The Unknown Shore (18 page)

Most of the people under Mr Anson’s command would have given him the same advice, in the likely event of his asking them; and it is possible that the great man himself would not willingly have put to sea on a Friday (if only because of the despondency it spread among his more superstitious shipmates) had the urgency of his mission not pressed him so, and the lateness of the season. Superstition was a weakness from which Tobias was totally free – he was devoid of poetry, poor soul, but he was devoid of its dark, perverted shadow too – and he at once fell to proving that there was no
connexion between shrimps and Friday, and none between Friday and misfortune.

‘My dear Jack,’ he said, ‘do but consider how illiberal, how unphilosophic it is to suppose  …’

A week later, to the very day and hour, he was reasoning with Jack in the foretop, with just the same eagerness, and with just the same amount of success.

‘Do you not see that it is wholly unreasonable – contrary to experience – contrary to logic?’ cried he. ‘Where, for example, are your dismal forebodings of last week? You must confess that they have come to nothing: the weather is charming – see how cheerful the penguins are.’

‘Yes, it is all very well,’ said Jack, looking up into the cold blue sky, ‘but I wish you would not say so, Toby. It is not that I mind a blow. Strike me down, I
love
a good blow. But nobody that has ever been to sea wants to find himself on a lee-shore.’

At this moment the squadron, having run down its southing in thick, cloudy weather, was lying off Gape Virgin Mary in a calm, clear evening, with the captains all aboard the commodore for a council, and the seals, sea-lions and penguins of the Straits of Magellan (the cape marks the entrance to this interesting channel) hurrying up in droves to view the ships.

‘I am glad, at any rate, that we are not going through there,’ said Jack, nodding towards the Straits, whose northern boundary was clearly visible from the foretop. ‘Once you were in that passage, you would have a lee-shore whatever happened, unless the wind was foul or well abaft the beam.’

‘Jack,’ said Tobias, in a confidential voice, ‘pray tell me about this lee-shore, and why it is so often mentioned with dislike.’

Jack gazed at him for a moment. Had it been anyone else, Jack would have kicked him out of the foretop, for trying to make game of him. He knew that Tobias was capable of sailing half-way round the world without noticing the number of masts that propelled him, but even so he found it hard to credit such a very monstrous ignorance as this.

‘Well,’ he said, looking warily at Tobias to see whether really after all he were not joking, ‘you know that the lee is the side the wind is not blowing on?’

‘Yes,’ said Tobias, with good faith evident in his plain countenance.

‘Well then, a lee-shore is a shore under your lee – and with the wind blowing from you to it.’

‘I see. Thank you very much. But what is so disagreeable about it?’

‘Why, don’t you see, blockhead?’ cried Jack. ‘If it blows strong, and you have no sea-room, you are going to be driven ashore.’

‘But you can tack, and sail along in that ingenious diagonal manner that you explained, Jack.’

‘Yes, you can beat up amazingly, in a moderate steady breeze, with a kind sea and a stiff, weatherly ship: but the stronger the wind, the more your leeway. Look, we can come within five points of the wind,’ he explained, sliding his hand through the air as if it were the
Wager,
‘and we can keep there in a topgallant breeze, only losing one point in leeway – I mean, by being pushed sideways as well as along. But as soon as the topgallants have to come off her, that’s another point, which makes seven. And when one topsail goes, that’s another point, let alone the other two. So under your courses you cannot sail nearer than eight points, which is ninety degrees off. You may be pointing up into the wind nearer than that, but your real course, the course you really travel, is eight points off it. That means you are sailing at right angles to the wind at the very best – when you are as close-hauled as possible, you still move at right angles to the wind. So, don’t you see, if there is a stiff wind blowing straight on to the land, all you can do is to run along the shore, parallel with it. Because you cannot beat up into the wind, do you see? You cannot make any way into the wind, however much you luff up: do you follow, Toby?’

‘Yes, I do. I see that you would have to run along the shore in such a case: but would that be very bad?’

‘Not at all, if the wind stayed at only that strength, and if the shore were charmingly straight and even. But what if it began to blow really hard, and what if right ahead of you, on your course parallel with the shore, you saw a vast great horrible cape? You could not go about on the other tack, because she would not stay in such a wind: you could not wear, because that would mean falling directly down the wind, towards the shore, for a great way before
you could bring her up again. Anything you could do would only bring her nearer the shore. And anyhow, if the wind had increased by only a little, your course would not have been parallel with the shore at all: you would have been edging down towards it all the time, in an old unweatherly tub like this. Besides, the waves would have been heaving you in all along, to say nothing of the tide. No: you would end up by letting everything go, in the hope that your anchors would find a hold and that you could ride it out, and everybody aboard would grow uncommon pious all of a sudden. But it would not answer, you know, for your anchors would drag, and your cables would part.’

