THE CLOCK IN the saloon made it 8.45 p.m. when I switched off the light and lay down on the couch. It was long before my normal bedtime. I did my best to sleep and pretended to be deep in it when Larsen returned. But actually I was awake most of the time. Yet so great was my excitement and so much had the day given me to think about that sleeplessness did not bother me. It was only towards the end that I must have dozed off.
I was woken up by someone shaking me. The light was on and it was Larsen.
“You still wish come to wheelhouse?” Larsen asked in a whisper that could be heard all over the ship.
“Of course I do,” I answered, getting up quickly, wide-awake at once.
“Good! Come you then. But your friend, I think him we leave asleep. Better. Not?”
Without waiting for an answer he went to the drawer underneath the couch opposite me, pulled a bottle of gin out of it, filled a tumbler to the brim and swallowed the liquid without pause.
“Warms the stomach,” he said, smacking his lips. “No gripe. No inflammation of the lungs. You have small one, too: cold on deck, not?”
I shook my head.
“Perhaps you right,” he commented. “Thor Larsen too, he never drink at sea. Whales and gin. No! They do not mix. You see, this Thor Larsen’s last drink until he come back to port.”
With that he went quickly on deck, and I hasten to add that in all the four seasons I served with Thor Larsen, much as he drank in port, I never saw him vary this rule. As a result, our first day at sea would invariably be an unpleasant one because, as the effect of the final tumbler-full of gin wore off, he became more irritable and exacting, a state of mind which would vanish only when we harpooned our first quarry.
I had no time to think then, though I often thought about it later, how suddenly he had talked about himself in the third person as if he were, indeed, someone else.
I was up and dressing as quickly as I could, a yellow woollen shirt, thick grey woollen socks, an old pair of thick dark flannel bags and a polo sweater knitted for me by my mother in the dark-blue wool that was our school rugger colour. And finally a pair of tennis shoes.
Before going on deck, however, I tiptoed to the entrance of the Captain’s cabin and, my ear to the curtains, listened carefully in case my friend, too, might be stirring. I could tell by his breathing that he was asleep, so I turned away.
I came on deck just as Thor Larsen rang for “Half speed astern” in the engine room. To my amazement the Kurt Hansen’s deck lights had all been switched off. There was no light even in the wheelhouse except two faint phosphorescent glows from the compass, which faced the man at the wheel, and the two dials of the signals box that connected the wheelhouse with the engine room. The other whalers, too, were in darkness but the light from the quay was just bright enough for me to see that our crew were all in position and had already cast off from the Harald Nielsen, for at that moment two of them, one fore and the other aft, jumped smartly from the whaler alongside, back on to the Kurt Hansen’s deck.
They were just in time, for as they jumped the propeller of the Kurt Hansen started thrashing and the deck began to vibrate underneath my feet. The spirited ship responded at once and, gathering way, began a rapid slide sideways into the main stream of the harbour. Had this movement been carried out by day, Larsen would have been compelled by the law of the sea to give three warning blasts on the ship’s whistle for the benefit of the habitually dense traffic. But as we were the only ship moving in the harbour at that hour, he ignored regulations, whether out of consideration for the many sleeping craft around us or just because it was unnecessary I could not tell for sure, although I myself suspect the latter of the two alternatives to have been his reason.
As we moved thus, steam hissed loudly in the safety valve alongside the tall funnel, out of which black smoke was bubbling so thick and fast that it looked as if it might burst its rivetted seams. The hissing of the steam, the deck trembling underneath my feet, the powerful thrust of the screw, the ease with which we glided backwards and the speed with which the gap between us and the rest of the fleet widened, made the most dynamic of impressions on me. I was not only elated by it but suddenly felt very proud of the Kurt Hansen, privileged to be in her, and, as I realised with amusement remembering my conversation with Leif and ’Mlangeni earlier on, already fond, very fond of her, indeed.
I gave one look at the still dark, shining water between us and the quay. The riding lights of the moored ships, the lamps blazing on the quay, lay trembling deep within the water side by side with quick, quivering stars, as if they, too, marked another great concourse of shipping just waiting for the dawn in order to cast off.
By the time I joined Thor Larsen in the wheelhouse my eyes had become sufficiently accustomed to the darkness to see him grasp the levers of the signals to the engine room and ring for full speed ahead. I heard him snap out in Norwegian to the man at the wheel the order “Amidships.”
“Amidships, it is!” the man acknowledged.
I had no difficulty in recognising the voice of Gorgeous, who instantly bent down, came up and bent down again as he spun the wheel round deftly to bring the rudder amidships. Even in that half light he was a neat, incongruous and oddly elegant figure, a white kerchief visible in the left sleeve of a thick sailor’s jersey reaching almost down to his knees.
“Good morning, Mr. Grieg. How are you?” I greeted him.
“Not to speak to the man at the wheel!” Thor Larsen intervened harshly before Gorgeous could think of answering. “Not to speak until I tell you. Not, not!”
Embarrassed, I retreated to stand discreetly against the back of the wheelhouse while the Captain took up position at the port windows watching the quay intently.
I heard the propellers stop and a second later begin churning again more vigorously than ever before. The backward motion of the ship was quickly arrested. For a moment we lay with our nose directly opposite the stern of the mail steamer. Her decks were awash with lamp light although they were deserted except for her portly master-at-arms who was doing his round of inspection of the ship.
The sight annoyed Thor Larsen because he spat vigorously and muttered angrily at the ship, calling it, among several other names I could not catch, “Pig, you fat spoilt selfish pig, just like your owners! No consideration for others, blinding a sailor with your lights just when he needs his eyes most!”
