by John Gardner
“Slaver! A word more smoky, more darkly ambiguous than Egypt’s creator-destroyer Sun-god, to a man from Yankee Boston. We did not speak much of Slavers or the men who shipped on them. The whole institution was a cosmic inexplicable. Take the feeling you have when you see a butchered bear in van Klug’s front window—hung upside down, like Peter on the cross, with the arms and shoulders and chest of a man—multiply that feeling ten thousand times, and you have, it may be, some feeble image of the superstitious dread in the heart of a Christian Boston man when, straying from the usual routes of his evening meditational walk to wynds more somber, he comes upon the dead-count bodies laid out on the wharf—black females, babies, stunted males—from a Slaver just berthed from Africa. Right enough, they’re not human, you may say in your soul, and may support the opinion with a thousand cyclopaedias. But doubt bedevils you— those dead hands unnaturally like human hands, the misery frozen on the dead black face, perfect counterfeit of yours or mine in that sorry last hour. Quickly they cover the bodies with tarpaulins and march the cargo still salable to the wagons. (The living ones, too, could fool you for a minute, wringing their fingers and complaining to the skies, more religious than many a Christian pope—or weeping silently, like whalers’ widows—or showing no trace of emotion whatever, like Cato the night of his suicide, reading his book.) It was known in Boston that the Lord smiles here on earth on His elect. So Calvin maintained, or so I’m told. And whether the captain of a slaving ship walked home chin on chest without muttering a word, or greeted his family with a shout and a smile, pulling out his pipe for his children’s kiss, it was known that the captains of Slavers were well-to-do beings. These things were indisputable, however dubious. So that persons confident of their theological position shrugged, though uncertainly, at the sorrow of slaves, or at most pursed their lips as they would at the humanlike whimperings of injured dogs. But mainly we did not go down to the docks when a Slaver was in, but were checked by the same inexplicable dread (much multiplied) we’d have felt beside the carcass of a butchered bear, outlandish country brother. The institution was legal and right, but we were metaphysically uneasy. Though they would have denied it (studiously callous as men always are when the crowd condones what a decent man alone would feel leery of) the slave ship crews were themselves uneasy. Pirates, when they meet on the high seas, pause and greet each other. ‘How many skulls?’ goes the merry cry. But Slavers pass in silence.
“So, gazing down at the mournful singers, I was shocked, hardly able to credit my sight. A whaler, to any man born where I was, was a vessel above ambiguity, an emblem of pluck, sly Yankee craft. She was the soul of big business, industry, initiative. She was oil—light and power—vialed ton upon ton: egalitarian, winch-and-cable key to boundless Empire. A whaler with a hold full of slaves was a flat impossibility, as if Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel should conspire to get Satan a comfortable hotel.—But then it came to me I’d made a mistake. No women, no children; so she wasn’t a Slaver. But the shackles, the chains … enigma!
“There was a noise behind me, the scrape of an opening hatch. I looked back, stiff-necked for fear of another blast of pain. There was no sign of light, but I could hear someone coming. I doubted I had time to return to my stateroom. For some reason I didn’t even try to understand, I was filled with alarm at the thought that I might be discovered where I lay—premonition, no doubt, of the violence charging all hands on that ship—and instinctively, whimpering, still on all fours, I scuttled away like a crayfish. There was a wavering film of light now, behind me, gleaming on varnish where the passageway angled. I continued backing off, clumsily quick-footed. Tears streamed from my eyes; my clenched teeth ached. And then, in the darkness, my right hand, following the bulkhead, struck empty space. I jabbed in further. It was a narrow companionway leading toward sky and rigging. I started up. Pain shogged through my veins with every heartbeat. In a minute I was crouched in the lantern-slanting dark of the fore-deck. No one in sight. I eased myself forward to the shadow of the windlass—movement was somewhat less difficult here, though the deck was slippery from the wash of waves—and here I lay still.
“The southern blow was as stiff as ever, but the rain had passed on. Overhead there were clouds outlined by the moon to make silver-edged, teratic faces—a few cold stars like wild horses’ eyes—in all lateral directions, the rolling, white-capped sea. The hatch I’d just now come through lit up, then dimmed as the man with the lantern moved on. I breathed easier, still shallowly. It was a game, one man against the universe, like my spree on the Jolly Independent. But as before, the game abruptly ended. The hatch I’d come through lit up once more, and this time the light did not dim but grew brighter. The man came hurrying up the companionway. Before his head emerged I was bows-ward of the windlass and laid out flatlings on the forecastle head. The man with the lantern was shouting something. His movements, his voice, were like those of a machine. Wolff, he was called, I’d find out later. The second mate. Another shout came from the watch on the bridge, then another from the stern. ‘ ‘E’s away, sir!’ ‘All hands!’ For all the wind, the hull laid-to against churning seas, the masts trimmed tight, the deck was suddenly aswarm with men, their lanterns swinging, reflected brighter than diamonds in the foam, and the salt-spray air was alive with their ringing yells.
