Neil Hanson - The Custom of the Sea

Despite the positive face he took care to present to his crew, he was now privately certain that they would die. He took out the note he had begun writing to Philippa the morning after the shipwreck and scrawled a few more lines with the stub of his pencil.

9th picked up turtle. 21st July we have been here 17 days and have no food. We are all four living hoping to get passing ship if not dear we must soon die. Mr Thomson will put everything right if you go to him and I am sorry dear I ever started such a trip but I was doing it for our best. Thought so at the time. You know dear I should so much like to be spared you would find I should lead a Christian life for the remainder of my days. If ever this note reaches your hands dear you know the last of your Tom and loving husband. I am sorry things are gone against us thus far but hope to meet you and all our dear children in heaven. Do love them for my sake dear bless them and you all. I love you all dearly you know but it is God’s will if I am to part from you but have hopes of being saved. We were about 1300 miles from Cape Town when the affair happened. So goodbye and God bless you all and may He provide for you all. Your loving husband, Tom Dudley.

There was no rain again that day. They lay sprawled in the boat without speaking, neither awake nor asleep, their minds drifting. Tom was astonished at the breadth and depth of his recall. Long-forgotten events, some great, some small, returned to him with crystal clarity. He heard the voices of childhood in his head and saw the village children scrambling over the fields, marshes and saltings. He saw Philippa at the piano in their first house in Oreston and heard every note of the songs she sang.

When he fell asleep, he was tortured by the same constant recurring dreams — soft rainfall speckling the surface of the Blackwater, morning mist hanging over Woodrolfe Creek, the cool shade of the trees in the sunlit meadows where he and Philippa used to walk, and the lemonade, cold from the cellar, that she would bring to him as he sat in the garden at Sutton and the children played in the grass around his feet.

Then he would jerk awake, dragged back to the present by his thirst and the pains in his body. To move was agony, but to remain still for long was an impossibility, as the rough boards dug into him and his salt-encrusted clothes chafed at his sores.

Even the effort of swallowing his urine tortured him. It was thick, yellow and stained with blood, and his throat seemed so dry and constricted that he could barely force it down without choking. It gave him no relief from his thirst.

By the following morning the men’s mouths had become so parched and their tongues so swollen, they could hardly speak at all. Richard still lay in the bottom of the boat drifting between consciousness and oblivion.

Tom looked down at him, then glanced at the others. ‘Better for one to die than for all of us.’ Even to speak was torture, the words seeming to tear at his dry, cracked throat. ‘I am willing to take my chance with the rest, but we must draw lots.’

‘No. We shall see a ship tomorrow,’ Stephens said.

‘And if we do not?’

No one replied.

The day passed without rain and when a shower did come just after midnight, it barely troubled their upturned mouths or dampened their capes.

Although he hardly slept at all, Tom’s mind drifted constantly. Mirages began to appear to him. He saw lush islands and snow-capped mountains rising sheer from the sea, and a bank of haze lying on the water became the chalk cliffs of Kent. Sailing ships bore down on the dinghy and he was pulling himself upright, heart pounding with joy, when the vision faded again, leaving only the endless wastes of empty ocean.

Then he saw his father standing on the end of a jetty, beckoning to him. He felt drawn to the side of the dinghy and had to fight the urge to slip over the side into the water. He shook his head and shouted, ‘No, I cannot do it,’ in his cracked voice. The others barely stirred as he slumped down again.

Whenever he did lapse into unconsciousness, he dreamed of walking out of the dinghy across the sea to a beach or a waiting boat. Once he woke to find that his legs were already over the gunwale, his feet trailing in the water. The discovery barely shocked him; sometimes he saw himself slipping downwards as the green waters closed over him, and dreamed that he was already dead.

The next morning dawned hot and leaden once more. Tom leaned forward and laid his hand on the boys forehead. It was still burning hot and his breathing was shallow and erratic. ‘Dick? Do you hear me, boy?’ he said, his voice a cracked whisper.

There was no reply.

Tom sat back on his haunches and looked at the others. ‘You both know what must be done.’

‘Better for us all to die than for that,’ Brooks said.

‘Even when the death of one might save the lives of the rest? You are a bachelor, but Stephens and I are family men. It is not just our own lives, we have the fate of others to consider. Would you have us see our children cast into destitution, even the workhouse, when we have the means at hand to save ourselves and keep them from that fate?’

‘I, too, have a—’ Brooks began, then fell silent. ‘At least wait for him to die,’ he said. ‘Let us not have the boy’s murder on our consciences.’

‘But if we wait for him to die, his blood will congeal in his veins. We must kill him if we are to drink the blood. And it must be done, it may save three lives.’

Brooks again shook his head. He lay down in the bow and hid his head under the canvas.

Stephens did not speak, but Tom read a different message in his eyes.

That night Brooks had the watch from midnight. While he steered, Tom and Stephens sat in the bow, talking in whispers.

‘What’s to be done?’ Tom said. ‘I believe the boy is dying. Brooks is a bachelor — or says he is — but you have a wife and five children, and I have a wife and three children. Human flesh has been eaten before.’

Stephens hesitated. ‘See what daylight brings forth.’

‘But if sunrise brings no rain and no sign of a sail?’

Stephens stared out over the dark water, then muttered, ‘God forgive me,’ and nodded.

Soon after dawn Tom and Stephens hauled themselves up in turn on the improvised rigging and searched the horizon for a sail. There was none in sight under the cloudless sky. Richard still lay in the bottom of the boat, with his head on the starboard side and his feet on the port side, his arm across his face. He was rapidly sinking into unconsciousness.

‘We shall have to draw lots,’ Stephens said. ‘It is the custom of the sea.’

Richard lay comatose in the bottom of the dinghy and gave no sign that he had heard Stephens’s words. Brooks remained silent and Tom did not wait for a reply from him. He pulled out his knife and whittled four thin slivers of wood from the gunwale of the dinghy. He trimmed three to equal length and cut the other one a half-inch shorter.

‘We’ll have to draw Dick’s lot for him,’ Stephens said.

The three men exchanged looks between themselves. Tom laid the pieces of wood across his palm, the ends protruding beyond his index finger. The shortest lot was on the right. Palm open, he showed them to Stephens and Brooks. Then, without changing their positions, he closed his hand over the bottom ends of the slivers and held them out.

Brooks licked his blackened lips and, as Stephens hesitated, he reached past him and took the left-hand lot. Stephens took the next. Tom was about to complete the ritual by taking the next when he paused, looked the others in the eye and then threw the remaining slivers into the sea.

‘Why go through this charade?’ he said. ‘What is to be gained when one lies dying anyway? We all know what must be done. Let us be honest men about it, at least.’