Honey Harlot (23 page)

The rain ceased, we struggled, we three together, to raise the mast and get under sail. He came aft and showed me how to control the rudder. To go this way, I must push on the stick in the opposite direction, to go that way, I must push it—like this… Back to front, a mirror image—under his irritable instruction, I grew frightened and confused; a little patience, a little confidence at the outset that I wouldn’t be dull and stupid about it, and I daresay I should have understood well enough, and soon enough picked up the trick of it. But now! The boat ploughed this way and that, they both stood, balancing, over me, screaming at me furious instructions. No doubt it was an agony to know that even this simple task could not be left to me. I mastered it at last but by the end, we were all three worn out again, I with trembling uncertainty, they with frustration and contempt. I think that they were deeply afraid. They kept looking back to where men from the Dei Gratia must long ago have boarded our ship and found the strange condition of things there—the log not made up for the past ten days, as though she had been vacated then; all our possessions strewn about, the men’s clothes still there and small intimate things, their pipes and tobacco, the slate with those last words of poor Richardson scrawled upon it, ‘Fanny my dear wife…’ Money lying about, my small pieces of jewelry, and Mary’s; (would rough seamen recognise the difference between her dresses and mine and deduce that there had been more than one woman aboard?) My sewing-machine and the melodeon with music still propped up on it, though it was many a day since I had struggled with those hymn tunes there. That we had so very recently departed—no sign; we had not yet breakfasted, I hadn’t lit the galley stove nor yet the stove in the saloon where we might dry our wet things. Indeed, beneath the oilskins, Mary and I still wore only our underclothes, covered with loose wrappers so sudden had been his summons when he saw that smudge on the horizon that had proved to be the Dei Gratia; the decision to abandon ship. He had brought with him a barometer and a sextant, enough to enable him to navigate the yawl, I suppose; I wondered what they would make of those two being missing. But I saw when the rain stopped and he took off his oilskins, that his watch wasn’t in its breast pocket; would they find it swinging, tick-tick-tick over the head of what once had been my bed? Would anybody note that it must have been recently wound? As the rain ceased, the wind freshened and now with the sail unfurled we scudded through the swell of the waves and it was all I could do to hold her as I had been instructed. They two left me to it and went up into the forepeak of the boat and there unfolded a tarpaulin to its dry side and flung themselves down, side by side, and there sat and earnestly talked, she now and again throwing an arm about him as though to comfort him. I think that, having brought us to this pass, he was very much afraid; but she was never afraid. While she could see and touch him, put her arms about him, run her fingers through that rough, dark hair of his—she would be afraid of nothing. If ever there was a woman possessed by passion for a man, it was Honey Mary, the waterside harlot, for Captain Benjamin Briggs. After a while, she pulled him to lie down and lay up close against him, shameless in her need to be in his arms. Whether they loved, slept, or only lay for a little while forgetting, in the comfort of each other’s arms, I don’t know. I curled up on the broad seat and fought with the steering yoke and stared out to sea.

And so came about the last of our strange routines. At intervals one or other or both of them would come to the stern and take a turn at the rudder with me, or arrange the sharing out of the food and fresh water. Our course, within reason, was of little importance, as long as it should not head north and cut again across the path of the Dei Gratia. They discussed it anxiously. ‘Surely she’ll outstrip us within the next hour?’

‘Not if she decides to bring in the Mary Celeste for the salvage she’d fetch.’

‘Well, now one thinks of it, that’s sure enough,’ she said, laughing. ‘Davey Morehouse never would resist such a gamble as that!’

‘She’s perfectly sea-worthy; we knew that for ourselves, only you and I handling her. He’s only got to pump her dry, there’s a spare sail or two he can rig up; put two or three men aboard—’

‘Can he spare them?’

‘He carries the same crew as we did. If we two—with such help as she could give us—could manage the Mary Celeste, then he and three men can manage his ship and put three aboard burs.’

‘In that case, they’ll be far ahead of us in this wretched thing—’

‘They’ll be a day or two, making repairs; and he’ll hang back I suppose, and support the brig on her voyage. We must keep well away from them.’

‘As long as we stay within the trade routes,’ she said, ‘till some other ship finds us

So he plotted some course and between us I suppose kept the yawl to it. What speed we made, I have no idea. Allowing for the way made while we three handled the ship, we were still six hundred miles from land.

