by Rick Spilman
dhows and local pulwars swarmed around them in the stream as the minarets of Calcutta gave way to verdant paddies, broken only by clumps of date palms or stands of bamboo. McPherson idly watched the snags beyond the edge of the channel. Branches of trees, bits of broken timbers and fractured rock rose about the surface, leaving their own wakes as the current swept by them. The snags caught anything that washed down from upstream - bits of cloth, weeds, trash, other branches and bits of wrecked boats.
Suddenly McPherson saw it, rising up from out of the glare and the haze. At first it was just a profile, but he knew what he saw. Chip's body, caught on a snag, upright with one arm outstretched, as if ready to point out his murderer. McPherson's knuckles turned white, grasping the quarterdeck railing. He mumbled beneath his breath, “Go away, bastard. Go away.”
The pilot turned toward him. “Excuse me, captain, but did you say something?”
“No, nothing,” McPherson snapped, keeping his eyes on the shape in the river.
As they moved downstream, what had appeared to be a body became a log jutting up from the river with one remaining broken branch extending out like an arm. McPherson turned away in relief and disgust.
They finally reached the James and Mary, the terrible double shoals that shifted underwater like the clouds moved across the sky. The water boiled furiously over the shifting sands in a twisting foaming froth with no apparent safe path through to the calmer water downstream.
The pilot took out a chalkboard and his assistant ran to the fo'c'sle head, carrying a similar black board in his hand. As the water hissed and surged around them, the pilot's head snapped back and forth, looking at the semaphore flags ashore, which relayed the latest information on the shoals. He scrawled course directions on his chalk board and held them up so that his assistant on the fo'c'sle could see them and relay the the courses to the tug. With a few words from the pilot to the helmsman and the messages scrawled in chalk, the tug and the Queen Charlotte wove their way between the angry standing waves and swirling whirlpools that buffeted them on either side.
Captain McPherson stood by impassively. This was where the pilot earned his exorbitant fee and he would stand aside and let him earn it. The captain's eyes scanned the dancing waters over the shoals. Several times he thought he caught the carpenter's face staring up at him from the swirling water. What would start as a whirlpool then twisted itself into a face, Chip's face, snarling or screaming or worst of all laughing at him from depths of the river. Each time he looked closer, the face disappeared beneath a wave or was swept upriver as they traveled downstream.
McPherson pulled out his handkerchief to mop his forehead. He realized that he was sweating. His shirt was beginning to soak through. As the dreaded shoals slipped behind them, he could only breathe deeply and look forward at the now placid river.
At length, they reached Diamond Harbor, the old East Indiaman anchorage, forty miles down stream where the river widened and the current was not so treacherous. A pilot boat made its way out from shore. The captain exchanged the expected and meaningless pleasantries with the pilot, complimenting him on his skill and receiving the pilot's good wishes for a fast and safe passage. The pilot and his assistants then boarded the pilot boat which carried them ashore, to await their next customer who would carry them again back up the river.
From here on the Queen Charlotte, her captain and crew were on their own. There were still hazards before reaching the open waters of the Bay of Bengal, but Captain McPherson allowed himself to relax now that the narrows and rapids were behind them. Then, just as he was about to go below, he saw a white body spinning in the current. He stopped and stared, but soon realized it was only the pale back of a Ganges River dolphin.
Four days into the Bay of Bengal, after an easy sail under fitful northerlies, the winds dropped and an oily swell began to roll. On the southeastern horizon, a wall of angry blue and black clouds arose, growing rapidly to fill the wide arc of the sky. In what seemed an instant, the dark clouds towered above the mastheads and wrapped around them, like the arms of some great demon.
Mate Johnston roared at the crew, “All hands! Strike royals and t'gansails! Reef topsails!” The crew scrambled pell mell along the deck and into the rigging, more frightened by the mountainous clouds rushing madly towards them than by the mate's bellowing. While sailors on deck hauled bunts and clews, their shipmates laid out on the yards and wrestled to furl the sails, racing against the imminent deluge. Even shortened down, the Queen Charlotte staggered in the sudden blast of the wind, rolling her leeward deck deep into the water. The crew grabbed any rigging they could lay their hands on, scrambling up the ratlines to safety, while the sailors caught to leeward swam for their lives, as the lower yard arms dragged furrows in the roiling sea.
