Since the marine underlings were laughing quite as hard as the crew and convicts, Lieutenants Johnstone and Shairp shut themselves into the quarterdeck and contemplated suicide.
While the northeast trades held the fleet made good time, but toward the end of June the steady wind failed and progress depended upon whatever breeze could be found. This involved a great deal of tacking and standing; the helmsman would bring the ship onto a different tack and then everybody would wait to see if it brought a wind with it which would send the ship in the right direction. If no such wind appeared, the ship was again turned a little, and the waiting began once more. Tack, stand, tack, stand. . . .
Richard had been put on fishing detail, not so much because he demonstrated any degree of luck as because he was so patient; when people like Bill Whiting decided to fish, they expected a bite within a minute of sending the line down, and refused simply to stand, leaning on the rail with line in the water, for hours if necessary. With the sun directly overhead, deck was not such a comfortable place anymore, particularly for fine white English skins. In that respect Richard’s luck held; he had pinkened on the voyage to Teneriffe but then darkened slowly to a good brown, as did Taffy the dark Welshman and others who tended to dark hair. For the fair and freckled Bill Whiting and Jimmy Price came a long period during which they had to retire below, there to nurse pain and blisters, suffering sparing applications of Richard’s salve and the calamine lotion Surgeon Balmain slapped on heartlessly.
So when Richard saw the sailors rigging canvas awnings from the stays to the shrouds or any handy projection which would not inconvenience men climbing aloft, he was very pleased.
“I did not know Esmeralda was so considerate of sunburn,” he said to Stephen Donovan.
Donovan hooted with laughter. “Richard! Esmeralda don’t give a fuck about shelter! No, we are getting close to the line Line—the Equator—which is why we spend so much of our lives becalmed. Esmeralda knows the storms are about to start, is all. The awnings are to catch rain-water—see? They put a tun at the lowest corner to take the runoff. ’Tis an art to string the canvas—old pieces of sail—so that it forms a saucer with just one edge sagging to form a funnel. We have lost the trade, I think, and so does dear Esmeralda.”
“Why are ye fourth mate, Mr. Donovan? It seems to me as I go about the deck that ye carry almost as much weight as Mr. Long, and certainly more than Mr. Shortland or Mr. Bones.”
The blue eyes crinkled up at their corners and the mouth wore a smile, but to Richard it looked a little bitter.
“Well, Richard, I am an Irishman of sorts, and despite time with Admiral Rodney in the West Indies, I belong to the merchant sail. Esmeralda put me on as second mate, but the naval agent wanted a berth for his son. Esmeralda got very piggy when he was informed that Mr. Shortland would be coming aboard as second mate—he and the father, Lieutenant Shortland, had a rare old barney. The result was that Lieutenant Shortland thought it better to shift himself to Fishburn. But the son stayed. Mr. Bones was not about to give up his third mate’s ticket, so I became fourth mate. There is one of us for each Watch, ye might say.”
Richard frowned. “I thought the captain was master of his own ship and had the final say.”
“Not when ye’re in partnership with the Royal Navy. Walton’s want to do more of this transportation work—that is why Captain Francis Walton, one of the family, is master of Friendship. Esmeralda Sinclair is a partner in Walton & Company. Ye’d find, if ye looked hard enough, that almost all the masters of the transports and storeships are shareholders in their companies.” Donovan gave a shrug. “If the Botany Bay experiment is a success, there will be a brisk trade in shipping convicts.”
“It is nice to know,” Richard grinned, “that we miserable wretches bring prosperity to some people.”
“Especially to people named William Richards Junior. He is the contractor—and the one ye have to thank for the food ye get, God rot the bastard to Hell forever. And, God, send us a fish or two!”
The line in Richard’s hand jerked. So did the one Donovan was holding. A whoop went up from a sailor farther astern; they had come into a huge school of albacore, and hauled the big fish in at such a rate that those standing watching were put to baiting hooks so the lines could go down again before the fish were gone. By the end of this exhilarating spurt of activity there were over fifty large albacore flipping and flapping around the deck, and sailors and marines were sharpening their knives to clean and scale and fillet. A task not allowed to convicts, devoid of knives.
“Chowder aplenty tonight,” said Richard with satisfaction. “I am glad too that we do not eat at midday anymore. A man sleeps better on a full belly. I know our lieutenants complain that these beautiful creatures are dry eating, but the meat is fresh.”
The sea was great company; something was always happening in it. Richard had grown used to the sight of huge porpoises and somewhat smaller dolphins chasing, playing and leaping far out of the water, though they never ceased to fascinate. Life for sea dwellers, he fancied, could not simply be a matter of survival. These creatures enjoyed themselves. Nothing as carefree as a leaping porpoise could possibly not know pleasure in the act, no matter what dour men like Mr. Long said about the leap being a device to frighten predators away, coming down with such a splash and rumpus.
Birds were always present in sometimes great numbers—pintada birds, various petrels, even gulls. As Alexander was not liberal with scraps save when fish guts were tipped out, Richard learned that the presence of lots of birds meant there were schools of fish about, usually too small to bother catching.
He saw his first shark and his first whale on the same day, one of great calm, just a long swell rolling too placidly to break into ruffs of foam. The water was like crystal and he longed to swim in it, wondered if perhaps somewhere along the way Mr. Donovan or some other sailor would teach him to swim. What puzzled him was why they never went over the side, even on days like this, when a man would have no trouble climbing back on board.
Then along it came, this chilling creature. Just why the mere sight of it should freeze him to his marrow he did not understand, for it was beautiful. He saw its fin first, cutting through the water like a knife. The fin stood two feet into the air, heading for a bloody mess of albacore ruins bobbing along their side and in their wake. The thing swam past like a dark shadow and seemed to go on forever; it was, he estimated, twenty-five feet long, as round as a barrel in its mid section but narrowing to a pointed snout in front and terminating in a slender, tapering tail equipped with a forked double fin as rudder. A dull black eye as large as a plate broke the mass of its head, and just as it came up with the fish guts floating in a tangle it turned over on its side to scoop the mess into a vast maw armed with terrible teeth. Its belly flashed white, then the albacore remains were gone; it gulped down every bit it could find, then cruised off into the gentle wake to see if there were more goodies near the ships in Alexander’s rear.
God Jesus! I have heard of whales and I have heard of sharks. I knew that a shark is a big fish, but I never dreamed they came as large as whales. Now that is a thing does not know joy. Its eye said that it has no soul.
The whale erupted into the air perhaps a cable’s length from the ship, so suddenly that only those like Richard fishing from the starboard side saw the mighty creature breach the surface in a shimmering explosion of water. A beaky head, a small eye that sparkled cognizance, a pair of speckled flippers—it just kept coming up and up and up, forty feet of it in ridged, blue-grey glory, its hull as barnacled as any ship’s. When it fell it crashed in clouds of spray and disappeared; a moment’s breathless wait and the magnificent fluked tail towered, poised like a banner, before it smacked with a clap like thunder amid dazzling rainbows of foam. The leviathan of the deep, grander than any ship of the line.
