Amitav Ghosh - Sea of Poppies

It was Mr Crowle, and much to Paulette's relief, he was shouting not at her, but at someone else: since his voice was pitched to the tone he commonly employed with the lowest of the lascars, Paulette assumed that he was shouting at some unfortunate launder or topas. But such was not the case; looking aft, she saw that it was Zachary who had been thus addressed. He was on the quarter-deck, heading back to his cabin after the end of his watch. His face went red as he came to the fife-rails. 'Were you speaking to me, Mr Crowle?'

'That's right.'

'What is it?'

'What's this hugger-mugger business over here? Were y'fuckin asleep on yer watch?'

'Where, Mr Crowle?'

'Come'n see for yer own bleedin self.'

This being a mealtime, the deck was about as noisy as it ever was, with dozens of girmitiyas, overseers, lascars and bhandaris talking, jostling and arguing over the food. The exchange between the mates brought the hubbub to an abrupt end: that there was bad blood between the malums was a secret to no one, and every eye turned to watch as Zachary made his way forward, towards the bows.

'What's wrong, Mr Crowle?' said Zachary, stepping up to the fo'c'sle-deck.

'You tell me.' The first mate pointed at something ahead and Zachary leant over the bows to take a look. 'D'ye have the eyes to see it, Mannikin – or do you need it explained?'

'I see the problem, Mr Crowle,' said Zachary straightening up. 'The traveller is unseized and the jib and martingale are afoul of the dolphin-striker. How it happened I cannot imagine, but I'll fix it.'

Zachary had begun to roll up his sleeves when Mr Crowle stopped him. 'Not yer job, Reid. Not yer place to tell me how it's to be fixed neither. Nor who's to do it.'

Turning aft, the first mate surveyed the deck with a hand over his eyes, squinting hard, as though he were looking for someone in particular. The search ended when he caught sight of Jodu, who was lounging in the kursi of the foremast: 'You there, Sammy!' He curled his finger to summon Jodu to the bows.

'Sir?' Taken by surprise, Jodu pointed to himself, as if to ask for confirmation.

'Yes, you! Get a move on, Sammy.'

'Sir!'

While Jodu was climbing down, Zachary was remonstrating with the first mate: 'He'll only do himself harm, Mr Crowle. He's a raw hand…'

'Not so raw he couldn't pick y'out o'the water,' said the first mate. 'Let's see him try his luck with the jib-boom.'

Alarmed now, Paulette elbowed her way to the forward bulwarks, where many migrants were standing clustered, and found herself a spot from which she could watch Jodu as he climbed out on the schooner's bowsprit, over the heaving sea. Till now, Paulette had paid little attention to the vessel's architecture, treating her masts, sails and rigging as a crazed cat's-cradle of canvas and hemp, pulleys and pins. She saw now that the bowsprit, for all that it looked like a mere extension of the schooner's ornamental figurehead, was actually a third mast, a lateral one, that stuck out over the water. Like the other two masts, the bowsprit was equipped with an extension, the jib-boom, so that the whole ensemble, when fitted together, jutted a good thirty feet beyond the schooner's cutwater. Strung out along the boom were three triangular lateen sails: it was the outermost of these that had somehow wrapped itself into a tangle and that was where Jodu was making his way, to the farthest tip of the jib-boom – the Devil's-tongue.

The Ibis was mounting a wave as Jodu began his advance, and the first part of his journey was an ascent, in which he was pulling himself along a pole that was pointing skywards. But when the crest of the wave passed, the climb became a descent, with the Devil's-tongue angled towards the depths. He reached the jib just as the Ibis went nose-first into the trough between two swells. The momentum of the schooner's slide sent her plunging into the water, with Jodu clinging on, like a barnacle to the snout of a sounding whale. Down and down he went, the white of his banyan becoming first a blur, and then disappearing wholly from view as the sea surged over the bowsprit and lapped over the bulwark. Paulette caught her breath as he went under, but he was gone so long that she was forced to breathe again – and yet again – before the Ibis began to raise her nose from the water, riding the next upswell. Now, as the bowsprit rose from the water, Jodu was seen to be lying flat, with his arms and legs wrapped tightly around the wooden tongue. When it reached the end of its trajectory, the jib seemed to flip upwards, as if to send its rider catapulting into the clouds of canvas above. A stream of water came sluicing back, along the bowsprit, drenching many of the spectators who were standing crowded around the bows. Paulette scarcely noticed the water: she wanted only to know that Jodu was alive, and still able to hold on – after a ducking like that, surely he would need whatever strength he had left for the climb back to the deck?

Zachary, in the meanwhile, was stripping off his shirt: 'The hell with you, Mr Crowle; I'm not going to stand by and see a man lost.'

The schooner was mounting a swell when Zachary leapt on the bowsprit, and the Devil's-tongue was still above water when he passed the dolphin-striker. During the next few seconds, with the schooner's head clear of the waves, Jodu and Zachary worked fast, cutting away ropes and cables, thrusting blocks and pulleys into their pockets. Then the schooner began her downwards plunge and both men flattened themselves on the boom – but their hands were now hampered with so many odds and ends of rope and canvas that it seemed impossible that they would be able to find a proper hold.

Hé Rám! A collective cry went up from the migrants as the Devil's-tongue plunged into the water, pushing the sailors below the surface. Suddenly, with the shock of an epiphany, it dawned on Paulette that the sea now had in its grasp the two people who mattered most to her in all the world. She could not bear to watch and her gaze strayed instead to Mr Crowle. He, too, had his eyes fixed on the bowsprit, and she saw, to her astonishment, that his face, usually so hard and glowering, had turned as liquid as the sea, with currents of cross-cutting emotion whirling across it. Then a spirited cheer – Jai Siyá-Rám! – drew her eyes back to the bowsprit, which had emerged from the water with the two men still clinging on.

Tears of relief sprung to her eyes as Zachary and Jodu slid off the bowsprit, to drop safely back on deck. By some quirk of fate, Jodu's feet came to rest within inches of her own. Even if she had wanted to, she could not have stopped herself from saying something: her lips breathed his name as if of their own accord: Jodu!

His eyes widened as he turned to look at her ghungta'd head, and she made only the tiniest motion to caution him – as in childhood, it was enough; he was not one to betray a secret. Bowing her head, she slipped away and went back to her washing.

It was only when she was stepping away from the scuppers, to hang the washing on the after-shrouds, that she saw Jodu again. He was whistling nonchalantly, carrying a pintle in his hands. As he went past, the pintle dropped and he fell to his knees, scrambling about, as if he were chasing it across the tilted deck.

Putli? he hissed as he passed her. Is it really you?

What do you think? Didn't I say I'd be on board?

He gave a muffled laugh: I should have known.

Not to a word to anyone, Jodu.

Done. But only if you put in a word for me.

With who?

Munia, he whispered, as he rose to his feet.

Munia! Stay away from her, Jodu; you'll only get yourself in trouble…

But her warning was wasted for he was already gone.