The wail of the wind screamed through the rigging in a wild cacophony of tones, from a low monstrous roar over the stays to an insane shrieking as it sang through the ratlines. Ever so slowly the ship rounded up into the wind, throwing off the heavy load of water, sending a green wave surging aft along the deck to explode against the break of the quarterdeck. Again, sailors leapt up into the ratlines to keep from being swept away. With the mates bellowing orders, the crowd on deck worked frantically to haul the braces in sharp to avoid being caught aback in the dark and deadly blow.
A sailor, climbing down off the fore upper topsail yard, lost his grip and with a scream was carried off by the wind, his cry blending with the wind's howl. Captain McPherson, holding tight to the mizzen shrouds, watched the sailor tumbling like a leaf on the breeze, until he finally fell into the raging sea. The mate rushed over and asked, “Launch a boat, captain?” The captain only scowled and shouted. “He's gone. Shan't risk a boat for the likes of him.”
And then the rain came, a wall of water and a deafening roar. The monsoon was less a rain storm than a perpetual, blinding waterfall carried on a relentless gale of wind. The Queen Charlotte labored on, close hauled, clawing slowly to the south and west. For endless days, she seemed to be more a half tide rock than a sailing ship, as the waves and the deluge kept trying to drive her under. The captain stayed on deck, day and night. He lashed himself to the mizzen shrouds, determined to outlast the monsoon. Finally, though, exhaustion and the howling wind forced him below.
When Captain McPherson finally retreated to his cabin, he found no refuge. The wind still howled and the rain pounded just above his head on the cabin top. He helped himself to his gin bottle to fortify his tattered spirit. By the second glass, he was feeling better and by the third and fourth, he was almost at peace.
Then, behind him, he heard the dripping, even over the din of the wind and rain. Drip, drip, drip, drip. The skylight, the damnable skylight, had began to leak again. In Calcutta, he had finally hired a shore carpenter to finish the job that the damned ship's carpenter had left undone. It appeared tight and true before they sailed, but now, it was leaking again.
He looked at it more closely. To his horror, it didn't drip water. The drips were a dark red. It was dripping blood.
The captain watched in both horror and a building rage. He had shown the useless bastard of a carpenter the consequences of ignoring a superior officer. He had given him exactly what he deserved but now the whore's son was back once more, his blood dripping from the skylight.
In the flickering lamp light, the captain saw a shadow of a man on the bulkhead. In his muddled state, it never occurred to him that the shadow might be his own. He knew, as certain as sin, whose shadow it was. It was the damned carpenter. The carpenter who had demanded liberty and now refused to leave the ship.
“Get out! Go away! Damn you!” the captain screamed. With a shout, he lunged toward the shadow, but the instant that he moved, the shadow jumped away, lurching toward the cabin door. In a blind rage, McPherson staggered into the companionway and grabbed the fire ax. Screaming, he launched himself up onto the quarterdeck, shouting above the gale and the torrents of rain. “Chips, you motherless sod, I'm coming to get you, you
cowardly bastard.”
He stood there on deck, staggering, swinging the ax in the wind and blinding rain, holding it tightly with both hands, fighting an unseen foe and yelling at the top of his lungs over the howling of the storm.
The sudden appearance of the ax swinging apparition startled the two helmsmen, who struggled at the ship's wheel. In the storm, it was a constant struggle to keep the ship on course. In a moment's distraction, they allowed the ship to luff up. As they did, a quartering wave broke over the after deck. The two helmsmen hung on to the wheel for their lives as the wave, a solid wall of dark water, swept over them. When the ship rose again and they dared open their eyes, the deck was empty. The captain was gone.
As the bow swung into the wind, the fore topsails backed with a thunderous crack, then exploded into fluttering rags with a boom that sounded like a cannon shot. The ship shuddered from truck to keel and the masts and rigging groaned in agony. The mate jerked his gaze upward, surprised to see the mast still standing. The main topsails were luffing wildly, threatening to flog themselves to pieces in the wind. The ship was being pushed backward.
Mate Johnston shouted to the men at the wheel,