“In all that noise it should have been impossible to hear what I nevertheless imagined I heard—what by all the laws and traditions and above all superstitions of the sea I could not have heard—a woman’s voice. It chilled me, threw me into panic like that of a periodic madman when he feels the faint tremble of his sickness coming on. It was a voice you might’ve heard in a school for young ladies, or a nunnery perhaps. Around and above me hung the stark gray whaler, professional killer, stern tool of industry lifting and plunging on a violent sea; on the deck below me and on the bridge above stood shouting men with lanterns. Nevertheless clear as day I heard it—the voice of a cultured young lady. Someone answered her, a voice muffled, maybe drunken, and I caught a name: Augusta. I held my breath, straining to hear any further word the girl might say. It was a voice that shot through me, magical, unearthly. (I was struck the same way years afterward by a woman singing in a field down in southern Illinois; a voice that made time stop, prepared for a mystical opening of the skies— a common enough thing, but powerful in its moment.)
“That same instant, the Captain emerged from his cabin and tottered to the rail like a man either deathly sick or drunk, his glinting eyes jumping the length of the ship to the windlass. I shrunk back into the darkness behind me. Where there’d been nothing before, there was now interference. I looked up. A black harpooner with a bone through his nose stood barefoot but steady as a steeple above me—a thousand feet tall and as wide as a gleaming stone mountain, he seemed. His harpoon lay casual as a hiking staff in his richly bejeweled and braceleted hand, as if I, no whale, were unworthy of his skill. I gave out a squeak, like a mouse in the shadow of a hovering eagle. The harpooner showed his enormous white teeth and chuckled, a sound like jackals chuckling on the Syrian coast, and his hand came down, very gently, and closed on my elbow.”
VII
“This does concern a hoax?” the guest inquires.
“A hoax, sir. Aye.”
The angel smiles, draws his pipe out, stuffs it. He stares out the window, his wings drooping, and absently pats his pockets, hunting for phosphor-sticks.
VIII
“They kept me locked up more carefully thereafter—locked up body and mind like a dangerous maniac, though I was freer than they guessed. They’d tell me not a word about the blacks in the hold or who it was owned that female voice. When I asked the first mate, Mr. Knight, about these things—it was the first mate himself that brought me food—he’d take a look of consternation as if he feared for his safety in the range of such a lunatic. But he never would flatly deny that I’d heard what I claimed I’d heard. He’d stand looking guilty, head forward, horselike, his shoulders drawn inward like those of a ma
n who hears footsteps behind him in an unlighted alley—it was all he could do to keep from peeking past his shoulder—and he’d grumble gloomily, ‘Who ever heard of black slaves on a whaler?’ and would laugh, then throw me a sudden sharp look, as if hoping for an answer. Whatever the ins-and-outs of it, I saw I was less the ship’s prisoner than he was, and I’d smile knowingly. “Eat yer supper,’ he’d say then. When I’d done so, he’d check my bandages and leave, all as quick as he could manage. I could see I had nothing to fear from him, though he never forgot to lock me in when he left me. He was a tall man, broad-shouldered as a chest of drawers, firm-muscled as a statue, but his leathery face was cracked deep beside the ice-pale eyes and again at each side of his wide, thin mouth with laughter lines. He was not a man built for ponderous meditation. Even if you saw him at home in Nantucket, sitting in the Methodist church in his tight black Sunday suit— a man with enormous feet and hands and a long, long neck with a small head perched on the top like a crowsnest—you’d have moved him in an instant to his proper setting, balanced at the stern of a longboat shouting to his oarsmen, teasing, joking, cajoling, occasionally throwing a dare-devil taunt or wild curse at the whale. He was a creature designed for roughneck adventures and tales of them later to his numerous, healthy, pious family; but the design had gone awry. Something—something more troublesome than whales—had turned him speculative. Sometimes looking up from my plate of beans, I’d catch him staring at the bulkhead like a man looking thoughtfully off at the horizon. He was a man with grave responsibilities, and the longer I watched him, the surer I was of my natural advantage. I formed a plan.
“I said to him: ‘It’s no use pretending it’s otherwise. I’ve been taken aboard a mystery ship, and I’ve penetrated enough already to be dangerous. God help us all!’ I wrung my fingers, pretending I was greatly distressed by it.
