“But what does a fish-man want with a land woman?” Singleton persisted. “It’s unnatural.”
“Unnatural? Oh man!” said Charley, rolling his eyes. “When you’ve been on ship long enough, any kind of woman starts to looks good—black, white, red, yellow—and if those mermaids looks like Dublin’s tattoo they aren’t so bad …”
This started a new round of discussion about the effects of a prolonged lack of female companionship and the merits of women of different nations, a conversation spiced by personal observations that ran on into the night. The sinking of the Ly-ee-Moon had been put behind them, and was not referred to again.
II
The next morning, the watch reported flotsam ahead. There was planking, a hatch cover, then some mattresses and a sea chest. It was all clustered together, carried out to sea on the same powerful current that dragged debris away from the coast like a river in the sea. Shortly afterwards the lookout called that a boat was sighted, and the captain grimly ordered a quarter-boat to be lowered.
The lifeboat proved to be empty, but there were dark stains here and there that might have been blood. Among the litter in the scuppers was a boathook, the metal smeared with black to suggest it had been used as a weapon. The boat, as well as a lifebelt recovered later, carried the name of the Ly-ee-Moon.
The Amaryllis sailed through more drifts of flotsam, and an hour later a second boat was sighted. There was no sign of life aboard, and the boat crew set out again with little energy. But when they reached the lifeboat, the boatswain waved back and shouted. There was a man huddled under a sheet of canvas, and he was weak but alive.
When we glimpsed him coming aboard, the second survivor of the Ly-ee-Moon looked drunk or drugged. He was a European, a long lean man and dressed as a sailor. The old Man directed Podmore and Singleton to carry the wretch to his stateroom, where Yang, the ship’s steward, pressed a tin mug of coffee laced with rum on him.
Podmore helped the sailor to a seat, gave him a fresh jacket, and offered to stay and help, but Butcher turned him out. Yang was on hand, though, and the steward was an incorrigible gossip who had shipped with Podmore for many years. Yang was the main conduit of information from the old Man: if he was looking at charts for a new course one night, or preparing a report, Yang would tell all about it. Podmore relayed the tale as faithfully as a semaphore.
“Yang says he righted himself quick when he sat down with his coffee,” said Podmore. “He was admiring the books on the bookcase and the furnishings as though he’d never seen anything so fine. So straight up the old Man asks him who he was and what happened to the Ly-ee-Moon.”
“‘My name is Thomas Crocker, your honour,’ he says, ‘and I’m at Long Acres farm hard by Marnhull, in Somerset,’” said Podmore. “I heard before from his voice he was West Country. So the old man asks him what he means about farms when he’s a sailor.”
“‘I can do any work you name about the farm, your honour,’ says this Crocker. ‘But I never durst go to sea and leave my home. Not with my mother worrying so.’ That’s what he said!”
“And he’s got an anchor on his arm. Did you ever see a landsman with one of those?” asked O’Neill.
“Never go to sea?” asked Singleton. “How did he get here then?”
“Yang says the old Man asks him the same thing, and he looks back stupid and says he’s never left his village. And when he asks Crocker where he thinks he is now, the man says, ‘In your honour’s manor-house, of course.’ And the old Man asks him what’s that out the port-hole, he looks out and says it’s fields and meadows. But he can’t quite make out which direction it is to his farm and can his honour direct him before his mother worries about him.”
“Which direction to his farm?” said Charley. “Man, he’s got a long, long walk to Dorset from this place.”
“He’s simpleton,” said Singleton. “Or he’s gone stark mad.”
“The old Man keeps asking more questions and Crocker gives all the same replies,” said Podmore. “Finally, Yang says, the captain asks him how old he is, and Crocker says ‘Fifteen year this Easter, your honour.’ From a man who’s thirty if he’s a day!”
“Stark mad,” repeated Singleton.
“You know when a vessel’s in trouble with high seas?” said Charley. “You jettison the cargo overboard so she rides higher. I think it’s like that in a man’s head. Sometimes he throws things out and lightens the load because he’ll sink otherwise.”
