The Deck Hand

Rory Killarney awoke, his awareness filled with several different types of sloshing. There was the usual sloshing of the Dame Bournemouth as she rocked, rail to rail, in the surf. The second and third sort of sloshing were the result of the empty bottle of Golden Hedge Snake rum that rolled back and forth by his head. The least of the last two types of sloshing was the roaring disturbance that seemed to start halfway down his throat and run clear to his backside, presaging a lengthy session on the rails, head and tail hanging over in alternating turns. That was not the worst of it, though. Not by far.

Inside of Rory’s head was a dizzy-making combination of what felt like flint churt grinding in cheap lamp oil, a wretched ache not unlike what he imagined a canoneer felt when leaning too close to the mouth of his piece on discharge.

Then, the true unpleasantness began…

“Mister Killarney!” shouted bosun Gregor, “Git yer swill-slobbering, stankin’ boones ta foot an’ be seein’ about that thar gull wot perched atop the crow’s nest! Cap’n Jackson swore he’d leather my hide i’f ye’d not done wi’ it boy marnin’, an’ the sun, she’s just below the horoizon loin. I’ll give ye two fer one-uh every lash I tek n’yer account.”

All Rory could manage was a weak, “aye” as he made to stand. Three attempts later, he was semi-upright in the corner near the stores.

A few moments later, after some clambering, crawling, a few swerving dashes between deck fittings, Rory stood at the base of the mainmast. The sky had begun bluing from black. Stood, however, was too noble a term for the cocked and bent posture Rory assumed as he gazed upward. He looked more like a random collection of rags thrown over a hastily-assembled and not-too-convincing stick mannequin.

The bird was there, above, same as it had been for six days. He heard a weak cry from above. It must have a broken wing, must have. Else, it would have fled by now. Mr. Jo, the man they took on just off the Cape of Good Hope, said the bird was injured and had started to stink more than usual. It’d do no good to have a dead bird in the nest. So, Rory moved to the rigging and began to climb, but not before securing a club in the waistband of his trousers.

It was a miserable, sickening, and disorienting climb. Rory tried to gauge the timing of the ship so that he would hang over open water if his gorge let loose. It never did and he made a good time to the nest. The higher he climbed, though, the further his arc of travel, the harder he had to work to hold on to the rigging. It became a strain. There was a moment, three feet below the crow’s nest, when one hand slipped. Were it not for the other forearm wrapped in the lines, he would have plummeted into angry seas.

Catching his timing just right, Rory closed the final distance to the crow’s nest in a feverish scramble. He heaved himself up and realized he’d forgotten to account for the return pass of the main mast. As he went over one rail, the whole ship shifted beneath him just so, and he caught the opposite rail right in the gut. There were cracking sounds. Rory was pretty sure they did not come from the wood of the rail. A nauseating pulse of agony shot to his groin and radiated along his inner thighs. For what seemed forever, he hung there, not sure what was pulling him in which direction. The sea below seemed tobe in front of him, the horizon seemed above, and he felt he’d fall backwards, right past the rail over which he’d just hurled himself. The momentum of changing directions increased, with it his pain, until he cried out. Rory clamped his eyelids shut and he was in freefall.

And he landed right on the floor of the crow’s nest, his abdomen reporting a fresh explosion of pain. Rory lost the contents of his gut out of both ends as he lost consciousness.

He was brought to by a potpourri of stenches. Mixed with the acidic and foul stink of his own bodily excreta and vomitus was the high and cloying smell of flesh gone over. He opened his eyes to see an amorphous bundle of once-white feathers gone grey, dabbed with yellow and green. The feathers fluffed and ruffled in the wind, but the mass that underlay them did not move. Perhaps it had died. Rory hoisted himself upright, letting out a wincing gasp as he did so. The pain, the smell, the swinging back and forth. If he’d anything left inside him from the last fortnight of meals, he’d have lost it. Instead, he let loose with dry heaves. Shaking and weakening, he settled to the floor of the crow’s nest a second time. He did not lose consciousness, although he wished he had. How long he lay there, he did not know. He’d be damned, though, if he did not finish what he came to do. Flexing his body a bit here and a bit there, he was able to divine which parts he could move, and how, without falling back down again. He managed to roll over on one side, and pulling with the arm that brought the least pain, he grasped the uprights on the nestand dragged himself forward.

The gull did not move even as he was just upon it. By some miracle, he’d kept his club. Drawing it from a sodden and clingy knot of materialin his pant leg, he fumbled to get a solid grip. With what little range of motion he could command, he raised the club overhead and brought it down on the mass of feathers. It was a weak stroke, hitting the mass where there was no meat or bone, passing its force through the feathers into the floor of the crow’s nest.

And it was then that the yellow beak and half-ruined face of the gull came about. It hissed! It HISSED at him, a whistling ragged hiss…and no wonder. Its beak was broken, one eye was gone, and rot had set in to the point that there was a maggot plainly visible on the edge of its necrotic socket. Whatever had been at this bird before Rory had done a right number on it. The gull should, by any account, have been dead days ago.

But, it wasn’t dead. Mad from pain, wounded, with a blood infection surely raging hot and strong, the bird surged forward, jabbing with its broken beak like a centurion probing with a gladius. It caught Rory full in the meat of his cheek, so sudden and sharp and deep that the broken beak thudded into the bone underneath. Again it pecked, this time at his lip, going through that and hitting his lower gum, opening both.

Rory flailed with the club. Mad strokes never intended for combat, hitting with the middle of the club, the bird was so close, Rory drove down with the tip of the club like some deranged fencer…

Amid blinding pain, and in total panic, Rory scurried backward…and up…as the bird pressed its attack, pecking at his hand, his wrists, the club, then his cheek, his neck. Tiny red wounds blossomed on his skin like a scattering of wildflowers in spring. Rory was balanced against the rail of the nest, in an anguished attempt to stand upright, to pull his face way from the hellish beak. It caught him inthe eye.

A howl rang out over the deck, so wild and inhuman that Rory did not recognize that it came from his own throat. He went over the rail. Rather than falling directly to the main deck or getting caught in the rigging, Rory’s experienced reflexes took over. He hit the yardarm with his mid thigh, and both arms wrapped around it. It must have been by the shear strength of terror that he held on, his whole body slick with sweat. Time seemed to pass with no marker, save for the white hot screams of agony that raced through what seemed to be every part of his body. He whimpered, he wept from it. He was finally able to raise his head to see the crazed and dying bird gazing at him with its one good eye. The gull inched forward, squeezing its own ruined body through the rails. It adjusted its balance, took aim for Rory’s one good eye, cocking its head as a snake would when readying to strike. It sprang forward.

Rory, a mass of wounds himself, had a moment of philosophical clarity.

“Better both of us, me boyo!” He croaked as the bird leapt into his open hands, hands that no longer grasped the yard arm. Down they both went. Twisting in his fall, Rory saw the side rail of the Dame fast approaching. He angled his body over to put the bird between him andit. But, the ship was shifting again. With a rush of air and the crush of something not wood, Rory came to a sudden stop atop his foe. His mind became a uniform white field of pain.

“Mister Killarney. When yeev done wi giving yon birdie the best of yer tender attentions, please ya ta swab the crow’s nest. It seems some green fella left his sick all over the place up there.” said the bosun.

Rory, who had managed to land on a stack of sail cloth, could only manage in a feeble wheeze,

“Aye.”

– D.W., 2013