The Voyage of the Morning Light

by Marina Endicott

  On Piha beach the waves seemed to argue with each other, not rolling in long, inevitable curlers but going every which way, crest crashing into crest, confusing. Even on land she was at sea now, Kay thought. She felt a little weary.

  The beach stretched out in a wide half moon, bounded at one end by slow-rising hills and nocked on the other by a giant, solitary rock, which one could imagine to look like a lion couchant. Beyond the rock, more beach. Oystercatchers skittered in the surf on bright-orange twig-legs, long orange beaks sifting sand. Surf-pound mingled with the steadier sound of falling water sparkling down from the hills.

  Boots and stockings tied round her neck (she had paused behind a rock to do it, once Thea’s attention drifted), Kay ran ahead over the glistening mirror-surfaced sand. She had not been on a beach since Eleuthera. This was a wilder, rougher place—the water not at all welcoming—but the sea wind shocked her hair from her head enough to liven her blood, and she sprang in exultation over the gleaming rind of dampland between wave and rock, feet leaving a pleasing, impermanent record of her presence on the earth.

  Mr. Brimner carried along behind, black oystercatcher legs holding up his plump middle. Like the birds, he did not want to get his feet wet, and moved in a diagonal, up out of the tide-swelling surf-eddies. They had no need for chatter, the wind was enough. Kay saw his lips moving—praying to himself, most like. To God, she supposed she meant. When she got closer, however, he turned to her with a brilliant smile and said, βαθυδείελος! bathydeielos—is it not a lovely thing, after the last few days, to be steeped in sunshine?”

  She had become very fond of him.

  The luncheon was cleared away by the two men who had driven them up, and then they all climbed back into the brake for the short trip to the railhead. Kay was determined to ride the tram. She wanted Thea to come too, but once the little track came in sight, they could see how rough it was. The tram was a dinky, ramshackle thing, bolted-together steel plates making a basket on two of the carriage beds. But the kauri logs! As wide as houses! A single barkless log, twelve feet or more in diameter, had been tied to each of seven carriage beds, making the tram look even more like a toy.

  Scale occupied Kay’s mind as they drove on: little, big; how each thing has its long-ordained suitable size, and how a difference in that size sets our perception of importance zinging and swings the world upside down. There was God in that thought, somehow, the way that tiny things assume importance: the way a change of view, when one crouches down to look properly, turns an ant’s leaf into a landscape.

  The tram terminus stood in a little camp, with a few ramshackle huts of various purposes: a smithy, a saw house, a cook tent. Thin dogs and mangy chickens roamed the dust, nosing for food. Kay held out a last corner of sandwich from the luncheon basket and it was snatched at a gulp by a tall white-and-brown dog. Men loitered about the place, dark-clothed, touching their hats to the dentist but not behaving subserviently. They had long legs and strong faces, some with black markings. A few horses stood about, listless in the heat. No women to be seen; this was a working camp.

  With cautions and precautions and shouts of way! the little tram (the engine was called Sandfly) juddered off, making a tremendous pother about it all. The logs swayed in their lashing and the human occupants shook along with the tram, each clutching for tighter hold on the slanted sides.

  The rails ahead tilted around the rocky edge like a long smile of broken teeth, ties higgledy-piggledy and rails clinging to the cliff. Twenty feet below, surf pounded the great dark rocks. Kay stood up to peer over, knowing Thea was too distracted to tell her not to.

  This rail carriage was pinned together with rivets and string. Its wheels made a shrieking screel to accompany the ride, but even that noise was overpowered by the building cacophony of the waves. The engineer turned back to wave a filthy hat and smiled, blackened teeth very like the broken railings.

  Kay loved it. Thea did not, and told Francis so, loud enough to be heard over the screech of metal on metal. Mr. Brimner kept his thoughts to himself, merely clinging tight to the steel wall of the basket, the tips of his pink fingers gone starry white.

  Seeing her joy in the trip (when Francis put out a warning hand to stop her craning farther over the side), Dr. Raynor shouted boisterous approval of Kay’s bravery—which was not courage at all but some giddy form of self-torture. She loved the deep-carved sensation in her guts when the cars rounded the bend, perhaps loving too the possibility of death. It could all be over in an instant, and then there would be no worrying to do at all!

