They were too pleased, at first, to feel the snow. But soon the Cradle Rock, its motion halting imperceptibly, was capped in white. They wanted to stay where they were until the Cradle was at peace. But the snow came driving in too thickly; soft snow, not wet. It fell inertly for a few minutes and then was taken up by a gusty wind. Both men were badly provided against such weather. They had no hats or gloves. Only Aymer’s tarpaulin coat was waterproof.
They climbed down to the path and left the Cradle Rock to tremble in the snow, unwitnessed. Ralph was too cold to talk. Aymer was too nervous and elated to stay quiet. He asked about the seaman’s family, but couldn’t tell if Ralph had heard. He gave his solo verdict on the Bowes, on ‘rocks that rock’, on emigration, the American ‘language’, slavery, the beneficial properties of sea air, everything except the aching wetness of his knees and calves and boots. He pointed at and named the trees, the rocks, the fleeing birds, until there was nothing left to see or name excepting snow. Their path had disappeared. Their legs and faces nagged with cold. Their clothes and hair turned white. They couldn’t see the sea. It boiled with pilchards which would, at least, be safe until the Sabbath ended. On this God-flinching coast it was bad luck to catch or eat a Sunday fish. But then — at midnight — all the boats would put to sea for this godsend of oily flesh. It wouldn’t matter that it snowed. Snow can’t settle on the sea. They’d shoot their nets into the lanes of pilchards and pack their stomachs, lamps and purses with the catch. ‘Meat, money and light, All in one night.’ And what a night, for fishermen! Snow. Pilchards. Floating cows. The flotsam of the Belle. And twenty yards below the Cradle Rock the sea-logged, bloated body of a man. Not the African. He has his first experience of snow. But Nathaniel Rankin, the Bostonian, drowned for almost two days now, and ready for the nets.
6. Evensong
THE SAILORS from the Belle were bored. The Sabbath was a torment. What could they do all day, except sit round an idling fire and regret their ship had not been grounded off some other town, where there were breweries and brothels, or, at least, the liberty to work on Sundays? After breakfast they’d watched the Tar dimming out at sea. With the backing of a westerly it chased its own steam trail and then it was evaporated by the light. That was the entertainment for the day. They should have volunteered to walk with Ralph Parkiss to check the fortunes of the Belle at Dry Manston. At least there would’ve been flirting on the coast, and some amusement to be had with rocks and cattle. At least there’d have been some noise, if only gulls and wind.
The captain wouldn’t tolerate their singing or any horseplay in the inn. His mood was murderous. George, the parlourman, whose conversation at its best was cryptic, had brought the news, ‘Your blackie’s gone back home to Africa.’ Someone, he said, had released the bolt on the tackle-room door. All that remained of Otto now was dry blood on the straw. Who should they blame but Aymer Smith, the meddler with the soap, the sugar abolitionist? George said he’d seen the man a little after dawn, down on the quay. He had Whip at his side and was talking to the sailors on the Tar. He hadn’t any trousers on. What should the captain make of that? He whistled through a window for his dog. She didn’t come.
The captain went down to Aymer’s upstairs room with Mrs Yapp and George. The carriage bag, some clothes and books were on his bed. The man himself had disappeared in the middle of the night, Robert Norris said, embarrassed, evidently, to have slept through breakfast and to be discovered in his barely curtained bed with half a pot of urine at its foot. He and his wife — who looked a touch too flushed and ample for a Sunday — hadn’t seen or heard of Aymer Smith since then.
‘What does that mean, do you suppose?’ the captain asked George. ‘Not wearing any trousers? Is this a jest or your invention?’
‘It in’t any jest. I’d not invent such indecorum. As barelegged as a seagull, he was.’
‘He didn’t even settle his account,’ said Mrs Yapp. ‘Or pack his bags. Too rushed to put his trousers on! Well now …’ She laughed. She couldn’t help it. She put her arm around the captain’s waist. The poor man needed cheering up. But when she saw the temper on his face, she let him go and busied herself with the empty bed. ‘He had clean sheets and hardly dirtied them. Now, there’s a wicked waste … Who wants some soap?’ She took the few remaining bars from Aymer Smith’s belongings and offered them first to Katie Norris (‘We have some, thank you, Mrs Yapp’) and, then, to George (‘Enough! Enough!’). Alice Yapp removed the sheet from the bed, bundled Aymer Smith’s possessions — the soap included, and his books — in his bag and took them to the door. ‘We’ll see if we can fetch a shilling with these to pay his bill,’ she said, and then, by way of explanation for the profit she could make, ‘The man has gone. So’s the dog. So’s the African. And so’s the Tar. We’ve seen the last of them!’ She prodded the Norrises’ piss-pot with her toe. ‘Take care of that,’ she said to George. ‘Before there’s kick and spill.’
The captain spent the morning at a table in the snug, placated every half an hour or so by a shot of ‘Mrs Yapp’s Fortified Tea’. (It would make her rich when she was in her sixties.) He needed fortifying, Mrs Yapp insisted. He’d been ‘stormed-up about the blackie and the Belle’. A little ‘lively tea’ would settle him and let the anger out and only cost two pennies for a pint. ‘You’re sitting stiff,’ she said. ‘Don’t be so starchy down your back. Better bend than break. There, now.’ She squeezed the tendons in his neck and shoulders until his back relaxed. ‘Anything you need from me, just ring the handbell in the parlour. Or else you’ll find me in my room.’ Was that an invitation to her room? The captain couldn’t tell. She was so brisk and democratic. But her fingers and her tea had done their job. He felt more lively now, though, thanks to Mrs Yapp’s plump generosities, he was stiff and starchy in places other than his neck. He was stormed-up in ways that no man, even agent Howells, could relieve.
The captain had arranged for Walter Howells to visit him that afternoon. That’s why — he needed no excuse — he hadn’t gone with seaman Parkiss to Dry Manston to check on the Belle himself. For the first time in seven years of captaincy he would have to pass a full day without seeing the ship under his command. ‘No choice, no choice,’ he said aloud to himself, and tried to concentrate on his letters and his log. He did his best to calculate the dollar-damage that the storm had done. How would he pay for the repairs? What would they cost? He made a list of urgent tasks: the rounding up of cattle, the purchase of timber and rigging, the disciplining of his men who, given time and liberty, would turn feral. He wrote the names of Whip and Otto at the bottom of his list. And then the name of Aymer Smith. The three of them would be, by now, miles down coast and nothing he could do would get them back. Otto would cost a hundred dollars to replace at A. K. Ellis, the Negro Broker and Auctioneer in Wilmington. More trouble and expense! What kind of man would steal an African in such a blatant way? What kind of man would steal a little bitch like Whip?