“No. I understand women.”
It made me laugh.
“Do you say so indeed? How can that be? You are a proper old tarry breeks, a son of a gun, a man master of an honourable profession and skilled in the way of a ship!”
“Ships are feminine, you know. But I understand women. I understand their passivity, gentleness, receiving impressions as in wax—most of all their passionate need to give—”
“Miss Granham, Mrs Brocklebank! And are there not bluestockings? This is no character of a female wit!”
He was silent for a while, then spoke heavily enough, as though I had defeated him in argument and dispirited him.
“I suppose not.”
He walked away and presently the quarterdeck was concerned once more with casting the log.
“Five and a half knots, Edmund. Write it in.”
“When I look back on this voyage—if I am alive to do so—I shall think that for all the danger there were compensations.”
“Whatever they were, they have got you through the middle or nearly.”
“Why so brusque?”
But he had turned away and was plainly more interested for the moment in the ship’s affairs than mine. A pipe was shrilling and men were moving here and there. The next watch was falling in just aft of the break of the fo’castle. Mr Smiles, the sailing master, appeared with Mr Tommy Taylor who was yawning like a cat. Smiles and Charles performed their ritual exchange. The duty watch fell out and dispersed to the wheel, the quarterdeck and positions throughout the upper deck. The off-duty watch was now drifting away to disappear into the fo’castle. In the belfry on the fo’castle the ship’s bell rang eight times in four groups of two.
Charles came back to me.
“Well, Mr Midshipman Talbot, you may go off duty until midnight tomorrow.”
“Good night then, or good morning. I shall remember this watch for the rest of my life—fifty years or more!”
He laughed.
“Say that after you have stood a year or two of them!”
But I was right, not he.
So I went off watch, suddenly overcome with sleepiness at four o’clock in the morning and yawning like Mr Taylor. I opened the door of my hutch and found that the lantern had burned or blown out. But I seemed still to be in conversation with Charles. I got my oilskins and seaboots off somehow in the moonless hutch, tumbled into my bunk, struck some eyebolt or other and cursed it sleepily. Nothing could keep me from falling into a dreamless sleep.
*
It was many days before I in my ignorance realized what had happened. Charles in his care of me had taken on the burden of the middle watch partly, perhaps, to relieve the other officers, but mainly, I am convinced, to spare me the dark hours of that dreadful cabin! It was just like his provision of dry clothing for me. The extraordinary fellow, where he felt himself esteemed, responded with such generosity, such warm and manly thoughtfulness as I had not experienced since the days of Old Dobbie or even earlier! It was in him, so to say, a pedestrian care which contrived much out of small things. It was a kind of science or study of domestic donation, trifles set aside, saved, little schemes, manoeuvres, which he would not for the world have known to others but which must at last come to be understood by the caring recipient. It was an odd trait in a fighting sailor, I thought—yet not so strange when you think of the greater part of his career as a ship’s husband, who is a man either shopkeeper and agent for the “domestic” care of a ship in port, or the ship’s officer most responsible for and attending to her internal economy!
So I slept and the moon set and the sun came up, though not in my dark hutch. I was positively shaken awake by Phillips. He would not let me go back to sleep but continued to shake me.
“Go away, man. Let me be.”
“Sir! Wake up, sir!”
“What the devil is the matter with you?”
“You got to get up, sir. The captain wants you.”
“What for?”
“They’re getting married this morning.”
A marriage at sea! For sure the idea does at once summon a variety of comments and did so in our ship, I believe. Comments! They had been varied enough at the engagement! But now—Had the reader himself received nothing but the merest intelligence of the fact, his first thought might be “Couldn’t they wait?” His next would be the converse, “Oh, so they couldn’t wait!” But the whole ship knew much more than the mere fact. They knew that a man (respected forrard!) was dying. His reason for marrying could not be one for jesting comment. But aft, opinions on the man I discovered to be neutral or a little on his side. Then again, the lady he was marrying had literally undergone a sea change. Miss Granham, brought up in circumstances which some would consider easy, had, by the death of Canon Granham, been forced to school herself into the behaviour and appearance of a governess, no more. Unexpectedly presented with the prospect of an alliance with a man of even easier circumstances than those of a canon of the Church of England, she had divested herself of both the appearance and the behaviour of a governess as quickly as she could. Or am I so certain where the behaviour is concerned? I believe she was by nature a woman of great dignity, intelligence and—austerity. She had also, as I was beginning to discover, a certain warmth, as unexpected as welcome. Given all this, that she had submitted to the man’s astonishing advances wounded me more than I could understand! I believe she had been the first lady to present me with a proper view of the dignity possible to the sex and I was—disappointed. Oh, that young man! However, there could be little about the marriage for rejoicing. It might well call forth those tears which lesser females are ever ready to shed.