  At Whatipu, Kay and Thea stayed in the bucket, still trembling from the journey. Thea closed her eyes and sank down in a puddle of skirt to the bottom of the carriage, but Kay watched the men unload those giant logs. Each one must be pried up onto rollers set along the narrow wharf, and coaxed along—then the short tumble into the boat, a bit sickening. Each time, Kay thought the boat would sink, but each time it bobbed up again, adjusting to the new weight. She hoped Francis would decide not to take this lumber. She would hate the Morning Light to wallow with it. Once the logs were all off, with a good deal of sidling and hitching, the tram ground back again more slowly along the darkening cliff.

  Disembarking after the loud, discombobulating ride, they scrambled back up the scree from Piha. The brake’s thick earthbound wheels and sturdy boards felt like staid luxury after that harum-scarum tramway.

  “Here,” the dentist said to Kay, reaching deep into an overcoat pocket. “Got something for you, Missy.” He handed up into the carriage a handful of fur—a muff, was it?

  The muff turned and stretched, and opened a pearl-toothed maw to yawn. Inside, the roof of its mouth was ridged, pink, brown-speckled like a trout. It was a puppy, half head, half paws.

  “One of the camp dogs whelped a month ago, and this is the only pup that lived. Comes of a good breed, I dare say, what’d’youcallit, a mountain dog of some kind. Will do for an ocean dog, I dare say. A companion for a good brave kid.”

  Kay looked down at the moving mass of fur on her lap. A pink tongue showed between black lips and spiky teeth. Its breath smelled of skunk: a wild, clean smell.

  “There, Kay,” Francis said, turning to admire the pup. “Say thank you to Dr. Raynor—this little fellow will be a good pilot for your journey.”

  Names fall so easily, with an idle word. Pilot he was, her good dog Pilot.

  Hugging the puppy to her chest for safety, Kay was glad to be gone to sea again, into the air and wave; land-borne life was not for her.

  The Morning Light pulled out of her berth with a graceful sway, buoyed on the true home. Pilot reached up and bit her chin gently to say she was squashing him, so she let him down, now that they were far from the wharf.

  They left Auckland harbour in a graceful spray, and Kay raced the puppy around the deck, in what Father would have called an access of animal spirits. She won—Pilot’s lumbering legs were too short yet to bear the burden of that great head, and he was not yet a sailor and tended to fall over when the ship rose to a swell. He tired quickly, poor pup, but that was good, for work had still to be done. The school table was set up on the foredeck, Mr. Brimner already ensconced but not yet absorbed.

  “You are walking on air—άεροβατεῖς—today,” he told Kay, looking up. “Which in your derivations list should be related to those who walk on the heights, acrobats—instead of your more usual ΰπνοβατεΐν (hypnobatein, sleep-walking), which also helps us to remember υπνολογεΐν (hypnologein, sleep-talking).”

  Kay could not tell if she should be cross with Mr. Brimner for mentioning her nightmares, but not feeling anger, she did not invent some. Pilot slept at her feet—on her foot, in fact. If he found that leathery pillow comfortable, she would not move it.

  The dog turned out to be a great deal of trouble, both on deck and in the parlour, because he was not yet trained to civilized behaviour and would from time to time embarrass himself; it was a good thing the carpets were rolled up
as they left port. He always seemed so sorry—who could blame him? Even Thea could not, and they always cleaned it up before Francis saw. Jiacheng tolerated him; Kay had been worried about that.

  It felt unfamiliar and perhaps unfair to be happy, but she was. They were flying north on a bright sea, in a blue line stretching from Auckland, on the north tip of New Zealand, to Tonga—where in three days Mr. Brimner would leave them.

  Wanting to work hard during the last of his tutoring, Kay bent to her First Greek Book with alacrity.

  RELATION OF WORDS TO OTHER WORDS

  877. It is of great practical importance to note and fix in the mind the relationships of Greek words.

  In acquiring a Greek vocabulary, do not commit words to memory as separate units, but group the Greek words together that show affinity in form and meaning, and associate with them the related Latin and English words.

