Blessed be the light
And the Holy Cross
And the Lord of Truth
And the Holy Trinity;
Blessed be the soul
And the Lord who leads us.
Blessed be the day,
And the Lord who sends it.
God give us good day,
May the ship have safe passage,
A good master, and worthy crew, AMEN!
May they make this voyage safe.
God give you good morrow,
Lords of stern and prow.
Was it necessary that we repeat or add something more as we joined in his song?
When I would see her pass by with that unusual step of hers and holding her dish — which was the time when she had the greatest leeway to move around — or when she would slyly brush against me as if not realizing that this body she was touching belonged to me, her confidant, the only one who knew her secret and hence for her the only man on the whole ship, since I was the only one who knew that she was a woman and the only one who, for her, would throw himself into the ocean headfirst and let it devour me in my despair over not being able to put my two palms (I was no longer content with one) on every part of her body, the only one who would throw himself headfirst and in vain, just for her, into the deep, endless, silent sea … In vain, because if I was the only man on the whole ship for her, then I was also the only being of whom she wished to know nothing at all (“That’s all over and done with,” she had said); her confiding had erased me completely from the map. On the other hand, the others did have some interest for her, or at least for the “him” they thought she was. Those who told her the sea stories in which we all dressed the silly, childish fears that awaken in the dark of night on the high seas made her open her eyes wide as if they might want to jump out of their accustomed place and leap completely away from her. And the ones who refused to show her the rudiments of even the simplest tasks necessary for the ship’s navigation exerted still more attraction over her, from the cabin boys who pushed her away so she was unable to see how they handled the sheets that kept the sails in trim or how they bailed out the water taken on by the ship, to the old salts who moved their thick bodies into her line of vision so she could not watch them keeping the fire alive on the sand where they warmed the grim meals with which they tortured our palates at midday.… Every one of the crew or the novice cabin boys, all those who were going in search of adventure or in hopes of making a living, those who did not yet know why they were going, those who were sorry they had come, those who had more than once crossed the ocean sea as well as those who had never voyaged before, the ones who had begged on the streets or been sold by their families — every single one of them was more interesting to her than I was because I was the repository of a secret that bound me ardently to her.…
The restless memory of this episode that made me suffer so — because the sickness of love is suffering — is making me lose all sense of order. Better that I take it up again so as to be able to relate how the voyage continued:
First of all, it was necessary to flee from the English ships. Hard by the Isle d’Ornay were four frigates waiting to accost our fleet, and we were afraid not only of their despoiling us of our goods, arms, and supplies, but also of suffering their cruelty. While we were waiting for their attack, many stories were passed around describing the horrors perpetrated by the English pirates, to which in my imagination I added the perils my companion, being a woman, was exposed to, dangers that (in my imagination, again) I confronted valorously, saving her in a thousand ways, all different, all of them heroic, from the lust and violence of the English. Fortunately, some fog arose and prevented us from being seen and perhaps falling into their hands. Who would have said then that J. Smeeks would ever become a member of the crew of a ship of that sort! I would never have believed him, just as now I find it difficult to believe in the veneration I felt then toward my companion, the fidelity I maintained toward her skin.
Throughout the first part of the voyage we remained close to the French shore. The population along the coast, fearful and rather uneasy, saw us sailing by and took us for the English, unmindful that we shared their fear and that the reason we stayed where they could see us was to protect ourselves from the very men they feared. We ran up our flags but they put no trust in them, nor in that the hulls of our ships were painted in bright colors, nor that our sails were decorated with crosses and shields; in their fright they saw us only as the talons of the English marauders, seeking out a good place to show our strength and raid their towns. To find ourselves taken for the assailants laid the fires of ambition for at least some of my companions; holding their reeking bowls in their hands, they would devour the houses of the rich with their eyes and fantasize about sumptuous meals doubtless being prepared beneath those roofs by gorgeous women, singing all the while (women of exuberant breasts and blouses with plunging necklines) — meals that could well be cooking there just for them.…
The wind favoring us as far as Cape Finisterre, a huge storm came up that separated us from the other ships. For eight long days the storm threw the passengers from one side of the ship to the other, and for twenty-four hours a day the crew made enormous efforts to keep the ship under control. The first day, when the storm had not yet reached full force, the Captain, punishing a flagrant lack of discipline, forced a crewman to mount to a yardarm and remain up there without permitting him to be lashed to it, and into the sea he fell, totally exhausted. Throwing out a line, they rescued him from the frenzied waters; yet if his authority had so moved him, the Captain could have punished him with death.
As always when encountering such furious winds, they brought in all the sails, the hull being unable to bear the weight of those enormous masses of canvas standing full out against the wrathful gusts, after which the sailors trusted only to luck as to the ship’s course. The carpenters and the caulkers had not a moment of repose, they were so busy fixing and overhauling things everywhere, bailing water out of the craft several times a day, and not merely in the mornings as in good weather. No one was able to set foot on the plank thrust out over the ship’s sides to give us a place where we could relieve ourselves, the pitching of the ship making it dangerous in the extreme, so the crew members would shit and piss right on the deck, and the passengers did likewise in the cabins we were stuffed into, alongside the messy gobs of vomit left there by those who did not know how to behave like seamen in a storm: for if they began to puke in a corner next to the other filth, they would end up smeared all over with it, so ensuring that whoever had not vomited before this would certainly vomit now. The cow, doubly lashed by each of its four legs, refused to drink water and in the midst of all the furor got so thin it was almost invisible, continually loosing a piteous mooing sound into the air that made it seem more like the ship’s cat than a proper milk cow.