At the sound of the tin pannikin striking against the stone lip Mrs Roxburgh resolved to refuse her tot if the rum should not give out before it reached her. As a gust of evening breeze wafted the stench her way, Pa’s breath was too much for her; she was hard put to it not to vomit up the little she had in her queasy stomach. But every man was rejoiced by the fumes before consummation by taste; the mere theory of spirits was inspiration. Awaiting their turn some of them began humming, or muttering snatches of words, and one young fellow broke into whole verses of a song, in that high, yearning tone peculiar to his class when a prey to bitter-sweet thoughts in deserts and upon the high seas:
‘Oh that I was gatherin’ roses at Yeovil,
Gatherin’ the red red roses
To put in-to my true love’s hand.
Oh that my girl would speak
Or silent let me touch her cheek,
Then I would gladly die,
On beds of red red ro-ho-zez …’
His passion was quenched at last in a spluttering of rum.
The plangent tone of the young man’s voice, together with the potent sentiments expressed by his song, had combined with the scent of spirits to make Mrs Roxburgh drunk in advance, against her will. She was determined not to risk any further indiscretion, when instead of offering her the pannikin, her husband seized it for himself, and without hesitating, downed the contents.
‘Haaah!’ he ejaculated in half a laugh and half a cough. ‘Overproof!’ Some of it was seen to shoot out from under his moustache.
At that, most of the sailors laughed, not in malice, rather from kindred feelings. Instead it was the woman who had become the alien amongst them for not revealing whether she approved her husband’s newly ratified alliance.
But Mr Roxburgh was off on another unexpected tack, telling of an evening as a young man at Douarnenez, ‘… when I fell flat on my face after an injudicious quantity of rum, to which a rowdy crew of Breton fishermen had introduced me for the first time.’
Several of the present company admitted to having warmed up on a drop from across the water, many a night at St Mary’s, Polperro, Dawlish, or wherever.
Mr Roxburgh’s eyes were shining with rum and reminiscence, the more intoxicating for being shared.
His wife had surprised a trait which she might have caused him to suppress by coddling him too assiduously in order to curry favour with his mother; while he, no doubt, saw his wife as the brittle work of art he was creating, the glaze of which might crack were she to become aware of her creator’s flaws and transgressions.
The tears came into Mrs Roxburgh’s eyes and she might have given way from seeing the strangers they had been to each other (and for that matter, might remain, till death overtook one of them) had she not realized that Captain Purdew had refilled the pannikin, and was holding the object, black and horrid, under her nose. One of the seamen closest to her had knelt in the bilge, hands raised as though preparing to assist in a ceremony. All were waiting for the lady to drink.
‘Mrs Roxburgh,’ the captain invited in a reverent whisper.
All were watching.
‘No,’ Mrs Roxburgh began, and made a movement to push the stinking vessel away. ‘I hardly think — oh, no!’ she snickered in disgust.
‘Ellen,’ her husband chirruped, ‘you must take a sip at least, out of deference to the captain, and because’, he thought to add, ‘the Almighty has brought us safely to land.’
For one blasphemous instant there arose in her mind the vision of a fish the Almighty was playing, the distended lip in which the hook was caught, her own; then she said, ‘Oh dear! You are all against me,’ and accepted the tin cup as though it had been a silver chalice, and despite her nausea, sank her face.
‘This’, said Austin Roxburgh, winking at the congregation, ‘is the original Cornishwoman!’
That her husband could have betrayed his own creation, granted it was under the influence of rum, made her blush and swallow, and what she experienced was not remission of sins, but a fire spreading. She was amazed and mortified to find she could swallow so much of the stuff — almost to the bottom of the cup.
As she gave back the pannikin she could feel the blood streaming through her veins, into fingertips and sodden toes, though that most vital part of her, her belly, remained curiously cold and untouched.
Her companions sighed on witnessing their lady’s demonstration of good faith, and were free to look about them again.
One of them asked, ‘Where be our blessed land now?’
‘Still where ’twere, I reckon.’
If not incontrovertible, it seemed to Mrs Roxburgh the only desirable conclusion as she sank back to loll against her husband’s chest.
Night fell at least, and with it her blue-black hair she sensed escaping into sleep and water. We shall wake, she promised herself in leaving her body, and find we have arrived, and begin afresh.
It did happen more or less as she decided it would, with a few deviations from the foreseen.
Mr Pilcher was shouting through another milky dawn. ‘’Tis not the coast. It’s a reef, or cay. Will we beach ’em, sir, if we find somewhere that’ll suit?’
Flattered into thinking he had been consulted, Captain Purdew accepted the suggestion, while Mr Courtney scowled and sulked, and the master of the pinnace grinned back.
His derision, if it were, made Mrs Roxburgh touch her hair, whereupon she discovered her bonnet gone, nor was it anywhere to be found however much she sidled and looked.
‘What is it, Ellen?’ her husband inquired anxiously.
‘Nothing,’ she replied.
She was relieved he did not appear to notice that her hair was hanging in dank disorder; he was still too sticky with sleep and stiff from the unorthodox position in which they were forced to spend their nights. Her impulse was to reach for the dressing-case, to avail herself of her comb and glass, until remembering that they had parted with the case some way back.
Almost every contingency had become by now acceptable. To find herself sitting in water up to her shins did not alarm Mrs Roxburgh. The sea-water inside the boat had risen by inches in recent hours. Bailing was intermittent, either because ineffectual, or because the thoughts of all those who performed the duty were directed at the land. Mrs Roxburgh too, had sat back at last, to feel and enjoy the milky warmth, the texture of tamed sea-water.
The surf by contrast was punishing the reef with such animal ferocity it did not seem as though any respite could be expected, when on rounding a coral neck, the pinnace and its insufficient relative the long-boat were vouchsafed the peace and protection of an elliptical recess rather than a bay, its curve as white as kaolin.
Always in the lead, Mr Pilcher was soon gesticulating from the shore after wading through milder, though to some eyes, still intimidating breakers. A sprinkling of sailors followed his example, leaping, pounding, racing one another when not battling through breast-high foam. Upon reaching land the men began hauling on the boats while cursing the coral which had torn their hitherto-impervious feet.
In emulation of the seamen, Mr Roxburgh jumped, and was junketed around, and nearly fell. She could have done nothing for this frail spillikin no longer her husband as he was whirled away. In any case, she too, no longer functioned by her own will, for that hairy man the boatswain was lifting her over the gunwale regardless of her wishes.
‘Leave me — cusn’t tha?’ one of her selves expostulated as she flailed around in search of some solid object to help her in resisting an exit of which her mother-in-law would surely have disapproved.
She found nothing, and was dragged off, like any caterpillar from a twig.