“Mr. Steen,” he said when he realized who I was. “How good of you to call.”
He had quite a loud voice and sounded much more enthusiastic than when I’d first phoned him about the book. I told him how excited I was about his letter.
“Believe me, we’re excited too,” he said. “Let me say again, I’m so glad you sent the book to us. I assure you, we get dozens of requests from people every month to examine literary works that turn out to be quite worthless, at least from the standpoint of rare books. I’ve got to the stage where I often tell them we’re too busy to accept any more items at the moment. In your case, that would have been a real blunder.”
I was pleased to hear that and pressed him for information. What were these “interesting discoveries” he’d made? For instance, did that visitation of the weird mirror cloud really happen?
But Curator Soulis obviously had different priorities.
“Oh, we haven’t even begun that kind of research yet,” he said. “I’m afraid you’ll have to be patient with our methods. What’s really attracting our attention at the moment is the format of the book.”
Format? I suppose my disappointment came through over the phone, for he laughed.
“Of course, only a specialist in the history of printing could be expected to appreciate how interesting and unusual its format is,” he said. “The Obsidian Cloud has several characteristics that in themselves make it a noteworthy piece of work from the period. We’re not familiar with its printer, so we’re in the midst right now of attempting to trace the firm and any possible records of the printing.”
So he hadn’t found out anything about whether the incident actually happened?
“Not as yet,” said the curator. “But we will get to it eventually, Mr. Steen — please don’t worry. For now we have a number of other avenues we need to explore before we dig into the matter of the book’s actual contents.”
At that point the most awful noise was coming from the phone, so much so that I thought something had gone wrong with the line. I couldn’t hear what Soulis was saying and was about to hang up and redial when the background noise stopped. Soulis’s voice was quite clear again, though he was shouting so loudly I had to hold the receiver away from my ear.
“I just want to assure you I’ll keep you apprised of all our findings in due course,” he shouted. “By the way, when you first phoned you told me you’d been in Duncairn years ago. Out of curiosity, may I ask what exactly you were doing there?”
I gave him a brief account of how I’d stayed only a few months, theoretically preparing to teach school. In the end, it hadn’t worked out and I’d moved on. Naturally, I didn’t mention Miriam Galt.
“I see, and now you’re in Canada.” His voice was back to normal. “I must confess I know very little about Camberloo except that its university has a very good reputation. After Duncairn, it must have been quite a change for you.”
After that, we exchanged a few pleasantries. He thanked me profusely for my donation — it would be put to very good use. We said goodbye, and that was that.
But he was right about the gulf between Duncairn and Camberloo. And that got me to thinking about what a circuitous route I’d taken to get here. I’d seen my quota of wonders and mysteries — as we all do in the course of a life, I suppose. But a believer in fate, or destiny, or some other obscure force might well have argued that it all led inevitably to the discovery of The Obsidian Cloud. And, at last, to the resolution of the most persistent mystery in my life.
DUPONT
1
The train I’d boarded that foggy morning I fled from Duncairn happened to be headed for London. It arrived at Euston Station in late afternoon in a thick fog, this one as dirty as anything the Tollgate could produce. In the course of the eight-hour train journey, I’d made my mind up that in London I’d look for any kind of work on a ship going to parts of the world that I didn’t know and didn’t know me. Perhaps the very act of travelling might counter the despair I felt at Miriam Galt’s rejection.
So when I got off the train, I found out that the docks were at Wapping and took a bus straight to them. At the Port of London Office, I was told that under normal circumstances my total inexperience as a sailor would have disqualified me from even applying for a position. But a problem had just arisen. The SS Otago, a freighter preparing to weigh anchor next morning with machinery bound for the port of Racca in West Africa, reported it was short of the legally required number of deckhands — the lowest ranking on board. Without a full crew, the ship would not be permitted to depart.
The Port Office was willing to issue me the appropriate certificate, no questions asked, if I agreed to sign on right away for the voyage out and back.
I didn’t hesitate.
At dawn next day when the Otago cast off and headed downriver, I was already on deck with a bucket and mop, swabbing dirt and oil stains from around the cargo bays.
DURING THE NEXT three weeks, any romantic notions I’d got from books about life at sea were dispelled. The Otago was reality. It was a rusty old freighter with a noisy coal-fed engine, the food in the below-decks’ mess was greasy and bland, and the sleeping quarters were cramped, smelly, and full of lice. Hence the Otago’s difficulty in finding crew and the Port Office’s willingness to let me, an admitted landlubber, sign on. Certainly, my crewmates could see that and made it clear they wanted nothing to do with me.
The sea itself, at first, appeared to mirror my sorrow over what had happened to me in Duncairn. The Atlantic Ocean with its vast grey emptiness was the perfect setting for a broken heart. Working alone out on deck, hour after hour, permitted me the luxury of wallowing in self-pity at Miriam’s betrayal. At times I allowed myself to believe she’d been playing me for a fool all along. Every detail of her behaviour could be seen in that light. Even that book she’d given me — about the man looking in vain for a pot of gold — was probably meant as a mockery of my gullibility.
But even my sense that the grey ocean sympathized with me turned out to be one more illusion. After two days a vicious storm hit and lasted for a week. The Otago plunged headlong into steep seas whipped up by gales that outdid anything I’d experienced on hilltops in the windy Uplands. The blinding squalls and bolts of lightning that seemed to roll along the deck didn’t excuse the crew from work — the Third Officer showed me how to rope a lifeline to nearby stanchions and continue scrubbing at those ingrained oil stains. Anxiety over the flimsiness of that lifeline did help put my broken heart out of my mind for long stretches.
Things got even worse when a queasiness in my gut developed into a full-blown seasickness. After a while even drowning seemed preferable to vomiting yet once more. Nonetheless, I had to keep working every day till the storm eventually passed.
My seasickness didn’t pass, however. Which led to my meeting with a Canadian medical doctor, Charles Dupont.
THE SS OTAGO, like many freighters, always tried to carry a few passengers to help defray the costs of a voyage. Dr. Dupont was one of only four passengers on board, the other three being businessmen. Since the Otago had no ship’s doctor, the purser had mentioned my chronic seasickness to Dupont, who volunteered to come out onto the deck one morning and see how I was.