Sea of Two Suns

by Nicholas McAuliff

  “His brain is addled Cree!” said the pirate and he grabbed Nukilik two-handed by the lapel.

  Nukilik released the hunter and lifted the captain and pressed him against the bulkhead as the Cree’s face and arms trembled with rage. Hanging candelabras shattered to the deck and a stool wedged between the captain and the wall cracked in two as Nukilik pressed.

  “He’s a child!” the captain gasped and he crossed his arms and brought his body weight down upon the Cree’s arms which just broke the Cree’s grip slightly.

  Arnaaluk squatted on the floor holding a crying Julius in her arms.

  All were silent.

  “Enough!” Francisco whispered at last, arms out. “Enough!”

  “He has the mind of a child, Nukilik,” yelled Lukas. “I have seen such a thing before.”

  Nukilik sat down and stared at the bulkhead, looking through it.

  Julius went toward him and placed his hand on the man’s shoulder. “I sorry,” he said through sobs. “Sorry.”

  Nukilik grasped Julius’s arm. “Forgive me friend,” he said. “All is ok, all is alright,” he said and offered Julius his cup.

  “No,” said the captain. “He cannot drink save for water and milk,” he said through gasps and called a server. “A milk if you have any. Or some honey in water.”

  Francisco eyed the newcomers with curiosity. He smiled and sat.

  “You see!” A voice came from the far table, edged with an Irish accent. “They want to lead you to riches in the frozen seas, but they can’t even settle a tab amongst themselves.”

  “Him again!” hissed the pirate.

  “Sail with me,” said McDaniel, “and you shall get your fair share, you have my word.”

  “A share you say!” a scream coming from the crowd.

  “Aye,” screamed another. “A share of pittance or a hardened sailor’s price?”

  All cheered.

  “Now you said last eve you was takin the captain home but his sister be here frantic this morn and said he never arrived!” screamed the barkeep.

  All eyes were on McDaniel and the voices silenced. “I brought him to the angel headed gates, friend,” he said gently. “Now I watched him make it inside but after that, what lot is that of mine? Now all of you know here that the old man was not like he used to be, aye?” he said, nodding and motioning toward sailors who nodded in agreement.

  “He probably at Wilson’s tavern near the skiffs at the old docks,” said a man.

  Gradually more and more drinkers became tomorrow’s treasure hunters. The edges of the tavern converged to the drama in the center and men both drunk and sober gathered around.

  All the men cheered, and McDaniel stepped into the circle of those men. He rose a single hand, silver bracelets coming into view when his sleeve slipped down toward his elbow. “Just consider,” he said. “Sail with me and you take fifteen ounces of silver and one tenth of the haul. If no haul be had, twenty-five ounces of silver. I need only ten of you and my boatswain,” said McDaniel pointing to the Inuk. “As much rum as you can drink, both to and fro.”

  There was an eerie silence over the tavern. The men eyed the pirate who was staring down McDaniel with a look of raw, silent rage. Even other unrelated parties seemed to look upon the scene, their obscured faces partially cast by flickering flames, their bulbs of varying sizes and shapes casting bizarre shadows on the walls.

  A few men walked toward McDaniel and he nodded in approval.

  “I am a sailor, not a talker,” said the pirate.

  “Yes indeed, you sail with Brits and Mexicans as well,” replied McDaniel.

  “You don’t say Mexican!” yelled Simon and the deckhand stood up. “These be true men of the sea, I know! See I know just by lookin at a man because I been at sea before! And you call him Francisco from here on out!”

  Francisco grasped Simon’s arm and pulled but the man stayed standing, almost quivering with anger.

  “And we be comin back with a silver haul!”

  McDaniel smiled and nodded and a soft chorus of laughter came about. “The small man sayeth,” he said, and the laughter rose again. “Sail with us and by summer you will be different men,” he shouted.

  “Sail with us and you won’t be counting your silver in ounces!” yelled the pirate.

