Deadly Shoals

by Joan Druett

  It was going to take far too long, Wiki thought nervously, with another quick backward look at the schooner. At last the Osprey was matching her speed, so that the ninety-yard gap between the two vessels wasn’t diminishing. However, she was well in range of those fiendishly efficient swivel guns, which let off another double fusillade at that very moment. A cry, and a man tumbled out of the lee shrouds. Miraculously, he landed safely on hands and feet, but blood was running down one arm. A snapped order from Captain Coffin, and the wounded man was hurried down the companionway by a shipmate.

  At last the cannon was set for loading. The carpenter, who also acted as gun captain, cried orders in rapid succession. The cartridge, a flannel bag filled with powder, was rammed down the muzzle, then the nine-pound iron ball, followed by a wad.

  “Man side-tackle falls, run out!”

  With a grumble the snout of the cannon was shoved through the space in the stern quarter rail. The carpenter crouched over the sights, and barked a stream of orders to his crew, who were grunting and laboring with crowbars and handspikes. At last he was satisfied. Back he stood, shouting, “Fire!”

  A huge bang, and the afterdeck was shrouded in stinging smoke. Everyone peered through it to see where the shot had fallen, but it was impossible to tell. They had overshot, Wiki thought. The schooner sailed on in hot chase, with no sign of damage, closing the gap by another ten yards, so that he could clearly see the two swivel guns firing in her bows. More shot whistled through the rigging, but without hitting a single rope or sheet of canvas. Obviously, the gunners hadn’t allowed for the narrowing distance, and had aimed too high, but it was an unnervingly close escape.

  Managing by a huge effort of will to ignore what was happening elsewhere, the carpenter ordered the gun readied for loading again. Wiki was still wet through from his plunge in the sea, and was shaking with both cold and excitement, so that his teeth chattered as he said to him, “D-dismantling sh-shot.”

  The carpenter stood straight, turned, and stared at him as if something had crawled out of a knothole in the deck. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Coffin?”

  “Dismantling shot,” Wiki said more clearly. “Like the b-bolas. Three chains—each about th-three feet long—j-joined together at a common center, and then rolled into a b-ball.”

  “But what use is that?” the carpenter cried.

  “The three chains spread out when they are fired. If you aim high enough, they will wrap around masts and rigging and wrench them to pieces.”

  “You want me to aim at the bloody rigging?” the carpenter exclaimed in utter disbelief, and then repeated himself in more seemly fashion, having noticed that Captain Coffin was listening. “My personal ambition, Mr. Coffin,” he said, “is to hole her ’twixt wind and water, and send her to the bottom afore she do the same to us.”

  “But it would be nice if Captain Stackpole were able to repair her after he g-gets her b-back,” Wiki argued, still shivering. “And he can’t do that if she is lying on the b-bottom with large holes in her hull.”

  “The schooner belongs to Cap’n Stackpole?” the carpenter exclaimed.

  “Aye, sir,” said Wiki, watching the leading edge of the topgallant sail and adjusting the helm.

  “He’s right!” Captain Coffin cried, all animation. “Mr. Seward—a party to assemble dismantling shot, if you please!”

  The mate arrived, green eyes slitted as he looked Wiki up and down. “You’re wet through, Mr. Coffin,” he growled. “What do you want to do—catch your death of cold? Get below and change at once!”

  “Aye, sir,” said Wiki, wondering why the whole world didn’t immediately discern that Mr. Seward was a woman, and obediently handed over the wheel. When he arrived below, the steward was bandaging the hurt man’s arm, and judging by the stream of oaths from the victim, the seaman was going to survive to tell the tale. The invective halted a moment as another fusillade tore through rope, canvas, and air abovedecks, but then resumed as vigorously as before.

  Wiki’s fingers were so numb that it seemed to take forever to drag off his wet, clinging clothes, and scramble into clean, dry ones. When he finally made it to deck, a quick backward look saw the schooner in the same place. To his mystification, two apprentices were filling grenade shells with flour, each one finished off with a fuzee.