Toby said nothing: he was never one to show emotion, but he looked with a certain wistfulness at the loom of Cape Virgin Mary.

‘Whereas if you had sea-room,’ continued Jack, ‘you could lie to.’

‘How much sea-room would you consider sufficient?’ asked Toby, ‘and what do you mean by lying to?’

‘Oh, a hundred miles of offing should make you tolerably happy,’ said Jack. ‘As for lying to, I will remember to tell you when we are doing it. From all I have heard of these waters, it will not be long. Toby, look over there, will you?’

To the westward the sweet afternoon was clouding, but clouding with a strange rapidity, not in layers or white masses, but in a black boil of angry storm that lit itself up from within, dull purple, by lightning. The darkness was growing fast over the land, and although the sea was still calm, the water had an unnatural light and transparency: the penguins, as they came up for air, leaping clear and going straight down again in one curve, showed far under the surface, darting with wonderful fish-like ease, accompanied by a silver train of bubbles. A cable’s length away the
Anna
pink (which showed a most offensive partiality for the
Wager’s
neighbourhood, as though they really belonged to the same service) was already taking in some sordid underwear from the rigging as a necessary preparation for reducing sail.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Jack, ‘but I think you ought to go below and make all fast. The last time it came on to blow the squids got mixed up with the spare blankets – most unpleasant. I would give you a hand, but as soon as Sawney comes aboard we shall be precious lively.’ He nodded towards the
Wager’s
barge, which was
shooting towards them, with Captain Cheap looking disagreeable and important, but also much concerned, in the stern-sheets, with Campbell beside him. ‘Go on, now,’ said Jack, urging Tobias through the lubber’s hole, ‘and I shall come after you as soon as I can.’

That was not very soon, however: by six o’clock they had taken in their close-reefed topsails, and at the very end of Jack’s watch it was all hands again; so instead of swinging easily in a warm hammock, with comfortably arranged pillows under his head, Jack found himself handing the foresail, lying aloft on a yard that groaned with the strain of the wind, while a south-wester, hurling itself in irregular squalls over the mountains of Tierra del Fuego and through the gap of Magellan’s Straits, did its powerful best to throw him off. He made a brief appearance in the cabin to fetch his tarpaulin hat and jacket, remarked, with a grin, that ‘it would be coming on to blow quite hearty, soon – growing precious cold,’ and vanished, while a surge of sea-water slopped through the door as he opened it.

It seemed hours before he reappeared – hours of stupendous darkness filled with noise, huge innumerable noises that merged into one overwhelming clamour. ‘Haven’t you turned in yet?’ he exclaimed, seeing Tobias sitting wretchedly on the edge of his bunk. ‘I say, Toby,’ he said, sitting down by him, ‘you ain’t uneasy in your mind, are you?’

‘Yes,’ said Tobias, ‘I am very much alarmed, and could wish to be put ashore. But I am not terrified, I find. I went downstairs to see how the sick-bay was faring, and when I gave old Bull his drops I found that I could count and pour them perfectly well, which surprised me. But tell me, Jack, is this not a very dreadful storm?’

‘No,’ said Jack, ‘it ain’t. You will not think anything of it when you have been at sea for a year or two. But it is freshening, that’s true enough, and we have just been preparing for a proper gale of wind. We are lying-to under a foul mizzen stay-sail, and when it is light I will show you what it means to be lying-to – nothing so exciting, when you have plenty of sea-room. And we have put spare gaskets to every sail that is bent – I am quite fagged out. Why don’t you turn in, Toby? It will be dawn in an hour or two.’

‘I do not want to alarm you, Jack,’ said Tobias, ‘but I am afraid that I must tell you an unpleasant fact: the sea is traversing the sides of the ship. Some has got into my bed.’

‘Yes, it will do that,’ replied Jack, yawning. ‘Whenever a ship works as much as this, water comes in through the seams; but it don’t signify. Would you like the hammock? I am used to the wet, you know – rather prefer it, indeed. Come, you shall try the hammock for once.’

‘No, thank you very much, Jack. I do not mind it, I assure you,’ cried Toby, lying down immediately, with a sudden squelch. ‘It is perfectly comfortable,’ he said, controlling an involuntary gasp. ‘It was only that I supposed that the condition was abnormal – that we were about to sink.’