  All the tavern roared, and cups rang and clanked in the air as cisterns blared and the hearth glowed orange like the sinking dusk just outdoors.

  “Thought we did not need any more sailors,” said Francisco into the pirate’s ear.

  The pirate shook his head. “No, but so long as I take men from his crew, I be satisfied.”

  “We shall see who emerges from the depths,” whispered McDaniel.

  The pirate grasped Francisco’s arm.

  “I know,” said Francisco.

  The Mexican looked around and then grasped Simon hard about the back of the neck so that the deckhand lurched forward and a gasp of air came from him.

  “You keep your useless mouth shut,” Francisco whispered hardly.

  Simon closed his eyes. “I am sorry,” he said.

  Francisco sighed and released his grip and placed a hand on the man’s arm. “I am sorry, forgive me, Simon. But you must leave room for silence when words would come to you lest they damn us all. These are killers and thieves.”

  “I always say too much, they used to call me-”

  “It is alright brother,” said Francisco. “Just move on.”

  The crowd thinned again to their respective tables and stools and the red-haired woman took center. At once tambourines started their songs and a one-legged man took up a violin.

  Francisco settled in and leaned back, ignoring a stew of braised beef and corn and instead focusing on the woman. She had a voice that sounded of icy air whipping over fresh snows at dawn. She looked at Francisco as she sang.

  “I spied three ships come sailing by

  On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;

  I spied three ships come sailing by

  On Christmas Day in the morning.”

  “It will be Christmas forever when we come sailing back in dame,” roared the hunter Herb.

  “Pirate,” said Francisco, not breaking eye contact with the woman. “What are they to address you as since you refuse to tell anyone else your name?”

  “Names denote weakness and giving my name to another denotes submission.”

  Francisco raised his eyebrows. “Forgive me, I had always thought a name was one of those simpler things in life, as in a god forsaken name. But there are many pirates and only one of you, hear me you horseshoe headed bastard?”

  “Call me captain.”

  XII

  Seagulls had just begun their pre-dawn calls in low numbers, the tides not yet drowning out their cries.

  A herd of men shuffled single file over the plank and boarded the merchant vessel which was much larger than The Roc. Its sails were adorned with three seagulls diving, and its hull glistened slickly in the still shining moon.

  The men laughed as they loaded provisions, with McDaniel standing steady ashore, hands on his hips.

  The Inuk watched from afar and in the reddening dawn he followed the obese night watchmen who lumbered down the docks wheezing loudly.

  From behind the Inuk grasped the man’s wrist and the watchmen turned around, mouth open in shock. The Inuk covered the man’s mouth before any scream was loosed and brought the man to the deck.

  The Inuk looked forward and back then with his free hand pinched the man’s nose shut. The watchman shook violently for a long minute, then finally stilled.

  The Inuk arrived by McDaniel’s side with lantern in hand. “Are they ready to set sail?” he asked.

  “Seems so,” said McDaniel.

  “I mixed the varnish with lard yesterday morn.,” said the Inuk.

  “Weigh anchor!” came a shout from the ship’s deck.

  “Good, pig fat burns hot,” said McDaniel. “Let’s cut the line.”

  McDaniel a
nd the Inuk calmly set the ship loose, the men looking down from the bulwarks with puzzled faces as they started to drift.

  “Do you abandon our quest already?” asked Captain O’Leary.

  Without words McDaniel grabbed the lantern out of the Inuk’s hand and hurled it toward the mainmast and at once the masts and sails were ablaze. Three shots rang out from the Inuk’s pepperbox pistol, killing men in free fall as they leapt aflame from the deck. McDaniel drew his own flintlock and fired it at the remaining crew, priming and loading the thing a second time while the Inuk let off three additional shots.

  “Get aboard!” said McDaniel. And the duo boarded an adjacent Skiff which looked to be the size of a huge grand canoe. “Wait, bring him!” he said.

