A Watery Grave

by Joan Druett

  “But of course we simply have a good growl and drink rather a lot of wine,” said George. Then he handed a card to Wiki and said, “Your company is craved by the mids of the Vin.”

  “My what?” Wiki blinked.

  “Next Saturday. The junior midshipmen of the Vincennes have invited you to a feast. I had to deliver many soothing reassurances that you would not try to eat any of them,” he added with a grin. “And then they asked if you ate your meat cooked.”

  Twelve

  “Do you think us awful outrageous, Mr. Coffin, sir?” inquired a red-cheeked lad.

  Wiki withdrew his stare from a fascinated survey of his surroundings and gazed at his questioner. Obviously, the young man expected an answer, but Wiki found it very hard to think of one.

  He did not think his hosts outrageous at all, just extremely high-spirited. There were six of them, their enthusiastic chubby faces belying the primness of their uniform—dark blue claw-hammer coats with a single line of gold buttons running down from gold-embroidered stand-up collars. Their trousers were white—two of them were grand enough to have white satin breeches to haul out for special occasions such as this. It was beyond Wiki to guess why they had invited him here, but it was certainly an interesting experience.

  The midshipman who had spoken was named Dicken, Wiki thought—his friends called him Jack. Like the rest, he was fit to bust with the honor and glory of sailing with what they all insisted on calling the first, great, national exploring expedition. “Just imagine, sir!” one of them had cried—“a country that but a short time ago was a mere discovery itself, taking its place among the most elevated nations of the world!” Captain Wilkes, they were all quite certain, was a genius of the stature of Captain Cook, and they hero-worshiped him unquestioningly. “Long life to him!” had been the first of their spirited toasts.

  Wiki smiled and said, “Why should I think you outrageous?”

  “Because we are not refined, Mr. Coffin!”

  They were also rather drunk. Wiki said very solemnly, “Does a midshipman need to be refined?”

  “Assuredly, sir! It is by no means enough that an officer of the U.S. Navy should be a capable mariner!” the young fellow declaimed, and to Wiki’s surprise the other five joined in the chorus: “He should be a gentleman of liberal education, refined manners, punctilious courtesy, and the nicest sense of personal honor!”

  Wiki hazarded, “You’re quoting someone.”

  “Aye, sir!”

  “The great John Paul Jones, sir!”

  “It’s drummed into us all by our superiors, sir!”

  Then the mids competed vigorously to relate the story of the epic battle that took place on September 23, 1779, between the English Serapis and the American rebel ship Bon Homme Richard, commanded by the immortal John Paul Jones. It had been a bloody conflict, Wiki was assured, the two ships tightly locked together in combat. The first raking broadside had cruelly blasted the Richard; but though the English commander had called out to Jones to surrender, he and his crew had tenaciously fought on, their ship sinking fast beneath them. So withering had been the fire from the tops of the rebel ship that the English captain had torn down his colors—and the Bon Homme Richard, foundering fast, was the victor.

  “I have not yet begun to fight!” a midshipman by the name of Keith roared, and all the other midshipmen roared it out, too, raising their glasses of wine in salute. This, Wiki gathered, had been the immortal reply made by John Paul Jones when the English had invited him to surrender. The party was getting very merry, he meditated further, and he wondered if Captain Wilkes would hear about it and send a lieutenant to calm them down.

  Meantime, he returned to a fascinated study of his surroundings. This might be the mess room of the mids, and the place where two of them slept, but it reminded him of nothing so much as the reception room of some low house of entertainment. The bulkheads were entirely draped with white-and-crimson curtains. There was a large mirror on one wall and silver candlesticks perched all about. A huge vase was filled with artificial flowers made out of painted feathers—a souvenir, he supposed, of Madeira. A bureau stood in one corner, and a fancy washstand, its china bowl and pitcher dedorated with sprigs of green and gilt, was set in another. Brussels carpet and Chinese rugs covered the floor, and two long couches were built along the fore-and-aft walls. Though upholstered in blue damask they were evidently used as berths at night.

