Esteban’s big bottom lip curled a little in protest. He considered his life with Humphrey. Crisp evenings standing on mountain slopes with a walkie-talkie and a stopwatch. He looked down at his missing middle finger which Humphrey had made 'disappear.' The scene was still fresh. Humphrey’s confident smile under curled moustache, he spoke loud, with sleight fingers and shifting eyes and when the blood came he couldn’t shake the magicians persona. Grinning madly, shuffling a deck of cards, all the way to the hospital. And he could barely count the times Humphrey’s wide looping throws missed the heavy bag and clocked him, a mouse had risen under each eye at just the first evening of training to be a boxer.
So the idea of sailing to the Galapagos Islands wasn’t at all enticing. Couple that with the dreamy look Humphrey now wore, and his conviction about some number he heard twenty years ago. Esteban let a hoarse breath burr between his lips.
"Okay, Sir."
They packed up. Humphrey replaced his moccasins with tightly tied rubber shoes, which squeaked with each step. And Esteban was loosely sealed in yellow polyerathane, his cheese cutter hat still sat under the hood. Humphrey puffed his pipe and watched on while Esteban hunched forward and pulled the oars back as the dinghy skimmed toward Edmund’s Endeavour. They climbed aboard, pulled the anchor, raised the sail and began.
***
When Humphrey woke after nine days at sea, it was still early and wet hot. Esteban’s feet, wrapped in holy socks, sent Humphrey’s breath back over his forehead. Last time they sailed together Esteban slept on the wood floor. But Humphrey had seen him hunched with his palms pressing into his spine, a grimace on his face and he thought the hard wood was no place for an old man with a bad back. So they bunked.
He considered the ship, but not the dusty old relic he lay in, the ship as it was forty years ago. He waited on the wharf, dangling his feet over the edge with a fleet of maids huddled around in case he slipped. Just five years old, he eagerly eyed the horizon, for five days. Watching for those great white sails, the sharp wooden nose of Edmond’s Endeavour as it cut through the blue. And every time another ship came, he eyed it expecting.
When that grand old thing bounced over the white caps and got closer, close enough to recognise. "It’s him!" He screamed and the fleet shook themselves from day slumber, fingernails ceased to be picked and eyes left magazines. They all watched as the little thing, with hair like Indian ink, danced his way along the wharf, waving his arms wildly.
Esteban’s feet shifted as he sat up and Humphrey sat aswell. They were face-to-face, close enough to hug.
“Morning, Sir.” Esteban said inquisitively, because it may have been afternoon, but they wouldn't know. Not until Humphrey reviewed the suns movement and the charts, of course.
Dolphins were cutting in and out of the whitewash which peeled from the prow. Humphrey sat with one hand hard on the helm and a cup of tea in the other. The vessel carved an unfaltering line, the sail sighed, and the mast groaned and swayed with the breeze. Humphrey looked up into the blue sky, then towards the horizon. Dark clouds were amassing like an army, staunchly waiting their approach. But he couldn’t stop, he wouldn’t wait. Wolf Island would arrive in a few days more if he kept this pace.
Esteban emerged from the cabin in time to find Humphreys sharp nose low, his gaze hard set on the coming thunder-heads.
“We are heading for the storm, Sir.”
“I can see that Esteban, but not to worry, this old girl has seen plenty of storms in her time.”
Esteban’s mouth shaped as if to speak again but he thought better of it. He swallowed, seemingly indifferent but for the way his mouth sat a little ajar and the way his fingers moved in and out of each other.
“Get back down stairs, Esteban, no use in you getting wet as well.”
Esteban went to speak again, but stopped himself and receded down the hatch.
The lanyard was flapping a little now, jerking about against the mast, ringing like the church’s bells. The sea was upset, rising and falling, breaking white caps. A fine caul of mist obscured the horizon. Then it began to fall, heavy lugubrious drops, beating their way across the water towards Edmond’s Endeavour. The sails were jerking tight, then falling flat, then jerking again. The ship was rolling over the mountains and into the valleys of the sea.
“Come on you bastard!”
From the pitter-patter of the rain, beating closer, came thunder. From the thunder came the storm.
Humphrey's father sailed, before he was locked away. And while his father was at sea Humphrey had only the maids for company. When the evenings got cold, and frost voided Humphrey’s bedroom window looking out over the garden, Jemima, the evening cook, made soup. Into the deep copper pot, she dropped peeled onions, and chicken stock, making gallons of it to last all week. Humphrey would help her cook, tugging on her apron and dictating ingredients, added in feign. She said “Go on down to the cellar and fetch me the big ole can of tomatoes would you, Humphrey?” And when she said Humphrey the ph slipped through her deep southern drawl.
