He was gone — silently, agilely.
'That bastard has a lot on his mind,' said Minnaar.
'He lost…' I told him the Oranjemund story in detail.
'Makes me feel almost sorry for the old so-and-so,' he said when I had finished. 'I'll say this for him, he was out in his boat that first morning after Walker put that old crap-shop ashore in a sea which would have made you piss yourself. I watched him for six hours dodging the waves, let alone the rigging and the hull. If anyone could have pulled it off, Shelborne would have.'
At three o'clock precisely the flatboom came skilfully alongside. It looked like a ship's boat of an older day, except that it was broader in the beam and the bows were slightly flared. Shelborne, at the tiller, greeted us with a preoccupied air. We pulled across to the stained and rusty jetty. Mercury from close up looked even more inhospitable. Landing from a boat lifting twenty feet with each swell was a hair-raising business, which meant jumping to the jetty on the roll. When the boat had been secured Shelborne led us up a short concrete path to the first prefab; the other, to which it was linked, was for the guano workers. The concrete, roughened to give a grip to the boot, was cracked and packed with eggshell fragments and feathers. The prefab was fronted by a long wooden platform resting on rusted metal piles and a short metal ladder led from it to the path. The windows were opaque with sea-scum.
Shelborne looked at his watch. 'We have time yet… We have to climb to the summit of the island back there. Some coffee and rusks from the galley first…'
It wasn't cookhouse with him, it was galley — still shipboard terms.
Minnaar nodded at a ship's bell with sealskin on the clapper which hung on the stoep. The brass was ornate, with worked edges.
'Portuguese gingerbread work,' Shelborne explained.
I read out the name. 'San Jodo 1888.'
'Portuguese warship,' he went on. 'She had a strange fate, strange even for this coast: years ago there must have been a lagoon where North Head is now — it's all quicksand today. They brought the San Jodo in for a careen and a repaint, and they could — there were then twenty-six feet of water inside the bar. The crew laid her on her side and — it seems incredible — the sandbars rose and closed the entrance, locking her in. The lagoon silted up. The crew died of thirst and starvation. The wreck's still there.'
'How do you know all this?' asked Minnaar.
'I made a rough plank bridge to the wreck when she became exposed after some upheaval of the sands. The San Jodo's log had been conscientiously written up. My signal cannon comes from her as well as the bell.'
Minnaar, stolid though he was, had become infected by the gloom of the bay. 'Too many wrecks and dead men around here for my liking — and I was nearly a goner myself, damn me.'
We sat down and Shelborne pulled out what looked like a cigar-holder, carved in soft soapstone. It took me several moments to recognize what it was while he plugged it with tobacco — it was a primitive Hottentot pipe, having no bowl, only a thickened section in front, which jutted out straight. The Coloured cook brought a pot of strong coffee, a bottle of brandy, some brown, oily-looking rusks and a plate of dried peaches..
Shelborne poured the brew into crude, quart-sized mugs and laced it with a dollop of brandy.
'We're as dry here as an American warship — only headmen are allowed liquor in the islands,' he said. 'The workers would never be sober if they had drink. At the last wreck up there' — he nodded to the north — 'on Hollam's Bird Island, they looted her and were blind for a fortnight.'
He handed round the oily rusks. 'They taste better than they look. Basis of refined seal-oil. Keeps you warm. The peaches go with it. Good combination.
I reached for my mug from the rough table. The turgid liquid slopped gently, spilling over the edge.
The island was shaking.
6
Nausea rose in my throat. Disbelievingly, I paused; the crude mug slopped over, although no hand had touched it. Earlier, I had attributed a queasy feeling to sea-legs unaccustomed to land, but now I knew: the island was rocking gently. My nausea was partly physical, partly mental, the first arising from the stench of stale guano, the second from the island's evil ambience. The movement underfoot seemed like something sinister within the rocks themselves. Captain Morrell must have felt the same when he saw the hillocks of dead seals, and this same phenomenon had found a place in the prosaic logs of the guano coasting skippers, a breed not noted for sensitivity.
The mug! What the hell…?'
Shelborne shrugged. 'Mercury shakes. Mercury has always shaken.' He was casual, good-humoured.
The clapper on the bell swung slowly, too. Minnaar was fascinated. 'Why don't you mount this flippin' outfit on gimbals and keep her steady?'
There must be some explanation,' I persisted.
'If there is any, I don't know it,' said Shelborne, but his eyes didn't bear out what he said. The island gets its name from the quivering, you know — mercury, quicksilver.'
'Is it some sort of submarine volcanic eruption?' I asked.
He laughed. 'It's been going on a long time then steadily for twenty years to my knowledge, and a century before that.'
Twenty years on Mercury Island! There was a walk of thirty feet ‹of level planking from where we sat, bigger than a windjammer's quarter-deck, maybe, but not much. Everywhere else were jagged rocks stained with old sea-bird droppings, a pocket handkerchief — and a snotty one at that — of raw undersea peak sticking out of the turbulent ocean. God! Twenty years of penal servitude!
He must have noticed the reaction in our faces. 'Yes, it is something over twenty years since I made Mercury my headquarters — my flagship, to use our jargon.'
I took a long pull at the strong coffee. The rawness of the brandy in it only worsened my nausea. Suddenly I felt I must get back to my ship, to a clean deck, not a false one dubbed with nautical gimmicks, away from the stale stink of Mercury and its air of being live when it should have been dead for a million years.
I put my mug down. It slid sideways a foot along the table. Shelborne reached out and caught it. 'You get used to it. Even when we die, we don't lie quiet on Mercury. No rest in peace here. Back there' — he jerked his head in the direction of the back of the hut — 'is the graveyard. We can't dig graves because there is no soil. So we cement the coffins to the rock. They're on the side the storms come from. The coffin lids sometimes blow off and you can see your former mates rolling from side to side.'
The macabre picture revolted me. I tried to banish it with a rational question. 'Why not take the bodies and bury them on the mainland?'
'The wind would expose a body in a couple of weeks. Either that, or a strandloper — a seashore hyena. I'd prefer Mercury to being a meal for one of those filthy creatures.'
I then suggested, 'Why not give them a sea-burial — in the bay or in open water?'
'Remember I told you how crowded with ships this bay was once,' replied Shelborne. 'It's shallow — and you know how superstitious sailors are. No, they wouldn't have their dead mates just under their keels, liable to be brought to the surface at any moment by the strange currents and eddies round the island. In any case there wasn't time to take a body out to sea, when every guano-loading hour was precious, and besides, it's too rough for a small boat. So our form of burial has become part of the Mercury tradition — tough, but I stick to it.'
Minnaar said, 'Do you really go and examine the coffins after every storm?'
Shelborne was staring across the sea. A cormorant feather blew into the corner of his mouth. He pulled it away absent-mindedly. He took a long time to reply. 'A coffin blows open — that is a handhold to the past. There's a chap there wearing a frilly lace shirt and a black hat. Yes — a hat, in his coffin. He used to sport it when the Alabama was taking prizes in these waters. Captain Lem Sherrill, of Connecticut. I've had to put his coffin lid back several times — it seems particularly prone to blowing open. He is history; Mercury is a handhold to — antiquity.'