by Joan Druett
“Best seaman I ever shipped, without a lie,” Starbuck informed Forsythe, meantime dispensing brandy with a lavish hand. The discovery that one of his old hands—albeit a confounded deserter—had come to call had mended his temper considerably. “Picked him up on the beach at Pitcairn,” he recalled. “What ship did you jump from there, huh?” he inquired of Wiki. “I did hear tell that Jed Luce of the Concerto was putting the word around the ports that he wanted to talk to Wiki Coffin real bad.”
With a broad wink, he placed a full tumbler in front of Forsythe and another in front of Wiki, and then set himself down at the head of the table with a great creaking of the chair. Forsythe, without bothering with any kind of salutation, disposed of half the contents at once, and smacked his lips appreciatively. Wiki nodded thanks, but let his drink alone.
“Gave you second mate’s berth; would’ve made you first officer if anythin’ had happened to Tobey,” said Starbuck, slapping down his own glass after absorbing a hearty slurp. “What did you want to go and jump ship in Callao for, huh? Not that he stole nothin’ from the ship,” he reassured Forsythe, who was watching Wiki very thoughtfully. “Dived overboard at midnight just like a goddamned Kanaka, and swam off to shore. What the devil did you want to go and do it for?” he demanded of Wiki.
Wiki smiled, lifting his brows in recollection. He had indeed stolen something—one of the cooper’s small tubs, which he had filled with his clothes and a few prized possessions, and floated to the beach. However, he chose not to reveal this, shrugging vaguely instead.
“Didn’t I treat you good, young man?”
“You did,” allowed Wiki. Starbuck had a fist like a rock and could be merciless with boneheaded greenhands; but if a man worked well and willingly, he got good treatment in return.
“So why did you jump, huh?”
“Because of a girl?” Wiki hazarded. “Or maybe because you were headed for the Callao sperm whale ground?” He had jumped so many ships, it was hard to sort them out.
“That could be so,” the old salt allowed.
Then that accounted for it, Wiki meditated. Usually his immediate reason for jumping a ship was because he had no ambition to reach the next destination. The prospect of bucketing about for months on the notoriously rough Callao ground, along with all the hunting, killing, and cutting up of sperm whales that it involved, had not been attractive in the slightest. The whale-ships stayed on the ground as long as the season lasted, calling in at the uninhabited Galapagos Islands to collect huge tortoises that ambled the decks until killed for food, so there weren’t even liberty times in port to leaven the monotony. Quite apart from all that, however, was the overriding fact that he just plain disliked the whaling business.
“But why South Americky?” Captain Starbuck demanded. “Did you think to make your fortune there? I’ve seen it happen before,” he informed Forsythe. “First good look at South Americky, and any resourceful Yankee sees the natural possibilities, even a Kanaka Yankee like this one—he thinks what a little hard work and ingenuity could do, and off he goes to make his fortune. I’ve seen captains do that, as well as common seamen, but it all comes to the same in the end. Every single manjack loses his money and is forced to move on, sore enough for certain. Is that what happened to you?” he demanded, swiveling his stare to Wiki.
Wiki, who by sleight of hand had managed to exchange his full glass for Forsythe’s empty one while Starbuck wasn’t watching, shook his head. There had indeed been a girl, he remembered, but when he’d arrived on shore in Callao it was to find she had married since he’d called there last. Then he had heard that the ship where Rochester was serving was lying at anchor in Valparaiso, and so he had shipped for the run south as the third mate of a coaster. He’d found George Rochester on the bark of war Acasta, and George, providentially, was at a loose end. The ship was refitting for the West Indies station, which involved a lot of waiting about and killing time. So they’d bought brown riding clothes and—after bargaining for two tough pinto horses with slit ears and the cartilage between the nostrils divided to give them better wind—had headed out into the hinterland plains, with nothing but their bedrolls, a small sack of big silver Chilean dollars, and their guns.
