That is where the murmur begins. Indistinctly, at first.
At least, on the fourth day it is indistinct. Also on the fifth day, as the sails hang slack, and the viscous, blue-green membrane of the sea clings around the ship, determined to hold her fast. Things are said—indistinct things—in the hold, in the berths, in the cabins; in the companionway, in the galley, in the saloon; on the forecastle, amidships, and astern; up in the rigging, in the crow’s nest, on the mainmast; around the mizzen, and over the boom.
My mother’s name is being mentioned. The eel, too. Bad luck is mentioned, as is ill omen, mermaid’s curse, the mop over the side, the bucket likewise, the tossed stone, the ginger-haired man, the wrong foot forward, the three gulls flying, the mysterious whistle, the trimmed beard, the pared nail, the parson’s collar, the flag through the ladder, the dog at the tackle.
What my father hears he’s never sure he’s heard correctly.
Someone’s got the cat under the basket.
What? What?
It’s nothing, a whisper around a hatchway. When he looks at them they avert their eyes.
The cat’s under the basket all right.
Someone’s put it there, for sure.
But what does it mean?
• • •
Him with that ginger hair. And her.
It’s her that brought the beast out of the sea. But he’s bad, too. That hair’s a sign, for them as has eyes to see it.
You bet it is.
Launch with the devil, sail with the devil, that’s what they say. Ginger hair’s the devil’s hair.
• • •
They cross themselves, duck furtively along the passages. They know my father’s heard them, but they don’t want to meet his glance.
• • •
And that sea, indifferent as a cat, smiling its noncommittal cat’s smile, barely flicking its cat’s paw in the pitch of a wave: it lies like a cat, languorously, stretching itself without effort in the unbearable heat of the afternoons, through the starlit torpor of the nights; with land just there on the horizon, teasingly beyond reach, insubstantial as smoke. It will make no effort on their behalf, that indolent, smiling sea.
• • •
A cormorant, black as pitch, flies above the bows: the men cross themselves; from somewhere down deep the murmur rises—
• • •
At last Hugh Blackstone must say what it means. The men believe the ship’s been cursed—a sea witch has stolen their wind. They blame you, Miss Girard. A woman on board is bad luck, in their eyes. If anything goes wrong she’s bound to be blamed. They’re a superstitious lot, these sailors—and stupid besides. Toss a pebble overboard and they believe it’ll drag the whole ship down with it. It makes no sense. There’s no logic in it. But once they get these ideas, they never let ’em go.
• • •
The explanation itself falls like a stone. There is nothing to do but wait.
• • •
My father bears up poorly in the heat. Eventually he concedes to remove his dark jacket and yellow waistcoat, to appear on deck in his shirtsleeves. But he keeps faith with his formerly proper, formerly starched collar and cuffs, he will not remove these, though they wilt sadly around his neck and wrists in the overwhelming humidity. He would not want her to see him without them—such a sweating, suffering fool. She does nothing but laugh at this, he in cuffs and collar, stifling in a tropical heat that demands, above all else, a sacrificial progress toward gleaming nakedness.