Part 14 (1/2)
”He asked us then. You will back me on this.”
Pallister nods and glances at Cheyne who nods also. Cheyne tests the point of his stiletto with a callused thumb. A bead of blood falls to the waxed deck. Above; stillness. The one in the crow's nest watches. The four who are closer pretend concerns elsewhere. It is a hot and sultry day with not a breath of wind. There is little need for them to be up, but there the air is fresher in the rigging and the responsibility is nil.
”I cannot order you, Cheyne.”
Cheyne nods, then steps past to stoop down next to Chaff. Pallister and Hinks stand between him and the Captain. There is a crunch as of a vegetable being segmented. There is the spastic kicking of legs, then stillness. Chaff no longer suffers.
”Man born of Earth who strives upon this sea ... ”
The prayers are sincere and the sermon long and boring for the crew. The Captain a.s.suages the guilt he feels at missing Chaff's death by reading the man's last rights. What remains of Chaff has been st.i.tched into an old sailcloth and weighted with lumps of salt. Hinks watches it slide into the sea, a small splash, nothing really. Below decks the Barrelman cuts ligaments and drops Chaff's bones into the maggot barrel. As is the way, his bones will be fas.h.i.+oned into a great knife along with the skin of the jable shark his other remains will summon. The shark is not long in coming.
”Fin. Fin. Fin.”
Pallister thumps the haft of his great knife against the deck. The chant is taken up by the rest of the crew as a fin a yard high slices their slow wake and takes the cloth-wrapped b.l.o.o.d.y morsel before the salt can take it right down. It is bad luck, but they are used to that.
”Fin. Fin. Fin.”
”Second Boat!” yells the Captain, and the windla.s.ses are manned. With a clatter of bone ratchets the boat folds out level. The twins leap aboard to stow the coils of rope and floats. They are not allowed to touch Pallister's barbs for he believes it is bad luck for them to be handled by women. Cheyne is not so superst.i.tious and hands his down. As the boat is loaded the Barrelman comes out on deck and the chant becomes quieter in deference to him. He has the black skin that marked him for his position from birth, for only by the hands of those born of the dark may the dead be handled before their last pa.s.sage into it. His face and shaven skull are dyed white and his eyes are blue. All the crew fear and love him.
Six crew board the longboat: the twins, Pallister and Cheyne, Hinks and the Captain. The Barrelman has charge of the s.h.i.+p, but then, he always has had charge.
”Lower away!”
The ratchets clatter again and the boat drops to the sea. As it hits the surface the fin turns and moves in. Who is hunting whom? Hinks wonders as four scapula oars dig into the water and shoot the boat forward.
”It comes!” The Captain clutches a wax-proofed copy of the book to his chest as he shouts. ”First knife!”
Cheyne stands with a great knife ready. Behind the blade he has mounted one of the detachable barbs from which a rope coils to a sea-cork float. The sunlight glints on the waves and the jable shark approaches in a tide of golden bands. They can all see its dead b.u.t.ton eyes.
”Steady.” The Captain is firm. Cheyne is firm. The shark's expression is all tooth-bone and flesh-ripping horror.
”Now!” The Captain, a second after Cheyne has made his cut.
The boat is rocked at the edge of a strike. The fin clips an oar as it is raised. The rope thrums as it goes out and the float hits the water with a dull flat smack. Cheyne stands with his knife emptied of its barb and the shark paints a red line from behind its right eye, a curving line, as it turns.
”Second knife!”
Pallister has his place and is ready. Soon two lines of blood flee the boat, turn, return, three lines then four, until at last the shark has had enough and tries to dive.
”Row, boys, row!”
They pursue the bobbing and jerking floats that reflect the shark's struggles. Down below; a cloud of blood at the nexus of four taut ropes. Then out of the cloud the toothed horror comes again, slowed and tangled. Cheyne's unbarbed cut is true and the great knife goes in behind the shark's head and severs its cartilaginous spine. The shark is held on the surface in the tangle of ropes and floats, and the blood spreads.
”Heave, boys, heave!”
The Captain holds the Book in his hand, the proper book, the s.h.i.+p's book. One of the twins mutters something filthy about his continual use of 'boys'. There was no proof to the rumour, though.