  But how was one to remember the words if one was also not to commit words to memory? Except that it was not exactly memory; it was knowing, rather than recalling. The way one did not have to recall Thea’s name, or think of the word for a stone. Mr. Brimner would read great slogs of Greek as she followed along, listening and seeing, and then would set her to reading herself, out loud and in her mind, and every day she went farther and farther into what had at first seemed a forest of bent sticks and now was becoming familiar paths through her own place.

  The papers were held on the table with stones from Yarmouth, large stones that used to fill the bare hearth of the saloon fire until Thea fetched them up, having seen how fluttering the work was. These stones were far from home. Round, worn-smooth grey granite, each one the size of a baby’s head.

  Across the table, Mr. Brimner worked on his dear friend Prior’s poetry, marking up the lines in thick black ink. His left cuff had a great smudge on it.

  She turned back to her own page.

  1. The bowmen shot birds and wild asses in the plain.

  2. The army was cut to pieces by these barbarians.

  Barbarians always cut you to pieces, if you did not fight them. Everyone always thinks the other people are barbarians, Kay thought. Mr. Brimner had said the word only means strangers. Everyone always thinks the strangers are savages.

  3. It was not safe to be among the barbarians.

  4. The soldiers were still in plain sight.

  5. This was not true.

  6. But the birds were black.

  The birds were black, like the birds in Blade Lake. No singing from the birds there, none of the meadowlarks that Thea and Father could imitate so sweetly from earlier days in Fort à la Corne—o-chayt-o-tiddlyboot. Only caw-caw-caw in Blade Lake. Bright crow eye staring at you from the fence post. Hawks pelting down like arrows out of the sky, soldiers in plain sight. It was not safe to be among the birds.

  A hand on her neck—what? Oh, she was sleeping at her book. The sun was too warm. It was Francis, finger to his lips so she would not wake Thea, dozing in the hammock.

  He gestured her to follow him to the rail. “See?” he said, pointing.

  Two long black shapes.

  Then another, rising and curving, wet-shining between them. Then a spume of water, and another, with a sound like a coughing sigh, ahhhh! They were whales—she had been waiting so long to see them.

  “Humpbacks,” Francis said. “Two of them, with a calf.”

  Kay looked and looked, following the black lines and the low, aerodynamic fins that showed, and winked away beneath the wave.

  The water felt empty without them.

  “There! Gone. They’ll dive for an hour now,” he said. “Magnificent, hey?”

  Good, that they were gone. She thought of the harpoon that hung over the mantelpiece in the mates’ parlour. She did not want them to be caught.

  άισχρός, aischros, shameful, disgraceful.

  βιός, bios, life.

  α’παλλάττω, apallatto, abandon, rid oneself of; mid. depart, go away.

  χρόνος, chronos, time, season, period.

  α’ποθνήσκω, apothneisko, die off, die, be killed.

  θνήσκω, θανού μαι, ἔθανον, τέθνηκα (cf. θάνατος), thneisko, thanoumai, ethanon, tethneika, cf. thanatos, die; perf., be dead. πέπονθα, pepontha, experience, suffer.

  All will experience, all will suffer. All people will die off, be killed, fall in battle. Be dead. Not just Father, and her mother, and Annie, and Mary. Thea’s baby. A long list.

  Kay shook her head to push the shadows out of it, and dipped her pen again. The ink-pot lid had to be pried off each time, which was a bother, but if it was not lidded tight, any rising wave set it slopping out to where it might stain the clean cream-and-brown fur of Pilot, flattened at her feet.

  Beside them, Mr. Brimner lay sleeping in a wicker chair beside the table, his face flushed apricot. Even his eyelids were pinkish. He was not cut out for southern climes. He had said for her to wake him if she ran into difficulties, but she would not.

  The end of the afternoon watch rang—four o’clock, she could not help still thinking in landsman’s language—eight bells and all’s well: the day’s work shipshape, a light breeze and a limpid sea, so all the sailors were at rest, one way or another. At the fo’c’sle, Mr. Best held the wheel while Francis, leaning against the bulkhead, looked through his spyglass at nothing. Thea went below to confer with Liu Jiacheng over what was to be done with a non-laying hen. Nothing disturbed the sleeper’s peace.

