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Hard Light

Page 6

by Michael Crummey


  ‘Crossing the equator.

  Arrived in Rio Grande.’ (1888)

  Set sail from Spain April 24th,

  arrived in Rio Grande after sixty nights at sea.

  Discharged our cargo and proceeded up

  the Port de Lego River for a load of horn,

  hides and tallow, arriving July 10th.

  In Pelotas fresh meat went for three cents a pound,

  apples could be had for a good song

  or a chew of hard tobacco and

  we drew water over the side for all purposes.

  Once our cargo was secured, the Port de Lego

  carried us back to Rio Grande, groves of

  green trees on the shore bowed so low

  you could pick fruit from the branches

  as we sailed beneath them; ripe oranges

  went ungathered, dropping straight into the water

  and floating downstream beside the ship.

  When I was a boy I went aboard every boat

  that sailed into Twillingate just to hear

  the sailors talk; there was a man from Devonshire

  claiming sight of countries where fruit is

  as plentiful as cod on a Grand Bank shoal,

  it seemed too fanciful a notion to put much faith in.

  We stood on deck with buckets and nets

  and we dipped them from the river by the hundred,

  eating till we were sick of sweetness, stowing

  the rest below for the voyage back to London.

  ‘Arrived in Hong Kong, November 9.

  The histories of China.’ (1888)

  Sailed into the harbour early morning

  and made our ship fast to the old stone quay,

  the Chinese coming down in hundreds to greet us –

  a queer lot to look at I guess,

  the men wearing braided pigtails

  and the women stepping as if

  they were walking on glass,

  their stunted feet bound tight as a reefed sail

  Went ashore after tea and received some peculiar looks

  though I was turned out as well as a sailor can manage;

  stopped into a bar where I checked myself

  in the glass and found no fault to speak of,

  perhaps it was my ears

  they were staring at

  Dusk when I found my way back to the waterfront

  and three parts drunk by then,

  fourteen thousand miles from Newfoundland

  to the east and west

  and can get no further from my home if I wanted –

  two thousand years before the birth of Christ

  the Emperor Yu divided this empire

  into nine provinces and etched

  their borders on nine copper vessels . . .

  The stars came out over the Pacific then

  and they came out over me,

  only twenty-six years old and all the histories

  of China at my back

  ‘The Fearnot of Liverpool’ (1889)

  On October 16th we passed a large bark

  dismasted and abandoned on open water,

  the main and mizzen down and

  no sign of life, we lay alongside

  several hours but could not launch

  our boats to get aboard her

  as there was a heavy sea running

  and she was as good as fifty years away.

  Finally we turned to and left her

  adrift, with only our own stories

  of what might have happened to ship

  and crew troubling our sleep.

  Continued without incident until

  the 26th when I was on my way to rouse

  the third officer for morning watch

  and there was a shout of man overboard.

  We cast out the life buoys and

  launched the lifeboat, pulling around

  in the darkness until eight o’clock

  before giving him up for lost.

  Put the ship on course and we were

  now running one man short.

  He’d done the work himself and jumped

  though no one could say his reason

  or what was in his head to send him

  over the side in weather

  calm as a dream of home.

  ‘Arrived in Odessa, Russia.

  Bonaparte at Moscow.’ (1889)

  Winter defeated Napoleon.

  Moscow razed by Russia’s defenders

  to deprive the advancing army

  of food and shelter,

  not enough wood left among

  the ash of the city

  to make a proper fire.

  November fell like a building

  hollowed by flame.

  Hands and feet of the retreating soldiers

  scorched by frostbite,

  exposed skin of their faces

  dead to the touch.

  Three hundred thousand men fell to

  the cold and to hunger

  on the long march out of Russia,

  their frozen bodies on

  the roadside like a knotted string

  being unravelled all the way

  back to France.

  And Moscow standing again now,

  spired and magnificent,

  as if Napoleon had never lived.

  ‘In a great row and got locked up.’ (1890)

  You may have all the pleasure here that

  you need and you may get it as rough

  as you please if you are not careful.

  Lying near Fulton Ferry in Brooklyn

  I went ashore with the other quartermasters,

  a Cockney and a Belgian,

  falling in with a crowd of bunker boys

  at a barroom and drinking in the usual way

  when a big row rose up that washed over

  the entire crowd assembled,

  bottles, trays, and glasses flying

  as if the room was being rocked by a gale.

