The Ballad of Desmond Kale, page 47
When Admiral’s blisters healed he was seen to be blacker than when he was burnt: a truly black man, indeed, of which race, though, was the subject of passionate ignorance. It made Admiral the lowest on the ship but with his preposterous three-cornered hat he showed refusal to accept how lowly he was. As the castaways were roughened by weather, hard usage, illness and injury, they looked about forty bleary years old, but they were mere mother’s sons, both of them, and still short of twenty years of age.
‘Where are you from, jackass,’ said Sykes, ‘where’s your home port, suckling?’ Wrenching Pepperpots’s ear, he marched him up and down along the deck but learned nothing.
After the iron rule of his ship as a means of sadistic enjoyment, the leading motive of Martin Sykes was commerce. When they found a place to hunt seal, his motive was to prevent anyone else from getting skins. His idea was, that no foreigner had right to privilege near any colony that he declared his own. From the decks of the Salamander he scanned the blear horizon and sent his boats on.
One day Pepperpots and Admiral were among those in the first boat away. The two close shipmates had made a practice of never taking more nor less than most of what they needed for their living needs in a boat running into a surf. It might be their last chance every time, and like the rest of their crew, they did not always make it back to their vessel at night, but slept in the sea grass, among dunes, or curled in a rocky cave echoing with breakers.
On boards at their feet that day they had all their worldly goods in a calico sack. They had some salt pork between them, a flask of rum, a sharpening stone, a sealing knife, a sealing club, a few poor souvenirs of happier times, and a lump each of dark tobacco. They had little to protect them from the weather in the coming night ashore. They each carried a tin canister of water since a time they were driven crazed by thirst, and whenever there was a squall of rain they always cupped their hands and licked their paws like cats, to save it. Pepperpots owned the clothes he stood in, and that was all, while Admiral — of lean and agile pretension — had a bedroll tied with a leather thong, hitched tight to his backbone.
Only closer inspection might have shown that the way Admiral carried himself, with a careful, forced, and upright gait — sometimes he couldn’t help tilting — was a sign that his bedroll contained something much heavier than the precious sea commander’s outfit, for which he was mocked, and which he was wearing — quite sadly bedraggled.
At their back, bucking an easterly swell, the Salamander rode with jabbing persistence against a grinding anchor chain on a shallow bottom. They were well enough away from her, and today the two mariners jabbed their fingers secretly in the air and swore silently it was the last they would look back on her.
They had not come as close before to such a difficult beach for setting down. Hummocks and dunes were all the land to be seen past the edge. It was a bay so constantly beaten by strong winds and high seas that their captain believed the seals inhabiting it were sure to remain unmolested until none were to be found anywhere else. The only trouble with his thinking was that seals everywhere were getting into shorter supply, the traders hungrier for them. Indeed had they only known it, in the bays over from this one were six different gangs of men belonging to a Port Jackson sealer, moored from sight, who were there on the same business as themselves, and all of them running short of provisions and on the point of eating seabirds and seals if they didn’t find better relief from their wants.
This was the leading boat coming away from the Salamander. Four men rowed, one worked a steering oar, while a sixth crouched in the bows looking out for trouble. The other boats followed, some with the intention of standing off to drive the seals back onto land when the killing began. Others would land and begin the dirty work of sticking them and skinning them, leaving their carcases to rot, their fishy dark meat being no use to anyone except the carrion birds and island rats, once the skins were taken.
They watched the Salamander shrinking behind them as their boat wallowed in a swell behind breakers, trying for a chance to get in among the rocky platforms. The easterly wind drove the seals up on land. There were a good many of them flopped and basking, shining their backs, their noses and long whiskers aligned to the wind in the direction of possible threat. They had heavy necks and thick manes and looked like a colony that had not been attacked too many times, as they were plentiful with the shore fairly free of bones. They were dense with variations in colour from dark black-brown to golden. Seal fur was wanted for its strength of insulation in coats, hats and mufflers, and for high, warm boots of style. Skins would be bloodily piled at the tide line by sunset. Bull seals raised themselves on their tails, scarred in their fights for females, having chunks torn from their hides and rendering them less desirable as skins. In pauses between waves thumping, males could be heard barking their challenges and the men were ready with theirs. Bull seals went for their opponents throwing their heads up and rising chest to chest, biting each other around the neck and shoulders, making guttural sounds and very preoccupied they were, as the first of the boats came in on a surge and was hauled up the rubble beach to sit above the tide line.
From there the Salamander was far off but they knew the eye of Martin Sykes was upon them, his telescope raised and lowered every few minutes and his last and most trusted boat’s crew of cutthroats standing by to be sent after stragglers, who might decide that a low piece of land lying in the southern oceans was better than their ship to live on.
There were sealers who lived on land the whole year, maintaining depots, and saving themselves the discomfort of ever having to go back to sea. They kidnapped women for their comfort. This day when Pepperpots and Admiral came stepping on sand, leaping from the boat, plunging up to their chests in foam, they were soon enough looking around for a rock, a lump of coral, the thighbone of a seal, or a piece of driftwood to use as a weapon. There were seals and there were men who lived among seals.
