Fire in the Abyss

by Stuart Gordon

  First I sent in a small boat to tell who I was. Then I directed the Delight into the run of the channel, which was half-a-mile of calm water between high rocky walls never less than two hundred yards apart. No problem, you’ll agree, but my luck struck again, for we ran aground a long flat rock just under the water and scraped to a halt, stupidly stuck in sight of all the fishermen. Stranded within yards of the land I’d come to take for England! I was not pleased. Yet it turned out well. The English merchants rallied round and towed us off and we took safe anchor in the road, after which all came on board the Delight to see my documents from the Queen, which persuaded them that my commission was good and lawful.

  French, Dutch, and Portuguese fished here as well as English, but English had predominated ever since Cabot, and the weekly Harbour Admiral was elected only from the English. Now I asked their help in repair and provision for my fleet, promising them privileges for such. They agreed to see this done. So, my captains drew up lists of our needs, the tax of these to be put on all ships in this and adjoining harbours, English as well as foreigners. It was clear to me that all must be equal under the Queen—and it must be said the fishers’ change of heart was marvellous when they saw our strength and knew we came from Her Majesty! Soon we had all we needed and more. The Portuguese were particularly generous with delicacies beyond our demand—wine, biscuit, marmalade, oil, every kind of fish. And that day was Saturday the third of August. And when the sun went down behind the high wooded hills of America that night, I stood exultant on deck. I’ll not go ashore tonight, I told myself, I’ll save that pleasure for the sunrise! And I hugged myself! Success at last! I gazed at the rugged hills and deep green woods, and saw how the last of the light played in the quiet rippling water and in the restless tumble of greenery. The forest was primeval and grew down to the water save where steepness of rock prevented it, and was thick in birch and witch hazel, and lofty pines, and the bottle-darkness of spruce and fir. No houses or even huts had been built onshore yet. The fishermen lived on their boats, being here only a few months each year. The land still belonged to the birds and fish and wild beasts, there being no savage peoples in the region, or so the merchants said. Only a jetty, and a thin plume of smoke charring up to the sky from one of the crude fish-curing shelters.

  It was ideal for my purpose. No need to go farther south for now, I thought. Here is the place to lay down the law and take our formal possession.

  I had in mind exactly what the first three laws should be. One, the Church of England. Two, any rebellion here against the Queen of England to be adjudged high treason and punished as such. Three, any man speaking or jesting against the Queen to lose his ears, goods, and ship; and this because there were lying scandals about her affair with my brother. And, in general. All the laws of England, so soon as community should grow to make them appropriate.

  So, gradually the sky turned deep dark starry blue over the forests and mountains and waters of this part of the New World, and I slept contented. And on the next day, the fourth, I went ashore with my company, and the English merchants showed us their walk to a place they called the Garden, where wild roses and raspberries grew in great profusion. That was Sunday, and on Monday the fifth, I raised the flag onshore, and in hearing of all declared this land to be England’s, and also stated the laws which I had decided. Then we prayed, after which the assembly was dismissed, and we set to the repair of our ships, and exploration of the land as best we could. I had with me one Daniel the Saxon, a refiner, who went out looking for signs of precious metals. Yet the forests were so thick and tangled with fallen trees that we could not easily move through them. Parmenius suggested we should fire the woods, burn them all down to get easier access, but I said no, for fear that the seas would be made bitter by all the turpentine and resin flowing into the water from the burning trees, thus driving away the fish, which had happened elsewhere. And Daniel found ore, and said he would stake his life that it was silver, which pleased me greatly.

  But there was little else to please me, after the first triumph. Sickness quickly came among us, with many dying and others made incapable; and others went and hid in the woods, disliking my command, while the rogues of the Swallow deserted altogether, seizing a ship at anchor in the next harbour southward and sailing off in it, so that within two weeks we were short of men and good spirits. The sick men were put on the Swallow, which started straight back to England, while the rest of us prepared to explore farther south before returning home. Captain Winter of the Delight being among the sick, I put Maurice Browne in his place; and as for myself, I took over command of the Squirrel, Andrews also being ill. And I prepared the Squirrel with nettings and guns, to give a show of strength if threat came against us, for I planned to sail the Squirrel into many small coves and rivermouths where the big ships could not go, the better to survey and learn the coast. And the ore found by Daniel the Saxon was loaded on the Delight.

