Me name's Ben Hazeltine. I remember Henry Lee, and I'll tell you why.
I met Henry Lee when we was both green hands on the Mary Brannum, out of Cardiff, and we stayed messmates on and off, depending. Didn't always ship out together, nowt like that — just seemed to happen so. Any road, come one rainy spring, we was on the beach together, out of work. Too many hands, not enough ships — you get that, some seasons. Captains can take their pick those times, and Henry Lee and I weren't neither one anybody's first pick. Isle of Pines, just south of Cuba — devil of a place to be stranded, I'll tell you. Knew we'd land a berth sooner or later — always had before — only we'd no idea when, and both of us hungry enough to eat a seagull, but too weak to grab one. I'll tell you the God's truth, we'd gotten to where we was looking at bloody starfish and those Portygee man–o'-war jellies and wondering … well, there you are, that's how bad it were. I've been in worse spots, but not many.
Now back then, there was mermaids all over the place, like you don't see so much today. Partial to warm waters, they are — the Caribbean, Mediterranean, the Gulf Stream — but I've seen them off the Orkneys, and even off Greenland a time or two, that's a fact. What's not a fact is the singing. Combing their hair, yes; they're women, after all, and that's what women do, and how you going to comb your hair out underwater? But I never heard one mermaid sing, not once. And they ain't all beautiful — stop a clock, some of them would.
Now, what you didn't see much of in the old times, and don't hardly be seeing at all these days, was mer men. Merrows, some folk call them. Ugly as fried sin, the lot: not a one but's got a runny red nose, nasty straggly hair — red too, mostly, I don't know why — stumpy green teeth sticking up and out every which way, skin like a crocodile's arse. You get a look at one of those, it don't take much to figure why your mermaid takes to hanging around sailors. Put me up against a merrow, happen even I start looking decent enough, by and by.
Any road, like I told you, Henry Lee and I was pretty well down to eating our boots — or we would have been if we'd had any. We was stumbling along the beach one morning, guts too empty to growl, looking for someone to beg or borrow from — or maybe just chew up on the spot, either way—when there's a sudden commotion out in the water, and someone screaming for help. Well, I knew it were a merrow straight–away, and so did Henry Lee — you can't ever mistake a merrow's creaky, squawky voice, once you've heard it — and when we ran to look, we saw he had a real reason to scream. Big hammerhead had him cornered against the reef, curding and circling him, the way they do when they're working up to a strike. No, I tell a lie, I misremember — it were a bull shark, not a hammerhead. Hammer, he swims in big packs, he'll stay out in the deep water, but your bull, they'll come right in close, right into the shallows. And they'll leave salmon or tuna to go after a merrow. Just how they are.
Now merrows are tough as they're unsightly, you don't never want to be disputing a fish or a female with a merrow. But to a bull shark, a merrow's a nice bit of Cornish pasty. This one were flapping his arms at the bull, hitting out with his tail — worst thing he could have done; they'll go for the tail first thing, that's the good part. I says to Henry Lee, I says, «Look sharp, mate — might be summat over for us.» Sharks is real slap–dash about their meals, and we was hungry.
But Henry Lee, he gives me just the one look, with his eyes all big and strange — and then rot me if he ain't off like a pistol shot, diving into the surf and heading straight for the reef and that screaming merrow. Ain't too many sailors can really swim, you know, but Henry Lee, he were a Devon man, and he used to say he swam before he could walk. He had a knife in his belt — won it playing euchre with a Malay pirate — and I could see it glinting between his teeth as he slipped through them waves like a dolphin, which is a shark's mortal enemy, you know. Butt 'em in the side, what they do, in the belly, knock 'em right out of the water. I've seen it done.
That bull shark never knew Henry Lee were coming till he were on its back, hanging on like a jockey and stabbing everywhere he could reach. Blood enough in the water, I couldn't hardly see anything — I could just hear that merrow, still screeching his ugly head off. Time I caught sight of Henry Lee again, he were halfway back to shore, grinning at me around that bloody knife, and a few fins already slicing in to finish off their mate, ta ever so. I practically dragged Henry Lee out of the water, 'acos of he were bleeding too — shark's hide'll take your own skin off, and his thighs looked like he'd been buggering a hedgehog.
«Barking mad," I told him. «Barking, roaring, howling mad! God's frigging teeth, you ought to be put somewhere you can't hurt yourself — aye, nor nobody else. What in frigging Jesus' frigging name possessed you, you louse–ridden get?»
See, it weren't that we was all such mates back then, me and Henry Lee, it were more that I thought I knew him — knew what he'd do when, and what he wouldn't; knew what I could trust him for, and what I'd better see to meself. There's times your life can depend on that kind of knowing — weren't for that, I wouldn't be here, telling this. I says it again, «What the Christ possessed you, Henry bleeding Lee?»
But he'd already got his back to me, looking out toward the reef, water still roiling with the sharks fighting for leftovers. «Where's that merrow gone?» he wanted to know. «He was just there — where's he got to?» He was set to swim right back out there, if I hadn't grabbed him again.
«Panama by now, if he's got the sense of a weevil," says I. «More sense than you, anyway. What kind of bloody idiot risks his life for a bloody merrow?»
«An idiot who knows how a merrow can reward you!» Henry Lee turned back around to face me, and I swear his blue eyes had gone black and wild as the sea off Halifax. «Didn't you never hear about that? You save a merrow's life, he's bound to give you all his treasure, all the plunder he's ever gathered from shipwrecks, sea fights — everything he's got in his cave, it's the rule. He don't have no choice, it's the rule!»
I couldn't help it, I were laughing before he got halfway through. «Aye, Henry Lee," I says. «Aye, I've heard that story, and you know where I heard it? At me mam's tit, that's where, and at every tit since, and every mess where I ever put me feet under the table. Pull the other one, chum, that tale's got long white whiskers on it.» Wouldn't laugh at him so today, but there you are. I were younger then.
Well, Henry Lee just gave me that look, one more time, and after that he didn't speak no more about merrows and treasures. But he were up all that night — we slept on the beach, y'see, and every time I roused, the fool were pacing the water's edge, this way and that, gaping out into the bloody black, plain waiting for that grateful merrow to show up with his arms full of gold and jewels and I don't know what, all for him, along of being saved from the sharks. " Rule," thinks I. «Rule, me royal pink bum," and went back to sleep.
But there's treasure and there's treasure — depends how you look at it, I reckon. Very next day, Henry Lee found himself a berth aboard a whaler bound home for Boston and short a foremast hand. He tried to get me signed on too, but … well, I knew the captain, and the captain remembered me, so that were the end of that. You'd not believe the grudges some of them hold.