  The wall opposite the looking glass was hung with dirks, daggers, a couple of the famous Elgin cutlass-pistols, fancy swords, and two massive cutlasses. Wiki studied them with mixed feelings of avarice and discomfort. In most of the Pacific communities he knew, weapons as valuable as these were kept wrapped in mats or tapa cloth so that their mana and kaha could not be stolen by malicious spirits. A hand weapon not only assumed the strength and valor of the owner, but acquired the power of the lives it had taken as well. After all these years he still found it amazing that Americans should take the substantial risk of so boldly putting their arms on display.

  Then, again, his attention was claimed. A voice piped up from the head of the table almost as if he discerned Wiki’s thoughts. “Mr. Coffin, could you tell us something of your history? The traditions of your ancestors? Stories of your youthful days?” he cried.

  It was Keith, one of the two midshipmen who lived in this room. He looked sincere and serious, but was possibly rather drunk. Wiki smiled, leaning back easily in his chair, and said, “You want me to recite my whakapapa? I warn you, it takes a long time.”

  Whakapapa? The strange word excited them. Two of them asked him how to spell it and carefully wrote it down. “Your … ancestry?”

  “Aye—my mountain and my river, my ancestral canoe, and my genealogy, too. Anyone who cannot recite his whakapapa is tutua, ‘a nobody.’”

  “Oh dear, then we are all tutua,” one said, and they all laughed.

  “No one expects a pakeha to recite his or her genealogy—except perhaps for Queen Victoria.”

  “Is that what you call us—pakeha?” And again the scribes wrote the new word down. “Sir, can you tell us how your people felt when Captain Cook arrived?”

  Wiki paused for thought, studying them with hidden amusement, and decided to tell them a story. “My grandmother told me that when the first European ship came into their bay, her grandfather declared to the people that the men who sailed on such outlandish craft must be wandering ghosts—tere tu paenga roa—because they had come from the far side of the horizon where the spirit realm lies. Then the ship came to anchor, and the boats pulled to shore.

  “And when the people saw the men facing backward as they worked at their oars, they knew that koro was right—that they were goblins, whose eyes were in the backs of their heads. The children and women ran into the trees, my grandmother with them, but the warriors stayed on the beach, ready to fight. Instead of attacking the warriors, however, the goblins began to collect shellfish and eat them with enjoyment, so the women calmed down, thinking they must be quite a lot like ordinary men. They took kumara—our sweet potato—and fish to the goblins, and showed them how to roast it in an oven in the ground. And when they saw them taking pleasure in the well-cooked food, my grandmother said that the women thought perhaps they were not goblins after all.

  “Next day the boats pulled ashore again, and this time the men brought a gift of some of the kind of food they ate on the ships. My grandmother said that some of it was very hard.” Wiki held up a ship’s biscuit. “She thought it was pumice stone that had been enchanted because it tasted sweet. She said the people liked it very much. The sailors’ meat, however, was fat and salty, and the people disliked it greatly. She told me that this was what convinced her grandfather that these were ordinary hungry mortals and definitely not supernatural beings. These men had heard about the good food of Aotearoa, and they had come because they wanted to find out what good food was like.”

  This part of the yarn was a joke, because the cold winters, thick forests, and poor
soil of New Zealand made growing food notoriously difficult; and Wiki’s people sighed often, in proverb and folklore, for the fertility of their lost ancestral land, Hawaiki. However, he did not bother to explain, feeling quite sure that his audience would not understand the wry humor—and, anyway, his little story had enchanted them enough, he saw. They were childlike themselves, and so the simple tale appealed.

  Then a shout of delight went up as the door opened and their mess steward arrived with a great sea-pie made of meat and onions and potatoes—“Hash with an awning,” they called it, because of its pastry top. “Rouse up some more of that capital claret, dear fellow,” said Keith to the steward, and more bottles were fetched. A toast was drunk to wives and sweethearts—“May they never meet!” quipped one, and they all rolled about with laughter as if they’d never heard the joke before. “A blessing, a blessing,” someone cried, and they chorused irreverently:

  Five, six, rigging to fix

  Seven, eight, don’t be late

  One, two, join the crew

  Three, four, take up your oars!

