To the Ends of the Earth Read online

  Bates, the saloon steward, has told me just this minute that we dine in an hour’s time at four o’clock. On my remarking that I proposed to request more ample accommodation he paused for a moment’s reflection, then replied it would be a matter of some difficulty and that he advised me to wait for a while. On my expressing some indignation that such a decrepit vessel should be used for such a voyage, he, standing in the door of the saloon with a napkin over his arm, lent me as much as he could of a seaman’s philosophy—as: Lord sir she’ll float till she sinks, and Lord sir she was built to be sunk; with such a lecture on lying in ordinary with no one aboard but the boatswain and the carpenter, so much about the easiness of lying to a hawser in the good old way rather than to a nasty iron chain that rattles like a corpse on a gibbet, he has sunk my heart clear down to her filthy ballast! He had such a dismissiveness of copper bottoms! I find we are no more than pitched within and without like the oldest vessel of all and suppose her first commander was none other than Captain Noah! Bates’s parting comfort to me was that he was sure she is “safer in a blow than many a stiffer vessel”. Safer! “For,” said he, “if we get into a bit of a blow she’ll render like an old boot.” To tell the truth he left me with much of the brandy’s good work undone. After all that, I found it was positively required I should remove all articles that I should need on the voyage from my chests before they were struck down below! Such is the confusion aboard this vessel I can find no one who has the authority to countermand this singularly foolish order. I have resigned myself therefore, used Wheeler for some of this unpacking, set out my books myself, and seen my chests taken away. I should be angry if the situation were not so farcical. However, I had a certain delight in some of the talk between the fellows who took them off, the words were so perfectly nautical. I have laid Falconer’s Marine Dictionary by my pillow; for I am determined to speak the tarry language as perfectly as any of these rolling fellows!

  LATER

  We have dined by the light of an ample stern window at two long tables in a great muddle. Nobody knew anything. There were no officers, the servants were harassed, the food poor, my fellow-passengers in a temper, and their ladies approaching the hysterics. But the sight of the other vessels at anchor outside the stern window was undeniably exciting. Wheeler, my staff and guide, says it is the remainder of the convoy. He assures me that the confusion aboard will diminish and that, as he phrases it, we shall shake down—presumably in the way the sand and gravel has shaken down, until—if I may judge by some of the passengers—we shall stink like the vessel. Your lordship may observe a certain pettishness in my words. Indeed, had it not been for a tolerable wine I should be downright angry. Our Noah, one Captain Anderson, has not chosen to appear. I shall make myself known to him at the first opportunity but now it is dark. Tomorrow morning I propose to examine the topography of the vessel and form an acquaintance with the better sort of officer if there be any. We have ladies, some young, some middling, some old. We have some oldish gentlemen, a youngish army officer and a younger parson. This last poor fellow tried to ask a blessing on our meal and fell to eating as bashful as a bride. I have not been able to see Mr Prettiman but suppose he is aboard.

  Wheeler tells me the wind will veer during the night and we shall get a-weigh, make sail; be off, start on our vast journey when the tide turns. I have told him I am a good sailor and have observed that same peculiar light, which is not quite a smile but rather an involuntary expansiveness, flit across his face. I made an immediate resolution to teach the man a lesson in manners at the first opportunity—but as I write these very words the pattern of our wooden world changes. There is a volleying and thundering up there from what must be the loosened canvas. There is the shrilling of pipes. Good God, can human throats emit such noises? But that and that must be the signal guns! Outside my hutch a passenger has fallen with many oaths and the ladies are shrieking, the cattle are lowing and the sheep baaing. All is confusion. Perhaps then the cows are baaing, the sheep lowing and the ladies damning the ship and her timbers to all hell fire? The canvas bowl into which Wheeler poured water for me has shifted in its gimbals and now lies at a slight angle.

  Our anchor has been plucked out of the sand and gravel of Old England. I shall have no connection with my native soil for three, or it may be four or five, years. I own that even with the prospect of interesting and advantageous employment before me it is a solemn thought.