  In our three remaining ships we left St. John on Tuesday the twentieth of August, Hayes being recovered from his own sickness and still in command of his ship the Golden Hind. We were fully provisioned, and for the first nine days matters went well enough. But on Thursday the twenty-ninth, the wind rose, bringing rain and thick fog, the Delight being in our lead over shallow banks east of Cape Breton, and keeping such ill watch that she struck aground and was broken into pieces, so that her crew drowned, Browne and Parmenius too, and all the ore was lost.

  After this dreadful loss we had little courage left, and the weather grew more severe, driving us round in circles out of sight of land, so that the men all begged me to give the order for return to England. I went on board the Hind, saying we’d learned enough and would return in the springtime. Hayes was reluctant, fearing the voyage to be unprofitable, but he agreed. So on the afternoon of Saturday the thirty-first, we changed course, and set for England, and even as we did, we saw a great sealion in the water, which bawled in such a horrible voice that many of the men grew fearful, calling it an ill omen. But I told them it was Bonum Omen, and pretended to be glad, saying I’d willingly fight such an enemy, even if it were the devil. So we started for England. The seas were dreadful, and more than once in our tiny frigate we were almost swallowed up.

  Twice before my fate came on me I went on board the Hind, the first time to have the surgeon dress my foot, hurt when I trod on a nail, and the second time, when we were more than three hundred leagues on our way home, to make merry, for we were all feeling very low. I assured the company our success was such that the Queen would surely give us ten thousand pounds to equip a new effort in the next year, but it is true I said this chiefly to encourage them, and my own temper was very poor. In sight of Hayes and others I beat my cabin-boy in a rage, for before the Delight was lost I had sent him on board for my books and for the ore, but he had forgotten the ore, and now it was at the bottom of the sea, and I had no evidence of the wealth I thought we’d found. I complained greatly, and must have seemed half-mad, which for a little time I was. And they begged me to leave the Squirrel and come on board the Hind for my safety, which I would not do. “I’ll not forsake my little company going homeward,” I told them angrily, “with whom I have passed so many storms and perils!” Clearly they thought I was foolishly insisting on this to deny the reports that I was scared of the sea: Hayes said as much, and repeated this charge in the account of the voyage he later wrote for Hakluyt, which I have since read. But it is not true: I was not willing to abandon my few men on the Squirrel, nor willing to abandon the little boat itself. Yet I should have abandoned the nets and small artillery I had on the Squirrel: these overloaded it dangerously. It seemed to me that enough had been lost already and that we should try to get home with everything we still had intact. And no doubt I was stupid: I returned to the Squirrel.

  So at length, on Monday the ninth of September, we were somewhat to the north and west of the Azores. Here we ran into the worst storm any of us ever knew. It rose continuously throughout the day, the wind attacking
without cease from unpredictable and diverse quarters, so that the seas became outrageous, breaking short and rearing up high like pyramids. More than once during the afternoon it seemed inevitable that we in the Squirrel were about to be overwhelmed, with water continually breaking in, and direction all but impossible to hold. I spent much of the day abaft where the spray was not so fierce, sitting with Bible in hand, preparing myself to meet my Maker, if that should prove to be His Will, and praying that the cunning man’s prophecy might not be altogether true. There was fear in me, which I hid, meaning to meet my end as befitted a Gilbert, so that I encouraged my men the best I could. And late in the afternoon the wind fell somewhat and we escaped immediate peril, so that, with the Hind again come several times within hailing-distance, I stood, bracing myself against the pitching and tossing of my groaning little boat, and cried out as loudly as I could (as I’ve said already): “We are as near to heaven by sea as by land!” I shouted this several times, so that Hayes and the others should know I was not afraid.

