Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [42]
At last the calm ended and we were able to go our ways. On the night before we parted company, we dined on salt beef and carrots on the Gallopan’s deck, each of us with a thin slice of fresh bread instead of hardtack, just as the captains and mates got all the time. And after a good rich duff of plums and damson jam, Simon got out his fiddle, and one of the Gallopan’s men went down below and came up with a squeeze box that looked as if it had sailed the seven seas at least seven times. Everyone joined in singing all the old songs, Sam Proffit’s glassy voice ringing above all the rest, a thin silver ribbon like the silver ribbons running down the cliffs when we left Faial. It could have been a woman’s voice or an angel’s, and it drove Felix mad. “Grates on my bones,” he used to say when the old man started on his Sunday hymns. Very devout, Sam was. I loved his voice. On first hearing, it was piercing and unpleasant, but it grew on you the way a bird with an irritating call does, becoming sweeter with familiarity.
There was a big moon that night. Over on the Lysander a bright light burned in the officers’ quarters. There lay our ship, all at peace, the captain’s dog scratching itself happily on the deck. “Blood Red Roses” they were singing. “Go down you blood red roses, go down.” The high, strange sound coming out of Sam’s worn black face was a ghostly descant to the rough voices of the others. “Go down you blood red roses, go down.” John Copper had tears in his eyes. One of the Gallopan crew was singing the thread: “Growl you may but go you must, for if you don’t your head they’ll bust,” and we were all joining in on the chorus: “Go down you blood red roses, go down. Oh—” this a great tipsy roar—“you pinks and posies—go down you blood red roses, go down.”
No one but me, for I was sitting next to him, noticed when Skip slammed down his tin cup, put his arms round himself and started rocking from side to side.
“What’s up?”
Ignoring me, he got up, walked to the rail and stood gazing across at our ship. Something peculiar in him made me follow. “What’s up, Skip?” I said. His eyes were wide. That was strange. Skip didn’t have wide eyes. He was staring up at her sails. “What?” I looked up too and saw nothing.
Then he looked at the black waves washing against Lysander’s side, and his throat clenched loudly.
“You not well. Skip?”
His lips were drawn back like a dog’s. “Can you see them?” he said.
“See what?”
“Snakes.” He was shivering.
I stared at the sea, the ordinary sea, and our ship, just as she ever was. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I wondered if I should go and tell someone.
“Of course, you don’t know what I’m talking about.” He sighed, wearily impatient. His hands were shaking on the rail. It was a beautiful night. The singing was growing melancholy and the lights swung out on the water.
“Don’t go mad on us, Skip,” I said, “for God’s sake.”
He smiled. “It’s all right,” shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter. It’s just something.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing.” He laughed, turning his head to look at me. His eyes were still too big.
“Skip,” I said, “are you really seeing things down there?”
He nodded sadly, returning his gaze to the sea, once more drawing back his lips from his gums in that peculiar dog-like