The elegant white form of The Queen Bathsheba sliced through the water like a scimitar, glistening boldly in the Caribbean sun. And slicing was exactly what she was doing—her deliberate edges carving a path with ease and precision, as per the careful design of W. J. Wheeler & Sons.; merchant shipwrights of highest renown. Every part of her that was meant to gleam, gleamed; from the brilliant white of her crisp sails to the spotless chrome capstans. And the parts of her that didn’t shine—the rich teak on the deck, the matching sun-loungers—they were scrubbed so that not a hint of salty residue remained. The whole ship was a carefully crafted, polished, sailing machine: and that included the men running it. Each of the 12 resident crew, from the first mate to the lowest deckhand had been personally selected by Wheeler & Sons.—all as part of the service.
Sitting under the canopy roof on the upper deck, Richard was also glistening. The little beads of sweat persisted in forming on his forehead just moments after he destroyed their predecessors in yet another exasperated wipe of his palm. He had installed a tinted glass spray so that he could work on deck with his laptop, cell-phone and any important business papers he might need without fear of an errant wave soaking the lot. That same screen now also served to direct the healthy 10-knot sea breeze that was propelling them deftly though the water away from where it was sorely needed – his face. That was a mistake, Richard thought to himself. In fact, the whole thing had been a mistake; the idea that an executive yacht would make a good escape from the day-to-day stresses of running a business. Especially when that business was in boats.
Looking back, it almost seemed to Richard to be almost laughable. Admittedly, the boats he was involved with were a stretch different to this one – huge passenger ships, providing everything from executive cruises, to teambuilding weekends to party trips. And while he rarely visited these vessels, and never sailed on them (he had only recently found his sea-legs), they were nevertheless a constant feature of his life. As such, sitting on one now didn’t really feel like much of a holiday. A busman’s holiday, thought Richard. Maybe it would have been all right in the days before universal network coverage, when leaving harbour meant leaving the office behind; now, however, Richard found himself firmly moored to the mainland via his cell-phone. He had spent the fine, cloudless morning speaking to various suppliers, clients, and Mark, his assistant. They were soon to augment his fleet with another three enormous sailboats; the scheduled launch day was looming and they were still short of crew and supplies on one of the ships. It was all turning into a bit of a headache.
Richard pressed his thumb and forefinger firmly onto his eyelids, as if somehow trying to squeeze out the stress from behind his eyeballs. He took a sip of his gin and tonic, only to find that the ice had all melted, and the drink was now watery, and slightly warm. He fished the slice of lemon out of the glass and sucked it thoughtfully, relishing its refreshing sourness. For the first time that day, he leaned back in his seat and took in the air around him. He watched as they skated along the sheer cliffs that lined the edge of Redonda, a black island of volcanic rock set inexplicably alone in the deep blue Caribbean waters. They were beating a gentle course parallel to the eastern edge of it, in the quiet, almost windless lull found in the shadow to leeward of any big rock. Richard tilted his chair back and pressed his eyes shut once again. He could hear the thick accents of the men on the working deck below, rising up in occasional yells and bursts of laughter.
Suddenly, as the slender form The Queen Bathsheba passed out from the shelter of Redonda’s rotund form, the wind in the sails whipped across to the other side of the boat. The smart white sail luffed uncertainly for a second, and Richard almost felt alarmed, but from below he heard the first mate’s voice firing a volley of orders and seconds later the boom swung across the deck, the sails filled with wind and they cut on through the water away from the rocky mass behind them.
Richard opened his eyes again, stood up, and walked over to the chromium railing where he could look down on the men as they worked. His phone vibrated and rattled on the glass table next to his warm gin and tonic, but he ignored it, gazing at the men below. Having finished adjusting the sails, most of them were squatting on the shining chrome capstans or in the large coils of rope. Two of them were clearly engaging in a battle of wits, and the eyes of the rest darted from one to the other between outbursts, flanked with laugher and shouts of derision. The first mate, Martel, was standing leaning against the thick trunk of the mast, grinning. On the upper deck, Richard suddenly felt an urge to join them, to be down there on the bottom deck as one of them, joking and working as they did. He started down the scrubbed teak staircase.
As Richard reached the bottom step one of the crewmen noticed him, and the gleeful hooting fell to hush, so that the sound of the wind rushing over the sails became suddenly audible. It was unusual for Richard to come down unannounced. They felt nervous. Had they done something wrong? The men who were sitting lazily on the big round capstans got up and stood awkwardly, watching their employer with an air of anticipation. Down here on the deck, Richard felt out of place and alien; a stranger on his own ship. Martel, however, had been as highly trained in hospitality as he had in boating – all part of the service. He beamed a broad white smile.
“’Tis a boutiful day, isn’ it, cap’n? We got abou’ 20 knots’ o’ wind behin’ us, I reckon.”
Richard mumbled a discomfited assent.
“An’ how can we help you today, cap’n?”
Richard furrowed his brow a little. Despite the fact that he was speaking to an employee, he felt more than faintly embarrassed. After a moment’s consideration he said, “Actually, I was wondering if I could help you.”
While not exactly a snigger, Richard could certainly discern a distinct ripple of something pass between the on-looking crewmen. Now it was Martel’s chance to look embarrassed. The beaming smile briefly flickered off his face, as if he was taken aback by the request, but with the professionalism and enthusiasm for which he had been selected, he quickly restored it—“Excellent, sir. We just tinkin’ abou’ raisin’ anuda sheet, what wit’ the fine wind we got, an’ we could certainly use anuda pair’a hands, right.” He clapped his own big hands together and nodded at the men, still baring his dazzling teeth in what appeared to be genuine enthusiasm. The frozen crew melted into action.
