‘Any sights?’ Baeticus asked.

  ‘For ten days not a blink.’

  ‘Nearer two weeks,’ Sulinor corrected. ‘We cleared the decks of everything except our groundtackle, and put six hands at the tillers. She seemed to answer her helm – sometimes. Well, it kept me warm for one.’

  ‘How did your philosopher take it?’

  ‘Like the gull I spoke of. He was there, but outside it all. You never got on with him, Quabil?’

  ‘Confessed! I came to be afraid at last. It was not my office to show fear, but I was. He was fearless, although I knew that he knew the peril as well as I. When he saw that trying to – er – cheer me made me angry, he dropped it. ’Like a woman, again. You saw more of him, Mango?’

  ‘Much. When I was at the rudders he would hop up to the steerage, with the lower-deck ladders lifting and lunging a foot at a time, and the timbers groaning like men beneath the Beasts. We used to talk, hanging on till the roll jerked us into the scuppers. Then we’d begin again. What about? Oh! Kings and Cities and Gods and Caesar. He was sure he’d see Caesar. I told him I had noticed that people who worried Those Up Above’ – Sulinor jerked his thumb towards the awning – ‘were mostly sent for in a hurry.’

  ‘Hadn’t you wit to see he never wanted you for yourself, but to get something out of you?’ Quabil snapped.

  ‘Most Jews are like that – and all Sidonians!’ Sulinor grinned. ‘But what could he have hoped to get from anyone? We were doomed men all. You said it, Red.’

  ‘Only when I was at my emptiest. Otherwise I knew that with any luck I could have fetched Sicily! But I broke – we broke. Yes, we got ready – you too – for the Wet Prayer.’

  ‘How does that run with you?’ Baeticus asked, for all men are curious concerning the bride-bed of Death.

  ‘With us of the River,’ Sulinor volunteered, ‘we say: “I sleep; presently I row again.”’

  ‘Ah! At our end of the world we cry: “Gods, judge me not as a God, but a man whom the Ocean has broken.”’ Baeticus looked at Quabil, who answered, raising his cup: ‘We Sidonians say, “Mother of Carthage, I return my oar!” But it all comes to the one in the end.’ He wiped his beard, which gave Sulinor his chance to cut in.

  ‘Yes, we were on the edge of the Prayer when – do you remember, Quabil? – he clawed his way up the ladders and said: “No need to call on what isn’t there. My God sends me sure word that I shall see Caesar. And he has pledged me all your lives to boot. Listen! No man will be lost.” And Quabil said: “But what about my ship?”’ Sulinor grinned again.

  ‘That’s true. I had forgotten the cursed passengers,’ Quabil confirmed. ‘But he spoke as though my Eirene were a fig-basket. “Oh, she’s bound to go ashore, somewhere,” he said, “but not a life will be lost. Take this from me, the Servant of the One God.” Mad! Mad as a magician on market-day!’

  ‘No,’ said Sulinor. ‘Madmen see smooth harbours and full meals. I have had to – soothe that sort.’

  ‘After all,’ said Quabil, ‘he was only saying what had been in my head for a long time. I had no way to judge our drift, but we likely might hit something somewhere. Then he went away to spread his cook-house yarn among the crew. It did no harm, or I should have stopped him.’

  Sulinor coughed, and drawled:

  ‘I don’t see anyone stopping Paul from what he fancied he ought to do. But it was curious that, on the change of watch, I—’

  ‘No – I!’ said Quabil.

  ‘Make it so, then, Red. Between us, at any rate, we felt that the sea had changed. There was a trip and a kick to her dance. You know, Spaniard. And then – I will say that, for a man half-dead, Quabil here did well.’

  ‘I’m a bosun-captain, and not ashamed of it. I went to get a cast of the lead. (Black dark and raining marlinspikes!) The first cast warned me, and I told Sulinor to clear all aft for anchoring by the stern. The next – shoaling like a slip-way – sent me back with all hands, and we dropped both bowers and spare and the stream.’

  ‘He’d have taken the kedge as well, but I stopped him,’ said Sulinor.

  ‘I had to stop her! They nearly jerked her stern out, but they held. And everywhere I could peer or hear were breakers, or the noise of tall seas against cliffs. We were trapped! But our people had been starved, soaked, and half-stunned for ten days, and now they were close to a beach. That was enough! They must land on the instant; and was I going to let them drown within reach of safety? Was there panic? I spoke to Julius, and his soldiers (give Rome her due!) schooled them till I could hear my orders again. But on the kiss-of-dawn some of the crew said that Sulinor had told them to lay out the kedge in the long-boat.’

