But, I digress a little. And I become flippant, which was certainly not my intention. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I fear that I may give you something which you had not expected to receive.
You will all, I know, have come here, dressed in your ridiculously anachronistic clothes, to eat a meal of quite stultifying awfulness, to gossip about your contemporaries and to listen to me make my usual polite and diplomatic speech on the contribution that Poseidon has made to the peace and happiness of the world.
You will hope that I will be mercifully brief, so that you can return early to your palaces and fine official dwellings. You expect a series of boring platitudes to which you will make polite noises of appreciation and applaud genteely at what you think are appropriate moments. Some of you will hope to snatch a few moments of sleep. Indeed, some of you already are!
Well, my fine people, my leaders of the planet Earth, you are going to be DISAPPOINTED!!
That was simply to assure that all of you were now awake. (Angry murmurs.) Please. I ask only that you listen to me. Really listen. With your minds as well as with your ears.
First ... Thank you ... First, I will speak very briefly about the last two hundred years. In the period before I came to this planet, there were great writers of what was then called ‘science fiction’. Some of them looked to a future of conflict and despair. Others, more gentle and hopeful, saw it as a challenge which man might meet. By meeting it, they felt that he could create a brave new world.
So, think back, two hundred years. The world was poised at a key point. I know that it was a moment of galactic truth. On the one hand stood the patient, blindfolded figure of peace, while the crooked shape of anarchy lurked baying in the wings.
So I came, and with me came my comrades, and we did not find it an impossible task to tip the scales in favour of the powers of light. Compare your world now with what it might have been!
Since our coming, there has been peace. By ‘peace’ I do not just mean that there have been no total wars that would devastate the whole planet. I mean a real freedom from war. No local conflicts, no ‘police actions’ as they were called. Not even a Vietnam guerilla war. Vietnam! I can see from your faces that scarcely any of you remember the word. (Murmurs of dissent) I had, of course, automatically excluded you. Mister President, from that comment.
The pollution that threatened your rivers, your seas, the very air that you all breathed—it is no more. The birth-rate is stable and food stocks are ample. Your brave new world is not that far away from being a Utopia.
For all that, you have been grateful to my compatriots and myself, though we never desired your thanks. It was enough to do the deed for its own sake. You look upon us as magicians and wise and benevolent guardians. To the best of my knowledge, we have never done anything to make you lose one jot or tittle of faith in us. Am I right? (Silence.) Well, am I right? Can any of you think of any wrong thing we have ever done? (Murmurs of ‘No’.)
Now I come to the very core of my speech. In a way it marks an ending—an ending of total trust, yet, in another way it is a beginning—a beginning of total truth. You see, that epic day, two hundred years ago was not my first visit to your planet. (Gasps and loud conversation). Quiet! Please, quiet!
In fact, my first visit to earth was three hundred years ago today. Yes, three hundred, not two hundred as you have always been told. I hope you will see my reasons for telling this story that has played on my mind for all this time. Today is a happy time, but I can no longer let the truth be hidden. I ask you to travel back with me for three hundred years.
Our science developed during the following hundred years but it shames me somewhat to admit that my space traveller developed a fault while travelling through the atmosphere of earth and I had to make a forced landing in the ocean.
As I plunged through the stratosphere, I estimated my position, using earthly navigational references, as 37° 24’ N by longitude 48° 19’W. I saw that I was over the northeastern edge of a vast expanse of very deep water, known, I discovered, as the North American Basin. My scope picked up a ship travelling eastwards at about nine nautical ... sorry ... knots, so I was able to control my angle of glide to land me about three miles ahead of the vessel. It was cloudy and dull with a hint of light rain in the air, I remember, but the visibility was not too bad.
The moment my craft settled in the water I began to shape-change. I made my ship have the appearance of a small steam-launch, while I gave myself the body and speech of a black native of the coast of what was then one of the west African princedoms under English suzerainty. I had observed that the oncoming vessel hailed from the port of New York so I prepared a large bag of the then-current golden coinage of that nation. I had arranged suitably tattered clothing and ravaged appearance but I carefully hid the money about my person.