Two of the men began unrolling the extra sail, and shackled the top of it to the halyard: the long rope running all the way up to the top of the mast and back down onto the lower deck. Martel took the lose end and wrapped it four times around the big silver drum one of the men had been sitting on, so that it coiled up from the bottom like a snake, with the head at the end of the rope coming towards Richard.
“You seen a capstan before, right?”
He nodded.
“As my men crank dem sail up, you gotta tail the rope; keep it nice an’ right all the time, and keep youself low”.
The men had settled onto the coffee grinders; the tall pedestal winches they used to crank the capstan around and raise the sail. They were standing in pairs, one on each side of the grinders, which had two opposing arms, quite like the pedals of a bike, except with a handle on each end. The deck was unusually silent, Richard noted. The men seemed tense and uneasy, as if he were there to judge them in some way. Crouching down next to the silver drum in his deck shoes and chino shorts surveying each of them, he felt vaguely ridiculous; he in his expensive, custom bought ‘boat wear’ which was entirely inappropriate for any practical boating and while their baggy shorts and sun-beaten torsos looked just as if they had been born on deck. Each man has his bare feet set squarely for added hold, and was leaning in towards his partner: eye-to-eye; hands next to each other, one on each pedal, ready to work together as one.
“All ready?” called Martel. This was less a signal for the already alert crew but more for Richard, whose rope was slack and limp around the drum. He pulled it taught, and rebalanced himself so that his weight was pulling him backwards against the rope.
“And: Hoist!” came the call.
The men leapt into action, arms spinning furiously on their pedestals which, in turn, turned the drum upon which Richard was keeping the rope tightly wrapped. Each man was cranking silently, without a grunt or a strain. Martel was the first to break the silence.
“Come on you boys!” he taunted. “Pull it like you’ fifteen years ol’ again.”
The men laughed appreciatively and kept turning. Richard laughed. The taut rope wrapped further round the turning drum as the sail inched its way up the mast. He had to keep working his hands down the rope as it slowly snaked out onto the deck behind him, all the while straining to keep it tight.
“I seen my granny at a bar pull faster than you guys!”
Howling laughter rose above the sound of the spinning arms, Richard’s intermingled with his crew’s. Even though he knew he wasn’t doing a tenth of the work of any of the men on the grinders, he could feel his arms aching, just as theirs were surely beginning to. Beads of sweat were again beginning to form on his brow. He blinked them off, gasping with the joyous exuberance of it all. Before his eyes he could see the great triangle of heavy white canvas creeping slowly up the big trunk mast, willed by their collective force. He felt proud. They were almost at the top now, and Martel’s shouts had turned to encouragement. The men, Richard included, worked as one to creep up the last few feet towards the end. Richard felt exultant, spurred on by the shouts of the men, and the ache in his muscles and the feeling of collective achievement.
He stood up a little, so as to better see the progress of sail as it reached the very head of the mast. As he did so, the rope he was holding slipped over the top of the drum and as it did the loaded force of a hundred kilograms of heavy white sail pulled in the newly created slack, whipping the rope from Richard’s hands. Suddenly, Richard’s world exploded with noise. The rope he had just been holding was now rapidly whizzing round the drum with a high pitched singing; some of the crew had stopped turning and were shouting at the others to stop too, and all the while the heavy canvas of the sail was now flapping angrily, beating a rapid succession of thunderclaps as it hurtled from the top of the mast down towards the deck. Richard watched stupidly for a second at the rope whipping past his knee and then reached out his hand to grab the errant chord and bright the racket to an end.
“No!” Martel’s booming voice rang clearly through the cacophony, and Richard looked up and watched the great man’s bare, muscled arm reach past him and slam closed the jammer cleat that the rope ran through before it reached his capstan. All at once, the world became still again, with the exception of Richard’s heart, which he could still hear thumping in his chest. He was visibly shaking. He looked at the rope that he had been just about to touch: at the speed it was going, it would have burned all the skin off his hand before he could have got a grip on it. And if he had managed to grasp it… Richard followed the rope round the drum and through the thick metal jammer: what it could have done to his fleshy arm didn’t bear thinking about. One of the crewmen groaned. He looked up. The sail was now back down to just above half-mast, hanging limply as a white flag on a windless day. The crew were exhausted, and now had half of what they’d just done to do all over again.
“I, I… I’m so sorry.”
“No,” replied Martel, smiling again, but this time without the brilliant teeth, “The fault is mine. I should ha’ warned you about the rope. Are you hurt?”
Richard shook his head, feebly.
“I mus’ apologise for shoutin’ at you too, sir, it’s just the rope would ha–”
Richard nodded. “Yes. I know. Thank you Martel. I’m so sorry.”
He stood up, and turned towards the stairs, trying to avoid eye contact with any of the men. Thankfully, they seemed to be doing exactly the same thing. He climbed the stairs to the upper deck, and sat in his chair, still shaking, the sound of the flapping sails rushing in his ears. Despite the sunburn, he could tell that his ears were flushed. From the lower deck, he could hear Martel encouraging the men into starting up again. Richard scolded himself fervently. What good was he on board if he couldn’t even tail a rope? What right did he have to pretend he could run a boat business if he didn’t know the first thing about sailing himself?
As he stared woefully at his boat shoes, an idea struck him. He reached for his cell-phone and dialled his assistant.
“Mark? Hi, yes. Listen: do we still have a space for another crewmember on one of the new fleet? No, nothing like that; just some deck work… No, they’re not experienced, but they’re keen to learn, and need someone to show them the ropes.”
— Dusk
