“We need this cleared,” Fflytte declared. When the sail-makers continued their needlework, he turned to the quarterdeck and repeated his demand.
“I’d planned on filming some scenes this morning. We need the decks cleared,” he insisted.
“When sail is up, decks will be clear,” La Rocha countered.
“ ‘Sail on, O Ship of State!’ ” Rosie urged.
Samuel said nothing.
“When will that be?”
“Braak!” Rosie answered.
La Rocha and Samuel studied the horizon.
“What are we to do in the meantime?” Even Rosie said nothing. “Captain La Rocha, we had an agreement. We need to do our filming on the way to Morocco.”
“Point camera here,” our pirate chief said, waving a ham-like hand at the quarterdeck. “No canvas.”
Fflytte squinted at the area in question, and turned to Will. “Would this be a good time?”
“We’d only use a few feet of film, if we can’t shoot the deck as well,” the cameraman replied.
“Captain-” Fflytte began, when La Rocha took pity on him.
“Two hours, maybe little more. Go, look around ship, find places to point camera.”
“I really-”
“Mr Fflytte,” I broke in. “That might not be a bad idea. If you haven’t seen all the nooks and crannies, a tour might give you some interesting angles.”
He thought for a moment, then nodded. “Very well, we will take a tour of the ship. Will you lead us?” he asked La Rocha.
Samuel had been frowning at a point among the forest of ropes where Adam and Jack were smearing some disgusting-looking grease into the wooden pulleys and all over themselves. Inadvertently, his elbow ventured into Rosie’s territory. La Rocha’s feathered familiar lunged, but quicker than the eye could follow, the quarterdeck erupted into a flurry of brilliant plumage as Rosie fought the hand wrapped around its throat. La Rocha stepped forward; Samuel let go; Rosie took off. A trail of scarlet and blue feathers traced the outraged bird’s path into the heights.
The two men looked at each other; the wind held its breath; the sail-makers’ needles held the air; waves held back from lapping our wooden sides. Then La Rocha turned on one shiny red heel, and said to Randolph Fflytte, “Your ‘Samuel’ will guide you through ship.”
Samuel’s normally dead-pan face registered a slight flush. He started to speak, but La Rocha cut him off, in Arabic. “The whole ship, Selim.”
Personally, I would not have turned my back on a man with that expression on his face (Selim the Grim) but La Rocha was made of sterner stuff than I. Either that or he knew just how far he could push his second in command.
Samuel’s gaze left the Captain’s hat, played across the passengers standing motionless about the deck, rested on the two grease-spattered lads (who hastily bent to their work), and then flicked briefly towards the presence that perched above us in the rigging.
He gave a brief nod, as if confirming some private idea, and descended from the quarterdeck, saying “Come” as he walked past Fflytte and Hale, leading the way to the bow. They followed Samuel; after a moment, I followed them; Annie and Edith came, too; soon half the ship’s population was gathered to hear Samuel’s voice.
Samuel waited for us to go still – or as still as one can go on a moving deck. Then, with a final dark glance at the quarterdeck, he faced the open sea and pointed. “Bowsprit,” he said. His forefinger went up. “Outer jib.” The finger dropped a few degrees. “Inner jib. Fore stays’l.”
And so he went. We learned what the lashings around the anchors were called (in English, to my surprise and relief) and which neat coil of rope was connected to which sail, and whether it was a halyard or a sheet; where the upper topsail ended and the topgallant began; the various staysails as opposed to the jibs. Or rather, we heard the labels recited. It was as if Samuel had been assigned the job of naming every minute portion of the ship – but naming alone. He would occasionally answer a direct question, if it reached him in a pause between recitations, but for the most part, he was a dictionary rather than an encyclopaedia. When Bibi asked why the sail was called “square” when it was a rectangle (in fact, they were trapezoidal), he simply looked through her and went on.
Most of the others went back to their sunbathing and cigarettes before we progressed twenty feet down the port side. Fflytte and Hale were looking stunned, Will ignored the lecture entirely, Edith developed a dangerous fascination for the knots holding the various lines in place, and Annie most helpfully kept pulling the child’s exploring fingers away from the belaying pins. Daniel Marks and Bibi seemed transfixed by the reflections in Samuel’s black boots.
Halfway down the side, only two of the audience were paying attention. Jack was one, the young pirate focussed on every label, every brief explanation, his lips in constant motion as he either tried to guess the name before Samuel could say it, or repeated the name under his breath once it was given.
The other attentive one was me.
I can’t say that it mattered in the least whether the bundle of rope before me was a sheet or a clewline, or if pulling on it raised the third sail of the fore mast (the fore-upper-topsail-halyard) or adjusted the angle of its yard (the fore-upper-topsail-brace) since I had no intention of running the ship myself. However, it was a mental challenge, along the lines of mastering basic Arabic in a month or committing to memory the by-ways of London. And Samuel’s whole attitude was that of a gauntlet thrown: None of you landsmen will be able to follow this, but I’ve been ordered to give it to you, and by God I will.
So I paid attention.
I admit that at first I cheated, writing down key words to reinforce their place in my mind. But once I had the patterns (clewlines and buntlines, halyards and braces, each going higher up the mast as we went aft) it became easier. Of course, my brain felt as if it were about to explode long before we went down the steps (companionway) and past the kitchen (galley) to the orlop deck, but it was all there, neatly catalogued and waiting for the next time I found myself on a brigantine.
Finally, at the nethermost reaches of the ship, Samuel came to a halt. Some ninety minutes had gone by. Jack was not far from tears, Fflytte looked bored out of his skull, Hale and Will had slipped away somewhere around the middle of the second level below decks, and Annie acted as if she had weights attached to both ankles. God only knew where Edith had got to.
Our sadistic guide held up the oil lamp with which he had ill-lit our way, and announced, “Is all.”
Fflytte seized his hand, thanked him vigorously, and fled. Jack thumbed his forelock and trudged back to his grease pot. The big man looked at the two young women he’d been left with, and for the first time, permitted a grimace to cross his face.
“I waste my time,” he said.
Annie protested, so weakly she might have been agreeing, but I decided there was no harm in letting him know that his efforts had not been entirely in vain.
“Not at all,” I assured him. “It’s extremely helpful to have a clearer idea of how all those bits tie together.”
“Yes?” he said, disbelief clear in his voice and stance. “Then what you call this?”
He kicked his boot (for the first time, not so shiny) against a piece of wood that I probably could have guessed had I never set foot on a sailing ship.
“That’s the mast – the mainmast,” I told him.
“That?” he said, indicating a lump of wood and metal.
“A knee.”
After the third such easily named object, it occurred to him that these would be fresh in my mind. Without a word, he pushed past and clumped up the ladder, restoring the lamp to its hook.