“It’s called amnesia,” said Nilsen. “I saw a man get a blow from a swinging bag of rice who didn’t know what day it was afterwards. It knocked the memories out of him and he couldn’t remember a thing from the past week.”
“There was that Foster who forgot everything he was told.”
“He was just an idler.”
“No, it was his memory…” The conversation broke up into several different dialogues.
“And that was all they got from Crocker,” said Podmore. “He was right there on the Ly-ee-Moon when it happened, no doubt of it, but he don’t remember a blessed thing. The old Man had one last idea and he ordered Yang to bring in the native Matthew and asked if Crocker knew him. The poor fellow broke down and sobbed and begged the old Man to have mercy on him. So now he’s got a cabin midships too. Like that Matthew, they’re both shut away for their own good.”
“Two madmen,” said Singleton. “This ship’s a reg’lar floating Bedlam.”
“I’ve said that before,” said Charley.
“Nearer the point,” said Podmore, “is the matter of what sank Ly-ee-Moon. We’ve no more idea now than we did yesterday. Ships don’t just run on to marked rocks on a coast full of lighthouses.”
That started of another free-for-all, with theories spun and assertions made with only the slenderest basis in fact. Unless the captain plotted a risky course, or if the crew were unskilled or careless or drunk, a ship like Ly-ee-Moon should be perfectly safe in home waters. Sudden squalls, crew mutinies, or cargo fires were all chewed over, old histories brought to light and old stories turned over. The subject of bad luck and curses came up more than once. They were still talking when the order came for lights down. During the whole time not one of them had mentioned the fish-men that Matthew had seen, or claimed he saw, after the Ly-ee-Moon went down.
Hall took his turn on watch at midnight. He was an apprentice, and the youngest of the crew. He had been pulled out of uneasy sea-dreams and looked across the water with a new sense of anxiety. The moon was up, and the Amaryllis was ploughing a solitary furrow upon a sea that appeared perfectly circular and featureless. The surface shimmered like grey silk, undulating gently and hypnotically. Steam trailed behind her in an endless pennant running up into the sky.
Something had sunk the Ly-ee-Moon. And if the New Hebridean’s account could be relied on at all—and Hall did not know that it could—the sinking happened sometime in the depths of night. The men had not tried to scare him with stories, as they so often did. That was a sign they were worried too.
Far ahead of the ship was endless dark, and she steamed straight for it. In the forecastle Hall had felt safe enough. On deck his nerves thrummed like cables in the wind. Out here he felt the isolation, with no speck of human life from horizon to horizon, and the fathomless depths beneath them. Sometimes the ship felt big, but now she was just a tiny little boat in all this titanic darkness. The deeps below them were boundless, deeps filled with who knew what. They might be lurking below, crowds of them, watching the ship pass over them like men watching a balloon pass by. Except that unlike men on the ground, they could swim up from the deep …
Hall looked away from the sea to take in the familiar silhouette of the Amaryllis, and counted the riding lights. He paced up and down a few times. On another night he might have been fighting sleep. Butcher was no disciplinarian, but his standards were high, and Hall would feel the end of a rope if he was caught asleep, as well as suffering some more humiliating official punishment. Tonight, though, Hall was wide awake,
his senses tingling in the fine salt air.
They had left the wreck far behind them now, and the drift of flotsam and the two lifeboats, the empty one and the one with that man Crocker. The empty one was an oddity. It happened sometimes that a boat was launched empty, or came loose when a ship was going down. But there were those marks, and the signs that there had been some skirmish there. Just like Matthew’s night-long battle with the fish-men.
Hall stood at the rail, leaning on a stanchion, thinking of the impossibility of getting on to a moving ship from below. Flying fish could do it, but not a fish-man or a man-fish. The hull was sheer and did not afford a hold. Even the chains at the prow were too high, except maybe when she plunged through a high wave.
Hall was turning over this latest discovery when the gale blew up out of the dark. The wind strengthened, and the rigging began to moan. The storm appeared in the distance, white below and dark above, rushing towards them.
