AT first Gav could see nothing for hail and sleet racing through the air. Blindly he struggled from the foc’stle scuttle, then grabbed on to some rigging to prevent himself from being washed overboard. The tiny ship was plunging madly into a giant sea that kept burying the forward part of the vessel. Within seconds he was soaked to the skin and gasping for breath.
Lightning sizzled and flared and flashed on the water all around making the ship appear to be in the centre of an inferno, and thunder rolled over the decks like a broadside of cannon. Gav remained pinned to the rigging, too terrified to move one way or the other. Despite the noise of the storm he could hear Mr Gudgeon’s voice roaring orders and the bosun bawling out so quickly after him that their voices fought together with the raging wind.
Then suddenly there was only Mr Gudgeon’s voice and his hand grabbing Gav’s jacket and jerking him along. Gav screamed and struggled but failed to free himself and hardly knew what was happening until he landed with a painful thud in the steerage and the hatch was battened down. The pain of his fall took his breath away but he was relieved that he hadn’t been tossed overboard. All around him women were screaming and children were sobbing and everyone was fighting to hang on to something, anything to prevent themselves from being flung from one side of the ship to the other. Gav kept a grip of the hatch ladder and clung on grimly until the storm quietened. The ship still heaved and sent his stomach leaping and plunging but at least it seemed to have escaped the wildest patch of weather.
He tried to settle down to sleep for what remained of the night but there was such a weeping and wailing going on that sleep proved impossible. One woman in particular was creating a frightful racket. Every few minutes she let out a piercing scream that tailed off into an animal-like groan, only to work up to a crescendo of ear-splitting noise again.
Unable to stand it any more, Gav struggled across to where she was lying.
‘The storm’s over now, mistress.’ He tried to give comfort. ‘You’re in no danger. Don’t be afraid. Everything’s going to be all right.’
The woman’s large dark eyes gazed at him through the gloom. Perspiration was running down her face and her long hair was plastered wetly against it. She managed to gasp something and, although he did not understand what she said, he immediately recognised the language as the Gaelic. His mother had originated from the Highlands and had often sung to Regina and himself in that language. He turned to a woman nearby who, like most of the others, was being wretchedly seasick in whatever space or corner she could find.
‘What is she saying? Do you understand the Gaelic?’
Supporting herself against the bulkhead, the other woman shook her head.
‘We’re all from Glasgow. She’s the only Skye woman. She’s in labour with child and God help her and the bairn when it comes.’
The Skye woman gave another scream of agony. Gav felt unnerved by her suffering. He had to do something. Wondering if there was a chirurgeon on board, he groped his way back to the hatch ladder and waited for what seemed a hell of endless time until the hatch was opened. Indeed, the shaft of daylight spilling down and trickling faintly to every side revealed what looked like hell. Bodies were helplessly strewn about and sobbing children clung to mothers who were too ill to bother with them or even protect them against the army of rats splashing and noisily quarrelling about the floor.
Thankfully he scrambled up the ladder and once on the deck went straight to the longboat and Jemmy Ducks.
‘There you are, shipmate.’ Jemmy greeted him. ‘When you weren’t in the foc’stle, I says to Andra Mr Gudgeon’s had him. He’s had him, I says.’
‘He caught me on deck during the storm last night and flung me down into steerage.’
Jemmy scratched his pigtail.
‘Not that I blames him for that. The deck’s no place for a lad in a storm. There’s no denying it, Gav. You were a danger to yourself and to Mr Gudgeon’s men. Verra busy them men are in a storm and they don’t like folks getting in their way.’ He sighed. ‘I don’t minds admitting it, Gav, I have a terrible struggle with them animals at times like that. They panics, y’see, and flutters and squacks and squeals and batters about something cruel.’
Suddenly Gav remembered about the Skye woman.
‘There’s a woman in steerage needing help. She’s having a baby. Is there a doctor or a chirurgeon on board?’
‘I always says there should be. I had a cow once and she pined away and died long before we reached Virginia. I never did find out what ailed that cow.’
‘Surely somebody could help.’
‘Chips tried his best. Yes, yes, I admits that. Chips tried his best for Henrietta but it was no use.’
‘I mean for the Skye woman.’
‘It’s Chips for her too, Gav. It’s Chips for everybody. He pulled them teeth.’ He stretched his lips into a grotesque grin and indicated several black spaces. Then suddenly he pointed his fingers upwards. ‘No, no, I tells a lie. The Captain sees to some things, Gav. He’s got his responsibilities but they’re not to steerage folks and that’s a fact. No, no, it’s Chips for them.’
‘I’d better go and tell him,’ Gav said and then added wistfully, ‘I wish I could get something to eat. My biscuits have got all wet down there and the rats have been at them.’