  The Inuk deboarded and sprinted to a merchant’s stand and from underneath it wrenched the bloodied and bounded barkeep from the New Bedford Tavern; the same who had spoken up for the old captain who now lay dead in an alleyway.

  The Inuk led him like a horse and boarded again.

  Already McDaniel had sails unfurled and the anchor reeled up and already the ship started to rock. Bells rang from just inshore.

  “We are done in New Bedford,” said McDaniel. “The die cast, the message sent.”

  “Now let us pray for some wind,” he said as the Inuk silently adjusted the sails.

  A whistle started blaring.

  The doomed vessel drifted deeper toward the infinite blue, where it glowed more brilliantly than the rising sun. Its riggings crashed yet screams went on until the ship itself was nothing more than an orange raft floating above the blue.

  “Not much to say?” said McDaniel as he leered down at the barkeep.

  “That scoundrel pirate and his crew will find the silver and buy out fur and pine,” the barkeep whispered.

  For a moment McDaniel stood silent and then abruptly he grasped the man at the back of the neck and with one arm held his face just half submerged over the bulwarks as the ship picked up speed and the Inuk manned the helm. He lifted the man’s head. “Not much to say?” he said again.

  The Inuk glared on as McDaniel submerged the man’s head until his body stilled, then lifted, then submerged it again just to where his nose was under the water. And on it went.

  “Enough,” said the Inuk finally.

  “Enough is when I say,” said McDaniel. “Know and understand that now, else a lesson awaits you similar to the one this man is receiving at current.”

  “Mercy,” whispered the man finally.

  “Very well,” whispered McDaniel. And he grasped the man’s hair in a bundle and with his Bowie knife cut his throat and pushed him overboard. The man gurgled weakly as the ship picked up with the winds and he rolled atop the water like a broken buoy until he sank from view.

  XIII

  Another ship sailed in the dawn too. The Roc glistened redly from her namesake and that redness bounced from the eagle’s tarnished head.

  “What commotion inland?” asked the pirate captain as he pointed a bronzed arm towards the bell and whistle symphony at the ever-distancing docks of New Bedford.

  “Let us be glad we are not present for it,” answered Francisco.

  The captain pointed at Herb who sat against the bulkhead. “You keep that elephant gun at the ready until New Bedford is no longer a speck of earth,” he said.

  “I can do that, captain,” said the hunter rising to his feet. Herb primed and readied the weapon, dropping a heavy slug into the bore.

  “Hoist sail,” the captain ordered.

  “Aye captain, hoist sail,” Francisco repeated. “You heard him, you bastards! Old man aloft!”

  “Aye!” came a shout from the crew.

  Francisco paced the deck like a tiger as he sang.

  When first I came to Liverpool I went upon a spree.

  And thus men ascended the riggings as they had for thousands of years, under other suns. The old man Jerimiah already was scaled topside of the mainmast, already peering down at the men on deck who liked ants flurried about. Tubs of coiled line looked as fat snakes in slumber.

  Jerimiah loosed the lines from the gaskets and in doing so the mainsails loosed from the yards and the motion was echoed by the Inuit brother and sister from the fore and topsails too and soon The Roc was a full bloom of sails.

  “Set course,” muttered the captain.

  A chorus erupted as the men worked, all but the captain sang.

  My money alas I spent it fast, got drunk as drunk could be.

  And when me money was all gone, ‘twas then I looked for more.

  A man must be blind or out of his mind to go to see once more!

  The nightly watch commenced where time took on a different meaning. A pacing aft to stern did little to ease the burden of time, where one hour felt three. The Mexican had learned long ago to shun the night sky, for the moon was the clock on these seas. And always there was the sinking disappointment of the remaining time, that which was indifferent to his own fatigue. As if the moon were pointing down a mocking yellow finger at the man obliged to watch ready in the night while his brothers slumbered below him. Still Francisco grinned at the thought and took to his duty without complaint or grimace as he always had and always would, curse that it be.

