All the Tea in China

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Uncheery, indeed, the voyage proved. No one could deny that Dogg was a gifted captain; by dint of merciless driving he contrived to work the ship efficiently. He divided our two weak watches into three pitifully weak ones, one of which was always on call: this meant that for much of the time two-thirds of the men were at work but, when the sailing was plain, two-thirds of them could be snatching some sleep. The men went about their tasks like sleep-walkers but did not, at first, properly comprehend the arithmetic of the thing. In any case, they were more pre-occupied with the question of whether Dogg’s morose inhumanity when sober was worse than his merry savagery when drunk. On the whole, the men preferred him drunk, for he would then sometimes order double shares of grog to be served out at unexpected times.

Peter, of course, even after the Second recovered enough to be able to stand his watches, was overworked and persecuted in a thousand ways, great and petty, but all perfectly legal by the letter of the law of the sea. I, too, was hounded and mocked but there was comparatively little that Dogg could do to me until I was qualified to stand watches — and I was shrewd enough to take care that my mastery of navigation grew slowly, although, in fact, I found it a simple enough science for anyone with a head for figures and had already, on the outward voyage, picked up the elements from Peter.

Captain Dogg was unlovely to behold: his shaggy head seemed to exude a dirty dust and he was afflicted with the disease called “Devil in the Beard” which made his jaws as hideously colourful as his strawberry nose. There was no doubt but that he was a wonderfully able Master Mariner but this won not even grudging admiration from the men. One came across little knots of them, muttering — falling silent whenever an officer or a warrant-rating drew near. In each of these knots, it seemed to me, there was always one of our Calcutta Yankees; our men dropped their eyes sheepishly at these times but the Yankee would stare at one boldly with a sort of a sneering smile. I caught glimpses of a little book passing from hand to hand.

Each day, as we ploughed through the island passages towards the Indian Ocean, I grew more uneasy. Strangely, whenever I tried to sympathise with Peter about some new imposition upon him or some fresh drunken outrage on the Captain’s part, he silenced me curtly, reminding me that Dogg was our commanding officer. This made it harder for me: to worry without a friend to confide in is a lonely business and wearing, wearing. What it was like for Peter I cannot say, perhaps I cannot even guess, even now.

Sheer loneliness — for Peter was at this time too tired when off duty to exchange even the lightest pleasantries — drove me to seek the company of the Doctor but he, too, seemed to become more glum and taciturn each day, although I cannot pretend that the flow and quality of his eatables abated. The change in his nature may well have been due in part to the new Captain’s base approach to the matter of eating. Long service in the Royal Navy had given him a morbid appetite for kinds of food which you or I would spread upon the rose-garden as a mulch. The demands he made upon the Doctor for weevily biscuits, smelly salt pork and the kind of nasty duff called “dog’s vomit” and his scorn for “made dishes” and what he called “kickshaws” must sorely have tried the patience of my negro friend. But this cannot have been the whole of the story. No, the Doctor was, so to say, the ship’s moral barometer and one could almost see the mercury slithering lower and lower in his Torricellian tube.

Blanche recovered but slowly and was less than eager to receive my caresses, nor would she often meet me at the rail for our twilight talks.

One evening, strolling past the main-mast bitts in search of a cooling breeze, I was accosted by the Irish O’Casey who pointed out to me the beauty of the evening, especially for those fortunate enough to have something to drink in such beauteous circumstances. Desperately lonely, I willingly fetched him a pannikin of what he called “the crater”, which he emptied with many a “God bless yez, Sorr” before commencing to talk.

“ ’Tis a shockin’ tarror of a life dese times, is it not, Sorr?”

“I’m afraid,” I said in a benign but Peter-like voice, “that I cannot discuss the failings of any of my superiors with you. Pray keep the conversation general.”

“Of course, Sorr. I was just t’inking of a Lieutenant I sailed under wance. A great, drunken, red-nosed, rug-headed bastard he was and not a man in the ship but wouldn’t have laughed to see him gibbeted. I t’ink his name was Catt or some such.”

I made a non-committal noise, not wholly discouraging.

“And gibbeted he should have been, too, for didn’t I see him murder three men in front of me own eyes? It was in these very waters, now I call it to mind. He was always a man to carry a press of canvas too long with a freshening wind, as you know.”

I coughed warningly.

“I mean, you might well have come across the kind of a man I’m speaking of, Sorr.”

“Just so.”

“Well it was just one of them occasions; with the wind roaring like the Bull itself and shrieking like the Black Pig, up he sends the foretop men to shorten sail. They lay out along the yard, clinging on for very life, their bare feet clenching on the footropes like canary-birds on a perch, finger-nails torn and bleeding as they fight the bursting canvas — and bursting is the very thing the canvas is likely to do at any moment — while yer lieutenant is dancing on the deck and howling up at the men, calling them idle cowards and names I would be ashamed to hear even in me mother’s mouth. He’s as drunk as the eldest son at a Donegal wake, foaming at the mouth and a black bottle in his hand and at his lips every moment: he’s as full as a Catholic School. Still the men cannot come to grips with the iron-hard canvas, it is as much as they can do to cling to life at all.

“The after-guard are standing by with axes, ready to clear away wreckage if the ship should be dismasted; the Lieutenant snatches an axe and with one mad, drunken blow, severs the sheet — the yard whips round and three top-men are twitched into the raging sea like musket-balls. No question of lowering a boat into that sea; no question of heaving-to, only a question of can the ship live, and every man working away like a dog at a bitch. But murder it was, black murder, and I seen it. I seen it in the Log, too, when I next had duty aft: ‘Sudden storm this day,’ he’d written, ‘the men surly and idle; I obliged to cut sheets to save the ship; three careless seamen drownd through their own inattention.’”

“But the Lieutenent you speak of was a young man then, O’Casey, and foolhardy, rash?”

“It was not dat terrible a lot of years ago, Sorr, and the only difference is that in them days he still had a few marks of the gentleman about him. Today he’s a man that would tear Christ off the Cross.”

“Goodnight, O’Casey,” I said.

Naturally, I did not believe a word of all this, for he was an Irish, as I think I have said, but nevertheless I passed an uncomfortable night.

Strangely, while the men were being worked like slaves as we battered our way against contrary winds through the Island passages, continually making, shortening and furling sail, the sullenness did not seem to increase. It is hard for an exhausted man to brood on mutiny: the hardness of his lot cannot compete with the softness of his pillow. You, whose lot has never been hard, will probably not understand this until my death. (In politeness I must add: “You should live so long.”)

It was later, when we were tearing west and south-west through the Indian Ocean toward the Cape of Good Hope, under all plain sail, that the men, with little to do and some sleep to prompt their appetites, commenced to become seriously surly, to reckon up the hours they spent on deck and to con over and over the little tattered book I had seen circulating, which must, of course, have been the dreaded Seaman’s Friend by the American revolutionary Dana, the arch-sea-lawyer.

When the Captain was sober the men worked just well enough to escape punishment; when he was drunk they gauged his moods to a “T”, idling when they knew it to be safe, hauling away with a “cheerily-ho!” when his eye was upon them and when they were confident that an issue of grog was in the offing.

I knew little of the sea and less of the world at that time but I knew enough to know that this was unwholesome. It seems strange to relate but it is true that, even when I held Blanche in my arms, I found myself wishing that Captain Knatchbull was still alive. (I could not — cannot — forget that moment when I stumbled over his head at the entrance to the Great Cabin and my remembrance that it — the head — was still attached to his trunk by a thick shred of the nape of his neck will never leave me. You may think it a small price to pay, but you have only dealt in money and goods: you have never seen a not-quite-severed head.)

Day followed day; it is impossible to explain to those who have never made a long sea-passage how tediously similar one day in an ocean is to another when the winds are fair, nor could you ever believe how the most trifling incidents can magnify themselves into calamities fit to set an entire ship’s company a-buzz. Let me, simply, say again that the crew became less and less like the jolly Jacks with whom I had set sail from London River, that the Second changed from a taciturn to an utterly silent man, that my dear friend Peter became a stranger who wolfed his food and fell into his bunk with the briefest of “goodnights”, that Orace carried out his duties in a perfunctory and timid way, and that the Captain grew more and more drunken and unpredictable. Sometimes he would not be seen for thirty or forty hours, other times he would rage about the vessel as though determined to make it a floating hell — and an hour later would be clapping every man upon the back, calling him a capital fellow and telling the Bosun to serve out rum to everyone in sight.

Even I could tell that this was no way to command a ship on the high seas.

Retribution came soon and arose from that very vice of Dogg’s which O’Casey had spoken of, taking in sail at a minute after the last minute.

We were running before a fair wind but it was too light for the Captain’s taste and all day long, as he grew drunker and drunker, he sent up more sail until we had staysails alow and aloft, water-sails and save-alls beneath the foot of the topsails; and, high above all, every “kite” that the sail-maker could find or improvise: moon-rakers, a “Jamie Green” or jib-o-jib, even a Yankee-style Jolly Jumper and a “hope-in-heaven”. Peter looked at all this press of canvas gloomily and I recalled his words when we first met: that the John Coram was built for spread, not hoist.

The Second had the watch; Peter and I were walking the deck in silence. The wind began to freshen and to shift a point here and then a point there. On the horizon there were tropical squalls plain to be seen, like dark-grey tree-trunks joining sea and sky. I noticed, with some uneasiness, that the watch on deck were all gazing aloft, where the extra masts looked no thicker than cabmen’s whips — and were behaving like them.

At last the Second lifted the speaking-tube and called down to the Captain’s cabin.

“Permission to shorten sail, Sir, and send down sky-sails.”

We could clearly hear Dogg’s answer.

“You have your orders on the watch-slate, Mister. Brace her up to the wind.”

“Sir, I do not believe she can carry this press of sail much longer.”

“What she can’t carry she may drag!” came the drunken bellow.

I tried to catch Peter’s eye, but without success. Looking around, I saw that many of the watch below had silently appeared on deck. There were ugly looks, both at the poop and at the weather. One or two of the squalls were approaching us fast, it seemed to me, and we were scudding along at a terrifying rate, shouldering the ocean aside like a constable shoving his way through a rabble. The Second drew a deep breath, like a man who expects it to be his last, and lifted the speaking-tube.

“Sir,” he said flatly, “I formally request you to come on deck and judge the situation with your own eyes. I shall record this request of mine in the Log.”

The Captain appeared, dishevelled and red-eyed, cursing foully. He looked at the weather, which worsened even as he looked. Then he looked at the sails.

“Send down all to the royals, Mister, and one reef in all plain canvas.”

The Second picked up the “trumpet” — for the noise was now deafening — and relayed the order to the Bosun, who yelled it out piecemeal to the watch. Those who were to reef jumped to their work with alacrity but one gang shuffled their feet and did not otherwise move. The Bosun ranted at them but to no avail. He came to the break of the poop.

“Beggin’ yer pardon, Sir, but the top-men won’t go aloft.”

“Won’t?” roared the Captain, “won’t? What kind of talk is that on ship-board?”

“Beggin’ yer pardon again, Sir, but there’s only one proper top-man in the gang, Sir, and he’s got an ’and in bandages still.”

“The men refuse to obey orders?” he whispered horridly.

“Not exackly, Sir. They just reckon it’s suicide to attemp’ it.”

To everyone’s astonishment, the ordinarily mute Second cleared his throat and spoke.

“Forgive me, Sir, but I consider that the men are within their rights. All that raffle of top-hamper will be carried away at any moment and an order which sends men to almost certain death in an effort to save a few light spars and rags of canvas is, by the laws of the sea, an improper order.”

The Captain slowly turned and smiled at him. This was a disgusting sight, for his teeth were nastier than his face.

“Pray write your remarks in the Log,” he said. With that he leaped at the futtock-shrouds and scrambled up like some great ape. Every eye in the ship was on him as he swayed and clung and fought the elements and canvas; but, by God, he took in and sent down all. No sane man would have attempted it, no sober man could have done it.

When he was back on deck, retching for breath and sucking his torn and bloody fingers, he glared about him with a kind of mad happiness.

“Line up the men who refused to obey orders,” he croaked. “I have just shewn that the orders were reasonable, have I not? Line them up, I say, and bring the cat. I am about to flog every man-jack with my own hands.”

“Oh no you ain’t, mister bleeding Dogg,” came a Yankee drawl. The Captain whirled about. One of our Calcutta recruits was pointing a little nickel-plated Bulldog pistol at his breast.

The Captain stood like a stone man for what seemed like a stone age. Wonderfully slowly, gently even, he reached out for the pistol. So persuasive was this gesture that even the coarse American faltered, spellbound until the last moment — but at this last moment he lashed out at the Captain’s knuckles with the barrel of the weapon. Dogg recoiled, snarling, spitting like a cat.

“If you drop that weapon this instant,” he said in the frightening whisper, “then I shall stretch a point and only have you flogged. If you do not, then I swear I shall stretch your neck. Unless, of course” — here he raised his voice — “any of your mates were so foolish as to support you, which would make it mutiny and hangings for one and all.”

