We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [87]
When I looked up again, the Kanaks had formed a circle around me. The wounded Kanak had come down from the rigging and was standing unsupported, as if his stay up there had done him good. I held out my hand. They stared at it. Then they stuck out theirs too, and one by one we shook hands. They didn't speak, and no smiles lit the darkness of their faces. They just shook my hand. I don't know whether it was something they'd learned from white men or a gesture they also used among themselves. But I knew what it meant at that moment. We'd sealed a pact. These were sailors, not savages.
Below deck I lay down in Jack Lewis's berth. I felt I'd earned the right to it. It wasn't until the next morning that I discovered Jim was missing. I remembered that I'd left him on the table—but now he was gone. I looked for him in the bottom berth and the locked cabinet, but he was nowhere to be found. It wasn't until I crawled around on the floor that he reappeared. He'd rolled into a corner, and somehow finding him in that humble position on the not very clean floor stripped him of the horror that had both attracted and repelled me. I wiped the dust from his hair, wrapped him in his frayed cloth, and locked him in the cabinet.
Not for one moment did I consider sending him the same way as the pearls. He was no longer a threat. Jim was a witness to the darkness in Jack Lewis. But I'd been there too, and I'd come back.
IT TOOK US a week to reach Samoa, but during that whole time I never thought about the purpose of my journey: I was too busy with my duties as a captain. I measured the height of the sun, plotted our course, kept an eye on the sails, and issued my orders. We had plenty of water and we lived on fish. We saw no other ships, and the trade wind blew constantly from the same direction.
When I stood in the bow and watched the never-ending break of waves and the white foam flecks glinting like pearls spilling onto a stone floor, I remembered Jack Lewis's words: a young man should travel the whole sea and every island in it. But when my gaze slid astern toward the white stripe of the wake sparkling in the sunlight, it struck me that it was a kind of chain, and I knew that the moment I became captain of the Flying Scud I was free but at the same time bound.
The ocean was so infinitely vast. It could take you anywhere, and yet it shackled you.
The port of Apia is shaped like a bottleneck: a big bay encircled by two peninsulas. The western one is called Mulinuu, the eastern one Matautu. Beyond that lies a reef that looks a bit like the breakwater around Marstal. Here the thunder of the surf is so loud that it's difficult to hear yourself speak: even five kilometers away, high in the green mountains that soar up behind Apia, you can hear the waves roar. And no one in Apia will call a captain a bad sailor if he wrecks his ship trying to pass through the gap in the reef during a storm, because it's regarded as well-nigh impossible. Instead they'll call him irresponsible or ignorant, for everyone knows that in foul weather, the open ocean is a safer bet than their shelterless bay in an oncoming wind.
***
But I knew nothing of this when I bent over the chart in Captain Lewis's cabin. To me, Apia was no more than a name on a map. But since that time, I've learned that a shipwreck can be a welcome thing, if the ship's loss saves a man's honor.
And as we neared Apia, my honor was very much on my mind. How could I ever explain the way I'd ended up as captain of the notorious Flying Scud? Who'd believe my story about the free men in the hold, the cannibals from the Morning Star, the death of Jack Lewis, and the leather bag of pearls thrown overboard?
Yet I was bound to this ship, for I could not reach my destination without her. Jack Lewis and