  How else, since we are being solemn, should I conclude the account of my first day at sea than with an expression of my profound gratitude? You have set my foot on the ladder and however high I climb—for I must warn your lordship that my ambition is boundless!—I shall never forget whose kindly hand first helped me upwards. That he may never be found unworthy of that hand, nor do anything unworthy of it—is the prayer—the intention—of your lordship’s grateful godson.

  EDMUND TALBOT

  (2)

  I have placed the number “2” at the beginning of this entry though I do not know how much I shall set down today. Circumstances are all against careful composition. There has been so little strength in my limbs—the prive-house, the loo—I beg its pardon, I do not know what it should be called since in strict sea-language the heads are at the forward end of the vessel, the young gentlemen should have a roundhouse and the lieutenants should have—I do not know what the lieutenants should have. The constant movement of the vessel and the need constantly to adjust my body to it—

  Your lordship was pleased to recommend that I should conceal nothing. Do you not remember conducting me from the library with a friendly arm across my shoulder, ejaculating in your jovial way, “Tell all, my boy! Hold nothing back! Let me live again through you!” The devil is in it, then, I have been most confoundedly seasick and kept my bunk. After all, Seneca off Naples was in my predicament was he not—but you will remember—and if even a stoic philosopher is reduced by a few miles of lumpy water, what will become of all us poor fellows on higher seas? I must own to have been reduced already to salt tears by exhaustion and to have been discovered in such a womanish state by Wheeler! However, he is a worthy fellow. I explained my tears by my exhaustion and he agreed cheerfully.

  “You, sir,” said he, “would hunt all day and dance all night at the end of it. Now if you was to put me, or most seamen, on a horse, our kidneys would be shook clear down to our knees.”

  I groaned some sort of answer, and heard Wheeler extract the cork from a bottle.

  “Consider, sir,” said he, “it is but learning to ride a ship. You will do that soon enough.”

  The thought comforted me; but not as much as the most delectable odour which came o’er my spirits like the warm south. I opened my eyes and lo, what had Wheeler done but produce a huge dose of paregoric? The comfortable taste took me straight back to the nursery and this time with none of the melancholy attendant on memories of childhood and home! I sent Wheeler away, dozed for a while then slept. Truly, the poppy would have done more for old Seneca than his philosophy!

  I woke from strange dreams and in such thick darkness that I knew not where I was but recollected all too soon and found our motion sensibly increased. I shouted at once for Wheeler. At the third shout—accompanied I admit with more oaths than I generally consider consistent with either common sense or gentlemanly conduct—he opened the door of my hutch.

  “Help me out of here, Wheeler! I must get some air!”

  “Now you lie still for a while, sir, and in a bit you’ll be right as a trivet! I’ll set out a bowl.”

