'GANS AT SEA

by Lucille D'ecoupage

Time, as was it's habit, passed.

The Rotund slid sideways down the face of a swell and was lifted like a child upon the crest of another. Caudal and Tarbin amused themselves by alternately sipping a spoonful of soup from a bowl which slid across the galley table between them. An overhead candle lamp swung precariously and occasionally one of them would steady it lest it crashed. Within a few moments it would be swinging again. The noise which surrounded them was almost peaceful. Timbers creaked under the strain and secured items strained against their bonds.

Farthing entered from the passage and swayed in time with the surroundings. His sea-sickness was obvious. A blue pallor rounded out his cheekbones and his eyes sat deep in their sockets. "Damn these seas..." he said to himself.

"They thay after free weeks you'll be used to it Sir." said Tarbin hopefully.

"Three weeks? I have never in all my years become used to it!"

At the Cape of Good Hope some years past, Farthing had lain prostrate on the deck, tied to the mizzen mast by a strand of rope sent seemingly by an angel as he watched - covered in his own vomit - a man bobbing helplessly in the tower of foam that rose above him. His eyes stung even now as he remembered the surging salt spray as the man, now below the ship, sank ever deeper.

"I've earned my share of pusser's medals," added Caudal.

Farthing regarded him with putrid disdain. He shook his head which served only to infuriate his condition and then swallowed the bile which rose in his throat.

Caudal stood and offered the Captain his seat, "Have you tried plugging your ears with oakum?" He guided Farthing to the bench, which was mercifully afixed to the floor. "My Grandfather, Sir, was an industrialist. My blood lies in the land as well..."

"I am quite aware of your heritage Lieutenant and I fail to see what benefit driving men from the fields into the squalor of the city has done for my present condition."

Caudal stood for a moment while the myriad concatenation of insult took hold. Why had I mentioned that? Was it so near the tip of my consciousness that I had to blurt out some reference at every turn? "But Sir..." was all he could say.

"I am a bit our of sorts Lieutenant." said Farthing as way of an apology once he had looked up to see Caudal's obvious distress. Tarbin busied himself with the clearing away the soup so as not to burst out in contrition. "Can you please find the Doctor and summon him here." continued Farthing.

"Sir." the Lieutenant said and was gone.

Caudal could not help but to make haste to the open and upon sliding the heavy teak hatch was met with a blast of cold laden air. The recent history of his family contained a dark period in an otherwise gleaming chamber-pot of belief. How it became of interest to anyone other than the members of his immediate family was still something of a mystery to him. As an industrialist, a manufacturer of ceramics, his grandfather Edward Rothsway Caudal had engaged in some standard business practice of his day. The patriarch had felt no less at ease at the family dinner table because it was common practise for small armies of men to gather in order to settle some difference or other in regards to land, property or honour. E.R. Caudal had however, had the unfortunate experience of being the subject of a scandal sheet at the dawn of the age of the printed page.

And so the grandson, who knew little of the affair which had toppled his grandfather and who now ventured forth on a mission fueled primarily upon the public's insatiable curiosity and ability to read, was subjected to and limited by, the common knowledge of an event committed a generation before his birth.

A moment later Caudal would climb back down the ladder and cry, "There is a vessel off the port rail!"