I will report what I can of the event. For sure it must be a report like Captain Cook’s, though the participants were white people rather than black savages, and some of them were gentlefolk. It was as if the whole ship was determined to exhibit at least a little of human nature in the raw—its innate superstition, its ceremoniousness, its joy when forced by the necessity of procreation to celebrate the animal in man!
Let me be precise. There is rather more here of the woman than the man. Miss Granham was visited early by Mrs East, Mrs Pike and Mrs Brocklebank. I am told that she had had to be persuaded out of her seaman’s rig, her slops. The whole female section of our company was determined that she should be properly dressed for the sacrifice! Yet this was make-believe! The man was dying and—though they did not know it—the sacrifice had already—but that is complicated. In any case there was an outbreak of the warm remark, the risqué, even the downright salacious, and some drinking to go with it, as is customary on these occasions. Inevitably it was young Mr Tommy Taylor who went far beyond what was proper, even at a wedding. For looking forward to an hypothetical, an impossible honeymoon, he remarked in a voice breathless and split with his usual hyaena laughter—I call it usual, but as the months passed it seemed to me that the boy began to disappear and the “hyaena” become customary—I have lost myself. He remarked, and in the presence of at least one lady, that Miss Granham was about to resemble an admiral’s handrope. When rashly asked what the similarity was, he replied that the lady was about to be “wormed, parcelled and served”. In sheer disgust I took it on myself to give him a clout over the head which must have made that organ ring and did, I was glad to see, leave him with his eyes crossed for as much as a minute.
The congregation which assembled in the lobby was gallant and pathetic. A procession of emigrants emerged the wrong, the way forbidden to them, up the ladder from the gundeck to the passenger lobby. They mixed, uninvited, with the passengers—Mr Brocklebank wearing a stock of pink material and divested of his coach cloak! The men wore favours, some, I thought, dating back to the “entertainment”. The women had made efforts and were neat in costume if nothing more. Naturally enough, I changed into the appropriate costume. Bowles and Oldmeadow had never been out of it. Little Mr Pike was not to be seen. There was much chattering and laughter.
Now the most extraordinary change occurred, as if
“Heaven smiled” on the ceremony! For there came a new noise altogether. The watch on deck was dragging the canvas cover and then the planking off the skylight. The gloom of the lobby was changed so that for a time we were in the same kind of modified daylight as you would find in some ancient village church. I am sure the change caused as many tears as smiles, this reminder of distant places.
Six bells rang in the forenoon watch. The canvas chair was bundled out of Prettiman’s cabin. The noise of assembly diminished suddenly. Captain Anderson appeared, glum as ever, if not indeed more so. Benét followed him, carrying under his arm a large brown-covered volume which I supposed rightly to be the ship’s log. The captain wore the rather splendid uniform in which he had dined in Alcyone. I had a mental picture of Mr Benét (the image of a flag lieutenant) murmuring to him, “I think, sir, it would be appropriate if you was to wear your number ones.” Well, for sure, Benét was wearing his and meditating, it might be, a polite, poetical tribute to the bride. The groom, of course, remained helplessly in his bed. Captain Anderson went into Prettiman’s hutch.
Miss Granham appeared. There was a gasp and a murmur, then silence again. Miss Granham wore white! The dress may have been hers, of course I cannot tell. But the veil which concealed her was one which Mrs Brocklebank had worn to protect her complexion. Of that I am sure, for it had provided a provoking concealment. Behind Miss Granham and from her hutch—how had they managed to cram themselves in?—came Mrs East, Mrs Pike and Mrs Brocklebank. The bride moved the few feet from her hutch to the bridegroom’s with a certain stately grace, not diminished by the fact that she kept a cautious hand near the rail. As she passed, the women curtsied or bobbed, the men bowed or knuckled their foreheads. Miss Granham stepped over the threshold and entered her fiancé’s cabin. Benét stood outside. I and Oldmeadow pushed our way to the door. Benét was contemplating Miss Granham’s back in a kind of trance. I plucked him by the sleeve.