  Is there, can there be, anything sillier, less comforting than the prospect of imitating a trivet? I saw them in my mind’s eye as smug and self-righteous as a convocation of Methodists. I cursed the fellow to his face. However, in the upshot he was being reasonable enough. He explained that we were having a blow. He thought my greatcoat with the triple capes too fine a garment to risk in flying salt spray. He added, mysteriously, that he did not wish me to look like a chaplain! He himself, however, had in his p
ossession an unused suit of yellow oilskin. Ruefully enough, he said he had bought it for a gentleman who in the event had never embarked. It was just my size and I should have it for no more than he had given for it. Then at the end of the voyage I might sell it back to him at second hand if I chose. I closed there and then with this very advantageous offer, for the air was stifling me and I longed for the open. He eased and tied me into the suit, thrust India rubber boots on my feet and adjusted an oilskin hat on my head. I wish your lordship could have seen me for I must have looked a proper sailor, no matter how unsteady I felt! Wheeler assisted me into the lobby, which was running with water. He kept up his prattle as, for example, that we should learn to have one leg shorter than the other like mountain sheep. I told him testily that since I visited France during the late peace, I knew when a deck was atilt, since I had not walked across on the water. I got out into the waist and leaned against the bulwarks on the larboard, that is the downward, side of the deck. The main chains and the huge spread of the ratlines—oh Falconer, Falconer!—extended above my head, and above that a quantity of nameless ropes hummed and thrummed and whistled. There was an eye of light showing still, but spray flew over from the high, starboard side and clouds that raced past us seemed no higher than the masts. We had company, of course, the rest of the convoy being on our larboard hand and already showing lights, though spray and a smoky mist mixed with rain obscured them. I breathed with exquisite ease after the fetor of my hutch and could not but hope that this extreme, even violent, weather would blow some of the stench out of her. Somewhat restored I gazed about me, and found for the first time since the anchor was raised my intellect and interest reviving. Staring up and back, I could see two helmsmen at the wheel, black, tarpaulined figures, their faces lighted from below as they glanced alternately into the illuminated compass, then up at the set of the sails. We had few of these spread to the wind and I supposed it was due to the inclemency of the weather but learnt later from Wheeler​—that walking Falconer—that it was so we should not run clear away from the rest of the convoy since we “have the legs” of all but a few. How he knows, if indeed he knows, is a mystery, but he declares we shall speak the squadron off Ushant, detach our other ship of the line to them, take over one of theirs, be convoyed by her to the latitude of Gibraltar after which we proceed alone, secured from capture by nothing but the few guns we have left and our intimidating appearance! Is this fair or just? Do their lordships not realize what a future Secretary of State they have cast so casually on the waters? Let us hope that like the Biblical bread they get me back again! However, the die is cast and I must take my chance. I stayed there, then, my back to the bulwark, and drank the wind and rain. I concluded that most of my extraordinary weakness had been due more to the fetor of the hutch than to the motion of the vessel.

  There were now the veriest dregs of daylight but I was rewarded for my vigil by sight of the sickness I had escaped. There emerged from our lobby into the wind and rain of the waist, a parson! I supposed he was the same fellow who had tried to ask a blessing on our first dinner and been heard by no one but the Almighty. He wore knee-breeches, a long coat and bands that beat in the wind at his throat like a trapped bird at a window! He held his hat and wig crushed on with both hands and he staggered first one way, then the other, like a drunken crab. (Of course your lordship has seen a drunken crab!) This parson turned, like all people unaccustomed to a tilted deck, and tried to claw his way up it rather than down. He was, I saw, about to vomit, for his complexion was the mixed pallor and greenness of mouldy cheese. Before I could shout a warning he did indeed vomit, then slid down to the deck. He got on his knees—not, I think, for the purpose of devotion!—then stood at the very moment when a heave from the ship gave the movement an additional impetus. The result was he came, half-running, half-flying down the deck and might well have gone clean through the larboard ratlines had I not grabbed him by the collar! I had a glimpse of a wet, green face, then the servant who performs for the starboard passengers the offices that our Wheeler performs for the larboard ones rushed out of the lobby, seized the little man under the arms, begged my pardon and lugged him back out of sight. I was damning the parson for befouling my oilskins when a heave, shudder and convenient spout of mixed rain and sea water cleaned him off me. For some reason, though the water stung my face it put me in a good humour. Philosophy and religion—what are they when the wind blows and the water gets up in lumps? I stood there, holding on with one hand, and began positively to enjoy all this confusion, lit as it was by the last lees of light. Our huge old ship with her few and shortened sails from which the rain cascaded was beating into this sea and therefore shouldering the waves at an angle, like a bully forcing his way through a dense crowd. And as the bully might encounter here and there a like spirit, so she (our ship) was hindered now and then, or dropped or lifted or, it may be, struck a blow in the face that made all her forepart, then the waist and the afterdeck to foam and wash with white water. I began, as Wheeler had put it, to ride a ship. Her masts leaned a little. The shrouds to windward were taut, those to leeward slack, or very near it. The huge cable of her mainbrace swung out to leeward between the masts; and now here is a point which I would wish to make. Comprehension of this vast engine is not to be come at gradually nor by poring over diagrams in Marine Dictionaries! It comes, when it comes, at a bound. In that semi-darkness between one wave and the next I found the ship and the sea comprehensible not merely in terms of her mechanical ingenuity but as a—a what? As a steed, a conveyance, a means working to an end. This was a pleasure that I had not anticipated. It was, I thought with perhaps a touch of complacency, quite an addition to my understanding! A single sheet, a rope attached to the lower and leeward corner of a sail, was vibrating some yards above my head, wildly indeed, but understandably! As if to reinforce the comprehension, at the moment when I was examining the rope and its function there came a huge thud from forward, an explosion of water and spray, and the rope’s vibration changed—was halved at the mid-point so that for a while its length traced out two narrow ellipses laid end to end—illustrated, in fact, the first harmonic, like that point on a violin string which if touched accurately enough will give the player the note an octave above the open one.

