Shark Island

by Joan Druett

  “By the deep … nine!” Cautiously they sailed on. There had been no sign of the cutter for so long that Captain Rochester had determined to forget Forsythe’s instructions, and mount a search. However, he was even more determined not to endanger the brig.

  Time passed … passed. “By the deep—four!”

  George Rochester drew in a deep breath. “Clew up tops’ls!”

  “Aye, sir!” hollered Midshipman Keith. His voice squeaked as he relayed the order. Bare feet thudded on deck planks, and men grunted as they hauled at ropes. A quick cry from the man in the chains, and Rochester shouted, “Starboard the wheel!”

  Wiki heaved down on the helm, one foot on a spoke for greater leverage. He heard rapid orders, and then the headland slid past and the vista opened out. A large cove lay before them, edged with rocks and white sand, backed by a towering cliff face. A three-masted topsail schooner floated at anchor a hundred yards from the shore, Forsythe’s cutter tied up to the martingale chains. Beyond her, the wreck of a sloop lay well up on the beach, and high above the wreck stone ramparts loomed at the top of a sheer cliff—Wiki could see the iron snouts of cannon, just as Captain Hudson of the Peacock had reported. On the half-mile of water that separated the brig from the anchored schooner, two whaleboats were pulling toward them with what looked like frantic haste.

  Wiki heard Rochester’s urgent shout: “Wear ship!” The brig had to come around on her heel so that the two guns on the quarterdeck could be brought to bear on the schooner and the oncoming boats. The deck boards thudded with the sounds of well-drilled response. Marksmen ran up the rigging hand over fist, while other seamen chanted at the halyards. The two big stern-chasers were run out, already primed, powdered, and loaded. Dave the gunner bawled, and brawny men grunted as crowbars were wielded and the cannon aimed.

  The brig rocked and stilled, ready for action. The two whaleboats kept on a-coming. Then, when they were just a few yards off, the two steersmen leaned on their oars, and the boats turned and came to a stop, side-on to the brig. The men inside them were tough-looking fellows of a variety of ages. They didn’t appear to be armed, but the thicket of rifle barrels poked over the bulwarks of the Swallow didn’t waver.

  The man at the steering oar of the nearest boat held one hand up to shade his eyes. Wiki saw him give the brig an assessing look all the way along the lean black hull from the sharp bow to the flamboyant sheer of the stern, and then up to the two tall, dashingly raked masts and the long spars designed to carry an enormous breadth of canvas. Then, carefully, he summed up the two cannon and the rifles aimed unwaveringly at his boats’ crews.

  “Brig Swallow ahoy!” he finally shouted.

  “Ahoy, sir,” replied Captain Rochester, arriving at the gangway rail.

  “Sealing schooner Annawan of Stonington, Connecticut, Captain Ezekiel Reed.”

  “You’re American?”

  “Aye,” said the other. “I carry a message from Lieutenant Forsythe. Permission to come aboard?”

  Captain Rochester paused, looking up to check the fort. The sun struck light from the distant snouts of cannon.

  Following his gaze, the blond man said with a touch of derision, “You can set your mind to rest—it’s deserted. Ain’t anyone left alive to tell the tale of why it was abandoned, but we do believe it was once a prison. Permission to board?” he asked again, and Rochester at last nodded—but without ordering his men to stand down from their stations.

  All twelve men arrived on the deck in a bunch, leaving their boats emptily swinging about at the ends of their painters, so that the brig seemed suddenly very crowded. Their spokesman stepped forward, and said, “Hammond’s the name, Captain Rochester—Joel Hammond, first officer. Beautiful craft, you have here,” he added, as if he couldn’t help himself. There was rank envy in his tone. “The U.S. Navy has done you proud.”

  “Aye,” George Rochester complacently agreed. “Lieutenant Forsythe has told you we’re with the U.S. Exploring Expedition?”

  “He’s with Captain Reed right now.”

  Hammond’s reply was strangely evasive, Wiki thought as he studied the intruders warily. That they were sealers was logical, because the best of them came from Stonington, Connecticut—but what the devil were they doing at this equatorial island? The Stonington sealers were the anonymous kings of the farthest, coldest, most tempestuous reaches of the world; they sailed their small, sturdy craft into wild, uncharted seas, and landed on icy, surf-battered rocks in pursuit of their prey. Even the whalemen regarded them with awe. So why were they so far from their regular sealing grounds? It was late October, the start of the southern sealing season, and by rights they should be south of the Falklands. Too, he didn’t like the fact that two whaleboats had come when only one was necessary.

  George Rochester, who was even more acutely aware of the danger of having so many suspicious-looking strangers on board at once, said blandly, “A message?”

  “Aye, sir.” And Hammond handed over a sheet of paper.

  Rochester read it, looked up, frowned, and said, “You have a leak?”

  “We’re pumping a thousand strokes an hour, just to keep her afloat.”

