A Watery Grave

by Joan Druett

  The burly officer said, “Didn’t Forsythe inform you that dueling is the province of gentlemen and not for the likes of Indians and kernackers?”

  “I simply assumed he was the kind of southern gentleman I would never have believed existed,” Wiki said coldly. “A man with neither courage nor honor.”

  The sheriff, as unmoved as ever, snorted with derisive amusement. “Wa-al, by rights,” he said, “I’m supposed to discourage that kind of sport, but you and Lieutenant Forsythe are taking yourselves and your little disagreement off into the wild blue yonder, so I reckon it’s safe to return your property.” And he handed over Wiki’s confiscated pistols, going on to say curiously, “What’s a man like you doing on an exploring expedition, anyways?”

  “I’m Captain Rochester’s linguister,” said Wiki, glancing at George.

  “You’re translating for a windbag?” The sheriff let out a guffaw—the fact that Rochester was bridling with affront and insult completely passing him by—and said, “Wa-al, son, I wish you a whole bundle of luck. What languages do you speak?”

  “American English, Maori, Samoan, Tongan, Hawaiian, Rotuman…”

  “And Greek and Hottentot, too, no doubt,” interrupted the sheriff, with unabated amusement. “Wa’al, I congratulate you on your American English—you speak it better than most Yankees of my acquaintance. How do you do it?”

  “It’s a knack,” said Wiki dryly, and at last the sheriff allowed them to get into the waiting boat.

  As the boat’s crew took up their oars, it occurred to George that the sheriff had neglected to ask something crucial; but before he could frame a question, Wiki handed him the two pistols and then put up his hand, signaling to the oarsmen to hold still while he slipped over the side into the river to clean off sweat and dust. The boat’s crew stared, openmouthed at such odd behavior, and then looked at their captain for some kind of explanation.

  Meeting their inquiring eyes, George said bracingly, “Don’t worry yourselves, lads. He swims better than your average fish.”

  The men glanced at each other and then studiously away, emanating a definite disapproval of this eccentric behavior, but George was still wearing a reminiscent grin, musing that he could have added that Wiki could hunt like a woodsman, ride like a gaucho, and manage a canoe like an Indian, too. He knew it personally because they had been staunch comrades from the day they had collided in the college portal, and since then they had shared amazing adventures.

  George had been packed off to the college in disgrace, with no idea that there he would find a lifetime comrade. After the death of his father, he had been sent to live with his grandparents, who had put him into training for the family legal firm. A few months of this deadly dull pursuit had been enough—George had run away to sea, to be captured on the brink of sailing by his grandfather, who had packed him off to the college instead. The school being a training ground for missionaries, the old man’s intention had been to make it possible for the lad to travel to all the exotic places he craved to experience but under a mantle of respectability—a lost cause if there ever was one. George was as determined as ever to head off to sea on the first ship that would take him, but as a dashing jack-tar, never as a stuffy man of the cloth.

  Wiki, on the other hand, had been raised in a native village in the far-off southern Pacific, surrounded by his iwi and his whanau—his tribe and his kin. Apart from his blue eyes, he had been no different from his childhood companions. The life of a warrior had been his natural destiny. Fate, however, had intervened. The way George’s family had heard the gossip, Wiki’s American father, Captain Coffin, had suddenly taken a notion to track down the son he’d fathered so casually in New Zealand, and had been so captivated by twelve-year-old Wiki’s strong personality and sharp intelligence that he’d made up his mind to take him back to Salem. As George’s grandmother had remarked, her mouth turned down, the fact that Captain Coffin’s childless, middle-aged New England wife might feel rather strongly about it had apparently never crossed the foolish man’s mind.

