Cloud Atlas

sheet.

Dawn was sweating & scarlet as passionfruit. Male & female Natives alike drudged up “Main Street” to the church plantations atop the hill, where they worked until the afternoon heat was intolerable. Before the skiff came to take Henry & me back to the Prophetess, I went to watch the workers plucking weeds from the copra. Peradventure it fell to young Mr. Wagstaff to be their overseer this morning & he had a Native boy bring us cocoa-nut milk. I withheld from asking after his family & he did not mention them. He carries a whip, “but I rarely employ it myself, that’s what the Guard of Christ the King are for. I just watch the watchers,” he said.

Three of these dignitaries watched their fellows, leading hymns (“land shanties”) & reprimanding slackers. Mr. Wagstaff was less inclined to conversation than yesterday & let my pleasantries lapse into silence broken only by sounds of the jungle & laborers. “You’re thinking, aren’t you, that we’ve made slaves out of free peoples?”

I avoided the question by saying Mr. Horrox had explained their labors paid for the benefits of Progress brought by the Mission. Mr. Wagstaff did not hear me. “There exists a tribe of ants called the slave maker. These insects raid the colonies of common ants, steal eggs back to their own nests & after they hatch, why, the stolen slaves become workers of the greater empire & never even dream they were once stolen. Now if you ask me, Lord Jehovah crafted these ants as a model, Mr. Ewing.” Mr. Wagstaff’s gaze was gravid with the ancient future. “For them with the eyes to see it.”

People of shifting character unnerve me & Mr. Wagstaff was one such. I made my excuses & proceeded to my next port of call, viz., the schoolroom. Here, infant Nazarenes of both hues study Scripture, arithmetic, and their ABC’s. Mrs. Derbyshire teaches the boys & Mrs. Horrox the girls. In the afternoon the White children have an additional three hours’ tutelage in a curriculum appropriate to their station (though Daniel Wagstaff for one appears immune to his educators’ wiles), while their darker playmates join their parents in the fields before the daily vespers.

A short revue was staged in my honor. Ten girls, five White, five Black, recited a Holy Commandment apiece. Then I was treated to “O! Home Where Thou Art Loved the Best” accompanied by Mrs. Horrox on an upright piano whose past was more glorious than its present. The girls were then invited to ask the visitor questions, but only White misses raised their hands. “Sir, do you know George Washington?” (Alas, no.) “How many horses pull your carriage?” (My father-in-law keeps four, but I prefer to ride a single mount.) The littlest asked of me, “Do ants get headaches?” (Had her classmates’ titters not reduced my interrogator to tears, I should be standing there pondering this question still.) I told the students to live by the Bible & obey their elders, then took my leave. Mrs. Horrox told me departees were once presented with a garland of plumeria, but the Mission elders deemed garlands immoral. “If we allow garlands today, it will be dancing tomorrow. If there is dancing tomorrow?.?.?.” She shuddered.

’Tis a pity.

By noon the men had loaded the cargo & the Prophetess was kedging out of the bay against unfavorable winds. Henry & I have retired to the mess room to avoid the spray & oaths. My friend is composing an epic in Byronic stanzas entitled “True History of Autua, Last Moriori” & interrupts my journal writing to ask what rhymes with what:—“Streams of blood”? “Themes of mud”? “Robin Hood”?

I recall the crimes Mr. Melville imputes to Pacific missionaries in his recent account of the Typee. As with cooks, doctors, notaries, clergymen, captains & kings, might evangelists also not be some good, some bad? Maybe the Indians of the Societies & the Chathams would be happiest “undiscovered,” but to say so is to cry for the moon. Should we not applaud Mr. Horrox’s & his brethren’s efforts to assist the Indian’s climb up “Civilization’s Ladder”? Is not ascent their sole salvation?

I know not the answer, nor whence flew the surety of my younger years.

