The Fabulous Beast Read online

  ~

  I was visited last night by ugly dreams and fearful visions of calamity, but woke this morning to a calm sea. We set forth just after dawn, drawing the rafts in the opposite direction to the rising sun, along its arrow-straight rays that glistered on the waters. There are eighteen persons to a raft, the six colourful pulling ribbons spread like a fan in front of each, with three pullers to each ribbon. I am the lead puller on the scarlet ribbon, with my good companion and cousin Giseppi behind me, and at the back there is Greta von Köln, a very strong Prussian woman. In all there are fifty rafts, with Amerigo – we almost always referred to him by his Christian name, which he preferred – and his navigators and officers of the military striding out in front, determined faces never looking back, always towards the horizon. Others: soldiers, cooks, carpenters and various artificers of a kind, walk beside and between.

  This morning the Atlantic Ocean was a dull green. It appeared undulating and endless, as if it spans eternity, but my earlier fears had been chased away, replaced by the need to concentrate in order to maintain a steady, even pace on the surface. I trod with firm, deliberate and positive step. The philosophers tell us that what we do is press the water with the sole of the foot into a brief semblance of solidity. The exact science escapes me but it is the timing of the footfall, the position of the sole of the foot, the brevity of the action, all of which add up to a successful tread. The action becomes instinctive, like walking itself, and requires no thought if one has been seasoned from childhood.

  Indeed, should you lose your step, sink into the liquidity of the ocean, you are lost. You cannot hope to regain the surface with your feet again. At such a moment you must pray to God you will be rescued by someone on one of the rafts and pulled to safety. Since there is only one crew on each raft while the craft is in motion, and should he or she be engaged in a more important task, your life could be forfeit.

  These disasters do not happen often however. We have all been walking the waters since infancy. It is almost as natural as breathing to get things right, so long as concentration remains high. Only when one is tired of mind or physically exhausted do accidents occur. There are frequent stops to ensure our safety. On hearing the high clear note from a golden horn we drop the ribbons, execute a wide curving turn, and walk back to the raft. There we may rest, eat and drink, even sleep, while the raft floats freely on the sea. Fires are lit on the rafts to warm our blood, chilled by the ocean winds and touch of the cold grey sea which breaks over our feet.

  That first morning I was greatly excited. This was a wild dream come true, for I had heard of first crossings as a child, enterprises which excited my imagination. Since hearing of them I had always wished to be part of such an exploration. The initial crossing of the Red Sea, by Moses and his followers; the primary Black Sea crossing by the Moghul Prince Natella Akaba; the first walk along the length of the Nile by the Englishman Sir Seamus Kilkenny, Earl of Cork, Wessex and the Cornish Peninsula. Those great men did not create their feats alone. They had others with them: men like me, women like Greta, who bore the brunt of the physical labour. Now I was here, on such a journey.

  By noon the waves had darkened beneath my soles but more worryingly had grown bubbling stalks of cauliflower. The movement of the water was causing increasing anxiety amongst us. A swell is one thing: one can walk up hills of water and down into troughs so long as the surface is unpuckered. But a sea that is dancing with sprites is another matter. Such movement of water is dangerous and I was relieved when our leader sounded a halt. We gladly dropped the traces, Giseppi, Greta and I, and we performed our circular movements back to our raft. There we were given hard-cake and water, and were allowed to rest.

  I spoke with my companions.

  ‘How is it with you?’ I asked Greta. ‘Can you haul at the rear with ease? Are we giving your our worth from centre and front?’

  ‘It would not be the extra work that would bother me, even if there any, which there is not. I can bear any labour without reproaching my fellow raft-pullers. It is the enormity of the depth of the sea beneath me,’ she replied with a worried look. ‘It bothers me, so many many fathoms.’

