Sea of Two Suns

by Nicholas McAuliff

  Francisco offered a hand and Isaac put his up in refusal and braced himself on the bulkhead before steadying. He went above deck and Francisco listened as his footsteps gradually blended with the lapping of the nightly waves.

  XX

  “All hands!” commanded the captain. Already he was at the helm. The hourglass lay motionless, its sand spilled. “Prepare the whaleboat!” he screamed.

  Francisco scanned the island with the monocular, seeing only birds commencing their eternal routine.

  “Where are they?” asked the captain.

  “I don’t see them,” replied Francisco. “The whaleboat is still ashore.”

  “Francisco, old man, Herb,” said the pirate, “With me.”

  “Aye captain,” came a chorus of three men.

  “I would like to come and help the search,” said Isaac.

  The captain nodded.

  “Aye captain!” shouted Julius again.

  “You stay here brother, with Simon,” the captain said. “Keep that scrimshaw going!” he said gleefully.

  Upon the shore the men beached the whaleboat.

  Beside was the whaleboat of Arnaaluk and Nukilik, its midsection crushed inward.

  “What is this?” snarled the captain. And his focus went down toward the broken whaleboat’s long oars, which were severed cleanly in two. The captain handled a broken oar and part of it splintered further as he did so.

  “Something is wrong here,” said the writer.

  The captain stared at Isaac for a long space.

  “To snap the oars as such,” Isaac said, squatting down at the whaleboat.

  “They meant to desert,” said Herb. “Of course Arnaaluk was saturated with joy.”

  “They’ll hang from the yardarm,” screamed the captain toward the sky. “Or I’ll put a ball in them myself if they are still here. To the top!”

  Already the captain was pacing up shore ahead of the men. “Never trust a fucking Eskimo,” he bellowed.

  “Perhaps last evening we should have rescued them,” said Francisco.

  Above the shoreline was a circular cliff face with just enough room for a human foot to step. Birds cried as they passed, stones slipped back to the sand. The Roc now was below them, and all above were spiky slopes and abandoned wilted nests from some flying creatures no longer roosted nor living.

  “Fire here,” said Jerimiah.

  And ahead a pile of charred kindling was, stones no longer glowing red. Two white furs were sprawled out, a spare jib sail was pulled taut betwixt two harpoons staked into the ground. The wind ruffled it as it beat toward the camp.

  “What in God’s name?” said Isaac.

  “Could they have planned this?” asked Francisco. “Chief Panuk could have sent canoes from Baffin Island, easily. In the night.”

  “No,” said the captain. “Nukilik said they won’t come here, not unless to bury the dead, and a shaman at that. Thus was their uncle,” he said, pointing toward the dunes just ahead. “The burial ground,” he said.

  The dunes were broken and windswept, but the highest was surrounded by cairns of stone and white shells, oval and fan shaped with marbled patterns and amber streaks in their whiteness. In a wide circle they surrounded flat ground, but atop those ground several pearls reflected in the sunlight.

  “No,” said Francisco eyeing the captain, who squatted down among the dead.

  “Why the fuck not?” barked the captain. His eyes shot from pearl to pearl which shined like burning stars condemned to the dirt.

  “This is a holy site,” replied Francisco.

  Abrupt laughter from the hunter. “They were here,” said he. He squatted amongst the pearly sward, inspecting vague prints which remained invisible to the other men. “Here and then yonder, down the toward the dunes,” he said.

  “Sword…a sword!” shouted Jerimiah.

  And there was an iron blade sticking upward from the earth; red with rust and crippled with age. But its hilt was still intact, another type of metal that branched out in the shape of a cross at its head.

  “An iron blade,” said Isaac. “Not from today, not from yesterday.”

  “Are you a master at arms?” grunted Jerimiah.

  The pirate wrenched the blade from the sandy ground and flakes of rust fell from it as he did so. He held out the blade, as if inspecting its temperament after a fresh forge.

  Isaac observed the captain, holding the blade out flat and broadside as it shined under the sun despite its age.

