The Bookman - Lavie Tidhar [63]
When he knocked on Verne's door, however, there was no answer, and as he went into his own cabin the room moved about him and for a moment he lost his balance. Then, peering out of the porthole, he realised they were moving.
The Nautilus was leaving port and heading to the open sea.
What can be said of this, the last ever voyage of the clipper Nautilus? It was a ship of misfits and rogues, of men from every nationality, their tones ranging from a Swede's pale eyes through their Indian captain's earthdark skin, to the Nubian darkness, like a polished obsidian rock, of the second mate's muscle-twined arms. Sailors spoke and sang and cursed and took orders in a confusing babble of tongues of which Hindi, English, French, Portuguese and Zulu were only the most common. It had seemed to Orphan, after a few days, that there were, in fact, more languages than people on board the ship.
It was, he had to admit, a magnificent ship, though it was, in other terms, also an old one: steam-power was muscling in on the clipper ships, taking over their routes, speeding along from continent to continent and market to market, making the old sail-ships slowly redundant. The Nautilus, having sailed the trade routes all over the Everlasting Kingdom's domain, and beyond, was now a ship-for-hire, commanded by the eccentric Dakkar (the son of an Indian rajah, according to Verne's whispered comment) and run by a rag-tag crew of ex-navy sailors, ex-buccaneers, even (so said Verne) ex-pirates. Where Dakkar had picked his crew Verne didn't know. "Here and there and everywhere," he had said, spreading his arms wide, "wherever there is unrest and injustice and wherever men run foul of the law."
"Whose law?" Orphan had said, and the writer shrugged expansively and said, "On this planet, at this time, there is only one law."
"So Dakkar is not…" Orphan hesitated. "Like you…"
"Of the Bookman's party?" Verne shook his head. "Not as such. He is his own man."
What could be said about the Nautilus? She had a long, slim body, narrow hips and billowing sails; her decks were sturdy and sure, her bow rounded, her quarter-deck and forecastle joined, by closing in the waist, to form one continuous upper deck. The Nautilus carried ten mounted 18-pounder guns on the upper deck, firing through ports in the low bulwarks of the waist. The middle deck, where Orphan and Verne's cabins were also situated, carried twenty 18-pounders. It was less a trade-ship than a warship, Orphan privately thought, and he wondered what Verne – or indeed Dakkar – had in mind for her, and for him. Would they sail direct to Caliban's Island with all guns blazing? Would they attempt a stealthy landing, with a small boat lowered off the side of the ship at night? Or… But there was no point in wondering.
It was time to get some answers.
TWENTY-ONE
Gilgamesh's Journal
In few, they hurried us aboard a bark,
Bore us some leagues to sea; where they prepared
A rotten carcass of a boat, not rigg'd,
Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats
Instinctively had quit it: there they hoist us,
To cry to the sea that roar'd to us, to sigh
To the winds whose pity, sighing back again,
Did us but loving wrong.
– William Shakespeare, The Tempest
Answers, however, were slow in coming. When he confronted Verne in his cabin the writer spread his arms wide and said apologetically, "There is not much that I do know. What I found out – most of it – is in my book. Surely you've read it?"
"L'Île mystérieuse? Well…"
"No?" Verne looked childishly hurt. "Well, there is not much there to help us, I'm afraid," he said. "It is only an account of a journey, you understand. I was never able to actually reach the island, as I mentioned to you. Oh, I have attempted to describe it, from what little obscure records I managed to locate, from drunken sailors' tales, from people who have claimed to have been shipwrecked on the island