The third of the monkey’s fleas will remain where it fell, in the fold of the red cloth tied around the boy’s neck, given to him by his sweetheart at home.
Later, when the boy has returned to the ship for the night, having eaten a dinner of some of the spiced nuts and a curious patty of bread, shaped like a pancake, he will pick up his favourite of the ship’s cats, an animal mostly white but with a striped tail, and nuzzle it against his neck. The flea, alert to the presence of a new host, will transfer itself from the boy’s neckerchief, to the thick, milk-white fur of the cat’s neck.
This cat, feeling unwell, and with the feline’s unerring eye for those who dislike it, will take up residence, the next day, in the hammock of the midshipman. When he, that night, comes to his hammock, he will curse at the now-dead animal he finds there, turn it unceremoniously out, kicking it across the room.
Four or five fleas, one of which once belonged to the monkey, will remain where the cat lay. The monkey’s flea is a clever one, intent on its survival and success in the world. It makes its way, by springing and leaping, to the fecund and damp armpit of the sleeping, snoring midshipman, there to gorge itself on rich, alcohol-laced sailor blood.
Three days out, past Damascus and heading for Aleppo, the quartermaster enters the captain’s cabin to report that the midshipman is unwell and confined below. The captain nods, still examining his charts and sextant, and thinks nothing more of it.
The next day, he receives word, as he stands on the upper deck, that the midshipman is raving, foaming at the mouth, his head quite pushed sideways by a tumour in his neck. The captain frowns as the quartermaster speaks these words into his ear, then gives orders for the ship’s physician to visit the man. Oh, the quartermaster then adds, and several of the ship’s cats seem to have expired.
The captain turns his face to regard the quartermaster. The expression on his face is one of distaste, bafflement. Cats, you say? The quartermaster nods, respectfully, eyes cast down. How very peculiar.
The captain thinks for a moment longer, then flicks his fingers towards the sea. Throw ’em overboard.
The deceased cats, three in all, are taken by their striped tails and flung into the Mediterranean. The cabin boy watches, from a hatch in the deck, wiping his eyes with his red scarf.
Shortly afterwards, they dock at Aleppo, where they offload more of the cloves and a portion of the coffee and several score rats, which make a dash for the shore. The ship’s physician knocks on the door of the captain’s cabin, where he is conferring about weather and sails with his second officer.
‘Ah,’ says the captain, ‘how is the man . . . the, well, midshipman?’
The physician scratches under his wig and smothers a belch. ‘Dead, sir.’
The captain frowns, surveying the man, taking in his crooked wig, the potent smell of rum off him. ‘By what cause?’
The physician, a man more suited to setting bones and extracting teeth, looks up, as if the answer might be found on the low, planked ceiling of the cabin. ‘A fever, sir,’ he says, with a drunkard’s decisiveness.
‘A fever?’
‘An Afric fever would be,’ the physician slurs, ‘my opinion. He’s turned all black, you see, in patches, around the limbs and also in other places I will refrain from mentioning here, in this salubrious place, and so it is necessary for me to conclude that he must have taken ill and—’
‘I see.’ The captain cuts him off by turning away from him, towards his charts, the matter dealt with, as far as he is concerned.
The second officer clears his throat. ‘We shall, sir,’ he says, ‘arrange a sea burial.’
The midshipman is wrapped in a sheet and brought up on deck. The sailors nearby cover their noses and mouths with cloth: the corpse is excessively odorous. The captain gives a short reading from the Bible; he, too, is struggling with the dead man’s smell, despite twenty-five years at sea and more watery funerals than he can recall.
‘In the name of the Father,’ the captain enunciates, raising his voice above the sounds of discreet retching at the back, ‘the Son and the Holy Ghost we commend this body unto the waves.
‘You,’ he gestures at the two sailors nearest him, ‘take the . . . do the . . . ah . . . yes . . . overboard.’
They dart forward and, with green faces, lift the corpse up and over the side.
The choppy, pleated surface of the Mediterranean folds over the body of the midshipman.
By the time they reach Constantinople, with an order to collect a consignment of furs from the north, the cats are all dead and the rat population is becoming a problem. They are eating through the crates and getting at the dried-meat rations, the second officer tells the captain. There were fifteen or sixteen of them in the cook’s quarters this morning. The men are demoralised, he says, keeping his eyes on the line of horizon out of the window, and several more have fallen ill overnight.