The North Water(31)
“We will make a whale man of you yet, Mr. Sumner,” Cavendish jokes, as they sit in the mess cabin smoking their pipes and warming their feet by the stove. “Some surgeons would be too dainty for the pick haak, but you took to it nicely, I’d say.”
“Flensing is a good deal like cutting turf,” Sumner says, “and I did plenty of that when I was a boy.”
“That’s it then,” Cavendish says. “It’s in your blood.”
“The whaling is in my blood, you think?”
“The working,” Cavendish says with a smile. “The Irishman is a laborer at heart; that’s his true calling.”
Sumner spits into the stove and listens to it fizzle. He knows enough of Cavendish by now not to take his taunts to heart, and his mood is too light this morning to be seriously baited.
“And what is the Englishman’s true calling, I wonder, Mr. Cavendish?” he answers. “To grow fat off the labors of others, perhaps?”
“There are them that are born to toil, and them that are born to grow rich,” Cavendish says.
“I see. And which one are you?”
The mate leans back complacently in his chair and flares his pinkish lower lip.
“Oh, I’d say my time is coming, Mr. Sumner,” he says. “I’d say it’s coming pretty soon.”
*
It is a quiet morning. No more whales are sighted and the hours before noon are spent cleaning the decks, reeving lines, and restocking the whaleboats. Sumner, who has not seen or spoken to Joseph Hannah since the time he saw him horsing with his friends near the fore hatch, decides to seek the boy out. He notices one of the other cabin boys on deck and asks for Joseph’s whereabouts.
“We were told he was to bed down in the tween decks from now on,” the boy says. “I have not seen him since yesterday.”
Sumner ventures into the fore-tween decks, where he finds a grubby wool blanket nestled between a sail chest and a pile of bundled staves but no other sign of the boy. He climbs back up and looks about. After checking that Joseph is not hidden from sight behind the spare boats, the windlass, or the deckhouse, he peers down into the forecastle. Some of the men are on their bunks asleep, others are seated on sea chests smoking, reading, or carving wood.
“I am looking for Joseph Hannah,” he calls. “Is the boy down there?”
The seated men turn to look at him. They shake their heads.
“No we hant seen him,” one answers. “We thought he were staying aft with you, Mr. Sumner.”
“With me?”
“In officers’ quarters. On account of his illness.”
“And who told you that?”
The man shrugs.
“That’s all what I heard,” he says.
Sumner, touched now with the beginnings of impatience, returns to his cabin and retrieves a candle with the intention of exploring the holds (although why the boy would be concealing himself anywhere in the holds is beyond him). He sees Black emerging from the captain’s cabin carrying the brass sextant.
“I’m looking for Joseph Hannah,” Sumner says to him. “Have you seen the boy about?”
“The one with the sore arse?” Black says. “No, I can’t say I have.”
Sumner shakes his head and sighs.
“The Volunteer is not such a large vessel. I’m surprised a boy can so easily go missing.”
“There are a thousand nooks and crannies on a ship like this one,” Black says. “He’s probably off pulling his pizzle somewhere. Why do you need him?”
Sumner hesitates, aware that his concern with the health of Hannah’s fundament has already become something of a joke amongst the officers.
“I have a task for him,” Sumner says.
Black nods.
“Well, he’ll emerge by and by, you can be sure of that. The boy is an awful malingerer, but he’ll not miss his rations when they’re served.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” Sumner says, looking at the candle for a moment, then dropping it into his jacket pocket. “Why should I trouble to search for someone who doesn’t want to be found?”
“There are other cabin boys,” Black agrees. “Ask one of those.”
Later that afternoon, since there are still no signs of whales and the weather is calm enough, Brownlee orders the men to commence the making off. They reduce the sails and begin to break out the main hold. Eight or ten casks, previously filled with water for ballast, are brought up onto the deck, thereby exposing the lowest stratum of casks, the ground tier, which will be first to be filled with the minced-up blubber. The men on deck make ready the equipment (speck trough, lull, chopping blocks, and knives) needed to separate blubber from muscle and skin, and to cut it into pieces small enough to be squeezed through the bunghole of a cask. Sumner keeps an eye out for Joseph Hannah, assuming he will appear soon enough, roused by all this commotion from whatever hiding place he has found.
“Where’s that little shit Hannah disappeared to?” Cavendish shouts out. “I need some knives taken down for sharpening.”
“He’s missing,” Sumner says. “I was looking about for him this morning.”
“He’s a shiftless little cunt, that one,” Cavendish says. “I’ll show him the true meaning of a sore arse when I discover him.”