Goat Mother and Others: The Collected Mythos Fiction of Pierre Comtois (14 page)

Once more, when it was time to depart, I was called upon to help round up the men. It was more difficult this time and we ended up losing two to the myriad drug dens that riddled the city. To replace them, Captain Marsh took on a couple of the huskier natives who could speak a kind of pidgin English. With hold loaded with fine porcelain and furniture and tons of rice, we slipped port and made our way back out to open sea. It was not official knowledge, but the scuttlebutt had it then that the Captain was of the mind to steer a course southward to the spice islands to trade our load of rice for some spices and peppers that would bring a great price among the dealers in Boston. He had hopes of finding an island not recently visited by traders and so, ill versed in the worth of rice
vis-a-vis
spices.

Well I am sure that the subsequent search went on a good deal longer than even the Captain had expected. The
Queen
at first made good time south of China as it crossed the Philippine Sea, passed the Carolines and threaded its way beyond the Gilberts and the Tuamotu Archipelago. After that, landfall became a rarer thing and when we transited the Tropic of Capricorn we at last entered the great, empty reaches of the South Pacific. At first, the Captain made for islands marked on his charts, but soon after he began following leads to others that were not charted given to him by the ignorant savages that populated these God forsaken specks of land. Most of the stories we heard proved false, some led to actual islands. Eventually, these specks of land seemed to run out and we drifted out onto the wide empty ocean far below New Zealand. Weeks passed with nary a hint of dry land and the men began to grumble and expected momentarily to spot stray icebergs from the not too distant polar regions to the south.

It was on one of those later evenings when I held the stern watch by the spanker that my doubts about the Captain’s intentions and his irreverent attitude toward the Christian religion began to crystallize, as the learned men sometimes say, in my mind. The surface of the sea was as still as a soft shroud while the silvery light of a full moon silhouetted the length of the ship toward the bow. Unfamiliar constellations twinkled between the ropes and spars of our empty masts as the
Queen
lay in wait for a strong wind. The hour was late, and so we had only a minimum crew on deck, allowing my thoughts to wander. I lit my pipe and leaned against the rail, feeling the cool night breeze against my face.

“Reckon we must be nearin’ the pole as some ‘o the crew been sayin’, Hosea?” came a voice from behind me. I looked over my shoulder without altering my position at the rail.

“It’s true that this wind is colder than normal, Worthy,” I replied, “but the pole’s still a long way off. More ‘n likely it’s just the season.” My bunk mate took a place beside me at the rail and lit his own pipe.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he said, looking out at the moon. “Ain’t familiar with these parts,” he continued. “The strangeness of it all: the stars, the currents, the not knowin’, it all spooks me.” I told him I agreed with him and wondered aloud if the Captain knew what he was doing.

“Cap’n Marsh is a crafty old seaman,” said Worthy, “but he’s got one weakness: profit. It ain’t enough for him to return to Innsmouth a rich man, he always needs to have more.”

“No good can come of a man who worships only at the altar of Mammon,” I observed. “The Captain’s god is gold and silver.”

Worthy did not dispute this observation but merely changed the subject. “What do ya hear about our provisions?”

“They are still good. We have plenty of fresh water, but we lack fruit to prevent scurvy.”

“Aye, we haven’t been able to stock up on fruit for over three weeks.” Suddenly, the moon slipped behind an approaching cloud bank and plunged the surrounding sea into what seemed pitch darkness. As the minutes passed, we could actually see the shadow of the clouds as they creeped over the water and swallowed the
Queen
. I immediately looked to the spanker as a few more hands came up from below decks. The second mate was shouting orders to trim sails when a terrified scream pierced the night air.

“We’re bein’ boarded!” it yelled, and immediately the ship was plunged into a chaos of shouting men and screaming savages as what seemed a hoard of dusky-skinned, painted, and file-toothed natives swarmed amidships flailing spears and truncheons at the night watch.

I saw Jim Caneford have his skull crushed beneath the weight of a war club and Isaac Kearns gutted with a spear. Their killing slowed the savages down a bit as they jumped and hooted in glee at their swift victories. Then the bulk of the crew emerged from below-decks armed with pistols, cutlasses, and belaying pins. Captain Marsh was at the forefront, shouting encouragement at the men and curses at the natives as the two sides met and mingled amidships. Almost immediately, the decks were awash with blood as limbs were hacked off and heads rolled. It was all I had time to see as I was suddenly grasped from behind in a rough embrace and felt the prick of a stone knife against the flesh of my back.

