An Orphan of the Tides

An Orphan of the Tides

Stephen Brooke ©2021

Among the heaps of red-brown seaweed, thrown up by the tempest that blew through the night, amid the flotsam of far shores and unknown lands, we found the old man. Naked, he was, and a long white beard, stained green with algae, fell to cover that nakedness. His hair, too, was long and plastered to his pate by the sea water, and white he was, as no sailor who has sailed long would be. We thought him dead, one of the drowned, lost overboard in the storm.

Yet he stirred, moaned feebly, and suddenly sat upright, looking about. I hastened to wrap my jacket around his frail form.

In a strange language he spoke to us, one neither of us recognized. It seemed hardly to have words at all, and sounded more of the crashing of waves and the moaning of the winds across the waters and the cries of soaring gulls. He shook his hoary head. “Nay, but you would not know that tongue. English. I thought I heard words of English. Be this England’s shore?” He looked from one to the other of us, his eyes that had seemed blurred and unfocused suddenly brightening.

“America,” John told him. “This is the coast of California.” The old fellow was obviously mad. How could he not know he was on the other side of the world from England?

“He must have wandered down here from someplace inland,” I whispered. “Dementia, maybe.” John nodded agreement.

“Let’s get you somewhere warm, man,” he said. “Do you have a name?”

“Of course, I have a name. It’s—uh, it’s—I can’t remember.” He sighed. “It’s been so long.”

John and I gave each other knowing looks. “Oh! Nick. That’s the name. Nicholas I am.” The long, unkempt white hair and beard, drying now in the cold wind, floated about his seemingly ageless, pale, unlined face as he shook his head. “Nicholas I was. A sailor. Yes.”

“Well, come along then, Nick,” I said. “We’ll get you before a warm fire.”

“A fire! I have not felt a fire’s warmth since I was young. It was cold where I have dwelt all these years. Too cold, too many years.” He walked between us, his legs shaky, John and I supporting him. “California, y’ say? Then that be the Pacific.”

All eyes turned toward the slate-gray ocean. Great waves still rose up to break upon the rocky shore but the storm had passed and sunlight broke through the clouds now and then, slender beacons that played across the turbulent water. A bitter, biting wind blew yet, sending the salt spray to drench us.

“It is,” I agreed, turning back to Nick. “A great ocean but there’s no reason to stand here gaping at it. Let’s get you indoors.”

The old man gave it one lingering look and then went where we led him.

*

“No one knows anything of him,” reported John, putting down the phone. “There’s no word of anyone gone missing.”

“Maybe he did go overboard from a ship,” I suggested.

“Or he could have been a hermit somewhere in the hills. All sorts hide away up there.” He gave a long look to our white-haired guest, huddled in his blanket, as if he could somehow find an answer in that stooped form. “The sheriff’s office is going to send someone out in the morning.”

The old man had been staring into the fire, seemingly fascinated with the flames and oblivious to what we said. “It was a ship,” he said abruptly, his voice little more than a whisper at first, but growing stronger. “The Northern Lady, back in Oh-two. Sail was still alive then. But dying. But dying.” He shook his head. “I’ve seen it. Ha, or not seen it. Fewer and fewer great spreads of sail to carry ships about the world. Only smoke.” He looked up at us. “Do y’ have tea? I just remembered tea.”

“I’ll make some,” I told him.

“I thanks you. A schooner was The Lady, sailing out of Liverpool, and a fine ship she seemed, her name fresh painted in shining gold letters along her prow. I recalls them gleaming in the sun when I last boarded, for it was a bright clear morning and all seemed well with the world. One of my shipmates claimed the name was fresh changed too and she was a ship of misfortune. But, wondered I, why did he sail on her? I put such thoughts aside. I was young and not one to worry.

“To the West Indies we was bound, with a hold full of printed cottons, to islands I’d never seen but was eager to, islands with women and rum and sunshine. But Hurican, the old great cannibal god of the Caribbean, came up out of the southeast and told us all mortals die. The wind howled into our sails till they were all gone, aye, and the masts too. Waves like slabs of gray marble ready for the building of giants’ tombs crashed down on us. And then The Northern Lady went down too. Ah, the tea.”

He took the cup, gulped from it, spattered. “Damn, I’d forgotten it was so hot. I’d forgotten about it being hot at all.” The hoary head shook. “I’ve forgotten everything.” He sipped more carefully now.

“I should have drowned then, long ago,” the old man continued. “I felt myself being dragged down, though I grasped at a bit of wreckage for a while. It was torn from me by the storm and only the peace beneath, the peace of the depths, remained for me. I fell into it. It was like falling into sleep, losing the world, and all I’d known would become the forgotten dream.

“But there were others in the water with me. I could see the shapes moving about. Some held men in their arms; that I could see though I could not not make out much else. One wrapped its arms around me, too, it seemed. I couldn’t see and I was losing my senses as it dove, dove into the dark swirling depths. I struggled but a moment.”

“Mermaids?” asked John. I frowned at the hint of derision in his voice but the old man didn’t seem to note it.