“‘Then ye’ve penetrated more than I have,’ says he, with his eyebrows up.
“ ‘That may be, Mr. Knight. That may well be.’ I took hold of the sides of my head and pretended to close my eyes, but in secret I kept a bead on him. ‘I hope you don’t think it’s for myself I endure this anguish,’ I said. ‘Not hardly, Mr. Knight!’ I gave out a mournful laugh very much like Pious John the Pirate’s.
“Mr. Knight pursed his lips for a minute or two, then tipped his head. ‘It ain’t?’ says he.
“I laughed again, like an undertaker. ‘I’ll tell you the truth, though you may find it hard to believe at first. When you hauled me aboard, you hauled in more than you bargained for. Did you ever hear tell of the pirate Jonathan Upchurch?’
“He picked at his chin. ‘I know a whaler named Upchurch.’
“ ‘No relation,’ I say quick as a rattlesnake. ‘My father raises hogs in Tennessee.’ Since he looked a little doubtful, I described the place in elaborate detail. His eyes got glassy. ‘But woe’s me,’ I continued, ‘I abandoned that heaven-on-earth and ran away to sea and became a pirate.’
“ ‘Ye didn’t!’ says Mr. Knight, and takes his black wool hat off. His eyes, when he widened them, were about the size of two dimes.
“ ‘I did, more’s the pity. Turned to a life of throat-cutting.’ I clenched my fists and heaved a terrible deep sigh.
“ ‘I be damned,’ he said. ‘Young fellow like you! Well, I be damned.’
“ ‘But you ain’t altogether grasped the point, Mr. Knight. He’s no ordinary pirate, this Jonathan Upchurch that sits here before you. It was gentlemen I sailed with, men of learning and refinement, and I was one of the highest respected of them all. Don’t be fooled by my youth! A wild young boy that’s got no sense, no fear of death, can be a dangerous character, and a boy that knows Latin and Greek and what have you, and’s been taught smooth manners—such a boy can be a formidable character indeed. I’ve got friends from one end of this globe to the other—people of some importance, I can tell you: the King of the Zulus, I might mention, for instance, and the King of Niroona, who I helped one time with some underhand business off the Gold Coast. You’d be surprised what people a young man as wealthy as I can get near to—Congressmen, lawyers, governors, actors, stage magicians (I might mention Dr. Flint and the incredible Murdstone). If some misadventure was to happen to me aboard this ship … not that I’d personally care, understand … What has a miserable pirate like me to look forward to, except death and the hope of the Lord’s forgiveness?—’
“I’d overdone it, could be. Mr. Knight reached down for my dish with the look of a man out of patience. ‘Avast,’ he said, ‘if you’re a pirate I’m President Lincoln. Ye never been a mile out of Boston in yer life.’
“ ‘Believe what suits you,’ I answered, and shrugged. I licked off my fork the way my mother does, elaborately genteel.
“He pointed a finger like a fencepost at me. ‘What’s Singapore look like? Who’s the Captain of the Great Silver Nail?’
“I smiled sadly and let him press me awhile before I gave him his answers (my father’s ballyhoo was worth gold just now). Mr. Knight got to looking exceedingly uneasy. He turned away, scowling and picking at his chin. He said, ‘Gentlemen of learning and refinement, was they?’ and grinned, about to leave.
“I lay back and put my hands behind my head. ‘We used to talk Latin on the ship, to keep our brains in tune. Sometimes our Captain would drill the whole crew on logarithms.’
“He went out and locked the door.
“That evening he brought in a leather-bound volume of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy in Latin. As if casually, I took the Boethius, opened it, and settled at once to reading, absent-mindedly forking in food. When I stole a glance at Mr. Knight, he was standing bent forward at the waist, head tipped, his bright little eyes screwed up like a watchmaker’s, trying to make out if I was really reading or just pretending to.
“ ‘Perhaps I ain’t really a pirate after all, Mr. Knight,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I’m, say, a schoolmaster.’ And I let him see a smile just exactly like Pious John’s.
“Mr. Knight tipped his head to the other side, one eye tight shut, studying the smile the way a robin would study a cast-iron worm, then picked up the plate, which I wasn’t yet done with, and abandoned me without a word.