This last remark partly explained the Captain’s irritation with the mail ship. But I was to discover later that he disliked all merchantmen, particularly passenger ships, and most of all, the de luxe Union Castle ships. He disliked even warships, with the significant exceptions of destroyers and submarines, to which he always referred, with one of his grating laughs, as “naval whalers” and “whales”. He really had no time for any kind of ship except his own whalers. Yet for me the mail ship had gained in beauty by the darkness. I felt even a little regretful that the Kurt Hansen, now getting into her full outward-bound strike, had to leave behind such a lovely pinnacle of light, shimmering with impatience at being bound to the immovable quay.
Soon we were entering the narrow channel between the breakwater and the steep narrow bluff that led to the open sea. The darkness there was great, except for the keen beam of the revolving light on the huge Roman nose of the bluff. The light was cutting deep swathes out of the night like a scythe in a field of opium-black poppies, and intermittently showing me the rigid back of the Captain standing, feet apart, to look straight ahead. Beside him stood Gorgeous, deceptively nonchalant, holding a spoke of the wheel as if it were no more than a cup of China tea.
I was to learn that Gorgeous’s attitude was merely an instinctive effort at achieving balance of mind, as if the assumption of a physical attitude of calm would counter the apprehensions of the highly sensitive and impressionable person that he was.
Considering his nature, he was perhaps the most gallant person in the ship, certainly, by my standards, more so even than the Captain, who had never known fear. I often wondered why, being what he was, Gorgeous never collapsed, and could only suspect that he, like Larsen, was fulfilling a pledge to the sea and whaling so profound that it had become a pre-condition of their being. However, I came to learn that, whenever Gorgeous’s hand went to his hip and he adopted a nonchalant attitude, he was getting ready for something that would impose great strain on him. And in our way out of the harbour he had some cause for apprehension.
The narrow channel out of Port Natal was one of the trickiest in existence. As a result no ships of any size were allowed in it without a pilot. These pilots, each holding a master’s ticket, had had years of service in one of the many tug-boats used to berth and unberth the ships in harbour, and were to steady them when some unsuspected condition of sea, current, wind or range of swell, swung them from their true course in the narrows. Whalers and a few fishing vessels, because of their small size and draught and long experience of the harbour, were the only exceptions.
So narrow was the channel now that the sound of the sea itself overcame the noise of the screw and engines of the Kurt Hansen. It was a wonderful Odyssean sound raised by those urgent white horses so sacred to Homer, as their great black hooves under their steaming luminous manes pounded the quaking shore. Sometimes, when a swell greater than the rest shattered itself on the breakwater, a dazzle of white streamed freely on the darkness, and consequently the disintegrated sea drifted like smoke on the air, penetrating the wheelhouse, where it overwhelmed even the smell of whale. Once a flash from the lighthouse coincided with a particularly heavy explosion of white sea water. The effect was so blinding that I half expected another outburst from the Captain. But none came, and soon we were so near to the bluff and so far below the light that it no longer directly reached us.
I heard Larsen grunt with satisfaction and saw him begin to pace the small deck within the wheelhouse, stopping at the end of each beat to peer fiercely into the night and, on resuming his beat, as he passed the wheel, often giving Gorgeous an order to correct or confirm course.
Ahead of us I could then make out the lights marking the harbour mouth, and knew that we were approaching the most difficult moment on our way out to sea. Winds, tides and currents worked incessantly to maintain a bar of sand across the entrance to the harbour. Although powerful dredgers were constantly used to reduce it, the bar still was much higher than the floor of the sea beyond. As a result, swell and sea making for the land would be forced to rise steeply and violently in order to cross it, and so tended to throw even the greatest and most powerful ships off their course. And the entrance was so narrow that the margin of safety was minute. All a pilot could do to counter the conflicting forces at work was to aim his ship truly and make it as responsive as possible to control from the helm by ensuring that it crossed the bar only at maximum speed.
Although we were still some cable lengths away from the entrance, the Kurt Hansen, now going all out, was already beginning to feel the range of the complex movement across the bar. At one moment I was admiring how the Kurt Hansen’s bow, darker than the night against the bright star sheen ahead, was pointed straight at the centre of the gap between the entrance lights; the next, it would begin to lift, and levelled first at one star and then at the other. As we approached the entrance the movement of the whaler became more and more violent, and the bow, to my alarm, began to waver like an alcoholic finger.
Once more the Captain went to take up position, legs wider apart than ever, beside Gorgeous who now had both hands firmly on the wheel and was constantly spinning it first one way and then the other. I was relieved then to notice that whenever the bow came down off centre, it would rise dead on the middle, or vice versa, and I began to have an inkling of what Leif had meant about Gorgeous’s skill.
But perhaps the greatest tribute of all to Gorgeous was that the imperious Larsen, from the time we came within effective range of the sea, gave him no further orders at all. He kept silent even when we hit the sea right on the bar and the little ship was suddenly lifted high into the night on the Himalayan peak of one of those swells at which the Indian Ocean excels. She was held briefly, shuddering, against the trembling stars before she crashed back into what felt like an abyss, which she hit, quivering, before rising higher than ever on the far side with a feather of white sea snow in her cap.