As for the seals, it was bloody work ending their animal life and stepping in blood and salt water. They got among them chasing them down, slaughtering them and skinning them between rocks and leaving their carcases to rot in the wind. It was bloodier, colder work than dealing with sheep ever was, and while there was plenty of barking there wasn’t any dog to do it better.
As for men — it was men the Salamander’s crew feared most: each other first and then rival gangs from rival ships who might appear any time and dispute the harvest. Pepperpots and Admiral weren’t so sure if they feared other men more than their own men. Other men were likely to beat them and press them into their gangs but other men’s gangs were likely to go home to port. There were signs of men around, a cold fire where mussel shells were cooked, and footprints in sand. If their men ran for their boats it might be better for the two sailors where they were. They were always ready for it anyway.
In a pause between killing they were both flat on their bellies watching ahead. A gap in the dunes showed a lumpy dark shape nosing around. ‘It ain’t no seal,’ said the Admiral. ‘It must be someone.’ The figure dropped from sight. So they scurried forward and scrambled to the top of the dune. There they saw a man watching towards them, but through careful manoeuvering they had put their backs to the eastern light and weren’t seen. The man must have thought he was safe, then, because he lifted an arm in a signal. He was joined by a few men raising themselves out of the tussocks, all carrying weapons. They set off moving at a jog trot in a westerly direction. It was clear their plan was to round on the Salamander men from the leeward side. They would reach them in less than quarter of an hour and each man jack of them would have his hands full.
Having seen what was up, the two friends turned and looked at each other, thinking the same wild thought, and then they ran forward into a hollow of the dunes, a scoop of land at the very narrowest part of the island, and hidden from Sykes’s telescope. They climbed the next dune and from there got themselves a surprise as they looked down into the next narrow, sheltered hollow. It was a thrusting animal coming along a sandy track, a womback, and didn’t that mean they were in their own country? And wasn’t it very tame, quite fearless as it ambled forward into Admiral’s arms? Admiral grasped it behind its neck bones, pushing its trunk backwards and forwards as if he’d just met a great old friend and had all the time in the world to greet him. Pepperpots looked to their safety while the womback butted. On hands and knees Pepperpots advanced to the crest of the last dune. There was a wide expanse of ocean to the north and a narrow stretch of beach below. Was there any guard posted? Nobody was seen. Certainly there were no men on that beach, but drawn up on the sand, with its sails furled, was their salvation — a ship’s whaleboat about fifteen feet in length!
With a garbled cry of wonder Pepperpots tumbled over the edge of the dune and plunged downwards, running. He crossed the tide line in a few wet strides and was at the bow of the boat. It was heavy on the sand. He dared not yell out to Admiral, but whistled piercingly like the whistling kite, hoping he was heard above the chop of the waves, and spent a few minutes untying knots and readying canvas, glancing around all the time and hardly believing the find. Shouldering the vessel around to face the sea was difficult heavy work and could not be done until Admiral appeared running backwards across the sands, scanning the skyline as he came, and lurching in such a particular disorganised way owing to his bedroll’s heft across his back. About that bedroll, which seemed to have grown into Admiral’s spine, he carried it so much, Pepperpots thought if there was anyone watching they would surely divine that held in the precious bundle of constant keeping was more than just the finery of a sea commander’s clothes and a triple-cornered hat — that sewn into the pouches of the bandolier was coinage of weight and worth. It was held since their sea chest was thrown on the ballast of the Salamander. They took their time and removed its false floor, securing their fortune.
Almost buried to the ankles in wet sloppy sand they got the boat turned athwart and heaved her, lurch by lurch, until a foaming wash of tide lightened her timbers and she began floating in a few inches of water. Pushing hard they drifted her across a stretch of shallows until the easterly, no longer blocked by the dunes, combed her stern, smacking the sails. As she began briskly moving, the two clambered aboard and fell into the bottom, from where one grabbed the tiller and the other hauled in the sheets, working the canvas from an almost lying position inside the hull. Anyone chancing to see them would think the craft had got an idea of its own freedom into its head, and was gone skimming over the ocean unattended.
They sailed for an hour not daring to speak. It was well past noon when the seal island shrank to a low pale band on the horizon. Pepperpots was half blinded by glare but Admiral screwed up his eyes and spoke: the moored Salamander, he said, was visible but hardly bigger than a freckle at one end of the island, while the strangers’ ship at the other end of it, where the Salamander hadn’t been able to see it, was no bigger than a pin head. Neither ship showed signs of putting out boats to give chase.
‘And pray God they never will, pray God there’s some kind of battle royale goin on,’ said Pepperpots as he leaned back, keeping the sail trimmed, and grinned his salt lips. ‘It will take all their attention, battling for seals. They might miss us by now, seeing as how we showed em the seal fighters we were. By tomorrer they won’t know where we’s gone, even if we don’t know where we are ourselves, cept heading away. I trust our captain’s come ashore to get his share of harm. I’d be disappointed if he ain’t. I can see his head being split open. I am almost pleased enough to sail back there an shake the hand of the man who done it, who was a big enough fool to leave his boat unguarded.’
