Neil Hanson - The Custom of the Sea

The captain turned his back and did not reply.

‘In God’s name, Captain. Please help us.’

He turned to look at Tom. ‘How many are there of you?’

‘Four. All Christian Englishmen like you, with wives and families at home.’

The captain was already shaking his head. ‘We cannot help you.’

‘But if you leave us here, we will die.’

The man did not reply.

Tom stared at him. ‘If you will not help us in any other way, at least give us a little water and food.’

‘We have none to spare. Better to starve in that craft than to perish from the same fate in this.’ He turned away and shouted to his men. As they hesitated, he cursed them. ‘Aloft, damn you, and make sail.’

The men jumped for the rigging. As the sails began to unfurl and fill with wind, Brooks shouted, ‘You’re a liar. You’re as fat and well fed as a bacon pig. Damn you and all your kind to hell.’

The captain ignored him. The gap between the two craft widened, slowly at first, then at a gathering pace. Brooks remained in the bow shouting hoarse curses at the barque, then sank to his knees. He lay down and wormed his way under the scrap of canvas covering the bow, hiding his head like a child burrowing under his bedsheets.

Richard buried his face in his hands and began to sob — a terrible dry, rasping sound. No one moved to console him, each man too wrapped in his own black thoughts.

‘We were now in our worst straits. We used to sit and look at each other gradually wasting away, hunger and thirst in each face. The nights were the worst time. We used to dread them very much; they seemed never to end. We were so weak and cramped that we could hardly move. If we did get any sleep our dreams would be of eating and drinking.’

That night a rain squall passed over them and they caught some more water. Tom’s hands were shaking so much that he spilled much of it as he tried to transfer some from his oilskin to the chronometer case, hoping to save it for a later moment.

There was no rain on the next day or the next, Sunday, 20 July, when Tom at last prevailed on them to give up their shirts. Stephens and the boy seemed past caring, lying listless in the bottom of the boat. Brooks began to argue again, then shrugged. ‘What does it matter? We’re doomed anyway. We’ll die of sunstroke or thirst, but die we shall.’ He took off his shirt and handed it to Tom.

Tom let Richard keep his shirt, but lashed the other three together, two above and one below, to form a triangular sail. They used an oar for a mast and split one of the boards for a yardarm. Tom hammered the back of his knife with the baler to open a crack in the wood, then forced it apart with the edge of the chronometer case until the board split along its length.

The shrouds and stays were fashioned out of the heart and outer strands of the boat’s painter. With the makeshift sail rigged, the stern seats lashed up and a strong south-easterly blowing, they found the boat would run sternways before the wind, as long as there was not too much of a swell, and they made two or three knots.

Later that day they were rewarded by the sight of another sail, coming up from the south-west. Its course lay to the west of them and as Stephens steered, Tom and Brooks seized the oars, trying to row closer to its path.

The ship passed within four hundred yards of them. Tom could make out the faces of crewmen standing at the rail, staring towards them, but the ship neither slowed nor deviated from its course. Brooks cursed and cursed until his cracked voice failed him, but driven by the wind, the ship passed and was gone from sight within minutes, leaving them once more alone.

Brooks rounded on Stephens and they began a senseless, bitter argument about the distance the ship had been from them. Fists clenched, they glared at each other and might have fought had Tom not interposed himself and cursed them both to silence. Brooks retreated to his sanctuary in the bow and spoke no more to anyone that day.

The cruel indifference to their fate of the two ships only fuelled the burning determination within Tom to survive, but he could tell from the faces of the others that the faint hope of rescue to which they had clung was now extinguished.

The sting of salt on their skin added to the pain of their sunburn and together with the salt-water boils from which they were all suffering made even the slightest pressure unbearable. As they crawled about the cramped dinghy, taking their turns to steer and bale, it was impossible not to brush against each other, but the pain it caused was so agonizing that Stephens screamed aloud whenever he was touched.

That night the wind dropped and in the calmer conditions Richard took the night watch. Tom and Brooks were asleep but Stephens was only dozing when he heard an unfamiliar sound and opened his eyes. Richard was leaning over the side, scooping up sea-water in one of the empty tins. He drank some of it then looked round. He started as he saw the mate watching him.

Stephens put his finger to his lips, then worked his way back to the stern. He bent close to the boy’s ear and whispered, ‘How does it taste, Dick?’

‘Not so bad.’

Stephens glanced behind him, then took the tin and swallowed a mouthful. He coughed and spluttered, then spat out the remainder. ‘It burns my throat like fire. It’s madness, Dick, you should not do that again.’

‘Then what would you have me do — die of thirst instead?’

Stephens crawled back to his berth and huddled down in the bottom of the boat, but just before he closed his eyes, he again saw Richard lower the tin into the water.

Tom was woken by the sound of the boy retching and vomiting over the side. Brooks grabbed the steering oar and Richard fell back and lay on the bottom of the dinghy, gasping for breath.

Tom put his hand on the boy’s forehead. It was burning hot. ‘What ails you, boy?’

‘I — I drank sea-water.’

‘How much did you drink?’

‘I don’t know, perhaps three pints.’

‘Then you’re worse than a fool,’ Brooks said.

Richard began to cry. No tears came from his matted eyes but his chest heaved with dry sobs. ‘I had to drink something.’

Brooks hesitated, then put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Cheer up, Dicky, it will all come right.’

He shook his head. ‘We shall all die.’

They left him where he lay and over the next few hours his condition worsened. He began to suffer from violent diarrhoea and several times Tom and Brooks had to help him to squat over the gunwale as his body was shaken by spasms. Then he crawled back into the bottom of the boat and lay bent double from the pains in his stomach.

That night he became delirious, shouting and ranting, and he began slipping in and out of consciousness. Each time he woke, he said the same thing, ‘I want a ship to get on board.’

The ship was all they ever heard him speak about. Whatever the frictions between them from time to time, the three others all shared an affection for the boy and did their best to lift his spirits, but he seemed barely to recognize them or hear their cracked voices. In one of his rare intervals of lucidity, he tried to drink some of his urine but was unable to do so, gagging and choking on it instead. He slumped down again.

There was a question in Tom’s eyes as he glanced at the others, but neither man would meet his gaze. ‘Something must be done,’ he said.

Brooks looked up. ‘Let us not talk of that further. Another ship will come.’

Tom shook his head and looked away. He pressed his fingers into the swollen flesh of his legs. The impressed marks turned white and remained visible for a long time after he released his grip. As he stared at them he felt something loose in his mouth. One of his teeth had dropped out. He spat it into his hand and threw it into the sea. He tested each of his other teeth with his fingers. All of them were loose in their sockets, barely held by his soft, pulpy gums.