  This has always been a concern with Greta. Her mind is a place of canyons and abysses, where lurk misshapen fears. The waters of the outer ocean plumb unknown depths. Her imagination stoops through layers of liquid darkness to the floors beneath, where she sees huge monsters and foul beings not yet revealed to humankind. In her mind she sees them rise, roaring to the surface, to swallow us whole. She describes them to us as huge slimy creatures, oleaginous, squamous, with massive staring eyes and mouths containing a forest of teeth. They have terrible faces, these beasts, and hideous bodies which taper from a bulbous head to a thread at the far end. Living as they do in the pressurised depths of the ocean, when they rise to the surface they swell to gigantic proportions.

  Giseppi said, ‘I am glad I do not have the intellect to indulge in such nightmares, Greta. The sharks and whales hold enough fear for me, without inventions of the mind. To lose a foot to a dagger-toothed dogfish is to lose one’s life. Or paralysis from a box jellyfish. Or even the arms of an octopus, knitting itself around a leg. These are terrors enough.’

  ‘For me,’ I said, ‘it is the vastness of the space around us. It falls away on either side, to back and to front, and nothingness, nothingness in all the corners of our present world. Even the sky is empty. What I would give to see the odd wild sea bird flying from nowhere to nowhere. I would know then that we are not walking to a place where the waters of the ocean fall into a bottomless pit of blackness.’

  We brooded for a moment on our own particular horrors, then spoke of brighter things.

  ‘When we reach the East Indies, as surely we will,’ Greta told us, ‘I am going to buy two slaves, one for the day, another for the night.’

  Giseppi smiled. ‘I can be your night slave until you have purchased one,’ he said.

  Greta stared at his groin. ‘I have seen what is on offer, my ribbon companion, and spaghetti comes to mind more swiftly than the image of a pikestaff.’

  My male friend looked aggrieved. ‘I have had no complaints from other women,’ he stated.

  ‘But do they ask for a second helping?’ countered Greta.

  Giseppi’s brow wrinkled and he went into deep thought. ‘No, by God, they don’t – why do you think that is?’

  Greta and I almost burst with laughing. Strange it is, human social contact, for I knew that Greta was in love with Giseppi, from her body language and from her looks. He knew it too. Yet she invariably mocked Giseppi’s sexual prowess and pretended to find him wanting. It was perhaps that she was afraid of rejection and needed to protect herself.

  The rest of that day became darker and more forbidding. It seemed the sky was closing down on us, pressing upon us with some weight. The air around the whole flotilla grew colder until we were huddled together around the shelters which formed the centre of the rafts. Inside our hut the domestic stock were restless and I could hear the goats bleating in distress. Waves began to wash over the rim of the raft and soak our feet.

  That night there was fire in the sky, but at a great distance. It lit the Heavens every few seconds with a blanket of light. No thunder was heard, so if it was a storm it was too far off to concern us. A tempest was of course to be dreaded. There were stories of rafts being washed clear of men, women and livestock. None could walk in such conditions, so if we found ourselves in the sea during a storm we drowned. There were safety ropes to cling to, to hook one’s feet into, but waves are mighty beasts when unleashed with fury, and they will rip you from your anchor.

  The unsettled weather lasted for two days, but if it did not grow better, it grew no worse. It was simply miserable. Everyone remained wet and cold, despite wearing leather smocks. Even our leaders looked despondent and yet we were hardly out of sight of land.

  It will be a poor showing if we go no further than our present position. At least this long halt gives me time
to catch up on my journal. This small leather-bound notebook I have is getting damper by the day but the charcoal sticks I brought with me serve better than pen and ink, the latter which would run like black rivers down the page.

  ~

  Today the heavy air lifted! We woke this morning to a great swell which rocked our raft this way and that, but the surface itself was much less the dancing water than that which we have endured over the last two days. Our spirits were lifted and we began the day thanking God for breathing the breath of Heaven over our flotilla. Anxious to make progress Amerigo called for us to step from our rafts and take up the ribbons again, which most of us did with alacrity. Some will always complain and dispute with authority, for that is the nature of men, but when these rebels saw their fellows begin to haul they soon felt the prickings of pride and walked out to take up the traces before we pulled too far ahead. We had a fair day of it, with light winds and a few short periods of sunshine. It is amazing how the sun may fill a man’s soul with hope.