The ship, a two-masted sailing ship, by the way, was nearly upon me before someone noticed. I must say, though it may appear somewhat churlish about my rescuers, that it took several minutes before they had put about and hove-to about a cable’s length away. You will see how easily I slip into the naval language (polite and scattered laughter)—for those of you who have no knowledge of nautical terms, I should say that the ship stopped about 608 standard English feet away from me!
They lowered their boat, which was an eighteen foot yawl and pulled through the long swells towards me. There were five men in the boat and it was the one sitting in the stern, a thin, rather tubercular-looking fellow with narrow eyes, who hailed me. I told him that I was Prince Zimbabwe and that I had been sailing my new boat near the Azores when a squall had struck and near wrecked me. All my small crew had been swept overboard and I was the sole survivor.
With some skill I conveyed to the sailor that my boating adventure had been ... shall we say, a little bit less than honest. It is common knowledge, or it was then, that Ponta Delgada on the island of San Miguel was the centre of an illicit trade with the African mainland in all sorts of commodities.
Although he wished to abandon my poor craft, a glimpse of a few dollars soon convinced the sharp-featured Yankee that it would be well to play along with me for a while. I was taken in tow by the yawl and brought back to their ship, which had lain some distance off. There followed another example of somewhat lubberly seamanship as they tried to get my boat upon the deck of their vessel. The captain, a bearded man with deep-set and somewhat fanatical eyes, was loath to have it on board, indeed he seemed lacking in any enthusiasm at the prospect of myself on board at all. However, the first mate, for it was he who had led my rescuers, climbed nimbly over the side of the ship and engaged the captain in private conversation for some moments. The subject of their talk was not difficult to deduce.
The captain assumed an expression of guarded welcome and ordered my boat hauled on board. I clambered aboard as best I could and my craft was heaved round to the port side, just under the bows of the brig. It seemed to me that it would have made more sense to have hauled it up amidships where there, was more room. However, I avoided any interference. Perhaps it would have been better if I had voiced my opinion as they made a fearful business of it.
Firstly, one of the sailors, a foreigner ... a German I discovered later ... named Gottlieb Goodschaad, had the misfortune to trap his left hand in the hoist and lost three finger-nails and a deal of skin and blood in the process. He had the traditional sailor’s ability of expressing himself in florid and picturesque style.
I was a little concerned to detect that the poor fellow blamed me for his own clumsiness. I had not wished to make any enemies and here I was with my expedition to Earth not one hour old and I had already incurred the hatred of one Earthman.
Finally, after much heaving and belaying, my craft was aboard and lashed safely on the starboard side, just alongside the forrard deck house. Sadly, some of the spruce timbers were chipped out during the operation, which gave the captain some angry moments. I suppose it was about two or three feet above the water line. I remember the exact measur
ements of the damaged area as I proposed restitution to the captain based on a rate of five dollars per cubic foot. Captain Briggs, for such was his name, was a real tartar for detail and took scrupulous care that the damage was exactly measured. The timber gouged out was seven feet three inches in length, by one-and-a-quarter inches high, by three-eighths of an inch deep.
Before going further I should introduce you, as it were, to the crew of my rescuing vessel. The captain was named Benjamin Spooner Briggs. A deeply-religious man, he was born in April 1835 and was the second of five sons. His wife, whose first name I never discovered, and who was never addressed as anything other than ‘Mrs Briggs’, even by her husband, accompanied him for this journey. Their eldest child, Arthur Stanley Briggs, had been left behind in New England to continue with his schooling. The youngest child, who was only ever called ‘Baby’, rejoiced in the name of Sophia Matilda and was loved by the crew for her merry antics. She was one of the most cheerful young children I think I have ever seen. The first mate, Albert G. Richardson, hailed from Stockton Springs in Maine and was just twenty-eight years old. I fear that I did not entirely trust Mister Richardson, and I think that he reciprocated my feelings.
