any salted Jack Tar.
“Are we sinking yet?” I asked nonchalantly.
“Not yet,” he replied. “But have you heard of mountainous waves? And dismissed them as poetic extravagance?”
“Of course.”
“Then come on deck; I have a treat for you.” At his suggestion I forced my way into some stiff and crackling yellow oilskins before venturing out. I felt absurd in these but so soon as I had, with Peter’s help, fought my way like a drunken man onto deck, I was glad of them for the wind kicked me in the face, green water smashed at me from the whole length of the ship, compressed me against the bulwark of the quarter-deck and so overwhelmed me with its cold, fierce lust that I was ready to surrender my life. Peter had a firm grip of the left arm of my oilskins; he dragged me up and across the heeling deck to the weather side and fastened each of my hands around the rail. Then he took my head and rotated it towards the right, so that I was staring forrard.
My fingers clenched into the rail so hard that they must have scarred it: a mountain of a wave — I mean a mountain, there was no poetic licence about it — was reared dead ahead of us and our absurd little ship was aiming its bowsprit straight into the scend of it. It was no moment for terror: our extinction was inevitable. I watched as though mesmerised. Up and up went our bows until Peter and I were bent almost level with the deck and still the peak of the glassy green mountain was high above us. I prepared in my mind a few suitable words of gratitude and farewell to say to Peter but, before I could speak, I heard a great roar from the Captain, behind and above us on the quarter-deck.