Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [72]
“Oh, of course. You know things.”
Skip ignored him. “It’s since we left the island,” he said. “We’ve gone into dragon time.”
I closed my eyes, very sleepy.
“I mean the time before the dragon and the time after are not the same.”
The funny thing is I knew exactly what he meant. It was true, something had changed, as if we’d sailed into a different air. I’d been groping at it in my mind, thinking it was something only happening in me. His saying it made it real, and that scared me.
That night I dreamed of home. Ishbel and Ma were there, and some of the lads and girls from Spoony’s, Ginger Jane and that lot, and we were all going down to the river, and all of it tumbled in with the kind of violent sunset you never saw on the banks of the Thames, a dragon-time sunset of crimson and violet. I was woken by shouting on deck. The sea was rolling. Not time, I thought, and slept again and found out later it was old Skip up to his tricks again. Rainey had found him fast asleep by the dragon’s cage and called him a whoreson and a bastard, and kicked him down the fo’c’s’le shaft.
Next morning we were out for open ocean when the weather turned. The air still heavy and hot and thunder rolled from the west. You could see the squall coming. It’s one of the things I love about the sea, the way you can see weather afar. It’s like looking at the future. Captain Proctor called out, “Shorten sails!” and we jumped to and set about turning her round and about direct. I ran and shielded the dragon’s pen with a hanging. Gabriel was at the helm, but the order was tardy and even he couldn’t get us around in time, so we were caught sideways on by the wind and suddenly all was madness and nonsense, the birds and the wind shrieking their devil souls out, and the rigging torn, the sails cracking, the timbers groaning and the huge masts crying mercy. My guts flew into my throat. The deck tilted, we dropped and I rolled, grabbed onto something. Mr. Rainey’s voice roared over the screaming as the sea rolled over the leeward rail, icy. We’d gone over fast. We’re sinking, we’re sinking, I thought, this is too low, too low, we’ll never come up again, oh, dear Jesus, God, please—the lee side touched the sea, the weather touched cloudy, fat-cheeked heaven.
I ran about, we ran about, I had no idea what I was doing. I saw Martin Hannah hauling on a rope and thought he looked as if he needed help, so hauled alongside.
Somehow we finally got her up and around. She flew before the storm.
“Good man yourself, Jaf,” Martin Hannah said, breathing hard. He was a tall, quiet lad I hardly knew, inclined to stoutness, with a faintly threatening air and a slow smile.
“Good man yourself,” I replied.
Then the cry: “She blows!”
It was ridiculous. Even in this, Proctor’s standing on the quarterdeck shouting his head off: “Down from aloft! Haul up the mainsail—Gabriel! Helm down—set topgallants—clear away boats …”
We had to get the spare from over the stern. It was starting to spit rain and the sea was high. But you don’t think, you just do. Soon came the falling rattle of the tackle, the splash of a boat hitting the sea. The flashing of long oars. We plunged and bucked over the sea with aching ears and flayed faces, blind with spray. Tears were blown backwards from our eyes. And we never caught a whale that day, we just lost another boat. So there we were, two down, and the weather frowning like a dragon. While the real dragon pressed flat and mad to the deck with eyes glazed over full of knowledge, drooling a slow spool of greenish slime as hell heaved sick about him.
I knocked shoulders with John Copper.
“Jesus,” he said, a wild look in his eyes. “Sweet, sweet Jesus, I wish I was back in dear old Hull.”
If I could write I’d make a song. “Oh, I wish I was back in …” Many a sailor song starts that way. “Oh, I wish I was back in Ratcliffe Highway, Ratcliffe Highway across the sea …” I don’t know how I’d say it. My own heart song. There are good old Ratcliffe Highway songs aplenty, but none are mine. So as the wild torrent howled and raged and pined for days