  According to Wiki’s version of the story, he had realized he was in trouble the instant he’d walked into the neat little Yankee cottage with its wreath of seashells on the front door and clapped eyes on the expression of consternation, outrage, and shame on Mrs. Coffin’s face. His only recourse was to adopt Yankee manners and speech as fast as he could—to disappear into the scenery, as it were—and he was lucky enough to have the adaptive talents of a chameleon. As Captain Coffin had exclaimed to George’s grandfather, the boy might be a bastard half-caste, but by Jehovah, he learned fast! Proud as punch, he carried Wiki along with him to Boston, Nantucket, and New Bedford when he went there on business, and had taken him along on a couple of coasting voyages to the West Indies, too. However, when he sailed off to the Pacific again he left the boy behind, happily assuming that his wife would be glad of the company. Instead, the instant Captain Coffin’s vessel was hull down on the horizon, and the masts and sails fast disappearing from view, she had packed Wiki off to New Hampshire—to be knocked over by George in the college portal.

  Their comradeship was founded the instant George learned that Wiki was as determined to get to sea as he was. Then they had got acquainted with the local Indian tribe and had found something else in common. Neither thought much of the college’s program for converting the Abnaki, being of the firm opinion that the Indians had been doing perfectly well for the past thousand years and had more to teach the white man than the other way around. Within days they were skipping class to head into the forest and listen to the huntsmen spin yarns about the campfire, and within a year they were participating in the hunting parties themselves. The way George remembered it, the Abnaki thought it a huge joke that two boys who were supposed to convert them to the way of the white man should be converted to the Indian way instead. When the school authorities eventually found out, however, all hell broke loose. So he and Wiki had absconded—like Indians, in a birchbark canoe they had built themselves, paddling three hundred miles down the Connecticut River to the sea.

  Now, as George watched tolerantly, Wiki slithered back over the gunwale, the water streaming off his rinsed body and clothes and long black hair. He had his question ready, but then the boat breasted Sewall’s Point, on the confluence of the Elizabeth River and Hampton Roads, and his entire attention was taken up by the discovery fleet that loomed ahead, dominated by the Vincennes and the Peacock, the smaller vessels clustered about the big sloops like chickens about hens, the storeship Relief standing off at a distance in the company of the Porpoise. They all looked spectacular, but he had eyes for only one vessel—the little brig Swallow.

  “Ain’t she beautiful?” he said. He was scarcely aware that his voice was hushed with a kind of awe and that his face had gone hot and red with bursting pride.

  The Swallow might have been the smallest craft in the fleet, but she had a dash about her that all the others lacked. Her black varnished hull gleamed like a rapier. “Maybe she’s not all that roomy below decks and the accommodations not all that they might be, but she’s, oh, such a weatherly little craft,” he said. “Wiki, old man, you should’ve been on board when we come storming down Chesapeake Bay! We overhauled a tubby old merchantman, and you would have laughed fit to bust your breeches to see the poor old slogger frantically putting out extra rags of canvas, convinced we was a pirate!”

  “I believe you,” said Wiki. Long, low, and black, her two tall masts wickedly raked, it was obvious the brig had been built as a privateer. Now, quite unintimidated by the big Vincennes lying just a couple of ship’s lengths away, she was tugging at her chain like a greyhound on the leash. “But isn’t she rather small for the job?” he inquired. With a rating of just under one hundred tons, the Swallow was less than half the size of the trading barks his father owned and commanded and a great deal slimmer than the sturdy, thick-hulled whaleships Wiki knew from his voyaging in the Pacific.

  “But what better ship for charting shoals and lagoons?
” Rochester demanded. “The brave Swallow will venture where the Vincennes could never follow!” Then, with an abrupt sense of crisis, he exclaimed, “Hello, what’s up?”

  There was a bustle on the brig that looked like sudden panic. The hands who had been left on board were rushing about in flustered fashion, looking over their shoulders at the Vincennes. Then Wiki’s sharp eyes spied a blue-and-gold figure on the poop of the flagship, aiming a spyglass in their direction. “There’s some captain or other on board the Vincennes,” he said; “and he looks like he’s studying the state of your ship, set to hold an inspection.”

  “Oh no,” Rochester groaned. “It’s Wilkes—his inspections are notorious already. Sheets, there! Haul out to wind’ard!” The whaleboat jinked, taking in a slosh of water, and then braced up as her sail filled, heading for the side of the brig that was out of sight of the Vincennes.