The day passed and the night passed, and the day passed and another night. By day I sat in the stern in control of the rudder, now and then relieved by one or other of them. By night I rolled myself in rugs and a tarpaulin and huddled against the curving hull and slept strangely, full of dreams. How they spent their nights, I would hardly enquire; through the days
and
the nights, I know that they shared watches between them and long before I slept and long after, all too early, I awoke, I would hear rustlings and murmurings and cries in the darkness. And another day passed and another night; and, sparely though we might have used it, the food that had seemed so much when I gathered it together was growing very low; and the water too. I cared so little for my life by then that they might have shared it out between them and let me simply fade into nothingness—if it had not been for the thirst. But in any event, they divided the ration always absolutely equally into three.

I think it was not bitterly cold; but the cold chilled one through and there was no means of getting warm. They two might lie together close and share their bodies’ heat, but I, always too thin and now rapidly getting thinner, felt it through to my bones. We made no moan. She felt, I think, that the smallest outward admission of suffering would have seemed like a reproach to him for that wild decision that had brought us to this pass; and if she could endure and give no sign, then neither would I.

They teach us that hell will be a pit of fire, burning. I think it will be that waste of dull, grey-green water, ever restless, heaving, upward leaping, with its promise of quenched thirst while our mouths grew ever more parched, our tongues furred and dry: water, water everywhere, slopping over into the boat, drenching our clothes with its salty spray, lying puddled where we might have slept in some small comfort; and we no longer with strength or caring to bale it out.
Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.
The lines of the great old rhyme ran through my leaden head, it seemed to me that indeed ‘the very deep did rot, and slimey things did crawl with legs, upon the slimey sea.’
Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide, wide sea, And never a soul took pity on My soul in agony…

But one took pity—crawled towards me, knelt there, took my hand, tried to explain through parched lips, cracked with the salt spray, that he would have refused food and water, given his life if it would have saved us; but what would we do, we two women alone, ignorant, helpless, strength gone…? I crouched there, uncaring. I was sick with the deep inner chill, the salt wind blowing off the sea, the ceaseless rocking of the boat. I said no word.

I know how his tongue felt huge in his mouth and dry, how every syllable was an effort of the will, forced out, half unintelligible from the burning throat. He mumbled: ‘We shall all die soon,’ and grasped at my hand again with his own hand grown to a thing of bones and stretched parchment, and looked up into my face and rattled out the words: ‘Pray for me.’

I lifted my heavy head, looked back into his eyes; but she came staggering across to us, dangerously shifting the balance of the boat; she couldn’t endure, I suppose, even
in extremis,
that he should show feeling for me. She had weathered the hardship better than either of us: her magnificence had lain in her health and vigour, in the lithe strength of that beautiful body, and she seemed to have drawn upon it but sparingly. The hollows in her cheeks served only to give a greater beauty to the bones beneath the flesh, her eyes were huge and brilliant in their shadowed sockets; the honey of her skin had been burned to a golden brown by the salt spray, her hair tumbled about her head like a lion’s mane. She clutched at his tattered sleeve and he hadn’t the strength, I suppose, to resist her; but before he pitched and staggered away from me, he touched my hand again, and again rasped and rattled it out to me: ‘Save—my soul!’

I could utter no word but I bent my weary head in reply.

How many days and nights, I shall never know. One day he lifted a hand, heavy as lead at the end of his fleshless arm and pointed. She whispered: ‘A ship!’

How they together mustered strength to make signals, I don’t know. I, with my smaller strength, perhaps with my lesser will, lay little more than half conscious on that broad seat in the stern which had been my kennel for so many, many hideous hours. But some signal was given: far, far off on the horizon, the ship was altering course, turning to approach us. Exhausted by this last one great effort, he fell into a sort of stupor, only gazing steadily ahead to where salvation approached at last.

The salvation of the body.

She left him there. Dragging herself along the bottom of the boat, she made her way to me. She caught at my skeleton hand as he had done. She got out two words. ‘Don’t—tell!’