Humphrey disappeared down the wooden steps, legs going like a sewing machine. When he busted through the cellar door his short breath stopped. His eyes stopped. His hand still clung to the brass handle. There he was. His father, home but unannounced -- some how he had got in without detection. His knees were wrapped under his elbows. His eyes mad wide and his face tight and clean, a child’s face on a man. “You’re my forty-first, son, my forty-first.” He said then he smiled, and his teeth were like white leather shoeshine. He was younger, he could have been Humphrey's teenage brother. But he was his father, his naked trembling father, balled in the corner of the cellar. Humphrey turned, and ran to his room, he didn’t eat supper that night.
The next day, he was convinced it was a nightmare, though how could a nightmare be so clear? He wondered. His father was at the breakfast table, coffee in hand. He looked his age again, whatever it was, though his skin was still tight, and his hands. His hands were clear of liver spots and callouses, younger.
Thump! His heart started going for it. He slipped and hit the wood as the ship rolled to almost ninety degrees. One white hand clutched the helm, the other let the tea cup slip along the wood and into the static. He hung for a moment then the mast settled upright again. He scrambled back to his feet and twirled his moustache with his freehand and his clothes stuck like heavy skin. The sun was gone now, down the horizon, or impossibly obscured by dark cloud. The ship rolled; the sails snarled and whipped. Humphrey pulled jerky lines, letting slack out, pulling it back. He was mad. Grinning.
“Is that all? You sonofabitch!”
Then an eruption hit. Sea water blasted over the side, washing over the boards at knee height. The mast swung with the wind and the force of the wave. It went ninety degrees, at least. Lightening flashed so bright that Humphrey could only see in negative for a few seconds after. Then Thunder, only a heartbeat later.Thump!
***
Humphrey woke. He was in bed. Was it a dream? He may have gone another four rounds, the way his head swam when he sat up. In the mirror, he pulled the comb back over his hair. But he couldn’t get past the crest without a crippling pain shooting through his skull like a masons drill, down his spine. He felt with his fingers and found a golf ball which had risen.
“You’re awake, Sir,” Esteban, who had silently moved into the cabin, said.
“What the hell happened? Are we still in the storm?”
“You,” He began uneasily, “You hit your head, Sir. I don’t know how long you were out there, sliding across the deck.”
Humphrey's bushy brows fell a little. “I have been sleeping?”
“Almost two days.”
Suddenly, Humphrey realised how empty his stomach was. Esteban, sat him down, and fixed oats and tea. The sun was pouring through the round cabin windows and Esteban said “We will be arriving this afternoon, according to your charts, Sir,” then climbed out of the cabin and back outside, to the helm.
Humphrey tried to follow him, but the sun was too bright, the rocking deck made his head spin, so he quickly resigned to the cabin. Out of boredom, or perhaps curiosity, he began rifling through the drawers, for a book or anything to pass the time. His fingers moved between broken compass pieces, ink pots and quills. They ran over something with hard edges, a book.
It was green and worn and turning it in his hands he read B.W.A carved in faded black ink on the cover. Bart Wolf Adams. He opened it, to the middle and read.
3rd January 1831
13-8558-89-8180
I have successfully visited again. Three times in total now. It's allure isn't quite what it was, anymore. I remind myself to look away, I say it, I scream it, I etch it into the back of my hand. And when I see it happening, I see the ink, I hear my voice and it's easier.
I am making my way East again, home. I am too tired to tell you it all. This was an adventure as always.
Sleep comes now.
1831, impossible. He had the date wrong, the crazy old fool. If it was right and he wrote this at age ten, he would have been 144 on the day of his death. Impossible
"I can see it," Esteban called, failing to keep the excitement out of his voice. "Sir, we are approaching Wolf Island."
It appeared as a pimple on the horizon. Then it grew into a tumour, then the boat creaked against the sand and they were forty feet away. It was steeped in vines, algae green. And the beach sand was as white as Humphrey’s milky earl grey. At the peak of the island sat a grey patch, a stone pillar, perhaps. That's it, Humphrey thought, though he didn't say it. Esteban let the anchor go and it hit the sand after only a second.
“ It’s shallow, sir.”
"Well, let's get going then, shall we?"
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