  “Still thinking about the red-haired girl,” a voice said. Francisco turned suddenly and Isaac smiled, handing him a wooden mug. “I would bring tea if there were any,” said Isaac.

  “This will put my lights out,” said Francisco as he downed the cup. “Or maybe the captain will put my lights out if he smells my breath in the morn.”

  “Well the lights are already out. Do not tell the captain I fear him and I shan’t tell him you were inebriated at the helm.”

  They both leaned off the bow and Isaac poured his own cupful as the moon reflected distorted in the rippling black.

  “I can drink to that arrangement,” Francisco said and they touched cups and then drank.

  “How was it?” said Isaac.

  Francisco leaned away from the man. “I did not take you for one to pry?”

  “Well she sang to you, Francisco. And only you it would seem.”

  “She was enchanting as she was beautiful, in more ways than one. But that is all she did. I am a scoundrel at heart but in the least I will not betray my wife.”

  “You are no scoundrel,” said Isaac.

  “Were you roused from sleep? You will not need to take a watch, brother.”

  “I think the men will start to hate me if they find out I am excused from that burden.”

  “You nor the surgeon need to watch. The captain insists always on the middle watch.”

  “The worst that is, aye? Woken up after a half sleep, pace for two hours, sleep for little only to be woken again.”

  “Aye it is the worst. First or last watch the most preferred.”

  “Sleep until the captain’s raucous voice rouses revelry from above deck.”

  “You never get used to that voice.” Francisco finished his cup and pursed his mouth and tilted his head. “Never have I seen a man adjust from sleep to waking as so,” he said hoarsely. “As if he just resumes his task from the prior day.”

  “I had thought Francisco that a captain typically did not take a night watch.”

  “By custom,” said the Mexican. “Most do anyway, Captain O’Leary used to take one night per week while all others took shift six nights, especially the landsmen and foremast hands, obviously. But on that night he would stay awake through and thus relieve not only the crews’ fatigue but also their wrath, which builds constantly at sea even on the most fruitful voyages. A good captain knows that his station in life is never permanent, this is true at sea more than anywhere else on this earth.”

  “Will we feel a different clime tomorrow?”

  Francisco laughed. “The sea is not the railway, Isaac.”

  “I suppose not.” The writer unfolded his notebook and held it sideways and tilted it this way and that to catch an angled moon ray. He scribbled a moo
n and a sea looking like it was drawn by a child in ink.

  “You are ridiculous,” said Francisco. “You need not record everything, Isaac.”

  “Yet I do! Else it will be lost until time immemorial.”

  A silence passed. “As if time were infinite,” said Francisco.

  “It is not,” said the writer boldly.

  “The sea can put me at ease yet flay my nerves at once, nothing else can do that. But truth still quivers under the waters, or maybe past that darkness.”

  Isaac looked star ward and it was like an ebony pin cushion from which white blinking needles pushed through. “You think other seamen sail now? On seas in other worlds?”

  “I do not know. Men may never know that. Look at all those other worlds, there,” the Mexican said, pointing to the white splash above. “To think we may ever see them is preposterous.”

  “I am sure those seamen who first took sail thought the very same on some nightly coast before they became the first men to traverse the seas.”

  “A long time ago brother. I think men know the sea more than they know themselves, yet still know nothing about it. Preposterous to cross the thing, and they were right.”

  “What more is life than a collection or preposterous decisions? A shaking vessel barely lingering above tumultuous waters, with god knows what underneath. That’s what life is, is it not?”

  “I do not know Isaac. I am a Mexican whaler with a sickly wife and a burden to bear, from which there be no relief, save maybe riches. What else to life is there but riches? Alas, one small tenet that me and the captain agree on.”

  “I would venture to say there be much more. Is there not purpose? Whatever yours may be? That we oft have to forge for ourselves, Francisco.”

  “What of love?” quipped the Mexican.

  “Of a woman? Everybody finds that, someday or another. Not everyman finds riches despite their best efforts.”

  “Everyman, aye? Confident that you will too?”