  The captain held the sword and inspected it tersely; his narrowed eyes danced about every curve, gleam and indent in the blade which still caught glints of the sun though broken and wilted.

  And to Isaac’s eyes the man had done so dozens of times before.

  The pirate sheathed the blade between his belt and trousers.

  Past the burial ground and down the other side the shore was filled with jagged stones. Waves lapped gently at those shores, but no petrels flew here, and indeed their cries seemed muffled coming from across the high dunes and bluffs that now separated them from the men.

  “Anything here?” asked Francisco, eyeing the hunter who squatted down and brushed his hands over the ground.

  “Here,” said Herb, close enough to the sea as to be touching the lapping waves. “They stood here, then-”

  “What?” asked the captain.

  “There ain’t no other tracks, he said.”

  “Bah!” sneered the captain. “There must be more tracks. Not sure that trapping was your lot in life, Herb.”

  “Gentlemen,” exclaimed the old man Jerimiah.

  On the beach and partially submerged sat what looked like a white blanket bogged into the water. Mangled yellow claws were exposed with the sinking tide, and only tufts of white hair with the high rise. The animal was torn, its bones broken and flattened.

  “A snow bear,” said the captain. He squatted down and inspected the thing, his cuff to his nose. “Every bone is broken,” he said.

  On the beach the men pulled the bear to a clearer view.

  “Ain’t no other bear done this,” the hunter said. “The skull,” he said. “It’s crushed. And it been dead for a fortnight I would guess, no more than that.”

  “Pulverized,” said Francisco. The animals head was crushed explosively. Its eyes bulged, white as the thing’s formerly regal fur.

  “Sharks, captain?” asked the writer.

  The captain grunted and shook his head. He looked both ahead and behind, to where the sand stopped against a sheer cliff face of knife-like rocks.

  And the men all steered their eyes toward the yellowed crags, where hundreds of petrels and sandpipers ceased their cries seemingly at once.

  “The birds,” said Isaac.

  “Why do they stop?” asked Francisco.

  “Perhaps to roost,” said Isaac.

  “Herb,” ordered the captain. “Walk you the shoreline and see what you see,” he said.

  The hunter squatted and duck-walked the shoreline, inspecting seemingly every dent or crevice upon the soft sand. To where the island curved south, back towards the ship, then turned and methodically duck-walked back, toward the men.

  “Nothing,” he screamed.

  “What the fuck do you mean nothing!” yelled the pirate.

  “They did not take to the ocean,” said Isaac.

  “There!” said the hunter. All heads turned toward the hunter, who stood where the island curved toward the dunes. He lifted a broken harpoon, only the bottom half of the wooden shaft while the top half and point were gone.

  “Nukilik’s harpoon!” exclaimed Isaac.

  Affixed to the broken shaft a ripped mane of silken black hair blew in the wind. It was partially ripped from the scalp.

  Isaac ran and vomited into the tide.

  “Jerimiah,” the captain shouted.

  “We failed to find the Northwest passage. My fellow shipmates were the most danger to me. Aye. Sharks, captain. Always sharks. But never did we see a snow bear to
rn asunder. Never did our own die by some hand other than that of our own.”

  “It was the Inuit from the Baffin Island,” blurted Herb. Chief Panuk’s brother. They came here and found them and killed them and left this as a sign. They will be after us.”

  “In fucking canoes!” yelled the captain.

  Francisco helped the writer to his feet and the fellows trotted over the sand, the hunter between them with water and sand dripping from his breeches at the knees.

  Back to the rockface and around the cliff they circled, and back to the whaleboat then finally in silence back to The Roc which floated serenely above the waters.

  Lukas’s bloated face looked down unto the men in their whaleboat where soon it raised and only heard was the creaking of the davit and burning of rope over the gunwale.

  On deck the men gathered in silence.

  “You allowed them leave and sent them to their death!” screamed Isaac.

  The captain eyed the writer while wiping sand from his breeches.

  “Light the galley fire!” commanded Francisco.

  “I gave no command to tread on this rock,” said the captain softly.