“Aye, mermaids. They were not much like I had pictured them. No tails, just legs but their feet were wide, like paddles. And they weren’t at all what you’d call beautiful. Ah, no, not beautiful.” He sighed, sipped his tea again, and went on. “I came to in a sort of cave. Some of my shipmates I saw there with me, lying on a beach of sand, seaweed strung about us. Not all them were alive. And the mermaids—well, they were feasting on those that weren’t.

“They took us on to other caves, some of us, in time. They had those caves, y’ see, big caves lit by phosphorescence under the water, with air in ’em. They need to breathe air just like you and me. Cities, they were, mermaid cities.”

John gave me a wink, maybe thinking he saw a hole in the story. “What about the mermen?”

“They wouldn’t let them in. Once I learned the lingo they told me they were brutes what roamed the seabed, solitary-like. The girls preferred us.”

He saw the look we gave each other this time. “Yes, yes, that’s why they kept us. Kept me. The main reason. And that wasn’t so bad. They weren’t really so different than women on dry land and a sight better than some whores I’ve known.

“And so I got used to being among them and learned their ways. The mermaids had pearls as big as my head what they would use to play ball, and chests full of treasure they had collected, having no idea of its worth but only enjoying the shining gold and jewels for their own sake. I’d count the coins sometimes and clean off the algae and such that encrusted them, just to have something to do, and dream of what I could do with their wealth.

“Ah, but even if could get away how would I take any of it with me? And then when I’d learned their way of speaking I listened to the stories of the merfolk, of depths unknown to men and the creatures that lived in them, the whale, the kraken, the great dark fish that dangle a light to attract you into their toothy maws. All these were in their tales. And they told of distant sunny coasts where the palms grew down to the water and fish like living jewels swam in and out of the reefs, the corals and the fans swaying in the current.

“They took me with them, from one of their cities to another, and I had no way to count the days and the years. I couldn’t understand then but I did in time, for I remained alive while others came and went. They’d grown fond of me, maybe, the way a farmer will of one cow or rooster, letting it grow old when all its brothers and sisters are gone to slaughter.” He pondered that a moment and shook his head. “Or maybe their queen actually loved me in her way. I was ever her favorite.”

“There were others there?” I asked, gently, willing to half-believe this ancient mariner’s account.

“Oh, aye. Others shipwrecked or fallen overboard, or fools that saw the mermaids sporting and jumped in the ocean to join them. Sometimes I spoke with them, so I did not forget my native tongue. I would have lost all I was had I lost that too. One lad was the smartest man ever I knew but he had no gift for the learning of languages and that was no good. He didn’t last down there. The women liked that I could talk with them so well, I think, and they took care of me. Fed me well, too. Fish, yes, mostly fish. Sometimes other things, worse things. I didn’t ask about the meat but had my suspicions.”

John remained as incredulous as before, nor could I believe any of it when the old man rested from speech. But while he was spinning his tale—ah, then it all seemed so real and I could see the mermaids—not beautiful at all—in their cities beneath the waves. “So how did you get away?” my friend asked him.

“They told me I could go home if I wanted. And perhaps they let me go out of kindness or maybe I was just too old and of no use, but they hadn’t it in them to kill me after I’d been with ’em so long. They brought me up to this shore—America, y’ say?—they brought me up and let me go. I still hear their voices bidding me farewell, carried on the winds that once took The Northern Lady and me to the bottom of the sea. The endless winds, filled with the cries of the gulls.” He looked about the little room. “Will I hear that music again? I don’t know this world. I don’t belong here anymore.” A tear glistened and rolled down his pale cheek. “What is to become of me, an orphan left on your doorstep?”

A look from me prevented John from saying something he shouldn’t.

*

“There’s the deputy,” I said, peering out the window. Dawn was just breaking. “I’ll go see if our guest is awake.”

I went to the room where we had put the old man to bed. No one was there. The pajamas we had given him lay discarded on the floor.

“It looks like he’s run off,” I reported. “We’d better look for him.”

Deputy Scott went out and radioed from his car for more to come and help. John and I stood outside our cabin and surveyed the hills, the Pacific lying below us. I had a hunch as to where our old sailor might have gone. Back to the cove where we had found him. “I’m going down to look by the water,” I announced. John followed me. The deputy said something more into his radio as he watched us go.

The seas yet crashed but the skies were clear this morning and the sun shone and sparkled on the wave crests. There he was, slowly wading into the ocean.

“Come back!” I called after him.

He paid no attention as the waves crashed about him. John began to wade in behind him, shouting for him to stop.

“I’m going back,” I heard the old man call out, to us, to the sky, to the sea. “Back—” His voice was lost in the wind, the crash of the waves. And I swear I heard other voices, voices that spoke a language that seemed born of the waves and wind, to be one with them. They too were calling.

He disappeared among the waves. What were those dimly-seen forms moving in those waves, that came to him, lifted him up, and bore him away into the deep? I can not say, nor would I if I could.

No. The tides carry many things, the flotsam of all the seas, to these coasts, and they carry them away again.