  But I lied to myself, as my men understood very well, and it is a curious irony that I am famous in history not for anything else I did, but for this one phrase. My seven men, bailing desperately, thought me a stubborn fool for not abandoning the tiny Squirrel while the chance still existed. I’d heard them muttering that I was choosing my death and theirs deliberately, through misplaced pride, so that men should not call me a coward, and so that I should not have to return to England to live a second time with the ruin of my credit and reputation. And perhaps they were right, in part—I don’t know. What had I achieved? I’d taken the Newfoundland for England, yes—but in all other aspects I had failed, and none of them thought I truly believed what I’d said; that the Queen would help me to a new expedition in the next year. Besides, my heart and mind had been under a black cloud ever since the loss of the Delight, and all knew it, despite my attempts at levity. Now they saw me apparently exultant in the very jaws of death: what could they think but that I wanted to die, and cared not if I sacrificed them too? And now I cannot blame them for thinking this, though I do not think they were altogether correct, for the motives that drove me were more complicated than even I could understand. Nonetheless, I lied: my good cheer was false, I did not feel it, and now I’m reminded of something that very peculiar Irishman, Oscar Wilde, said a hundred years ago, that “the basis of optimism is sheer terror.”

  So, as long as the dreary windwracked daylight persisted I sat abaft with my Bible, turning my spirit to God while Cade and the other men bailed for our lives, keeping the ship as best they could into whatever wind seemed most predominant. And when the light failed and the storm rose again, we rushed and pitched on into the bitter darkness, and I stood braced against the single mast, crying out prayers in a loud voice against the wind, exhorting my men to turn their thoughts to God. Then Cade on behalf of the others came and cursed me to my face for “wasting breath on God” when I would have been better employed fighting for the life of the ship and its men. So I went down among the men and rebuked them for such impiety, though now I see that the impiety was mine, for I abandoned my duty to them as Captain in thought of my own soul. They were very afraid, and I had no comfort to give but a sort they did not believe. For you should not think that skepticism about God is common only now. It was always common, and especially in that time when the links with the past were being so thoroughly broken.

  Soon enough it was only too sure that this night would be our last. The storm howled ever louder, and the black freezing seas came rushing over our half-deck so that we wallowed ever lower, with the lantern swinging so violently above us that we expected its extinction imminently. Then the evil blue fire of Castor and Pollux came crackling on the spars, which the men took as sure sign of their evil fate, and I confess that for a time I too despaired, and saw the cunning man’s face in the darkness, and heard his voice telling me again of the “power not of Christ and not of this world” that would shortly take me and carry me to my doom. I felt dreadful fear, and wanted to scream madly to relieve it, but then made an effort, and got a grip on myself, reminding myself that I was of good family which had owned Devon land since before the Conquest, and that I had an example to give. So, with the strange fire now crackling with an electric blue brightness more intense than any of us had ever seen, and with the light from the Hind’s lantern ever more often eclipsed by the tremendous height of the waves that separated us and broke violently over the wallowing gunwales of the Squirrel, I fixed my mind entirely on the Redemption of Jesus Christ, calling out prayers for all of us in a voice louder than ever (though it could scarcely be heard at all, even by myself, the roar of the storm being so great), and trying to inspire my hope with dreams of the better world to come.

  Yet had I known what was truly to come, I would have thrown away both Bible and prayers, I would have forgot my station and set to bailing as frantically as any of the men. And by the time I realised that the cunning man’s prophecy was coming true, that something utterly devilish was happening, it was too late.

  For in those last minutes that immediately preceded our Fate, our experience became strange and horrifying, the will-o’-the-wisp burning with an ever-greater brightness, casting an ugly light upon us and all over the boat, so that the boat and each of us gradually came to seem on fire, even there in the raging sea! The men stopped bailing in bewilderment and fear, and I heard one cry out, “The Devil has us!”—but no longer had the spirit or desire to rebuke him further, for doubt was on me again, I could not tell what was happening, I saw the cunning man, for the fire seemed to be burning now in my very bones! Our bodies glowed luminous in the rushing wet blackness of the night! I looked aghast at my hands, and found I could see right through the flesh to the shape of the bones beneath! It was then I truly wondered if God could be with us, or if He existed at all, and I do not care to write down any more of what I thought, nor what I believed I saw, the demonic shapes coiling in the night.