  And knives and forks were wielded with a will.

  “Do you enjoy sea-pie, sir?” Wiki’s neighbor politely asked.

  “Of course,” said Wiki. “But it must be well-baked,” he added gravely.

  “We collected together a thousand dollars to spend on extras for our mess, and Keith spent six hundred of his own in the bargain. After all, three years is a long time to be away from the amenities of home, don’t you think, sir?”

  Wiki’s eyebrows were higher than ever. A three-year voyage about the world was certainly quite a proposition, but nonetheless he was very impressed by the amount of money these lads had at their disposal. He knew from George Rochester that the custom in the navy was for officers to make their own eating arrangements, only staples like flour being provided by the ship, but for the first time he realized that the families of these young gentlemen were rich.

  “And Keith furnished this cabin, sir. Don’t you admire it?”

  “I do indeed,” said Wiki solemnly.

  “What age are you, sir?” another boy asked him. “Do you know it? Do your people keep count of the years?”

  “I’m twenty-four,” said Wiki. Up until this afternoon he had felt quite young, but these boys made him feel old.

  “Sir, I couldn’t help but notice that you’re not tattooed,” said another. “Don’t New Zealanders tattoo themselves like other savages?”

  “Warriors have a moko, a tattooed face,” said Wiki, and then added by way of explanation, “I was taken to America when I was twelve years old.”

  “Do you ever think you will get one?”

  Wiki had often thought of it. He said, “It’s not really my choice.”

  “Why, who chooses?”

  “The father, the grandfathers—it’s taumaha, a serious matter that demands a lot of deep discussion.”

  It wryly amused him to imagine what his father would say if approached with such a proposition. Captain Coffin was still sailing the Pacific, trundling from one lagoon to another after sea slugs—bêche-de-mer—and pearl shell, to trade for tea in Canton. They met up occasionally, usually in some foreign place, and Wiki invariably enjoyed his father’s company. Not only did they have a lot in common, both being seafarers, but Captain Coffin was so unstintingly and flatteringly proud of his only son.

  “If you got your face tattooed, sir, do you think they would put you on display in America?”

  “Perhaps,” said Wiki. It was one of the reasons for not getting a moko.

  “What was your mother’s name?”

  What strange questions they asked. “Te Rau o te Rangi,” Wiki said. His people often changed their names at a whim, but that was the name he had known her by. She had been a celebrated beauty—Captain Coffin had certainly been bowled over by her looks, and there were songs likening her to the planet Venus. “She was a famous swimmer,” said Wiki. “Many men challenged her, pakeha sailors among them, but she beat them all.”

  “And your father, sir?”

  Wiki smiled, understanding now that the question about his mother had been asked to tactfully lead the way to this one, and said mildly, “Captain Coffin of Salem, Massachusetts.” Then he watched their faces. Most of them knew that part of his history already, he saw; he did not feel surprised about it, knowing that scuttlebutt—shipboard gossip—was both fast and accurate. However, a couple of his hosts lifted their brows as if suddenly realizing why their guest had been carted off to America at the tender age of twelve.

  “What were your feelings when you left your home?” one asked.

  “Excited. Sad.” Wiki shrugged. Several men of his tribe had gone off on American ships before; and while some had not come back, others had returned to amaze the iwi with their exciting yarns and become people of importance, and so following in their wake had not taken a great deal of courage.

  “It was an adventure,” he said.

  “What were your first impressions when you landed in America?”