‘What a din those guns make,’ said Jack, after a pause, and speaking very loud over the screeching, ‘although we double-breeched them all.’ With each roll the guns, first on the one side and then on the other, strained their tethers to the utmost and then shot back again, each making a pig-like screaming as it did so and a thump as if it would force its way through the port. ‘Then,’ said Jack, closing his eyes, ‘we got rolling tackles upon the yards, squared the booms, made all the boats fast, set tarpaulins and battens to the hatchways, got the topgallant masts down upon the deck and the jib-boom and spritsail yard fore and aft – we nearly lost Cozens and the bo’sun doing that – should have been sorry to lose Cozens – Lard, Toby, how sleepy I am. But never worry; she is as snug as can be – all the searoom you could wish – not the least danger or inconvenience in the world, so long as the
Pearl
don’t fall aboard us – you will think nothing of it. Nothing at all – nothing  …’

‘Y
OU WILL THINK
nothing of it,’ Jack had said, long ago: he had been right, and now, in a sea that outran all description, Tobias balanced between the swinging hammocks of the sick-bay without consciously noticing the tremendous roll. The motion of the ship was less down here, but even so the hammocks swung so wide that the men were obliged to be lashed in, and the lantern threw so wild a light, and so uncertain, that he made his round mostly by touch.

He moved with the cat-like wariness that he had learnt in months of storm, the worst storms in the world, and he went steadily from hammock to hammock on his round – a long round, for the sick men stretched far away into the madly tossing shadows. There was little he could do for most of them. Ever since the scurvy had started to be really bad much of his care was nearly useless; but they did not know this, and the formula of taking their pulse and asking how they did at least showed them that they were not abandoned. Besides, there were the surgical cases, the men who had been injured on deck or hurt aloft – there were life-lines rigged in plenty, but, for all that, men were continually being hurt; men who had been at sea all their lives could not keep their footing in these storms, and there were broken collar-bones, stove ribs and three broken arms for him to attend to at present, as well as sprains and dislocations.

He covered the face of a seaman at the end of the row and nodded to Andrew, who hung a mark upon the hammock: that was the third today. But death was so familiar in the sick bay of the
Wager
that it was accepted without any surprise: so many had died. Ever since they had come into the Southern Ocean the scurvy had been with them, and growing every day, so that now more than half the ship’s company was either so ill as to be laid up altogether or at least so kitten-weak as to fall down after five minutes at the pumps. And there was scarcely a man among those who were reckoned sound
who was not affected in some degree; so that by a private calculation Tobias reckoned that unless the crew had some refreshment in their diet within seventeen days there would not be enough of them left to work the ship.

It was all a question of diet; everyone knew that. Men cannot live indefinitely upon salt beef, salt pork, dried peas and biscuit: they have to have something green and fresh, or they will eventually die. But how was greenstuff to be provided for a voyage in the far south, where for months you never see land but what you fly from it with all the sail you can bear? Mr Eliot had tried an experiment with cress and with sprouted grain; but that was in March, and his trays and seed-pans had stood no chance against the terrible seas since then – they had been destroyed by the fury of the Pacific long ago.

They were still just in the Atlantic when he and Tobias had planted them on that memorable day when they made the passage of the Straits Le Maire, and they had kept breaking off their gardening to run up on deck to see, on the one hand, the terrifying desolation of Tierra del Fuego, and on the other the shocking precipices and the dead-white snow of Staten Island, while a tide like a mill-race swept the whole squadron through the twenty-five mile channel in two hours’ time, the wind fair behind them and the sky a brilliant blue. The ship had been alive with pleasure and anticipation, and although the night before had been spent in bending a whole new suit of sails – the strongest storm canvas – the watch below lined the sides to gaze at the astonishingly horrible land and to look for the sea at the end of the strait, the Pacific, the Great South Sea upon which the Spanish galleons sailed. They knew that round the corner of Cape Horn and a few hundred miles up the other side of the mainland there lay Chile and Peru, the golden treasures of Baldivia and Callao, Panama and Acapulco and beyond – all plain sailing in an open sea.

Even Captain Cheap was cheerful and obliging; he spoke civilly to Captain Pemberton of the marines, although they had not been on speaking terms since his second day aboard, and pardoned two defaulters. The bo’sun chatted in a friendly and animated way, with the gunner and the carpenter, all grievances forgotten, at least for the time. Mr Eliot and Tobias planted their seeds and invited Mr Oakley to drink a bowl of rum-punch with them to the success of
their sowing and the voyage. It was a delightful morning.

