13
It was no apparition, engendered by the collapse of my reason; I had undergone enough extraordinary experiences by this time, to have some confidence in determining what was actually happening.
A dark stain of sea-water oozed around the hole the brass stalk had bored through the cabin floor; the metal apparatus glistened damply as the flower-like terminus rotated about. "Dower-" The voice came through it again. "You are there? Approach this device, and answer me."
It had risen to a height of a couple of feet from the floor. I knelt down and brought my mouth close to the brass flower. "Here I am."
The device ceased its rotation, the terminus pointing towards me. "You know who is this?"
"Yes," I whispered in reply.
"Good." The Brown Leather Man's voice, coming through the stalk, shaded darker. "Listen most closely. I can help you. These persons – your captors – from them you can escape. You can evade their fateful intentions."
My heart sped when I heard these words. I had resigned myself to the – seemingly unavoidable – prospect of my own death. This was, perhaps, no more than the stoicism of the lamb being readied for slaughter, seeing no point in dashing itself against the unyielding limits of its pen. But had not this enigmatic figure, appearing when least expected, helped me to escape a grisly fate twice already? Though I could not imagine how it would be possible again, given the overwhelming numbers of the Godly Army surrounding us, yet I allowed a tremor of hope to quicken my pulse.
"Not now, but later," continued the Brown Leather Man's voice. "When dark it is, and these men are asleep. You must then meet me." He described a point on the ship's deck, unlit and out of the sight of any sentries.
"But- but how can it be possible?" I asked, my lips nearly touching the cold, shining metal. "How can-"
"Now, quiet," ordered the voice. "Explanations later. When we meet. Tell no one." The brass flower folded in on itself, and the stalk drew back through the floor. The only evidence remaining of its singular apparition was the round hole, no bigger than a finger's width, and a trickle of sea-water. I pulled a small rag rug that had been near the bed over the spot to conceal it.
At the, appointed hour, when all the ship was asleep save for the single watch stationed at the prow, I slipped from my cabin and made my stealthy way to the deck. My passage went undetected in the night's darkness, and soon enough I was crouched down among the coils of rope and other nautical gear, hidden from all but the most thorough search.
I waited in nervous anticipation for the Brown Leather Man's arrival, The slap of waves and the answering creak of the ship's timbers were all that I could hear; the cloudless heavens scattered points of lights upon the troughs and crests of the ocean's expanse.
His journey to the spot was even more surreptitious than my own, though it included – as I was shortly to learn – his clambering up the side of the ship and over the rail, I was unaware of his presence until a hand touched my shoulder from behind and his voice whispered my name. Thus startled, I whirled about; his hand clapped over my mouth before any outcry could reveal our meeting. "Yet be quiet," he commanded softly.
"Where – where have you been hiding?" I asked when his stifling hand had been drawn away. "You've been aboard all this time?"
He gestured for me to lower my voice further. The moon and stars glinted from his dark face and shoulders, still wet from the sea. "To me listen," he said. "There is little time, and much to tell."
Thereupon followed, as I knelt close to his soft voice, the exposition I herewith summarize. Even if I succeeded in reproducing his exact words (minus my own exclamations of surprise, which rather lengthened the discourse), I would still fail to convey the eerie wonderment evoked by his narration.
He told me his real name, but the human voice lacks the facility to properly pronounce so strange a cognomen; I continued to identify him in my mind as I had done when he had first entered my London shop. He claimed and it was soon enough proven to me, banishing any residual scepticism I might have harboured – to be the last surviving member of an amphibious race, at home in the depths of the seas rather more than upon dry land. His people were the basis for the various tales and legends of "selkies" common to the Scottish islands. In support of this point, he demonstrated to me that what I had taken to be his brownish skin, was in fact a thin, pliable covering – a species of leather indeed, though marine in origin constructed to hold a layer of salt-water, essential to his survival, around his body; the marks that I had taken to be scars in the manner of African tribesmen were the finely worked stitches holding this garment together.
The Brown Leather Man continued from the singular to the general, his discourse forming a natural history of his race. Never very numerous and always secretive, the selkies – to use the most convenient term – maintained through the long years a few friendly contacts with human beings; the various sailors' yarns of miraculous rescues from ships lost at sea had this basis in reality. As befit their piscine physiology, the selkies' reproductive processes were external, fertilization and growth of the resultant embryos taking place in large beds of seaweed; these sites, the only ones suitable, were located in the waters off the island of Groughay. Unfortunately, the activities of mankind had a disastrous effect upon the situation. Readers of sufficient age may recall that, towards the end of the previous century, a lucrative boom in the trade of seaweed occurred. It was gathered in large quantities from the shores of the distant Scottish islands, charred into a soft black substance, and distributed throughout Britain for use as a fertilizer. (Readers familiar with contemporary agricultural practices will be aware that other, more productive substances have supplanted the seaweed for this purpose; there is virtually no trade in it at the present time.) One of those who had profited from the market for seaweed had been the young head of the clan based upon Groughay, Lord Bendray. He had sought to accelerate the process of turning seaweed into money by commissioning a device from a clever London inventor – my own father. The device that resulted from this commission was a set of wooden booms that, once installed under my father's personal supervision on Groughay, extended into the ocean, and were kept submerged by heavy chains. When directed underneath the offshore seaweed beds, the booms would be released from the chains, thus rising to the surface and tangling into the marine vegetation. The seaweed could then be drawn towards the shore by winches, at a rate many times greater than the tides previously had brought it, and thus harvested. My father's device worked well, securely establishing the Bendray family fortune before the collapse in the seaweed market came.
(This history related by the Brown Leather Man brought back to mind Lord Bendray's rambling words in his cellar laboratory beneath Bendray Hall. I had then dismissed his talks of seaweed as nothing more than the wild ravings of a disordered mind; but I did recall that he had made passing reference to his first commission to my father having something to do with the substance.)
It was while on Groughay (so the Brown Leather Man's exposition continued), while my father was installing this seaweed gathering device, that he came into contact with the aquatic race of selkies. Perhaps there was some attraction between minds of similar brilliance: the selkies, being of a philosophical and inquiring breed, possessed much advanced theoretical knowledge pertaining to matters little investigated by human scientists. It was from them that my father learned those arcane principles of sympathetic vibrations in rarefied media, that he subsequently employed in his later inventions such as the Paganinicon. The Brown Leather Man related that my father made several journeys to the island of Groughay, long after the price of seaweed fertilizer had plummeted in 1811, the gathering device been abandoned, and the island depopulated, for the express purpose of consulting with the learned selkie elders on scientific issues.