During my night at the Horroxes’ Parsonage, a burglar broke into my coffin & when the reprobate could not locate my jackwood trunk’s key (I wear it around my neck), he attempted to force the lock. Had he succeeded, Mr. Busby’s deeds & documents would now be fodder for sea horses. How I wish our captain was cut from trustworthy Cpt. Beale’s cloth! I dare not give Cpt. Molyneux custody of my valuables & Henry warned me against “stirring the hornets’ nest” by raising the attempted crime with Mr. Boerhaave, lest an investigation spur every thief aboard to try his luck whenever my back is turned. I suppose he is right.

Monday, 16th December—

Today at noon the sun was vertical & that customary humbuggery known as “Crossing the Line” was let loose, by which “Virgins” (those crewmen crossing the equator for the first time) endure various hazings & duckings, as thought fit by those Tars conducting ceremonies. The sensible Cpt. Beale did not waste time on this during my Australia-bound voyage, but the seamen of the Prophetess were not to be denied their fun. (I considered all notions of “fun” to be an anathema to Mr. Boerhaave, until I saw what cruelties these “amusements” entailed.) Finbar warned us the two “Virgins” were Rafael & Bentnail. The latter has been at sea for two years but sailed only the Sydney-Cape Town run.

During the dogwatch the men slung an awning over the foredeck & assembled around the capstan, where “King Neptune” (Pocock, dressed in absurd robe with a squilgee wig) was holding court. The Virgins were tied to the catheads like a pair of Saint Sebastians. “Sawbone & Mr. Quillcock!” cried Pocock upon seeing Henry & me. “Art thou come to rescue our virgin sisters from my scabdragon?” Pocock danced with a marlinespike in a vulgar fashion & the seamen clapped with lickerish laughter. Henry, laughing, retorted that he preferred his virgins without beards. Pocock’s riposte on maidens’ beards is too obscene to record.

His Barnacled Majesty turned back to his victims. “Bentnail of Cape Town, Riff-the-Raff of Convict-town, be you ready to enter the Order of the Sons of Neptune?” Rafael, his boyish spirits restored in part by the anticks, responded with a brisk, “Aye, Your Lordship!” Bentnail gave a surly nod. Neptune roared, “Naaaaaay! Not till we shave those d——d scales off you sogerers! Bring me the shaving cream!” Torgny hurried up with a pail of tar, which he applied to the prisoners’ faces with a brush. Next, Guernsey appeared, dressed as Queen Amphitrite & removed the tar with a razor. The Cape man howled curses, which caused much merriment & not a few “slips” of the razor. Rafael had the sound sense to bear his ordeal in silence. “Better, better,” growled Neptune, before yelling, “Blindfold ’em both & shew Young Riff into my courtroom!”

This “courtroom” was a barrel of salt water into which Rafael was plunged headfirst while the men chanted to twenty, after which Neptune commanded his “courtiers” to “fish out my newest citizen!” His blindfold was removed & the boy leant against the bulwarks to recover from his hazing.

Bentnail acquiesced less willingly, yelling, “Unhand me you sons of w——s!” King Neptune rolled his eyes in horror. “That stinking mouth needs forty o’ the best in the brine, boys, or me eyes ain’t mates!” On the count of forty, the Afrikaner was raised, baying, “I’ll kill every last one of you sons of sows, I swear I will I—” To general hilarity, he was submerged for another forty. When Neptune declared his sentence served, he could do nothing but choke & retch feebly. Mr. Boerhaave now ended the skylarking & the newest Sons of Neptune cleaned their faces with oakum & a bar of toilet soap.

Finbar was still chuckling at dinner. Cruelty has never made me smile.

Wednesday, 18th December—

Scaly seas, barely a breath of wind, therm. remains about 90?. The crew have washed their hammocks & triced them up to dry. My headaches commence earlier daily & Henry has once more increased my dosage of vermicide. I pray his supply will not be depleted ere we drop anchor in O-hawaii, for the pain unameliorated would shatter my skull. Elsewhere my doctor is kept busy by much erysipelas & bilious cholera on the Prophetess.

This afternoon’s fitful siesta was cut short by clamor, so I went on deck & there found a young shark being baited & hoisted aboard. It writhed in its own brilliant ruby juices for a considerable time before