It had been one of their best adventures. During the long days on the southern plains, they had watched the wild horses play; and when the sun lowered, turning the sky to a luminous indigo, they had watched long lines of pink flamingoes rise from the lakes, their wings translucent in the golden light. After about a week, they had joined a roaming band of gauchos and had learned to hunt with bolas. About the campfire at night, they had sipped the aromatic tea called maté through hollow stalks from a common gourd that was handed around, and traded yarns of the sea for tales of the pampas. Then it had been time for George to return to his ship, so Wiki had kept him company as far as the port. There he had signed articles on a homebound California hide-and-tallow trader, and after a long and tedious passage he had arrived in Boston in time to get a message from his comrade suggesting the exploratory expedition.
So Wiki grinned reminiscently at Captain Starbuck as he said, “I didn’t try anything in South America, save take a look at the scenery. And then I went home and made up my mind to explore the Pacific with the navy.”
“But why the hell should you do anything like that? I thought you had more brains.”
“He didn’t join,” remarked Forsythe. “He’s a civilian.”
“Ah,” said the whaling master alertly.
“He ain’t bound by navy articles.”
“Aha!” said Starbuck, and swiveled around to stare at Wiki. “I can’t offer you more than fourth mate’s berth right now, the whaling being over,” he said swiftly, “but I’ll ship you as first mate next voyage and be right glad to do it. What do you think of that plan, huh? Four months in New England to get acquainted with your folks again—on account of I heard that your father be back in Salem—and then it’s the Pacific for you and me.”
Wiki said, “But—” and stopped, as a shout echoed down from the deck.
Without a word Forsythe drained the brandy glass and went up the stairs to investigate.
When Wiki started to rise from his seat to follow, Captain Starbuck detained him by barking, “Why not?”
“I signed on as the expedition’s linguister—to translate Spanish, and the various Pacific languages—so I’m committed, even if I haven’t signed articles. And,” Wiki went on, fishing the package for the sheriff out of his pocket, “I have a job to do—an investigation, which means I have a favor to ask.”
“Favor?” Starbuck echoed blankly.
“Aye. It would be a considerable help if you would get this on the way to Portsmouth, Virginia, as soon as possible after you make home.”
Starbuck took the packet and turned it over in his huge gnarled hands, scowling down at the address. Then he looked up and said aggressively, “What’s all this about, young man? Just what the devil have you been up to?”
“There was a murder in Virginia before the expedition sailed, and the sheriff strongly suspected that the man behind it was with the fleet, and so—” Wiki paused and then said wryly—“he appointed me a kind of sheriff’s representative with the expedition—a deputy, if you like—with instructions to keep on with the investigation.”
“You?” said Captain Starbuck, and guffawed, as derisive as Rochester had been. But he was greatly interested as well, Wiki saw. The old man enjoyed mysteries, he remembered. Starbuck carried more than a hundred history books with him on voyage; he had willingly allowed Wiki to read them, and then had discussed the puzzles of the past with enormous animation, his mind tugging at old conundrums like a thrush at a snail.
So Wiki told him all about it, starting with the discovery of the body and going on to the theory that someone had posed as Stanton in order to get into the plantation house. Having piqued the old skipper’s curiosity, Wiki was not allowed to stop there, and so he went on to describe the discovery of Burroughs’s broken-
necked body and the seemingly insoluble mystery of the note.
It flowed remarkably easily. Back when he was second mate of the Mandarin, he and Captain Starbuck had paced the deck together during many a night watch, the Nantucketer being an incorrigible and entertaining spinner of yarns. The recounting took not a few minutes, but Captain Starbuck listened with deep attention throughout.
“Well, it sure do look to me as if the woman’s husband is the prime choice for the feller who put the body in the boat and then tried to sink it with those shots,” he observed at the end, “especially as the servants were so positive they saw him.”
“It’s physically impossible. Many men have testified that he was at Newport News at the time.”
“Unless a powerful lot of fellers were makin’ a big mistake, there’s no getting around that, that’s for sure,” Starbuck agreed. Then he said, “What about this Burroughs feller? You reckon he was the one who posed as Stanton to get into the house and take Mrs. Stanton away—maybe because he was bribed?”