But the seeds had never even sprouted green before they were awash with salt water. The foremost ships of the squadron had barely cleared the strait before the wind backed with unbelievable suddenness into the south-west (the direction in which they had hoped to sail) and blew in tremendous squalls that laid the ships right down before the topsails could be taken in; and at the same time the tide turned, to run with even greater force than before and to sweep the hindmost ships, the
Wager
and the pink, towards the black cliffs of Staten Island and the half-sunken jagged reefs, all spouting with white foam. It was then that Tobias learnt what a lee-shore was; and as the
Wager
was driven slowly closer and closer, until at last a biscuit could have been thrown from the poop into the surf, he had had time to consider it, and to feel that Jack’s passion for sea-room was not unreasonable. But in those days they had well over a hundred men capable of going aloft, and close on two hundred to work the ship: the
Wager
was stout and well-found then. They had weathered the point of Staten Island, profiting by a little shift in the wind, and they had saved themselves, if not Mr Eliot’s flowerpots.

After that day in early March there had been a series of storms, one after another so close that it was not the storms that were remembered, but the rare intervals of calm between them. It was in one of these calms, a day of drifting fog, when the masts vanished upwards into nothing, and men who had sailed in the Greenland whalers swore they smelt the loom of icebergs, that they lost Mr Eliot – not by death, as they had lost and were to lose so many of their shipmates, but by his going aboard the
Gloucester
to help in an operation upon the fourth lieutenant, cruelly mangled when the huge main-yard broke in the slings. The
Wager’s
carpenter had also been ordered across by the commodore to help in the repairs, and so, when the worst weather of the whole voyage struck them, they were without him. It was a westerly storm that raised a sea so enormous that a man could scarcely bear to look up at the waves, a mountain high and black, and it lasted for four nights and three days. Hour after hour the wind increased, hour after hour, until on the third night it seemed to have reached the highest point that could be borne: but those who thought so were wrong, for on the
third day it rose higher still, and the spray that filled the racing air began to freeze: it coated the masts, the yards and the rigging, and it accumulated in frozen grey masses on the deck. The
Wager,
burdened by the ice, rolled gunwales to; and, as she rolled, the wind’s shriek in her rigging varied – highest when she was in the middle of her roll, lowest when she was down – so that it made a slow, dreadful ululation. Suddenly in the fourth night it changed: in one moment the whole note changed, for the mizzen-mast had gone. The chains to the windward had broken: the whole massive assembly had yielded, not only the dead-eyes and lanyards, but the irons too. The mizzen-mast had gone, and with it the main-topsail yard. The main-mast was tottering, and the standing rigging, afore and abaft, was a senseless tangle.

Then, when the ship could have been dismasted altogether, broached to and destroyed, the wind died to no more than a steady gale; they had a few hours’ respite to knot and splice, and although without a carpenter aboard there was little enough they could do to deal with the masts, they managed to survive another week, and even to keep company as the squadron beat to westward: a day calm enough for a boat to swim came at last, and they had their carpenter again. But Mr Eliot stayed aboard the
Gloucester.
He had been knocked down by a block falling from the rigging (a very usual accident) and he was obliged to stay in the
Gloucester
until the next opportunity – an opportunity that never came.

Mr Eliot had always insisted that scurvy was to be classed among the diseases of the imagination; and certainly in the last few weeks there had been three striking facts that supported his theory. A little after the loss of the
Wager’s
mast the
Pearl
and the
Severn
vanished – they parted company in rain and sleet so thick that you could not see the ship’s length, and they were never seen again. Secondly, when the squadron had been beating to the westward for so long that the navigators reckoned themselves at least ten degrees of longitude, or three hundred and fifty miles west of Tierra del Fuego, in spite of the strong current that set against them, orders were given to steer north; the larboard tacks were hardly aboard before the news spread through the ship – they were bound for the warm, calm waters of the true Pacific; the rigours of beating up in snow, ice and hurricanes were over. Then at two bells in the middle watch, the
Anna
pink fired every gun she had; the moon, shining for a few providential minutes through the racing clouds, had showed her the appalling spectacle of Cape Noir right ahead, with the surf rising a hundred feet up its side. Providentially, again, the wind that was carrying them right on to the land, shifted into the west-north-west, and they came safely off. But the whole wretched task of making their westing was still to be done – they had not allowed enough for the current and for their own leeway. Thirdly, after a still longer reach to the south west and another turn northward, the squadron was scattered by still another appalling storm, and from that day on the solitary
Wager
had plunged northwards through a black and lonely sea, so utterly alone and in such a sea that men doubted the reality of things, and half suspected that they were already dead and condemned to a sailors’ hell.

