The Seven Gifts

by John Mellor

  He felt the egg in his pocket; it was very warm. The mother had obviously been sitting when the skua arrived. It was right, he felt, that the baby should live, after its mother's sacrifice. He wondered how near it was to hatching. He thought for a moment, then came to a decision. Picking up the body of the dead mother, he turned and walked rapidly back towards his camp.

  It would be something to do, he thought; something more interesting than simply sitting around waiting to be rescued. He had never heard of a seagull being reared from the egg, but there was always a first time. All he had to do, he reasoned, was keep it warm.

  He soon reached his camp and entered the lean-to hut he had built out of branches and driftwood. Dropping the dead gull on the floor, he went straight to the smouldering fire and stoked it up. He placed the still warm egg in a deep nest of dry leaves close to the fire and covered it with more leaves and earth. Then he sat back, wondering how long it took a seagull's egg to hatch. Not that he knew when it had been laid, or the incubation period for that matter. But at least it gave him something hopeful to look forward to.

  The egg stayed warm, and three days later it started cracking. By the evening a baby seagull had hatched out, and the Bosun was fussing around like an old grandmother. The fluffy little chick crouched in its nest and yowled for food. But the Bosun was ready.

  On the offchance of the hatching being successful, he had kept the head of the mother seagull, and he now used it to feed the baby. The red spot on the beak, he knew from past study, was a trigger that made the baby open its mouth for food. The mother would then regurgitate half-digested fish into the baby's open mouth. The Bosun did the same; chewing fish until it was like paste, then poking it through the beak into the chick's mouth with a little stick. And it worked.

  The baby thrived; and it grew. The old Bosun seemed to spend the better part of every day stuffing food down that gaping, clamouring mouth. But he was happy; glad to have saved the baby whose mother had died for it, and glad to have something to do other than morosely watch for ships that never came. And Charlie, as he had named it, was good company. He grew very fond of him.

  When Charlie was a little bigger the Bosun began taking him round the island on his foraging expeditions. The young gull would perch on his shoulder, peering avidly about it, yelling at the other passing gulls, and occasionally falling off. But he made no attempt to join the others. The Bosun was his mum; and he showed his devotion by pecking constantly at the old man's ears.

  But the affection was mutual. What was a sore ear, thought the Bosun, compared to friendship?

  In the evenings they would sit round the fire together eating their supper. The Bosun had carved some wooden bowls now that Charlie was old enough to feed himself, and they each had their own. Charlie's was filled with chopped up fish, while the Bosun's would vary. Sometimes he had rabbit, sometimes fish; occasionally just seaweed and fruit. But he never had seagulls’ eggs again. And he didn't bother any more to look for ships; his life on the island now seemed quite sufficiently meaningful. With Charlie's company the Bosun was content.

  Even when Charlie began to fly and went off fishing by himself, he would still return to the old Bosun's hut of an evening to share a little of his supper, and perhaps his company. But they spent less and less time together now that Charlie was independent of his mum. And before long, the Bosun knew, Charlie would be away to a new life as an adult seagull. He was already spending most of his days flying with the other mottled young gulls; swooping along the wind currents that were drawn up over the cliffs, and scouring the beaches for food.

  The Bosun began to think again of rescue. He spent more and more days wandering the cliffs and, where at one time he would just have watched Charlie, he now scanned the distant horizon for ships. And he rebuilt his old signal fire, long since pillaged to feed the fire in his hut.

  At night he would dream of the sea and ships, even of land and the civilisation of the Snow Queen's kingdom. He dreamed of the family and friends who now presumably thought him dead. And one night he dreamt of his old Captain: the man he had last seen standing calmly on the poop watching his ship break up and sink beneath him.

  Only it wasn't the Captain he saw in his dream, it was Charlie - Charlie speaking with the Captain's voice. It was Charlie stood on the poopdeck in the screaming wind and spray, as the Bosun and his men fought with the frozen halyards, each crashing sea filling the deck and rising to their necks. And Charlie spoke to the Bosun, the voice of the Captain rising clearly above the howling gale.

  “Do not worry, my old friend. You will be saved; from this storm, and again from the island you will be swept to. You have more years yet in which to suffer this world.

  “Tomorrow at noon you must light your signal fire, for a ship, homeward bound to the kingdom, will pass just below the horizon at that time. The crew will see your smoke and come for you.

  “And do not fear for me."

  The Bosun awoke with a start, the dream still fresh in his mind. He looked towards the spot by the fire where Charlie normally slept, but the seagull was gone.

  He shook his head and thought about the strange dream. He had never believed the superstition that the souls of drowned sailors lived in seagulls. Could they? No, it was wishful nonsense.

  But as the sun neared its zenith he had almost finished preparing the bonfire. Damp leaves and twigs were piled high on top of it to make smoke, so that it would be visible further in daylight. He felt a little foolish, but then there was no-one around to see. Why not have a bonfire? It was something to do. And he couldn't know that there wasn't a ship passing below the horizon that day.

  All through that long afternoon he stood on the edge of the cliff, peering out to sea. Behind him the bonfire gradually died to a flicker. By nightfall there was just a pile of smouldering embers, and he had seen no ship. When it became too dark to see, he turned and trudged wearily back home to his little hut.

