The Ghost of the Mary Celeste (10 page)

“And we sail?”

“At dawn. It may be rough going this time of year.”

In the morning the weather was fine, but it deteriorated as the
Mayumba
made her way down the Mersey. At Holyhead there was such a gale blowing they had to put in for the night. The next day, in rough weather, they made for the Irish Sea, pitching and rolling, plowing through a fog thick as cream. The lighthouse beam was only a dull sheeny patch in the white sheet off the starboard bow. The crew labored earnestly, each wrapped in a white shroud that kept him from seeing his mates. Nor did conditions improve on the open water.

All the passengers were seasick. The doctor ran from one cabin to the next, dispensing blue bowls, and when the bowls ran out, buckets, to grateful ladies and gentlemen whose complexions, as they clung to their bedsteads or bent over their bowls, were distinctly green, except for the Negroes, who were gray. The steward arranged for the orderly rotation of bowls and buckets, which it was
the doctor’s business to supervise. The waves tossed the ship up and then pounded her down and the seas swirled across the decks. The sailors were forever hurtling fore and aft, the captain and his mate washed in and out through the companionway, relieving each other on the deck. As the second day passed exactly as the first, Dr. Doyle recalled the captain’s weather prediction. The fog cleared off, and they could see the waves crashing over the prow.

The third day was worse. The aft cabin flooded and the only sound belowdecks was the moaning of the passengers. Occasionally retching could be heard, though most had emptied their stomachs completely by then. The doctor could do little to be of help, so he sat at his desk reading Macaulay, those beautiful sentences, his bare feet ankle deep in the briny water on the floor. The fourth day was like the third.

“But are we making any progress?” cried Parson Fairfax when the doctor looked in on him and his family. The boys were flat on their backs like two skeletons, their mouths agape, and the wife sat clinging to the bedstead, her hair loose over her shoulders, emitting a sharp groan with each lurch of the ship.

“Of course we are,” the doctor assured him. “This is a steamer. We make progress no matter the weather. Make sure those boys take some limewater, whether they ask for it or not,” he advised, going out the door.

In the officers’ mess he found the mate, a taciturn man, but pleasant to his fellow officers. He was drinking coffee, his eyelids heavy as he gazed into the cup he held between his hands. There was no putting it down on the table, where it would be swiftly transported to the opposite side when the ship rolled. He glanced at the doctor, weaving in at the door. “Join me, Doyle,” he said. “There’s some gin, if you care for it.”

“Just coffee,” the doctor said, pouring it out from the pot, which was lodged in a tray screwed down to the counter. He had put on his shoes to visit the passengers and his feet squished as he took a seat at the table.

“And how are your ladies and gentlemen bearing up?”

“As best they can,” Doyle affirmed, “under the circumstances. The parson fears we are making no progress.”

“Does he?” said the mate.

“I think he’s only frightened.”

“Well, it’s foul going, that’s sure. But we’re going all the same.”

“Yes, of course.” The doctor smiled at the foolishness of the parson.

“It’s lucky for them you’ve a seagoing stomach. Our last doctor was worse off than his patients in bad weather.”

“It’s not my first time at sea.”

“Is it not?”

“I was ship’s surgeon on the whaler
Hope
, under Captain John Gray.”

“A whaler,” said the mate. “Now there’s sailing. You’ve no retching passengers on a whaler.”

“I liked the life,” the doctor said simply. He would have told how Captain Gray had offered his doughty medical officer double duty as surgeon and harpooner on his next voyage, but the mate drained his cup and pushed back his chair. “I’m up, sir,” he said. “I believe we are in for a wild run for our money tonight, but by morning, if we don’t founder, we may find smooth sailing. The Bay of Biscay is a hellion, but by God she moves you, she moves you.”

The mate’s prediction proved true. In the night, it was as if they had entered a mountain range made of water. The doctor, aghast at what he saw through his porthole, made up his mind to go on deck. The ship lurched and trembled like a living thing and he held tightly to the handgrips as he came up. There he saw a sight that made him gasp for breath. In every direction great walls of black water, heavily veined with white, loomed so high they blocked the sky. The ship, which had seemed large, was here revealed to be a child’s toy. There was a continual rush of phosphorescent sea across the decks, hip-deep liquid green flames, which cast upon the pale faces of the sailors manning the pumps an eerie, otherworldly pallor.

