Bridge over troubled water

I’ve spent the better part of two weeks avoiding the schooner’s bridge. It’s easy to see why now. Captain Burroughs occupies the cramped space the way a grizzly might a cave. I find myself staring at him – at the individual hairs in his red beard, the line of a white scar running his cheek – wondering how it’s possible this colossus was ever a child.

What’s it to be? I’m tempted to ask. Lashed at the mast with a bullwhip, Sir? Beaten to a pulp with a barnacled plank?

I draw up to my full 5 foot 11, thankful for last year’s growth spurt. But I’m no match for Emery. His uniform gleams brilliant white, the gold buttons burn perfect circles in my eyes and his black boots are slick and shiny. He’s standing to attention beside me. I’ll admit, he’s not half impressive … confound the man.

Burroughs digs his hands into his pockets and stares out to sea. ‘Unless you’re partial to custody in the hold for insubordination, I suggest you answer!’

The stowaway is silent. I nudge him in the ribs with an elbow, but the fellow doesn’t budge. I’ll be damned if I’m locked up for his impertinence.

‘He’s, um … a little shy, if you know what I mean, Sir.’

Burroughs turns a dark eye on me. ‘I was addressing you?’

There is a moment of excruciating silence, followed by a garbled simultaneous confession:

‘Captain, Sir, I found this stowaway in the coal roo …’

‘Captain, I only felt that if anyone should be giving …

We stop, and Emery glares at me. ‘What right does this … this civilian have, Sir?’ He spits the word civilian as though it’s a disease. ‘What right?’

We are spared the captain’s response by a knock at the door. My father pokes his head through. Salvation at last. Tell them, Father. Tell them God’s on our side. My father’s expression is inscrutable. ‘You called for me, Captain?’

The Captain nods. ‘With due respect, Father St John, it won’t do to undermine an officer’s authority aboard my ship, you understand.’

This is not going well. My father shoots me a speculative glance. ‘I see.’

‘Indeed. I shall have to...’

‘But, we’re paying passengers!’ I blurt, indignation evident in the pitch of my voice.

‘Ah, yes ... there is the nub of it, Boy. Are you paying passengers? Are you indeed?’ He stares at me with his steel-grey eyes and I throw my father a look of wild accusation. Am I really alone here? Alone, and under siege?

Sea legs and sea dogs

Sea legs. I'm not entirely sure what they are, nor how to attain them, but I'm certain of one thing: I don't have them.

The Captain has sea legs. And then some. Apparently, he was born at sea, carried to his mother's arms by a long-winged albatross, swooping right out of the sky. That's what the shipmates say. I, of course, don't believe a word of it. He was born like anyone else. On dry land. He came to sea, probably in his teens, and worked up the rope ladder, rotting rung by rotting rung, until he stood at the helm of the Frontier with his weathered sea dog face and his faraway eyes that could pierce a London fog right through.

He stands above me and his gargantuan shadow looms over the deck. He adorns the bridge with his long beard and fixes his glittering grey-green eye on the undulating grey-green sea. He's nothing but a pirate to me. 'Yar, me hearties, ye scurvy dogs, to work with ye.' Of course, he doesn't really speak this way, but he might as well. His face might as well be made of sand it's so weathered and moulded by the wind. The truth is, he scares me. I have never met anyone like him. Someone made by the sea. Captain Henry J. Burroughs by name, sea dog by appearance, stone-silent Narwhal by nature.

We are two days at sea and, so far, the trip has been nothing short of disastrous. We set sail under inauspicious circumstances. No fanfare, no ticker tape parade, no waving army of fair maidens. Nothing but the shrill cry of gulls and the ripe stench of fish guts and the sting of salt on the air. Two days at the rail, lurching under the rise and tilt of this tin can boat leaves me white-knuckled and bilious.

Everything shifts on the schooner. The mast, the ship's furniture, even the windows. Plates on the table scuttle from one side to the other as I attempt to stab my gristle-ribbed slice of beef (at least I assume it's beef) with a blunt fork. And the thing is ... it doesn't seem to bother anyone but me. Even the Right Honourable Ibrahim Seedat seems at ease in these seas.

I know this because he turns to me today and says: 'I feel indeed at ease in these seas. Jolly good and all. What ho.'

'Jolly good,' I repeat, hurling, green-faced, over the pitching side.

'This is no storm, young rascal, save your sickness and incredulity for the whipping Atlantic wind and the walls of water. She is not upon us yet.'