But the semi-proximity of his lingering presence on deck was galling not just to the sailors, but also to Taramony, whose voice was now often in Baboo Nob Kissin's head, urging him to enter the very precincts of the chokey, to bring her closer to her adopted son. These promptings precipitated a raging conflict between the emergent mother, seeking to comfort her child, and that part of Baboo Nob Kissin which continued to be a worldly gomusta, bound by all manner of everyday proprieties.
But I can't go down there! he would protest. What will people think?
How does it matter? she would respond. You can do what you like: aren't you the ship's supercargo?
There was no denying that Baboo Nob Kissin was one of the few people on the Ibis who had the right of access to every part of the ship. As the supercargo, he often had business with the Captain and was regularly to be seen making his way into the officers' part of the ship, where he would sometimes lurk at Zachary's door, in the hope of hearing his flute once again. In his official capacity, he had also been empowered, by Mr Burnham, to inspect the other parts of the vessel, and he even had in his possession a set of spare keys for the chokey.
None of this was a secret from Taramony, and as the days passed it became clear to Baboo Nob Kissin that if she was ever to manifest herself in him, then he would have to embrace every aspect of her being, including her capacity for maternal love. There was no getting out of it: he would have to find a way to the chokey.
Like an animal returning to its natural element, the Ibis seemed to grow ever more exuberant as she went lasking along on the open sea. The schooner had been on the Bay of Bengal for exactly a week when Paulette looked up from her washing one afternoon, and noticed that the sky above was a luminous, radiant blue, its colour deepened by flecks of cloud that mirrored the crests on the water below. The wind was blowing strong and hard, and the waves and clouds seemed to be racing each other across a single, vast firmament, with the schooner straining in pursuit, her timbers groaning with the effort of the chase. It was as if the alchemy of the open water had endowed her with her own will, her own life.
Leaning over the rail, Paulette gingerly lowered her balty to draw some water. As she was pulling the bucket up again a flying fish came rocketing out but only to leap back into the waves. The flutter of its wings drew a squeal of laughter from Paulette and startled her into tipping her balty over, spilling the water partly on herself and partly on the deck. Alarmed at the mess, she fell to her knees and was busily pushing the water down the scuppers when she heard a peremptory shout: 'You there – yes you!'
It was Mr Crowle, and much to Paulette's relief, he was shouting not at her, but at someone else: since his voice was pitched to the tone he commonly employed with the lowest of the lascars, Paulette assumed that he was shouting at some unfortunate launder or topas. But such was not the case; looking aft, she saw that it was Zachary who had been thus addressed. He was on the quarter-deck, heading back to his cabin after the end of his watch. His face went red as he came to the fife-rails. 'Were you speaking to me, Mr Crowle?'
'That's right.'
'What is it?'
'What's this hugger-mugger business over here? Were y'fuckin asleep on yer watch?'
'Where, Mr Crowle?'
'Come'n see for yer own bleedin self.'
This being a mealtime, the deck was about as noisy as it ever was, with dozens of girmitiyas, overseers, lascars and bhandaris talking, jostling and arguing over the food. The exchange between the mates brought the hubbub to an abrupt end: that there was bad blood between the malums was a secret to no one, and every eye turned to watch as Zachary made his way forward, towards the bows.
'What's wrong, Mr Crowle?' said Zachary, stepping up to the fo'c'sle-deck.
'You tell me.' The first mate pointed at something ahead and Zachary leant over the bows to take a look. 'D'ye have the eyes to see it, Mannikin – or do you need it explained?'
'I see the problem, Mr Crowle,' said Zachary straightening up. 'The traveller is unseized and the jib and martingale are afoul of the dolphin-striker. How it happened I cannot imagine, but I'll fix it.'
Zachary had begun to roll up his sleeves when Mr Crowle stopped him. 'Not yer job, Reid. Not yer place to tell me how it's to be fixed neither. Nor who's to do it.'
Turning aft, the first mate surveyed the deck with a hand over his eyes, squinting hard, as though he were looking for someone in particular. The search ended when he caught sight of Jodu, who was lounging in the kursi of the foremast: 'You there, Sammy!' He curled his finger to summon Jodu to the bows.
'Sir?' Taken by surprise, Jodu pointed to himself, as if to ask for confirmation.
'Yes, you! Get a move on, Sammy.'
'Sir!'
While Jodu was climbing down, Zachary was remonstrating with the first mate: 'He'll only do himself harm, Mr Crowle. He's a raw hand…'
'Not so raw he couldn't pick y'out o'the water,' said the first mate. 'Let's see him try his luck with the jib-boom.'
Alarmed now, Paulette elbowed her way to the forward bulwarks, where many migrants were standing clustered, and found herself a spot from which she could watch Jodu as he climbed out on the schooner's bowsprit, over the heaving sea. Till now, Paulette had paid little attention to the vessel's architecture, treating her masts, sails and rigging as a crazed cat's-cradle of canvas and hemp, pulleys and pins. She saw now that the bowsprit, for all that it looked like a mere extension of the schooner's ornamental figurehead, was actually a third mast, a lateral one, that stuck out over the water. Like the other two masts, the bowsprit was equipped with an extension, the jib-boom, so that the whole ensemble, when fitted together, jutted a good thirty feet beyond the schooner's cutwater. Strung out along the boom were three triangular lateen sails: it was the outermost of these that had somehow wrapped itself into a tangle and that was where Jodu was making his way, to the farthest tip of the jib-boom – the Devil's-tongue.
The Ibis was mounting a wave as Jodu began his advance, and the first part of his journey was an ascent, in which he was pulling himself along a pole that was pointing skywards. But when the crest of the wave passed, the climb became a descent, with the Devil's-tongue angled towards the depths. He reached the jib just as the Ibis went nose-first into the trough between two swells. The momentum of the schooner's slide sent her plunging into the water, with Jodu clinging on, like a barnacle to the snout of a sounding whale. Down and down he went, the white of his banyan becoming first a blur, and then disappearing wholly from view as the sea surged over the bowsprit and lapped over the bulwark. Paulette caught her breath as he went under, but he was gone so long that she was forced to breathe again – and yet again – before the Ibis began to raise her nose from the water, riding the next upswell. Now, as the bowsprit rose from the water, Jodu was seen to be lying flat, with his arms and legs wrapped tightly around the wooden tongue. When it reached the end of its trajectory, the jib seemed to flip upwards, as if to send its rider catapulting into the clouds of canvas above. A stream of water came sluicing back, along the bowsprit, drenching many of the spectators who were standing crowded around the bows. Paulette scarcely noticed the water: she wanted only to know that Jodu was alive, and still able to hold on – after a ducking like that, surely he would need whatever strength he had left for the climb back to the deck?