The second mate was a splendid fair-haired Viking of a fellow, named Andrew Gilling, a native of New York, The cook and steward was another light-haired man, Edward William Head, aged about twenty-three also born in New York. He was a fiery-tempered man whose cooking made up in quantity for what it lacked in quality. The most common dish was a sort of ragout of salt beef with some ancient potatoes and onions. I fear that the palates of my companions were more jaded than my own as I never heard one word of complaint.
The remainder of the crew was composed of four German seamen from the islands of Föhr and Amru in Eastern Prussia. I believe, Mr. Premier, that Föhr now houses a large power-producing plant? I thought so. Their names were, Volkert Lorenzen, Adrian Martens, Bob Lorenzen (younger brother of Volkert) and my friend with the injured hand, Gottlieb Goodschaad, aged twenty-three. With the exception of Goodschaad, who will .play a major part in my tragedy, they were all good stolid fellows.
I made the acquaintance of all of the crew during the evening meal, and I was mostly impressed with the nautical wisdom and knowledge of Captain Briggs. I attempted to find out more about his ship and, indeed, more about mankind. I was aware of the troubles between the North and South over the vexed problem of slavery and counted myself lucky to have fallen, literally, upon a northern ship where the crew were prepared to entertain a black person at their table. If I am to be completely honest with you, 1 have often wondered whether my well-padded purse was not a larger factor in my acceptance than the morality of any of the crew.
The good captain was not prepared to satisfy my curiosity until I had performed a similar service for him. Again I told of my ‘activities’ around Ponta Delgada. As we ate, the heat from the stove in the fore-cabin was having a deleterious effect upon my health and I managed to suggest to him that I might be prepared to enter into some kind of financial arrangement with him if we could repair to his own cabin. He took the bait and invited me to squeeze past the sideboard into his own little cabin, ‘for a stogie and a glass of gin’. The gin upset my metabolism more than I could have imagined and the ‘stogie’—a thin cigar of doubtful origin—did little to help. I can still remember how foul it was!
In the bluff way of all Yankees, Captain Briggs wasted no time in coming to his subject. He wanted to know what I had been smuggling and what did I propose that he should do with me. I eventually hinted that it might possibly, just possibly, have been precious stones. That was enough to bring the light of avarice to his eyes and for the cash register in his mind to start clicking and whirring overtime. I asked him that he should keep me on board while I made necessary repairs to my craft and then, when he got nearer to the Azores, he could drop me off and no more would be said. I also asked him if my arrival on board could, somehow be omitted from the log. He jibbed at that, and it took several glasses of his execrable gin combined with a large number of my double eagles before he admitted that it was just possible and he would speak to the crew to make sure no-one ‘blabbed’.
It was agreed that I should sleep on a makeshift cot in the comer of the galley in the forrard deck house, under the window away from the stove. I talked briefly with the cook, Ned Head, before dropping off to sleep. It seemed to me that the poor fellow was somewhat taken aback at the thought of sharing his galley with a real prince, albeit a black one! The last thing I heard as I fell into the gentle arms of Lethe was muttering coming from the adjoining partition of the crew’s quarters. I noticed the voice of Goodschaad raised, as though in anger.
The weather was somewhat improved the next morning and the captain kindly told me something about his ship. He was most proud of her, as one would expect from someone who was not only captain but also part owner. He showed me the ship’s papers which revealed the owners as ‘James H. Winchester, twelve twenty-fourths; Sylvester Goodwin, two twenty-fourths; Daniel T. Sampson, two twenty-fourths and Benjamin Briggs, Of Marion, State of Maine, eight twenty-fourths.’
