We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [77]
I'd sailed with him to solve one puzzle, only to discover another.
I was just like one of his Kanaks. But I was also a white man, and I felt he owed me an answer to the riddle. He was about to die, and I wanted that explanation before it was too late.
I ordered one of the Kanaks to take the helm, and went over to Jack Lewis. I'd never seen a human being die before, unlike my papa tru, who had been to war and seen men all around him blasted to pieces as the Christian the Eighth headed for disaster. I'd seen men fall overboard and disappear into the sea, but that was different. Swallowed up by the waves, they were already lost from view by the time they began that lonely journey into the depths. They didn't die in front of your eyes. They just left your field of vision.
Jack Lewis was about to die, I was certain of it. Just as I was certain that now, as he lay on the deck like the statue of a deity toppled from its plinth, his stony façade would crack and reveal the naked human inside. Bleeding from his wound, he'd soon be exposed as human just as James Cook was in Kealakekua Bay.
But as he stared at me, I realized that I'd been wrong to think that. Jack Lewis might be a toppled god, but he was still a god. There was no fear in his eyes, and I didn't know why I ever thought I'd see it. Was there grief, then, at all he'd have to bid farewell to? Or regret, for all he'd no longer achieve? Or was there just pure rage?
I'd seen him lose his self-control when he was forced to use his precious pearls as bullets. Was that how he viewed his own death? As the waste of a pearl?
I was young and I'd never given death a second thought. Can the feelings that another's death prompts in you provide a forewarning of what you'll experience when you draw your own last breath? I was about to find out.
"Fetch the whiskey." He had to swallow between each word, but Jack Lewis's voice still retained its old authority. He patted the deck with a feeble hand, as though inviting me for a final drink in his cabin. "And Jim."
I stared at him.
"Are you deaf?"
Perplexed, I shook my head and went to his cabin to carry out his order. Unwrapping the ghastly head from its cloth, I placed it next to Lewis. Then I opened the whiskey and poured some into my palm. I'd never treated a gunshot wound before, but I vaguely recalled that you cleaned them with alcohol.
"What do you think you're doing?" Jack Lewis snarled.
"I'm going to wash your wound."
"My wound!" he exclaimed. "My wound isn't thirsty. I am. Fetch two glasses."
When I returned with the glasses, Jack Lewis was scrutinizing Jim, as though he'd just asked him a question and was now awaiting the reply.
The Kanaks stood rooted to the spot in the middle of the deck. The helmsman had let go of the wheel: I shouted at him and he returned to his post. But he kept turning around. It wasn't the dying captain his eyes kept roaming toward, but the shrunken head in his hands.
"Is this wise?" I said to Jack Lewis.
"That's none of your business." His voice was thick with contempt. "Of course, it's bloody stupid to show a shrunken head to a bunch of cannibals whose blood's just been roused. But I'll be gone in a moment. And then it's your problem, not mine."
A gurgling noise came from his chest, and he bared his teeth in a grimace that might have been a smile.
"Fill up the glasses. Let's toast our onward journey. Mine's to the unknown. And yours will be as the newly fledged captain of a cannibal ship."
I poured and passed him the glass, but he didn't have the strength to hold it: I had to support his head and raise the glass to his lips. He drained its contents with a groan, but it was impossible to tell whether it was from pleasure or pain.
"The free men," I said. "I want you to tell me about the free