The American pointed his pistol into the air and fired a shot. This was a signal, clearly. The men who now crowded the deck shifted to and fro and arranged themselves hesitatingly into two groups. There were whispered curses, threats, promises, and several fellows shuffled first to one group, then to another.

At last all seemed settled.

“How many?” asked the American over his shoulder, never taking his eyes off the Captain and us other officers.

“Twenny-eight,” replied one of his accomplices.

“Fine. Jest fine. Mighty fine. Mister Dogg, you are no longer in command here; I have placed you under arrest as a dangerous lunatic. You are free to leave this vessel, along with your shit-livered officers, who should have locked you up weeks ago. Any men who wish to stay and help work the ship, why, I’ll write their names in the Log and say they had no part in this consarn.”

There was a shuffling and a muttering from the uncommitted part of the crew; I was reminded perfectly of the crowd-scene in Julius Caesar by W. Shakespeare. Dogg leapt at the American with a strangled yell: he was, as they say, fit to be tied, and tied up is what he was, after some compassionate mutineer had hit him on the head often enough to calm him. Peter and the Second strode into the fray, unarmed, ordering the men to lay down their arms and accept their punishments like honest seamen, but their words carried little weight, for all knew that the only punishment was the stretching of the neck to which Dogg had referred. They, too, were bound.

I, as a thoughtful man, had reserved my judgment and, when the fellows wielding belaying-pins and pistols looked towards me I may well have been studying the horizon in an abstracted way. I was, after all, only a supernumerary officer.

There ensued a great deal of sordid bickering and bargaining, during which, to show my contempt for these proceedings, I strolled to the galley and filled my pockets with two double-handfuls of the Doctor’s “tabnabs”. I have always been a practical man.

Soon all arguments were settled. Dogg, the Second, Peter, the sailing-master and a few ancient mariners of warrant rank who had served Peter’s father were to be set into the long-boat. Blanche was to remain aboard. The mutineers snickered at this. They asked me where I stood. I had been thinking.

“Where are you bound?” I asked haughtily, brushing a few crumbs from my lips.

“We’re taking this hooker to the West Indies, brother. When we’ve sold the cargo, why, we’ll jest go into business on our own account. Whole heap of work for a handy little ship in South Americky nowadays, ’spacially if she carries a few guns.”

“And who, pray, is to navigate you to the West Indies?”

“You. We seen you taking lessons.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Guess you kin take your chance in the open boat — but your fancy lady stays here. Calc’late we kin find a use for her.”

I thought some more. A thousand miles in an open boat with Dogg held few attractions and the chances of survival seemed small in any case. Moreover I was, as I have explained, in love with Blanche.

“Very well,” I said. “I’ll navigate you to the West Indies; on conditions.”

“Oh, yeah?” he said (this is how Americans speak, you understand — it means “indeed?”).

“Yes. First, Mrs Knatchbull not to be molested, on your word as an honest seaman. Second, I am to be put ashore in the West Indies with Mrs Knatchbull and my private cargo. Third, I am to retain my pistol for self-protection — you shall have my parole d’honneur that I shall not attempt to seize the ship with it.” I grinned disarmingly at this point. I am very good at grinning disarmingly — I practise. (Verb, sap.) “Fourth, the Captain, officers and seamen leaving in the boat are to be properly provisioned, watered, supplied with a boat’s-compass and two firearms for use when they reach shore and to be given the ship’s position and a sight of the charts before they leave.”

The Yankee did not consider long, for he was an intelligent man.

“No,” he said.

I reasoned with him, pointing out that behaving in the way I had suggested would lend a colour of legality to his assuming command from an insane Captain; otherwise they were mutineers and would spend all their days in the shadow of the rope. He agreed, at the urging of his accomplices.

The departure was unpleasant; Dogg raved and cursed, the Second looked at me as though I were something unpleasant he had noticed adhering to the sole of his shoe, Peter wrung my hand and gave me a long, anguished look which seemed more to indicate compassion for me than fear for his own survival.

The mutineers, ignorant fellows, made a trifling mistake which may well have cost them their lives one day. They seized the Second Officer’s beautiful modern sextant for my use but contemptuously let the Captain take his old-fashioned quadrant or “hog-yoke” as they called it.

“’T’ain’t no use without the star-book,” said the leader knowledgeably, “and thet’s right here on the chart-table.” So it was. As soon as the boat had left I stole to our cabin and studied Peter’s little shelf of books. All his “Jane” Austens were there, also his Catullus and his Norie, but there was a gap at the end of the row where his own copy of the Ephemerides had used to stand. I was mightily comforted. A longitude and latitude, you see, and a course set by a boat’s compass are but rough guides because of the set to leeward, the drift of the current and so forth, whereas with the quadrant, the Ephemerides and Peter’s pocket-chronometer they would be able to fix their position with great accuracy each noon if the weather were clear, and at night, too. Moreover, I had seen the Second having the agreed “sight of the charts”: he had stared at them for quite two minutes — Peter had long ago casually told me that the Second’s brain was freakish, like Lord Macaulay’s: he could memorise a page of print in the time it took to pass his eyes over it. Today we would say that he had a mind like a photographer’s plate.

Their dangers were still unimaginable but now at least they could not be lost in the waste of waters. I pitied the mutineers if Dogg reached land; he was a man who would hound them to death if it took him all his life.

That he was not wholly insane was soon evident; when the boat was out of gunshot I saw the little lug-sail come down. Through the telescope I saw her begin to row as though towards us, then turn to port and to port again.

“Swinging his compass, the ole bastard,” muttered one of the Yankees. “That’s a shaggy wolf from ’way up where the river forks.” I did not understand these words but I relished them, for they were spoken in a voice tinged with apprehension.

I popped a “tabnab” into my mouth and went to reassure Blanche.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

An evening or two later I was leaning on the rail at the waist of the ship, on the windward side, greedily snuffing what slight air wafted to me. There was the least shuffle of bare feet on the deck. I did not move except to put my hand upon the butt of the revolving pistol in my waistband. A shadowy form materialised beside me. It was on my left side, which gave me some reassurance, for I am right-handed. I drew back the hammer of the pistol, soundlessly, as I thought.

“Put it back to ’arf-cock, Sir,” whispered the shadowy form, “for I means you no ’arm.”

I lowered the hammer completely, then pulled it back to full-cock: I could afford to trust no one. The clicking seemed to satisfy the shadow.

“It’s only old Tom Transom,” it said. I almost put the hammer to half-cock, but at that time I would not have trusted my mother. My father, perhaps, yes.

“Mr Van Cleef, Sir,” whispered Transom, “meaning no disrespect, but are you out of your sodding mind?” There were only two answers to this; “yes” or “no”, and I could not find it in my heart to give either.

“Hrrumph,” I said Britishly.

“Shh!” he whispered.

“Sorry!” I squeaked.

“Ssshhh!” he shushed, anguishedly. I shushed. He fell silent, peering and listening until he was sure that no one was a party to our conversation. It struck me that he was almost as afraid as I was.

“Listen, Mr Van Cleef, Sir,” he whispered at last, “’aven’t you wondered why you ain’t in that boat with the other ossifers?”

To tell the truth I had not wondered much: perhaps in my vanity I had supposed that I was popular, perhaps I had thought, in a modesty more natural to me, that I was too insignificant to be awarded the dramatic casting-away. I did not answer, for I had no answer ready.

“Well, I’ll tell you. First, they needs someone to take sights of the sun with that quadrant; them Yankees can ’andle the ship everywise but that. Second, they reckon that if we’re cotched, you’ll speak up for them at the trial. Third, you was the only one stupid enough, beggin’ yer pardon, Sir, not to know that jest by staying aboard, let alone doing the navigationing, you was aiding and comforting mutiny on the high seas and you’ll be ’ung ’igher than any on us if we’re taken.”

This sank in, painfully, terrifyingly.

“I see,” I said. “What, then, can be done?”

“Dunno, Sir. ’Opes you’ll come up with an idea. Smartly, Sir.” Frantically, I clutched my wits together, tried to think as a Nelson.

“I do not see how we can attempt to re-take the ship,” I said, “for they have every arm in the ship except my revolver.”

“True enough, Sir, true.”

“How many of the crew are of your turn of mind, Transom?”

“Well, Sir, there’s a clear twenty on us served under Lord Stevenage’s pa; I reckon I could trust a dozen of them, true as steel, the others is old or daft or plain frittened.”

“Hm,” I said. A plan commenced to glimmer in my frightened brain. “Meet me here at this time tomorrow night, Transom,” I murmured. “I think something can be done but I must have a look at the charts.”

“Aye aye, Sir,” he said. This made me feel wise and responsible; no one had ever said “Aye aye Sir” to me before. It also reminded me, uncomfortably, that I was indeed an officer, however supernumerary, and an officer condoning mutiny. I had never witnessed a hanging and felt strongly that, if I should ever do so, it would be more interesting to be a spectator than the principal.

I spent a miserable night, slept a little in the morning and at noon, when it was my task to shoot the sun, my mind was a mere riot of half-digested plans. Alone in the chart-room, plotting our position and laying out a course, I took the opportunity of stuffing the chart for the coast between Knysna and Cape Town under my shirt and down my trousers. This chart I pored over agonisedly all afternoon, to some avail.

Transome and I met again in the dark.

“The day after tomorrow,” I said, “at just about this time, we should be at Longitude 20° East.”

“Arrh,” he said, “Cape Agulhas. Nasty bank there and a famous place for dirty winds.”

“Suppose I made a false reckoning at noon and laid a bad course and one of our party was quartermaster: we could run her aground, don’t you think?”

“Yerss,” he said bitterly, “that’d solve our little troubles for good, that would. Might as well jest jump over the side now an’ be done with it.”

“It’s like that, is it?”

“Exackerly like that. An’ if one or two on us got ashore alive, we’d still be mutineers, wouldn’t we?”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Well, I ’ad,” he said, caressing his leathery neck affectionately, as though he liked it as it was. I was chagrined that he no longer called me “Sir”; clearly, I was no Nelson in his eyes.

“Never mind,” I said briskly, “I am just testing my thoughts, you understand.”

“Yerss. There’s summink in it though. Make a wrong course so’s we pass close to land on a rising tide in the dark and we could swim ashore.”

“Mrs Knatchbull cannot swim,” I said. I did not know this, but what I did know was that I could not.

“Oh,” he said in a disinterested voice.

“Now then,” I said, still briskly, “how long would it take to lower a boat, quietly, in the dark; one large enough to take us all?”

“Quarter-boat too small,” he mused. “Lower the launch — fifteen minutes. In the dark — twenty. If we got everything cleared away, falls loosened and such, all before’and like, p’raps ten minutes in a flat calm.”

“Excellent!”

“But quietly,” he went on, remorselessly, “carn’t be done. Arsk me to slaughter a pig quiet and I’d give it a try, but lower a long boat …” I think he would have laughed if the need for silence had not been so imperative.

“Don’t jump to conclusions!” I rapped — but as quietly as it is possible to rap. “I am examining the possibilities; your part is to make seaman-like comments. When asked.”

“Aye aye, Sir,” he replied, gratifyingly. There was no trace of surliness in his voice: I might not know wood from canvas but I was a gentleman and therefore capable of thought. All he had was knowledge. He could probably have made an ass of me at draughts but he would not have attempted to learn chess, for he knew his station in life. (This is the art of dealing with the lower orders: praise their mastery of the craft to which they are born but keep the chess-board locked up as you would your wine-cellar.)

“Now,” I said, “suppose that the mutinous, self-appointed officers were locked in the cabin when they have dined and supped and one of our hearts of oak knocked the quartermaster’s brains out quietly; would that give us time to lower the boat?”

He breathed deeply; one would have thought that he was thinking.

“No, Sir,” he said. “You couldn’t reckon they’d all be drunk enough; I’ve seen that crazy Boothcastle wide awake after a quart of rum. They got all the firearms in there, they could blow the lock off before you could say ’ow’s yer farver.”

“My pistol?”

“Might ’old ’em back, might not. Then, when we’re in the boat?”

“Hm,” I said, striving for a tone of “hm” which would convince him that this was what I had expected him to say.

“Anyways,” he went on, “there’s a fair lot in the fo’c’sle what would come raging out at us; they got their hearts set on South Americky and freedom. They’d reckon that if we got ashore a King’s ship would be arter them in jig-time — and we knows their names and their destination. Which ain’t ’Eaven,” he added, obscurely. “You couldn’t ’old off the cabin and the fo’c’sle both, not with that pistol — the men forrard still ’ave their case-knives, let alone the firearms aft. See?”

I saw, but preserved my feigned nonchalance.

“Quite right,” I said. “Now, this gun,” nudging the pivot-piece beside me, “I fancy this could be brought to bear on the fo’c’sle? There is a garland of shot beside it, a flexible rammer and sponge racked against the bulwarks, a flint in the lock and the expense-chest of powder cartridges under my very foot as I speak. What do you say to that, eh?”

“Wot I says, Sir, is: tap the expense-chest with your boot.”