A foul reek of sweat and fish guts assailed my nostrils as my captor’s breath whistled in my ear. I twisted suddenly and reached behind me, my hand seeking to stay the plunge of the knife. I found the savage’s wrist and we stood there a moment or two, he with his arm about my throat and I with my hand at his wrist. The sounds of the melee below died away until we struggled in silence, the perspiration beading my face and streaming along my body with the strain. Finally, I felt my assailant shift his weight and in that instant, I acted. I pushed the knife hand against his belly and threw myself backward. In doing so, the arm around my neck pulled away enough for me to use my free hand to seize and twist it away. In the meantime, the force of my rearward lunge prolonged the savage’s imbalance and he toppled back. I threw my full weight against him and in another moment his back was arched against the horizontal beam of the spanker. I spun and flung my right hand to his throat, with the other, I struck the knife from his hand. Our relative positions were in my favor as I continued to force him back. Now both his hands were desperately grasping at mine as I stopped forcing him back and concentrated on crushing his larynx. Already, the breath was wheezing from his open mouth where I could see that two of his sharpened teeth had been broken long ago. At last, his struggles grew weak, his arms fell to his sides, and he began to slump. Cautiously, I removed my hands from about his throat and had the peculiar satisfaction of seeing him crumple to the floor.

Fleetingly, I felt the guilt a proper Christian must feel when he kills a fellow man, but it was only fleeting because just then I heard, as if from very far away, the voice of Worthy Hunnicut calling my name. He was asking me if I was all right and I replied that I was. I could see through the tatter of his blouse that his shoulder was smeared in blood and behind him lay the corpse of a native, the broken haft of a spear protruding from its side. I looked at my own hands and saw that they were smeared in the earthy paints that had decorated the native I had slain.

Then the silence retreated and the clamor of battle reemerged into my consciousness. The level of noise had lessened somewhat, and as Worthy and I rested warily against the rail overlooking the main deck, we could see the last act of the epic battle. A score of bodies lay strewn across the blood-drenched deck and we could see with some relief that only one more of our crew could be added to those of Jim and Isaac. The rest consisted of savages in various modes of dismemberment. Captain Marsh was still standing, still shouting and cursing and spattered in blood, he looked more than a match for the nickname the men had taken to calling him: Old Limb of Satan. The enemy were in full retreat as the last of them fell and leapt over the side. Some regained their war canoes, others simply began swimming toward the horizon, while still others merely sank beneath the surface of the sea. By then it was near dawn and just as the men began to catch their breath, another shout arose, this time with an even more fearful warning: “Fire in the hole!” it yelled.

There was a momentary scramble as the crew looked anxiously about until someone spied the smoke rising from the bow trap. “Form a bucket line!” ordered the Captain as tired men became newly galvanized and began handing buckets of water up from the sea with ropes and handing them on down a line of their mates to eventually be thrown into the hold. As the smoke dissipated, and the seaman’s worst nightmare began to recede, the first mate was lowered into the hold to view the damage. When he reemerged, it was to report that the trade goods were undamaged but that our victuals had all been spoiled. There was silence then as everyone looked to the Captain who wasted little time in nipping any discontent in the bud.

“These savages,” he said, pointing to what remained of the dead natives, “boarded our ship in war canoes, which means that they didn’t come from very far away. We’ll find their island and restore our supplies there.” This seemed to reassure the crew who for a moment had not thought of that possibility. But the natives who had survived the battle were already out of sight and no one aboard had noticed in which direction they had fled.

As I ruminated upon this new problem, the sound of a groan at my back arrested my attention. When I turned, I saw that the savage whom I had thought I had slain, was yet alive. I immediately informed the Captain of this stroke of good luck and watched as he and Matt Eliot climbed the stairs to where the savage lay on the deck. “Matt, you speak the lingo of these parts,” says the Captain, “see if the brute can understand any of ‘em.” The first mate grunted some words which the native immediately understood. I was not too surprised at this development as past experience had taught me that many of the natives populating the islands of the Pacific Ocean were related in some way and shared much of the same language.

The native grunted something back which Eliot translated as the whereabouts of his own island. The Captain smiled, then stopped. He had noticed something around the native’s neck and, stooping, ripped it from about his throat. The savage made as if to stop him, but thought better of it. The Captain looked closely at the object which seemed to be a necklace made of finely worked gold. Grinning, the Captain handed it around the knot of crewmen that had since surrounded the native, who still reclined on the deck.