  Charlie, who was normally ensconced by the fire long before dark, was nowhere to be seen. And by the time the Bosun was preparing for bed, he had still not appeared. He worried about Charlie, sufficiently to be able to forget the failure of the signal fire. That night he slept fitfully, dozing, then springing awake at the slightest sound, hoping it might be his little seagull. But when he finally dragged himself out of bed with the dawn, there had been no sign of Charlie.

  It was a tired and saddened old man who half-heartedly ate a small breakfast of fish. After he had eaten he savagely kicked soil over the fire, ground it out with his heels and stamped out of the hut to begin a thorough search of the island. He hoped he might find his little friend with perhaps just minor damage to a leg; something he could fix. It seemed odd, he pondered as he walked, how Charlie had disappeared immediately after his strange dream. A dream that obviously had been just wishful thinking on his part. But something seemed to have happened, to break the harmony of his simple life with Charlie and the island. He felt depressed, and that was unlike the Bosun.

  He rounded a small clump of wizened trees and stood looking down on to the bay where he had first washed ashore. In the middle of the bay, at anchor, was a sailing ship. A small gig was being rowed towards the beach and the Bosun could see an officer, quite clearly, standing in the sternsheets.

  He fell to his knees on the wet grass, put his hands together and cried out thanks to God for his salvation. Then, with tears streaming from his eyes, he ran - all thoughts of Charlie gone - down the steep path towards the beach.

  The Bosun leaned on the rail of the little ship, clad in fresh clothes and puffing contentedly on a pipe. The Mate was alongside him, recounting all the latest news of the kingdom. Above the ship, unnoticed by either of them, a seagull soared on long white wings, round and round, ignoring all the others that squabbled in the scraps thrown over by the cook.

  “...... palace was razed to the ground," the Mate was saying. But the Bosun didn't hear him. Now that he was safe on the ship he was thinking of Charlie again and wondering what
had happened to him. He had asked the Captain to scour the island for his friend, but it seemed the time could not be spared. They had already lost a day and a night coming for him, having seen the smoke the previous afternoon. And that had set him wondering about his dream.

  But dream or no dream, he was desperately sad at leaving without saying goodbye to Charlie. The little seagull had been a good companion during all those months on the island - months that would have been intensely lonely without Charlie.

  The Mate was still talking.

  “No-one knows what happened," he was saying, “but the Ice Princess has been in the foulest of moods ever since. Something to do with the band, I believe. I tell you, the kingdom is no place to be these days; you'd be better off staying ......"

  He was cut short by a scream from somewhere above their heads. Then a seagull smashed into the deck at their feet in a flurry of blood and feathers. Its neck was pierced with the bolt of a crossbow, and blood poured from the wound, swirling around the seamen’s boots like a red tide. The Mate stared horrified.

  But the Bosun turned cold. Ice ran down his spine and into his heart as he knelt and cradled the dying Charlie in his arms. Charlie looked at him with surprisingly calm eyes for a long time, then suddenly fell lifeless in the Bosun's shaking hands.

  Tears streaked the old man's rugged, lined face as he slowly rose to his feet, gently holding the dead body of his friend in strong seaman's arms.

  “Good shot eh?" came a cheery cry from behind him. The Bosun turned unseeing, his eyes blurred with tears. But the Mate saw.

  At the break of the poop stood a grinning merchant, on board to keep an eye on his wares. His ermine-trimmed robe ruffled in the breeze and a crossbow swung negligently from his right hand. His round, puffy face looked pleased.

  “Scum!" spat the Mate, who knew full well where the souls of drowned sailors went. The Bosun turned to him - a kindred spirit.

  “Take me back to the island please," he said.

  o ------------------------ o

  The young boy closed the book on the Third Gift

  and remained a while with his thoughts

  in the lonely tower at the end of the beach

  And the Angel watched over him

  o ------------------------ o

  Gone Fishing

  IT WAS soon after midday when the Angel entered the room. The young boy was sat at the desk staring rather glassy-eyed at the third story, which still lay open in front of him. He felt tired and fed up. There seemed to be all sorts of possibilities in this one. The gift could be almost anything - love, eternity, hope, life; anything. He could not sort out which one.

  He did not seem to be doing very well so far. He felt sure the Angel would soon despair of him. Whatever it was he had to do on Earth, he was beginning to think he was just not capable of it.

  He swivelled in his chair at the sound of the door opening, and was surprised to see the Angel standing there. He shrugged his shoulders apologetically.

  “I can't seem to figure out this one at all," he said, with a sigh. “There are so many alternatives. What is it?"

  The Angel shook her head slowly. Yes, I know, he thought, I must work it out for myself. “I'm tired," he said with some feeling.

  The Angel smiled. “Never mind," she said. “Forget about that for today, I think you have had enough. Let's go fishing." And with that she turned and left the room.

  The boy could hardly believe his ears. Fishing! His tiredness vanished and he flew out of the door.