I tapped. It rang hollow. It seemed to me that just such a tap at my head would have produced a similar sound, for that had been the last of my ideas, my trump card. Never again would Transom call me “Sir”. My hand stole to my collar and fingered the soft skin at my throat. Transome maintained a respectful silence, no doubt sure that I was elaborating some further part of a plan, but I was considering the technicalities of hanging. In the hands of a skilled craftsman, a well-calculated drop brings kindly oblivion in a twinkling of an eye, I am told, but to be hoisted aloft in a noose is a quite different matter: more prolonged, tediously uncomfortable and calculated to make the subject behave in various shameful and disgusting ways which I shall not trouble you with describing.

My craven musings were blown to pieces by a deep, sotto voce cough, six inches behind me, I did not quite jump over the side, nor did my heart altogether stop, but I must confess that I shuddered violently and, indeed, may have moistened myself a little.

In an instant I collected myself, realising that it was only the Doctor: a man to be trusted regardless of his creed or colour.

“Ah was wokened up by yo’ thinkin’, Mistuh Cleef,” he rumbled softly in my ear, “so ah jes’ naturally come out heah to heah what you was saying. ’T’warn’t at all the same as what I heard you a-thinkin’.” I looked over my shoulder at him: his grin was like the keyboard of a small piano-forte.

“Speak, thou apparition,” I said.

“Cain’t hex me, Mistuh Cleef; I hear’t longer words nor that. Jes’ wanted to tell you about my medicine chest.”

“Yes, well, I did see it before,” I mumbled, swallowing the blood from my bitten tongue. (It was, indeed, a beautiful chest, with double doors and sliding sides and back, all filled with little bottles of Gregory’s powder, snake-oil and other useful jollops.)

“Didn’t see the secret drawer in the bottom, Mistuh Cleef. Didn’t see the big flat bottle of micky-o-flynn.”

Transom, beside me, stiffened into attention; clearly this meant something. I raised an interested eyebrow: the doctor could see it in the dark, I was sure.

“Cheloral hyderate,” he explained, “ ’nuff to send a school o’ whales to sleep.”

My mind raced.

“Only trouble,” went on the cook, “it don’t keep too long. Bo’t it two year ago. Still send ev’one to sleep but anyone ain’t fit, well they jes’ might not wake up agin.”

“Tsk tsk,” I said. “That is a risk we must take, is it not?”

Our plans were soon laid.

On the night, all went wonderfully well. Only the watch on deck had not drunk of the micky-o-flynn in their fish-chowder; only six of these were not of our persuasion and they were tapped upon the head and battened below hatches. I made a dutiful visit to see that all was well in the specie-room and took a little gold to cover travelling-expenses. Then I went onto the quarter-deck and showed the steersman my pistol. Without hesitation he agreed that it was better to be tied up than shot. I delivered him to Transom, set a course to take us as near to the mouth of False Bay as possible, slipped the becket over the spoke of the wheel and went to supervise the loading of my chests of porcelain. A whip had been rove to the main-mast yard-arm for this and all went as smoothly as a rabbi’s wedding. Nothing was heard but the creaking of the tackle and the hoggish snores of those who had eaten of the fish-chowder. Yes, well, also the muffled sobs of Blanche, who had been obliged to abandon half her wardrobe. I had not troubled to explain to her the benefits of our action, for women, as you will learn when you are older, think only with that charming organ which is their third eye, second heart and only brain. For my part, being compassionate by nature, I was concerned for the crew we had left behind, mutinous dogs though they were, but a glance over my shoulder as I sat in the stern-sheets shewed me the ship pursuing an excellent course. If even half of them awoke by morning they should be able to round the Cape; after that they needed no navigator, any course west of north would pitch them up somewhere in South America where life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness awaited them.

At dawn we beached the boat somewhere south of Simonstown, emptied it, stove it in and shoved it back into the sea to sink. I gave each man a guinea to see him safe home to England and we dispersed, only Blanche, the doctor and Orace staying with me and the chests. We slept until noon, when the doctor, who had rambled off, arrived with a yellow-faced man, two thin, strong negroes and a spring-cart.

Arrived at the village of Simonstown, our bottoms blackened and blued with the jolting of the cart’s hard seat, we were taken to a house where a fat woman gave us something nameless to eat and put us into a monstrous feather-bed. I do not know how long we slept. When I awoke I saw from the window some ships which clearly belonged to Her Majesty and I lost no time in hiring another cart to take us to the town of Cape Town, where we mingled with the motley crowd. We ate better there and slept as softly. After a day the doctor came to find us and announced that he was going off to seek his fortune at the digging of gold and diamonds, poor benighted heathen. I assured him that he would be safer working in one of the vineyards, such as the great Constantia, but he had been convinced by some plausible fellow that there was gold to be had for the digging and diamonds to boot. Sadly, I offered him a piece or two of gold but he refused these, explaining that, when I was about to leave the John Coram, I had carelessly left the key in the door of the specie-room. I bade him farewell with much feeling.

I occupied a few days thus: I discarded my surname of Van Cleef and retained my middle name of Mortdecai; I found a synagogue, stricken with poverty, which was prepared to marry me to Blanche without enquiring too strenuously into our antecedents. I found a similarly stricken Scotch church whose minister did more or less the same thing: this satisfied Blanche, who happily sewed both sets of marriage lines into her stays. Normal matrimony suited her: it was only rarely that she hinted at a nostalgic desire for the whip. I helped her through those times.

More important for our future was the necessity to get back to England, the home of the free and the brave. My first attempts to buy a map were baffling: the Dutch settlers (they liked to be called Afrikaaners — the word “Boer” in those days meant a rustic clown, perhaps rightly) had no faith in cartography, for they knew that the earth was flat. London was a few weeks’ marches North; Holland a little further. One could not disagree with such men for each one carried a firearm and was fierce in his faith, fierce. Anything not explicitly spoken of in the Bible could not exist: it was so simple. I envied them their certainty. One Predikant or preacher harangued me for quite half an hour, his food-encrusted beard cracking like a whip as he spoke. Armageddon, he assured me, along with the end of the world, was positively to begin in the year 1914. I have every intention of seeing that year (for I am careful about choosing those who prepare my food) but I shall be surprised if anything Armageddon-like occurs.

No map was to be had, I learned, except by favour of the Clerk to the British Admiralty at the Royal Dockyard. This meant, for me, in my peculiar circumstances, that no map was to be had. While Blanche occupied herself with replenishing her wardrobe, I roved the town, making friends both here and there. The Afrikaaners were difficult to befriend: my clean Gelderland Dutch seemed affected to them and their yokel-patter grated upon my delicate ear. Many a time, when I had plucked up the appetite to attack a bowl of beef stewed with ginger and dried apricots, a monstrous she-Boer with breasts like pillows and moustaches which seemed to have strayed from her private parts would clap me heartily upon the shoulder and cry “Smaaklike ete!” into my ear. This never failed to destroy my appetite.

On one such night, famished and forlorn, I fell in with a rich young smouse, or Jewish pedlar, in a drinking-shop. He had been up-country many times, he said, and was indeed about to set forth again. I expressed interest. He studied my clothes, which were of good quality but not showy and decided that I was a man of some small substance. We began the elaborate, ritual dance of conversation which takes place when Greek meets Greek. He was, it appeared, tailing on to a caravan of farming settlers who were “trekking” north-westwards instead of taking the more usual route to the Orange River and the Vaal. This trek was to march parallel to the coast, through the Little Bushman Country, skirting the great Kalahari Desert and, it was hoped, joining a party of kinsmen who had gone that way a couple of years before.

“And how are these kinsmen faring?” I asked.

“Who knows?” he shrugged. “What is news? Who is going to ride through dangers for a month on a valuable horse just to tell that Oom Paul has the gout and the cow has calved? Maybe they are all dead, God forbid; more likely, they are wallowing in milk and honey in some new Canaan.”

The smouse clearly believed, from his experience, that the gamble of taking his wares so far was a better-than-even chance: he was not a man to take odds worse than seven to three. If the trek found the community settled and prosperous, the contents of his pedlar-packs would be almost beyond price. Such a community, you see, might well be self-sufficient in the matter of meat and butter, corn and leather, even milk and honey — but no such community could make fine steel needles, gun-flints and powder, silk shawls, lead bars for the casting of bullets, ribbons, petticoats and delicate under-drawers for brides. (A Predikant would be in our trek and would have a busy time if we found the settlement: there would be a great naagtmaal with much hell-fire preaching and drunkenness, many informal marriages to be regularised, adulterers to be chastised and babies to be baptised.)

Yes, the smouse agreed, there was much room to spare in his wagon. The charges, of course, would be heavy, for this space could otherwise be used for valuable freight. Surely I could see that? I pressed many a glass of the excellent Van Der Hum drink upon him but the heaviness of the charges dwindled only a little. At last we struck hands on the bargain.

“By the way,” I asked idly, “where will you sleep?”

“Why, in the wagon with you of course, where else? There are two pallets, each with a good palliasse of sweet hay.”

“But my wife …?”

He had not known that I had a wife. He did not quite rend his garments, nor tear his hair — indeed, the latter was so richly pomaded that I do not think he could have secured enough grip upon it for tearing purposes. Back and forth the argument swayed: twice he stormed out of the drinking-shop in disgust, only to return for something he had forgotten and to give me one last chance to be reasonable; three times I, too, stalked out, only to be dragged back in and implored to be reasonable. Being reasonable meant that I should either abandon Blanche — women, he assured me with many an anatomical detail, are much like each other and can be readily replaced — or pay a monstrous extra charge to compensate him for sleeping outside his wagon, away from his goods. We came, of course, to an agreement in the end. The other clients of the boozing-ken, listening avidly, may have believed that I had broken the smouse’s heart, for this is what he vowed; while he — for this is what I cried aloud — had reduced me to penury and consigned my unborn children to the poorhouse. Altogether, it was a most satisfactory and profitable evening. I would not be a Gentile for a knighthood — even for a peerage.

We — that is to say, Blanche, I and Orace — made rendezvous with the trek three afternoons later. The smouse made a great fuss about Orace, although I explained that he was only a bastard and would not need a bed. Then he complained about our baggage, which was more than had been agreed upon. Ever ready to meet a reasonable demand, I compromised by jettisoning one trunk of Blanche’s clothes. I had bought a fine battery or chest of weapons for our protection and explained to her that these would prove more valuable than basques and drawers and stays. She was not an unreasonable woman. I had also, at the last moment, bought a fine saddle-horse: I fancy I cut a fine figure on it, although the Boers, inexplicably, laughed at me. Next morning — not a time that you or I would call morning, but at the “hour of the horns”, when, before true dawn, a man with good eyesight can just discern the horns of the oxen against the sky — the whole cumbrous, complaining encampment of what was to be our trek roused itself, beat its oxen and blackamoors into activity and grated into a sort of motion. Northwards.

So eager were these Boers for the sight of long-lost kinsmen, not to mention land and profits, that the Predikant was left on his knees, still bellowing prayers, and had to scramble into his cart and whip up his sorry mule for a mile before he could bring up the tail of our strange caravan.

(I tried, from time to time, to discourse with this Predikant, hoping for intellectual stimulus, but I found that his learning was as narrow as his beliefs. He had a perfect knowledge of the more merciless parts of the Old Testament but was vague and evasive on the subject of Jesus Christ. I lost his friendship, I believe, when I postulated, simply as a point of argument, that the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah must have been drunk when they wrote. He never spoke to me again but I did not regret this. One of the few things I have learned in life is that only a fool argues with bigots when he could be in bed with a lovely and lustful woman. And Blanche, at just this time, was coming into full blossom as a lover: all the years of misdirected passion burst forth like petals of an autumn rose and her inventiveness astonished and challenged my simple Dutch lechery.)

A trek is like a long sea-voyage but dusty. The dangers are as many but of a different nature: there is little danger of drowning, for instance. The boredom is exactly similar, day follows day in an unchanging pattern, one loses count of time, and after many days one can only recall trivial incidents, small oases in a desert of dullness. One such was the night when Orace was eaten by a lion. Poor child, he had failed to keep the fire bright and had fallen asleep. I was awakened by a gentle thudding, as though someone were pounding the earth with fists. Peering out between the laces of the wagon-flap, I caught a glimpse of a great yellow beast trotting away with a large object between its jaws, then, despite its burden, clearing the thorn stockade or bomah, which closed the entry-gap between the semi-circle of wagons, with one bound. I called crossly for Orace to make up the fire but he did not reply. A search shewed that he was missing and must have been what the lion was carrying. I had half a mind to go out with my heavy rifle and pursue the cowardly beast, but I was readily persuaded that this would be both hopeless and dangerous.

I was quite cast down by the loss of this devoted child; indeed, I believe I shed a tear. Blanche comforted me, saying that she would learn to wash my linen, but she did not understand: I had become fond of Orace, foundling or no. Fond.