  How would Mr. Brimner make do in a strange place like Tonga, where no English ship would arrive with black-bordered letters, and there would be no English marmalade at the breakfast table or Gentleman’s Relish at the dinner? He might find someone in Tonga to teach Greek to—but perhaps, like Father, he would be too busy teaching them English and Scripture.

  It was hard, even after so many Sunday services, to think of Mr. Brimner as a priest. He did not wear vicar clothes, but cool grey linen shirts and jackets; he saved his clerical collars for best. Passing his opened cabin door, she had seen a cupped set of them lying on the bunk. The foot of the bunk was taken up with books, row after row, like Francis had threatened to set a crate of china on her own bunk. Mr. Brimner must curl very tight to sleep, or pack them all away each night. He was more scholar than cleric.

  593.1. The gods will show us the way.

  2. He was considering what answer to make.

  3. There they remained a week and collected supplies for their journey.

  4. Considerably later (the cloud of dust appeared) like a sort of blackness in the plain for a great distance.

  That was an exciting development, that cloud of dust appearing in the great distance. She did not feel she was making any very great progress, yet Greek words had slipped into her understanding as things themselves, not just other names for the things. Realness was gathering like a cloud of dust in her mind, still in the distance, but perceptible.

  Mr. Brimner opened one teal-blue eye. “Enough!” he croaked. “Walk the rail, jump in place, school your dog, be a child! There is time aplenty for the dark cloud work to crouch on your head in future. Go and ask your brother if you may climb to the crow’s nest.”

  Kay laughed, because Francis would never let her climb that high. And then shivered, because she did not want to!

  9

  Tonga

  Early next morning, the Morning Light crept up on an island, a high green hill humped up out of the ocean. Beyond it they could see larger land, misted to grey in the early morning air.

  Through the morning they rounded the point of the first island, which Mr. Wright told them was ‘Eua. They were not stopping there, but made for Tongatapu, the largest island of the archipelago of Tonga. The map in the saloon called it TONGA or FRIENDLY Is. Mr. Brimner, who had read up in readiness for his post, said that was because Captain Cook had found the people willing to trade and kinder than other islanders, whose first instinct had been to kill the interlopers. And perhaps that would have been a better idea
, for Mr. Wright said many islanders had died of diseases brought by Europeans, before they gained resistance to new germs. Like tuberculosis, in the West.

  It was a soft, murky sea around these islands. Near Tongatapu the water lay quiet, variegated from blue-green to brownish in patches, from some vegetation on the sea floor. The main town crouched on a slight rise: scattered white buildings around a larger official mass, also white. Yet everything was a little greyish, and dirty too. A fitful wind blew across the deck.

  “The draft is shallow,” Francis said, coming to sit for a luncheon on deck, in honour of the gentle weather. “Here at Nuku‘alofa we will not dock at the wharf, but anchor well out and take the tender in as we need.”

  That was a strange, unaccustomed name for a town. Kay said it under her breath to get it right. Nuku‘alofa, Nuku‘alofa.

  Across the water she could now distinguish a large white building, a pepper-pot red roof on a stubby white tower; next to that, a church. A double avenue of low, feathery trees hid the buildings from full sight, but there looked to be lawn there, and park grounds along the waterfront.

  Near shore in the shallows, submerged to their chests, dark-haired people moved along a line of basket weirs, threading something through the water and peering down to run hands along. Eels? Kay hoped not eels, for she had a horror of them.

  “They soak the fibres for their mats, ta‘ovala, their waist-wraps,” Seaton said from the lifeboat above her. “The women soak them in salt water for days or weeks, and come to check to see how pliable they are for weaving. I had a mat, long ago . . . My grandmother’s father’s ta‘ovala putu, that I wore to her funeral.”

  Was this where Seaton was from, then? His strong hawk nose lifted into the air, seeking, as if this land would have a different smell. Kay breathed in too, but could detect no special flavour.

  Mr. Brimner dawdled in the companionway as if unwilling to go up on deck, his dark spectacles flashing in a subdued way. “I hope you will all come to tea with Mr. Hill, if invited?” he asked earnestly. Perhaps he was a little anxious.