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By Root 964 0

Dag’s voice went peculiar. Not that we’d understood anything he was saying, but there’d been a human quality at least to it, but now he turned and became like the Minotaur in the myth, bellowing like an ox being dragged to slaughter, eyes rolling. He shat himself. Then a terrible thing happened, an image that seared itself indelibly onto my eyes and into whatever I am. He was leaning up against the gunwale and Simon had just finished wiping his face. The captain was dipping the rag in the sea. Dag’s eyes were open, looking out at the world with fixed interest, as if he’d never seen it before. Next second blood gushed out from his nose, then more, a great flood from his eyes, from his mouth, from his ears. As if all the blood of him was leaving through his face.

His head fell down on his chest and he was gone.

Whether it was the blood horror of it I don’t know, but this death disturbed me more than all the others, more than I can say. I saw that sight as you see a demon in your worst nightmare, but I didn’t wake up. I palmed my eyes and pressed them hard, feeling sick. My eyes burned with wanting to cry, but they couldn’t. There was nothing there. No spare. My bones rubbed against one another, against the boards beneath me. There was Tim’s same old hand in mine, but they were poor things now, those hands: brown, spindly sticks linked. The palms ticked with nerves.

The captain said, “Let’s just get on with it, shall we? We know what we’re doing …”

“It’s not fair,” Simon said. “Why’s it always us has to do it just because it always happens on our boat? One of them should do it for a change.”

Oh God, not me.

“Next time,” the captain promised.

Close your eyes but you still must hear.

“Dan,” I said, “what’s a good way of doing yourself in?”

“Shoot yourself,” he replied immediately.

“Would you give me the gun if I wanted it?”

He looked at me for a long moment. “Would I? I wonder? I don’t know, Jaf.”

I could smell blood, a whiff on the breeze.

Here came the cup and I drank.

“Drink of this,” said Dan when it was his turn, raising the cup as if it was a chalice, “for this is my blood, shed for thee …”

We had days of meat, and then days of no meat, and then more days of no meat. A change stirred in the sky. The sun dimmed and a chill came whispering on the air. Clouds piled up on every side, and rain fell in a soft, blue-grey shimmer far away in the east. The east: coasts of the Americas. The American sailors have a song that goes: “Oh, say was you ever in Rio Grande, those sweet señoritas they sure beats the band …” Black-haired, bosomy girls welcoming weary sailors to soft feather beds. The wind got up. The sky flickered. We took in the sails and the wind spun us round. Our boats drifted far apart, and the rain came down all at once in a drenching torrent, icy cold, and it was laughable the way from cursing the bloody heat we were suddenly freezing to death and soaking wet. We lay to. It was dark suddenly, and there was baling to do and Gabriel couldn’t. He’d spread himself out since Skip had gone back to the captain’s boat to even things up, and now could scarcely push himself up from the boards. A great shake had come over him. Every lightning flash revealed him lying in inches of cold water with twitching legs and grinding teeth. We didn’t get to sleep till late next morning when the rain abated, and as soon as I woke I saw him sitting with his eyes closed and a look of concentration on his face. He’d gone a funny olive green colour.

“He won’t eat his tack,” said Tim.

“Gabe? You’ve got to eat.”

He didn’t react.

He never ate again after that. Hardly a drop of water passed his lips either. The wind calmed from wild to merely boisterous and we drifted on, tossing up and down. He didn’t eat, but he opened his eyes and started cursing God again.

We sang “The Blind Man Stood on the Road and Cried” the night Gabriel died.

The blind man stood on the road and cried,

Oh, the blind man stood on the road and cried,

Oh, my Lord save me,

The blind man stood on the road and cried …

Round and round like that for ever.