Another day which sticks in my memory is the day after we crossed the Olifants River, skirting the high ground to the west of the great Desert of Kali-Hari. It was my turn to be riding far ahead of the trek as voorloper and I was nodding in the saddle when I noticed that my horse had come to a halt. Looking up, I saw through sleep-filmed eyes what appeared to be a monstrous cloud of dust hazing the air a few miles ahead. I rubbed my eyes clear and looked again. As far as I could see, from east to west, this cloud of dust was still rising. I galloped back to the trek-leader — although I had been warned against galloping a horse in that climate — and reported that at least a regiment, probably a brigade, perhaps a division of cavalry was crossing our front.

He glared inscrutably at me from the forest of his brows and beard and said, although with little conviction, that everything was possible under God. Then he called up young Cloete, a man of fine breeding who had scouted as far as the Congo River itself, although not for gain, because he was one of the heirs of the great Constantia estate, where the finest wine in the world is made. (If you do not believe this last remark, I remind you that Napoleon Bonaparte himself, on his death-bed, called for a glass of Constantia.)

Young Cloete, reins slack, moved out on his beautiful half-bred Arab at a ground-eating single-step pace, the great broad brim of his hat over his eyes and only one foot in a strirrup, so sure he was of his mount. (This is also a useful way to ride over broken ground or if you fear an ambuscade.)

In twenty minutes he was back with us, smiling, but holding up his arm, palm out-stretched. The trek halted untidily, the men growling, the women squabbling, the children squealing and the oxen, horses, milch-cows, goats, mules, pigs, poultry and dogs each making noises proper to their kind.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Bok,” said Cloete as he dismounted and lay down to rest.

“Is that offensive?” I asked the trek-leader.

“No. It is bok.”

I walked my tired horse back to the wagon and gave him a hatful of water.

“Why have we stopped?” asked Blanche.

“Bok,” I said.

“The same to you!” she replied with spirit.

Hours later our motley cavalcade ground into motion again and, before dusk, crossed the track of the great movement I had first seen. A thin film of the finest particles of dust still hung over it and for the breadth of quite half a mile, our wagon wheels pressed over a carpet of flattened corpses of little buck. Cloete told me later that this particular kind of antelope, once in a while, takes it into its head to migrate in unimaginable numbers, for no discernible reason. “They are almost human,” he explained. If I used the words “one million” in respect of this exodus of buck you would only laugh, for you have seen little of the world and know less. Cloete used these words, prefixed by the words “at least”.

The irrational nature of this business of the bok vexed me strangely, for I had already made a fool of myself the previous day, when I had suggested that I might leave the trek at the River Olifants and proceed down it to the sea, finding a ship at the Western Coast. The trek-leader, whose religion, I think, prohibited laughter, sank his great bomah-covered chin further into his breast and controlled his breathing carefully before pointing out to me that the Olifants, except in spate, was a series of disconnected lagoons and that its course was, in any case, opposite to the direction I named. These Boers have a name for us British: rooinek — it means red-neck. My neck became red.

In this business of the Afrikaaners’ religion I found much to reflect on. Their “Reformed Church” was strict in its doctrine but easy to follow: the whole truth was to be found in the Bible, therefore nothing else could be true. So, the earth had four corners and was therefore flat. Nothing could be more logical. (They marvelled that I should want to take ship to London: it was only a couple of hundred marches to the north-west, just as Jerusalem was a similar number of marches to the north-east. Perhaps this was the cause of the continual treks northward from the Cape: they did not like to live so close to the southern edge of the world.)

There was no possibility of salvation for any but members of this Reformed Church — and, to judge by the rantings of the Predikant, precious little chance for them. One formed a mental picture of the Elysian fields, empty as the High Veldt except for an occasional Predikant wearing a justified look of righteousness and a few withered virgins wearing calico from hairy chin to scrawny ankle.

They had the inhabitants of this continent of Africa neatly docketed. The Kaffirs were partly educable and might be beaten and baptised. The Hottentots were sub-human: the very word comes from the Dutch word for a stutterer; the Hottentot does not speak but he tries to. So, he may be trained and charitably fed and beaten but not baptised. The little yellow Bushmen, with hair like a sprinkle of peppercorns and buttocks which, in a good season, protruded astonishingly but, in times of hardship, withered into a sort of flaccid apron, were clearly non-human. They had to be exterminated, for all sorts of excellent reasons which I cannot recall at this remove of time.

While we trudged at the maddeningly slow oxen-speed through giraffe country one of the skilled huntsmen in the trek would set out each Friday and kill a giraffe. This great, improbable beast would be skinned and the Kaffir “boys” would cut his hide, with infinite care, into one or perhaps two enormously long strips. On the Saturday all would fall to and grease this strip with the tallow from the creature’s kidneys and guts. On the Sabbath, when all who had the slightest hope of salvation rested and would do no more than eat and journey no further than nature and decency demanded, the Hottentots would loop and sling the riem, as it was called, over the high branch of a tree and, having attached a heavy stone to the lower ends, twist and re-twist it until it became a stout and resilient rope. This took quite twenty hours and the “boys” became lazy, lazy, for they knew, intuitively, that no one would beat them on the Sabbath and to their untutored minds the Monday, when they could and certainly would be beaten, seemed infinitely far away. They were a cheery lot, with no memory of the past and no care for the morrow, but I did not envy them.

This beast, the giraffe, illustrates again the certainty of the Afrikaaners about the definitive nature of the Bible. There is no beast of that name in that Book so, clearly, it must be a camel — and kameel is what it was called. In the same way, the leopard was a tijger — what else could it be? One peculiarly ugly kind of antelope defied Biblical nomenclature, but the Reformed Church were not long at a loss: they called it the “wild animal”: wildebeeste. I was proud to share Dutch blood with these people; their pig-headedness exceeded that of the English by far.

Inch by inch, day by day, the landscape changed: flat-topped trees gave way to scrub, earth became sand and sand soon became stones, then rocks; for days we might march towards a distant mountain which seemed but a few miles distant, then for days we might crunch through grass taller than a horseman’s head, correcting our course at night when the stars came out. Some of us died, of course: snakes and crocodiles, buffalo and sickness all took their toll but my own little party were spared except for Orace, whose loss I think I have already mentioned, and my horse. He had been sold to me as “salted” — that is to say, he was supposed to have survived the fever which kills horses in Africa. This was not true. As soon as we entered the area where horses die, he died. I quarrelled bitterly with the smouse because he had introduced me to the horse-coper who had sold and vouched for the animal and I knew he must have drawn a commission but he would not part with a stiver as recompense. He was a bad Jew; he treated me as though I were a Gentile. “This is no way to conduct business,” are the words I spoke to him from a full heart. He pretended to care nothing for them, but such words, spoken by a full-blooded Jew of the Sephardim to a mere son of the sons of Gomer is a terrible rebuke, terrible.

The next day, at the mid-day meal, he approached me in an ingratiating way and offered to sell me a riding-mule at cost-price. My buttocks were bruised blue (I speak from hearsay, of course) from riding on the tailgate of the wagon but I affected to ignore the smouse’s existence. “See, Blanche,” I said, pointing at the sky, “a kite or vulture!”

“They call it an aasvogel here,” she replied, smiling. I was not pleased with her. From women one wishes loyalty, not information.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Since I penned those last few words I have been thinking. Dozing a little, too, but also thinking. My difficulty is that this next episode, as well as being unpleasant, involves a matter to which the Statute of Limitations does not apply — I refer, of course, to murder — and also involves certain people with whose descendants I have a pleasant and profitable trade relationship.

I think that if I mention the name of the smouse, which was Oppenheimer, any of you who may inherit shares in this House will realise that it is in no one’s interest to bruit the incident abroad. As to the other matter, that of the Statute of Limitations, I fear I can only surmount the difficulty by, for once, paltering with the truth a little. You may therefore treat the ensuing few folios as, in some sort, mere fiction.

The cruel sun, glaring blindingly down on human beings threading their weary way across South-Western Africa, takes its toll from each one in a different way. Members of the Reformed Church become confirmed in their belief that the world is flat; women spend most of their day in bed and yet spurn their husbands’ attentions; little children grow old and wise overnight. The effect on me was that I dwelled more and more on the smouse’s perfidy in the matter of the horse until hatred filled and darkened my whole mind. Each time I set eyes on his accursed riding-mule I trembled with irrational rage. The smouse’s sickness from the sun took a curiously opposite form: he became obsessed with the notion that I hated him, and whispered to all who would listen that I had threatened his life. This was a monstrous mis-reading of my character, for I was then the mildest of men and had killed no more than six or perhaps seven men in my whole life — and always in self-defence, as I have related.

Silly though these phantasies were, they nevertheless poisoned our lives and many a curious glance was cast at both of us, especially when the smouse had occasion to go to our — his — wagon for supplies or fresh linen. I watched him narrowly on these occasions, for I believed, by then, that he was capable of everything base. I received the impression that, while I watched him, the men of the trek were watching me.

One day it fell to the men of our wagon — the smouse and me — to go out and shoot for the communal pot; it was the custom for each wagon to take its turn at this. I was bidden to ride eastward (on a borrowed horse), the smouse was to go west. Neither of us was skilled in the traversing of wild country and I suppose both of us must have unwittingly circled towards the north. After riding several miles without sighting any game, I tethered my horse just below the crest of a ridge and crept to the top, hoping that there might be a fertile valley, rich in game, on the other side. To my fury, all that was to be seen was that accursed riding-mule of the smouse, tied to a thorn-tree a bare hundred yards away.

With a chuckle which rang crazily even on my own ears, I levelled my rifle at the brute’s hindquarters, confident that I could graze its backside enough to lame it without crippling. I cannot tell whether the sweat ran into my eyes or the heat-haze distorted my vision or whether some madness possessed me; all I can say is that, as I squeezed the trigger, the hated beast dropped dead, a bullet through its heart.

Something snapped in my brain: in a flash I saw what childish petulance had been inflaming my brain for days — and what a criminally stupid and unworthy thing I had now done. As the smouse’s head rose above the bush where he had been “still-hunting” I jumped to my feet, waving my gun and shouting, running towards him, longing to apologise and to repair our friendship.

Poor, craven fool, he quite misconstrued my actions; he fired both barrels wildly in my direction, threw away his gun and took to his heels as though the devil was after him. It was idle to pursue — he ran as fleetly as any bok.

I remounted and rode on sadly, taking little notice of my direction. Fortunately, I fell in with game: covey after covey of fat, mindless birds resembling guinea-fowls and a nice little gemsbok. The westering sun startled me: I realised that the laager was now to my south-east. Soon I walked my laden horse in through the thorn zareba — having approached from the direction in which the smouse had left.

In an instant the laager was alive with activity: women’s hands flew as they plucked the fat fowls, pots were a-boiling from the gemsbok’s flesh, while dogs snapped and snarled for its entrails.

There is little dusk in those latitudes: darkness falls from the air in minutes. It was in that brief dusk that the leader of the trek walked over to our fire. His face was grave and stern in the ruddy light.

“When shooting, did you see anything of Oppenheimer?” he asked.

I was exhausted in mind and in body and my mouth was full; I did a thoughtless, foolish thing: I shook my head. A moment later I choked on a fragment of bone and my mouthful sprayed out into the fire, almost as though I was suddenly overcome with laughter. He looked sombrely at me, then turned on his heel. Blanche went to bed. A fire was kindled outside the zareba to guide the smouse back.

He did not come back.

There was no in-spanning of oxen next morning; instead, the trek-leader, with young Cloete and four other men, rode out at first light in the direction from which I had returned. They rode in again at noon. I ran towards them, asking whether they had found any sign of the smouse. They did not look at me, much less answer. I began to understand. The trek in-spanned and made a short stage before evening. No one spoke to me that evening. I begged Blanche to gather news but she had few friends among the women, for she was young and beautiful and wore clothes which did not wholly conceal her breasts. It was not until the noontide halt of the next day that she was able to bring me information gleaned from a Kaffir woman in Cloete’s service.

“They found Mr Oppenheimer, Karli. He was alive, but he died as they took him down from the cross.”

“The cross? What cross?”

“The cross he was nailed to, Karli. He had been crucified.”

I was speechless with dismay for quite a minute. Then I exploded with grief and rage.

“Those vile, accursed savages!” I cried.

“Yes, Karli, the savages, of course,” she said quietly. “But they found the mule, too.” There was nothing I could say: for the first time I was tasting the bitter indignation of a wicked man charged with a wickedness which he has not committed.

“Karli, the killing is not so important; they believe that God will avenge that. It is the blasphemy of crucifying a Jew”

“But their Christ was a Jew!” I bellowed.

“Hush, Karli, they are listening.” I could have bitten off my tongue.

The ensuing days do not bear speaking of, for I simply ceased to exist as far as the Boers were concerned. Blanche placidly drew our allowance of water and share of game without apparent embarrassment, for she had been more or less ostracised from the beginning of the trek, but I am a warm and companionable man: this rôle of Ishmael bit deeply into my soul.

