"So?" I ask. It's true, we're usually not able to see the surface of the sea close at hand, because we're down so low.
"So, I saw big clumps of seaweed in it. I know you've been to sea before. Don't you find it strange, us being so far out?" I chose Caroline for this because she did such a good job in Clarissa's little skit on the day of the Great Riot.
Dorothea takes her cue. "Mr. Sackett says there's a place out here called the Sargasso Sea. He showed it to us on his globe. Could that be where we are?"
My turn. "Oh, no, dear, we couldn't be in the Sargasso—no sane Captain would think of bringing his ship and crew through there."
"Why not?" asks Caroline.
"'Cause it's a horrible, haunted place, is why. There're all sorts of sailors' tales of ships getting hopelessly becalmed and entangled in mossy seaweed, to become ghastly derelicts, rotting away in the tropic sun, covered in slime, their crews long dead of thirst and disease and far worse than that, even." I'm noticing out of the corner of my eye that the crew on deck have stopped their work and are listening.
The fourth member of our little cast of players picks it up.
"I don't know if any of you know it, but my family is in the shipping business in Boston," says Julia Winslow. "About six years ago one of my father's captains came back from a voyage with a very strange story. It seems his ship, the Amazon, was sailing on the edge of that Sargasso Sea one day, when his lookout spotted a ship on the horizon. As they drew closer, the Captain put his spyglass on the ship and saw that it was one he knew—it was the brig Marie Celestine, which had recently sailed out of Boston, bound for the Lesser Antilles with a full cargo of trade goods. On board was Captain James Boggs, his wife, and young daughter, and a crew of twenty-five"
Julia pauses for breath and then goes on.
"Closer and closer the Amazon got to the Marie Celestine, and the nearer they got, the stranger things became. They saw that the ship's sails were not trimmed, they were just flapping loose in the breeze. Then they saw something that made their blood freeze—there was no man on the wheel! The helm just spun around, back and forth, aimlessly."
Again she pauses—the men on deck draw in closer to us. I make a little sign to Julia that she can lower her voice. She does.
"The Captain of the Amazon, suspecting that it might be a plague ship, sends a man over in a rowboat to the derelict, that man having survived smallpox once and therefore being immune to the disease. He boards, goes below, and soon reappears, waving for others to follow. They do and this is what they find: The cargo is intact. There is no sign of struggle. The lifeboats are still in their davits. Tables are set in the crew's mess, and food is left on the plates. The captain's table is set for three. The silverware is where it should be. Nothing is awry, but"—now Julia lowers her voice to a harsh whisper—"there is no one aboard, not one single soul!"
Caroline and Dorothea gasp, and I think I hear some sharp intakes of breath from outside.
"The only thing out of the ordinary found on the Marie Celestine," Julia concludes, "was a string of seaweed at the door to the crew's berth."
"Brrrrr..." Caroline shivers convincingly, despite the heat of the Hold.
"Brrrr is right," says I. "It was four years ago when I was on the Dolphin and I first heard that story, and I heard lots of others about the Sargasso since, and none of 'em good. Listen to this..." The others lean in to listen, and I believe I have the full attention of the crew as well. "There was one cove on the Dolphin, Snag Thompson being his name, who sailed through the Sargasso one time and he told me things, which he swears are all true. He said that sometimes the seaweed gets so thick, a ship can hardly push through the mess, and the weed is this sick, gray-green color, like the skin of a corpse. He said he heard tales of ships brought to a stop, entangled in the stuff and never to come out, their crews sufferin' horrible deaths and never seen again. It's said that the Sargasso weed gets into a man's very blood and takes him over complete, till he ain't a man no more, but a monster."
"Oh my," breathes Julia. She really is just the gentlest thing and is totally believable in her distress.
"That's what he said, and I believe 'im, 'cause he was a good and honest mate of mine. He said he heard that it started with a man's feet—the first sign was if a man's feet started stinkin' real bad—and then the weed would start to grow between his toes, then over his feet and ankles, and then up through the vein on the inside of his leg and by then it was too late. You could try to rip it off or cut it off or shave it off but it warn't no use—the weed was in your blood."
All four of us grab a foot and bring it up to our nose to sniff, and although I have smelled sweeter things, I shake my head in relief, as do the other girls.
"Right, and that ain't all," I say, pressing on. "Snag knew a bloke who saw this with his very own eyes. They were becalmed one night in the Sargasso, and it was dreadful hot and steamy with thick fog all around, and late in the mid-watch they heard a scratching at the side of their ship and they got a lantern and held it over the side and the fog blew off for a second and they saw something they knew would stay with them to the end of their days. There, on a wet and soggy seaweed raft, sat this heap of a thing—it was no longer a man but plainly had once been one. It was covered, head to toe, with the vile weed, and the only thing left vaguely human about it was its open mouth pleading with the sailors to end its misery. Which act of mercy they could not grant, the fog having enclosed everything once again in its moist and choking embrace."
"Lord...," says Caroline.
We are silent for a moment, and then I speak up again.
