A Burial at Sea

CHAPTER SIX

The Lucy left Plymouth Harbor under steam (somewhere below deck—Lenox suspected it was in the orlop, but couldn’t feel sure—men were shoveling coal as if their lives depended on it) about an hour later. It was nearly five in the afternoon, and in a cloudless sky the great yellow sun had just begun to mellow into orange and broaden toward the curve of the earth.

When they reached open water Captain Martin ordered the jibs and staysails set. This request precipitated a profound flurry of action and movement among the men at the fore of the ship, and a somewhat stupefied Lenox, ignorant of shipboard terminology, managed to ask his friend Halifax what the directive meant.

They were on the quarterdeck, that deck of the ship, six steep steps up from the main deck, that was reserved for officers. (It was the sole privilege of the midshipman’s life on board that he could walk on the exalted planks of the quarterdeck; otherwise he slept in a hammock like a common bluejacket and took rather worse food.) Captain Martin had, as was common when dignitaries sailed with the navy, invited Lenox to use it, though he had advised Lenox that the poop deck, one level higher up, was, while not technically off-limits, a place in which he might make mischief among men at work.

“Quite without meaning to, of course,” Martin had said over that supper of theirs at the Yardarm.

“I understand, of course. I should never like to be underfoot.”

When Lenox asked Halifax what it meant to set the jibs and staysails, the officer pointed toward the fore of the Lucy. “If you look toward the bowsprit—”

“The bowsprit?” said Lenox.

Halifax laughed his melodious laugh. “I had forgotten there were men who didn’t know what a bowsprit was,” he said, and then, seeing Lenox redden, said, “No, my dear man, I value you for it! The navy can be a confinement, if you let yourself fall oblivious to its limitations. But listen: I imagine you saw the great spar—the great pole—that extends off the prow of the ship?”

“Of course,” said Lenox, still stung.

“That is the bowsprit. There are three sails that may be run up from it, all of them triangular—the flying jib, which is farthest out, and two staysails. Can you see?”

“Oh, yes, now I can.”

Of course he could, and felt stupid that he hadn’t been able to locate the object of so many men’s attention. Two sailors were all the way out along the bowsprit, hung upside down over the water in a way that looked extremely dangerous. Neither kept more than a casual hand on the spar, however, instead primarily using the strength of their legs to hang on.

“What are they for, these sails?” Lenox asked.

“In a medium wind like this—”

“Medium!”

“What would you have called it?”

“A stiff wind—very stiff indeed.”

“Oh, dear,” said Halifax feelingly, and Lenox could see that he had committed another solecism. “No, this is quite a medium wind—even a light one, you might say. In such a wind the jib and staysails give you a bit of a pick-up, and better still they make you more maneuverable. The captain will want to be able to catch the wind again quickly if it shifts, you see.”

“Thank you,” said Lenox. “I fear I shall have more questions—if you find them importunate—”

“Never!” said Halifax, his plump face animated. “It’s a pleasure to have you aboard, Mr. Lenox.”

There was a deep sensory pleasure that Lenox found in these first hours on board the Lucy. There was the salted wind, the flecks of water that occasionally caught his hands or face, the orange and purple sunset, and always the mesmerizing, muscular gray-blue water. Land had vanished some time since. Then, too, he discovered how much he enjoyed watching the sailors at work. At the very top of the rigging (which acted as a kind of ladder), some fifty feet up, a small number of men were hard at work with the same apparently casual attitude toward danger as the men on the spar had had. For one terrifying moment, in fact, Lenox thought one would die: a man in a blue serge frock and blue trousers who flung himself off the mainmast and for a brief, paralyzing moment was in the open air, only at the last possible moment to grasp safely a rope that led to the foremast.

“Skylarking,” said a thin, rather dour lieutenant on the quarterdeck, Carrow by name, but Lenox perceived that this disapproval was almost unwillingly mingled with a faint but detectable dash of admiration. Even joyfulness. Everyone on board, it seemed, was happy to be out of harbor.