  My two shipmates got the worst of the play

  that was started on me, the Belgian’s nose

  was broken and blood all down his front

  when we met up again near the ship,

  and they blamed me for raising the ruckus

  when I had all I could do to get clear

  with a whole skin. The Belgian brandished

  a knife and the Cockney did nothing

  to discourage him when he swore he would

  take my life right there in the street,

  so I pulled out my revolver and fired.

  Four policemen arrived thereafter and

  they put me aboard the Black Mary to

  take me to the lockup, I said “Boys

  I never enjoy a decent ride except

  when I am driving with you,”

  they said I wouldn’t think so by

  the time I got through with this affair.

  Next morning I was taken before the Judge,

  the two quartermasters and others were there

  to give their evidence which was not

  in my favour. The Judge asked if I was

  guilty of the charge and I told him yes,

  the Belgian had come at me with his knife

  and I burned the skin of his forehead with a bullet,

  upon which evidence the case was dismissed,

  self-defence being the first point of law in America.

  The Belgian and me took the day off

  to go across the bridge to New York

  where we had a jolly time of it since

  sailors hold no malice, and then we sailed

  back to England as friendly as ever

  with a pleasant smile.

  ‘Observatory on Mount Pleasant’ (1890)

  Paid off a ship in Saint John, New Brunswick,

  and no work to be had until I got word

  of a building going up in Mount Pleasant.

  The foundation already down

&nbs
p; when I arrived and the foreman

  took me on as soon as I mentioned

  being several years on the tall ships.

  It was twenty storeys high when we finished,

  and I was sent up the pole to hook the block

  and hoist the framing for each floor.

  Each time up I could see more of

  Lily Lake at the foot of the mountain,

  the crooked arms of the apple trees

  laid out in orchard rows,

  and there was always a handful of nuns

  saying the rosary outside the convent below.

  I waved in their direction from every storey

  but they went on praying as if they hadn’t seen me,

  perhaps it was my safety

  they were bringing to God’s attention.

  Stayed on until the place opened in October

  and the night before I shipped out

  they sat me in the chair beneath

  a telescope the size of a humpback –

  for the first time I saw constellations

  the way a saint perceives the divine,

  almost clear of darkness.

  When I carted my tools down the hill

  those stars came with me, a branch of

  ripe fruit almost close enough to touch.

  ‘A hard looking sight but not lost.’ (1890)

  Now I have been on board some hard ships

  but this one takes the lead of them all.

  They say there was six men killed on her last voyage,

  the Captain changed her name and still

  could not entice a soul aboard before

  my chum and me took a chance and signed on.

  We sailed into Bath Bay and took on

  a load of ice, leaving again October 22nd.

  The following day a wind came up with rain and thunder

  so we clewed up the foremain and mizzen topsails

  and had two reefs in the mainsail when a squall

  blew up and carried the works off in strips.

  The Captain stood to the wheel shouting orders,

  we let go the halyards to lower the foresail

  and take in reefs but the ropes burst or

  jammed around the peak block and the foresail

  blew away in ribbons, along with the three jibs.

  Only the spanker managed to stay up and

  the Captain hove to, keeping her underway in

  the storm so as to not be drifting for shore.

  The sea came across the decks and took the rail,

  the bulwarks and part of the upper bridge,

  all hands were engaged at the pumps to keep

  her afloat; there was no food or sleep to be had,

  the galley and forecastle were saturated and

  the fresh water spoiled, the men getting laid up

  one after another with sprains and exhaustion

  as we lay in that condition seventy-four hours and it would

  try the nerve of a mule to endure so long without rest.

  When the wind moderated we got her fitted up

  as best we could, mustering some old sails

  stored below, bending a mainsail for a foresail

  and making way for Boston, swearing we’d never set foot

  on a boat again if we were able to gain the harbour.

  By the time the weather ceased there was only the Chief Mate,

  myself and the Captain left sound to manage the ship

  and we shimmied her safe up to the pier at last,

  a hard-looking sight by then, but not lost.

