The Great Eastern
Page 18
And I wondered if my life—had my life been allowed to continue as planned—might have sailed a parallel course. Would I now be seen as Isambard Kingdom Dunderhead, father of the Washed-Up Leviathan? Would I by now be a figure in my own wax museum, gesturing toward the gangway of a ship that no longer sailed, but was instead some double-hulled public house, serving up whiskey-by-paddlewheel?
But my musings as to what humiliations might have been in store for I.K.B. had the reputations of I.K.B. and his ship been for the past five years yoked together were soon put to abrupt halt. I followed the article to an interior page, set in finer type, and read—inasmuch as I do not have Portuguese—that my Great Eastern, her grand paddlewheel replaced by one of random diameter, her grand salon hacked out to accommodate cargo, had fallen yet again. Was now no longer liner nor merchant ship but worse: a cable-layer. And engaged in that task was about to set out from Foilhummerum, Valentia, Ireland. Massive spools of twisted copper in tow. On a mission to lay on the sea’s bed a line between old world and new at the behest of Mr. Field.
It did not take an excess of empathy to feel for the ship, given the depredations to which it had been subjected. It did not take an excess of imagination to realize—nay, to know—that we were now en route to destroy Mr. Field’s cable. Knowing the captain’s disregard for innocent life, it would not be large leap to say that he would have no hesitation in deploying Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Nautilus to engage Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Great Eastern in sea-battle. My mightiest creation, and my most ingenious one, set upon one another. I know, now, why the captain had given me this sheaf of Portuguese newsprint to read. It fills my heart with no little sadness, and more dread than the soul can carry.
If the Nautilus were to be pitched against the Great Eastern, ‘tis an engagement I cannot imagine this craft—perhaps one-hundredth the mass of my great iron ship—to survive.
And if I know one thing to a certainty, it is that Isambard Kingdom Brunel, at yesterday morning’s sunrise a man with liberty within his grasp, will ne’er again find home. If in sea-battle the Great Eastern were to make short work of a sub-marine attacker I would be deprived of my life. But also: would be made free.
* * *
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LET US NOW close our engineer’s journal, leaving its pages to rest within their buckram binding, and bid for the moment an au revoir to our Mr. Brunel: his dilemma at this juncture neatly stated, deeply felt.
Let us take up our story, then, from another vantage: that of our sea captain Mr. John Ahab, as he steers unknowingly into battle with his nemesis, recently re-christened: outfitted by our Engineer; captained by our Prince.
We have reached the point where the destination is closer than the departed port. There is no harbor here, no turning back. The horizon is flat all round with neither shore nor human construction to offer hope, shelter, salvation. Out here there is naught save the voice of John Ahab, lone and only, John Ahab, whom now we shall allow to speak.
TWENTY-ONE
A.
Ye heard me: A.
First letter of the God-damned alphabet. A. No letter before it. First one. When they only needed one, it was A. Quick, mates: who’s the first man? Adam. And what’s his first letter? A. Mine the same. A-hab. Accent on the first. Not a-HAB, like ye were making to sneeze. No, not that. A-hab. Starts with the first letter, which is A. Are ye getting me? Are ye getting what Ahab is saying to ye about First Things? Later we can talk about Last Things. But that be later. And maybe we won’t talk about them at all. For now just say the name, will ye? Ahab! There ye go. John Ahab! Ye might make it yet. Ha! Ye might not.
Say my name and be gone with ye. But say it right, man, or ye’ll be taking a stick and I’ll be jamming it up yer bunghole. And ye’ll be whining like the stuck pig and Ahab will yawp. Big and loud. Like an A-merican (no accident there!). When they only needed one letter the letter was A. Eons pass. Then BCD. Then all the other woman letters. Letters weak with blub. With bla. With blab. With the blabble of women at a table. Ye don’t need words if ye’ve got yer A. Ahab. Adam. America. What more needs be said? Do not mess with an American lest ye be reamed. Remember that all thy days and thou shalt not go wrong. But make the missed step or defy Ahab’s word or mock yer Ahab in his person then Ahab he doth say
Ha! He doth say
Aha! He doth say
Ahab!
And ye, as ye mewl, can say it too. Ahab. Where the death wind meets the sea.