“Fasten yourself!” Butcher ordered, and Hall quickly roped himself to the rail, knotting and double knotting.
It seemed like just seconds later that Amaryllis sailed right into a big foaming sea, the ship rising up, seeming to launch herself into the air before plunging down with a lurch that made Hall seize hold of the stanchion. She continued with a gait like a galloping horse, throwing herself up and down with every wave.
The water was close beside the ship now, towering walls of green glass topped with snow. Then Amaryllis topped a wave and gave a sudden lurch to leeward, and a roller came sweeping over the deck. Hall hung on with his arms and legs as the torrent of icy water rushed over him; the ship rolled again and the wave was gone, but the deck was awash with white foam, streaming back over the side.
One of the boats had come loose and been carried across the foredeck; it now rested against the rail. The steam windlass was not secure and swung round with every roll, swinging its chains until it fouled in the rigging. There was no canvas up, but the masts tipped and bent with every roll.
The water had burst the door of the forecastle, and through the roaring he could hear the shouts and cries of alarm from below.
The men came up, hurrying to secure hatches and doors and portholes, clambering over the deck from handhold to handhold like a pack of apes, gripping hold of rails and ropes and ringbolts as they went. Three of them started to secure the loose boat, pausing at the upswing of every roll when they had to take hold, while others saw to the windlass and set lifelines.
“Heavy wind,” Podmore shouted to Hall as he passed.
The others did not stay on deck long completing their tasks, and in a few minutes Hall was alone.
The wind howled overhead, drawing strange moans from the rigging as it veered. Cold rain fell in short, intense showers that blanked out all visibility, as though immense bucketloads were being hurled down from an infinite height. Hall found himself shivering from the cold.
Hall had never seen a storm like it, had never imagined that the stories the others told were actually true. The ship boomed, and a vast sheet of white spray shot upwards and towered over him before collapsing again and soaking him afresh in salt water, stinging his eyes. The strength of the wind was enough to loosen his grip, and he struggled as though he were being wrestled. The deck slanted crazily beneath him, rolling to ridiculous, unheard-of angles, then suddenly dropping away, and it seemed that his feet were not on the ground but he was in mid-air, falling. She lurched upwards again, almost pulling the stanchion out of his grip, and the wind howled and plucked at him.
The starboard light shone feebly ahead of him in the dancing rain, and as he watched a moving mountain of water overtook it. He saw the head of the wave toppling over as it fell toward him.
A single thought raced through his mind: “My God—My God—My God—”
The stanchion was torn out of this hands, something struck him a blow on the chest, and Hall was suddenly afloat and borne whirling upwards. He expected to see the ship fall away as he was swept overboard, but the water rushed away and he thumped back on the deck, catching his chin a blow on the rail. The rope securing him had held.
Choking and coughing, half-drowned, Hall wrapped his arms and legs around the stanchion. He did not know if he was dead or alive. He just wanted it to be over.
The rolling continued for an hour, first from one direction and then from another, and sheets of spray spattered over him. But the worst of it was over. Butcher came, swinging arm over arm, and put another lamp on the starboard, shouting a greeting as he passed. The other men were back in the forecastle, except those on duty in the wheelhouse.
Hall became aware of the sounds of the ship. Sometimes the sound of heavy objects shifting and bouncing below could be heard as a new angle forced something loose. The gale had taken them all by surprise, and there had not been any preparations made. There would be breakages to pay for, and the owners would be putting hard questions to the captain.
The sea was still high, but the rolling was steady now, without the wild swings that threw you off-balance, and the waves boomed in steady cadence against the hull. The wind blew strong but steady.
The rail ahead dipped into the dark of the sea, then rose into the faint light of the sky, dipped and rose. And when it rose again it was changed, as though it was fouled with something, but the light was not good enough.
The light of the lantern caught movement midships. Hall could not be sure until he saw the glint of light off a hatch opening and a man dripping through the hatchway.
“Hi there!” called Hall, but his voice was lost in the wind.