  The going was not easy, we having to haul the rafts up the slopes of waves the size of Rome’s hills. But for every up there is a down and just when we thought our lungs would split with the effort we found ourselves treading down into watery-green valleys smooth as glass. It was in one such valley that some wild dolphins came and investigated our expedition. They leapt from the water, crying gleefully, wanting play. There were dolphin-imitators amongst us who confused the poor creatures by repeating their calls and even countering them. Some claim that dolphins have a language which can be learned, but while I feel these sea animals might communicate between themselves I have doubts that any human can converse with them in any meaningful way. The tame dolphins can be called to their corrals at night, even be given instructions – a series of commands – but conversation is a much higher skill.

  Today too, sadly, we lost our first comrade. A zealous marine soldier was striding out in front. In his eagerness to be seen to be doing his duty he failed to notice a dark patch on the ocean. This was no subsea monster, nor anything like, but a huge clotted mass of seaweed floating just below the surface. It became entangled around the poor man’s ankles as he strove to navigate this hidden snare.

  A faltered step, a terror-filled moment when he realised he was going down, and then the fall. A gasping choking cry for help, a frantic thrashing of the surface, before the greenery which indeed seemed a living thing enfolded his flailing arms. We saw him struggling with his green trap, unable to reach him. By the time safety ropes were thrown only his head showed above the sea. He seemed unable to lift his hands, the weed perhaps being too heavy for them to penetrate. Then with a last despairing cry he was gone, disappearing beneath the water, most likely entangled forever. We could not even recover the body. None dared traverse the deadly vegetable. The marine was left to float within the enfolding vines, going where the currents took him and his creeper grave.

  Such innocent-seeming perils there are out on the open waters of the world, waiting to entrap unwary walkers. There would be more to follow, we had little doubt. Valour was needed, courage required. At such times we promised one another that we would be vigilant in the protection of our comrades, secretly knowing that no matter how strong the watch there would always be that unseen danger which would manifest itself.

  It is foreseen that we will have at least two months on this desert of water. Those mathematicians, using facts concerning the cycles of planets and stars; and calculating the distance travelled by winds, their strengths and direction; and informed by currents and swells on the ocean, say that our goal is at least 2,000 miles from the Irish shore.

  We walk at 3 miles an hour for 8 hours a day. By this means we understand it will take us two months to cross these watery wastes and reach the Indies. Much of this journey will be drudgery. Some of it will be delightful. A little – a very little we hope – will be fraught with danger. Would that we had wings and could fly such a journey! Today I saw a shearwater skimming the surface of the sea. The first bird I have noted since we left the waders and gulls of Ireland.

  ~

  ‘There are murmurs of discontent,’ stated Greta. ‘Some speak of mutiny.’

  We were sitting on the raft during one of today’s halts. Our voices, by necessity, were low though we were not planning conspiracy: others were doing that. There was the smell of fear in the air, which often engenders talk of desertion and even mutiny. The Devil plays havoc with fearful minds. Once people become afraid of something the first thing they think of is running away from it, though where they would run to out here on the open waters is a mystery to me. This is the worst kind of fear though: fear of the unknown. On the one hand we might be getting close to our destination, and so fear the beasts and people of that as yet unvisited place. On the other hand, we might not be nearing our goal, which would mean a slow death out here in the midst of the ocean. We have been out a month and a half now. There is no turning back. We have not the resources or the strength to return to our starting point.

  ‘What are you three whispering about?’

  I looked up. An officer of our raft was standing over us. His hand was on the hilt of his sword. Greta stared at him.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said.

  ‘There’ll be no insurrection on my raft,’ stated the officer. His face was dripping with salt-spray. ‘I’ll kill the first man or woman who tries to stir up trouble.’

  I said, ‘No one here was speaking against the expedition.’

  ‘Then speak so all can hear you,’ replied the officer. ‘He turned to the other raft-pullers. ‘That goes for everyone.’