Ned Head took me on a lightning tour of the brig. In fact, he told me that she was more correctly called a ‘half-brig’ or ‘hermaphrodite brig’, since she had two masts—the foremast square-rigged and the main-mast ‘schooner-rigged’, which means fore-and-aft. She had been built in Nova Scotia in 1860 and had originally been called the ‘Amazon’. Ned claimed that she had once had a reputation for being an unlucky ship, as on her maiden voyage in 1861, her young master, named Robert McLellan was taken ill and died shortly after. Then, just five years ago, she had gone aground at Cow Bay, near Cape Breton.
The syndicate that bought her, apart from changing her name, had also made some major structural changes. She retained her square stem and billet head, but her length was increased by four feet to 103 feet, her breadth to 25 feet 8 inches while her depth was still a mere 11 feet 8 inches. Her total tonnage went up to 282 tons.
Over luncheon I quizzed Captain Briggs about his present journey. Ned had shown me the cargo of 1701 barrels of crude alcohol, a substance which I hoped to be able to use in the repair of my craft. Captain Briggs told me that he had sailed from New York on November 4th and was bound for Genoa, via Cape St. Vincent and Gibraltar.
After luncheon, Mrs. Briggs entertained us right prettily by playing us some religious tunes on the elegant rosewood melodeon which stood in the captain’s cabin. Albert Richardson revealed himself as the owner of a pleasant tenor voice and we were all a little saddened when Mrs. Briggs had to stop as ‘it was time for Baby’s afternoon nap’.
I spent the afternoon in some preliminary work on my own craft, watched surreptitiously by Richardson and a couple of the Germans. I used my unusually acute hearing and was disturbed by the words of Goodschaad. As near as I can recollect them—and, you must remember, my friends, that I am thinking back to events that happened three hundred years ago—he said: ‘I fear we are turned into a charvering crib for black hussington bastards. There is no room for them in our country and there should be no room for them on this ship. We should rake his soskins and over with him!’
For the benefit of the ladies here tonight, I will not attempt a full translation of the German’s idiom. Suffice it to say that he cast aspersions upon my sexual origins and abilities; suggested that I dwelt in a place of dubious morality and recommended that my money should be stolen and my corpse dumped over the side of the ship to become food for fishes. An ironic ending for an inhabitant of the Planet Poseidon, you might think! (Loud laughter).
Fortunately, Goodschaad’s words seemed to meet with little approval, and I heard no more from them for the rest of the day. However, during the evening meal, I was unfortunate enough to be put off balance by the lurching of the ship and I jogged the arm of the unfortunate German, causing him to spill some exceedingly hot mulligatawny soup over his hand—yes, it was the injured one—and more of the same into his lap.
He leaped to his feet with a scream and a foul oath. Fortunately for all of us it was in his native tongue. Had it been otherwise. Captain Briggs would have struck him to the deck for he allowed no profanity in the presence of his wife. Goodschaad would not even listen to my apology but stamped off on deck, clutching the more severely wounded part of his anatomy. I could still hear him raging on the deck about me and cursing with a remarkable fluency. The mildest of his comments was that I was the diseased oddity, resulting from the pairing of a Tokyo one yen whore and a spavined Jewish money-lender. Interestingly, I noticed that all the German sailors, and Goodschaad in particular, seemed possessed of a quite unusual hatred of any person and anything Jewish. I wondered then whether this might be a characteristic peculiar to the Aryan people!
There was an embarrassed silence in the saloon after the incident which was broken by the good captain. ‘I should take good care of yourself, Mister Zimbabwe (he had the sturdy distaste for any title of birth which was, and still is Mister President, a characteristic of the citizen of United America) for that man is the worst type of Kraut. He is stubborn, arrogant and will not forget a wrong. Neither does he have any love for those whose skin happens to be of a different hue to his own. If you’ll take my advice, sir, you’ll guard your back against him, for an accident can be mightily simple and easily arranged when one is in the middle of the old Atlantic. Perhaps you’ll accept the loan of this, sir.’
New Writings in SF 22 - [Anthology] Page 13