“When he committed suicide, it seemed to bear it out. Everyone who knew him has said how proud he was of his reputation. He put his head in a noose because he was on the verge of being exposed—or so I thought, for a while.”
Starbuck was looking at Wiki very alertly indeed, his little eyes bright and shrewd. “But you don’t believe that anymore?”
“In my report to the sheriff,” said Wiki, nodding at the packet in Starbuck’s hand, “I’ve told him how strongly I doubt it. Everyone who knew him seems to think he was too contented with life to end it all. He even wrote a note telling the world how happy he was.”
“A letter?”
“A poem. An ode to happiness.”
Starbuck snorted, for a moment sounding like Forsythe, but then said abruptly, “It sounds to me like someone knocked him on the head, broke his neck, and strung him up to look like he put an end to hisself. What do you reckon about that idea, huh?”
“It fits,” said Wiki, and nodded emphatically. “Quite apart from the poem, the ceiling simply wasn’t high enough for the drop to break his neck when he kicked over the chair. If it was suicide, it’s much more likely he would have strangled to death—and not very quickly, either.”
“So who do you reckon snapped his neck?”
“The obvious candidate is Tristram Stanton. When George Rochester arrived at Burroughs’s door, Tristram Stanton was hammering on it, on the verge of breaking in—but George had been with Wilkes quite a while before that. Stanton had plenty of time to kill Burroughs, fashion that noose and string him up, and then get outside the door to put on a show of having to break it down.”
“The door was locked?”
“The key was never found. Astronomer Stanton reckoned that Burroughs threw it out the sidelight.”
“And no one searched Stanton’s pockets?”
“Of course not.”
“H’m!” Starbuck grunted. “It does seem logical that he would’ve wanted him out of the way. This Burroughs fellow knew too much by far.”
“Aye,” said Wiki. That had been another of the suggestions he’d made in the sheriff’s report. The hard part, he mused, was proving it.
“And this unreliable man, Powell—what do you reckon about him and the note he told you he delivered to Forsythe?”
“He tells so many lies it’s impossible to know when he’s telling the truth,” Wiki said, letting his frustration show. “And now he’s disappeared. His messmates reckon he lost the number of his mess—which means ‘dead’ in navy language.”
“What?” said Starbuck, looking more alert than ever. “You mean to say that he’s been murdered, too?”
Wiki remembered the fleeting look of terror that he had glimpsed in Powell’s bloodshot eyes and nodded grimly. “Though there is the chance he went overboard in the last big storm,” he amended. “At least, that’s what his messmates think.”
“H’m,” Starbuck grunted, and then said abruptly, “This was on the Vincennes?”
“Aye.”
“And what’s the complement?”
“About two hundred men, all told.”
“And no one would’ve noticed him going over? That’s a bit hard to believe.”
The whaling master was right. Wiki remembered the panic as the boatswain of the Swallow had floated out of reach on the tossing waves, and the way the men had watched the sea as if mesmerized, as the immense billows rolled in from the night. Even though the brig—one-eighth the size of the Vincennes—had just seventeen men on board, it was impossible to believe that someone could have fallen overboard unnoticed.
“Nope,” said Starbuck roundly, “he’s been put out of the way.” He pursed his lips judiciously and said, “Even then, there’s the problem of his corpse. It ain’t that easy to get rid of a body at sea, you know, accidentally or otherwise. Lubbers might think that a body could be slipped overboard while no one was watching, but you and I know that bodies float. Three voyages back,” he said reminiscently, “a couple of my Portugee greenhands got into a fight, and one knifed the other and tipped him over the rail. And do you know what? The body got caught on the rudder. We couldn’t work out what was up with the ship, not until we looked over the taffrail and saw an arm poking up out of the water.”
Wiki grimaced. “What did you do with the murderer?”
“Handed him in at Talcahuano. He was hanged, I do believe,” Starbuck said carelessly, and then looking animated went on. “So where do you think the corpse might be stowed, huh? One would think it would have given away its presence by now,” he ghoulishly observed. He picked up the brandy bottle and pointed it questioningly at Wiki’s empty glass, bristling eyebrows lifted.