  ‘I let ’em swing her out,’ Sulinor confessed.

  ‘I wanted ’em for warnings. But Paul told me his God had promised their lives to him along with ours, and any private sacrifice would spoil the luck. So, as soon as she touched water, I cut the rope before a man could get in. She was ashore – stove – in ten minutes.’

  ‘Could you make out where you were by then?’ Baeticus asked Quabil.

  ‘As soon as I saw the people on the beach – yes. They are my sort – a little removed. Phoenicians by blood. It was Malta – one day’s run from Syracuse, where I would have been safe! Yes, Malta and my wheat gruel. Good port-of-discharge, eh?’

  They smiled, for Melita may mean ‘mash’ as well as ‘Malta.’

  ‘It puddled the sea all round us, while I was trying to get my bearings. But my lids were salt-gummed, and I hiccoughed like a drunkard.’

  ‘And drunk you most gloriously were, Red, half an hour later!’

  ‘Praise the Gods – and for once your pet Paul! That little man came to me on the fore-bitts, puffed like a pigeon, and pulled out a breastful of bread, and salt fish, and the wine – the good new wine. “Eat,” he said, “and make all your people eat, too. Nothing will come to them except another wetting. They won’t notice that, after they’re full. Don’t worry about your work either,” he said. “You can’t go wrong today. You are promised to me.” And then he went off to Sulinor.’

  ‘He did. He came to me with bread and wine and bacon – good they were! But first he said words over them, and then rubbed his hands with his wet sleeves. I asked him if he were a magician. “Gods forbid!” he said. “I am so poor a soul that I flinch from touching dead pig.” As a Jew, he wouldn’t like pork, naturally. Was that before or after our people broke into the store-room, Red?’

  ‘Had I time to wait on them?’ Quabil snorted. ‘I know they gutted my stores full-hand, and a double blessing of wine atop. But we all took that – deep. Now this is how we lay.’ Quabil smeared a ragged loop on the table with a wine-wet finger. ‘Reefs – see, my son – and overfalls to leeward here; something that loomed like a point of land on our right there; and, ahead, the blind gut of a bay with a Cyclops surf hammering it. How we had got in was a miracle. Beaching was our only chance, and meantime she was settling like a tired camel. Every foot I could lighten her meant that she’d take ground closer in at the last. I told Julius. He understood. “I’ll keep order,” he said. “Get the passengers to shift the wheat as long as you judge it’s safe.”’

  ‘Did those Alexandrian achators really work?’ said Baeticus.

  ‘I’ve never seen cargo discharged quicker. It was time. The wind was taking off in gusts, and the rain was putting down the swells. I made out a patch of beach that looked less like death than the rest of the arena, and I decided to drive in on a gust under the spitfire-sprit – and, if she answered her helm before she died on us, to humour her a shade to starboard, where the water looked better. I stayed the foremast; set the spritsail fore and aft, as though we were boarding; told Sulinor to have the rudders down directly he cut the cables; waited till a gust came; squared away the sprit, and drove.’

  Sulinor carried on promptly:–

  ‘I had two hands with axes on each cable, and one on each rudder-lift; and, believe me, when Quabil’s pipe went, both blades were down and turned before the cable-ends had fizzed under! She jumped like a stung cow! She drove. She sheared. I think the swell lifted her, and overran. She came down, and struck aft. Her stern broke off under my toes, and all the guts of her at that end slid out like a man’s paunched by a lion. I jumped forward, and told Quabil there was nothing but small kindlings abaft the quarter-hatch, and he shouted: “Never mind! Look how beautifully I’ve laid her!”’

  ‘I had. What I took for a point of land to starboard, y’see, turned out to be almost a bridge-islet, with a swell of sea ’twixt it and the main. And that meeting-swill, d’you see, surging in as she drove, gave her four or five foot more to cushion on. I’d hit the exact instant.’

  ‘Luck of the Gods, I think! Then we began to bustle our people over the bows before she went to pieces. You’ll admit Paul was a help there, Red?’

  ‘I dare say he herded the old judies well enough; but he should have lined up with his own gang.’

  ‘He did that, too,’ said Sulinor. ‘Some fool of an under-officer had discovered that prisoners must be killed if they look like escaping; and he chose that time and place to put it to Julius – sword drawn. Think of hunting a hundred prisoners to death on those decks! It would have been worse than the Beasts!’

