Chapter 12

The Whale’s Belly

Merely two weeks into the transatlantic voyage aboard the Sea Mist, Clare discovered the iniquities of the life she hoped she left behind had followed her aboard the ship.

There were those who lived above and those who dwelled below.

When they weren’t sequestered in their tiny cabins, the few privileged passengers hovered in the restricted forecastle area at the front of the ship, clinging to the modicum of pretension and entitlement available. In a ship originally designed for open sea battles, there were few luxuries retrofitted in the vessel, with perhaps the most treasured being the boundary between the general citizenry and the impoverished ones in the bowels of the steerage section.

Down below in the stench-filled cargo hull, a rumor was spreading there was sunshine above, something distributed as scarcely during this winter journey as food and water.

As fleeting as this chance for fresh air and needed chores could be, a scramble was afoot. In the dim light of rationed candles, the cramped passengers pushed their way to the ladder leading above, with curses and raised fists. They gathered soiled clothing, overflowing chamber pots, and food to cook on the few stoves available above deck.

They funneled through the narrow aisle, with three rows of wooden shelves protruding from the walls on either side, serving as crude bed frames. Filthy straw mattresses lay on them, as well as scattered clothing and moth-eaten blankets. In the knotting of scurrying legs, Clare tripped and bumped into the back of an older gentleman. “Beg your pardon.”

“Mind your step!” There was anger in his gray-browed eyes, but down below, in such tight and miserable quarters, they were all ill-tempered, rats in a cage baring their teeth.

“Watch your tone with the lady.” Clare turned to see Pierce pressing behind her.

Seamus was farther back in the crowd. He held up a few potatoes and shouted to them. “Get us in line for a boil.”

“You’ll wait for hours,” grumbled a woman next to Clare. She held up a bag. “Might as well eat these oats raw. We could chew on the biscuits they give us, if we had no intentions for keeping our teeth.”

Up front there was a shout and a clearing in the crowd.

As the line stopped, Pierce was now being shoved into Clare. “What happened?”

The woman turned and pinched her nose. “Oh, dear me. Someone spilled a stench pot. Ah, curse the life in the belly of the whale. That mad captain of ours deserves to be hung for this.”

Pierce shouted up to those crawling up the ladder through the hatch to daylight. “Get up with you. Let us out.”

A voice hollered back, “That’s good on you, boy. I’ll have one of these boots greet you when you come up.”

Clare rubbed her temples, her head now aching from the anxiety and foulness in the air. Her only hope for comfort was for the days to pass quickly.

Several mornings later, well before dawn, Clare suffered such discomfort from the hardness of her cot, her back throbbed with pain. After turning dozens of times through the hours of the night and unable to find relief, she decided to go above deck.

She crept past the snores of the masses below and guided herself only by memory and the feel of her feet along the creaking floorboards. Clare finally reached out to the ladder and climbed up through the hatch, which moaned as it lifted. Above, in a moonless night, with a scattering of brilliant stars, she felt invigorated by this rare moment of aloneness.

The creaks of the masts, the flaps of the sails and the bending of the rigging in the wind, and the lapping of the waves added to an ambience that sent chills through her body. The cold of the night caused her to wrap her arms tightly around her chest. So silly. She should have brought a blanket.

In the background, as figures moving in the shadows, a small crew labored above and around her in silence, spiders moving among the web. At times, she would catch a face or see arms trimming a sail, and they would pass each other and converse. Clare reveled in the fact she had eluded their notice.

Looking over the port side, her thoughts meandered with the rise and fall of the ship in the massive emptiness of the dark waters. When had she ever felt so alive with freedom?

The smell of the ocean transported Clare back to a time in her youth. In happier days, she enjoyed a rare family excursion to the sea cliffs of Galway. Although she was only four at the time, the memory remained rich. Cool and crisp salted air, the craggy, moss-covered boulders, and endless views beyond a deep tapestry of churning blue.

Down on the shoreline, Clare and her older sister, Margaret, pranced in the waves among the swooping ballet of gulls, herons, and swans, as moist sand pressed between their bare toes.

Maggie, who was eight at the time, shone her familiar grin of mischief. “C’mon, will ya, Clare? Let’s see how far the ocean goes.”

“Ma says no.” At age four, the waves raged tall and mighty and Clare would brave only as high as her ankles.

“Fine then, I’ll go without you.”

Maggie waved and then danced and yelped in the frigid chest-high waves and she pressed farther and farther. Above the chattering birds and the ocean’s thunderous percussion, her rebellious laughter soared.

“Maggie!” With baby Seamus cradled in her arms, Ma screamed from the shoreline, waving her free arm, begging her oldest to shallower waters.

But Maggie merely leapt and spun in the deeper waters. She must have known her mother wouldn’t brave the chilly waters to retrieve her. And Da was far down the shoreline, untangling his fishing line and presumably cursing at ocean spirits.

Years later, Maggie recaptured this adventure through one her many ink drawings, a particular favorite of Clare’s, a sketch so precious she stored it in the pages of the Bible Grandma Ella gave her.

And now, peering into the emptiness, Clare reflected with some horror at the thought of Maggie’s last moments as her ship sank to the bottom of the sea, her brilliant torch of life extinguished by the salt water amidst screams of anguish. The tragedy compounded in Clare’s mind as she imagined her Uncle Tomas’s desperate efforts to rescue Maggie, prior to succumbing himself to the ocean’s cruel, cold arms.

Clare was angry with herself for drifting toward these forbidden thoughts as she had been enjoying the euphoria of solitude as master of the ship. In an effort to recapture the moment, she slipped toward the forbidden area of the forecastle, and the giddiness returned as she climbed the steps in purloined pleasure.

As her feet touched the floorboards, she felt elevated to the level of her elite shipmates. Imagining herself cloaked in a dress fashioned in Paris, she was about to mock a curtsy when she caught something askance. She froze.

Someone else was at the bow of the ship, gaping toward the distant lands ahead. The darkness obscured her view to where she could vaguely make out a shadow.

She saw a movement and realized it was someone drawing a cup of tea to his lips. As her eyes adjusted, she was horrified to realize she was looking at the backside of the captain, who other than a pair of boots was as naked as the day he was born.

He appeared to be unaware of her presence, enraptured by the endless horizon.

Clare stepped backward, ever so gingerly, crept down the stairs, and slid down the hatch.