From somewhere a voice came to him like something from the
Bible, clear, firm, distinct, a voice from the fire. “Go in, you fool,” it commanded. “Go in.” The doctor looked about and saw that it was the captain, waving one hand at him from the quarterdeck, holding on to the rail for dear life with the other.

Doyle ducked back into the companion and sloshed off to his cabin. He was as soaked as if he’d actually dived into the sea. He stripped off his clothes, draped them around his furnishings, and then, strangely exhausted by what he had seen, he fell into the bed and was instantly asleep.

How changeable is life at sea. When next the doctor opened his eyes, a warm beam of sunlight gleamed across his outstretched hand. Nothing in the room was moving up, down, or sideways, and there was a hum, as of a man gently snoring, coming from belowdecks. When he rose from his bed, the water he stepped into barely covered his foot. Outside his cabin door, he heard cheerful voices, then the slap and slop of a mop, and the roll of the bucket moving down the passageway. He found a dry shirt and trousers. He had no choice but to put on the sodden jacket, as he owned no other. He opened his door to find the steward grinning at him. “As you’re up, sir, I’ll just pass in with the mop.”

“And welcome you are, wherever you show yourself this morning, sir, I don’t doubt,” said the doctor.

“It’s true. I’ve found none to complain at the sight of me, would it were ever so.”

The doctor passed out, anxious to be on deck, to see that great roaring bull that had bellowed and threatened in the night transformed into a willing beast of burden.

All hands were in good cheer; full steam was ahead. “Good morning, sir,” called the captain from his post on the quarterdeck. “Will you come up?”

The air was delicious, charged after the storm with a luminous glamour that made even the old
Mayumba
sparkle. The decks were
marvelously, miraculously dry. “I will tell you, Doctor,” Wallace said, as the two men surveyed the scene below them, “there were moments last night when I thought we would not meet again.”

“It was a furious sea.”

Wallace gave his medical expert a close look, pulling down the corners of his mouth, as if something provoked or displeased him. “I expect our passengers are a chastened lot, and a hungry one,” he observed.

“Yes, I heard a great hubbub in their saloon.”

The sound of four bells was accompanied by the appearance of the mate, smiling up at them from the foot of the ladder. “I’ve an appetite myself,” said Wallace. “Have you breakfasted?”

“I have not.”

And so the two men went down to the officers’ mess, where, for the first time since leaving land, a hot breakfast was laid out for them.

Like mushrooms after a rain, the passengers commenced popping up everywhere. They paraded on the saloon deck, converged in the saloon and in their dining room. Passing one another on their shipboard excursions, they chattered volubly in the passageway. In the afternoon, cards were broken out and the doctor joined his charges for a game of whist. All the hatches were open, the air was fresh, and one could sit at the table with a glass of wine or a brandy with no need to hold tightly to the stem. The day passed pleasantly and in the evening Dr. Doyle took his dinner with the officers. Over brandy, Captain Wallace entertained him with stories of the sights afforded the tourist on the Dark Continent. He told of native tribes
who offered human sacrifice to alligators, which devilish creatures swarmed the shore when they knew their tribute was due. One could hear, he said chillingly, the screams of the victims for miles down the river. On another occasion, the captain had seen a human skull protruding from a giant anthill, a fate, he learned, reserved by one tribe for its enemies in another. White men couldn’t survive for long in Africa, he opined. Its malignancy infected their souls, no matter how much liquor they took, and they took a lot.

Doyle, startled by these horrors, spoke of the more wholesome oddities of the Arctic, of a captain who, seeing it was light for twenty-four hours a day, decided to change day for night, and of the massive white bears, stretched out full length on their stomachs, wrapping their great paws around an ice hole, waiting patiently for a seal to come up for a breath of air, and when it did—whack, lunch was served.

“Clever creatures,” chuckled Wallace, amused by this image.

At length the two men, in companionable spirits, agreed to take a turn on the quarterdeck, where passengers were strictly forbidden to roam. Wallace swept a sharp eye over his vessel, to the bow, the waist, the strolling passengers on the saloon deck, and at last, to the horizon, which was shrouded in a damp mist. The fresh air of the morning had given way to an oppressive humidity and the doctor would have shed his coat had he not thought it an impropriety to do so. As they contemplated the lazily lapping waves, the dog watch went down and the first watch came on, saluting their fellows as they passed with mild humor. “Wasn’t Mither right?” said one cheerily. “Sell the farm and go to sea.”