He had prayed to me to save his soul. I stared ahead speechless, gazing out over the intolerable ever moving, moving, moving grey-green sea. She knelt at my feet, she made, feebly, the sign of the cross upon her breast; fumbled at her bosom, drew out the gold cross she wore about her neck—her cracked lips kissed it. She held it out to me, still on its chain about her neck. She seemed to plead, wordlessly: ‘Have mercy!’

For her sake, he had robbed me of his body and the heart within his body; for her sake he had robbed his Maker of his soul. He had murdered two men and sent them to God with all their sins upon them; with her, had sent to their deaths seven men in all. These sins must be expiated here on earth, lest they bring a terrible retribution in the world to come. I gave no sign.

I saw the desperation in her eyes. The dry lips moved but seemed able to make no more sound. She placed her thin, shaking hand against her breast with a gesture of repudiation, with the other hand pointed to where he lay huddled in his exhaustion in the prow of the boat. The motion said: ‘Not for my sake. For his!’

But it was for his sake that I must do my duty. He had come to me, he had prayed to me to save him; it had never been my intention to do less. To save him from eternal damnation, he must pay an earthly price for his sins. For the first time I made some acknowledgement. I shook my head.

Her whole being seemed to lift, to grow strong again, her bright eyes to grow more brilliant, the sap to return to her veins with the huge force and courage of a final determination. She rose to her full height, stood balanced there with all the old, flaunting magnificence of strength and vitality: looked down at me for one brief moment and then swooped, caught me by the arms, jerked me to my feet and with one swift movement thrust me towards the gunwale of the boat.

Alive and alert, I should perhaps have been easier prey. But in her emaciated arms, my weight was the dead weight of my helplessness. I slumped in her hold and she had not strength to jerk me again to my feet and as she struggled to raise me, he was upon us, lurching towards us down the length of the rocking yawl. And he had hauled her off me, thrown me back into my corner, was struggling with her as she tried to fling herself again upon me and with her tigress teeth and claws rip me into silence if no other way would serve. I staggered up, tottered towards where now they wrestled, he fighting for her subjugation, she to break free and attack me again—and feebly tried to drag her off him. She released her hold for a moment and with her free hand gave me a shove which, weak as it may have been, in my condition was enough to send me toppling back against the side of the boat. The release of my hampering weight flung them, still locked together, to the opposite side; the yawl rocked violently and, without so much as a scream or a cry, in a terrible silence they had vanished from my sight.

He could have saved himself perhaps; but her strength was spent, she clung like a dead weight about him.
Instead of the cross, The Albatross about his neck was hung
… They threshed in the water, sank beneath its churned surface, came up again with streaming hair and gaping mouths; sank again.

With one hand grasping the gunwale, I leaned far out and stretched my hand to him. For the second time, he came up again. She lay across his arm, her own hanging lax in the water. His eyes were closed, his mouth gaped open; he was near to death. My own scream was like the rattle of death indeed, as I leaned ever further over, dangerously tilting the boat, reaching out my hand to him.

He opened his eyes. He looked full at me, flung up his hand and for a dying moment held it high. The light glittered cold on the gold of Mary Sellers’ cross.

When I knew consciousness again, they were gone and I clutched fast in my hand this cross that now hangs with the worn black crucifix, at the end of my rosary.

With God in his hand, he died—doing penance for his sins. With God in my hand, I have lived—and done penance also for his sins.
God have mercy upon him… Lord have mercy upon him… Into Thy hands, oh Lord, I commend his spirit…

They found me alone in the drifting yawl, with this cross in my hand, bearing her name. They brought me to this place and I was nursed back to life. They gave me her name and, since I carried a cross, what I suppose might have been her religion: in mine we had no room for golden idols. What did it matter?—under any form, one may worship the one, true and living God. I feigned ignorance of my whole past; there were wrecks enough at sea for there to be no suspicion that a woman bearing a name unconnected with the brig found abandoned many miles distant, could have anything to do with the mystery. The yawl, if she had any name painted upon her stern, still discernible, had at least none approximating to the name of the Mary Celeste; and as I have said, in this remote place, far, far from Gibraltar where enquiries were going forward, communications would be slow or exist not at all. As Mary Sellers, I allowed them to do what they would with me: took their veil, vowed their vows, adopted their way of life—what did it all matter?—all I needed was peace and a place to do penance for his sins.