  ‘But Julius saw – Julius saw it,’ Quabil spoke testily. ‘I heard him tell the man not to be a fool. They couldn’t escape further than the beach.’

  ‘And how did your philosopher take that?’ said Baeticus.

  ‘As usual,’ said Sulinor. ‘But, you see, we two had dipped our hands in the same dish for weeks; and, on the River, that makes an obligation between man and man.’

  ‘In my country also,’ said Baeticus, rather stiffly.

  ‘So I cleared my dirk – in case I had to argue. Iron always draws iron with me. But he said, “Put it back. They are a little scared.” I said, “Aren’t you?” “What?” he said; “of being killed, you mean? No. Nothing can touch me till I’ve seen Caesar.” Then he carried on steadying the ironed men (some were slavering mad) till it was time to unshackle them by fives, and give ’em their chance. The natives made a chain through the surf, and snatched them out breast-high.’

  ‘Not a life lost! ’Like stepping off a jetty,’ Quabil proclaimed.

  ‘Not quite. But he had promised no one should drown.’

  ‘How could they – the way I had laid her – gust and swell and swill together?’

  ‘And was there any salvage?’

  ‘Neither stick nor string, my son. We had time to look, too. We stayed on the island till the first spring ship sailed for Port of Rome. They hadn’t finished Ostia breakwater that year.’

  ‘And, of course, Caesar paid you for your ship?’

  ‘I made no claim. I saw it would be hopeless; and Julius, who knew Rome, was against any appeal to the authorities. He said that was the mistake Paul was making. And, I suppose, because I did not trouble them, and knew a little about the sea, they offered me the Port Inspectorship here. There’s no money in it – if I were a poor man. Marseilles will never be a port again. Narbo has ruined her for good.’

  ‘But Marseilles is far from under-Lebanon,’ Baeticus suggested.

  ‘The further the better. I lost my boy three years ago in Foul Bay, off Berenice, with the Eastern Fleet. He was rather like you about the eyes, too. You and your circumcised apes!’

  ‘But – honoured one! My master! Admiral! – Father mine – how could I have guessed?’

  The young man leaned forward to the other’s knee in act to kiss it. Quabil made as though to cuff him, but his hand came to rest lightly on the bowed head.

  ‘Nah! Sit, lad! Sit back. It’s just the thing the Boy would have said himself. You didn’t hear it, Sulinor?’

  ‘I guessed it had something to do with the likeness as soon as I set eyes on him. You don’t so often go out of your way to help lame ducks.’

  ‘You can see for yourself she needs undergirting, Mango!’

  ‘So did that Tyrian tub last month. And you told her she might bear up for Narbo or bilge for all of you! But he shall have his working-party tomorrow, Red.’

  Baeticus renewed his thanks. The River man cut him short.

  ‘Luck of the Gods,’ he said. ‘Five – four – years ago I might have been waiting for you anywhere in the Long Puddle with fifty River men – and no moon.’

  Baeticus lifted a moist eye to the slip-hooks on his yardarm, that could hoist and drop weights at a sign.

  ‘You might have had a pig or two of ballast through your benches coming alongside,’ he said dreamily.

  ‘And where would my overhead-nettings have been?’ the other chuckled.

  ‘Blazing – at fifty yards. What are firearrows for?’

  ‘To fizzle and stink on my wet sea-weed blindages. Try again.’

  They were shooting their fingers at each other, like the little boys gambling for olive-stones on the quay beside them.

  ‘Go on – go on, my son! Don’t let that pirate board,’ cried Quabil.

  Baeticus twirled his right hand very loosely at the wrist.

  ‘In that case,’ he countered, ‘I should have fallen back on my foster-kin – my father’s island horsemen.’

  Sulinor threw up an open palm.

  ‘Take the nuts,’ he said. ‘Tell me, is it true that those infernal Balearic slingers of yours can turn a bull by hitting him on the horns?’

  ‘On either horn you choose. My father farms near New Carthage. They come over to us for the summer to work. There are ten in my crew now.’

  Sulinor hiccoughed and folded his hands magisterially over his stomach.

  ‘Quite proper. Piracy must be put down! Rome says so. I do so,’ said he.

  ‘I see,’ the younger man smiled. ‘But tell me, why did you leave the slave – the Euxine trade, O Strategos?’