Admiral cried out, ‘Ooh yah!’ and was busy untangling a fishing line in his lap, that he’d found in a storage hatch. It was a generously supplied boat they had, and if they were caught, they’d be in worse trouble for stealing it than any sort of trouble they’d known before. There were other good things in there, under that hatch. Admiral was at the business of hauling them out when the wind changed aft, almost knocking them down. Pepperpots shouted a warning, hauled in ropes, pushed hard at the tiller, came around, the small craft bobbling and wobbling, and it was all right, only busy with slamming this way and that. They hadn’t seen it coming, feathering across the green stirred sea: they were in for a time of it.
Wind belted from the south-west and settled in with a howl, bringing whitecaps. Admiral kept his head down. Eventually the two battered mariners looked at each other again with dripping faces and had the same thought. It was that any two who’d sailed a sea chest in a circle of the ocean, ballasted by stolen coin, and lived to make towards home, would be well able to span the whole world in a whaleboat with a standing lugsail and ready rigged as a yawl, when it came to trouble worse than this. For there was a feeling within the narrow ribs of their vessel that its rules of ownership were changed for the good, and a few other rules of ownership were changed as well, and with a little more luck changed for ever. They lifted their eyes to each other and dared their souls to return, that had deserted them for so long.
HAVING THE WHOLE WIDE SEA to themselves for the second time in their short lives they could barely contain their wonder at the reversal of fortune. When they were marooned drifting they’d dreamed of such a boat. Waves slapped the underside of her as she carried them along. One of them worked the tiller while the other stood high as he could holding onto a shroud and shading a hand across his eyes.
‘Is anyone followin, yet?’
‘I can’t see nobody. Don’t mean they ain’t there.’
The little boat seemed almost to shout aloud that she was in better-deserved hands than she was with a bunch of dirty sealers, and so she’d hurry them along. Why, she was a tighter and more responsive bundle of salvation than two such mortal souls ever deserved. They might even see reason in keeping her and making her theirs if they ever found land! They’d sail her up rivers and pirate their way along in full charge, doing what was needed to get back their choices so lately stolen away. When they reached dry land they might even try out a few lessons they’d learned as ones who suffered but wouldn’t no more. One sure thing was, that when it came down to trust, it would be hard to give it to anyone, except each other.
In the bottom of the boat they found waterproof canvases stowed for shelter of the coming night, jugs of water, lucifer matches, salt meat, hunks of bread, hard cheese, and a flagon of rum all stowed ready for an island camp that was never going to happen for a company of rogues. They were good sailors, though, it had to be said, who got their boat so ready for strangers. In this blowy change of wind, it was found that because of the sail layout being so conveniently prepared by those who might by other chance have knocked them on the head, things went very well indeed. When the mizzen was sheeted on hard, then the boat lay comfortably hoved to, head to wind, while the pair of them enjoyed a respite and looked each other over with such unaccustomed smiles on their faces, as they’d been trying out since they left the island. Pepperpots and the Admiral. Was that who they were?
They blinked, to find it was safe to say otherwise, when only the wind, and a few seabirds were listening.
‘Titus Stanton, is that you, matey, sitting on your arse bones?’
‘Warrie inch-long boy, with your balls so black and blue. I thought you bin done with sailin all over the world, mate.’
‘Not till we get safe over, I ain’t. Till then we have a ship. She’s a good one and all.’
‘An she is.’
From the direction of the seal island a leaning pillar of smoke came in their direction. It was easy to guess that all the grass must have been set on fire to scare men out in the contest between them.
‘I’m smellin smoke,’ said Titus, with a look of pleasure on his beloved mug. ‘When we get to land, I’m thinkin, a fire is what we want, to warm us.’
‘It won’t be tonight, mate,’ said Warren. He stood in the stern and scanned the northern horizon. ‘I don’t see no land signs and there weren’t none this morning, neither, when I looked.’
‘When’ll it be, cap’n?’
‘That, God knows.’
They were shivering cold and wet, but after they wiped their faces with a rag and took swills of rum they were warmer. Warren attended the helm and swung her back into making way, with the wind on the port side, hugging the tiller under his armpit — keeping her up to the wind. If he’d learned anything at all in the time he’d been flung away from his truest life, it was about finding direction. He believed, more or less, that they were heading nor-nor’ east. There wasn’t any compass to prove the guess, but in the sea they were in they were obliged to hold her a direction as best they could — just in case they sailed clear past New Holland and back into the Pacific Ocean again. What a trick that would be. Never again to know their land, and the only taste of it given, a sandy hollow with dead seals on one side and a womback in the middle.
Holding the white ball of the sun at his left shoulder Warren kept trying and thought about ways to keep safe in the night. This gale that was driving them was getting stronger. It was coming on faster than they liked. As they crossed the waves Titus crouched sheltered in the bow. He sang a song, a droning melody Warren hadn’t heard in a good long time, except it meant he was happy.
And safe. So safe now that in his mind he started to go back and must have arrived on his home dirt already. It was allowed by their circumstances, allowed in feelings long banned from their hearts.
‘Remember that Mr Moon, Warrie, that old man belongin to Laban Bale? It’s his song I’m singin, y’know.’
