by Ben Jones
“I began by begging and eating garbage, which had enough food for armies in it; eventually I found work with a jewelry maker. I had been drawn to his window as I begged and he had seen me and invited me in. His works were marvels, exquisite but not gaudy, like the golden tracery of a single breath which I could hold trembling in my hand. He also made fine watches and ingenious mechanical birds that sang with the silent spinning of tiny gears. I was particularly useful to him because of my hand—with it I could do things that even he could not.
“And yet, for all my dexterity, I could not equal him; I made watches of tremendous complexity and fine balance, but in the end their distinction was merely complexity and not grace—they were always soldered and screwed and heavy. He laughed at my grasping—‘Three hands,’ he said, ‘three hands are still not enough for you!’ ” Aziz held up for me a marvelous silver teacup, woven with a silver filigree, that slid with odd balance into his twinned hand, turning it over in the light to reveal the shapes of birds and of fruit woven in layers and animated by the movement of the tea within it.
“I passed a happy time in his shop, enjoying my imperfect progress and my sense that I was involved in a great endeavor— the making real of delicate and magnificent creatures that needed the gift of my dexterity to nurture. We lived comfortably in the clutter of his shop, surrounded by the flutter and lilt of his birds and the fantastical grace of his jewelry.
“But that beauty bred destructive hungers in jealous men, and thieves burst into our shop and killed him, and used his torch to melt down his golden breaths into blobs of gold—a reverse alchemy, taking his work and transforming it with their crude touch into the mere, as to lead as his woven grace had been to their only gold.
“I fled again, to the docks, and hid myself in the hold of a ship, squeezing between two bulkheads and holding my breath. I heard their footsteps in the hold and their feral calls, panting and snuffling. They moved on finally and I was left to console myself in the darkness. The ship sailed in the night and I remained hidden, stealing from the stores what I needed and scurrying back into the shadows like a rat.
“When we were several weeks out of port, a cabin boy discovered me. The sailors, children ever, were terrified of me and some wanted to throw me overboard. Others argued that I was the devil’s and that my murder would draw his wrath. My fate was settled when their engineer sickened and died. Though they suspected me of having been responsible, they were too frightened to accuse me directly. And now they needed someone with my mechanical knowledge. They locked me in the engine room and sealed the door with chants and charms and left me to work. And so I became a sailor, however grudgingly, and have been one ever since.
“I hoped to find at sea an expansiveness that would free me, that might grant me some peace from the grasping of men that had twice sent me fleeing, but I did not. The seas are vast, but crushing also; they trap as surely as the city or the desert ever had. I settled for a place no better or worse than other places—unpleasant enough to remain uncoveted, and so keep me somewhat free from the exiling envy of men; I have clung to this small hollow, trying to keep from getting dragged into the fray of the world. I am not proud of having retreated into hiding, but have found safety here at least, in the darkness and damp quiet, a space out from the world, which is a strife and a clashing.
“West discovered me after his translator died during a trip to Zanzibar—he grabbed me as I passed in the market and ordered me to assist him. He has found me both useful and discreet since then, and I, some odd measure of refuge.”
He paused, gazing into his tea, his face lost.
I could think of nothing to say and so said nothing. It is so seldom that a man is laid bare before you, lays himself bare, that I could but gape in wonder. And as quickly as he had opened himself, he closed again, rising to tend the lamp. The room seemed to rush with cold air and to fill with distance. My tea was cold in my hands.
thirteen
On the fourteenth of December I stood shivering in the deckhouse, my hands cupped around a cannonball. Griffin had forbidden the use of the deckhouse stove, to conserve fuel. He stood with his hands on the wheel, as if we might drop free at any instant. He clung to the wheel as a drowning man might throttle his savior, refusing even to venture onto the deck or to survey his instruments. Preston huddled by the pump, stoking its small heater. The rest of the crew was below in the Ballroom, shifting stores. Outside, a steady wind was blowing, carrying a fine, almost gritty snow.
“Kane, how’s the barometer?”
“Steady, sir,” I replied.