  Isaac ran toward the captain who stood still but Francisco had his arms about the writer.

  “Hoy!” the Mexican shouted and held his friend tight. “Hoy!”

  “Francisco, set a course North by Northwest,” said the captain, ignoring the writer’s outburst.

  “Aye, captain,” Francisco responded. He released Isaac with a scowl and pushed the writer hard. “North by Northwest,” he snapped. “Make sail.”

  A flurry of voices echoed the commands, and the main and topsails suddenly were unfurled and waving wildly in the sharpening winds.

  The surgeon looked around, bewildered. “Where are Nukilik and Arnaaluk, sir?”

  “They are dead!”

  And into the dusk the men sailed northwest. The tiny whaleboat forever more sat broken and stowed upon the stony shore of the island, from which the birds resumed their chorus and seemed to chase the disembarking Roc. From the beach the mane of black hair marred by crimson still waved in the icy wind, like a banner of death under the reddening sky.

  XXI

  Men scaled the riggings like ants toward the crow’s nest, commencing watch. The gales of the afternoon had ceased, and the vessel ebbed and flowed on the soft sea as the sky tinted a dark blue hue.

  From the bow two leaned onto the gunwale and peered northward.

  Miska whined and barked interchangeably, trotting above and below deck, standing on his hind legs and looking out to sea.

  The captain stormed above deck. “Here’s what we are to do,” he yelled, the dog still barking.

  “We are going to shoot that dog, then eat that dog,” and before he finished speaking he grasped Herb’s elephant gun leaning against the bulkhead.

  “Rounds ain’t easy to come by!” said the hunter from the stern.

  “Captain!” shouted Francisco.

  Miska came above deck again and repeated the cycle. He barked at the captain as the pirate loaded the black powder.

  “Go on!” yelled the captain. “While you still have a head!”

  “That dog may be our best defense against any who try to do to us what they did to Nukilik and Arnaaluk,” said Francisco.

  “Don’t give a fuck,” said the captain, taking aim.

  “You are a superstitious man are you not?” said Jerimiah. “The brother and sister will haunt you should their spirits see what transpires now,” he said. “And they left that dog on board because they trusted you. Now where I come from, its bad luck to kill a dog at sea.”

  “You just made that up,” replied the captain as he lowered the elephant gun. “Isaac,” he said. “You are good with soft words and soft hands and anything easy in this life. Hush that animal or I’ll toss it overboard.”

  “Aye captain,” said the writer. He sat on the deck and patted the animal’s shanks with long strokes back and forth and the animal panted and gazed overboard, trying again to jump but held fast by the writer. “Nay, nay!” snapped Isaac.

  “The air will be frigid soon,” said Francisco as the captain descended below deck. The Mexican patted the dog too.

  “I had thought this was frigid,” replied Isaac. The writer fashioned a collar from a length of hemp and looped it around the beast’s neck.

  The men stood in silence for a space as Isaac shivered. The sounds of the nightly winds and Miska’s whining and barking seemed to add to the cold.

  Francisco draped a fur over the writer in one motion.

  “Thank you,” said Isaac.

  “You two have plans for tonight?” inquired Herb. “Let us know, we’ll stay out of the forecastle.” A quick grumble of laughter rose and fell from the crew.

  “Never have I been this far out, not once,” said Isaac.

  “Simon!” shouted Jerimiah. “Coil the lines, if you please.” The old man pointed toward the half-emptied tubs, yards of rope uncoiled and sprawled about the deck.

  “Should Julius not clean up his mess?” countered Simon.

  “No. You should, as I ordered,” said Jerimiah. “Dark will be soon, and before supper you’ll do as I say.”

  Isaac eyed the deckhand who sulked and did as he was told. “Money to be made on merchant vessels, Francisco,” said the writer. “Good money.”

  “Good money if you know the right people. A Mexican in New York does not know the right people. I have better chance as a whaleman.”

  “How did that go for you?”

  “For mi gloria, went well I guess.”

  “I do not take your meaning,” said Isaac.