I glanced quickly to port and starboard. Green and red lights looked in at the wheelhouse windows, then fell away below us before the Kurt Hansen was once more hurled aloft and shaken out against the summit of the night, phosphorescent water dripping like star-light from her being. When she came crashing down again both port and starboard entrance lights had vanished. We were safely over the bar, and the next swell we met, though it lifted us high and put us down low, did it all so smoothly that we shipped no water at all.
The Kurt Hansen at once picked up a regular rhythm and went swinging out over the surging sea into the brilliant night with a sailor’s long rolling stride, across the unlocked ocean, leaving the huge swells dissolving in classic thunder and fading away far behind us.
“You hear, young Boher? I say, now you speak as much as you like!” The Captain’s voice brought me to myself.
Gorgeous, steadying the wheel against his knees, took out a cigarette case, turned to hold it out to me, exclaiming with obvious relief: “Phew, out of the garage, out of the street and on the open road at last!”
“Thank you, Mr. Grieg, but I don’t smoke.”
“The name to you is Georghius.” He answered affably, taking out a cigarette, snapping the case to, tapping the cigarette end lightly on the case a number of times and then lighting it: “Georghius, the Latin for George.”
And from that moment on I became the only person in the ship to take him at his word. For the Captain and the crew he was always just plain Grieg except to Leif and ’Mlangeni, who insisted when they were alone with him and me on calling him Gorgeous.
“Are you fond of music?” he asked me now. But before I could answer, the door of the deck-house opened and Leif stepped in to ask something of the Captain in Norwegian.
“Chocolate! My God! You know damn better!” Larsen exclaimed fiercely. I suspect the only drink he could think of just then was gin, and Leif’s question must have roused a diabolic challenge to his power of will. “But ask this young Boher and Grieg, they might.”
“Would you two like a hot cup of chocolate?” Leif asked us, unperturbed.
“Ta!” Gorgeous replied.
“Yes, please,” I said. Then, noticing that odd look of fatigue at the back of Leif’s eyes, I added: “I’ll come and fetch it.”
“Good, very good! You go!” Larsen commanded.
I followed, or rather staggered, after Leif on to the deck and for the first time experienced the full effect of night, sky and open sea. Propped against the back of the wheelhouse with a solid roof overhead, I had not realized how high and how far the ship was being thrown by the sea. I had to feel for whatever support I could find, like someone in a game of blind man’s bluff, and marvelled at the ease with which Leif walked ahead of me.
Steadying myself against the rail for a moment, I saw that the lights of Port Natal were a lovely diamond glitter behind us and, as we were already far from the land, the lighthouse was no longer a scythe cutting through the darkness but a large single eye of fire winking ceaselessly at us across the waves. The sky was deep and clear, the stars enormous and visible almost to the edge of the horizon. We were heading due east, so that I recognized Alpha Centauri, a bright gold just over the starboard horizon, then near it the Great Pointers, and hard by the Pointers the Southern Cross, its lack of symmetry giving the whole conception a strangely home-made quality and making it the most moving of all the combinations of stars in the sky. Just to the left were the Pleiades, then the Twins, Castor and Pollux. Everywhere I looked there were the stars either singly, or as great constellations, that I had known all my life since, with rare exceptions, I had always slept out in the open at six thousand feet above sea-level under a sky seldom veiled with cloud. Yet I had rarely seen the stars bigger and so without impediment or distortion as now viewed from the deck of the darkened little ship shouldering the heavy night on a heaving sea. Wherever I turned to search the sky it seemed to me that I was not alone but had company.
On this occasion I felt this so strongly that I stood there for quite a while leaning against a stanchion, letting the feeling run through me like wine, and thinking I was linked, through such a night, with all the life there had been and ever would be. I knew that each of those stars, before their meaning was confined to what could be determined by telescope and spectrums, had had a personal significance for countless vanished peoples. I rejoiced, for instance, that the Pleiades of the Greeks could also be the Seven Kings to us, Seven White Heifers to the Amangtakwena, and the Digging-for-Stars to the Zulus. It was the Southern Cross to the Portuguese, a Sword to me, and the Giraffe to the Sutho peoples of Africa. The great black hole on the edge of the Milky Way, the Coal-Sack to some Europeans, the Entrance to Hell for us, the Cave of the Night to the Abwatetsi, and in Sindakwena The Great Bull-Elephant’s Killing Place. Sirius The Great Scorcher, The Dog Star to the Greeks, Eye of the Night to the Amantakwena and the Great Grandmother of Plenty to the Bushman—indeed Mother of Plenty seemed the most appropriate because Sirius does not shine like other stars but seems to contain light so abundantly that often, lying on the veld, I had had the illusion of hearing it overflow like crystal water and drip on the earth beside my head. I recognised them all, saluted them in my heart and felt acknowledged in return.
The climax of this moment for me came when the Kurt Hansen suddenly altered course. For an instant our smoke was confused and spread itself streaming between me and the stars, like a Spanish mantilla glinting with sequins when caught in a swirl of wind. As the Kurt Hansen came down into the trough between swells, the sea countered with precious stones of phosphorous flashing on the velvet furrows of ploughed-up water vanishing sideways into the dark. Then the smoke took up its proper station aloft like a pennant high over the stern, the sky emerged again unstained and intact, and I saw the whaler’s perky nose pointing straight down a dazzling Milky Way. There the tip of our tall foremast was stirring the stars around, indeed was like a kind of magic ladle thrust deep into the night as into a great cauldron filled to the brim with the black brew of time, stirring and re-stirring it so that the imprisoned light within could break free in star-bubbles on the surface. So entranced was I by the experience that I might have stood there longer had not Leif come back to my side, asking: “Not feeling sea-sick, are you? You’re all right, aren’t you?”