The hatch swung and banged, swung and banged. That meant something was wrong, because what sailor would not fasten a hatch? Unable to think what it was but knowing his duty as the man on watch, Hall hesitated, then untied himself and, moving with the rolling of the ship, made his way across the deck, unhooking the lamp as he went.
Hall clambered through the hatch and down the ladder, holding the storm lamp up before him. Here were the cabins for supercargoes and passengers. They were all empty on this voyage, except for the two now occupied by the madman Crocker and the native Matthew. The decking was awash with four inches of water, sloshing around his feet the ship rolled.
The smell hit him as soon as he came in: a thick, fishy smell, the smell from a barrel of dried herring just open. Worse than that, a barrel that had gone off and mingled fish with decay.
As he turned the corner Hall saw moving shadows ahead. He held up the lamp in the dark and saw that there was not one man, but half a dozen of them, crowding the corridor by one of the doors. They did not have a lamp, and all he could see was the shape of their bodies, compressed by the shadows into ape-like form. They were all wearing the same greyish-green oilskins, foreign ones not like the brown-black oilskins on the Amaryllis.
As the light caught them from behind the six men all stopped dead and slowly turned around.
In a moment of nightmare, Hall’s lamp caught six pairs of enormous fish-eyes, six blunt animal snouts, and six open mouths filled with shark teeth. They were not wearing oilskins: that was their skin. They were all different shapes, but with the same finish, like vessels turned out by the same shipyard to different plans: a hulking brute, a squat midget, one stooped with long arms, another that seemed to go on all fours. One raised a hand, and the fingers were webbed and clawed. They gaped and started to shuffle towards him.
There was an open doorway beside him, and as the ship rolled Hall half jumped, half fell into the cabin and slammed the door, feeling for the bolt and pushing it shut. He had dropped the lamp in the corridor, and the cabin was as black as the pit. The only thing to be seen was the faint lighter circle of the porthole.
The door handle turned. There was a burst of shouting outside, not in any language that Hall could understand. They hammered on the door. Then something heavier thudded against the door—a man using his shoulder. But the door held solid.
Hall felt his way, pushing off the walls and bunk as he crossed it. He
was halfway to opening the porthole when the cold spray slashed through. He thought madly about whether he might be able to clamber out the porthole and climb up the side of the ship. That was sheer insanity. Going out was certain death; staying in was certain death.
Could there be any furniture he might wedge the door with? Hall, a plain seaman, had never been in these cabins. He felt around like a blind man, but his hands found another door handle: it was a connecting door into the next cabin. The ship rolled again, and with it there was a louder thud from the main door and a crunch of wood beginning to give way.
The connecting door was locked, but from this side: when Hall unbolted it the door opened easily and Hall fled through it, feeling his way into the next cabin.
Outside there was a commotion, shouting and croaking and battering, as though some heavy piece of lumber had bowled down the corridor. Hall hesitated a moment, then took his chance; as the ship rolled he opened the door into the corridor. His lamp was still alight, floating on the ankle-deep water in the corridor, but the scene illuminated by the feeble, rolling light made no sense. There was nothing but rolling shadows and thrashing limbs in the churning water. Hall caught a single glance before he dashed back to the square of faint light from the hatch above, jumping on to the ladder, leaving screeching and growling like fighting tigers behind him.
He scrambled back on to deck, barking his shins. He raced to the wheelhouse and tripped over a rope. He recovered his feet, skidded on the deck, and made the wheelhouse, where he seized the rope of the bell and rang a general alarm, deafening himself with the clangour, then raced to the forecastle as Butcher looked out angrily from the wheelhouse.
The forecastle door burst open before he got there, Singleton at the lead.
“Boarders!” Hall shouted. “We are attacked! Boarders!”
Men spilled out from the door like a new wave breaking over the foredeck. Some had snatched lamps from their holders, and all of them were armed: with belaying pins, handspikes, a boat-axe, or just their own knives. They roared out like a horde of barbarian Vikings intent on slaughter, whooping like a pack of savages.
The Dulwich Horror & Others Page 27