Jemmy’s eyes, protruding from a brown, leathery face, strained cautiously around.
‘I knows some friends who can maybe help.’ He jerked a thumb in the direction of the hen coops. ‘Them hens has helped me out many’s the time. I’m hungry, I tells them, and out they comes with an egg. Them hens are great friends to me, Gav, and I don’t minds admitting it.’
After a great deal of stealth and precautions to ensure that he would not be found out, Jemmy slipped Gav an egg and stood in front of him to hide him from view while Gav sucked hungrily at it.
Feeling considerably cheered, he went to tell Chips the carpenter about the Skye woman and then, when returning, his attention was caught and riveted with delight by a school of porpoises leaping and tumbling and bobbing all round the ship. But he was exhausted with lack of sleep and after a while he decided to go down to the foc’stle for a doze.
He found some of the crew sitting making and patching clothes by the light of the scuttle. They greeted him in a friendly enough manner and did not object when he made a bed for himself on top of some sails. He fell immediately into a deep sleep and dreamt that he was in the hole-in-the-wall bed in his old home in Tannery Wynd. He was cuddled between Regina and his mammy and his mammy’s tartan plaid covered the three of them. The bed-doors were tight shut and everything was safe and cosy. Even when mammy got up and opened the bed-doors and went over to poke up the fire and put on the porridge pot, he still felt a warm, happy glow inside.
Soon they would have their porridge and milk, maybe bannocks and ale as well. As usual, at night after they came home from school, mammy sang to them. It was then he wakened and realised that the singing was not mammy’s. Mammy was dead. He sat up rubbing at his eyes.
Echoing down from the deck came sailors’ lusty voices:
‘Oh, it’s pipe up, Dan, when yer feelin’ kind o’ blue,
With a half-drowned ship, an’ a half-dead crew,
When yer heart’s in yer sea-boots ‘n the cold is in yer bones,
An’ ye don’t give a damn how soon she goes to Davy Jones,
When it’s dark as the devil an’ it’s blowin’ all it can,
Oh, he’s worth ten men on a rope is Dan!’
He didn’t know what to do. The dream, or rather the wakening to the realisation that it was only a dream, weighed him down with sadness. It took all his courage to keep tears at bay as he struggled into his big jacket and jammed his hat over his mass of curls. When he returned on deck, the first thing he saw was Jemmy Ducks excitedly chasing a gay coloured rooster round the decks. He couldn’t help giggling at the sight and then, after glancing towards the poop to make sure that it was Mr Jubb’s watch and not Mr Gudgeon’s, he joined his friend in the chase. Suddenly, just when the rooster was within the eager grasp of both Jemmy and himself, it leapt up flapping and squacking in indignation and escaped overboard.
‘Damn his eyes!’ Jemmy wailed as they watched the animal fluttering helplessly down among the rolling waves. Its glowing plumage looked strangely out of harmony with the dull slate colour of the water as it sat drifting away astern. ‘Damn his eyes,’ Jemmy repeated brokenly as he turned and limped away.
Respecting his need to be alone with his distress, Gav didn’t follow him and it was while he was still standing gazing overboard that Regina approached.
‘You’d better watch that pig of a mate doesn’t catch you again. You know what he said about keeping to steerage.’
‘It’s Mr Jubb on duty just now.’
‘I know that,’ Regina said impatiently. ‘But Gudgeon’s still on the ship, isn’t he?’
‘He keeps picking on me.’
‘I know that as well. The men call him bully Gudgeon. He’s just a pig.’ Her mouth twisted. ‘He looks like one as well.’
‘I’m down in the foc’stle now.’
‘Does he know?’
Gav shook his head.
‘Not that it’s much better.’
‘There isn’t much room in my cabin and there’s only one berth but we’d be able to squeeze in together …’
‘Oh, Regina!’
Immediately her hand stung across his face.
‘Reggie,’ she hissed at him.
Swallowing as best he could, he nodded his head before dutifully repeating, ‘Reggie.’
‘It means asking him.’
‘He doesn’t like me.’
‘He likes money, I’ll wager.’
‘Jemmy says he’s always got to have somebody to pick on.’
‘He can find somebody else. He can pick on your precious Jemmy.’
Gav was silent. Eventually he managed:
‘When are you going to ask him?’
Regina shrugged.
‘First chance I get. It isn’t easy to talk sense with him when he’s always so drunk. Did you see him falling off the poop?’
Gav shook his head and Regina smiled grimly.
‘He staggered and fell down the stairs. There was such a thump I thought he’d gone through the quarter deck. I was the only one who dared laugh. Serves you right, I said, for bullying Gav Chisholm.’
Gav didn’t look at all happy. He was thinking that the incident and Regina’s behaviour would do nothing to help his position. If anything, the mate would hate him and try to bully him all the more.