I realised then, for the first time, that I had not suffered the slightest discomfort from the ship’s lively movement and answered exultantly: “No! I’m all right. I’ve never felt better!”
He stood there peering through the darkness at me and then said casually: “Good. But of course, it’s a very calm night.”
“A calm night!” I exclaimed. “With the ship bounding about like a kitten of a wild cat and me not able to walk without support!”
He laughed at that and retorted: “All the same, it’s exceptionally calm. This is only the regular swell. You wait until we get a swell with a gale-driven sea as well! Even so, you’re doing very well for a landsman. But come along, Gorgeous will be wondering about his chocolate!”
I followed him down a companion-way.
After the dark the light below was dazzling; the heat coming up from the engine room after the winter air outside almost stifling. I stumbled down a short steel corridor and caught up with Leif standing beside the opening at the head of the steel ladder which led down to the engine room. Leif was pointing below. I looked through the entrance, saw first the broad, plump figure of the engineer in oil stained overalls still standing expressionless beside the wheel of his controls, and then ’Mlangeni, stripped to the waist, at work by the boiler.
He had just opened the door to the grate, and the vivid red glow from the fire leaping within shone on his broad chest and surrounded his great head with light. So organic, so volcanic in quality was this glow that by comparison it made the electricity of the engine room look pale and clinical.
As I watched, ’Mlangeni turned his back on this living fire and plunged the shovel in his hand into the slope of a pile of coal which lay on the iron floor behind him and vanished at a steep angle into the gloom of the bunkers from which it came. The supple muscles of his arms and back stood out like those of a weight-lifter in a circus, and the sweat made satin of his smooth black skin.
“Listen!” Leif said.
But already I had heard above the regular clanking of the pistons, whirr of propeller-shaft and brushing of heavy water against the ship’s side, the full round bass voice of ’Mlangeni singing loudly to himself in Zulu as he worked the long handle of the shovel to force it deeper into the coal:
“Seed of the great mother,
Black corn of the earth,
Food of flame,
The child is hungry,
Come feed new fire:
Yes, feed, feed this fire.”
With that he would lift the shovel high out of the dark, swing round easily and with one thrust of his long arms pitch the coal cleanly through the open grate.
For a moment he would stand up with his hand lightly on the shovel at his side, his head bowed, looking down at the fire with the flames flickering over his face, and then would sing again as if to a person:
“Red flame of the earth,
Child of the sun.
Look! Fear no water,
Hunger no longer!
Take food from the mother,
Eat this black corn,
Fill your belly.
And grow, my little one,
Yes! Grow strong and great.”
Swinging round with his shovel, he would dig once more into the coal to begin his singing all over again.
It all had an extraordinary effect on me, as if I were watching the first man beside his first fire far back in time.
“Could you make out what all that was about?” Leif asked me when at last we reached his small neat galley.
I gave him a rough translation.
He shook his head in amazement and remarked: “Who would have thought that it is the savage among us who should be the poet and singer of songs? There’s precious little music and only a living for most of us in it, except of course the Captain.”
“Does the Captain sing?” I asked, surprised.
Leif quickly replied. “Good heavens, no! I merely meant whaling is something much more than just a living to him.” Then his mind was back on ’Mlangeni. “I wish I understood him as much as I like him,” he said. “But there’s no end to him . . .”
“Does he go on for long, singing?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” Leif answered. “He always starts out like that but before long the singing becomes a hum, the hum just a grunt with each shovel full of coal, and in the end not even a grunt.”
And indeed, when we passed the engine room again on our way back to the wheelhouse, I heard no sound except the steady beat of the engines and the brushing of ploughed-up water against the ship’s side.
On deck we found the Kurt Hansen had changed course again. Her nose was no longer pointing down the Milky Way but nearly a “quarter” off at a red unblinking star that I took to be the planet Mars.
Leif, of course, noticed it too. “Oh no!” he exclaimed. “It’s not possible: he’s swung away further than ever!”
“Swung away from what?” I asked.
“From where we broke off whaling on Saturday,” he answered vehemently.
“But why?” I pressed him.
“Why?” He reiterated my question disdainfully. “I told you before there’s no ‘why’ to what the Captain does. I can only tell you when we broke off whaling on Saturday with two big blue whales lashed, one on the port, the other on the starboard side, the sea around us was still alive with whales. Surely the sensible thing to do would be to go back to where we were a bare forty hours ago? Instead we’re heading as fast as we can in the opposite direction! There’s no sense in it! And yet the chances are that the Captain will be right and that the whales will have changed their minds and suddenly turned back to south where we’re heading. You’d think he was a whale himself from the way he seems to know what they are doing!”
He spoke with emotion and was compelled to raise the issue again with Gorgeous the moment he entered the wheelhouse. Noticing that the Captain was out on deck where we could see the tip of his cigarette moving like a firefly through the darkness, Leif handed Gorgeous his mug of chocolate, remarking: “I see he’s done it again!”
He sounded as if he were making an accusation.
“Ta.” Gorgeous thanked him before saying: “Yes, we’ve just changed course and are heading east-south-east.”
“We!” Leif’s tone was sarcastic but Gorgeous did not rise.
He took a sip of chocolate and commented: “You make the best chocolate in the world.” Adding, “You know better than I do that he’s hardly ever wrong about these things.”
“You’re right there,” Leif replied. “I sometimes think it might be better for him if he were wrong more often. Anyway I leave you to him. I am going down to catch some sleep. What about you?” He turned to me. “We’ll all have a long day tomorrow and nothing interesting is likely to happen for some hours yet.”