Let it suffice to say that there came a day when the leader of our trek pointed to a river we had just forded and told me that it would lead us to the West Coast at a place where ships were said to call. He did not know how far the coast was. He would give us one Hottentot. Our baggage was my crates of precious porcelains, my chest of arms, my hamper of clothes, my tin shirt-box of delicate foods and medicine, two bundles of Blanche’s clothes and necessaries — and Blanche herself, of course. I protested. The trek-leader — there are reasons why I cannot give his name, even if I wished to — told me that willing bearers would spring up out of the ground as soon as the trek had passed.

Blanche stood silent, as dignified as I, beside our heap of goods with the Hottentot squatting beside it. The horrible thing was when they left the smouse’s wagon with all his goods beside the road as they trudged away on their impossible journey. I shouted, then screamed after them until Blanche was hanging on my arms, begging me to calm myself. Young Cloete, who was a compassionate young man and quite liked me, rode back to ask what the matter was.

I could only mumble stupidly. He stared down at me from his fine horse with veiled contempt. I wiped away the sweat which threatened to fill my eyes and he looked at the gesture with interest. He asked me a certain question; then I sent Blanche away and repeated the gesture in a precise and formal way. This made things different. It did not, of course, make it possible to condone a crime, but it made things different. He said that there were enough men in the trek who would understand and that the smouse’s wagon, beasts and goods could be distributed to those who most needed them. He would make all square. I thanked him. As he rode away, driving the beasts and the wagon, he bade me farewell and used the word “brother”.

Our Hottentot absconded in the night of course but, sure enough, bearers sprang out of the ground, apparently, in the morning. I made some sort of a bargain with them and off we trudged, following this nurseling river to the distant sea.

The trek had in some sort hardened us to hardship but this next journey was more than hardship. After the first few hours of the first morning, every step was misery, every fold and crevice of our bodies an inflamed torment. By the third day I was vividly recalling those anatomical diagrams which depict each thread of muscle and tendon in the human body, neatly picked out in blue and red: there was no morsel of me which I could not have identified on such a diagram and expatiated on the agony it could cause. Blanche, too, I daresay, was in some discomfort but women are born to suffer, this is well known. Indeed, she did not complain.

Again, just as at sea or on trek, the days followed each other with a remorseless sameness, only diversified by different nastinesses. The torments were the same in kind but different in degree, while dangers and difficulties and diseases came fresh and fresh each day, so that we arose each morning dully wondering what our next tribulation was to be. If we achieved the noontide rest before some disaster struck we wondered, just as dully, what the afternoon march held in store for us, because no day could pass without some frightfulness. After the first few days our gang of bearers became sulky, then demanded money as an earnest of our solvency. I was foolish enough to pay them a little on account: they vanished in the night, not stealing anything of importance. The next day, sure enough, others of another tribe drifted out of the bush, offering their services. When they absconded, two or three days later, stealing a little more, others replaced them. Each gang demanded less pay but, on leaving, stole more. Luckily, they stole trash and items of Blanche’s clothing; they had no judgment in matters of fine porcelain, thank God, and as to my chest of arms and box of foods and medicines, Blanche and I slept with our heads upon them.

We forced our way west and a little north as best we could: fatigue and illness had bereft us of the sense which would have told a clear-minded person to lie down and die.

Although we followed the course of the river we did not often set eyes on its waters because of the vegetation. It was clear that we were in river country though, because each dusk great insects called Moustiques — not at all like the friendly, playful midges of England — came out of their lairs and pierced us with red-hot, poisoned fangs, so that Blanche and I, looking at each other’s lumpish face of a morning, would have laughed had we had the strength to do so. I dare say that a true-born Englishman would have found such strength. I do not care. These insects were of a size and voracity which cannot be exaggerated: I am convinced that, had they mastered the rudiments of communal discipline, any six of them could have carried me off to devour at leisure, piecemeal or even wholemeal.

As the ground grew wetter and we sploshed through the ambash reeds for much of the day, the leeches came. They were revolting, also enfeebling: we must have lost a pint of blood to them each day.

There came a day after God knows how many days when Blanche and I, emaciated and rotten with disease, staggered into a village on the banks of a distributary river, accompanied only by three porters. All that remained to us were a box of clothes and medicines, my chest of arms and several thousands of pounds value in carefully-packed Ming and Kang H’Si porcelains. We cared nothing for the political or religious beliefs of the savages there; our need to rest wiped away all such thoughts. Blanche collapsed and began to snore charmingly. The porters, encouraged by my little hippopotamus-hide karbash, laid down their burdens with great care, next to Blanche. I too lay down then, against the chests, snoring, I fancy, before my head touched the earth.

A gentle, courteous kick up the arse awakened me when the sun was low. I rubbed my eyes and looked about me. A dozen of elderly black men surrounded me. Their expressions were hard to read for their faces were fancifully etched with cicatrices; these were unpleasing to my untutored eye. I rubbed my eyes and yawned; this must have been a courtesy of sorts because they all smiled at me. I wished that they had not, for each smile revealed a row of teeth filed to needle-points. I stirred Blanche gently with the toe of my boot and enjoined silence upon her when she opened her eyes. Raising myself to a dignified squatting posture, I stared them all out of countenance then, selecting my words with care, I said:

“Hrrumph!”

This caused agitation in their circle; they jabbered at each other as though discussing protocol.

“M’Gawa!” the eldest said at last. Thinking this to be a greeting I civilly replied “M’Gawa!” I was wrong. The old man — the chief, evidently — clapped his hand loudly onto his belly and some twenty young warriors, hitherto unnoticed by me, stepped into the circle, rubbing their thumbs against the edges of their spears with a rasping noise which I could not believe was friendly. I was in a debilitated state but the desire for survival filled me. I stood up, fixing the chief with my eye and a pointing forefinger, and ranted out some twelve or twenty lines of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the Dutch translation. He cowered. I turned to Blanche, snapping my fingers. “Absolute alcohol!” I snapped. “Surgical rubbing-spirit! In the medicine chest; quickly!” While she rummaged I cowed the simple sons of nature with a few more selections from the Swan of Avon, at the same time indicating by signs that they should bring water, lest worse befall them.

When the calabash of water was drained I slipped into it a little of the absolute alcohol and set it alight. This created a great amazement but when I dipped my fingers in the flaming liquid and flourished them they either ran for their lives or prostrated themselves on their bellies, according to taste.

From that moment we were treated as guests and demi-gods. A hut or giddah was allotted to us, also an old woman to attend to our needs. We were feasted regally that night on delicious tender pork or perhaps veal, stewed in a peppery sauce. I confess that I gorged myself, out of politeness and against my will, for I have always been a sparing and delicate eater. Appetite was enhanced by the dancing in firelight of some two dozen nubile — palpably nubile — maidens of the tribe: their swinging, sweat-glistening breasts and rotating bellies made a most agreeable sight, although Blanche, inexplicably, found the performance vulgar and unartistic. I have often noticed that women’s minds are closed to some of the finer things which life offers us.

After eating, and then drinking many a calabash of toddy fermented from the tender heart-leaves of a certain palm-tree, I remembered my Englishness with a guilty start and enquired whether my bearers had been housed and fed. I had to do this by sign-language, naturally, and it was a little while before I could make our hosts understand. At last they signified assent by smiling, nodding and rubbing their hands upon their distended bellies. I was well content, my duty done. As I accepted yet another calabash of palm-toddy, Blanche suddenly rose and ran frantically from our circle around the fire. I was vexed at this breach of manners but no one else seemed to care and it was not until an hour later, when I joined her in the giddah, that I understood that her intuitive grasp of sign-language was better than mine. I assured her that what we had been eating was young goat, but she could not be appeased: she had eaten goat. Goat is not nearly so tender and tasty.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

During our two-month sojourn in the village we convalesced well and replaced much of the flesh which hardship had stripped from our bones. The savages, in their primitive kindness, seemed concerned to make us fat, they were forever pressing food on us. Blanche had developed a morbid dislike for meat but she fared pretty well on cassava (which is tapioca), sweet potatoes and plantains baked or cooked in red palm-oil or pounded up with karta (which is pea-nuts) into a delicious purée. She passed her time, when not sleeping, in repairing what was left of her wardrobe.

For my part I ate heartily of whatever was put before me: monkey, for instance, is very good once one has recovered from the first sight of the little creature roasted. My pastime became that of learning the tribe’s simple tongue — they had a vocabulary of less than one thousand words but the placement of some of these words was hard to master — and I fell into the habit of meeting the elders of the tribe each day and questioning them about their rites and customs, funereal, marital, festive and so forth. Their habits of thought and language were strange; for instance their adjective for “eatable”, I recall, was the same as their noun for “member of another tribe” while, if one added the word for “crocodile”, the compound word meant “elderly lady”.

The notion grew in my head that perhaps I might one day write a book, displaying the manners of these simple children of God to civilised men as an example to wonder at. (The science of this is now called Anthropology: those of you who are too idle to enter our business House, or incapable of being supple to your benign grandfather, might well go to a University and master this simple science. You could perhaps earn fame thereby, for the world is foolish — but not, I think, fortune, for the world is not wholly foolish.)

One night, tossing feverishly in our bed, which was rendered almost intolerable by the heat of Blanche’s perfervid bottom, I occupied myself by making a mental summary of the strange, cruel but infinitely civil behaviour of this tight-knit society of savages whose obliged guests we were. Of a sudden, I had a stroke of insight: there was one piece missing in the almost-logical puzzle of their system of life! One question, which I would pose the very next morning, would decide forever whether they were near-apes performing a meaningless, ritual dance or truly human beings observing a sensible code of behaviour no more different, in essence, from that of us Jews than our code is from that of Christians.

So exhilarated was I at my cleverness that I felt the need to communicate with someone, however hot and moist the night. I slid down into the sagging centre of the bed, so that Blanche’s incomparable bottom — hotter and moister than the night — fitted into the concavity of my belly. We were like spoons in a canteen of cutlery — such as we give to old porters who are past their work but not eligible for a pension. My loins stirred. She was deeply asleep but you will learn one day that there are few women, however deep their sleeps, who do not awaken at feeling that particular stirring. She wriggled languidly and muttered something through sleep-sticky lips. I reached around her body and imprisoned a breast: the light muslin of her shift, sweat-soaked, clung to it like a second skin. The nipple — she was gifted as to the nipples, gifted — sprang up so that her pretence at sleep was no longer plausible. She adapted her posture a little and soon I was expressing my pleasure, silently, vehemently. She, too, expressed pleasure, not silently.

I went out on to the platform in front of the hut and kicked the old woman awake, demanding a bucket of water to be thrown over me. She looked at my person closely when pouring the water and tittered impudently, so I made her fetch another bucket.

When I went back into the giddah, Blanche seemed again asleep but was now on her back in a posture so abandoned that I felt constrained to pleasure her again, this time more thoroughly. Then, I must confess, I fell into a deep sleep, for, although I was young and vigorous, the night was hot and the climate enervating, you understand.

I was up betimes the next morning, adroitly avoiding Blanche’s questing hand. I was full of my great and visionary question, the key which would unlock the secret of the tribe’s whole way of thought. So soon as I had eaten I lurked by the matting of my door until all the old men of the village had taken their places under the mango-tree. Then I sauntered towards the circle and stood a little way off, gazing at the heavens and scratching myself at the groin. This was courteous, you see; whereas to scratch an armpit would be a shameful act in that village.

After a certain, civil interval I addressed them in the formal fashion which I had learned, speaking slowly because although I had mastered their tongue I knew that my Jewish accent made it difficult for them to understand me.

“Oh, great bulls!” I said to the withered old men. “Oh you with horns of buffaloes and testicles like ripe mangoes! Oh you whose ears still ring with the shrieks of the countless virgins you have deflowered! You whose wives are so fat with your plenty that they cannot stand upon their feet! You who permit the sun to rise and, at your pleasure, bid him hide his face! How sweet would be the inside of my belly if you could but see me!”

The eldest of the elders fumbled vainly in the tobacco-gourd which hung about his neck. I absently dropped four inches of black pigtail-twist on the ground and continued to gaze at the heavens. A pot-bellied child with a great umbilical hernia scampered up and took the tobacco to the chief, who looked at it curiously, then absently cut off a generous half and passed it to the next elder. When the youngest elder had glumly received the shaving which remained for him another silence fell, broken only by the sounds of groin-scratching and the picking of noses.

At last the second-eldest elder — for this was beneath the dignity of the chief — said “We see you, man with the red face, cousin to the son-in-law of a chief; you who service your woman a hundred times in the heat of the night. There is a stool for you here, why do you stand?”

I sat.

A few more civilities were exchanged, interspersed with as many silences. At last the chief looked at me. I cleared my throat, assembled my knowledge of the tongue.

“Father of penises,” I began diffidently, “you know that I love you so much that my bowels loosen each time I dare to look at your beauteous face.” He opened his mouth; this meant that I was to continue.

“A great thought came to me in the night,” I said.

A courteous titter was heard.

“Twice this great thought came to you in the night, the old woman tells me,” said the chief. The tittering became a guffaw. I remained composed.

“Oh Chief,” I said, “I do not speak of pushing babies into women’s bellies, I speak of things in a man’s mind. Hear me.”