“We are the witnesses. Oblige us by stepping back.”
Benét obeyed at last and a murmur rose from the crowd and passed away. Miss Granham was standing by the bunk, level with Prettiman’s shoulders, and all at once a simple idea occurred to me—so simple that it seemed no one had thought of it. Prettiman lay with his head to the stern!
Miss Granham put back her veil. It is, I think, unusual for the bride to face the congregation—but then, everything was unusual. Her face was pink—with embarrassment, I suppose. The colour did not look like fard.
I now have to report on a series of shocks which Edmund Talbot experienced. To begin with, after she had put back her veil, the bride shook her head. This set her earrings in motion. They were garnets. I had last seen them ornamenting the ears of Zenobia Brocklebank during that graceless episode when I had had to do with her. I remembered them distinctly, their little chains flying about Zenobia’s ears in the extremity of her passion! This was disconcerting; but I have to own, and it may have been the influence of the general air of lawful lubricity, that I found the fact flattering.
Miss Granham carried a bouquet. She did not know what to do with it, for she had no bridesmaids and the only publicly plausible recipient was Miss Brocklebank, now declining in her cabin. The bouquet was not made of cloth as were the favours which some of the congregation wore. It consisted of real flowers and greenery! I know that. For in the absence of a bridesmaid, the bride looked round her, then thrust out her arm at me and forced the bunch into my hands! All the world knows what will happen to the lucky girl who gets the bouquet, and there was an exclamation from Oldmeadow, then a howl of laughter from the congregation. At once my face was far redder than Miss Granham’s. I clutched the thing and felt the softness and coolness of real leaves and flowers. They were, they must have been, from Captain Anderson’s private paradise! Benét must have induced the sacrifice. “I think, sir, the whole ship would be gratified if you was to honour the lady with a flower or two from your garden!”
The next and last shock was delivered by the captain to everyone who heard it. He raised his prayer book, cleared his throat and began.
“Man that is born of woman—”
Good God, it was the burial service! Miss Granham, that intelligent lady, went from pink to white. I do not know what I did but the next time I looked at my bouquet it was sadly damaged. If any words followed this awful mistake I never heard them in the shrieks and giggles of hysteria which were followed by a rustle as our Irish contingent crossed themselves over and over again. Benét took a step past me and I had to haul him back. Captain Anderson fumbled with his book, which he had opened so thoughtlessly or which had opened itself at the fatal page, and now he dropped it, picked it up and fumbled again. Even his hands, accustomed to all emergencies and dangers, were trembling. The roots of our nature were exposed and we were afraid.
His voice was firm and furious.
“Dearly beloved—”
The service had been taken flat aback and was some time in returning to an even keel. Mr East, muttering what may have been an apology, pushed in past me and Anderson and placed the bride’s hand in his. Benét was trying to get in and I held him back, but he hissed at me:
“I have the ring!”
So the thing was done. Did I detect a faint trace of scorn in the bride’s face as she found herself literally being handed over? Perhaps I imagined it. Everyone held their peace as far as possible. No objections having been raised, this spinster and this bachelor were now both of them cleared for the business of the world and might do with each other what they would or could. Anderson neither congratulated the groom nor felicitated the bride. There was a sense, I suppose, in which such an omission was proper, seeing how little joy the two had to expect of the marriage. However, he leaned down over the writing flap and fiddled with documents. He opened the ship’s log, signed papers on the opened page, then held the book open over the sick man. Prettiman had a sad job of signing his name upside down. Miss Granham, not according to custom, signed her new name, Letitia Prettiman, firmly and legibly. I signed, Oldmeadow signed. The captain presented her “lines” to the bride rather as if he had been giving a receipt. He grunted at Prettiman, nodded round, and left with the ship’s log which I have no doubt he felt had been rendered a little ridiculous by the unusual entry.