  Then they were coming about the larboard quarter. “Sail in, there! Unstep mast!” The mast was grappled, and the single sail wrapped about it. A heave and it was lying in the bottom of the boat with its end sticking over the transom. Then the men took up the oars. The stern of the brig was so sheerly curved it seemed to swoop overhead like the wing of some large raven, the black paint dappled with dancing reflections from the water. On the stern board the name Swallow flourished in gilt. Above and to each side, the muzzled snouts of two nine-pounder guns poked out, one at each quarter.

  The boat came around the starboard quarter and then clinked against the brig’s side. Wiki jumped, grabbed the leading edge of a strake, and scrambled up to deck, four of the boat’s crew behind him. In the boat, one man and the coxswain heaved on the boat falls while Rochester stood in the middle, and the boat rattled up into the davits. Rochester vaulted from the boat to the deck the instant it was level with the rail, landing with a thump of his half boots.

  A flurried-looking older fellow in midshipman’s uniform hurried up to him—Ernest Erskine, Rochester’s old-fashioned but highly valued second-in-command. George said hurriedly, “Aye, I know it, Ernest, I know it—clapped eyes on the situation as we came up. Line up!” he entreated the crew. “Toe the line for your lives!”

  It seemed to take an unconscionable time; but finally, after a certain amount of swearing, nine seamen, two officers, and the four idlers—the cook, the steward, the boatswain, and the carpenter—stood strung out along the deck as straight as they could, their feet braced on the planks as the sprightly brig danced about on the rippling waves.

  The glittering figure on the poop of the Vincennes lifted his speaking trumpet and aimed it like a blunderbuss. “You have to learn to move faster than that, you passel of witless virgins!” he hollered. “Mister Rochester, I see you at last, sir! Is your vacation finally over? You’ve consented to come on board because of supper, I doubt not—your galley smokestack has been fouling our air for the past two hours. And that man on your left is a confounded disgrace! Call yourself an officer when you allow your crew to descend to this state? And who the hell are you, sir?” The amplified voice rose high in an extremity of outrage. “What mean you by making your appearance on a United States ship in that filthy and uncouth condition?”

  It was Wiki Coffin, who had made a fatal decision to stand alongside the brig’s sailors. Rochester cast him a reproachful look, but neither said a word. Then, standing rigidly and trying not to listen while the commander of the expedition poured scorn on his friend’s wet dungarees and the extravagant length of his unbound hair, George noticed that a five-oared gig was putting out from the Vincennes and steering for the brig. A junior midshipman was seated in the sheets with a satchel on his knee.

  “Your orders,” snapped the speaking trumpet. “The satchel holds a letter with my instructions. I do not require an answer. Simply read them and comply.”

  And with that the tirade was over. Apprehensive silence reigned as Rochester and his crew watched the boat with the midshipman bob toward them.

  Four

  The midshipman was the loquacious type, babbling on about the great personal honor of playing a small part in the glorious enterprise that was the United States Exploring Expedition, all the time eyeing Rochester with something like awe. George knew exactly what was in the boy’s mind—that not only was Captain Rochester the paragon who had come first in the class in the recent grueling navy examinations, but one who had done the incredible. Though only a passed midshipman (albeit passed with full honors), he, George Rochester, had been given the command of one of the expedition ships and the glorious right to be addressed as captain! Now he was the living, walking, talking proof that even lowly midshipmen could aspire for marvelous things.

  Knowing all that did not make George feel any less impatient, however. The satchel sat on the table between them like doom, but he could not open it until the talkative young fellow had gone. When at last he went, George ushered him to the gangway with a briskness that was positively impolite, ran below, tore open the satchel and the envelope within, read the contents with growing consternation and rage, and stamped back up to deck.

