The Lobster Cracking - from Churchill my Father
The Lobster Cracking, a nine hundred ton mercantile cargo ship, rose in the swell of the sea fifteen miles out of the Thames on its journey to Amsterdam. It was a wild summer night. There was lightning. Some version of the scene had rain. Impossibly, the image of the ship burned brightly against the moonless night. There were lantern lights on deck, moving about. A search was underway. There were shouts in the wind. The Lobster Cracking held a cargo of just one man and he, at that moment, came frantically running along its deck and such was his speed that he knocked over the bulkiest man aboard, the cook, Mr Alabaster. The lantern that that man had held rolled away from him and for a little moment it kept its flame and light. Enough light to highlight in the gloom the close and desperate face of Mr Jack Clay, as he looked down at his fallen victim. Mr Alabaster saw a white and haunted visage. Black sunken eyes. Lips drawn back at inhalation. On the cusp of evil. A desperate man. And Mr Alabaster knew what was to come next. The quick movement and the knife slipping in easily. A turn and a sharp light in his head. Night became day and Jack Clay's leapt off like water washed or cleared away. The deck quite scrubbed clear of all the guts and gibbets of animals that they slaughtered on their voyages. Jack went over the side like slops and he was gone. He hit the dark sea as Mr Alabaster died in his fading internal light. Close on him for a moment, in his last sigh.
It was difficult to see Jack Clay there bobbing when he resurfaced, even from a close up shot with the looming mass of the ship beside him. But he could be heard.
- Damn this night for being so moonless! Jack Clay told himself aloud. Stay calm Clay. They will send for you, they will send. Meanwhile, occupy yourself and work out which way is the shore.
- Every living being, said Churchill, unseen, when he hits the water for the first time, must choose between the Swimmer or the Drowned man. It is certainly difficult for us to watch but it is important, nevertheless, to remain solemnly aloof for as long as is safely possible. We must let the will determine the outcome. The intervening gods have been quiet since classical times, having done all they can and covered already all grounds. No. He that is rescued from such as position too early remains undecided in life. Unsure of himself and uncommitted. Time and again he will end up in cold sea after cold sea until he makes the choice.
Up and back on the ship Captain Claxton came breathlessly along the deck into the shouts of his crowding round men.
- Damn you Boothby! Have you been drinking or sleeping at your work? Says Claxton, shouting it into the man's face.
- He broke his chain and ran Captain, Boothby said, overlapping.
Captain Claxton took in the man's terrified face, but he would not be affected by it.
- And you let him get up here? He asked him
- He has put three of the crew on the floor. Sakesby is cut to death.
Claxton became fiercer still
- Did you not shout a warning? Were you not watching him? You damned fool!
Boothby came back at him, indignant.
- I have been watching him the whole time! He cried
And now Captain Claxton overlapped with him, to the jeers of the men.
- Over the rim of a drinking cup I have no doubt!
And at that Boothby burst.
- Ever since we left dock I have sat alongside him and he has been a-swaying and a mumbling to himself. Faster and louder and more furious he has become with the more distance between us and the land! He has been calling for Doctor Mann but that he would not come. No, he would not come at all. And the more furious he became and he cast a spell upon himself. And at the end of it he has the strength of an animal. He is a madman.
- And you are a dunk! Screams Captain Claxton, now afraid.
- And now, says Boothby solemnly, he will die a madman's death.
Captain Claxton lunges at him and grasps him by the neck, leaving the poor man to choke.
- It is not over yet, says the Captain, where's a torch? Higgins bring one here.
From the crowd, a man's arm
- Here Captain.
It lights up the Captain's face and he talks to his men quietly with a determination that they know about, that makes them feel the charge he has, and with the character that makes them fear to do as he says. In that light, with their eyes wide, they look like children.
- He won't get far. He won't know sea from sky from shore. Drop a boat and go after him. Higgins you! Go after him. The scoot won't get away so easily.
But there is always one that will question.
- Captain it is ten miles at least. He won't…… but Mr Higgins is prevented from finishing the sentence.
- Get on with you Higgins, says the captain, and you Boothby. This is worth reputation and money to me. Get going or you are both off this ship with him. Shift!