* * *
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IF YE KNOW yer Ahab, Captain John Ahab, captain now of the ship Valparaiso, escort to the Great Iron Boat, if ye know him at all ye know then that he absented himself from the public foofaraw round the arrival and departure of said Great Iron Boat in Foilhummerum. Yer Ahab, he joined the mission but later, at the Splice. Field, he’d wanted Ahab to be with them in Foilhummerum to participate in celebration abysmal. Parade of dignitaries. Perorations as the sundial sweeps. Hosannas of civic pride. Solemn, ragged parades of spectators. Here massed, here missing, juts and gaps, a sailor’s scurvy’d smile. Tents made of old sails. Pipers and fiddlers, so help me God. Itinerant gamesters doing good business with the Spoil-Five. And the marks upon whom they preyed, eyes turned away from the game toward the horizon.
Why so turned? Why so gathered? To see the Great Eastern! Not to see but to have seen. Stories for the grandchildren: Once I saw a giant ugly iron paddlewheel railway-built floating contrivance right here in Foilhummerum Bay I did I did. Did you really Grandfather? Yes I really. May I then adore you Grandfather? Yes you may—and will you sit upon your grandfather’s lap, little girl little girl?
Why Ahab would want to witness such a foul corrupted gathering is a question so fathomless as to have no bottom. As ye know: Ahab he does not want to be on land. Accordingly Ahab told one thing and did another. Ahab will see, Mr. Field, if Ahab can join thee. That’s what Ahab said. That’s not what Ahab did. To Mr. Field the pomp and vulgarity were as precious ambergris. To Ahab, as whale vomit.
So I’ll not tell ye of the festivities at Berehaven where the ungainly Leviathan first made land. Of the screw-steamer Caroline she had in tow. Of how the tow-rope broke, and how the Caroline had to make her own way to Valentia under strong gale winds and upon a heavy sea. Nor of the laying of the earth cable and its laborious attachment to the ass-end of the sea cable on the cliffs above the tedious town whose name we have repeated so often it will not again be mentioned. Nor of the paying out of the cable from the prow of one ship to the stern of the next, from the Caroline to her sister steam-screw ship the Hawk, up to the instrument house. Nor of the mindless, endless round of Orations, odes upon the Greatness of the Occasion, culminating in the valedictory of the Knight of Kerry, whose unbounded salute to the Queen and to the President of the United States lent nothing to the enterprise, yet subtracted mightily from the store of human contentment.
No, these ye will not hear from Ahab as Ahab was not present. No fool, Ahab. He met them, rather, at the Splice, some miles out from Foilhummerum, where he needn’t have waking hours or sea-borne dreams troubled by lubbers in antic array. No, it was not until the hip-heavy Leviathan made the Splice, her cable to the one hauled from Ireland in relay by the steam-screws aforementioned, 51°50’, N., Long 11°2’20” W., watched on by the Hawk; by Her Majesty’s sloop-of-war the Sphinx; by the Terrible, whose state of repair echoed its name; and of course mine own ship, mine own. So damn many escorts, so little yield! The town wallflower taken to the ball by a sextet of lolly’d-up gents, each more eager than the next to quit the premises. The combined folly of Mr. Brunel and Her Majesty’s government knows no equal in the world contemporary, or e’en in the world historic. Ahab is an American and as an American he laughs at them, he laughs upon rising, he laughs yet again just before embracing the arms of Morpheus. Nor doth he conceal his laughter. Ahab is from the New World, father, and if his manners be crude, his way of speaking rough, his stride long, his reverence lacking, why then, come at us again! And see if y
e fare better this time round.
Capt. Anderson of the Great Misshapen said that there was eating and drinking to be done and so dispensed the hospitalities of his ship in a kind and genial way. This too was an evening at which Ahab was not in attendance. Ahab was not hired to be social nor to befriend the captain of that large and accursèd craft. He was hired to protect the cable from the Leviathan—and so the obligation was to the enterprise, not to any of its associated ships and crew.
Ahab is the captain of but one ship, this one. His task is to stand vigilant, then to strike. His other task: to protect his own crew. Doth ye hear me, mates? Ahab will not let ye be harmed. Unless there is no choice. But in circumstances that dark, that dire, we are all of us done for. Will ye see Ahab pulling from the heavy seas the bodies of crew aboard the G____E______? Not until his own men are first secured. Every man jack, down to yer holystoner.