  More comprehensibly, three more cadets were cutting chain into three-foot lengths, while a fourth shackled them together in groups of three. The first of these, rolled into a ball, was handed to the carpenter, who was dancing with impatience, and down the throat of the gun it went, to join the cartridge of gunpowder. So swiftly did he aim, Wiki shied involuntarily when the gun went off, as he hadn’t heard the command to fire. Then, as the chains spread out and whirled through the air, he jumped with fright again, because the ghastly device emitted a sound he’d never heard before, like the screaming of the condemned in the lowest level of hell.

  Everyone about the decks looked equally stunned at the sheer violence of the noise. Even more incredibly, it wailed its way through the rigging of the schooner without effect. The Grim Reaper didn’t even shy in fright, instead veering to take advantage of a gust from the north which brought her even closer.

  Seventy yards, then fifty. To Wiki’s surprise, he saw a man on the schooner jump onto the weather bow, brace himself, and then swing an arm as if throwing a ball. He glimpsed the flying missile, and then a grenade thumped onto the deck of the brigantine, and bounced. The boatswain, who was closest, frantically kicked, and the grenade jumped over the lee rail, fizzing as it went.

  “Dear God!” cried Captain Coffin. If the grenade had burst, the brigantine would have been quickly reduced to a mute patch of charred wreckage—and it was obvious that the men on the schooner would have made sure that none of the Osprey men who survived the explosion would still be alive to tell the tale.

  Another grenade was hurled, then another. Both fell harmlessly into the water, but it was horribly evident that many more were on the way. Captain Coffin roared, “Give me the man with the strongest arm! Someone to put grenades of our own on board that bastard!”

  Wiki’s teeth had stopped chattering, but he was numb with amazement. They were going to retaliate with grenades armed with flour? He couldn’t believe it. Nevertheless, he managed to shout at his father, “The whalemen! Harpooners!”

  Miraculously, Captain Stackpole had heard him—and understood, too. He snapped out two names, and two brawny-shouldered whalemen came running to the poop. Each was handed a flour grenade with the fuzee lit and burning steadily. Each took up the famous harpooner stance, one foot braced behind, the forward leg bent so the knee was tucked firmly against the bulwarks beneath the taffrail. Each brought his grenade-loaded arm back.

  “Fire!” cried the carpenter, intoxicated with battle. Both men swung with the power of experienced harpooners, and smoothly released. Wiki distinctly saw the two grenades fly over the space between the two ships, and land on the schooner’s deck.

  There was a double thump as the two grenades blew up simultaneously—and the Grim Reaper was cloaked in a billowing white cloud, which sparked weirdly as individual particles of flour caught fire and exploded. Blinded and startled, the schooner fell off the wind, and sagged away in their wake.

  “Now for dismantling shot!” cried Captain Coffin. The two topmasts of the Grim Reaper, sticking up out of the great white pastrylike puff, made a perfect target. The gun crew worked like demons, and another devil’s invention howled over the widening gap, while Wiki darted up the mast of the brigantine for a better view.

  The aim was a little low, but the result was just as effective. Wiki heard the bang as the spring stay was cut, and then a distant clatter as the mainmast collapsed—and the Grim Reaper turned broadside to the gale.

  Within moments, impelled by the twin forces of wind and tide on her hull, she was sagging directly for the deadly shoals and certain doom, while Captain Stackpole’s roars of pain and fury at the imminent loss of his property echoed from the
foredeck of the Osprey. The cloud of flour was thinning, and Wiki could glimpse figures on her deck frantically clearing away the raffle of ropes and spars to try to straighten her up.

  Then, from his vantage point aloft, he saw a figure struggle out onto the bowsprit of the schooner. A moment later, a scrap of canvas began to wriggle up a stay that was still, miraculously, secured to what was left of her foremast. He could hear puzzled comments from the decks of the Osprey, and then abruptly realized what was happening.

  At the same moment, Captain Stackpole yelled, “She’s trying to set a sail to pay her head off!”

  It was magnificent seamanship, and Wiki felt a pang that the man behind the gallant action should be nothing better than a murdering pirate. As the thin triangle of canvas blew taut the Grim Reaper straightened up, and it became obvious that whoever was in charge was steering head-on to the beach. The breakers pounded high but, as Wiki knew well, the bottom there was free of rocks. Then the schooner was in the surf, surrounded by spray and flying spume—and the Grim Reaper grounded with a crash.