A clatter of rope and pulley action lifts the boat over the side, Boothby and Higgins aloft with it, and then gently as they can down the forty or fifty feet and with a smack upon the water, the men clinging to it, each with a rope. It is a different sound down in the water. Their breathing has become amplified and the sound of the sea is quieter, with little now to break against, They row away from the ship and the sounds of the seaman's voices, Captain Claxton's among them.
When they are a little off and have stopped their rowing, and begun their hopeless Captain's task it is Higgins who speaks first.
- He will surely be dead before he get anywhere near the shore. Raise a torch Boothby.
Boothby takes a torch, strikes four matches held inside his flax jacket and holds the emerging light in the air. It is eerily quiet, with merely the slosh of seawater against the little boat, and the crackling of the light.
- Have you a knife? Boothby says to Higgins
- Aye, says his mate, but still nothing sharp enough to cut through this night. It is unaccountable to me how it is so dark! I have never seen it so black.
Higgins, standing up and scanning in all directions to the extent of the light, calls to the ship.
- He is gone under Captain. There is no sign of him. He is surely dead or dying.
In the distance, from the dark hulk of the ship, the distant Captain's voice booms.
- You no good shits of men! Keep at it I tell you. Come back with the body or don't come back here. I tell you! If you try to climb aboard this ship with out the live or dead body of Mr. Jack Clay I will boot you down again.
The men waited and it ended, the sound of the slosh taking back over from their fear of the Captain.
- He must have wanted or needed freedom very badly Boothby, to prefer this death, said Higgins.
- He has not been in a rant about freedom at all Higgins. I have sat outside his confinement this last night as the ship was prepared, after his secret bringing on board. He was brought like an animal, caged and covered. By my honest hair, I am a bag of ground bone. My nerves are gone listening to him. His rant.
- About himself Boothby and less of you!
- Well then his rants about 'He that put me here and would deny my rightful interest'
- Is that about the Doctor that travels with him? Boothby you are confusing me. Make it plain!
- No, Higgins that Doctor Mann is escorting Jack Clay, and he is ranting about some other bigger Doctor, 'a power in London', Clay calls him.
- What is he then, this Jack Clay?
- From what Mann has told the Captain at the departure dinner last evening, and then got told to Sakesby who was serving them, who tells me, Clay was got away from the Madhouse in Bethnal Green recently for treatment in Wittenberg. It was revealed that he has led many a young child to its death. Not murdered them with his hands but convinced them to put themselves in situations of death. He has a strong mania about him Higgins. So much so that he or was our only cargo aboard ship. Without him we may as well return to London. And he is
- Or was, cut in Higgins
- Or was, conceded Boothby, a very rich man indeed. Yes. Worth a very great deal it is said. But he is kept away from it because of the mania and the harm that he has done. Kept by his family. They are funding all of the Doctors. But you cannot buy a calm mind like you can buy love. Doctor Mann is to study Clay in Wittenberg where Clay has a twin that doesn't have the mania.
- He's a madman then. And a twin? That's unlucky. He is better off our ship then. Let's wait awhile until the Captain calms. Have you your pipe Boothby?
And then it begins for them. Their end.
In the air there is Churchill's voice as the sudden rush and whoosh of water produces Jack Clay from the sea. Both of the men are occupied; Higgins in filling Boothby's pipe and Boothby in settling the torch in its housing. It is with this that Clay strikes the first blow across Boothby's head and then pulls him into the water, stabbing him in a frenzied attack. Higgins is curiously both protecting the tobacco and advancing across the small boat in fearful anger; screaming and effing at Clay who is climbing in and who has the oar raised quickly.
- Poor devils, says Churchill, for they are men of no account in this story. Or of little. A representation of the honest British sailors; a little threadbare in their beliefs, and a little superstitious, but of brave heart when led well. Deferring to their Captain's authority but not wholly afraid of it. No one should judge their career without asking the question, 'What should I have done in their position?' In a way they have acted rightly to give in. To strike a somewhat discordant note. Their captain feared the mad, and he has fed them it like a poisoning mother. They had a means of stopping the barbarism, of stamping on the darting flames as they approached the powder chamber. Too late! The ungovernable passions of family sorrow have broken loose to roam the generations. Death stalks another child. Poor devil. Jack Clay has a means to London.
And in the background of the gently fading sound of Churchill's voice, barely above the sound of the sea swell and the wind, is the Captain's voice.
- Higgins? Calls Captain Claxton, Boothby? What gives?
James A Bullion Jan 2010
