Of the three men, Mr. Carter kept most to himself and paid scant attention to the boy. He occupied his time with the few books left behind, seizing upon and rereading the Geneva Bible that once belonged to Mr. Bucke, complete with strange numbers at the verses and notes printed in the margins to explain the more uncertain tales. Or else he scribbled in a journal fashioned from a ship’s log commandeered from the effects of Master Ravens. On those few occasions when alone in the boy’s company, Carter sought to instruct him in how to distinguish the letters among the alphabet and in six months’ time had conveyed an elementary understanding of the art of reading. Robert Waters, who had late killed a man, she avoided as best she could, but he was forever near Mr. Carter or Mr. Chard, anxious in his solitude, as if plagued by the memory of his foul deed and discharge of his temper. Whenever alone with Long John, Waters bore a smile upon his face, made all the meaner for the disappearance of both teeth that some call the eyeteeth and others the dogteeth, for they are pointed and sharp in some mouths. How he became untoothed Waters never said, and he also walked with a bandy-legged strut, and she guessed that upon the sea so long he had suffered the sailors’ disease on a distant voyage. In all, an agreeable chap, if not for the murderous heart, and he had not one ill word for her in the entire time on the islands.
As for Mr. Chard, Edward, she found him the most fascinating of the three, for he evinced, at first, a most easy and ready character, adapting to the islands as if he had always lived there, clambering like a monkey up the palms to gather nuts and fronds, keen at spearing fish, roping hogs, digging turkle eggs. Chard went about shoeless in the long summer months, and his stockings had long since gone to tatters. At comfort in the presence of his male comrades, he soon was blouse-less, too, in hot weather, his skin baked to cedar. Whene’er he grew nosesick of his own odour, or when he simply cooled in the waters, he would strip off all clothing, his lower half pale in contrast and his pizzle in plain sight. Her discomfort on the initial occasion of seeing him thus gave way to wicked delight, so that she ofttimes wished the sun to blaze just to see him cavort, tho in his nakedness, he cajoled the others to join him in the cool ocean waters. Jane never chanced a moment in the sea save for the rare times when she’d slip away with Crab while the others dozed, and on the other side of the island, she could bathe, certain that the dog would play the sentinel and bark as if mad should anyone approach. Vigilance was her motto, and she kept herself bound.
They passed the seasons in this manner, carefree summer giving way to autumn rains and then the chilly nights of winter. No sail appeared on the sea, tho in the springtime, great herds of whales, as big as their expeditionary fleet, passed by. The four castaways gathered upon a clifftop to watch the great fish play and feed in the clear waters. From above, the leviathans seemed as small as the dolphins and porpoises that frequented the coast of Bermuda.
“ ’Twas one of these,” Mr. Carter informed them all, “what ate the prophet Jonah.” He opened his ever-present Bible and found his page. “Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.” With his finger, he followed to the note in the margin. “Thus the Lord would chastise the Prophet with a most terrible spectacle of death, and by this also strengthened and encouraged him of his favour and support in this duty which was commanded him.”
“Rubbish,” said Chard. “Three days and three nights. What I eat lasts not more than a day in the belly. The most base superstition. Have you never seen a whale close up, Mr. Carter?”
“That I haven’t.”
“The humpedback has no teeth but a comb in its mouth whereby it brushes the water, and into the hairs many shrimps are fastened and it is these the whale swallows and spits the water through the hole in its head.”
Mr. Waters laughed and spat a seed onto the ground. “ ’Tis true, marry, but there is whales with teeth. Have you never heard tell of the spermaceti? That man has teeth the size of yon Crab there and could swallow whole a dog or hog or man. ’Twas the sperm whale ate Mr. Jonah, I’d imagine, a brute beast, big as a church and more fearsome.”
Drawing her knees to her chest, Jane wrapped her arms around her legs and considered with wonder the lives of such seafaring men. Chard plucked a blade of sawgrass and stuck the root end between his teeth. “Onct a-sea in the good ship Forbearance, hard off the coast of Aifric, I saw one of them monsters come roaring through the surface in a death struggle with a mighty sea spider. Huge it was, with long suckered arms wrapped around your man’s massy head, its great eye bigger than a cask of ale, never blinking, and the sperm whale jaw snapping and biting like a shears, and then down they go in a splash and ne’er drew air again, so far as I can see, and Lord knows the victor.”
“I’d have liked to have my hands on that whale,” said Waters, “and gashed the head, for the head’s where the gold is. The amber grease what foulness from which they make sweet perfume, tho the good Lord knows how, and a nugget of that stuff would make a man rich.”
“A whale is just like Lord Gates, a rich man who never leaves off gaping till he swallows all.”
“A pretty moral,” said Carter. He had his head buried in the book and read again. “I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, thou heardest my voice.”
Waters stood suddenly and looked at the horizon. “Perhaps we should have gone away with the rest. They are not coming back, are they?”