  Then, when we were wallowing heavily, the wind suddenly broke, and hit us from a new quarter, catching us utterly by surprise, so that the Squirrel heeled hard over, and the sea poured in, and I knew that all was lost. I briefly saw the dancing flaming leaping skeletons of my crew in that instant before the ocean fell on me and sucked me into its commotion. After that, I do not know what. It was utter chaos, for the electric fire still crackled through me even as the waters took me, I did not feel the blow of the ocean at all. It was the pain of the fire that consumed me, and the glaring of its light, even in the blackness of the midnight sea! I could not tell what was happening. Surely I was drowning, or already dead, and these were visions not of heaven but of hell. For amid this madness my mind stayed with me, and next thing I knew I felt a terrible wrenching, as if some giant hand had seized me and turned me inside out. My eyes came open, there in the sea, and everything danced with flame, and then I was sure I was dead, for of a sudden my vision became brilliantly clear, and what I saw told me I could no longer be in the world I’d known, the world of earth and air and fire and water.

  For the world was no longer there!

  I seemed to be suspended in a universe of flame and strange distortions. I seemed to be looking down, down, down into an unfathomable abyss. And even as I was aware of looking down, I fell, spinning, so dizzily wrenched that all thought left me completely. I fell into the abyss, and it twisted me, and tore me apart.

  And when it put me together, I was no longer the same man, and the world was not the same world.

  That is all I can write now.

  Part the Second

  11. The Nature of the Vulcan Vortex

  And so I missed the British Empire entirely.

  “QUID NON? QUID NON? QUID NON?” This morning I awoke from dreaming that ended with a giant voice thundering this question over and over again. “WHY NOT? WHY NOT? WHY NOT?”

  Yesterday I did not write but tried to rest. On the radio they said the government may fall and that there is threat of martial law if thi
ngs get as bad as they did last summer. I was wondering what this has to do with me when the phone suddenly rang. Doubtfully I took it off its hook and said, “Yes?” There was no reply, only breathing, then a click. Ten minutes later it rang again. This time a cold voice said, “Englishman, go home!” I put it down without a word, and when it rang again I ignored it. At intervals throughout afternoon and evening it rang. Finally at midnight I picked it up and shouted “WHAT DO YOU WANT?” But it was Michael. He said he’d been trying to call for hours. I told him why I hadn’t answered. He sounded worried. He says there is trouble he cannot speak about now, but hopes he can get here in a fortnight. “If you have to go anywhere,” he said, “send word you-know-where.”

  Yes. I know where.

  There have been no calls today, but when I went out I locked up the house, for the first time. I walked a long way, and met nobody. Yet something extraordinary happened when I was up at the old pagan stone on the hilltop. Three fighter aircraft followed by three more blasted out of cloud to the north and roared so low over my head that I was flattened and utterly deafened, and my heart just about jumped from my mouth.

  Welcome to the twentieth century, Humf.

  Project Vulcan!

  How well they named it.

  Part of me wants to walk away, to leave all this, to be anonymous and unknown again. I hate this sensation of trouble closing in, and I have no wish to be imprisoned again, or shot at again, simply for being who and what I am. But a stronger part says I must refuse to be intimidated. I have started this, I will finish it.

  I noted down the dream I had last night. I’ll get no closer at all to what it was like in the vortex of Vulcan. That event was too praeternatural to be caught with everyday words. My intellect cannot grasp it. Only my dream-self seems to know what it means.

  In the dream I lay frozen in a fog. My eyes were open, but my gaze was fixed, there was only fog, and I seemed to be flat on my back. My hands were clasped upright in immovable prayer. My mind alone had motion, and I pushed angrily with it, and the fog lifted a little. Suddenly I knew where and what I was. A stone effigy! A cold memorial on its back on a raised slab in the dark comer of a derelict church in Devon! In memoriam Sir Humfrey Gylberte, 1539-1583, long lost at sea and forgotten! Petrified here in a lifeless place where nobody came anymore, where weeds pushed up, where the walls were all in ruin and the graveyard overgrown!