He only left the busy quarterdeck at nearly seven in the evening, knowing that he had to dress for dinner in the wardroom; the first lieutenant, a fellow called Billings, had extended him a standing invitation to supper. Martin had done the same but with considerably less enthusiasm, which made sense when Lenox learned from Halifax over their meal aboard the Lucy that the captain preferred to dine with a book in his private stateroom.

He had been very fortunate in the cabin he received, which his steward informed him had generally belonged to the chaplain on previous voyages, and which he had seen before his supper earlier that week with the officers. It was ranged alongside the wardroom, like several other officers’ cabins, toward the larboard side of the ship. He could only just stand up straight inside it, but it was nevertheless much larger than he had expected.

Immediately to the right of the door (which swung out, thankfully) was a narrow bunk lying over a nest of drawers, while farther back there were a desk that looked out through the cabin’s two small windows and a row of bookshelves built into the curved wall. Opposite the bed, just far enough for the drawers underneath the bunk to extend all the way out, were a washstand and a small but eminently serviceable bathtub, circular and made of copper.

While he had been on deck Lenox’s steward had unpacked for him, and he arrived to find his drawers full of clothes, his bookcases quarter-filled with the twelve or so volumes he had brought, a leather satchel full of papers on the desk, a cup of pens with an inkstand by it, and, best of all, beside the windows, the framed pen drawing of Jane he had brought. It had been done by Edmund’s wife, who was an accomplished sketcher, and given to Lenox the previous Christmas. It captured beautifully the prettiness of Jane’s eyes and nose and also, more difficult, her innate mildness, her gentleness.

This steward (who would bring Lenox his meals, stand behind his chair in the wardroom, fetch him water, clean his clothes, and perform a hundred other minor offices) was a Scot called McEwan. He slept in the tiny hallway between Lenox’s door and the wardroom, where apparently he strung up his hammock. It must have been a strong hammock, too, for he was perfectly enormous.

Better still he had the astonishing ability, it seemed to Lenox, never not to be eating. During their initial encounter McEwan had been holding a cold chicken wing that he glanced at longingly from time to time while Lenox tried to make conversation, and since then McEwan had consumed, at various moments, a piece of salt beef, some buttered brown toast, a large slab of cake, and a wing from the same unfortunate bird. Halifax had mentioned, confidingly, that McEwan was one of the few men on board who didn’t drink or carouse on land, saving his pay packets instead for the various delicacies he stowed in secrecy about his living quarters. Little wonder that he weighed twenty stone.

As Lenox walked through the wardroom he heard a voice, and stopped just shy of the corridor that would have led him to his cabin.

“These political gennlemen,” the voice said with deep disdain, “don’t know their arses from their foreheads—”

“Elbows,” McEwan interjected.

“Or elbows,” said the voice triumphantly, “and what’s worse I bet you six to one he’s a bad luck and’ll get us sunk from some ship hearing we have treasures and the like, or worse yet papers. They all want papers, don’t they.”

“He has some, too,” McEwan whispered.

A dissatisfied grunt. “Wish he weren’t aboard, the bugger, and I don’t care who knows it. Joe Meddoes reckons he’s an albatross, like.”

“He brought a fair bulk of food, though, I will say as much as that for him.”

Lenox swung the door open. Both men looked at him in surprise, and then each took their cap off. The one he didn’t know, who was a very large, strong-looking fellow with black hair and a dark complexion, spat his tobacco into the cap. This was custom when speaking to an officer, Lenox had seen that afternoon. Otherwise he would have been disgusted.

“Hello, McEwan,” he said. “Who is this?”

“Only Evers, sir,” said McEwan. In his cap was not a plug of tobacco but a single hard-boiled egg. “Which he got turned the wrong way and lost, like.”

“By the wardroom.”

“Oh—yes,” said McEwan.

Lenox tried to look severe. “Since he has seen it once he shan’t get lost here again. Good day, Mr. Evers.”

“Sir.”

Evers stalked out past him, his face black, and Lenox, doing his best not to seem perturbed, asked McEwan to lay out his evening wear.