The chief raised his hand and all laughter stopped.

“Great King,” I said in a dignified voice, “you whose power is felt from sea to sea, you who have long lost count of the children squirted from your wonderfully symmetrical loins, last night I had a thought. During the time that a woman would have two courses of the moon I have eaten your salt and drunk your beer. I have learned to love you and your subjects: the ways of your mighty nation have taught me much. Each day I have asked both hands and both feet” — this meant twenty — “of questions about your ways of life, of feeding, of religion, of marriage. You have taught me much, answering these many questions of mine. The thought that came to me last night was this: in all that time you have never asked me once about my land, my people’s customs. Are these of no matter to you?”

There fell a silence which seemed almost to be of embarrassment. At last the chief gestured to the second elder, who spoke.

“You are wrong, man with the face of a setting sun: our bellies are sour with longing to know these things. But amongst our people, if you must know the truth, it is thought a filth and shame for a man to ask questions after he has grown his first pubic hair.”

My face, I could feel, grew more than ever like a setting sun. No one spoke; they all gazed politely at the little fire of M’Gawa (bull-dung) smouldering in the centre of their circle. I scanned their faces, which were solemn — no hint of a smile. I pulled myself together.

“Why then,” I asked indignantly, “did not you, whose bellies burst with wisdom, tell me of this thing at the outset?”

“You did not ask,” he replied blandly.

This ended my excursion into the science of anthropology.

To restore my dignity I regaled them with many an account of Europe and its wonders; our customs and laws, our buildings, our new iron ships which were propelled with the smoke of boiling water, our wars and the blessings of gunpowder. They listened raptly, their mouths open in full politeness. When I drew to a close they clapped their cupped hands against the inside of their thighs, making a noise greater than a London opera audience. One or two of the younger ones allowed themselves to fall off their stools. This was the highest compliment, I knew, which could be paid to a truly gifted liar. Such a man was much prized by that tribe for few savages had mastered the art of lying. Now, as I write, they are surely more civilised in such matters, for their land will be full of traders and missionaries.

Foolishly, I allowed myself to become vexed, for I had spoken nothing but the truth: we Jews only lie in a ritual way when conducting business with our equals. I stalked back to the hut and unlocked the chest of arms. My battery was but a pair of percussion pistols, a heavy rifle, a light flint-lock fowling-piece and my beautiful revolving-pistol. I decided upon the heavy rifle — an old East Indian Company “tiger-gun” with two barrels. I loaded and primed it carefully, re-set the flints, wiped the frizzen dry and marched back to the circle of elders, who were still rocking back and forth, repeating phrases I had used, much as people leaving Gatti’s Music-hall bandy the inane jests of the latest Lion Comique.

They fell silent, eyeing the strange object cradled in my arms.

“If I have lied to the bull-elephant,” I said in an important voice, “then I could not kill the fat goat tethered outside my giddah without rising from this stool.”

“But there is no fat goat outside your giddah, O red-faced teller of stupendous lies!”

I waited, staring without expression at the bull-dung fire.

“Tether a fat goat outside the giddah of the teller of tales,” said the chief at last.

This done, I drew back the hammer and levelled the rifle at the goat’s head: it was an easy shot, perhaps twenty-five paces. There was a great roar and a cloud of smoke; I rocked back on my stool with the recoil. When the smoke cleared, the goat’s head was a mere vestige of its former self and those around the circle who had run away were creeping back to their places. The chief, to his great credit, had not budged. I handed him the piece, explaining its use in simple terms, reserving only the intelligence of how to load it.

He was quite ravished with the gift. The old woman of our giddah was shrieking loudly and rhythmically, for she had been but a foot away from the goat I had slain. This was vexing after a while. The elders, too, were vexed, because the lokali drums were talking from the village ten miles down-river. The king sent for the old woman, who squatted deferentially before him as though about to urinate: the paucity of her clothing made this an unpleasing sight to behold. The king playfully poked the muzzles of the rifle at her nose: she sniffed them, looked down the barrels. The chief pulled the trigger. The heavy ball, scarcely slowed, smashed into the fire with a pyrotechnic effect and screamed over the heads of the elders opposite. The old lady’s brains spread themselves most copiously upon those present: this caused much merriment, as you can imagine. I was about to protest on humane grounds but the chief’s happy face quite disarmed me. A moment’s reflection taught me that goats were edible wealth while old women were more than plentiful, also raucous and of little use after they had lost their teeth and only esculent to crocodiles.

The king — or chief — then turned the gun affably in the direction of the fourth youngest elder, who owned one of the most desirable women in the village, and pulled the trigger. There was a shower of sparks from the frizzen but no explosion, of course, for both barrels were now expended. Again, everyone fell into a paroxysm of merriment except the fourth youngest elder, and the chief. The latter scowled at me. I explained that the weapon had to be filled with more magic after each discharge and that this could only be done at the full moon (we were in the first quarter) or on the departure of an honoured and well-feasted guest. The chief muttered like a sulky child, snapping the locks of the rifle petulantly. I was explaining to him that this would wear out the flints when all fell silent, for the distant lokali had stopped speaking and our own hollowed tree-trunk boomed out a response. “Vroom, da-da, vroom da-da, vroom da-da,” it roared, over and over again. This was not a message, I knew that much; it meant only “I hear you.” Presently an old man crawled into the circle and licked the chief’s feet with every sign of apparent relish. He was older than many of the elders but his position as lokali-talker made him a mere intellectual, a Postmaster-General if you will, or, better, an Oxford don to whom a Prime Minister may listen but must not deign to speak. The chief listened benignly to his mutterings.

Extending his other foot to the pleasing lavage of the old person’s tongue, he told me that the savages down-river had two pieces of news: first, they had heard two great trees snap although there was no hint of thunder; second, at the mouth of the river, a great canoe was lying, longer than a village and with trees growing from it and monstrous pieces of cloth upon the trees.

We collogued. The chief then dismissed the lokali man with a benevolent kick, telling him to talk with the drums up and down the river, saying that he, the progenitor of all elephants, had broken the two trees with his thumb and forefinger out of impatience because the monthly tributes of goats and virgins had not arrived. The second message was to be drummed down-river from village to village: he, whose walls were built of the skulls of those who had displeased him during the last score of scores of years; he who possessed nightly each of his one hundred wives — none thinner than a hippopotamus — bade all the people of the river to guard and cherish his beloved children — to be known by their fiery faces — who would be travelling down-river next day to the great canoe which he, whose very excrement was treasured by all the world, had commanded to appear in the estuary.

This seemed to me a comprehensive laissez-passer but the chief, flushed with the possession of his rifle, wished to make assurance doubly sure. He snapped his fingers and an ancient, dirty person, wearing a necklace of nameless things, crept forward. The chief handed me his own ebony wand and bade me go thrash the god. I followed the dirty old person a few hundred yards into the forest; we entered a stockade inside which there stood an idol crudely shaped from the stump of a tree, sheathed with gold and stuck all over with nails. I belaboured it with the staff until a grunt from the witchdoctor told me that I might exercise compassion. Something else then took place within the stockade which was nasty and which I shall not relate in case your daughters might one day see this narrative.

Blanche had five petticoats left and two pair of drawers. I coaxed one of each from her and that evening used them to purchase a quantity of dance-masks, straw-and-shell skirts, gaily-plaited penis-sheaths and other gew-gaws. I opened my chest of porcelains and took out some of the packing-stuff, replacing it, chiefly on the surface of the chests, with this smelly anthropological trash. Then we went to bed, where I explained to a sulky Blanche that the loss of her drawers was of little importance to a woman with an ardent young husband. I brought her round to my way of thinking at last, for she was not unreasonable.

In the morning, before we set off, the chief came to our giddah and reminded me that it was now meet to restore the magic to his rifle. With many an incantation I poured quite four ounces of powder into each barrel, then a leather wad, two inches of stiff clay, two lead balls, then more clay. He asked for a further supply of powder but I assured him, truthfully, that the weapon as now loaded would last him the rest of his life. I gave him a little paper of priming-powder and adjured him not to discharge the piece until the moon was full. By then I would be on the high seas, you understand. I had never liked the old woman he had shot, but justice must be done, must it not, and savages must be taught not to play with inventions they have not invented for themselves. Nevertheless, I am glad that I was not present when the chief pulled the triggers, for I am a compassionate man and he had been kind to me in his own way.

Indeed, his kindness was not yet exhausted: as our little procession wound down to the river bank, where two capable dug-out canoes awaited us and our goods, a strange and hideous ululation smote our ears. It was somewhat like an Italian tenor practising his scales and gargling with unpleasant medicine at the same time. This sound was intermingled with the merry laughter of little children. Clearly, some farewell entertainment had been arranged for us, for the chief urged us onward with many a nod and smile and hospitable gesture. When the river bank came into view I must confess I was vexed at the mise-en-scène: the fourth youngest elder — he who owned the most desirable wife in the village, you recall — had been tied wrist and ankle and seated upon the point of a five-foot stake planted in the ground. He was not meeting his end with anything of the stoic complacency which is supposed to characterise the Noble Savage; indeed, the hordes of little children were diverting themselves with clever imitations of his antics, encouraged by their admiring mothers.

I applauded politely, for this was clearly expected of me, but I cannot pretend that I found the spectacle at all droll. With the most perfunctory farewells I hurried our party into the canoes. Blanche, I recall, was sick over the side as soon as we were under way: she had probably eaten her breakfast too quickly.

I remember little of our journey down the great river, for, at our first noon-tide pause for food, Blanche and I were persuaded to eat some fresh-water mussels, which grievously afflicted our bowels for the whole of the three days. I recall only the all-pervading, sickly smell as of dead marigolds, the eternity of mangroves and the prodigious number of kingfishers of every size and colour which flashed across our bows like streamers of fire. Yes, and a frightful afternoon when we scorched on a naked sand-bank while a monstrous bull-hippopotamus raved and roared in the shallows, daring us to come into the water and fight with him. My hands shook too much with fever to risk a shot at him, for, had I not hit him lethally with the first shot, he would surely have rampaged ashore and gnashed and trampled us all to death. The canoe-paddlers explained, with many a lewd gesture, that he was in rut.

The last stage of our canoe-journey was through a thick and stinking forest of enormous reeds, following channels which were tortuous and, to me, invisible. I urged the paddlers on with promises of rum, for I was near-frantic at the thought that the ship might sail before we reached the anchorage. When at last we burst out of the reeds onto the open water of the estuary our eyes were blinded by the glare of sky and sea but soon we could descry, at about a mile’s distance, the beautiful, blessed ship: a barquentine and with her sails still furled. I shed some feeble tears of relief.

The canoe-men would take us no further than a tumble-down trading post near the shore — and indeed, I would have been reluctant to risk my life and porcelain and Blanche on the sea in those clumsy little crafts. The agent at the trading-post looked as though he might once have been European but he was rotten with fever and stupefied with drink and could by no means be awakened. I rousted out a fat Parsee clerk who sold me rum for the paddlers and then dashed my spirits to the ground by saying that there was only one surf-boat and that it was alongside the ship, loading the last of the cargo. The ship, he added, would then set sail immediately. Indeed, he could now see the boat returning. I snatched the old brass spy-glass from his hands and saw that he was speaking the truth; a boat was heading for the shore in a leisurely fashion and there was unmistakable activity on the ship’s yards.

“How long for the boat to reach us here?” I snapped.

He shrugged his shoulders as only a Parsee can.

“Half an hour?”

He spread his hands out as though feeling for rain-drops.

It was clear that by no means could we reach the ship before she sailed.

“When will the next ship call?”

“Next season.”

Again I shed tears but this time they were tears of bitter chagrin. Robinson Caruso himself could have felt no more desolate a castaway than I.

“Ve could fire signal-gun,” said the Parsee nonchalantly, “but gunpowder is werry costly and every ounce is accountabled.”

A few minutes later I had bought half a pound of the costliest gunpowder in the world and the little brass gun by the flag-post was banging out three shots. I watched the ship agonisedly until I was sure that activity had ceased: some irritated officer had uttered the blessed cry, “Avast all that!”

The surf-boat was manned by the most curious people: whilst they were in their boat you would have thought them giants, for their chests were like barrels and their arms like thighs, but ashore they presented an extraordinary appearance on little, spindly bowlegs. They were of a tribe called Kroo-men, who are to be found all up and down the West Coast wherever there are boats to be worked. They sped us to the bar of the estuary; there was a flurry of spray and a corkscrewing motion then all of a sudden we were on the beautiful sea itself and pulling through the swell to the barquentine.

We were not welcome on the barquentine.

The captain was an uncouth fellow from Lancashire or perhaps Yorkshire and spoke a kind of patois English which was strange to me, but his meaning was clear: on no account was he permitted, or able, to take passengers. I pled, but to no avail.

“Gunpowder is werry costly,” I murmured under my breath — and gave him a shameful number of guineas, which made him recall that a Captain had discretion in these matters when saving lives was concerned. In a twinkling a whip was rove to a yard, my goods and Blanche were hove aboard and the anchor was weighed. The breeze was from the south-west, so it still bore the heavy scent of Africa, but I snuffed it with rapture.

