A small boat drifted through an easy ocean. Clarence stood at the wheel, and sometimes at the boat’s edge, to study below the rolling waves.
On one such departure Clarence lingered, worried at the sight of things until he found the way again.
‘Ho, friend!’
Clarence nearly tossed himself overboard, before craning to witness the imposing beauty looming overhead.
‘Come aboard!’
A man hollered from far above, and after scrambling back to the wheel Clarence did guide his small boat to a dangling hook at the vessel’s side. As he fastened the slaps of rungs unfurling chased down until the last clapped just a tough reach beside.
So Clarence climbed the swinging ladder back up past ornately carved and painted wood and rows of canons’ watchful eyes until an equally formidable banister concluded the ascent.
‘Welcome and apologies, good sir.’
A finely dressed in a most regal but for golden button and puff of purest white blue arm accompanied the greeting. Clarence took it and with a swing and thud planted on the deck. ‘My thanks.’
‘Of course.’ The man waved as he spun. ‘Come.’
They soon reached a pair of doors toward the ship’s front and behind them a huddle of fine dark shoes and climbing white socks to kiss handsome pants half so stiffly tight as the sharp fins of smartly decorated jackets.
‘Captain.’ At the man’s voice the others promptly left their study. ‘A sailor.’
‘Well met.’ One from among them nodded with a smile, or perhaps smirk, tucked under the rounded point of perfectly folded velvet leather. ‘Or not quite yet really. What do they call you?’
Clarence shot a glance about the room. Dandy as to be expected. ‘Clarence.’ An ornate globe rested in its corner, fuller in color than the circle round the table. ‘A sailor, I suppose.’
‘Yes, and of rough seas no less.’
The Captain gestured, while Clarence circled the group to reach an empty spot beside his sweeping hand. “Here is the mind behind the manifest.’
There were a dozen implements if one, measured wood straight as planks and rounded, pairs of points with joints, arrows spinning under glass and simply glass with sand within and many other important things strewn over a waste of parchment. ‘Thus we navigate.’ The Captain’s arm receded. ‘While you brave the waves alone.’
Clarence raised his gaze to meet the others’, and thought to take the observation for a question.
‘Well, I know the way.’
‘Ah, so you live this route.’ Another spoke, in his green suit, while a huff escaped a third.
‘Live? No, these seas are new to me.’ Clarence thought a moment. ‘I should say, I see the way.’
A chuckle rose from one and spread, before the Captain settled the room. ‘The stars laze, for every week they waste a month on holiday behind the clouds. Especially of late.’
‘Oh I don’t watch the skies. The currents they’re like veins and you can see them, I can see them, They can take you anywhere.’
‘You see currents.’ A laugh escaped the Captain, and soon enough the rest, and with them the truth of his welcome.
Clarence stalked back round the table and toward the doors without notice, to a chorus of laughter and shouts and clanging coin. Then it was back to and down the ladder, down into deepest brooding thought, down from the heights of greater men.
Towards the bottom a most insidious notion penetrated a most frustrated mind, banished with but glance beneath the rolling waves, where the way presented clear as day. He pushed from the mighty vessel and embarked, newly determined.
***
Clarence stood leaned against a pillar on a pier, pear in dangling hand.
‘Half a shilling they’re Royal.’ A boy stood beside him, arm extended.
He followed the pointing finger to what looked to be raft and its disheveled Captain, who after collapsing to caress the pier rose to meet Clarence’s easy look with a quite hard one.
‘No,’ Clarence smiled, ‘I would lose.’