For the first time I felt disappointed by Leif. As far as I was concerned, interesting things were happening all the time, and I was convinced that if I went below I would miss something of the greatest importance. I even judged it a flaw in Leif’s character that he had ceased to find it all as absorbing as I did. I was at an age when I just couldn’t understand why the whole process of getting older should be accompanied by a growing indifference, and I was quite resolved that, somehow, I would grow up differently. So, in answer to Leif’s question, I gave an abrupt “No” which sounded almost disdainful.
Looking back I am certain the meaning of my tone was not lost on him, but far from offending him, it seemed to endear me to him. He patted me affectionately on the shoulder and said: “Thought as much. Enjoy yourself,” and went below.
I was alone with Gorgeous and at once he repeated the question he had first asked of me before Leif and I went below for the chocolate: “Are you fond of music?”
I said “Yes”, though I felt compelled to add that I knew little about it. We had no professional orchestras or organised music up-country, and I had only twice heard artists of distinction. Once when very young I was taken to hear Melba sing and on another occasion to hear Paderewski play Chopin on the piano.
“Melba! Paderewski!” Gorgeous exclaimed instantly: “I say, you’re a lucky boy. I’d have given anything to have heard them.”
He there and then concluded that my interest in music equalled his own and treated me to a long exegesis of his own tastes and musical experiences. I longed to change the subject. My mind was on more immediate things. I wanted to ask him about the sea, ships, whaling, Captain Larsen, Leif and so on. But there was no stopping him. He had on his voyages picked up the German word “fabelhaft” and I soon found that in the world of his choice the most “fabelhaft” were Beethoven and Wagner. He told me he had a great deal of Wagner on gramophone records below and promised to play them for me as soon as he had any leisure.
I must have listened to him for close on half-an-hour when the door to the wheelhouse opened abruptly and Larsen walked in. From the way he crashed it to behind him I gathered that the tension in him must have increased greatly since I had last seen him. Knowing his moods of old, Gorgeous instantly stopped talking, stiffened at the wheel and stared straight ahead.
Without a word Larsen in that heavy rolling gait of his went to the compass, bent down to peer at it as if prepared to find the ship off course. When he saw it was not, he merely growled. It was extraordinary what drama Larsen brought to everything and how his own inner atmosphere determined the climate for all around him.
Hard on the grunt came a curt order in Norwegian. I was soon to learn that in moments of compulsion and crisis Larsen spoke only his native tongue, in short, quick bursts and a tone more rasping than ever before.
The order made Gorgeous immediately step back and hand over the wheel to Larsen. That done, he turned away lightly, muttered an almost inaudible “Ta-Ta!” at me, and went out of the wheelhouse quickly, shutting the door behind him.
His going left me feeling acutely uncomfortable. The Captain so far had ignored me and looked as if he would continue to do so. All I could see of him was his square uncompromising back, rigid and black against the star sheen ahead like a silhouette in a shadow-show. I did not feel I could break the silence and yet did not see how I could go on cowering in the background indefinitely as if I were not there. And if I dared to speak, how could I begin and what should I say? So far the openings and the initiative had always been his.
I need not have worried for, once Larsen had got the feel of the helm and the response of the ship underneath him, without turning his head he rapped out the question, “And you, young Boher? What you wish now for to do? Go below and rest? Two more hours to daylight, not?”
Again I had no wish to go below. But neither did I feel like spending two hours in the company of a Captain who was as on edge as his manner and tone suggested.
“Please, sir,” I said, as an inspiration came to me. “May I go out and watch on deck for a while?”
“You feel sea-sick.” In his mood already fixed for the worst, instant suspicion made this harsh utterance an assertion of fact.
“Not at all, sir,” I replied quickly. “I feel perfectly all right. I just thought I’d like some fresh air and watch from the deck.”
“Good! Good! You go but to take care not to fall overboard, not?” For the first time he sounded almost pleased. I suppose because my words proved, as he thought, how right his first assessment of me had been.
I remained on deck until first light. Whenever I looked up at the wheelhouse it was to see the tip of the Captain’s cigarette winking like a red star in the centre of the window above me. His hands moved with the wheel but otherwise he never ceased standing there, feet planted firmly, staring straight ahead. It was extraordinary the effect that so small a thing had on me, conveying how fixedly and unalterably he was at the heart not only of the ship but also of all that was shaping ahead in the daylight to come.
The sky maintained its algebraic clarity, so that I was able to see the morning star rise in its entirety from the moment when it was just a quicksilver sliver in the narrow band of sea-moisture on the horizon, then a pin-prick of light and a darting spearhead of fire, swiftly followed by the shoulders and finally the whole brilliant body of Jupiter swinging clear of horizontal murk and vapour to drive the night authoritatively before it. At once the new starlight walked the water, leaving a footpath of silver to run between me and the east like a life-line through the multitudinous creases in the palm of the sea’s black outstretched hand.
There is something most significant about the encounter of a human being in solitude with great abiding manifestations of nature. It is so intensely personal and specific that it demands some special recognition from one’s imagination. That moment, indeed, grew great with natural divinity, and the vast uprush of light soaring after it with widespread wings became a miracle. I felt then as if I were witnessing the first day of Genesis and so near to some numinous presence stirring over the face of the waters that I had the impulse to pray in the ancient Amangtakwena way. They greet the day by breathing into the palm of the right hand until it becomes damp and warm, holding it up to the dawn till the morning air has fanned it cool and dry, taking that as a sign that the breath of their lesser life has been made one with the breath of a greater. I had often when alone with them on the veld or in the bush found it perfectly natural to join in with them. But on this occasion something I was not aware of stopped me. I know now that it was a fear that Thor Larsen, up there at the wheel, would see me do it.