  But this ship has more strings than a violin, more than a lute, more I think than a harp, and under the wind’s tuition she makes a ferocious music. I will own that after a while I could have done with human company, but the Church has succumbed and the Army too. No lady can possibly be anywhere but in her bunk. As for the Navy—well, it is literally in its element. Its members stand here and there encased in tarpaulin, black with faces pale only by contrast. At a little distance they resemble nothing so much as rocks with the tide washing over them.

  When the light had quite faded I felt my way back to my hutch and shouted for Wheeler, who came at once, got me out of my oilskins, hung the suit on the hook where it at once took up a drunken angle. I told him to bring me a lamp but he told me it was not possible. This put me in a temper but he explained the reason well enough. Lamps are dangerous to us all since once overset there is no controlling them. But I might have a candle if I cared to pay for it since a candle dowses itself when it falls, and in any case I must take a few safety measures in the management of it. Wheeler himself had a supply of candles. I replied that I had thought such articles were commonly obtained from the purser. After a short pause Wheeler agreed. He had not thought I would wish to deal directly with the purser who lived apart and was seldom seen. Gentlemen used not to have any traffic with him but employed their servants who ensured that the transaction was honest and above board. “For,” said he, “you know what pursers are!” I agreed with an air of simplicity which in an instant—you observe, sir, that I was coming to myself—concealed a revised estimate of Mr Wheeler, his fatherly concern and his willingness to serve me! I made a mental note that I was determined always to see round and through him farther than he supposed that he saw round and through me. So by e
leven o’clock at night—six bells according to the book—behold me seated at my table-flap with this journal open before me. But what pages of trivia! Here are none of the interesting events, acute observations and the, dare I say, sparks of wit with which it is my first ambition to entertain your lordship! However, our passage is but begun.

  (3)

  The third day has passed with even worse weather than the others. The state of our ship, or that portion of it which falls under my notice, is inexpressibly sordid. The deck, even in our lobby, streams with sea water, rain, and other fouler liquids, which find their way inexorably under the batten on which the bottom of the hutch door is supposed to close. Nothing, of course, fits. For if it did, what would happen in the next minute when this confounded vessel has changed her position from savaging the summit of a roller to plunging into the gulf on the other side of it? When this morning I had fought my way into the dining saloon—finding, by the way, nothing hot to drink there—I was unable for a while to fight my way out again. The door was jammed. I rattled the handle peevishly, tugged at it, then found myself hanging from it as she (the monstrous vessel has become “she” as a termagant mistress) she lurched. That in itself was not so bad but what followed might have killed me. For the door snapped open so that the handle flashed in a semicircle with a radius equal to the width of the opening! I saved myself from fatal or serious injury by the same instinct that drops a cat always on its feet. This alternate stiffness then too easy compliance with one’s wishes by a door—one of those necessary objects in life on which I had never before bestowed much interest—seemed to me so animated a piece of impertinence on the part of a few planks of wood I could have believed the very genii, the dryads and hamadryads of the material from which our floating box is composed, had refused to leave their ancient dwelling and come to sea with us! But no—it was merely—“merely”—dear God what a world!—the good ship doing what Bates called “rendering like an old boot”.