  Francisco leaned onto the helm. “The harpoon and lance always came well to me,” he said. “But Nantucket boys, and them boys from Missouri who figured they’d try their hand at the lance didn’t take well to a Mexican first mate.”

  “No, I imagine they would not.”

  “Jealousy has been the undoing of many lesser men, amidst the rise of greater men.”

  Isaac turned and looked toward the stern, where the hunter and Julius sat cross legged on the deck. They etched scrimshaw together onto a large walrus tusk, now faded and cracked amber. As two children coloring, they squatted over the tusk and focused clear eyed on the markings and scribblings that would become a prize back ashore.

  “Have you ever thought to give up the sea?” asked Isaac.

  “Men don’t give up the sea,” replied Francisco. “The sea won’t permit it. You would know, had you taken the life of a sailor. Perhaps you will know yet, when you have your sea legs about you,” said the Mexican as he pointed toward Isaac’s feet.

  “Sea legs,” Julius shouted, not looking away from his scrimshaw.

  Francisco ran towards the stunted man and he rose and they play-boxed, Francisco batting soft fists toward his stomach. Julius laughed as a child would and swatted the hands away. “Perhaps we won’t need the silver Julius!” exclaimed the Mexican. “Keep up the good work and that Scrimshaw may buy us all out!”

  “I will!” yelled Julius.

  “Below deck!” came a shout from the captain. The crew did as they were bid save for Francisco and Isaac. The night’s dark curtain fell in full.

  “I suppose,” said Isaac continuing as Francisco neared. “I did not choose to write. Did not want it. Aye. My father and his father come from stonecutters. Of Milan, where my father remembered fading images of red running vineyards and a sun that never set. They came over these same waters. And they prospered in New York City. Their hands were worn and cracked, mine were built for the pen.”

  “We don’t choose these things my friend,” said Francisco.

  “No we do not,” concurred Isaac.

  “Your father now?”

  “Dead,” said Isaac.

  “You do not seem affected, though you never do.”

  “Fathers are oft cruel in shaping their legacies. Still he was my father.”

  “What were your scribing before
your obsession with Fur and Pine and the silver haul?”

  “Of captains here and gone. Of whalers given up and moving westward like lost ghosts to try their hand at the yet unsettled desert past the Mississippi.”

  “Did you know Captain Dax?” asked Francisco abruptly.

  “What?”

  “Dax. Many wrote of him after he went crazy in New York so I thought you may have been among his biographers.”

  “Dax! I knew of a captain Dax, out of Halifax before retiring to the city,” said Isaac.

  “Yes yes, captain Dax.”

  “The damned Telegram got that story. Never thought Halifax to be a whaling port.”

  “Aye,” said Francisco. “Whaling moved Northward to push against the French expansion of Fur and Pine. Since you Americans could not best the Limeys nor the French.”

  “Aye,” said the writer. “They found him up to his ankles in the powder room, they say. Where he would never leave. The home had running water, have you seen that? The Grand Terrace on Upper East Side has plumbing.”

  “I have,” said Francisco. “Incredible. Like the sea in the home.”

  “They say the two faucets ran endlessly; they say he sat and chewed hardtack, when his icebox and pantries were filled with provisions that the rich would envy. They say the skin slipped from his feet as they pulled him out of his own wet prison. After that he was committed to Marque Asylum in the upstate. Certainly far from the sea. Unless you consider the seas of firs and dogwoods. Man spent twenty-two years at sea. Twenty-two years!”

  “Aye,” said Francisco. “Men usually don’t leave the sea. Not after that long.”

  “Right,” said the writer. “When we met, he was dressed in old trousers and his bicorne cap was covered in slime. Like he never left the sea. Then I saw the man pay for our meal with silver rounds. Silver rounds, Francisco, for two meals. I think he thought them shillings. Yet he rambled when he spoke. Of the sea, of them bastards out New Haven, of the French and of the Right Whales off San Francisco. I had to discern meaning from those ramblings.”

  “Men make a fortune, the time passes faster than you would think. Men make a fortune, then buy their estates. Then they long for the sea forevermore. Most die in misery.”