“Aye, sir. Reef the upper main t'gansail.”
The moment of mourning was lost in the familiar rhythm of heavy labor, but this time, at least, the hauling was done without a song. They worked in silence in the memory of the shantyman.
At dinner that evening Fred went to pick up the mess pot and bread barge from the cook. Jeremiah was scowling.
“I tole ye. That man Harry mocked the debil and the debil came up and got him. I tole ye true.”
Fred exploded. He reached out and grabbed the cook's collar. "Shut your mouth, you foul son of a bitch. Don't you ever speak of Harry again or I'll take your knives and slice you up into your own stew pot, not that anyone but the sharks would eat your worthless stinkin' hide. Do you understand me, you worthless bastard? I am sick to death of both your hoodoo and your rotten cooking.”
Fred could feel the blood in his face and he realized that he was close to lifting the cook off his feet with his hands on his collar. "Do you understand me?" he repeated.
“Yes, suh," was the cook's only reply.
Fred let go of his collar, grabbed the mess post and bread barge and went back to the cabin.
The next day, Fred stood huddled with Frenchie and Donnie at the break of the poop deck. There was nothing to do but wait for the end of the watch. As Captain Barker's infernal rules said they had to stay on deck regardless, they hunched down behind the canvas weather cloth for what little protection it offered.
Fred was tired, worn out, used up. His muscles ached. He was always hungry, often thirsty. Salt sores on his wrists, ankles, elbows and knees tormented his every move. But he kept on because there was no other choice. His body seemed to move by rote, more by habit than thought.
All he could do now was watch the long and endless rollers, the mountainous white-crested waves that slammed into the ship, lifting them, rolling them, sending green water breaking across the decks and leaving a rime of sparkling ice clinging to the rigging and the house front.
Fred finally understood a saying what he had heard in a Liverpool pub years before. An old sailor had said, over too many pints of porter, "There ain't no law below 40 south latitude. Below 50 south, there's no God.”
He had acknowledged it intellectually, but now he knew its truth in every atom of his being. It coursed in his bloodstream and had seeped into his bones, tendons and muscles. Looking out over the Southern Ocean with the bitter westerly wind screaming in his face, it was obvious. There was no room for God on this ocean. The westerlies would blow him away or the crashing waves would have crushed him and pulled him under.
God might live in the chapel at Yale, where the swell of the organ and raised voices filled the chamber with sublime song. It was easy to feel the hand of a God there, warm and dry beneath the glow of stained glass.
There just might be a place for God even in the sailors' chapel on the East River by Water Street. The floating chapel, built onto a barge so that it was even closer to the ships than the brothels, bars or the boardinghouses. Beyond the hectoring sermons, in the rough singing of the psalms by men just off deep-sea ships, there was a sort of peace that felt almost, if distantly, divine.
South of the Horn, there was only the howling wind. Organs, hymns and psalm singing had no business here. They would not survive the gales.
One ship might make a fast passage around the Horn, while another, equally sound and strong, could be crushed and disappear in the icy depths. It was all as one. They were not in a struggle with an evil sea, nor would they be saved by its benevolence. That was all for the poets on shore, who never ventured closer to the ocean than the sand of the beach, who spun their fancies into poems to amuse patrons drinking brandy sitting beside a warm and glowing fire.
Fred finally understood the true horror of this place. The monstrous waves and the howling wind were neither cruel nor kind. There was no good or evil in the Southern Ocean. It was far, far worse than that. The wind, the sea and the sky were simply and completely indifferent. Nothing mattered. Ships and men—their hopes, dreams, fears and aspirations—were of no consequence whatsoever. They mattered less than the flotsam or the foam.
In the distance, he saw the great swooping flight of an albatross, rising up above the swells and then dropping down into the shelter of the troughs. Some sailors said that albatross were the hosts to the souls of lost sailors, so it was unlucky to kill one. Other sailors scoffed, catching and killing the birds to make tobacco pouches from their leathery feet. Were those the souls of friends out there, carelessly wheeling in the wild westerly wind? That seemed too much like the stories his mother once told him at night, soothing tales that helped him sleep but meant nothing in the light of day. And if his shipmates were not carried aloft on the albatross wings, where were they? The heaven or hell of the chapels? Davy Jones' Locker or Fiddler's Green? Or were they just carried along in the icy waters? Food for fish and crabs.
He realized that he could have slipped from the rigging just as easily as Gabe, or been swept overboard like Santiago or had his head stove in like poor Harry. It didn't matter how good a sailor he was, how educated or how ignorant, how virtuous or how craven. The wind and the sea didn't care. There was no God to pray to below 50 south latitude. No God at all.
Second Mate Atkinson appeared from below and shouted, "That'll do the watch.”
Fred, Frenchie and Donnie trudged down the ladder to the main deck and worked their way along the weather safety line to the fo'c'sle.
Fred knew that Mr. Rand was sick and not fit for duty, so he was surprised to see him in the fo'c'sle, sitting on a sea chest by the bogie stove, talking quietly with some of the crew. The day before, Fred thought that he had seen him heading for the other cabin as well. It was hard to tell. Fred had been furling a sail when he saw the shadow moving across the deck below, indistinct in the spray in the near dark.
Fred didn't care to listen to what was being said. His one and only concern was to rest when he could, eat what little there was to eat and to turn to when his watch rolled around. All the same, it bothered him that a mate would invade the fo'c'sle, which was sailors' territory. The mate had no business being there, and if he was strong enough to make it forward he should be on duty, like the rest of them. Fred threw himself fully clothed in his oilskins into his bunk and slipped gratefully into a dreamless sleep. In four hours, if he was lucky and no one called "All Hands," his watch would start all over again, in the endless cycle of what seemed an endless voyage.
14. Rumors of Mutiny
Mr. Rand turned to on the poop deck at the start of the morning watch. He appeared haggard but stood ramrod straight when he presented himself to the captain.
“So, Mr. Rand, are you fit for duty? Have your aches and pains subsided?”
“I am fit as I am likely to be, Captain. My back still hurts like the very devil, but laying up hasn't made it any better, so I figures that getting back to work might take my mind off the pain.”
The captain looked him up and down for a moment. "Very well. Paul Nelsen has been appointed acting third mate. He is in your watch. Utilize his services as you see fit.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
Mr. Rand climbed down the poop deck ladder to the main deck. Captain Barker could hear him bellow even above the wind. "Starboard watch. On deck with you.”
The next evening, the barometer began to drop. For weeks it had been hovering between 27.50 and 28 inches of mercury but now it fell to 27.3, lower than Captain Barker had ever seen it in his years at sea. The falling barometer foretold an increase in the wind, but if the reading could be trusted they would soon face a hurricane's blast. He ducked down and unscrewed the inspection cap on the barometer to make sure that the chamois bag that contained the mercury wasn't leaking. It was fine and tight. After all the storms and gales, now the wind would really blow.