“They’ll sleep tonight,” Wallace observed. “And dry for a change.”

“Was the fo’c’sle flooded?” asked the doctor.

“Was it, indeed? Their beds were awash and the cook got up the stove, so it was a veritable steam bath, I’m told, and they could hardly find their way about their slops.”

“They are stalwart fellows,” Doyle opined.

Again, Wallace fixed upon his medical officer a stern look. Then
he turned away and positioned himself at the rail, gazing out over the water as it streamed away behind them. Dr. Doyle, unflustered, joined him there.

“I say, what’s that?” said the captain, pointing to the air off the starboard bow.

The doctor followed the line indicated by the captain’s raised arm. “I don’t see anything,” he said.

“Don’t you?” Wallace replied. “Look again.”

Obediently, the doctor surveyed the sea. It was dark, and the heavy mist confused him, but he thought he did see something, a triangle of brighter white than the mist. He saw it, then it was gone, then he saw it again. “What is it?” he asked.

“It’s a ship,” Wallace replied.

“Is it? Is it coming our way?”

The captain had his binoculars out and for several moments he stood at the rail peering through the glasses. The doctor could only try to see, unassisted, what his commander saw, but he made nothing out, if he ever had. A feeling of helplessness and lethargy—it was really so much warmer than one might expect an open deck could be—came upon him and he coughed, trying to clear his head. The evening cocktail ritual might prove a mistake.

“No,” Wallace spoke at last. “No, she’s gone on. She’s on an odd course.” He pulled the glasses down, and grinned at his companion. “She must be the ghost of the
Mary Celeste
.”

Doyle recognized the name, as who would not? He was a boy at school when he read about it. It must be ten years, he thought, since that ship was hauled into Gibraltar for a salvage hearing that quickly became international front-page news. A ghost ship she’d been, but was she still? The doctor felt the fine hairs at the nape of his neck stir infinitesimally. “The
Mary Celeste
,” he repeated.

“She was picked up in these waters, and it was this time of year.”

“And you think the ship itself is a ghost?”

The captain grinned again, shaking his head slowly from side to side. “No, Doyle, I don’t, man. But you’re such an impressionable lad, I thought I’d try it out on you.”

The doctor was unabashed. “I haven’t thought of that story in years,” he said. “I recall it was a great mystery at the time. Was it pirates took the crew? I can’t remember.”

“There haven’t been pirates in these waters in fifty years,” said Wallace. “And there were no signs of violence and nothing taken.”

“Yes,” Doyle agreed. “That’s right. The ship was in good condition, but not a soul on board.”

Wallace nodded, his brow thoughtfully knit. “I knew the captain a little,” he said. “A Yankee gentleman, upright, family man. Name of Biggs, or Tibbs, something like that. I happened to be in port with him at Marseille; it must be twenty years now. He was a young man then, and a handsome one. He had his wife along, and she was much relieved to find English speakers. She had no French and they’d been loading a week. Very dark-eyed, pert creature, confident in that American way, always slyly mocking anything foreign. I invited them on board for dinner and we had a pleasant enough time. He was teetotal, but he didn’t fuss if others took spirits. I liked him for that. There was nothing puritanical about him; he was a cordial man. I remember one thing especially about that night. We got to singing round the table, more polite songs than usual because the lady was present, and his wife took a turn. She had a lovely voice, almost a professional voice, and she sang a song I didn’t know, an American song, I presumed. I’d never heard it before or since, but I recall the refrain. It was ‘All things love thee, all things love thee, so do I.’ ” Wallace tilted his head to one side, as if listening to the remembered voice, while the doctor studied him with a questioning eye. “She stood up to sing, and when she got to that refrain, she turned to her husband, and he, with a smile of the purest satisfaction, looked back at her. They looked into each other’s eyes, you see, while she told him she loved him, and it was as if there were no other people in the world but those two. The look on her face! I’ve never thought to bring my missus along on a voyage, but I think if she ever looked at me like that for one moment in my life, well, I might consider it. I can tell you there was not a man there that didn’t feel envious of Captain Tibbs at that moment. We were all going off to
our bunks with a last tot of brandy for a bedmate, and he was going back to his cabin with a woman who adored him.” Here Wallace paused, having concluded his story.