With the light, shape and colour in its purest and most limpid shades returned to the world. The swell which I had hitherto known only as ploughed-up water now claimed its full unbroken stature. I was startled at first by the length and height of those seas rolling down on us and by the full extent of the ocean as now revealed to me. The Kurt Hansen looked really too small to fill so great a vacancy indefinitely. As the stars, one by one, vanished until Jupiter alone was left, the feelings of companionship I have mentioned before deserted me.
Happily these feelings did not last, for soon in our quick sub-tropical way there came the sun. It fell on my senses like the call of a trumpet. Immediately its colours were run up the mast of the sky and their reflection below turned the sea into the deepest of blues. At the same time the day went into action. Half-way between me and the port horizon a school of dolphins broke surface and went leaping northward, working a gun-metal shuttle of silver-blue stitches in and out of the yellow hem of the morning. Just ahead a purple porpoise arched its lazy back on the water so slowly that not a ripple troubled the glassy surface around it. Close to starboard the triangular fin of a great shark began to keep dark determined station on us.
The crew at the same time appeared on deck. No whistle or bell had summoned them. They all knew only too well from experience when they were needed and what each man had to do. In all the years I was in the Kurt Hansen I was never to hear a bosun’s pipe or ship’s whistle used to muster her men. Yet on this first morning when, without warning, I saw them turn up around me, I was certain that it was not habit but Larsen who, in the soundless way that he had of imposing his will on men, had brought them bubbling out of the hatch on deck. I had already seen enough of this kind of communication among gregarious animals and birds who could know what their leader wanted without any visible or audible signal from him, to think that human beings could not be denied a similar gift. Each man, the moment he stepped clear of the hatch, looked up at the wheelhouse where the face and shoulders of Larsen, the sun on them, were clearly visible. Even my own comparatively unenlisted eyes again and again turned to those set, determined features. It was most noticeable, too, how, having had their look at the Captain, the whole crew went to work with a will.
One man made straight for the foremast and began climbing without a pause up to the crow’s-nest. My excited eyes took in every refinement of his technique. The firm grip on the rope with the hands, one hand never relaxing its hold to reach upward until the other had consolidated its own clasp; one foot firmly pressed into the rope in the hollow between the ball and heel of the foot so that it could not slip before the other was raised for the next rung with the whole weight of the man pressing down and backward like a monkey on a stick, so that the knees could not get entangled with the ladder, and the rope of each rung was allowed to sag so it could bite more securely into the middle of the foot. My heart followed him with my eyes until he stood securely in the tub just underneath the top of the slender mast, the sky a great-coat about his shoulders and the light of the morning a halo round his head. I think I knew already that, of all places in the Kurt Hansen, that was where I would most like to be. Also there seemed a glorious natural rightness that, at the very moment when everything in the world was reaching upward, the sun into the sky, the dolphins into the air, the porpoise and even the shark and its midnight fin to the glassy surface of the sea, the first action of man, too, should be to rise.
Directly he was in position he gave a quick look round the whole horizon, then signalled with his arms that there was nothing to report. It seemed at best a highly provisional judgement for he had taken so little time to examine so great a view. The reason for his hurry, however, was plain when I noticed Larsen leaning well out in front of the wheel, his face near the window, staring upward at his look-out in the crow’s-nest. The disbelief on his face at the negative signal and the distaste with which he stepped once more behind the wheel were most marked and filled me with some apprehension.
The next man, who happened to be mate and bosun combined, a huge, deeply religious, middle-aged father of seven, went right forward and climbed the platform in the bows on which the Kurt Hansen’s harpoon gun was mounted, securely swaddled in canvas against the damp like a Russian suckling against the Siberian cold.
At the same time one of the oldest members of the crew made for the wheelhouse. Now all our whalers, being designed to work in Antarctic as well as sub-tropical waters, had two interdependent steering and navigating systems: the one housed for rough and cold weather in the wheelhouse we had used all night; the other was on a small open bridge above it. The man had hardly vanished into the wheelhouse when Larsen appeared in the long level light of the sun on the open bridge. He must have gone up the interconnecting ladder at the double and appeared to be in a hurry, for at once I saw the ash-blue canvas which covered compass and signals box, stripped off and being rolled up against his broad chest. A moment later he was at the signals box, pulling at the levers. Their bell rang out at once loud and clear, and seconds later an acknowledgement in kind came up from the engine room. Satisfied that his bridge-system was functioning properly, Larsen took to the wheel and a moment later he was joined by the man from the wheelhouse below. It was obvious that Larsen could hardly wait to abandon the wheel to the newcomer, for he vanished almost immediately from my view to come striding down to the main deck. There he made his longest scrutiny yet of the crow’s-nest where the lookout was now methodically doing a steady detailed inspection of the entire horizon with German binoculars. Larsen, judging by the fierce expression that came to his face, found it more incredible than ever that the man still had nothing to report. In the end he went by me so angry that he didn’t even see me, although I had jumped to my feet to wish him good morning, and joined his bosun in the bows.