The scent of the ship herself was not so rapturous to snuff, for much of our cargo was palm-oil, which stinks. She had come out laden with trashy Preston cotton-goods, Batley shoddy-cloth and some bales of old uniforms from the Napoleonic wars. (These last had made the ship — otherwise cleanly — to be infested with fleas at which Blanche complained bitterly until I explained to her that it was a privilege to give board and lodging to a flea whose ancestor might well have bitten the Duke of Wellington himself. Like all women, she was something of a snob, an attitude now fashionable since Queen Victoria herself took it up at the instigation of the man Albert.)

I signed the ship’s papers as Professor Mortdecai, occupation anthropologist. The captain was concerned about our lack of papers until I reminded him of the voracity of the termites on that Coast.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Neither Blanche nor I was in a condition to remark on the food until we were north of the Cap Verde Isles. When at last we were able to dine regularly with the Captain we did not regret the wasted days, for he kept a poor table. I recall the diet with hateful clarity: one day there would be Lancashire hot-pot, which is a thick, muddy mess of the worst bones from the neck of a starveling sheep, seethed with potatoes and onions to disguise, one supposes, their loathsome appearance. This horror would alternate with Irish stew, which is the same as Lancashire hot-pot but contains much more water, and Lob Scouse — a Liverpool dish of stewed vegetables and crushed ship’s biscuit, enriched with gobbets of fat meat. Each Friday there would be Blind Scouse, which is the same but without the gobbets, for the Captain, inexplicably, was a Roman Catholic. On Saturdays there was fat salt pork boiled with pickled cabbage and on Sundays there was, at an unconscionable hour, the weekly feast: a roast of beef from some elderly cow who was more to be congratulated on her longevity than her succulence, served with roast potatoes bobbing about in a sea of warm grease and segments of a firm, yellowish custard called Yorkshire batter. The Captain and his cloddish officers ate ravenously of this harmful ordure and seemed puzzled that Blanche and I preferred to staunch our stomachs with stale bread, rancid butter and what I suppose I must call cheese, for that was what they called it. My respect for those who build the British Empire grew at each meal: “’tis from scenes like this that Britain’s greatness springs,” as Lord Byron has said. Dyspepsia is the spur. With such a dinner inside him, it would be a strange man indeed who could not face the charge of Fuzzy-Wuzzy undauntedly; a strange missionary who could not preach the fiercest Old Testament passages with burning eloquence.

Thanks be to God — any God who chances to be thumbing through this essentially moral tale — our water-casks had become impossibly foul and so full of animalcules that even these iron-livered North Country men could not drink it, so our Captain put in to the Gran Canaria, at the mole called Las Palmas, so as to complete with water and, no doubt, bargain for more beasts of canonical age. For my part, I laid out a guinea on fresh fruit, a crock of butter, certain crusty loaves and a long, hard garlic sausage. I kept an eye open for the young person I had met there on my outward voyage — how long ago it seemed! — not with any lust in my heart, for I was now a married man and, moreover, too undernourished — but simply to reproach her for the infestation she had ungratefully rewarded me with and to press upon her a cake of the incomparable mercury soap. She was not to be seen; I like to think that she was in the confessional box.

This sausage, coupled with these fruits — I speak figuratively, of course — so restored our well-being that before we weathered Ushant I found myself once again able to reassure Blanche of the vigour of my devotion towards her; this, in turn, gave us both the appetite to warm ourselves in the increasing cold by eating a little of the hot and greasy messes of the Captain’s table, which now proved less offensive than they had seemed in the Tropics.

Nonetheless, it was with a great gladness that we heard the anchor-chain crashing through the hawse-hole in London River and our thanks and farewells to the Captain and his officers were, I fancy, not much more than perfunctory.

I had pasted great labels on my chests of porcelain, bearing the words “BRITISH MUSEUM”, and these, along with a sudden inability to speak anything but the most broken English, soon cleared me and our goods through the customs with no more than a half-sovereign tactfully laid out here and there. The cases, I, and Blanche were soon on a tax-cart, bumping towards St Botolph Lane. At Mr Jorrocks’s warehouse we were greeted by the M.F.H. himself. He peered at me amazedly, cried “Dash my vig!” from a full heart and indeed pulled off the very wig itself and dashed it upon the grocery-encrusted floor.

“Never hoped to see you alive again, Mr Dutch, my dear young cock! And wot’s this, wot’s this? Your lady wife? Charmed, I’m sure: ‘none but the fair deserves the brave’ as Nimrod himself has said. You shall come home with me this werry hinstant to meet Mrs J., who I do not doubt will find some scrap of a snack to furnish us out until dinner-time.” We did so. Mrs J. burst into tears at the sight of me: for a moment I feared that she would fold me to her bosom. Luckily, Mr Jorrocks presented Blanche to her at that moment, so that it was Blanche who received the enfolding, the kindly, copious tears and the maudlin sayings of “there, there” and “you poor thing, you,” etc., while Mr Jorrocks and I stole away to where the good, strong Marquess of Cornwallis lay in black bottles under the dining-room sideboard.

I did not see Blanche again until dinner, when she plied almost as lusty a knife and fork as I did, for she had rested, you see. It was a frugal dinner, Mr Jorrocks explained, because we were but four at table and there had been no time to arrange “made dishes”. A tureen of gravy-soup and a stuffed pike were “removed” by a round of boiled beef at one end of the table and a crown-roast of mutton at the other; the corner dishes were but a brace of green geese and another of Aylesbury ducklings; nevertheless, we fared well for we were used to worse, and the black puddings, ragoût of kidneys and pigeon pie which came with the sweet things as second course were barely touched.

When the women had retired to drink those potent, sticky drinks which women drink in drawing-rooms, Mr Jorrocks fetched out two decanters of a port which he himself had only once before broached, he vowed. The two decanters were because he professed himself too old and tired to push decanters the length of a table: it was easier to have one each. It was capital port. Later, Blanche and I slept between lavender-scented linen sheets, smothered luxuriously in feather beds. There was never so happy a man as me that night and Blanche, too, gave every sign of contentment with her lot.

There was, of course, no question of taking such another little shop as I had once kept — so many centuries ago, it seemed — near Strand Street and the Convent Gardens Cabbage Exchange. In those days I had been but a poor, ignorant Dutch Jew; I was now a rich, ignorant Dutch Jew, for I owned the finest stock of porcelains in Europe as well as the modest amount of gold I had thoughtfully rescued from the specie-room of the John Coram. For running expenses I went to a Dutchman in Hatton’s Garden — which is a street, not a garden at all, and where you could linger a week without hearing a word of English spoken — and sold my splendid baroque pearl. I was robbed, of course, robbed, but £485 (plus a sovereign with which to buy sweet-meats for my non-existent children) shewed a good profit on my purchase price from the base of the base Indian, and in any case it has always been my philosophy to leave a profit for the next man.

Not only had I to seek out a more grandiose shop but also one with elegant living-quarters, for I now had a wife and, as everyone knows, wives require drawing-rooms, water-closets and many another fal-lal and folderol. At last we found an ideal place: Mr Jorrocks advised me that an acquaintance of his (“for ‘friend’ vould be stretching the Henglish language a leetle,” he said) had recently gone to Queer Street. This “Queer Street” is an affectionate term used by Londoners to denote Carey Street, where the Commissioners in Bankruptcy sit magisterially the live-long day, striving to teach debtors and creditors to live together in amity. It is a strange, British institution and many a fortune has been founded by prudently resorting there. I have heard it said that a sensibly-planned bankruptcy can be as profitable as a well-insured fire.

Be that as it may, Mr Jorrocks’s acquaintance, a Mr S. Sponge, had “failed” in his business, which was called the SPONGE CIGAR & BETTING ROOMS, by advertising that he had £116,500 to lend at three and one half per centum — a madness which only a Gentile could perpetrate.

The cigar divan, which we went to inspect that very day, was furnished in the most gentlemanly taste: replete with crimson plush, gilt plaster simulating carved wood, ottomans in bottle-green velvet; red mahogany and crystal chandeliers: one might have thought oneself in Waddesdon itself. It was going for a song and I snapped it up in a trice; that is to say, after little more than three hours’ bargaining with the agent for the creditors. It was situated in a quiet, not too dirty little street called Jermyn which runs parallel to the unfashionable end of Piccadilly (where the more genteel whores ply their trade) and is in the Parish of St James’s. But why do I tell you this, for have I not often taken you to see where our House was founded, and where it throve until, needing more space, I bought the Duke’s house at the Corner of Hyde Park?

The upstairs apartments were spacious and elegant for such a seedy neighbourhood and Blanche declared herself well pleased. Then, at her insistence, we went a-shopping. Our first call was at the Foundling Hospital, where I bought another bastard, explaining that Orace had ungratefully run away to sea. The new boy seemed sturdy, willing and with clean fingernails. He was happy to leave the Hospital, for his work there was to scrub floors for ten hours each day, except on Saturdays when he was leased out to a “Sabbath goy”, who is a man who contracts to light fires for orthodox Jews on that day and to do other tasks forbidden in Leviticus.

I was generous with Blanche and I am bound to admit that she laid out the money well on bedding, furnishings, wall-papers and clothes for herself. Her taste in drawers, stays and smocked petticoats I found exquisite and she discovered an innate gift for removing them in my presence in the most charming way. It was interesting to observe that, as her store of finery increased, so did her saltiness; indeed, there were nights when even I was hard-pressed to match her salacious inventiveness. I believe it was at about that time that I bought her, as a sentimental present, a charming little terrier-whip, the lash bound with green velvet and a silver fox’s head on the handle. She had, it proved, not quite out-grown such toys.

I think that, on the whole, I am glad that I shall never understand women. There are some areas of knowledge which we men are better without.

My mother had sent, in care of Mr Jorrocks, a couple of chests of excellent Delft and other wares; these, along with some of the less important items from my cases of Chinese porcelains, furnished forth the still-shuttered windows of my new establishment against the day when I should open for business and astonish the London connoisseurs.

There came a day when the new clothes which I had ordered were delivered and the modest, but not quite tradesmanly, carriage was promised for the morrow. I sent a note to Lord Windermere craving, in a dignified way, permission to wait upon him the following day. The note came back with a scribbled. “Pray do, but you’ll find me bedridden” on it.

Before this visit, something upsetting happened: when signing the papers for the new bastard I had noted that his first name was “Hugh” and had, accordingly, been addressing him as “Hooch”. He came to me and explained, most respectfully, that this name was in fact pronounced “You” in English. I was quite taken aback and told him that this would never do. He admitted to owning a second name — Thomas — and we agreed on this — an excellent name for a bastard.

When the new carriage, drawn by a fine half-bred Hackney bay, was delivered, Tom walked around it in the most knowledgeable way and gentled the horse like any ostler (which is short for oatstealer, of course). He shyly claimed that he knew how to drive such a conveyance and I allowed him, with some trepidation, to prove his skill. He was, indeed, gifted in the art and I sent out forthwith for a suitable hat and leggings for this capable little dandi-prat.

That afternoon, I found Lord Windermere in a piteous state. It appeared that, some few nights before, he had drunk two bottles of port more than was his wont and had awakened in the night with the frightful kind of thirst which will drive a man to drink water. He had made his own way to the butler’s pantry and drunk quite a pint of the stuff. Now, everyone knows that to drink the water of London is to invite disaster, and disaster had indeed descended upon his essential tripes: one could hear them gurgling like Fleet-ditch. He perked up considerably when I produced the little present I had brought him from China: a minute, exquisite scribe’s screen in the purest mutton-fat jade and a matching brush-pot in the most unflawed spinach-colour; a colour only to be found in the fabled Jade Mountain which lies somewhere in Shan-Si, is guarded day and night and whose location even the Celestial One has not been told.

He was right to prize this present, for old Jim Christie would have squeezed out quite a hundred guineas for it in his auction rooms. But Windermere was no fool and knew that I too was nothing of the sort.

“Uncommon kind of you,” he murmured, just audible over the Vesuvian noises from his innards, “uncommon kind. Dare say you’ve something to sell me, eh? Eh?”

I explained to him that, amongst my new season’s stock, I had the incomparable ox-blood piece, bought in Canton, which I have spoken of before, and that I could not exhibit it publicly because no true connoisseur would have eyes for anything else in my shop if it were there; I had to be rid of it, even at a sacrifice. Windermere’s eyes glazed with disinterest as he stared abstractedly at a corner of the painted bedroom-ceiling, where some precocious cherubs were disporting themselves in adult ways. I uttered, in a flat voice, some seven more words describing the piece. His eyes remained disinterested but I was watching the quickened respiration of his chest.

“How much?” he asked, languidly.

I told him. He sat bolt upright.

“Oh, burst and rot me!” he cried in a frenzy. “If I’d not the squitters already I’d have ’em now! Are you insane?”

“I do not think so,” I said carefully, “except, perhaps, in the matter of women.”