He had been preoccupied with the barometer all morning, calling out for a reading every few minutes. I was starting to become exasperated, as it had not moved a fraction of an inch since yesterday.
“Are you sure, Kane?”
“Twenty-nine-point-nine-oh inches. It hasn’t budged all morning, sir. Would you care for a look yourself?”
“There is no call for insolence,” he said sharply, and left the wheel to examine the barometer himself. He fussed over it for a moment, clutching it in his hands to clear away the frost. Then he brought his face very close to it, holding his breath.
“Well, sir?”
“I believe, Kane, it has frozen in this damn cold. Check with the doctor. He has another one in his cabin.”
I went below to the officers’ quarters and knocked on the doctor’s door. I heard a grunt and entered. I noticed immediately that his cabin was absolutely frigid. Delicate fingers of frost reached up from the floor and extended down from the ceiling; the bottles were covered with a lacy webwork so fine that it looked like cobwebs. The doctor was making notations on his chart with the help of a magnifying glass. He had some sort of leather apparatus over his face that covered his mouth and nose completely. It was covered with icicles that hung down over his chest like a beard.
“Captain Griffin, sir, wants to know what your barometer is reading. It seems that ours has frozen—”
I was not able to finish—the doctor had dropped his glass with a crash and clamped his hand over my mouth. He threw me roughly back out the door and slammed it shut behind him. He mumbled something to me, his eyes very fierce, but I could not understand it from behind his mask. As soon as he dropped me, I began to remonstrate, but he cut me off with a wave of his hand. He pulled off the cumbersome apparatus and shook it in my face.
“Do not breathe in the laboratory!” he shouted. “You will ruin everything.”
“But I just—”
“You just nothing—you just came in and began blabbing without thinking, and your wet breath coats the walls, and then what? Did you think? Then the map is useless, then we are lost, then the islands slip away from us forever. What do you think this is for”—he held up the ice-covered mask—“you idiot?”
“Be that as it may, sir,” I said tersely, “the captain would like to know what your barometer reads. Ours has frozen.”
He turned without speaking and, taking a deep breath, went back into his cabin. When he returned, his face was somber.
“If it can be trusted,” he said, “it is 28.78, and falling. I will bring it up to the deckhouse, if you can keep it warm.”
“I’ll light the stove, sir,” I said and returned to the deck.
The captain had resumed his post at the wheel, and kept his eyes fixed on the wall of ice in front of him as I stoked the stove. He did not acknowledge the news that the barometer was falling, nor did he acknowledge Architeuthis when he brought the barometer and mounted it beside the stove.
“It is Dutch,” he said, as if it were diamond, “so you must kept the heat even. Uneven heating will disrupt the expansion of the metals and it will become useless. I suspect that is what has ruined yours. Stand here”—he pointed—“and rotate it slowly until the room temperature is above freezing. Then it will be all right on its own.”
He shook some of the ice from his peculiar mask and retreated to his cabin. I opened the stove up fully and turned the barometer idly
in my hands.
“Well?” asked the captain finally.
“Twenty-eight-point-seven-six, sir, and .06 in the last hour. Can’t make much difference to the icebergs really, can it?”
As if in answer, a shudder passed through the ship.
“Maybe the storm will open the ice and let us closer,” I said miserably.
The small deckhouse heated rapidly and I was able to put the barometer down. The warmth of the stove felt wonderful on my numb fingers. Outside, the temperature rose slightly, to about thirty below; the wind remained steady and the snow continued to fall. My watch was relieved, but I remained in the deckhouse with the captain, watching the barometer. The captain ordered the deck prepared for a blow, but there was little to do. Everything had already been stowed, or was lashed tightly and frozen, so that we would have been hard pressed to unlash it. We moved the dogs into the Ballroom.