After passing from hand to hand for a bit, the necklace finally came into my possession. It was very fine indeed, not heavy. And the man who had shaped the figures on it could have made his way in any civilized city in the world. Upon closer examination, I could see that the figures etched in the gold were strangely amphibian. Men who seemed to be in the form of frogs or fish, and fish with legs and arms emerging from the waves. There were other, less recognizable shapes but by then the short hairs on the back of my neck had begun to rise and I sensed that there was something not right with the native imagery. Something beyond simple pagan iconography, for I had seen much of that in my travels and none ever affected me in the manner that that necklace had. I handed it absentmindedly to Worthy, and when I brought my attention back to the small drama before me I could see that the Captain’s ploy of handing the necklace to the men had worked as he had planned. The lust of riches was plain in their eyes and none seemed to be as disturbed as I was about it.

“Ask him where he got that there necklace,” ordered the Captain. When Eliot reported that the native refused to tell, the Captain became exceeding wroth and told Eliot to threaten the native with bodily harm if the information was not forthcoming. Again the native refused to comply and the Captain ordered Barnston, the second mate, to take him below with two other men and use what physical persuasion they cared to convince him to cooperate. The broad smiles that creased those crewmen’s faces needed no explanation. They were the sort who took pleasure in the sound of other men’s bones breaking. I did not hesitate to protest the action and was surprised to find that I had an ally in Matt Eliot, but our suasions were wasted on the Limb of Satan, who confidently asked the rest of the men if they felt the way I did. They bellowed their negative reply and the issue was settled.

A short time later, the second mate returned and he and Eliot were beckoned by the Captain to follow him to his cabin. There they remained for some time until emerging around noon. The first and second mates split up, bellowing orders to the crew to trim the sails and bring the
Queen
about. With our experienced hands, it did not take much time to put words into action and presently we found ourselves bearing a course to the south-southeast. Every eye aboard strained ahead to be the first to spy our destination even though every one knew that honor would fall to the man in the crow’s nest. The sea was still as glassy and smooth as it had been during the night and a preternatural calm had suddenly settled in the air itself so that our sails soon went limp. Anxious to arrive at the island the native had spoken about, the Captain ordered a boat lowered with sixteen men to man its oars. A line was made fast in the bow and the men soon were bending their backs and singing a seaman’s dirge to the calls of the second mate. Slowly, they pulled the
Queen
along toward the horizon and presently, as the afternoon waned, a great tower of birds could be seen wheeling in the sky like a living tornado. It was a strange sight even if we had not been away from land for so long and it elicited much excited discussion until the lookout in the crow’s nest called out “Land ho!” Instantly, every member of the crew followed the direction of the man’s pointing arm and dimly, a dark smudge began to resolve itself on the horizon. The men in the boat began to pull with renewed vigor but it was clear that it would be after nightfall before we arrived within the vicinity of the island. When the time came, the Captain ordered a halt and the boat brought back. The sea anchor was thrown overboard and the ship made fast for the night. It would remain for the dawn to see us make our final approach to the island.

That night, most of the crew slept above-decks with their weapons close at hand. I found it difficult to sleep at my position aft with the regular scuff of Captain Marsh as he paced the deck throughout the night. He seemed more anxious then he usually was when near to closing a deal. Sometime in the dark nearest dawn, I gave up attempting to sleep and approached the port rail. The faintest tinge of the approaching sun glowed dimly near the horizon silhouetting the shape of the island. We were within a mile of it and already I could tell it rose steeply out of the water at that point. As the light increased, its bulk began to take on more detail. At first, I guessed the irregularity of its summit was due to a thick, overhang of jungle growth and indeed, my surmise soon proved accurate and more. Great tendrils of leafy vines festooned the face of the greyish cliffs much as we are told of the hanging gardens of cursed Babylon. Then, as the sun rose fully into view, and as more of the crew joined me at the rail, the full wonderment of those cliffs were revealed to us. Far from being a single sheet of rock, the cliffs were actually a grouping of colossal stones, tumbled as if from a great height untold ages before. It betokened some sort of volcanic activity on the island some time in the past. But as the sun slowly moved its rays over the surface of those stones, their true disposition became startlingly apparent. Many of them sported the likenesses of men. They proved to be great stone effigies whose visages stared unseeing and eternally out to sea, as if waiting for something. I had seen such handiwork before in the Ponapes, but never dreamed the practice could have reached to other islands. Also, these stone faces were of more intricate work, as if closer to the culture at the source of the phenomenon.