Now at last my father returns exultant with the oar. But my mother, spanked, seeks immediately to spank in turn.
Mr. Dell’oro, she cries, it appears you are an oar short!
The air comes out of him at that, humiliated he slackens visibly, the oar held triumphantly upright makes a quick descent toward the deck and in that same moment something else happens, there is a kind of shift, a beat skipped, it is as if the air has gone out of everything, yes, that is it exactly, the air goes out of everything, not just him but everything, in the sails, too, the breeze has died completely, all the bellying white folds fall slack, something somewhere breathing has died, and its breath will not resume.
Hugh Blackstone, on the bridge, utters a soft oath.
My mother, as if conscious of what she has done, runs away then, my father and Harry Owen stand helpless watching the curl of her shawl glimmering in the dark, lessening and lessening like the crest of a wave that breaks and slips back into the sea. In a few minutes they will hear a few notes of the spinet, rising from down below.
• • •
But they’re done now. They’re finished. They’ve entered the Trough of Leo’s Despair. A trough that will be deepened, almost before they really realize they’re in it, by a shout from the mainmast the next morning:
Land, Captain! To the south, sir!
There it is, after all those weeks, the sought-after object, land: purple, wavering slightly, miragelike, insubstantial as smoke, seeming, like smoke, to float just above the water, rather than to rest upon or arise from it.
But they are becalmed. Stuck, in the Trough of Leo’s Despair.
• • •
Best not make too much of this, nobody’s mood controls the weather, not really.
• • •
A cheer rises up from around the ship, there is a sudden flurry of activity, trunks being packed, scientific instruments readied, gear stowed or unstowed (depending), piglets chased into their pen, breeches laundered, hair combed, faces washed, gloves buttoned, for the first time in seven-odd weeks.
It’s a long time to float like a smut in a saucer. Grime builds up, a certain amount of filth that may be ignored while at sea, but must be removed before progressing onto land. Even onto such a land as Punta Yalkubul is likely to be.
There is a shimmer of anticipatory dread, thinking about that. Quickly buried, though, as the decks are scraped with holystone: scoured once, twice, three times, and the barnacles chipped off the hull, in preparation for a landing.
• • •
But they will not be landing. The sails will hang slack throughout this very hot day, and through an entire sultry night as well. Nonetheless, optimism runs high. It isn’t until the end of a second day that the truth of the matter is suspected; and even then it doesn’t win wide acceptance. The gloom isn’t widespread until the end of the fourth day.
Hugh Blackstone, of course, is the exception. He’s been scowling consistently since he uttered that oath.
• • •
Then begins the murmur. That’s when, on the fourth day.
It arises, first, in the lower parts of the Narcissus, those areas which, lying under water, are perpetually dark—beneath the cabins and the workrooms, beneath the space where the men hang their hammocks and stow their trunks, down beneath, where supplies are kept: the casks of water, the biscuit, the salt beef and cornmeal, the bread and the raisins, the peas and molasses, the sacks of dried apples and of rice, of potatoes, cocoa, tea, the barrels of pickles, butter, beer and onions—and lower yet, down below the ballast, in the bilges, where the pumps are manned continuously, day and night (though night from day cannot be distinguished there, and the lantern burns all the time).