Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [43]
“I can’t see anything,” I told him pointlessly, and we stood for a while, both of us gazing down as if hypnotised.
“Don’t worry. Look at your hands.” I tried to prise one off the rail. “It’s just the sea playing tricks. It’s worse when the moon’s out. Does funny things with your eyes.”
“Snakes from out of the sea,” he said, but his hands loosened and fell down by his sides.
“Listen, if you’re scared witless by a bit of moon on water,” I said, “what’ll you do when we get to dragon land?”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“Because that’s real. I’m not scared of what’s real.”
He turned from the rail and I saw that his eyes were narrow again. “They’ve gone,” he said. “Gone back down into the sea.”
Normal, or as normal as he could ever be.
“But they’re not real,” I reminded him. “You said it yourself.”
“So?” And he just walked away as if nothing had happened.
I told Gabriel about this and he said, “There’s a word for it, Jaf. Mad. You meet a lot of mad people at sea, particularly on a whale ship. Long as he can do his job.”
“True, but what if it happens while he’s out in a whaleboat? What if he’s supposed to be pulling along with everyone else and he sees something that isn’t there and starts watching that instead? I wouldn’t want to be in a boat with him. Do you think he’s all right?”
“Look,” he said, “if they laid off all the mad sailors there’d be no one left to man the ships.”
But later he gave me a nudge and said, “Keep an eye on him though.”
I told Dan about it too, and he said much the same.
So, there we were keeping an eye on Skip as we crossed the Equator. I was thinking of Ishbel. I was thinking of Ma. I was thinking how when I got home, I’d never be able to tell them, never be able to describe all this, the way it felt, the miles and miles of empty sea and never a sail and never a sight of a whale or anything, and all of us rubbing along together like we did, with the timbers groaning and the smells of oak and pine and the murkier smell of men. How to explain how safe and good the fo’c’s’le? Home with the hatch down. That’s how peaceful it was when at last, six weeks after leaving home, we encountered our first whales.
It was Tim sighted them. God caused the great glory of the deep to appear for Tim—who else?—and Tim seized his moment joyfully.
“There she blo-o-ows!”
Loud and clear. His voice broke a little, but what matter? We were so thoroughly prepared, we all knew exactly what to do, yet for a moment or two we greenies froze.
“Where away?” Rainey cried, and Comeragh called all hands.
“Right ahead—a school of sperms.”
“Haul up the mainsail and spankers—helm down—back—clear away boats—lower away!”
Sam and Gabriel and Dan and Yan set about the boats calmly. Captain Proctor came up and stood on the quarterdeck with his telescope to his eye, and the dog sat at his side, wagging its tail.
“Flukes!” yelled Tim.
We ran to the rail. I saw nothing, only the sea and the endless horizon. Bill, my friend of the sick bucket, was on one side of me and on the other was Dag Aarnasson, a big, strong boy with white-yellow hair. He must have had better eyes than me. “I see it!” he cried.
Then Bill started jumping up and down and pointing. “There! There!”
I couldn’t see anything.
A cheer went up.
“Keep it down, you fools!” Proctor roared in a voice we’d never heard before, a real captain’s voice full of command that must have been kept in reserve all this time for just such an occasion as this. We jumped to. Ours was the waist boat. The line was already in and Simon stood sharpening his harpoon. Far above, Tim leaned out over empty air.
“She breaches!”
“A shoal of sperm,” Captain Proctor called out sharply, “twenty at least.”
We ploughed on. Rainey walked about the deck sticking his big nose in everywhere and swearing all the time as if there were no other words would do it. Henry Cash always seemed to be striding about everywhere too, always looking as if he was in control of some very important situation.
“White water!” cried Tim.
A mile from the shoal we hove to. A ghostly feather appeared, far,