“Pull the bell-rope!” he yelled. “No, not that one, the other: I need a bedpan, not the butler.”

When I re-entered the room, some minutes later, an effete and pallid Windermere begged me to trifle no more with a man trembling, as he was, on the edge of the very grave.

“What’s the real price?” he asked. “Come now, the real one, eh? Damme, you’ve had your joke, turned me bowels inside out, let’s talk sense now. Guineas. Things like that.”

“Lord Windermere,” I said, gravely as any high-priced doctor, “the real price would blench the cheek of anyone but Nathan Meyer Rothschild” — I repeated this name carefully — “but the price I named to you was but a token of friendship, you understand.”

He ranted a little but used no language more dirty than was customary with him. At last, sulkily, he said that he would look at the pot.

“Tomorrow,” I said. “Today, if you will forgive me, your eyes are a little tinged with bile and not perfectly able to appreciate the colour of this piece. So, until this time tomorrow, my Lord…?”

“Very well,” he rasped in tones of defeat. “On your way out, tell that woman to bring the bedpan again — and tell the butler to give you a glass of whatever you please. I can recommend the water, heh heh.”

There is a peculiar pleasure in knowing that you have made a sale before the customer has seen anything but the price.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I sprang out of bed the next morning with a song on my lips and the world at my feet. Blanche had, during the night, given me yet more proof of her talents and inventiveness in the field of love and had shyly promised to surprise me deliciously, next bed-time, with a truly remarkable piece of naughtiness which she had been saving up for a special occasion. Moreover, I was rich; I had a glistering new carriage, a splendid emporium ready to startle London with, an ensured sale to Lord Windermere that evening which would bring enough to keep an unambitious man for life and — here I rubbed my hands with glee — Mr Jorrocks was bidden for dinner at two-thirty sharp and I had arranged such a feast as would daunt even his magnificent appetite. He had made me cry “capivi” at the Margate breakfast and I had long thirsted for revenge. At this dinner I meant to make him repeat the legendary episode when he had had to beg his friends to lift him up, tie him into his chair and fill his glass.

There was a barrel of oysters dripping in the cellar; an incredible salmon with the sea-lice still clustering on it, brought express from the sandy deserts of Wales itself; a tureen of soup made from a prodigious turtle, the gelatinous meat and gobbets of green fat swimming so thickly in it — both calipash and calipee — that it was a puzzle to find the liquor; Aylesbury ducklings as big as geese; half of a stag’s bottom cooked in pastry and many another kickshaw — but the prime remove, the dish to defeat even Mr Jorrocks, was a round of boiled beef. Plain fare, you say? Ah, but this round of beef was from an ox among oxes, an ox which would have made an elephant cringe; moreover, it had been dressed according to the receipt of Signor Francatelli, the pupil of Carême himself and the new chef de cuisine to her new Majesty. The receipt alone had cost me a guinea and now, as I write (when I have to count every penny so that I can leave a substantial sum to the Foundling Hospital), it makes me shudder to think of the cost of the cocks’-combs, palates, crayfish and other rarities which were called for. (I shall perhaps append the receipt to this memoir of mine, but I know how you love these little legacies en souvenir.)

It was, then, a wonderfully happy Van Cleef or Mortdecai who sat down to dinner that afternoon.

“Wot a werry helegant little repast, Mr Dutch,” said Mr Jorrocks, as oyster after oyster flew down his throat. “Can’t take my eyes off that salmon. Yes, pray help me, do.” A little later: “Vy, wot’s this? Haven’t seen finer turtle soup on the Lord Mayor’s table, swears I don’t know where you gets it, unless you’ve a friend in the Mansion House.” And so it went on without a flaw or pause in the arrangements; Tom was trotting to and fro with fresh plates and more bottles, Blanche was beaming and winking at me and old Mrs Jorrocks’s great red face was steaming with pleasure as she gobbled.

I passed the ox-blood Ming bowl around as a loving-cup, filled with champagne, then the round of beef was brought in with great éclat. I begged Mr J. to take the honours of the carving-knife and he had heaped every plate before he dropped, from a full mouth, the words which were to change my life.

“Almost forgot, Mr Dutch. A person came to the varehouse on Friday, claimed to be a friend of yours.”

“Really?” I said, from an equally full mouth. “Did he give a name?”

“Believes he did. Elderly, skinny chap, brown in the face, werry short of teeth and a little the worse for liquor. Ragged pea-jacket buttoned up to the neck to hide his no-shirt, but spoke like a gent — and I means the genuine harticle.”

“I do not think I know anyone of that description, Mr J.,” I said, reaching for another oyster or two to help the beef slip down. “Do you recall the name?” This question seemed to have the most alarming effect:

“Fetch my hat, Binjamin!” he roared over his shoulder. I gaped.

“Surely, Mr J., you’re not going?” asked Blanche, distressed.

“Going, going; vy should I be going just ven my happetite is properly tickled? No no, just wants my hat, lid, tile — calls it Golgotha, ‘place of the skull’ you know, haw haw! — it’s my portable scrutoire.”

He fumbled in the lining of the great beaver and after turning out a raffle of bills of exchange, promissory notes and notices of the meetings of fox-dogs, finally found and handed to me a scrap of paper with his great blotted scrawl on it. The words were “P. Stenegave DA PM”.

I shall not pretend that the oyster turned to ashes in my mouth: such extravagances are bred only in the heated minds of female novelists, but I recall that I gulped at the little bivalve with some difficulty, for it was clear that, against all odds, my dear messmate Peter was alive.

So intense was my emotion that I found it difficult to speak until I had emptied my plate and Mr J. was refilling it.

“Yes, please,” was what I said, “and a few of those cocks’-combs and other tid-bits, if you please. Thanks. By the bye, what does ‘DA PM’ mean?” He inserted his fork under his wig and scratched reflectively. “Can’t say as I recalls now,” he said, wiping it on his napkin (the fork, not the wig), “but ‘PM’ must signify ‘post meridgium’ or afternoon, must it not? My vord, ’ow beautifully laced this beef is with delicate yellow fat, thinks I’ll take a touch more. ‘Well bred, well grown, well killed, well ’ung, well bought and well-dressed’ as the old King used to say. Ah yes, ‘DA’ signifies the place where you might find this hacquaintance of yours. Yes, that’s it, ‘Dirty Annie’s’ is the place he named. Any arternoon, or p.m. Vould have said he was a longshoreman, shy of the price of a pot of ale, but for ’is woice.”

I would not have been able to contain myself had Mr J.’s carving not reached, at that very moment, the rich, red centre of the beef. In the event, it was not more than ten or fifteen minutes before I felt constrained to rise to my feet and beg the company’s forgiveness, saying that I had reason to think that an old friend was in grave distress. Blanche gave me a puzzled but loving look; Mrs Jorrocks was too deeply — and noisily — involved in victuals to have heard; John Jorrocks gazed at me curiously, for, when wiping my lips with the napkin, I had also cleared part of my face from perspiration with a gesture which Captain Knatchbull would certainly have recognised. There was a chinking noise under the table — Mr J. had his purse out and was proffering it to me. I smiled and shook my head.

“I should be back within the hour, dearest,” I said to Blanche, “pray keep our guests here until I return.” With that I was off, bounding down the stairs without a thought for my digestion, seizing my hat and hailing the first four-wheeler. The owner of the “growler” had no wish to go to the India Docks but my will was stronger than his.

Outside Dirty Annie’s there was the usual scattering of loiterers, hands deeply pocketed. As I passed a little, old, nut-brown man a dear and familiar voice said “Too proud to recognise your old mess-mate, Karli?” I scanned the line of loafers suspiciously, but no, the voice came from the old man. It was Peter; toothless, hairless, wizened and shabby but undeniably Peter.

His smile was not the same, because of the lack of the teeth, but it was as warm as ever, and as wry.

“You, too, have changed, Karli, but losing your puppy-fat suits you.”

We fell into each other’s arms and I fancy we danced a little jig of delight. No one spared us a glance, for such sights are a commonplace in every great port. Then I said, lying tactfully, that I was starving and that he must come and eat with me, for dinner was on the table.

“Not in these clothes. I mustn’t shame you before your fine friends. And, just at present, I have no others. And to tell the truth I would much prefer a drink, it keeps a fellow warm, d’you see.” It was a warm day, but I did not point that out. I hurried him away to the nearest decent tavern — that is to say, I tried to hurry him but his gait was uncertain and plunging as though the cobbles of the street were covered deep with feather mattresses. With sinking heart I recognised this gait: it is a sign of locomotor ataxia, a disease which visits those who are in the last stages of syphilis.

The nearest tavern to the Docks was empty and dirty; the fat, blubber-lipped landlord who stood at the door had a shifty look. But I did not think that Peter could walk much further; it would have to do.

I ordered a bottle of brandy, lemons, hot water and sugar, such as I knew he loved; also a cold fowl in its broth.

He retched and gagged over his first glass, then his face gained a little colour — although not a colour I would like to see on my own face — and his hand was steadier when he filled the next. Little by little, between potations, I coaxed a disjointed story from him. He was in the mood to drink toasts to the most improbable people and occasions: he made me drink to long life for the odious Captain Dogg who, pistol in hand, never sleeping, had navigated the open boat like an insane genius, doling out water and biscuit in sips and bites over the countless sea-miles before they made a miraculous landfall on the south east coast of Ceylon.

We drank to the Booby-bird which Peter had caught one dawn in his bare hands and which they had torn apart and gobbled, raw and bleeding, two mouthfuls to a man.

We drank to the marvellous fact that large fishes, when you can catch and boat them, have eyes full of sweet, fresh water.

We stood and drank bumpers, solemnly, to the man who had drunk seawater at midnight and died at noon, and to the old coxswain who had seen his mother walking on the burning water and had stepped over the side to meet her.

We drank to Peter’s teeth which, he said, had been rattling loose as castanets by the end of the voyage and which he had given, one by one, to the kindly Sinhalese natives who had guided them (at the point of Captain Dogg’s pistol) across the swamps and quagmires to where a Royal Navy frigate had been lying, licking her wounds after a storm-battering.

When I called for the next bottle the landlord thoughtfully coaxed us into the inner “snug” where, he pointed out, we could sing undisturbed by the curious crowd which had gathered about us.

There we toasted the Second Mate, whose hair had turned pure white overnight after a tropic rainstorm. “I swear it’s true, Karli,” Peter giggled, “you could see the hair-dye all over his face and chest!”

It was at about that time that we determined to become a little drunk. “But first,” I said owlishly, “first we must see about you, Peter, for — forgive me — you do not seem to be in good case.”

“Pray do not fret, Karli, it’s of no importance, I assure you. The pox, d’you see, is up to my eyebrows now…” He lifted his cap and sure enough, just below the hairline there was the corona Veneris, the crown of Venus, the circlet of pustules which tells the pox-ridden that there is no hope.

“Cheer up Karli,” he cried merrily — a merriness made hideous by his naked gums — “my navigation is still adequate; I’ll get a berth in some foreign-going bucket and that’ll see me through the rest of my allowed time.”

I cleared my throat, frantically searching for some way of offering help.

“Your wife …?” I muttered.

“Let’s drink to the bitch. Found her in bed with her lover. I offered to thrash him. He thrashed me.”

“Your father …?”

“Married his nurse on his deathbed. I’m a Marquess now, the poorest and poxiest Marquess in Great Britain. Let’s drink…”

I decided to be practical.

“Peter,” I said firmly, “the first thing is to get you into a suit of decent clothes; you know you cannot hope to get a berth looking as you do now.”

He glared icily, then grinned a travesty of his old mocking grin. “Of course, Karli; it would be churlish to refuse a little temporary help from an old mess-mate. But first, there is the small matter of getting drunk, you recall.”

Later we sang a lugubrious ditty called, I think, “Here’s to the dead already — and three cheers for the next man to die.” We sang it again and again, for there was some disagreement about the tune and key.

Later still I recall enjoying the wonderful coolness on my cheek as I rested it in a puddle of brandy, for it seemed to me that I could see Peter more clearly from that angle, you understand.

I must have slept, for wonderful dreams came to me: I was a little, naked child again, I was being carried and rocked in strong arms; I had wet myself. All around me I could hear good Dutch voices shouting. I wept happily. As I floated to the surface of sleep I was puzzled, for the Dutch that was being shouted was not the Dutch of my native Gelderland but the harsh accents of Rotterdam; it made my head hurt. I opened my eyes to utter blackness. The shouting went on and there was a din above my head of stampings and bangings. I was sick.

A door opened and blinding sunlight made me blink. Black against the sun I made out the shape of a huge man.

“Get up,” said a voice I thought I had heard before.

I rose to my feet and staggered towards the figure, rubbing my eyes and trying to focus. There was a snake-like thing dangling from its hand.

“Where am I?” I whimpered.

“You’re in the Rose of Boston, loading for Sydney, New South Wales. And you call me ‘Sir’,” said Lubbock.

I gaped. The rope’s end flicked out and my groin jumped in agony.

“Aye aye, Sir,” I said.