Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [83]
“Is he dead?” cried Skip again, high as a girl. “Is it my fault? Oh, my God, my God, is he dead and is it my fault?”
If there is anything to be learned from my story perhaps it is this: never go to sea with a madman. Then again, as Gabriel once warned me, I have found that the seas positively seethe with them. Skip was one certainly. Was that why it came to seem that it was indeed his fault? Because it did, even though we all knew that his freeing of the dragon had nothing to do with anything that followed.
“It is not your fault, Mr. Skipton,” the captain said. “Contrary to what you might believe, you do not control the weather. For God’s sake, keep your mouth shut if you want to stay alive. Mr. Rainey, we must look for survivors and salvage whatever we can. We’ve a long journey ahead of us but it’s nothing that can’t be done.”
Over on the horizon the sky was dark. It started blowing again, and the rain came down and turned into hail.
iraculous that one poor head can carry so much. I see my old shipmates so clear, a strange mustering, like old times, old times only yesterday. We stand together on the tilted deck, wide eyed as children, waiting to be told what to do. The hail pings off the deck and hits our eyes.
Henry was under the deck, Billy was in our boat. Dag said the foremast fell on Sam and the water went over him. Simon said he and Abel Roper brought Mr. Comeragh up and put him in the waist boat, but then the big one hit and the boat was taken. Tossed but sound, carried far away, and in it Mr. Comeragh with his big-nosed, smiling face and dark eyes. How did he feel? Best to lie in the bottom and let the sea have its way and pray, then maybe or not you’d discover yourself alive in the following calm.
There were no more.
Mr. Rainey’s face was bloody as hell. Captain Proctor took control. “This is a disaster,” he rasped, eyes narrowed and blinking at the hail. “Not the first and not the last.” A coughing fit took him and it was a moment before he could continue. “We will bring these boats safe to shore with all hands. There is no doubt—no doubt at all—that this is well within our reach.”
Hail, blinding.
“Some of our friends have died.” He opened his mouth again, but nothing came out, then he sighed, closed his eyes for a second, opened them again and licked his lips. “We will give decent burials to all we can find.” His eyes were firm and steady, but pulled down at the corners and weepy. He’d managed to keep his glasses on, God knows how. “Now,” he said, “we have work to do.”
We had Joe’s toolbox, hatchets, needle and twine, a quadrant, two compasses, lanterns, two pistols and a musket, some powder, two terrified hogs. The captain put me, Tim and John to making new sails from what we could save of the old. Wilson Pride went among the rigging, chopping at spars, while Simon and Dan and Captain Proctor himself, cack-handed, set about the making of masts. We needed Joe. Yan was on lookout. Gabriel fished for barrels of water. Rainey got Skip hacking holes in the deck, and he went down himself with Dag and started bringing up boxes of hardtack. We did not mention what had happened. Hey ho, it was just another day and we were doing what we were told. All our tobacco was gone. I would have killed for a pipe, sitting there pricking my fingers bloody, wielding my needle. I could have cried, thinking of sweet smoke, the loveliest thing in the world. The sky too was the colour of smoke, with blue inside the blackness, shining. I was in a state of dreamy infancy. John Copper was joining the sides of a small sea shroud for Billy. The hail had eased to soft rain and I was in bits: one of me on a great adventure, one of me shivering on the sea like sunlight, one of me working on a gloomy afternoon in Jamrach’s yard with dear old Crabbe and Bulter …
My God, Crabbe and Bulter! My eyes filled with tears at the sudden thought of them.
“Hey Tim,” I said, “do you remember Crabbe and Bulter?”
Tim turned his head and smiled. “Course I do. Crabbe