And what did they eat aboard the iron-hulled sea-sloth? It was not salt that they ate. Not pemmican, not bacalao, not any of the sad and tawdry victuals that we seamen eat, no. They ate lamb! Lamb from Ireland, though it was July! They ate pheasant! Pheasant fresh-killed, neither salted nor iced, slide yer finger boys between gum and teeth to extract the lead shot. They ate salmon, not the smoked variety beloved by the Russians and the Jews, not the brined variety beloved by the Laplanders, no, it was salmon, boys, fresh from the sea, and scaled, and boned, and tossed over a fire, and ate just like that. Later they had fancy French dessert consisting of meringue (the white of the egg, no yolks at all whipped then baked); and caramel (that’s burnt sugar, me boyos!). All shaped and fancied and set down on a bed of crème anglaise. (That’s English cream and fuck ye all.)
What did they drink with the meal just described? Why they drank wine! They drank Bord’eaux, which in the manner of the creamy English they called Claret. The captain Anderson, he being a man of refined taste don’t ye know, he pulled from his store some red Burgundies. And then they drank Madeira, from butts and casks that had twice crossed the equator. There was a Malmsey, yes, and a Bual, too. And of course the liberal application of Grog, because yer sailor, don’t ye know, likes nothing better than to be bathed in Rum. Why the Rum? Because it comes from Barbados, and the islands nearby, where they were given it, in exchange for African cargo. Ye get the Africans, we get the Rum!
That’s commerce, lads. Who makes that commerce possible? Sailors we! Who makes the profit! There are many answers to that one, lads, but among them is not thee. Nor thee. Nor Ahab. The elaborated dance of freight doth cross the seas of the globe, and in London and New York they celebrate with the proceeds while we sail on. ‘Tis the way. And woe to he that questions why, or lifts up the lid to see what lies beneath.
And now ye be wondering: Ahab, he says he stayed aboard his own ship, no venturing onto that of Capt. Anderson—yet he doth seem to know, and know in some detail, what was et and what was drunk. How can that be? Doth he have telescopes so full of power that they see through doubled-iron hull? Can he tell just by sound, by the scrape of fork ‘gainst china, what be the victual emitting such frequency? No, and no. Or if he can, Ahab not be telling ye, that is for sure and certain. If Ahab have the Powers, Ahab be saving that knowledge for his Self.
No, Ahab knows on ‘count of Ahab sent his crew. Ahab will not dine with electricians aboard a floating railway car. But he treasures his afterguard almost above himself. So when the skiff came he saw them aboard it, each of them and every last man Jack, so that they might eat, and drink, and celebrate the Splice. He sent the sturdy, honest Evander Jaques, a first mate as was his father before him, out of New Bedford. He sent Ed and Vin and Jonesy Jones, his bowline-pullers. He sent his carpenter, named Chips. (Was he called Chips because he was a carpenter, or did he become a carpenter because his name was Chips? The mysteries of the sea!) He sent his boatsteerers, his swabbers, his polishers. (Yes they have names, but Ahab shall not here name them.) He sent his binnacle man and his sheet man. (Like-wise.) He even sent Langhorne, his chanteyman, who otherwise would have stayed on the Valparaiso, the better to entertain his Ahab with mellifluous song.
Reuben was no sailor,
Ranzo, boys, Ranzo
Reuben was a tailor;
Ranzo, boys, Ranzo
Ranzo joined The Beauty,
Ranzo, boys, Ranzo
And did not know his duty:
Ranzo, boys, Ranzo
They called Ranzo a lubber,
Ranzo, boys, Ranzo
And made him eat whale blubber;
Ranzo, boys, Ranzo
The Beauty was a whaler,
Ranzo, boys, Ranzo
Ranzo was no sailor;
Ranzo, boys, Ranzo
They set him holy stoning,
Ranzo, boys, Ranzo
And cared not for his groaning;
Ranzo, boys, Ranzo
So: four mates, four boatsteerers, carpenter, cooper, steward, chanteyman, and cook. But Ahab he stayed alone, as was his custom and wont, dining on salted meat, or was it meated salt. And did without song, save the borborygmus of his own guts and entrails. And did without fun, save the satisfactions of solitude.
True, after his repast he came abovedecks, and considered at length the moon, waning gibbous, and those stars whose view the northern latitudes do afford. They shone down upon him, distant, white, remote, uncaring, arraying themselves in ways that meant much to the Ancients, and to Ahab not a thing at all. They mayswell have been crystals of salt spilled atop a black tablecloth.