"Julia, do you know whatever happened to the Marie Celestine? The ship itself, I mean"
"My father says it was towed to some southern port and painted black and renamed, for no sailor would set foot on that brig again ... and ... Good Lord! You don't think that this ship could..."
We let it go at that, and just then Chubbuck provides for us a curtain to our little play, by roaring up and telling the men to get back to work and being very free with his club.
The Bloodhound Players manage to get down below the Stage before collapsing in fits of muffled laughter.
"Can you imagine," I chortle, lying on my back and pumping my hands and feet in the air for joy, "them down there tonight smelling each other's feet!"
After a while we subside, but it's hard for me, what with visions of Mick and Keefe sitting down in the galley, gravely pulling their toes apart to inspect what might lie between.
"Well played, all," I finally say, getting up and hugging Caroline and Julia and giving Dorothea's hand a squeeze. "Now, back to our duties."
I reflect that someday I may try my hand at playwriting.
The girls are done writing their personal notes now and I gather them up and tightly fold them together in packets and slip them into the bottle. While the eyes of most of the girls are moist as they pass me their notes, Clarissa's are bone dry as she hands me hers, saying, "If you are thinkin' I wrote some sentimental twaddle like the rest of you, you are dead wrong. All I did was kindly ask my daddy not to hang that Bartholomew Simon till I got back as I want to be there for the festive occasion. I plan on packing a picnic lunch and enjoyin' it hugely while watchin' that scum swing." I have no doubt that is exactly what she wrote.
I take up my scrap of paper and sit down to write mine.
Dear Jaimy,
Remember that girl you said you liked and wanted to marry but you thought was drowned in a boat accident? Well, she didn't. I'm still alive and kicking at this time. If you get this without seeing me, though, you'll know that our plan of escape failed and I am either passed on or in some sultan's harem, dressed in veils and baggy pants and smoking a hookah.
Ha. Ha. Just kidding. Really, though, Jaimy, if I don't come back, I hope you have a happy life and will think of me sometimes, fondly. I am, your girl always,
Jacky Faber
With that, I snort back a tear of my own and stuff the note into the bottle. I know that this could just as easily wash up in a Spanish port as an English-speaking one, so I ask around to see if anyone knows any of that language. None do, so I just write the one phrase I know, "Mucho dinero," in the margin of the main letter, with dollar signs next to it and an arrow pointing to Ezra's address. That should do it. I stuff this letter in last, so it will be read first.
I press the cork back in, ram it home, pound it down level, and then light the candle and drip wax over the end of the bottle till it's got a good thick cap of wax. I shall mail it tonight.
The flaps have fallen, Chorus is over, and I stand in the middle of the Stage in the total darkness.
"All right," I say. "Hughie here has requested that I tell some stories about when him and me ran with the Rooster Charlie Gang in London. Some of you know that I grew up there in that gang, and that there were six of us—Rooster Charlie Brewster, the leader, our Hughie here, then there were Polly, Judy, Nancy, and me. I was maybe nine at the time and called Little Mary because of my size, but I was not the youngest one, not by a long shot. That honor fell on the shoulders of Polly, our beautiful little angel, she of the golden locks and big, round blue eyes, eyes as blue as the sky, who had wandered one day into our kip under Black-friars Bridge, her thumb stuck firmly in her mouth, saying nothing, just standing there waiting. We took her in, as I had been taken in, years before. She was our best beggar."
I clear my throat. "Here goes..."
The drunkard stumbled out of the Admiral Benbow, weaving slowly from left to right. He fell once but got back to his feet, real unsteady-like, and headed down Tudor Street ... I'm peekin' round the corner of North Bridge Street, with my good stout Hughie at my side. Charlie's on the other side with Nancy, and he signals to me to hold back. Judy and Polly are in the alley next to them. We have been waiting for hours for one such as him to come out.
The drunkard stops, sways for a moment, then his head goes back and he falls forward on his face. Charlie says, "Now!" and we're all out and on the drunkard in an instant. As follows our usual way of doin' things, Charlie goes straight for the purse, whilst Polly and Judy pulls off the boots. Next Hughie flips him over and I start unbuttoning his coat and vest. Then I undo his pants so's Nancy can pull 'em down and off. "Hughie! Sit 'im up!" I say, and Hughie does it. I strip off his coat, fling it to the waiting Judy, who's collectin' all the stuff. I'm workin' on the vest when I hear Charlie say, "Damn!"
I look up from my labors and see two shadowy figures have joined us. My heart goes into me mouth, but it ain't the police, no, it's two of the Shanky Boys, the gang who owns the turf on the east side of ours.
"This 'ere drunk's ours," says the taller of the two.
"Like 'ell," says Charlie. "He's down on our side o' the line, so 'e's ours. This ain't Shanky turf."
"Our turf's where we says it is and I says this 'ere's our drunkard, so get off him. His hands are lyin' on our side."
I leap up and stand on the back of the fallen drunk and spit out, "You bugger off, Turkle! His purse is on our side, so 'e's ours!" Turkle's this wormy cove with bad teeth and smells a lot like Sammy Nettles of present-day renown.