He gazed anxiously around.
‘Maybe I’d better get back to the foc’stle now.’
‘Being afraid of him won’t help you.’
‘It’s all very well for you to talk.’ Anger reddened Gav’s cheeks. ‘You’re all right. You’re safe enough. And you’re older and bigger than me,’ he flung at her before stamping away.
He hadn’t gone very far when he stopped in surprise. The captain was shuffling along the deck towards him. He was wearing soft floppy shoes and no coat and he had a woolly stocking hat pulled over his tangled hair.
‘Aye, and who might you be?’ he asked Gav.
‘Gav Chisholm, sir.’
‘Are you any relation to the red-headed family that has the next farm to us?’
‘I … I don’t think so.’
‘Where’s my wee sister?’
‘Your sister, sir?’
‘My Minnie said I was to keep an eye on her. An awful wee lassie she is. She’ll be in the daisy field again.’
The hair crept up the back of Gav’s neck. The old man was obviously mad. Yet at the same time, he couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. He looked so pathetic with his shirt hanging over his breeches and his long tangled hair and woolly hat.
‘Don’t worry, she’s all right,’ he said kindly. ‘Your mammy’s found her.’
The wrinkled, weather-beaten face brightened.
‘I’m obliged to you, Gav Chisholm. I was verra worried aboot oor Hester.’
Just then Mr Jubb approached and, ignoring Gav, murmured something to the captain and led him away towards his cabin in the stern.
Jemmy came limping over shaking his head.
‘They’re greasing the board.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Chips and his mate. They’re getting ready for a burial. Somebody in steerage has died. Captain’ll have to say a few words before he sends her down to Davy Jones’ locker.’
‘He’s gone mad.’
‘No, no, Gav. He’s just not himself at times. He’ll come all right again, you’ll see. Mr Jubb helps him. Mr Jubb’s good with the captain when he’s not himself.’
Gav felt upset.
‘I wonder if it’s the Skye woman who’s dead. My mammy came from the Highlands. She spoke just like the Skye woman.’
‘Happens all the time, Gav. Folks dies all the time on ships. Last voyage we had five folk died. Time afore that we had seven. As often as not, we has shipmates dies as well.’
‘With seasickness?’
‘No, no. It’s not the seasickness that shatters your hull and rigging, Gav. It’s the scurvy or the ship-fever or the flux. Them’s the terrible things.’
A little knot of women were huddling on deck with plaids draped over bent heads and children clutching at them. Seamen too were gathering and standing quietly around. The board was set up and Chips brought the body sewed in sailcloth and weighted to make sure it went to the bottom.
Eventually Mr Jubb came back with a happily smiling Captain Kilfuddy, cocked hat slightly askew, black stock muffling too high up over his chin, coat and skirt flapping loose in the breeze. They stopped beside the board which was balanced ready on top of the bulwarks.
‘Aye,’ said Captain Kilfuddy patting one of the children on the head, a pale-faced little boy of about three. ‘And what game do you like best, eh? Crinky? Or cross tig? My wee sister’s aye at the peevers but it’s bools and peeries and fleein’ dragons for me.’
Mr Jubb put a hand on his arm and bent closer to murmur in his ear. The captain turned on him in surprise.
‘Say a few words? I’ve just said a few words. Who are you?’
Mr Jubb had a vague, hunted look as if he was trying to shrink into himself and disappear. Yet he always managed to retain a certain air of dignity. He murmured again.
The captain said:
‘Prayers? No, I canny mind any prayers. But there’s a verse my Minnie says.’ He beamed around the silent crowd, then cleared his throat.
‘When Faither Time goes hirplin’ doon life’s hillside,
And locks once raven, noo as white as snaw,
We’ll keep oor hearts from grow’n sad and weary,
With thinkin’ o’ the days so long awa’,
The bairnies with their laughin’ and their daffin’,
Will help us to forget lang days o’ pain;
The songs they sing when softly falls the gloamin’,
Will make us live oor youthful days again.’
A woman began sobbing and Chips who was holding the board shook his head at Mr Jubb. ‘It’s no use, sir.’
‘Here’s another one my Minnie likes.’
Captain Kilfuddy held up a hand.
‘They’re slowly slippin’ from our ken
The freends we loved so weel,
As mists in autumn gloamin’s fa’,
Along the valleys steal;
And though the day’s last rosy beam,
May light some lofty Ben,
The shadows seem to deeper grow
Within the wooded glen.’
Mr Jubb made one last attempt and the old man repeated his words in surprise.
‘Commit this body to the deep?’ Before he could say any more, Chips and his mate tipped up the board and the body disappeared with barely a splash. Gav turned away from the scene and without a word walked towards the foc’stle. Then, once alone in that dark cave, he wept.