The speed with which the two men stripped the canvas from the gun was impressive. While the mate stored the canvas, Larsen seized the stock of the gun and began to swing it about on its swivel aiming it at all possible angles at imaginary whales in the sea. I had seen many hunters, including some of the greatest in Africa, go through these motions with their own weapons before setting out into the bush, and I knew, of course, that this was a precaution that no hunter of big game could neglect except at his peril. One could tell, too, what kind of man and how expert he was, from the way the hunter examined the actions of his gun. Watching Thor Larsen at a similar ritual with his harpoon gun, I knew somehow he was to be counted among the greatest. Nor did he stop with the gun. He paid as much attention to its charge as to the gun.
The harpoon with which it was loaded carried between folded flukes and sharp arrow point a war-head, a kind of grenade with a high degree of fragmentation. The grenade was designed to do two things: on explosion it spread the four folded flukes wide outward so that they gripped the flesh of the whale as firmly as ship’s anchor does the bed of the sea. At the same time it drove tiny fragments of steel everywhere deep into the vital organs of the whale in order to try to hasten its end. The tough steel flukes of the harpoon were designed to hold the whale, whatever the strain, and the slot in the neck of the harpoon shaft was thin so that a wire strap could connect it with the end of a cable of the best manilla.
This cable was neatly coiled on the platform in front of the gun before being led on to the deck below to a block and tackle at the foot of the mast, and from there up to a pulley at the end of a derrick, and from the pulley to a drum on a steam-winch between mast and wheelhouse. The pulley was attached as well to a powerful spring which acted both as shock-absorber and brake when the harpooned whale dived in its mortal pain and quickly ran out the ration of free cable coiled in the bow. In fact the whole mechanism, from the moment the whale was harpooned, enabled the machinist at the winch to play the whale as an angler does a salmon with rod and reel.
Accompanied by the mate, Larsen examined his highly mechanised fishing tackle inch by inch from harpoon tip to the drum on the winch. By the time he got to the winch the mechanic was there, and from the steam smoking over the drum it was obvious that already he had made certain that the power was there to operate it instantly. Even so, Larsen made him start up his engine, winding the slack on his rope several times in and out to make certain the whole mechanism was properly interconnected. All the time he would stop at intervals to give the crow’s-nest a fierce unbelieving look.
After one more look upwards Larsen suddenly stamped off back to the bridge with his resolute, rocking step. Once more the bells of the signals from the bridge to the engine room rang out imperiously. A moment later the beat of the engines changed and the thrash of the propeller decreased noticeably. At the same time the ship’s course altered, for I saw the Kurt Hansen’s impertinent nose slowly move slightly towards the east. Looking abaft at our milky wake, I noticed that we had begun a great wide circular sweep of the ocean at what I took to be at least half our former speed. Obviously the lack of positive news from the crow’s-nest had not changed Larsen’s conviction that there were whales in the vicinity.
When he came down on deck again a quarter of an hour later and there was still no sign of quarry, he looked baffled and for a moment rather irresolute and helpless as he stood there in the sun. I found myself feeling rather sorry for him. Then I saw him quickly square his shoulders, make for the companion-way to the saloon and vanish below without another glance at ship or crew.
I was not certain whether I should follow him or not. I felt that the moment had now come when I should go below and call my friend. Yet I was by now so under the domination of the Captain’s mood that I felt almost incapable of doing anything except by his command. I stood there irresolute, the slight air of that clear winter’s morning cool on my face, swaying as the great blue swell of the open sea rocked the Kurt Hansen, at one moment towering between it and the sun like a palace of glass and the next holding it up high on its shining ramparts. I had the feeling that I had become some kind of a puppet, and the ship indeed seemed just such another manipulated by an all-powerful sea.
Then Leif’s face appeared at the head of the campanion-way. He beckoned to me and called out: “Breakfast!”
I realised then that without knowing it I had grown almost faint from hunger. With the appetite of a healthy boy I hastened down into the saloon. Larsen was already seated at the head of the small table. A large enamel can of coffee, steaming at the spout, three empty enamel mugs, a huge wooden board holding a great loaf of fresh rye-bread, a bowl of yellow butter, sugar, an immense round cheese, three plates and three knives were placed squarely in front of him.
As I came barging in, he looked up sharply. His intense, vivid grey eyes, the eyes of a born witch-doctor as my host’s butler had described them a week before, looked up at me for a moment without really seeing me. If he were a house visited by strange spirits (as the butler had warned me and as I by now was inclined to believe), he was not being visited just then. His eyes appeared to see nothing. It was quite frightening, and the air in that little triangle of a saloon, though lit with the sun coming through the porthole, seemed dark around him. The sense of total obliteration within him made me think of a diver who, in the bed of a clear sea and at the point of snatching a pearl, found his light extinguished by a discharge of ink by the giant squid stalking strange game in the coral forests. The scraping of the sea against the ship’s thin sides, louder than ever in my ears since the Kurt Hansen’s reduced speed, lent a startling validity to my unsought underwater association.
Nervously, I remarked loudly: “Good morning, sir. It’s a lovely morning, isn’t it?”
He went on looking at me as if from some remote dimension.
Presently he growled, “Food. Eat. Call your friend, not?”
Relieved, I went directly through the curtains of his cabin, knelt by Eric’s bunk, took him by the shoulder and said: “Wake up, little old one,fn1 wake up! Time to get up and eat!”
Poor fellow, there was no need to wake him, for he groaned instantly at my touch exclaiming, “Oh, do leave me alone. Can’t you see how awful I feel?”
“Oh, come on!” I remonstrated. “You’ll feel better for some food and fresh air. It’s a lovely day on deck!”