  “We have to remain behind for the convenience of Mr. Tristram Stanton,” he exclaimed to Wiki, who was leaning on the taffrail and looking somewhat more respectable, having changed into dry dungarees and tied his long hair into a ponytail. “We have orders to hang about until his wife is buried, his affairs are settled, and his dunnage is stowed on board. Then we do our best to catch up with the fleet; otherwise, the rendezvous is Madeira. Why us, for the sake of Jehovah, why us?”

  “And why Stanton?” said Wiki slowly, his blue eyes narrow crescents under eyebrows that curled down.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m sure they could have found a replacement—you’re always assuring me that any ambitious scientific would kill for the chance to come along on this voyage.”

  “Oh, Tristram Stanton and Wilkes are great cronies,” Rochester assured him. “Wilkes, as an astronomical fellow himself, wanted to do it all on his own—everyone knows that it is the scientifics who are going to reap the glory of the enterprise, not the officers of the expedition. But the department was determined there should be a civilian astronomer on board the flagship, and so Wilkes finally gave in, though he declared he would only accept Stanton because they are as thick as thieves with their lenses and chronometers—and so we hang about here until the soft soap and palaver is over and Stanton’s wife is safely interred. And where the devil am I going to put him, I ask you? Not to mention his traps.”

  There were just three small private rooms on the brig—the captain’s cabin, where George lived, along with the five chronometers Wilkes had ordered him to carry; a small stateroom for Ernest Erskine; and another for Wiki who, as a civilian and a scientific, was entitled to a sleeping room of his own.

  Wiki shrugged. “I’ll shift to the fo’c’sle. After all,” he added with a touch of malice, “you wished me to come along on this great venture on account of my seamanship, not because of my talent with words.”

  This, Rochester was forced to admit, was true. Shipping Wiki as the expedition’s linguister had been a last-ditch measure, as his original plan had been that Wiki should come along on the expedition as one of the seamen. This was because Wiki was one of the finest mariners afloat—or so George reckoned. It was a gift his friend owed to the sea apprenticeship he had chosen.

  The inevitable horrible confrontation with George’s grandparents and Mrs. Coffin at the end of their Connecticut River adventure had led to both sets consenting to allow the boys to follow their ambitions and go to sea. In fact, Mrs. Coffin had been so relieved to get quit of her husband’s bastard that she had provided a decently filled sea chest when he’d signed onto the crew of a Nantucket whaler—a deliberate choice because Wiki’s aim was to explore the far reaches of the Pacific his mother’s people had described in song and story, and spouters were famous for poking their noses into the remotest islands possible.

  What Wiki hadn’t expected was that he would dislike the wh
aling business so much and that the slow hunt for the prey would be so unbearably tedious. To make up for this, he had become a confirmed deserter, absconding when his ship arrived at an island he wanted to explore and then shipping on another when he was ready. According to the stories he’d told George, this was easier than it sounded. Spouter masters were used to losing their men on the beach because whalemen jumped ship all the time, and they were just as accustomed to filling the holes in their crew from the stock of destitute seamen on the beach, so his behavior had not been considered particularly eccentric.

  There had been other advantages to the spouter trade. While whalemen might have lacked loyalty to their ships and their captains, they were consummate seamen, both on deck and in boats. And while their methods might be harsh, they surely knew how to pass on their remarkable skills. Within a month of shipping, Wiki had learned how to box the compass; heave the lead; haul out an earring; strap a block; and hand, reef, and steer; yet still his education wasn’t finished. Six months later, not only could he heave a harpoon and steer a whaleboat, but if the ship was wind-bound on a lee shore, in a place where it was too deep to anchor and impossible to either tack or wear, he knew exactly how to take in after sails, haul everything hard aback, and boxhaul the vessel safely out of trouble. Two months after that, and he had learned how to jump ship without being caught.

  Because of this free and easy attitude, he and George had met up remarkably often over the intervening years, getting together in a dozen ports both American and foreign to pick up the conversation where they had dropped it last and exchange rousing tales about their exploits. Now George recalled anecdotes of many a forecastle experience, and he mused that his friend’s offer to give over his stateroom to astronomer Stanton made a lot of sense.