Follow
the Fellow Who Follows the Sea
By Adam Lewis Schroeder
The water off Plymouth was so calm that even
after four hours’ rowing, as France appeared
behind my shoulder like an eyebrow on the
horizon, I could still hear those drunks
caterwauling on the Barbican. And it wasn’t
a hymn for my days-old wedding the wretches
sang, either, unless a ship’s peg-boy taking
a prick in his behind was to be considered a
marriage or sorts. My unmindful oars
kept time with these abhorrent lyrics, I’m
loathe to admit, even as salt dried across
my lace cuffs. Why were my hands not
all blisters? I put that down to
lanolin—thirteen years of shearing sheep,
from the age of five, my elder brothers all
gone to sea at twelve. That horror of
a song did not involve my brothers,
though. Our family lacks the capacity
for being anyone’s fool.
For the space of six strokes I couldn’t hear
the louts—only the squawk of those seagulls
resembling wisps of steam a mile above my
head—then I listened to the ladies singing
in France, their words like the mewling of
kittens down a well.
I found them with crocheted skirts pulled up
to their knees, stomping about the tidal
flats to fill their buckets with
cockles. Girls with faces like wheels
of cheese.
“Can’t you get me a bowl
of oats?” I asked. “With a dab of
butter?”
They belched and rolled their eyes, so I
pulled the boat after me to a stone cottage
arrayed in drying nets, but before knocking
I hiked my dress and had a good long pee on
those hot stones. I’d been waiting an
age.
The old woman was willing to trade one of my
antique garters for a haunch of salt
pork. Would I even have use for that
much meat? On such a becalmed day I
couldn’t conceive how Endeavour
could have sailed more than a few minutes
ahead. Perhaps my Hubert had already
spied me from the rigging.
*
After the exertions of the storm my sodden
veil hung heavy as lead, and I knew the
dampened pork would spoil. I rowed
alongside the Azores, for monkeys’ chatter
carried across the water. Sharks
encircled me like a halo. I had not
peed in half a week and found that
untenable, so I sat lithely upon the gunwale
and strove to be quick in my business as the
wretches’ bloodlust frothed the sea.
One impudent fish bit my uncovered behind
but succeeded only in breaking a tooth off
in the snowy flesh. I plucked out the
serrated thing and hid it within my
desiccated bouquet. It would make
Hubert a fine pendant, a keepsake of our
reunion.
*
My bait of rotted pork delivered no sharks;
indeed, the ocean seemed entirely deserted
that afternoon until my line gave a vague
tug just a moment before a single great
swell bore my boat directly up like a kite
in a gust. Once ten yards above the
glassy water, I looked southward for sails
but decried nothing. Certainly I did
not see HMS Endeavour. Against
my keel I espied barnacles and deep rubbery
divots, and a dozen feet astern a blowhole
as large as myself erupted with spray.
Yet again I regretted having mislaid my
parasol.
I calculated that I sat atop the melon of a
great sperm whale, and indeed as the mists
cleared I saw my line trailing down an
iron-grey forehead as wide as a
church. The great fish had a taste for
my pork, but how long would it remain afloat
before it dived, taking the line and
Hubert’s bride to the bottom? I had
better throw the tackle away!
As we plunged down I saw the line had
encircled the heel of my twelve-button
boot. I held to my dear oars though
green water enveloped us, the fish’s pitted
hide always beneath the boards. The
sunlit surface flew away, ten feet above my
head, then fifty, and denizens of the South
Atlantic surged past my eyes. The
small fish resembled insects with
beards. I endeavoured to keep
my lungs filled with air and my mind
untroubled. The rowboat’s buoyancy
overcame the loving sentiment between us,
though, as it turned sideways to unseat me
before flying to the surface like a
starling.
I felt quite alone then. The whale,
meantime, continued its descent, and I was
dragged by boot-heel into the darkening
deep. It appeared Hubert would not
receive his shark’s-tooth pendant, nor would
he keep me for his wife.