  Wiki meditated. When he was a child his grandmother had repeated to him the famous prediction of the prophet Te Toiroa of Nukutaurua—that in times ahead their land would be chattering with te reo kihikihi, the cicada language, which was how his people came to describe the incomprehensible twittering talk of the pakeha. And while twelve-year-old Wiki had thought he understood English well enough by the time he arrived in Boston, his first overwhelming impression had been of being deafened by the meaningless clamor of cicadas—that these busy Americans rushed about battering each other with a constant rush of words. And they interrupted each other all the time! In his home village interrupting a speaker had been the height of discourtesy, but in America, or so it had seemed to him, it was meant to be a sign of great interest in what was being said.

  From past experience, however, Wiki knew that it was not a good idea to let on that his first impression had been that Americans were rather less refined than the people at home. “I was greatly impressed by the immense buildings and the wonderful bustle of business,” he answered solemnly instead.

  “And you’re a true-blue American now, sir—ain’t that marvelous? They tell me you’re a sheriff’s deputy in Virginia, Mr. Coffin—is that true?”

  Wiki asked sharply, “How did you hear that?”

  Keith waved a casual arm. “Scuttlebutt, sir,” he said. “Everyone knows it. Are you investigating that astronomer what killed himself?”

  Wiki narrowed his eyes. “Why, is there something to investigate?”

  “We all wonder why he did it, sir.”

  “You were surprised when you learned about it?”

  “Astounded, sir! He spent all his time fussing about with his instruments and seemed perfectly happy with life. He just didn’t seem to have any reason to put an end to himself.”

  “Did any of you work with him?”

  The boys all glanced at each other. “Not really,” one said. “We have orders to assist the astronomers with their observations—it’s meant to be good practice for us, but Mr. Burroughs’s assistant didn’t like us to hang around and watch even, let alone try to help.”

  “He was jealous, perhaps?” Wiki suggested, remembering Grimes’s obvious devotion to Burroughs.

  “They were as close as cats, sir,” Dicken agreed. “Didn’t have much to do with the rest of the ship at all. Privately closeted together day and night with their instruments and observations. I feel sorry for the assistant, now—he must heartily wish he had been present to put a stop to the desperate act. Does he have no idea why Mr. Burroughs should do such a thing, sir?”

  They were all looking at Wiki expectantly. He was frowning, thinking that that was the question he’d forgotten to ask Grimes—what had he been doing and where had he been at the time Burroughs hanged himself.

  He evaded the question, saying wisely, “My people have a saying, Ko nga take whawhai, he whenua, he wahine—for the source of trouble, look for land and women.”


  “You wonder if Astronomer Burroughs put an end to himself on account of a petticoat?” someone demanded, and all six laughed heartily. “You’d be better to look to Lieutenant Forsythe for quarrels over the nancy girls, Mr. Coffin!” another exclaimed, and they all giggled again.

  For a nasty moment Wiki thought they were referring to his failed attempt to call Forsythe out after the foul-mouthed southerner had made his gross advances to Janey. Then, however, it became evident that Lieutenant Forsythe was unpopular with these boys—“Commander Wilkes gave old Forsythe a proper dressing down for bullyragging me unmercifully,” piped up one midshipman. “Three cheers for our gentleman commander!” chorused the others, with some sloshing of wine.

  “Forsythe’s a famous sharpshooter, though,” said Keith, when the hubbub had died down. “He brought his own rifle on board—his granpappy gave it to him when he was ten years old, he says, which must mean that it is awful ancient, but I’ve never yet seen him miss his mark.”

  Keith’s voice was wistful, betraying a youthful passion for firearms and marksmanship. Wiki mused that being a crack shot was a new side to Lieutenant Forsythe’s character, but not particularly unexpected.

  “It hangs from a famous large rack of antlers in his cabin,” the chubby-cheeked Dicken volunteered. “Would you like to see it, sir?” he said brightly. “I’m convinced Lieutenant Forsythe would be happy for you to view it, it’s such an awful fine trophy.”

  Wiki shook his head, smiling faintly, certain that Lieutenant Forsythe would not be happy in the slightest, and to his relief they returned to the ghoulish topic of astronomer Burroughs’s demise.