  The remnants of her masts jumped out of her with the jolt, but the bowsprit remained in place, sticking out over the sand. Eight figures scrambled out onto it, and ran in single file to safety. Wiki watched them jump down to the beach, dash to the cliff, and begin to climb. High above, the flagstaff poked a finger at the pale sky—and by the flagpole were two horsemen, their ponchos lifting and falling in the wind. Onward the eight men climbed, onward, while the riders watched and waited, unmoving. Wiki narrowed his eyes, indefinably reminded of the sketch Titian Peale had made of the gauchos roping the buck, then realized that it was because the far-off horsemen were carrying rifles.

  At last the climbers had reached the top of the cliff—and the nearer horseman raised his weapon and aimed. His movements were careful and precise as he selected his target. Wiki thought he heard a shot, though perhaps he imagined it, because of the distance. One of the escaping figures threw up his arms, and fell, tumbling down the precipice. The other seven men paused, then ran more frantically than ever. Seconds later they had disappeared, leaving their fallen comrade at the bottom of the cliff.

  * * *

  With the consummate skill of experienced whalemen, Stackpole’s boat’s crew put their boat down on the water while the Osprey was still under way. Scrambling down to deck at a headlong pace, Wiki had to take a running jump to get into the boat before they had pulled out of range. Captain Stackpole grinned tightly as Wiki landed in the stern sheets, and then barked out an order. The crew hauled mightily at their oars, and the boat scudded swiftly through the water.

  The grounded schooner made an easy landmark, standing upright in the surf, dismasted but otherwise apparently entire. Wiki saw Captain Stackpole’s head turn as he scrutinized the state of his property, but he said nothing, and the whaleboat surged on for the beach. With a long crunch of gravel, the boat grounded, sending a wash up the sand that surged and foamed almost as far as the fallen man.

  Four oarsmen leaped out and held the whaleboat still, while Wiki and Stackpole jumped out into the surf. Looking up, Wiki caught another glimpse of the two horsemen at the edge of the precipice, still watching. Then he ran toward the sprawled body at the foot of the cliff.

  The man was lying partly on his stomach and partly on one side, his head resting in the crook of an upturned arm. His bloodied shirt had torn, exposing part of his smooth back, and the pistol stuck in his belt. Wiki turned the body fully over onto its back. It flopped awkwardly, because of the jumble of broken bones inside the skin. The shielding arm fell away from the unmarked face just as the whaling master arrived.

  Stackpole cried, “That’s Caleb Adams!”

  Wiki straightened, brushing dirt off his palms as he looked down at the body of the man he had known as Benjamin Harden. Adams’s eyes were shut, and there was sand in his reddish beard and the creases of his face. The front of his shirt was scarlet with blood that leaked from a shot hole in the upper left side of his chest, but Wiki reckoned it was the fall that had killed him.

  He looked at Stackpole and said dryly, “No mistaken identity this time?”

  “I’d know him anywhere, even with those whiskers.” Captain Stackpole’s tone held utter certainty. Then he blinked. “So the other body—the body buried at the foot of the Gualichú tree…?”

  “Harden’s,” said Wiki. When he turned to look at the Osprey, the brigantine was dowsing her sails and dropping anchor. His father had lowered a boat, which was pulling for the schooner.

  He looked back at Stackpole. “If we had taken him out of the grave, we would have seen the scars on his back from that flogging. Otherwise, it was natural to identify the remains as Adams’s corpse, just the way Adams planned when he buried Harden that way. The body was wearing the right clothes, and the right medal hung round the neck. The skull was picked clean, so the face was gone.”

  “Dear God,” said Stackpole, and shook his head in rueful disgust.

  “Adams probably also planned on whoever blundered over the skull being too spooked to heave the corpse right out of the grave,” Wiki reassured him.

  But Stackpole wasn’t even listening. Instead he said, as if to himself, “So Caleb Adams murdered Harden, not the other way around.”

  “And stole his Protection Paper,” Wiki agreed.

  The whaling master abruptly paid attention. “So he could impersonate him?”