At noon, the barometer read 28.5, and was continuing to fall. The ice remained quiet for several hours, as if crouching down before the storm, then began to rumble like thunder. By this time, we had all gathered in the deckhouse and stood entranced, staring out into the swirling washes of snow. Adney had left one storm lantern suspended from the bowsprit; we could see it swinging with a disarming gentleness. Our waiting silence was broken only by Reinhold’s voice calling out the readings every half hour—28.32, 28.28, 28.24, 28.19 . . . Pockets of snow moved idly over the deck before dispersing; lines draped as the wind died. It was an awful feeling to watch the barometer and know that we should be in the midst of a howling gale, and yet look out on such a peaceful, pastoral silence.
Adney went out to check the anemometer.
“Only force four,” he said. “We should be flying kites.”
There was nervous laughter that subsided again into silence. Hunt and Aziz joined us, and then the doctor, all in silence. We stood packed-in tight, straining, barely breathing, looking out over the deck, poor Christians waiting for our great white lion to be released.
“Twenty-eight-point-one-four,” called Reinhold.
“Twenty-eight-point-one-oh.”
The storm struck with sudden violence, screaming over the deckhouse, snapping cables as it descended. The light on the bowsprit was snuffed, and a wall of white crashed up against the deckhouse window. Wind forced snow into every crack and crevice, and the boards of the roof rattled. Roaring filled my ears as from the thousand throats of a thousand madmen, then a single throat, impossibly loud, impossibly steady. Nothing could maintain that intensity. From the back of the room, I heard Reinhold’s shout faintly:
“Twenty-eight flat.”
Wind backed down the stovepipe and snuffed our fire in one blast. We stood dumb as statues and stared; it felt as if the whole atmosphere had been stripped away in a moment and the tearing pace of the naked earth through space itself were audible; I felt we should be mashed flat, crushed beneath it, that we should submit, only submit. I reached out to the wall and felt the timber straining under my hand. It seemed impossible that the ship did not simply explode, shiver into splinters and disperse in the wind. The vastness of the ice was lost in the storm; the power of the wind pressed us into the deckhouse cabin and threatened at every moment to compress us further.
From far away, I heard the sound of wood splintering. The wind seemed to abate for a moment, and with a tremendous crash, the mainmast fell through the roof, shattering the deckhouse and pinning Pago beneath it. The wind scattered embers from the stove across the deck that flared into dozens of small fires.
The mast had fallen over the hatch to the officers’ quarters and imbedded itself in the deck. I was caught in a tangle of ropes and could not see to free myself. Beside me, Reinhold and Adney were straining to shift the mast off Pago’s legs. The doctor leaned in to help them and they succeeded in lifting it while Pago slid backward. Reinhold snatched him up and they struggled down to the fore hatch while Griffin and Adney put out the fires. I pulled out my knife and with numbing fingers started to cut myself free. I tried to stand against the wind to see what ropes still held me, but I was knocked flat. Finally pulling free, I crawled over the deck to the fore hatch and clambered down.
Everyone gathered in the passageway to the Ballroom, talking excitedly. I could hear Pago groaning and, beyond them, the whining of the dogs. Creely succeeded in lighting a lantern, allowing us to start to sort ourselves out. Hunt headed to the galley, followed by several of the men, to boil water for the doctor.
In the swinging yellow light of the lantern, I could not tell whether the dark patches at Pago’s waist were blood or merely water; when the doctor’s hands came away darkened, I knew. A trickle flowed down from beneath Pago and pooled against the wall; it sent the agitated dogs into a frenzy. They growled and barked; several leapt at the wall of boxes across the doorway and snapped at the doctor’s back. With the ship angled so far forward, they threatened to come tumbling down into the cabin.
“Kane! Get them back in the hold!” yelled the doctor.
Captain Griffin lit another lantern and brandished it as I moved up beside him. I found a coil of rope on the floor, which I used like a club to beat them back. The floor was slippery with blood by this time, and I had a difficult time keeping my footing. Three dogs stood abreast in the passageway, snapping and lunging forward.
“Get back there, you bastards,” I heard the captain mutter.
While he held them back, I set the rope on fire with the other lantern and swung this at them. Now they began to retreat, their fur singeing where the rope caught it. Finally they slipped back into the chaos of dogs and we managed to pull the door shut. From behind the door, a massive free-for-all started, a fury of dogs joining the fury of the storm.