  ‘That sea is too like a wine-skin. ’Only one neck. It made mine ache. So I went into the Egyptian run with Quabil here.’

  ‘But why take service in the Fleet? Surely the Wheat pays better?’

  ‘I intended to. But I had dysentery at Malta that winter, and Paul looked after me.’

  ‘Too much muttering and laying-on of hands for me,’ said Quabil; himself muttering about some Thessalian jugglery with a snake on the island.

  ‘You weren’t sick, Quabil. When I was getting better, and Paul was washing me off once, he asked if my citizenship were in order. He was a citizen himself. Well, it was and it was not. As second of a wheat-ship I was ex officio Roman citizen – for signing bills and so forth. But on the beach, my ship perished, he said I reverted to my original shtay – status – of an extra-provinshal Dacian by a Sich – Sish – Scythian – I think she was – mother. Awkward – what? All the Middle Sea echoes like a public bath if a man is wanted.’

  Sulinor reached out again and filled. The wine had touched his huge bulk at last.

  ‘But, as I was saying, once in the Fleet nowadays one is a Roman with authority – no waiting twenty years for your papers. And Paul said to me: ‘Serve Caesar. You are not canvas I can cut to advantage at present. But if you serve Caesar you will be obeying at least some sort of law.’ He talked as though I were a barbarian. Weak as I was, I could have snapped his back with my bare hands. I told him so. ‘I don’t doubt it,’ he said. ‘But that is neither here nor there. If you take refuge under Caesar at sea, you may have time to think. Then I may meet you again, and we can go on with our talks. But that is as The God wills. What concerns you now is that, by taking service, you will be free from the fear that has ridden you all your life.’

  ‘Was he right?’ asked Baeticus after a silence.

  ‘He was. I had never spoken to him of it, but he knew it. He knew! Fire – sword – the sea – torture even – one does not think of them too often. But not the Beasts! Aie! Not the Beasts! I fought two dog-wolves for the life on a sand-bar when I was a youngster. Look!’

  Sulinor showed his neck and chest.

  ‘They set the sheep-dogs on Paul at some place or other once – because of his philosophy. And he was going to see Caesar – going to see Caesar! And he – he had washed me clean after dysentery!’

  ‘Mother of Carthage, you never told me that!’ said Quabil.

  ‘Nor should I now, had the wine been weaker.’

  [First published in the London Magazine in September 1930, and collected in Limits and Renewals (London: Macmillan, 1932).]

  * * *

  letters

  To Sir Percy Bates, 15 August 1929

  [Bateman’s] 15 Aug 29

  Dear Bates,

  Ever so many thanks for all the suggestions. Smith I have and I am sending at once for Lyndsay. I shall have to be quite sure about pumps before I commit myself. Didn’t think they were used at that time of the world?

  As to lading, I am cutting out as much as I can of direct reference to St Paul’s ship from Mysia. The tale is told by her Captain, after he had lost his job and had got a billet as Port Inspector at Marseilles where he inspects cargoes of wheat from Spain – Malaga way. He tells his tale to the skipper of a Spanish boat (108’ between perps, 35’ beam; and, say 16’ hold. What would that tonnage be?) She is ballasted on Spanish pigs stitched into hide, and concentrated copper ores, bagged in hide-bags. (Hides can be sold full value at Port of Rome, remember.) The grain is in bulk in grain-tight bins of inch and a half Spanish chestnut and live oak planking (all saleable at Ostia) and each of the two holds is practically bulkheaded as the planking is spiked against the big X-pieces that stiffen her laterally. They have topped off the loose grain with several layers of bagged wheat – hides again. Now comes the question of dunnage at the sides. What do you think? The bins would be clear of her sides by more than usual allowance, to permit of the wheat swelling. Would the bins be like ore-bins? And would it be good stevedoring to put say horns and horn tips for side-stuff. The point of all this fuss, is to have a row between the Port Inspector and the skipper on account of alleged ‘dunnage’ (Captain’s private venture) which the Inspector insists ought to come in as low freight. From that argument the tale of the loss of the Eirene (St Paul’s ship) begins. The only reference to her cargo is one about ‘filthy Egyptian wheat – half mud and no wonder seeing how they pull it up by the roots and where they thresh it’. All the interest appears to be thrown on the big competent Spanish skipper with his natural contempt for a man who has lost his ship. The ex-master is merely a worried and perturbed man who has run up against yet another new God on the seas.