Wiki looked down at the table—saw Forsythe’s empty tumbler, and abruptly realized that the southerner had never come back. “My God!” he exclaimed. “Where is he?”
“What? Who?”
“Forsythe!” Wiki swung his legs around, leapt off the bench, and sprang up the companionway—and arrived on deck just in time to see the brig Swallow putting on the last of her sails. Even as he watched, the topgallants snapped taut with wind.
“He’s marooned you!” Starbuck exclaimed, arriving at Wiki’s side. He looked as if he was on the verge of a highly entertained guffaw. “So I get you as fourth mate,” he observed merrily.
“But I have to get back on board!”
“Why? Do you reckon he’s the imposter?”
Wiki shook his head. For a long time he had indeed considered Forsythe a prime candidate, especially after Powell had claimed to have delivered the note to him. Since then, however, the southerner’s own actions had convinced him that he’d told nothing but the truth.
“It was his idea to mail the report to the sheriff, along with his testimony,” Wiki said, the hasty words spilling out. “He’s not likely to do that unless he’s innocent.”
“So why is he so anxious to get quit of you?”
“Because he dislikes Kanakas, and he dislikes me interfering with his mistreatment of them.”
“He don’t like Kanakas? How odd!” exclaimed Captain Starbuck, who—as Wiki knew well—didn’t care if a man was brown, black, white, or brindle, just so long as he had sharp eyes and broad shoulders. “Well, then,” he said briskly, “I most surely don’t want to lose you; but seein’ as you’re determined, the least I can do is get you there, it being my own fault for holding you up.” And he spun on his heel, shouting, “Clear away the starboard boat!”
Men dashed up to the roof of the hurricane house and released the cranes that supported the bottom of the boat, so that it was swinging loose from the davits. Two of them jumped into it, and then swiftly worked the falls so that it lowered with a single splash. Three more scrambled down the side of the ship, Wiki with them. Then, as he braced himself to jump, he found that Captain Starbuck was close behind.
“Are you sure?” he said.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” replied the old salt with a savage grin and gri
pped the steering oar.
Three minutes had elapsed. The Swallow was still just a couple of ship lengths off, but gathering speed fast as she headed downwind.
“Take oars,” snapped Captain Starbuck. The five oarsmen picked up the rhythm at once, bracing their legs and feet, and hauling mightily.
“Step mast.” The wind gusted, whipping Wiki’s hair out of its knot and lashing it about his face, so his eyes streamed as he manhandled the long mast into the step and locked it in place with a fid. The sail snapped and then roared full, and the whaleboat lifted and danced across the waves.
Starbuck’s steering oar dug deep, bending like a newly cut willow as he brought them around to the curling edge of the fleeting wake of the brig, so that the seethe of the water was in their favor. “Spring to it, boys!” The boat surged strongly with the double force of muscle power and the sail.
Then Wiki felt the wind drop. The boat sail fluttered and sagged. As the canvas slapped and flopped, he glimpsed the same tremble in the Swallow’s sails. “Pull!” cried Captain Starbuck—and they were catching up as the brig lost way, running by momentum alone in the sudden calm. Pull by pull the boat was drawing closer—close enough for Wiki to discern two figures on the quarterdeck, one much shorter than the other, and doing a lot of gesticulating. Lieutenant Smith arguing strenuously with Forsythe, he thought, and tautly grinned.
Then the wind flicked up. The Swallow fled on. She had lost much of her lead, though—and now they were gaining still more, slowly but surely, with the extra power of the oars. Suddenly, they were level with the taffrail. It was time to take down the mast, as the hull of the brig stole their wind. Still the long oars dipped and swung, bringing them farther along the Swallow’s starboard side. Standing in the back of the boat, leaning powerfully on his steering oar, Captain Starbuck kept them just outside the hollow of green water that rushed and swirled along the Swallow’s hull. Then, as he rapped out orders, they ventured closer.
