Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories - Italo Calvino [49]
‘And how did it end? Tell us, Uncle Donald!’ we said, seeing the old seadog's chin already sinking on his chest as he nodded off again.
What? Ah yes, becalmed! Weeks it went on. We could see them through our spyglasses, those mollycoddled papists, those make-believe mariners, under their tassled sunshades, handkerchiefs between scalp and wig to soak up the sweat, eating their pineapple icecreams. While we, the most able seamen of all the oceans, we whose destiny it was to conquer for Christendom all those lands that lived in darkness, we were stuck there with our hands in our pockets, fishing lines dangling over the bulwarks, chewing our tobacco. We'd been sailing the Adantic for months, our supplies were down to the dregs and rotting too, every day the scurvy carried someone off, we dropped them into the sea in sacks while our boatswain muttered a couple of quick verses from the Bible. Over on the galleon, the enemy watched through their spyglasses, seeing every sack that plunged into the sea and making signs with their fingers as if busy counting our losses. We railed against them: they'd have to wait a long time indeed before they could count us all dead, we who had survived so many hurricanes, it would take a lot more than a becalmed sea off the Antilles to finish us off…’
‘But how did you get out of it, Uncle Donald?’
What's that you said? How get out of it? Well, that's what we were always asking ourselves, all the months we were becalmed there… Many of us, especially the eldest and the most thickly tattooed, they said that we had always been a sprint ship, good for rapid escapades, and they remembered the times when our culverins had thinned out the masts of the most powerful Spanish ships, punched holes in their bulwarks, jousted in brusque gybes … For sure, when it came to rapid seamanship we were strong indeed, but there had been wind then, the ship moved fast … Now, becalmed as we were, all this talk of gun-batdes and grappling hooks was just a way of passing the time while we waited for God knows what; a rising south-westerly, a gale, even a typhoon … So our orders were that we shouldn't even think about it, and the captain explained that the real naval batde was this stopping still where we were, looking at each other, keeping ourselves ready, going over the plans of Her Britannic Majesty's great naval batdes, and the sail-handling rule-book and the perfect helmsman's manual, and the culverin instruction book, because the rules of Admiral Drake's fleet were still and in every detail the rules of Admiral Drake's fleet: if ever they were to start changing those, God only knew where …’
‘And then, Uncle Donald? Hey, Uncle Donald! How did you manage to get moving?’
‘Hum … hum … where was I? Ah yes, woe betide us if we didn't keep to the strictest discipline and observation of the nautical rules. On other ships in Drake's fleet there had been official changes and even mutinies, rebellions: people were looking for another way to sail the seas, there were simple seamen, lookouts, and even cabin boys who had become self-styled experts and wanted to say their piece on navigation … Most of the officers and quartermasters felt that this was the biggest danger of all, so woe betide you if they got wind of any talk about a radical rewriting of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth's naval rulebook. No, we had to go on cleaning up the mortars, washing down the deck, checking that the sails were shipshape, even though they hung limp in the windless air, and through the empty hours of those long days, the healthiest entertainments, as the officers saw it, were the inevitable tattoos on chest and arms glorifying our fleet that ruled the waves. And when we talked we ended up turning a blind eye on the ones who saw no other hope than a change in the weather, a hurricane perhaps that with a bit of luck would send everybody, friend