  All was quiet for a moment, then Giseppi filled his lungs and began shouting, ‘The weather today is quite pleasant for a stroll upon the waters of the Atlantic. What say you, my friend?’

  I replied with the same volume that indeed I thought it was.

  Men and women about us grinned. They too began dialogues at the tops of their voices, until the whole raft was instantly awash with noise. No one could hear themselves think above the racket. The officer who had given the order looked about him in a great rage. He wanted to punish someone but all were equally guilty of taking him at his word. He had asked for loud conversations and he was getting them. The raft commander finally intervened by ordering his marines to fire their muskets in the air. Only gradually we fell into a state of quietude.

  The problem of the mutiny remained though and the following day a woman was executed, run though by Amerigo’s right hand man, Cato. Some say she was innocent of mutiny and that Cato made an example of her to show the real but unidentified plotters what would happen to them if they rose up against their officers. That she was a sickly soul with but a few days to live anyway confirmed this view.

  Disquiet remained however. A giant marine beast of a shark dragged a man screaming to his death while he slept one night, his left foot overhanging the raft. There was a great storm somewhere to the north, which seemed to be bearing down us, though it never seemed to quite reach us. Greta talked incessantly about the horrors of the trenches of the ocean below us. She was convinced that the further we drew away from our own lands, the deeper became the waters beneath us. Our grip on the solid world, she stated, lessened with every step we took.

  Then there was Giseppi. Giseppi had never been thoroughly convinced that the world was a ball: fears that the Earth was indeed flat still haunted him in many moments of doubt. His anxious eyes were always on the horizon, wondering if he would be the first to see the roaring waterfalls going over the edge of the world. If he were right, he said, we would all be swept to oblivion by impossible currents. In our imaginations we saw ourselves flung out by foaming waters, into the darknesses of an immense void, all hope lost of our wretched souls reaching Heaven.

  ~

  Two months and two weeks have passed. Even our leader Amerigo himself must now realise we are doomed. Strabo’s calculations have been tossed to the winds. They were false. We should have reached the shores of the Indies long
before now. The land-smellers tell us they have nothing but the whiff of salt-water in their nostrils. The sea itself is a colour we have never seen before: dark and brooding. A running sea that cuts this way and that, the currents and tides erratic in the extreme. No islands have been sighted. The last of the livestock was slaughtered two weeks ago. All that is left is the seed with which we hoped to trade. I have been eating flower bulbs as if they were onions, intent on quelling this bubbling hunger that wells up inside me. They make me sick.

  A woman raft-puller died today when wild sea birds assailed her and she lost control of her walking pace. Her hands waved and fluttered around her head, as she tried to drive the creatures from her. Some say the birds were after the seeds caught in her clothing. I watched her sink slowly into the sea. Perhaps there was a trace of relief in her expression that her suffering was now over, yet there were also desperation and fear in her shouts. And anger. Anger at the people who had led her to this wet grave, anger at the birds for their unprovoked attacks, and finally anger at God’s ocean for robbing her of her life. Personally I believe it is very dangerous to rail at deities while on the point of death: last minute decisions on the soul’s destination I am sure can be swayed by such displays of emotion. A good person is a good person, and bad bad, but most of us are a mixture of both. Final gestures will tip scales.

  Perhaps that is why we were visited by a violent storm later in the day? Because of the drowning raft-pullers curses? It began at dusk. The sea and sky darkened together so that the line we call horizon could no longer be perceived. It was all one, ocean and Heaven, with no division between them. Truly at this point I believed us to be in Hell. We all got to the rafts in time, and linked them together with a network of ropes to prevent separation. Shortly afterwards the tempest fell on us like a deranged wild beast. It tore at our clothes and the shelters, trying to wrench them from us. Waves rose around us as giants, tower over our puny rafts and crashing down upon them with a force which might shatter a stone building. Men and women were washed overboard and only the trailing safety ropes prevented more deaths than there were.