Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [88]
The surnames had all been dropped; we were all plain Johns and Tims and Simons now, apart from Mr. Rainey, and the captain, of course, who was still the captain.
“It’s him,” said John, jerking a thumb backwards over his shoulder at Skip. “Driving me up the wall, he is. Keeps poking me all night saying there’s an owl sitting on the gunnel, and there bloody isn’t.”
We laughed.
“What’s the matter, Skip?” asked Tim.
Skip just shook his head.
“When’s this ship coming, captain?” Gabriel was polishing the end of his spear. “I thought it would have come by now.”
“I wish I knew. Could be tomorrow, could be the next ten minutes, could be a week or more for all we know.”
“Could be never,” said Simon.
“That’s right, could be never.” The captain threw a quick look at him. “But by my reckoning, we’re well on course for the coast of Chile, so if the worst comes to the worst and no ship comes, we should make a landing there in about three weeks. Weather permitting, of course.” He looked round at us all and smiled in an encouraging way.
“Three weeks.” Simon drooped.
“It’s nothing,” said Rainey sharply.
“In the course of your life, Simon,” the captain added, stifling a yawn, “three weeks is a drop in the ocean.”
“It’s my head,” said John. “If I could just get rid of this headache.”
“Where is it?” I asked. “I’ve got one too.”
“All over.”
“Mine’s at the back of my eyes.”
“It’s bloody awful,” Skip said in a sudden tearful voice. “I can’t stand it.”
“What do you mean by that, Skip?” Dan said. “You are standing it. You have no choice.”
“He’s standing it,” John said. “It’s me that’s going mad.”
“It’s my head too,” said Skip.
“And mine,” said Yan.
“It’s the sun,” said Mr. Rainey, voice chop-chop like a blade.
“True.” The captain squinted up at the blank blue sky. “The sun goes down in an hour and a half.”
“Ten days it is now,” said Dag.
“Nine.” A rare word from Wilson.
“Ten.”
“Nine.”
“Ten,” said Simon, closing his eyes.
“Not if you don’t count the day we stayed with the ship.”
“It’s the thirst,” said Rainey, and his voice cracked like a schoolboy’s, shocking to hear from a man like him. I tried to open my mouth, but it stuck shut.
“Water,” Tim said. “Must be time.”
My tot of water. Silver on my tongue.
The captain looked up at the sky and down at the bottom of the boat where Pole lay on his side panting weakly in the heat. “I think,” he said, “it’s time we killed a pig.”
Our hog was nameless, a stolid soul that took no notice at all when Pole began to scream. Nothing makes such a racket as a hog. Such exquisite terror. Wilson hauled him from his nook and got him over on his side. Out splayed his spiky little legs, trotters stabbing in spasm, kick, kick, kick. Wilson held him down while Simon and Dag grabbed and dodged and had the devil of a job getting him hobbled, but he was tied in a few minutes and they lay across his body to keep him still. Wilson cut his throat. The hog twitched on as his blood drained into the bucket John Copper held under his throat, and screamed on too, terrible sounds, vile, cutting. Blood filled the bucket and slopped over into the bottom of the boat.
“Here, Yan, pass the other bucket over,” said Captain Proctor.
The smell made my head light, the smell of the butcher’s shop two doors down from our old house on Watney Street. The smell in the early morning of blood and brine, the pig’s heads in a tub. The captain tipped some of the blood into the second bucket, dipped one of our tin cups in and hesitated for a moment before handing it sideways to Mr. Rainey. Rainey took it, looked down into it, closed his eyes and drank. The captain filled the other cup and passed it in the other direction, to John Copper.
“Not too much, John,” Proctor said. “Sip it.”
The cups went round in both directions and all of us drank except for Gabriel, who started heaving.
“Can’t,” he said. His eyes streamed.
“It’s all right, Gabriel,” Dan said. “It doesn’t taste of anything.”
It didn’t, not really, but it was salty and warm.
“I know,” said Gabriel,