And so at ten post meridiem, Greenwich time, Sunday, 3rd July, after a dinner aboard the Ate Greasetern of which he did not partake, and well-made wine he did not drink, yer captain watched as the crew of that ship, bellies full, heads aswim in good Madeira and bad Grog, payed out the cable, discharging it slow and deliberate over the stern of the ship. From tight coil to long lazy strand, metal dipped in gutta-percha, arcing low, into the sea, then beneath it, to lay against the bottom of the sea, where it would ne’er be disturbed. Not until the very end of Time. To which Ahab doth say, and ye say with him: ha!
* * *
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NOW THERE’S HAWSER-LAID rope. The kind ye know, likely as not. (Though, upon thought, ye may know nothing.) The hawser, it’s three strand, meaning three ropes coiled into one. Now the three ropes can be coiled in a pair of ways. There’s with the clock and against it. The turn to the right and the turn to the left. When yer with the clock what do we call that? We call that coiled with the sun. Because that is the way of the sun across the sky. When yer anti-clock what do we call that? We do not call it anything, ye royal termagant! Why? Because we only coil with the sun. We are sailors and we do things the way they are done.
Four strand, now that’s a thicker rope. What do we call it? We call it shroud-laid. Also with the sun, because and &c. But with four.
Shroud is what we use to wrap the dead. But yer shroud rope ain’t about death. Least not always. ‘Tis a thicker rope for the harder tasks. Sheets. Tacks. Rigging. Do we call it a shroud-laid rope? We do not. Do we call it a plain rope? Nope. We don’t call it a rope, be it three strand or four, coiled with the sun or contra. A rope to us is: a line. We don’t care what it’s of. Just what it does. From Manila that’s all well and good but we don’t want yer history yer stories yer palaverblahver about the bent-over brown men who gather the strands—When we need to pull a sail ‘gainst the wind we need a line. That’s all. Line. Four letters describing the short path between two points. That’s a line to Euclid and it’s a line to any Argonaut. Didn’t think yer Ahab knew his Classics? Well jam the pole in yer own sad self!
Then there’s cable-laid. That’s for cables, ha. And cables is why we’re here. Ahab and all who serve Ahab. The ship that carries ‘em. The other ships that escort it. All here because of cables. Cable-laid cable. And what do we mean? Children, what do we mean? Cable-laid means more than four. Could be five. Could be six. Could be an orang-utan for all the fuck we care. More than four is cable-laid and shut yer gaping hole.<
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The cable here is made of copper. Wound into ropes and then the ropes wound together. But then: wrapped in gutta-percha. From Malay. Sap of a tree what grows there. A liquid and then it’s not. Electricity won’t go through it. Fish won’t eat it. Bends when it has to. Man named Chatterton mixed it with tar. Stockholm tar! Some rosin, too, who knows what else. Then called it his own: Chatterton’s compound! Well hell and baloo! We know what it is. Gutta-percha, plain and simple, with some shit mixed in. Chatterton we don’t need thee! Stop sticking thy name where it doth not belong. Ahab says: When they write in history’s book they’ll be calling it gutta-percha. Yer gone, Chatterton! And not coming back as long as some tree in Malay has the thick sweet sap.
The thing out here is water. Have to be blind not to see it. Deaf not to hear it. The other thing out here is the salt. Ye can smell it and ye can taste it. Can ye hear salt? Mayhaps! Ahab he doth hear it in the water, one tiny piece of salt bumping up against its brother. Ahab hears all.
Also: can taste it. Because without the salt: the rot. What is pemmican? It’s the meat with all the wet drained out of it. Drained by what? Drained by salt. Keeps forever. Maggots won’t eat it. We eat it. Because we’re sailors we are. Surrounded by salt water and they make us eat salt! Where’s the logic in that? ‘Tis the logic of the insane. The boot in the face. Whose boot? Their boot. Whose face? Our face. No. Yer face. My face is here, laughing at ye, ye orang-utan pemmican eater! Ye muncher of bacalao! Any civilized country, anywhere on land, bacalao they soak it first. For hours. For days. We, we chew it dried. We feast on desiccated shit.
But we do it for a reason.
Reason is, there’s this cable. Cable-laid! Of copper! Of gutta-percha and shut up, Chatterface! And it breaks. Because things break. Because of currents. Because who knows what’s at the bottom of the sea. Currents, there is nil ye can do anent. Breakage random—again, there is nil ye can do anent. The unknown bottom of the North Atlantic? Well we don’t know, do we? And if we don’t know— Ye got it this time. Sing along with me: there is nil ye can do anent.