  The Angel's boat bobbed alongside the wall of the tiny harbour, varnish and yellow paint glinting in the afternoon sun. She was a sturdy little open boat some eighteen feet long, fitted with a small two cylinder diesel engine, and a stumpy little mast and derrick just abaft the foredeck. Under the derrick was a capstan, driven by rods and gearing from the engine, for hauling the little wing trawl that lay neatly flaked in the stern of the boat. A small wooden trawl door hung from each quarter.

  The two of them climbed aboard the boat, started the engine, and motored slowly out of the harbour. The Angel stood at the tiller and, once clear of the entrance, she set course for a patch of clean trawling ground where she knew they would find some big plaice.

  The boy sat perched on the gunwhale, his face wreathed in smiles as the little boat rose and fell to the waves. It was a beautiful day: clear and warm with just a light breeze to ruffle the water. A day to be at sea.

  He breathed in the clean, salty air and listened to the gentle chuckle of the bow rippling through the small waves. The diesel engine thumped away steadily and the Angel leaned back in the sternsheets, steering with one arm draped over the tiller. The boy was happy and the Angel content. But then she always was.

  They soon reached the grounds and shot the gear away downtide in about four fathoms of water. The Angel set the boat on course and throttled the engine so that they were making a steady two and a quarter knots over the ground. Then she handed the tiller to her young crew and went to check that the warps were vibrating evenly, showing that the doors were properly on the bottom and dragging the sweeps through the muddy sand, rooting out all those dozing plaice.

  “Digging well is it?" enquired the boy. The Angel nodded.

  “It always intrigues me," the boy continued, “how you can sense, just by feeling the vibrations in those warps, exactly what is going on down there."

  “Well," said the Angel, “when the doors and the net are set properly, you get steady, even vibrations from both warps. That tells you the doors are churning nicely through the sand, keeping the sweeps on the bottom; and the angle between the warps shows how far out the doors are flying.

  “I know from experience what the warps feel like when we are catching well, so if there is any difference then something is wrong. The door might have toppled, or a sweep caught up round its G-link, or maybe even the net has rolled over - which can happen if you shoot away across a strong tide. If there is hardly any vibration at all, the door is not on the bottom - not enough warp out usually.

  “It's all part of the general awareness a fisherman needs when he is at sea. You should know about that - all the things you need to be constantly judging and sensing: the state of the sea; strength and direction of wind and tide; any looming change in the weather; your position and course; how the engine is behaving; how the gear is working. That's why fishing is so interesting. To me anyway."

  She glanced casually at the boy, then added: “But you find real contentment at sea, don't you? Why?"

  That stumped him for a moment. Why did he? Was it peaceful? Not usually. Restful? Only occasionally, and certainly not when fishing. Just pleasant perhaps? Sometimes, he decided; but all too often it wasn't. When the wind howled and waves rolled aboard high enough to slop down your neck; with the gear hitched up round a rock on a black night in a rising gale, fish boxes crashing around in the water that swirled over the bottom boards; and you couldn't see where you were and home seemed a long way away; when you were scared and wondered whether you would ever see that home again, then it was not pleasant.

  No, there were complex reasons, he decided, for the contentment he felt at sea. And he remembered a night, running home before a gathering storm, with broken black clouds racing across a starry sky. His little boat was under sail - a tiny storm jib for'ard - and she felt like a living thing, roaring and surfing down the faces of the cresting waves, the spume blown off by the wind and glinting silver in the starlight. Then she would sink into the following trough, hidden from the wind by the next wave he could see climbing against the sky, and everything would go quiet until that next wave picked them up and bore them skywards, back into the ceaseless blast of the wind.

  He had clung on to the tiller, wet and miserable, desperately trying to steer a safe course down through those waves. And he had looked at the blackness around him - squinting his eyes against the driving spray - and there was no living thing anywhere. In all of existence there had seemed only him and the wind and the waves
, and the stars.

  Up above him, dodging around the fleeing, fractured clouds, were countless billions of stars; some near and some far. Some, he knew, no longer existed; yet he could still see them. Some were about to die, yet he would see them for many years to come. And he wondered how many were there, whose light had yet to reach him.

  That was not a sky above him, it was a lamination of time. Layer upon layer of different slices of time, reaching out beyond his vision, beyond his comprehension.

  He had felt very small, and singularly aware of the sheer enormity of existence and his own tiny part in it. Beneath that indescribable, endless vista of time and space - and who knew what else - there was a young boy and his boat, battling for their lives in a storm; unbeknown to anyone.

  But perhaps not? Perhaps someone was up there, watching over him. It was a comforting prospect; and of no less value for that.

  That experience, he remembered, had made the nightmare of the storm worthwhile. That vision - of the timeless immensity of life; the billions of other worlds, on which perhaps other young boys in small boats battled for their lives in unimaginable alien storms - had remained with him long after he had reached the safety of harbour.

  And now it had come back to him. Awareness, the Angel had spoken of - essential to a fisherman; to any seaman for that matter. That was why he liked being at sea. He had a sense of awareness out there - of his own being and its relationship with others. He was conscious of life and death; of feelings and senses; conscious of values. And that, he suddenly knew, was why the Angel had brought him fishing - to remind him of that consciousness. For Consciousness, he realised, was the third gift.