  ‘Taking photographs.’ (1891)

  Carried photographical outfit aboard

  for a voyage to Cape Town,

  having purchased my own from

  Mr. Waites’ shop in London

  where I worked several months

  between voyages while lodging

  at Lady Ashburton’s House

  Second week out I sketched off

  the Captain, Chief Engineer and Mate

  on the starboard side

  and now have all I can do to

  keep up taking pictures,

  the passengers willing to pay me well

  for my trouble

  Two days off South Africa

  met the four-master on which I first

  crossed the pond, the Konigsburg

  bound for England –

  managed a decent portrait of her,

  broad side and set with full sail

  so even if the oceans take her now

  she is mine to keep

  ‘Now in Africa among the Natives.’ (1891)

  In vain with loving kindness

  the gifts of God are strown,

  the heathen in his blindness

  bows down to wood and stone.

  Sketches in the old mission letters suggested

  these people were grey, charcoaled,

  unhappy shadows slumped and frowning.

  I see now they are something altogether different –

  skin the colour of stained wood

  and teeth bright as the keys of a church organ;

  hair as rich a black as peat moss, their voices

  musical and muscular, echoing thunder and rain

  God’s will is God’s will and if I once pretended to

  comprehend a portion I have since given up the lie;

  I’ve kept good company on Africa’s shore,

  on the white beaches of Brazil, in China and Ceylon,

  it confuses me to have shared the kindness

  of liquor and song with these when some

  brought up under the sound of the Gospel would

  see you dead before offering a drink of water

  I thought the world would make me a wiser man,

  but I am merely more perplexed –

  I’ve learned to distrust much of what I was taught before

  my travels showed me different;

  the faces of Africa are as dark as a night without stars,

  but they are not as blind as they are pictured

  ‘A narrow escape almost but saved.’ (1892)

  Aboard a Scotch boat shipping a cargo of

  marble and alabaster across the Gulf of Lyons.

  Three days out we came on a perfect gale,

  the seas running above the mastheads

  and the Captain had us clew up the topsails,

  haul in the jibs and bring down the mainsail to reef it tight.

  I was running out on the boom to make fast the outer jib

  when the ship dropped away like a gallows door

  and came up hard on a swell, chucking me

  fifteen feet into the air and overboard;

  I was lost but for falling into the outer jib whips

  rolled four feet underwater by the gale,

  like a dip net after capelin.

  I hung fast to a rope as the ship rolled back,

  got hold of the martingale whisker

  and heaved myself in over the bowsprit to see the Captain

  running about the deck with a life buoy

  shouting he had lost a man.

  We had a fine laugh about it afterwards –

  when I climbed back aboard, they said, my face was as white

  as the four-ton blocks of marble we had wedged in the hold.

  But I don’t remember being afraid when I fell,

  only the certainty of knowing I was about to be drowned

  a thousand miles from home,

  and then the jib whip in my hands,

  the peculiar darkness of discovering

  there is nothing that is certain.

  I came out of the water a different man than I had been

  though I would be hard pressed to say the difference.

  The scar of that rope on my palms

  for weeks after the storm had passed.

  ‘Useful information, the Holy Lands’ (1893)

  Desert the colour of winter sunligh
t,

  a yellow that is almost white, shadowless,

  constant shift of sand like

  a tide swell beneath your feet.

  Hills on the horizon as red as blood.

  The Commandments carried down Mount Sinai

  by Moses in sandals, his feet blistered

  by the heat of God’s presence,

  lettered stone scorched by the sun,

  his bare hands burning.

  All of this was once under water –

  mountains rose from the parting flood

  like the Israelites

  marching out of the Red Sea

  to walk parched into wilderness,

  sucking moisture from handfuls

  of hoarfrost.

  I have spent my life on the ocean,

  seven years now I have worked

  on the high seas,

  my hands blistered by the water’s salt,

  my tongue thick and dry as leather.

  The desert was familiar to me,

  I knew something of what it

  demands of a person,

  what it can teach.

  I understood that it is mostly thirst

  that makes a place holy.

  · Understanding the Heart, 1894–1935 ·

  ‘When I started trading.’ (1894)

  In seven years sailing I laid eyes

  on the rocks of Newfoundland but twice,

  skirting Cape Race shoals for Halifax

  and again on the way to Boston,

  looking away as quick as that

  on both occasions;

  I could hear her singing across the water

  and stopped up my ears,

  I suppose I knew I’d never be able

  to leave a second time

  Intending a brief visit to family last fall

  I married a woman in Tomwalls Harbour,

  paying the old priest three dollars

  to splice us; she held me like a tree

  grown through a wire fence

  and I could not get away in the spring

  though I said that was what I wanted

  Bought a sloop and started trading

  wood and coal and dry goods

  around the Bay of Exploits,

  gave up the sea for memories

 

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