We had now to complete our business. I felicitated Mrs Prettiman in a low voice and touched Prettiman’s hand. It was cold. Rivulets of perspiration coursed past his closed eyes. When I remembered my great idea to improve his situation I opened my mouth to explain it. But a hearty shove from behind told me that I was in the way of Benét and Oldmeadow crowding forward. I turned resentfully, hoping for a quarrel, though it is difficult to understand why. The congregation were trying to crowd in and I had some difficulty in getting away from the bunk. The people had no knowledge of the proprieties and seemed to desire only to press the dying man’s hand. Indeed, the first one tried to kiss it but was prevented by a faint rebuke from him.
“No, no, my good fellow! We are all equal!”
I squirmed away. I needed air. I had the crushed bunch of leaves and flowers in my hand. One flower was strangely foreign—what they call an orchid, I think. I got into the open air to throw the thing away but could not. Phillips, my servant, was coming from Prettiman’s hutch.
“Phillips. Put these in water. Then leave them in Miss—Mrs Prettiman’s cabin.”
He opened his mouth, probably to object, but I went past him into my cabin and shut the door. I changed back into my seaman’s rig, then sat at the writing flap. I could not think what I was doing there. I leaned my head on it for a while, then reached out for a book, leafed it and put it back. I lay on the bunk, fully dressed, thinking of nothing and doing nothing.
I have just looked at those last two words. How strange they are, how foreign! They might be Chinese or Hindoo—doing nothing, doing nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. I laughed aloud. It was a genuine “cachinnation” which sprang of its own accord from my lungs. Charles had assured me that Miss Chumley w
ould not forget me. Miss Granham—Mrs Prettiman—had given me the real omen. She had thrown me her bouquet! I should be the next one to be married!
Nevertheless, as I lay there on my back, slow tears ran from the corners of my eyes and wetted my ears and pillow.
(9)
And then I fell asleep! The reason was the wholly unexpected behaviour of our world. We lived with noise of one sort or another. There was always the sound of the sea outside the hull, ship noises, feet on the deck, pipes, somewhere a loud and male voice cursing, squeaks and knocks from the rigging, groans from timber, sounds at that time all too frequently of a quarrel from one part of the ship or another—once, a fight. But what helped me into a deep sleep was nothing more than silence! Perhaps in our part of the ship people were exhausted by the wedding, but I cannot tell that. Charles gave the crew a “make and mend”, keeping the very fewest number of the crew on watch. As seamen do in these cases, the rest slept, I as well.
What brought me back to the real world was the sound of Deverel being put in irons! I started up and then realized that this metallic banging came from right forrard in the eyes of the ship and must be Coombs, the blacksmith, at his forge! It was the moment! I was fully dressed and I leapt out of my bunk, pulled on seaboots and hastened into the waist. The sea was spread out like watered silk, light blue, and a faint haze reduced the sun to a white roundel much like the full moon. There was not a breath of wind. Benét and the captain had found their flat calm! I fetched my lantern from the cabin and lighted it, then turned the flame down. I descended the ladders—past the wardroom and down again to the gun-room. Here for the first time I found it was empty except for the ancient midshipman Martin Davies, who grinned emptily at me from his hammock. I smiled back, since it was impossible not to, and then proceeded to make my way forward. At once I had to turn up the light. It was a dripping, a moist progress, but this time, mercifully steady. Why, even those balletic lanterns in the gun-room had hung still, and now what with my lantern and the flat calm I could have run along the narrow planking between the stacked stores. I saw things previously I had only felt or smelt or heard—a huge pillar which must have been the warping capstan, the dull gleam of twenty-four-pounder cannon, all “tompioned, greased and bowsed down” and beyond them again—for those were but iron barrels—the flat gleam of water and the gravel of our bilges. Two walls, wooden for the most part and irregular, packing cases, boxes, bags, sacks of every size, some seeming pendant above my head—but there is no way of describing that hold, half-seen, partly understood, with a narrow way of planking which led through it along the keelson! Here was a ladder on my right that Mr Jones had lashed in place as an entry to the kind of loft which he had taken over as his sleeping quarters, living quarters and office! I chose to ignore it and made my way onward to the vast bulk of the mainmast and the pumps—
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