By slow increments and ratcheting clicks they hoist the jable shark from the sea using the same windla.s.ses used to lower the boat. The weight heels the s.h.i.+p over and b.l.o.o.d.y water rains down its side. No fins are in sight, but there is time yet. Hinks hauls with the crew. Two sharks snapping at a dead one on the side of a s.h.i.+p is enough to pull that s.h.i.+p over. He knows. He has seen. In the long boat Cheyne and Pallister keep ready to drive sharks away, but only adapted squid swarm around the s.h.i.+p. Even so, they will not be was.h.i.+ng their b.l.o.o.d.y hands in the water as Chaff did.
The white water of an approaching fin is seen as they lower the corpse onto the deck and open the blood drains. Cheyne and Pallister soon attach lines to the boat and the new shark only manages to nudge it once before it is hauled up the side of the s.h.i.+p.
”Open her up, boys. Let the shark soul free.”
It is Cheyne's honour under the sight of the Barrelman. He uses the hull metal great knife in one flamboyant slice. Steaming guts avalanche across the deck at the unzipping. The opening of the stomach at the last spills a hundred weight of turtle crabs, an almond-shaped sh.e.l.l the size of a barrel, the remains of Chaff and, what appears to be the corpse of a small boy until it convulses and spews salt water from its lungs.
”Shark soul,” hisses Pallister as the Captain hauls the boy to his feet. Hinks glares at the Knifeman, then turns to one of the twins as she speaks.
”Sea people?” she wonders.
Hinks stares at her. Is she Jan or Char? He has never known as they deliberately confuse. He turns back as the Captain pushes away damp fair hair to inspect the boy's neck for gill slits.
”Not of the sea people,” he tells the crew. ”Where are you from, boy? How is it you come live from the belly of this shark?”
The boy stares at him with blue and innocent eyes and Hinks does not like the expression that twists the Captain's mouth.
”Deal with this shark. I shall question him in my cabin.”
He pulls the naked boy away and the twins nod an affirmative to each other.
”That is not a boy. That is the soul of this shark come to avenge. We must cast it back in the sea.”
”Pallister, why so sure of this?”
”Always 'release the soul' and we see nothing. This time, something. A reason for the words. We always throw the innards and their contents back though they could be used.”
” 'Tis no soul of a shark.” They turn as the Barrelman comes upon the deck. ”Yet it seems not likely it is a boy.”
”What should we do?”
”As the Captain instructs. As always: by the Book of the Sea.”
With great knives and small knives they cut the shark. The innards go back into the sea after, with cursory ceremony, the remains of Chaff. The hull thumps with movement below the waves: squid and the b.u.t.ting of sharks. Barnacles never grow on the hull of a jable hunter, but weed often grows on the teeth left jammed into the wood.
They skin the shark and the Barrelman takes its skin to preserve and prepare for lamination - one of the many uses of a skin with a colour and a texture called jable. The salted meat they store in the barrels he marks, the fat is rendered for oil, and the cartilage stored in brine for later use in the manufacture of glue. When all is done, they wash the deck clean and replace the blood drains. All around the sea foams and great dark bodies surface and dive. All around, fins.
Night seems to drive the last of the sharks away or perhaps another jable hunter has cast a bucket of blood into the sea. Hinks knows there are those who prefer to hunt by the light of the moons, those who make it a mystic thing of ceremony and sacrifice, and toast each kill with shark's blood drunk from whelk-sh.e.l.l cups. As he pulls in nacreous glitters of green mackerel and snaps their necks with his forefinger and thumb he wonders what questions the Captain might be asking now. It has been some time since he took the boy to his cabin. No matter, no concern. Hinks casts his line of lures back into the sea as the two yellow moons the twins have their names from break over the horizon like glaring eyes.
”He b.u.g.g.e.rs an innocent while Pallister talks of shark souls, Cheyne sharpens all his knives, and you catch mackerel we don't need.”
Hinks stares the pile of mackerel next to him then looks up at one of the twins. ”Are you Jan?”
She ignores the question. ”In Piezel they would crush his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es and throw him to the jable. We sit idle while he gratifies l.u.s.t.”
”Many would, given opportunity.”
She steps more into the moonlight and stands with her hands on her hips. ”I might give you opportunity, Hinks. It is for me to say yes or no and for you to accept or not. This boy has been given no such choices.”
Hinks reels his handline back onto its frame then climbs tiredly to his feet. It is his responsibility, just like with Chaff. They all know what the Captain is doing and they all know it is wrong, but only he can do anything, by the Book.
”Back me up then. Where is your sister?”