At that he did sit up. Unfortunately his gallant effort coincided with one of the greatest swells the Kurt Hansen had encountered yet. She climbed it swiftly, shuddering as if with ague, at so steep an angle that the curtains in the cabin vanished through the entrance into the saloon, leaving so wide a gap that I saw the Captain’s chair at the head of the table and part of his motionless back. Then down she came again so quickly that the curtain came swinging again through the entrance until it nearly touched the opposite wall.
“Oh, God!” my friend exclaimed, sinking back into his bunk again. It says a great deal for his will that as he did so he apologized and added: “Please don’t let me spoil the day for you. It’s no use. I’ve been through all this before. If I can’t take the movement lying down, I know I shan’t be able to standing up.”
“Coffee might help?” I suggested.
“Later. Just leave me alone, now, will you?” He answered with such vehemence that I left, promising to look in on him from time to time.
“I’m afraid he’s not feeling at all well,” I told the Captain back in the saloon.
He took the news without a word, just signalling to me with his hand to be seated and pushing the breakfast board towards me.
I thought it best to comply without a word, so I helped myself to a plate and knife, cut a thick crisp crust from the fresh rye loaf and a chunk of yellow Norwegian cheese, took a knob of butter and poured out a steaming mugful of coffee.
All the time Larsen had stared unseeingly before him but now suddenly he began to be interested in my presence. At first I did not like the new look at all. I felt he was not seeing me as I myself was, but as a character on the stage of his own internal drama. We are an Old Testament people in Africa and Africa is an Old Testament country, and this was an Old Testament moment at sea. I had been brought up to know the Old Testament almost by heart, and the look on Larsen’s face made me think of Saul glowering at young David playing the harp just before hurling a spear at him. It so alarmed me that, as a natural act of appeasement, I stood up, took him the mug of coffee, put it down in front of him without speaking, returned to my own place trembling inwardly, and poured myself another cup and began my meal.
I have not since tasted any food I liked more than this simple meal. There was a wonderful ancient smell of fresh bread which came from the loaf once I had cut it. It was more astringent than bread made from wheat and so therefore more appropriate since it countered the heavier, all pervasive smell of the whale. It joined with the smell of freshly made coffee, which is the one substance I know that smells even better than it tastes. I seldom get a whiff of coffee or a smell of new bread even today without remembering briefly the boy eating his first breakfast in the Kurt Hansen’s saloon.
Eating with such relish pushed my nervousness into the background, and soon I had the courage to look at the Captain again. He was still watching me but more closely.
As his eyes met mine, he exclaimed with satisfaction: “By God, you not sick! You damn hungry, not?”
I nodded emphatically, looking steadily at him over the rim of my mug of coffee. This seemed to have a soothing effect on him.
“You friend damn sick, not?” he said again, pausing before going on in a resentful voice far too loud for my liking because I was afraid my friend could not help hearing it. “He is sick because he’s spoilt rich boy. His father spoilt rich merchant. All owners are spoilt. All peoples on land spoilt. Bah!”
His broad hand clenched and hit at the empty air, then he pushed his chair violently away, stood up, reached for my plate which was now empty, and said: “Now! I show you proper unspoilt whaler’s breakfast!”
With that he cut me a slice twice as thick as the crust I had just eaten, spread it three times deeper in butter, cut a portion of cheese as thick as the slice of bread and, slapping the two together, pushed the plate at me, rasping out confidently, “You like that, not?”
“Thank you, sir,” I said, and added: “Gosh, but it’s a whale of a helping!”
“A whale of a helping!” he repeated deliberately after me.
I believe at another time and place he might have laughed. As it happened, it was a triumph that he was not displeased. He gave me a look of some approval, then dropped back into the bottom of the cleft mood in which I had found him. Snatching up his cap which lay on the floor beside him, he lumbered out of the saloon, leaving the mug of coffee I had poured out for him untouched on the table.
I was finishing my fourth slice of bread and cheese when Leif appeared.
Seeing the diminished loaf and lifting the can of coffee and finding it empty, he said, “Good! It looks as if the Captain’s had something at last.”
I flushed and then confessed that it was I who had done all the eating and drinking.
Leif shook his head wearily. “I might have known it! He never does the first morning out. So it’s just to be another of those days . . .” He shrugged his shoulders and then added: “But I’m glad you ate well. There’s a long day ahead. In fact, if you like, I’ll make you some fresh coffee.”
However, I had had enough, but I went on to tell him that I was concerned about my friend and wondered if there was anything I could do to help him?
Food to be sick on, fresh air and keeping on one’s feet at all costs were the quickest cures, Leif assured me. In any case I was not to worry because sea-sickness was very good for the human system.
I had not much hope of success but felt compelled to try out Leif’s advice on Eric.
“For God’s sake, leave me alone, can’t you?” was his only response.
After that I had no conscience in hastening away to go on deck. I went through the saloon from which Leif, together with all signs and smells of breakfast, had vanished. A ray of the sun shining through the porthole had found the bookcase in the corner and was moving across its contents like a finger, dipped in the ink of fate, once did over a Babylonian wall. It moved from “The Pilot’s Manual”, “Lloyd’s Register of Shipping”, the “Holy Bible”, on towards Larsen’s moroccan bound volumes of his kills and then back again, according to how the Kurt Hansen rolled and dipped to the beat of the Indian Ocean on her way out into that great, glossy, bland and blank winter’s day.
fn1 Literal translation of Afrikaans “Outie” much favoured in my youth as an affectionate form of address.