Sea Change

Simon MacCulloch

We were sailing free on a smooth south sea when the captain said: “I know

In the stoutest crew that there’s one or two who will skulk in their bunks below

And pretend they’re sick. It’s a lazy trick, and I won’t have it happen here.

If they try to shirk from a sailor’s work they will find that there’s more to fear

From the kind of chore that I have in store.” And we knew that the man he meant

Was a thin young lad who’d been coughing bad since the Tropic without relent.

He had got so weak he could scarcely speak of his pain where he lay abed

With a fevered brow; and we guessed that now he’d be flogged and would soon be dead.

’Twas a piteous plight, so at dark of night we awoke him and made him hide

In the deepest hold. It was wet and cold; on the morrow the poor boy died.

Well, we had to pretend that he’d met his end on a venture without our aid,

So the search took days through the cargo maze, and the ravening rats had made

Such a handsome feast on the sad deceased that the captain himself turned pale,

And a hasty grave in the thirsty wave put an end to the sorry tale.

But the rats, grown bold, now forsook the hold, and they swirled like a tide on deck,

And we feared the worst  - that the ship was cursed and would soon be a drifting wreck.

“You will stand your ground!” roared the captain; round him the rats formed a squeaking pack,

And they dropped from the rails and the rigs and the sails and the mast where he’d set his back

Till they covered him. “There are loads to trim,” came his words in a strange high tone;

And he said no more as the small teeth tore through his flesh till they rasped on bone.

Yet his corpse fell not; and it left the spot where it swayed in its coat of fur.

“If you try to shirk from a sailor’s work here’s the punishment you’ll incur,”

Said the shambling lump, and began to stump towards the hatch, moving awful slow;

Then it heaved it wide, fumbled blind inside, slammed it down and was gone below.

In the weeks to port, there were those who thought we should hunt it where it slaved

Shifting cargo there in the lightless air. In the end, there was none who braved

The appalling dark. Did it disembark when we fled from the ship at last?

Does it haunt there yet, bones that can’t forget, in a black revenge held fast?

If you crave to know you are free to go to the yard where the old ship lies

With her lamps long dead and her sails a-shred and her hull full of glinting eyes,

And enquire within if the captain’s sin has been shrived and his bones set free,

Or if rat-toothed will keeps him labouring still, on the swell of a sickly sea.

Simon MacCulloch lives in London and contributes poetry to a variety of print and online publications.