Kraken in a Coffee Cup: 17
Chapter 17
Before we begin: I’m writing a series on literary style at Literary Salon, and today I realized there’s only a 20% crossover between newsletters. If you’re a writer, check it out.
Table of Contents
If you’re new to the story, I suggest beginning with the table of contents so you’ll understand the origins of the text and why I say it was co-authored by Herman Melville.
And now,
Kraken in a Coffee Cup.
Chapter Seventeen
MR. GRAVELING’S VOICE (from the quarterdeck): Before we call eight bells, let all arguments ring clear!
JOHN: I’ve the sort of mouth to ring clear enough—the hogshead mouth. So, so, (thrusts his head down the scuttle,) Rise up hell; come drink your Mogul’s wine, you with your accused; may what stimulates the one, deaden the other.
GRAVELING: The captain is on deck, and his judgment stands for God’s.
CAPTAIN CHARON (strikes thrice against the wood): We cannot call the watch ahead of justice. Make your statements, all who went ashore.
JOHN: You saw it with your own eyes. They mock the resurrection; they must kiss their last and come to judgment.
GRAVELING: Hist, boys! let’s have a particular or two before we ride the bodies up the main-mast.
COOPER: Who but a fool would take his left hand by his right, and say to himself, how d’ye do? It’s that unholy joining that’s to blame.
UNKNOWN SOULMAN: It explains a man who’s flown heaven.
JOHN: Aye; girls and a green!—then I’ll hop with you; yea, turn grasshopper! The going in we understand, it’s the coming out what condemns them, that and the pearl they ripped from the oyster’s grin.
CAPTAIN CHARON: Hoe corn when you may, say I. All legs go to harvest. If it were you in His field, ripe and green, what would send you running? And be slow to blame the Sirene; they know the calling better then we.
GRAVELING: I wonder whether our two jollies gave thought to the land they danced over. Sirene or not, neither knows that atoll. I’d sooner dance over your grave, I would, than treat reverend ground like a tavern floor; that’s the bitterest threat of welcoming this newling as one fated to be first; we moved so fast we beat the headwinds round the corners. O Christ! We are not some green-skulled crew!
COOPER: Spellbound they were, sprinting into death’s own mouth. Worse than pulling after whales in a calm; by what right did they escape with their lives? Was God’s arm too short?
CAPTAIN CHARON: The arm that is never too short to save, may yet pull back from judgment.
JOHN: If the Lord let them go, it was that they’d fall into our hands.
MANY: Aye! aye!
#
Above me, a new wind stirs the rigging, and I prop myself upon my elbow to better see my accusers. Men eye me in a turbulent confluence of suspicion and fear, and my heart answers them with indignation. “We have gone where none has set foot and returned with his report, and yet you condemn us without the courage to ask what we’ve witnessed. The wondrous and fearful images shown you on those risen waters are but a baited hook, drawing men near to death; a creature there, as fearsome as anything out of the darkest deep, impresses its prey with a last revelation, of which only he who comes back from the dead could adequately tell. No inspired Chaldee or Greek had a higher and holier report than this: what waits therein is no paradise but a variety of the beast you most fear. You believe yourself to toil in service of your high and destined heaven, but what you feel is the ocean’s invisible flood-tide lifting you higher and higher towards the destruction of body and soul.”
The men answer in a melody of rage, but Graveling’s voice rises above them all. “The captain’s judgment stands for God’s.”
The men all turn their faces to their captain, and the wind yawns in the sudden silence. The captain raises himself.
“Hands by the halyards! in top-gallant sails! Stand by to reef topsails!”
The men scurry in hurried obedience.
“Haul the accused to my cabin and bring us about to sail,” continues the captain. “The Starling awaits her salvation.”
#
Cooper drags me to the state-room, shared of sorts by all the officers, but in purposeful practice and for all practical purposes, belonging to the captain alone. The cabin lamp casts fitful shadows upon the old man’s bolted door. The isolated subterraneousness creates a certain humming silence, though all the roar of the elements hoop the cabin round.
“He would have killed you once, for a mutiny such as that,” Cooper murmurs in my ear. “Yes, he may feed you yet to the beast and its many deadly lances, and by the doing believe he’s cured us all of your damnation. You may think this momentary stay a report of fair wind. But how fair? Fair for death and doom—that’s fair for him. It’s a fair wind that’s foul for those accursed. Yes, he’d have killed you once; there’s some what say he’s killed before, and it was not fate what took his first. He would fain kill all his crew. Does he not say he’ll drag the whole ship’s company down to doom? What he calls his fate and purpose would make him the willful murderer of thirty men, if this ship comes against that which wrecked the Starling. My soul swears this ship will die, if Charon has his way. There is no reasoning; no remonstrance; no entreaty will he hearken to; all this he scorns. Flat obedience to his own flat commands, this is all he breathes. Aye, and says of the men who have vowed his vow, says we, all of us, are his by fate, and by fate he reckons his mad way home. Great God forbid!”
Cooper leaves and returns again with Ligeia clutched to his heart. Above my head, Charon’s hammock swings, and Cooper stares with transparent purpose. “But a touch,” he says, “and the Shade may survive. The killer, himself, would be forfeit, for the crew belongs to their captain, believers in a purpose none understand.”
His eyes meet mine with the assurance we are brothers; then he leaves, quickened by his captain’s order.
#
I am awakened when the captain lifts my head to drink. His narrowed eyes are lost within his furrowed wrinkles, a set of brows upon blinds of flesh.
“With this sin of disobedience in you, you still further flout at God, even fleeing from His face. Do you think us here to rescue you, that a Sirener ship may carry you into depths where God does not reign?”
His finger to his lips silences my answer. I follow his shrug and see a shadow at the door, the cabin boy; and the captain cowers at the cabin boy’s judgment.
“The widow found you skulking about the wharves of New Bedford, and sent you seeking a ship bound for Tartarus; dare you now defile the purpose of your coming? Miserable man! Oh! most contemptible and worthy of all scorn. You robbed that widow when you ran.” He turns his attention to past his shoulder. “Tell Mr. Graveling to double the speed.”
“Aye, Captain,” John says and is off.
He waits to hear him gone. “Now the time of tide has come; the ship has cast off her cables; and from the deserted wharf the uncheered ship for Tartarus, all careening, glides to sea. That ship, my friend, though sprung upon by a panther billow leaping over the bulwarks, will see me home. Wave after wave may leap into the ship, till the mariners come nigh to drowning while yet afloat, but I will find my coast; and as sure as the white moon shows her affrighted face from the steep gullies in the blackness overhead, you were sent to guide that bowsprit sure; without you we’d soon be beat downward to the tormented deep. You’ll not fail me boy; the fates have so decreed, and the Starling waits.”
I have no strength in me to answer and less to fight, nor can I tell if Ligeia lives; her flesh, barely recognizable in form, is loosely pooled and dull in the flickering lamplight.
“I believe your report,” the captain says, “but mere truth is no help to a man before a believing congregation. Weep and wail for direct deliverance; it will not be found. Do not seek your redemption in what was but in what will be. Show yourself righteous to your purpose, and this crew will yet be yours.”
—Thaddeus Thomas
Catch up with my series on prose style:
Chapter 17 continues your amazing story and writing. I love your use of simile such as, " I’d sooner dance over your grave, I would, than treat reverend ground like a tavern floor."
In this chapter I felt that while you kept your excellent style, you moved beyond Melville into a very special world of your own. It's really very special writing.