Pago had ceased to groan, though he was still conscious, looking almost idly down at the doctor fiddling with his stomach. Griffin moved up beside them.
“Well?” he demanded.
“His pelvis has been crushed—entrails, as you can see, are emerging. And he’s losing blood.”
Griffin looked worriedly at Pago, who smiled wanly in return. “Least I’m warm, Captain, at least I’m warm.”
“Can we shift him into the men’s quarters?” asked Griffin.
“With all due respect, Captain, there isn’t a point.”
“Of course there is a point, Doctor Architeuthis,” hissed Griffin. “Let the man rest a little easier, instead of lying in this hallway.” He avoided Pago’s eye, as, I suppose, we all did. We lifted him as carefully as we could by his sodden clothes; Griffin shouted ahead and the door to the men’s quarters was opened for us. We placed Pago on a bunk next to the stove, which was blazing. He settled back and smiled.
“Oh, that’s nice, Captain, yes. Very nice.”
We stood in helpless silence as the wind mounted, dogs howled, wood and ice squealed and cracked. Pago’s eyes closed, looking out at the flicker of the stove; his lips moved, barely more than a trembling, last words lost in the roar of wind. Now his head rocked gently, as if he were singing a lullaby; his eyelids wavered and drooped again. We stood in silence by.
We were roused by Griffin, who moved us around the bed and began the Lord’s Prayer, shouting to be heard over the storm. He pulled the blanket over Pago’s head; I should have liked to feel sad, but the noise of the storm intruded on my thoughts—it was insistent, invasive, unrelenting. We moved back from the body; Adney and Preston began to swab up the blood in the corridor, but there was little point. It had already begun to freeze.
Hunt arrived from the galley with a steaming pot of tea and passed out mugs. I hunkered down next to Adney, hoping his lightness could somehow cheer me. I could think of nothing to say and so sipped my tea intently.
It is something to watch a man die, especially a close companion. One would think that an experience so common in a man’s life would let us bound it, understand it on our own, or that we could turn to books somehow, or to some store of wisdom that might let us move past without miring us in it—it should have the
stench of commonality to it. We should be numb to it—not numb to the loss of our friend, but numb to the blind fact of death itself. And yet we were all confounded.
“Will,” I said to Adney, “what do you think for the storm? Will it last?”
“I imagine so,” he said evenly. “Our trusty Dutch barometer is most likely below twenty-seven if it wasn’t smashed by the mast.”
“Still, though, we’re safe here in the ice, don’t you reckon? Icebergs keep their own company, don’t they? I mean, the mast is gone, to be sure, but the ice is solid—like rock. We could as well be in a cave during the storm. And the fire’s quite nice, wouldn’t you say? Yes, like a cave, and a nice fire and maybe we’ll have beef stew. And biscuits. That’ll hold us till this blows over. Don’t you think? Like stone.” I heard myself speaking and could not quite manage to stop.
“These are big icebergs here, very big. Deep enough, they may even be lodged on the bottom. We’re wrapped up tight here, like Christmas candies. Nice and tight like Christmas candies.
“What do you think, Will? Another few hours and then we’ll be back to normal? Or will it open the ice for us? I think we’re tight as Christmas candies, don’t you think? Besides, she’ll hold, the old Narthex, she’ll hold, won’t she?” I managed at last to clamp my mouth shut and look over to him.
“Well,” he said, “I hope so.”
“Yes, but—well,” I replied, “it’s a lot of strain to be sure, but these icebergs won’t get pushed around easily.” I turned to Preston, who sat beside me.
“Beef and biscuits, don’t you reckon, Preston?”
He regarded me without hostility or amusement.
“How many of these big icebergs do you think there are loose around here, Kane?”
“A lot, I think. Hundreds, thousands probably.”
“Say an even hundred. And those not very big, only about one hundred feet high apiece.”
“Yes, so? I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“Think of each as a sail, one hundred feet high, and maybe three times that underwater, each driven before a wind of hurricane strength. A hundred sails or a thousand. It’s a damn armada.”