“The next morning it was a man named Wilkins who brought me food and checked the bandages. He was not exactly a pleasant person, to say the least, though adequate enough in his role as physician. Anyone on a whaler can set a bone, stanch a wound, or hook up an artificial limb. It’s as much a part of a whaler’s trade as stepping new masts on the shores off Japan when the ship’s former masts have been blown to Calcutta. Whereas Mr. Knight was reserved, as befits a first mate, Wilkins, who was only a common seaman, would chatter your ear off, jerking his flat face close to you, his red bandanna clamped tight to his scalp, his muscles all twitching, his body thrown forward like a Chinese wrestler’s, his hand on your elbow, your shoulder, the nape of your neck, as if intending no good to you. He was a man struck with lightning, unable to ground it, the flicker of it still in his eyes. He was a half-breed, or multi-breed (black-Chinese-Indian, or Lord knows what), with a thick-lipped, eternally smiling mouth and a sharply slanted squint, eyes black as coal. Where he got hold of the name of Wilkins is more’n I can tell you. Fact is, half of the crew called him Java Jim, and there was others that knew him as Quicksilver Nick. He answered my questions with a wink that belied his disingenuous words, denials that the hold contained slaves or that a woman had ever set foot on the Jerusalem. It did not take me long to guess that he’d once sailed with pirates and had been sent here to see if he recognized me. On the passageway bulkhead, outside my stateroom, I could see Mr. Knight’s long shadow, bent over, spying.
“I saw right away that even with Wilkins I maintained my advantage. He was one of them, involved, caught up in complexities, considerations. Mr. Knight had sometime befriended him, perhaps. Or the Captain had saved him from the gallows for the sake of his poor mother. As even Boethius had understood—though he’d turned it rather pious—a man li
ke myself was outside the web that entrapped their kind. I was dependent on them, that might be so (I was not yet prepared to eat the passageway rats); but I was indifferent and, being unknown, I was possibly dangerous, hence invulnerable.
“ ‘Yer lookin’,’ I said, ‘to see if I’m a pirate ye recognize. Look hard, mate! Look hard!’ and I pushed my face up close to him.
“He leered—not a genuine smile but a leathery mask-expression, no expression at all—but the trick was one I knew. I gave back the smile like a mirror.
“He looked thoughtful, though he kept the leer. ‘You’re a pirate, yes indeed; that’s plain to see. But you ain’t any pirate I’ve met with.’ He winked.
“ ‘Yer a fool, Mr. Wilkins. I’m a riverboat magician and part-time preacher.’ I gave him back the wink.
“ ‘That’s so,’ he said. ‘Yer a preacher-magician as plain as day. That’s how ye met with Dr. Flint, must be.’
“ ‘Ah yes, Flint,’ I said. It worried me a little that they’d fixed on that. The very idea of that devilish magician brought the sweat to my forehead, which is no doubt the reason his name had popped into my mind when I’d talked to Mr. Knight.
“ ‘Deadliest trickster in the world, people say. Or was till he vanished.’ The little man’s eyeslits were looking at me hard. I felt panic going up and down my back in cold shocks. I was sure there was some kind of trick in what he said, though heaven only knew what the trick might be.
“ ‘Vanished?’ says I, looking blank as a hensegg.
“He laughed and tipped his head. Soon after, he left me.
“That very afternoon—my ribs were by this time pretty well mended—Mr. Knight came and issued me seaman’s garb and, without so much as a word of explanation, put me to work with the scrubbing boys. Since I knew I couldn’t do the work exactly right—as I would if ever I’d shipped as a pirate—I worked with exaggerated clumsiness, like a man hiding a familiar skill. Sometimes for good measure I’d step into a pail, as if by accident, and get my bare foot wedged. A time or two I got myself and my fellow workers all tangled up in rope. Mr. Knight and Wilkins watched from around corners—with my cast left eye I saw every move they made—and looked dubious, pulling at their chins. The following morning I was graduated to labor for the cook, a big, fierce-looking one-eyed Chinese, smoky from the furious galley stoves and testy from the grill’s everlasting hiss. The cook, from the moment he saw me lay hand on a butcher’s cleaver—an instrument I took up with some relish, I must say, a little like Odysseus picking up his bow—was scared out of his wits. By noon he’d hid all his knives large and small. I took to playing little games with the masher and the rolling pin, and sometimes whispering to myself. He spoke to Mr. Knight, who picked at the tip of his nose and looked thoughtful, and I was shifted to the rigging, where I hung, terrified, clumsily tying and untying knots. In awe, sick and dizzy, I watched more experienced seamen like Wilkins dance on the royal masthead or leap like gibbons from stay to stay or swing out hand over hand on the yardarm. There was no possibility of clowning up here, no way on earth of exaggerating my clumsiness. All I could do was hang on for dear life. Even so, they rubbed their chins and seemed uncertain.