  “Aye.” Wiki remembered how Adams had furtively checked the riverbank before he had accosted Ringgold; he remembered the confident flourish with which Harden’s Protection Paper had been produced. His audacity had been astounding, but the masquerade had worked.

  “Dear God,” said Stackpole again. Then he said to Wiki in an accusing kind of voice, “You’re not even a bit surprised that this is Adams.”

  Wiki shook his head. “It just didn’t make sense that a revolutionary would recruit sealers for the rebel cause,” he said. “The instant I realized that Adams was a professional sealer, it was easy to work out what really happened.”

  Stackpole’s face wrinkled in the shadow of his hat while he thought this over. Then he shifted from boot to boot, and said, “So it was Adams who was hiding in the surgery while you and I was talking?”

  Wiki shrugged. “It was his store,” he pointed out. The trader had slunk back to home territory like a dog to its den. “He probably moved in there right after the schooner was safely hidden.”

  The whaling master squinted at him. “The two Gomes brothers would’ve had to help him to hide the schooner.”

  “There’s no reason why they wouldn’t,” Wiki said. “While they could have guessed that he was stealing the schooner, they didn’t know that he was a murderer, as well as a thief—and were used to obeying him, anyway. Their father had worked for him for at least two years, remember. Remember Adams’s temper? He probably had them all intimidated.”

  “So that’s why the clerk kept quiet about his boss hiding in the surgery,” Stackpole guessed, and added grimly, “And got knifed for his trouble.”

  They both turned as Captain Coffin’s boat arrived in the surf. He’d left men on the wreck, Wiki saw, because there were still several figures clambering all over it. His father was smiling as he trudged toward them, and then his face suddenly went stiff with alarm, and he shouted, “Look out!”

  Wiki whirled. Adams’s eyes were open. Wiki saw the pistol aimed in one bloodied hand, and jumped for it. The pistol went off an instant after his bare foot slammed down on the upraised wrist, clamping it to the sand. The explosion was deafening, followed by a loud whine and the slam of a ricochet. When Wiki kicked the pistol away the clunk as it hit rock seemed faint by comparison.

  Stackpole cried, “My God, he’s still alive!”

  Not for long, Wiki thought. Adams was staring at him with such ferocity that the nape of his neck crawled, but there was agony in the storekeeper’s face as well, and his eyes were beginning to glaze.

  Stackpole didn’t seem to no
tice that death was so close. Instead, he shouted furiously at Adams, “Why did you steal the Grim Reaper from me? All you needed was to ask for a goddamn berth—I would’ve made you sealing master!”

  Adams didn’t speak. Instead he turned his head and spat. It obviously hurt, and the phlegm was thick with blood, but the contempt was unmistakable.

  The whaling master took an abrupt step backward, looking shaken. He said to Wiki, “He stole my schooner, he cheated me—yet I dealt with him, I trusted him! And he killed the man he’d hired as sailing master! Why would he do that?”

  Wiki was silent a moment, thinking that the more interesting question was why Harden had agreed to ship as sailing master in the first place. Was it because he had plans for the moment when the schooner, with the storekeeper on board, disappeared upriver?

  He said to his father, “What’s the schooner’s condition like?”

  Captain Coffin’s expression became surprised at the unexpected question, but he said matter-of-factly, “She’ll float off with the next high tide.”

  Stackpole cried, “She’s undamaged?”

  “Tight as a bottle, and floats like one, too,” Captain Coffin assured him. “All she needs is new masts and rerigging. She didn’t ground hard, because she’s not heavy enough—there’s hardly anything inside her, apart from ballast and salt.”

  Wiki nodded. Not only did he remember the way the Grim Reaper had yawed every time the swivels had fired, but this was what he had expected.

  “Not much in the way of provisions?” he checked.

  “Hardly anything at all,” replied his father.

  Wiki looked down at Adams. “You got back to the store to find that Harden had stolen all your provisions,” he stated. “He’d brought in a party with plenty of horses, and they had packed out your entire stock, and carried it to the caves.”

  “For his goddamned revolution!”

  They all flinched at the tortured fury in Adams’s unexpected shout. His broken body spasmed with remembered rage. He was glaring at Wiki, apparently unaware of the thick gout of blood that bubbled out of his mouth.