Each of these three happenings had been followed by an increase on the dead-list that Tobias gave to the captain and the purser; and the coincidence of extreme disappointment and death from scurvy was so striking that Tobias was almost convinced. Yet on the other hand he did not consider himself a fanciful creature; a less imaginative one was not to be conceived, in his opinion: but he knew that he was entering the third stage of the disease himself. He had seen it too often in others to be mistaken. The symptoms were many and various, and although blotches growing and spreading, swollen legs, bleeding nails and gums, teeth going were usual, they were not inevitable; but the third stage, difficulty in breathing, followed by extreme weakness and prostration was, in his experience, invariable. He had seen it so often – a man at the pumps or the halliards would drop sometimes as suddenly as if he had been struck down, but more often slowly, staggering away a few steps and crumpling up; and his mates would carry him below to his hammock. No one who had reached that stage had ever come out of his hammock, except to go over the side; at least, no one aboard the
Wager.

And the idea that this disease, as well as the seasickness that had haunted him so long, should be set down as in any way connected with his mind, nerves or imagination, was inexpressibly vexing.

‘How can it be classed among the diseases of the imagination?’ muttered Tobias, frowning and clapping his hand to his forehead.

‘Eh?’ cried Andrew, holding up the lantern.

‘Andrew,’ said Tobias, after staring about for a moment to recollect where he was and what was to be done next, ‘Fetch the sweet oil, if you please. I must go to see the master.’

Mr Clerk had been injured when the starboard shrouds of the foremast parted, and in addition an old wound, healed twenty years before, had reopened – a usual consequence of scurvy – and he needed tender handling: but during these months of almost continual crisis, with all ordinary rules and customs gone by the board long since, Tobias’ waking hours had been spent either in the sick-bay or at the pumps, or hauling on a rope, or even lying aloft in some emergencies, and his hands were as hard and horny as a seaman’s. They were quite unsuitable for the work he was to do, and as he went aft to the master’s cabin he rubbed the sweet oil in to make them a little softer.

He passed Jack, who was hurrying on deck still half asleep, and they passed the time of day; they rarely saw one another now, for when either was not on duty he turned in, dead to the world, however great the noise. Jack looked anxiously after him as they parted, but Tobias went steadily on to the master’s door and disappeared. Jack ran on deck, and judging the roll to a nicety, he stepped straight over to his usual place at the break of the poop. The
Wager
was standing to the north-north-west, and for once the wind had shifted out of the west and south-west and had come into the east-south-east, blowing in over the
Wager’s
starboard beam – a strong wind, three parts of a gale, with occasional squalls of sleet, and she was making about six knots under her courses. Ordinarily she would have been showing her topsails, reefed or perhaps double-reefed; but with her masts so frail she had spread no more than her courses these many days. Besides, there was scarcely a sound piece of storm-canvas left in the ship: the topsails that were now bent to the yards were the last they had, and they were so worn that they could not be relied upon in a blow; but even if the sail-room had been full of new sails, there were not enough upper-yard men left to use them.

Jack was a little before his time. Mr Bean and what remained of the starboard watch were still on deck; the lieutenant, one of the master’s mates and Cozens under the lee of a tattered strip of weather-cloth, and the hands forward, huddled in the shelter of the gunwale, looked wretched, blue and surly. Jack was feeling blue as
well, for the cold, although it was not quite freezing, was of a peculiarly penetrating damp nature, very disagreeable before breakfast; but he was better able to withstand it than most, being surprisingly fit and well; apart from a great weal across his face, where a lashing strip of topsail had nearly blinded him, he was in excellent condition. This topsail was one of the many that they had lost: it was furled up tight to the yard and kept there not only by its gaskets but by a whole doubled set of storm gaskets as well, and yet the wind had found means to work into the folds, to balloon the sail out, to burst its bindings and so to loose it to the full, whereupon it split in every seam and thrashed about so as to endanger the yard, the top and all the rigging near it. It had to be cut free, and that was a desperate task, on a black, black night off the pitch of the Horn, with the sea running monstrously high and the shrouds and yards all coated with ice: they had lost four men, at one time and another, doing this, and a fifth was so injured that he was in no way to live.