CHAPTER 5
AT THE GRAVESIDE: GIDEON
The afternoon of the battle Gideon presided wearily over the funerals of Harris, the first officer, and the other men who had died. The graves had been dug hastily, and there was no canvas for coffins. The dead men were laid to rest in sacking.
Alexander Harris’s heart had been pierced with a pike; his face lay untouched, slack in the tropical heat, expressionless. Gideon found himself wondering, as he read from the burial service, whether or not he was reading over the grave of a friend.
He shook his head— there had been no friendship here. For over a year Gideon and Harris had sailed together; they lived and worked alongside one another, fought the same enemy, battled the same storms, and faced the same death with its chances of mutilation or disfigurement. Harris had been a burly man, a seaman born, with a temper the hands had been careful not to provoke. Gideon knew that he’d drunk in secret, that somewhere on board he’d had a cache of brandy. Once each week Gideon had invited Harris to dine with him, but they’d spoken of professional matters, whether the standing rigging should be tarred down, where the next cruising ground should be, how much the latest prize would bring in New Orleans. Gideon did not know if Harris’s parents were still alive somewhere in New England— in his papers, burned with General Sullivan, there would have been a record of that. Gideon didn’t know if Harris had a sweetheart somewhere, whether he was a Federalist or Republican or if he believed in the Life Eternal. He knew that Harris had obeyed orders well, that he could be trusted with a job. That was all. Now Harris was dead, and Gideon wondered how he could have lived so intimately with the man for such a length of time, and ultimately know so little.
Gideon, the man who longed to know.
Harris’s slack face gave away no secrets. Gideon found the dead man’s expressionless face irritating. The dead should be wiser than the living, they should speak eloquently of the beyond. Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her voice? The words rolled cynically from Gideon’s mind, and he suppressed them. He believed in God, and His Son, and the eternal life to come. He told himself fervently that he believed, that one day the answer would come. But Harris spoke not, and wisdom cried not. As hard as Gideon listened, he could not hear the voice of his God.