Edward Harris came up alongside Audubon by the port rail. "A pretty view," Harris remarked.
"It is indeed," Audubon said.
"I'm surprised not to find you sketching," Harris told him. "Sunset tinging the cloud above the mountain with pink against the deepening blue… What could be more picturesque?"
"Nothing, probably." Audubon laughed in some embarrassment. "But I've drunk enough of that splendid rum punch to make my right hand forget its cunning."
"I don't suppose I can blame you, not when mal de mer torments you so," Harris said. "I hope the sea will be calmer the next time you come this way."
"So do I —if there is a next time," Audubon said. "I am not young, Edward, and I grow no younger. I'm bound for Atlantis to do things and see things while I still may. The land changes year by year, and so do I. Neither of us will be again what we were."
Harris —calm, steady, dependable Harris—smiled and set a hand on his friend's shoulder. "You've drunk yourself sad, that's what you've done. There's more to you than to many a man half your age."
"Good of you to say so, though we both know it's not so, not any more. As for the rum…" Audubon shook his head. "I knew this might be my last voyage when I got on the Augustus Caesar in St. Louis. Growing up is a time of firsts, of beginnings."
"Oh, yes." Harris' smile grew broader. Audubon had a good idea which first he was remembering.
But the painter wasn't finished. "Growing up is a time for firsts, yes," he repeated. "Growing old… Growing old is a time for endings, for lasts. And I do fear this will be my last long voyage."
"Well, make the most of it if it is," Harris said. "Shall we repair to the galley? Turtle soup tonight, with a saddle of mutton to follow." He smacked his lips.
Harris certainly made the most of the supper. Despite his ballasting of rum, Audubon didn't. A few spoonfuls of soup, a halfhearted attack on the mutton and the roast potatoes accompanying it, and he felt full to the danger point. "We might as well have traveled second class, or even steerage," he said sadly. "The difference in cost lies mostly in the victuals, and I'll never get my money's worth at a table that rolls."
"I'll just have to do it for both of us, then." Harris poured brandy-spiked gravy over a second helping of mutton. His campaign with fork and knife was serious and methodical, and soon reduced the mutton to nothing. He looked around hopefully. "I wonder what the sweet course is."
It was a cake baked in the shape of the Maid of Orleans and stuffed with nuts, candied fruit, and almond paste. Harris indulged immoderately. Audubon watched with a strange smile, half jealous, half wistful.
He went to bed not long after supper. The first day of a sea voyage always told on him, more than ever as he got older. The mattress was as comfortable as the one in the inn back in New Orleans. It might have been softer than the one he slept on at home. But it was unfamiliar, and so he tossed and turned for a while, trying to find the most comfortable position. Even as he tossed, he laughed at himself. Before long, he'd sleep wrapped in a blanket on bare ground in Atlantis. Would he twist and turn there, too? He nodded. Of course he would. Nodding still, he dozed off.
He hadn't been asleep long before Harris came in. His friend was humming "Pretty Black Eyes," a song popular in New Orleans as they set out. Audubon didn't think the other man even knew he was doing it. Harris got into his night-shirt, pissed in the chamber pot under his bed, blew out the oil lamp Audubon had left burning, and lay down. He was snoring in short order. Harris always denied that he snored — and why not? He never heard himself.
Audubon laughed once more. He tossed and twisted and yawned. Pretty soon, he was snoring again himself.
When he went out on deck the next morning, the Maid of Orleans might have been the only thing God ever made besides the sea. Terranova had vanished behind her; Atlantis still lay a thousand miles ahead. The steamship had entered the Hesperian Gulf, the wide arm of the North Atlantic that separated the enormous island and its smaller attendants from the continent to the west.
Audubon looked south and east. He'd been born on Santo Tomas, one of those lesser isles. He was brought to France three years later, and so escaped the convulsions that wracked the island when its colored slaves rose up against their masters in a war where neither side asked for quarter or gave it. Blacks ruled Santo Tomas to this day. Not many whites were left on the island. Audubon had only a few faded childhood memories of his first home. He'd never cared to go back, even if he could have without taking his life in his hands.
Edward Harris strolled out on deck. "Good morning," he said. "I hope you slept well?"
"Well enough, thanks," Audubon answered. I would have done better without "Pretty Black Eyes," but such is life "Yourself?"
"Not bad, not bad." Harris eyed him. "You look… less greenish than you did yesterday. The bracing salt air, I suppose?"
"It could be. Or maybe I'm getting used to the motion." As soon as Audubon said that, as soon as he thought about his stomach, he gulped. He pointed an accusing finger at his friend. "There—you see? Just asking was enough to jinx me."
"Well, come have some breakfast, then. Nothing like a good mess of ham and eggs or something like that to get you ready for… Are you all right?"
"No," Audubon gasped, leaning out over the rail.
He breakfasted lightly, on toasted ship's biscuit and coffee and rum punch. He didn't usually start the day with strong spirits, but he didn't usually start the day with a bout of seasickness, either. A good thing, too, or I'd have died years ago, he thought. I hope I would anyhow.
Beside him in the galley, Harris worked his way through fried eggs and ham and sausage and bacon and maize-meal mush. Blotting his lips with a snowy linen napkin, he said, "That was monstrous fine." He patted his pot belly.
"So glad you enjoyed it," Audubon said tonelessly.
Once or twice over the next three days, the Maid of Orleans came close enough to another ship to make out her sails or the smoke rising from her stack. A pod of whales came up to blow nearby before sounding again. Most of the time, though, the sidewheeler might have been alone on the ocean.
Audubon was on deck again the third afternoon, when the sea —suddenly, as those things went—changed from greenish gray to a deeper, richer blue. He looked around for Harris, and spotted him not far away, drinking rum punch and chatting with a personable young woman whose curls were the color of fire.
"Edward!" Audubon said. "We've entered the Bay Stream!"
"Have we?" The news didn't seem to have the effect on Harris that Audubon wanted. His friend turned back to the redheaded woman—who also held a glass of punch —and said, "John is wild for nature in every way you can imagine." Spoken in a different tone of voice, it would have been a compliment. Maybe it still was. Audubon hoped he only imagined Harris' faintly condescending note.
"Is he?" The woman didn't seem much interested in Audubon one way or the other. "What about you, Eddie?"
Eddie? Audubon had trouble believing his ears. No one had ever called Harris such a thing in his hearing before. And Harris… smiled. "Well, Beth, I'll tell you — I am, too. But some parts of nature interest me more than others." He set his free hand on her arm. She smiled, too.
He was a widower. He could chase if that suited his fancy, not that Beth seemed to need much chasing. Audubon admired a pretty lady as much as anyone —more than most, for with his painter's eye he saw more than most—but was a thoroughly married man, and didn't slide from admiration to pursuit. He hoped Lucy was well.