  “My God!” said Rochester, appalled. “It sounds as if we’ve arrived in the nick of time.” He paused, frowning down at the deck planks between his boots, and then looked up with an air of decision. “We’ve yet to get the brig anchored, but I’ll be over with our carpenter as soon as humanly possible. Your captain must be pacing the deck, poor chap! Normally, I’d dispense hospitality, but I mustn’t delay you—you must get these men back to the pumps!”

  He turned his head, caught Wiki’s eye with a meaningful look, and then turned back to the visitor. “Mr. Hammond, this is Mr. William Coffin, our shipboard scientific.”

  Wiki stepped forward. Hammond’s expression was a study in baffled astonishment, his small eyes suspicious as he scanned Wiki all the way from snaky black hair flowing about brown-skinned shoulders to bare, broad feet sturdily pressed against the warm planks of the deck. He said nothing, and did not offer to shake hands. Instead, his manner became stiff and offended, as if he thought he might be the unwitting butt of some strange practical joke.

  “Wiki, my good fellow,” said George, his smile guileless. “Would you do me the honor of accompanying Mr. Hammond and his men to the schooner? Give Captain Reed my compliments, and convey my sincerest sympathies that he should find himself in such a plight. Reassure him that I will be along the instant the brig is snug. And—if you get the chance—do have a preliminary look at the damage. If it’s not going to be possible to fix her, then the sooner I know it, the better.”

  Wiki, knowing without being told that George did not trust Hammond an inch, and that he was being sent ahead as a spy, couldn’t help a small conspiratorial grin as he retrieved his boots from where he had stowed them in a corner by the helm. Then, with a farewell nod, he jumped down into Hammond’s boat. No one said a word, though the oarsmen’s faces were expressive enough.

  As the whaleboat was rowed steadily across the insistent shoreward current, he avoided the inquisitive stares by studying the schooner. He saw the two taut ropes stretched down the starboard side, and then, underwater, the dark square of a fothered sail. So there really was a leak, he thought; the figure of a thousand strokes stretched belief to the limit, but there was a chance Hammond was telling the truth.

  He said to Hammond, “You ran onto a rock?”

  “In the middle of what appeared to be a clear channel, close to where she lies now.”

  “Unlucky—but then again, you took quite a risk coming in.”

  “We came in for water. There’s a good stream farther up the coast.”

  Wiki was still very curious about why a sealing schooner should come to Shark Island, but before he could frame a question his attention was seized by an overwhelming impression of panic on board. He heard a loud, curiously shrill cry, and the thump of hurrying feet.

  He glanced quickly at the oarsmen’s face
s, but they didn’t look as if they had heard anything out of the usual. The boat had entered the channel where the schooner lay, and because it jinked about in the current they had redoubled their work at the oars. Then the side of the Annawan loomed over them, the bulwarks hiding whatever might be happening on deck. The copper sheathing below the waterline gleamed a ghostly green in the dark water, and the reflections of ripples danced on the black paint of the hull.

  Two men reached out, grabbed dangling boat falls, and hooked on, while others steadied the boat by gripping the side of the hull. Hammond, standing in the stern, hollered, “Ahoy the deck!”

  There was a long pause, and then a man arrived at the open gangway above them. “Sir?” he said. His tone was oddly wooden. Because the sun was behind him, it was hard to see his face.

  “Tell Captain Reed a visitor has arrived from the U.S. brig Swallow.”

  “Sir.” But the man did not move—it was as if he had no idea what the first mate had said. Wiki stood up to see him better, and then saw that the sailor’s face was ashen.

  Something has happened. Trouble. Wiki thought immediately. Forsythe. He jumped, grabbed the leading edge of a strake, scrambled urgently up the side—and then stood rigidly still, frozen by the utter unexpectedness of the scene.

  A young woman was walking unsteadily toward him, her movements stiff. She was small but voluptuously built, her half-exposed breasts thrusting out the bodice of her dress. Her night-black hair was neatly braided into the nape of her tender neck, and her gown was a shimmering dove gray, a color that he knew exactly matched the translucent irises of her eyes. She was still young, just two years older than Wiki himself, and still remarkably beautiful; those huge black-fringed eyes were still the dominant feature of her small, white, heart-shaped face.

  Annabelle! She blinked as she met his incredulous stare, but her expression was blank. Blood dripped from her arms and hands.

  “You catch me at an inconvenient moment, I’m afraid,” she said in a queer, numb, formal voice. “My husband’s just been stabbed to death.”

  Eight

  As if in a blur, Wiki heard rapid strides, and when he looked past Annabelle he saw Forsythe hurrying along the deck toward him, evidently from somewhere forward. Behind the lieutenant’s bulky, powerful form scurried the much skinnier, more ropey shape of Passed Midshipman Kingman. Kingman’s mouth was hanging open. Forsythe’s frown darkened when he saw Wiki. “What’s she screaming on about? And what the hell are you doing here?”

  Wiki said dazedly, “Did you hear her say that Captain Reed’s been stabbed to death?”

  “What!”

  Forsythe spun on his heel and headed rapidly for the after house door, with Wiki close behind him. They jumped down the companionway in a clatter of boots, and Forsythe led the way along a short corridor. At the threshold of the captain’s cabin Wiki stopped short, stunned by the sight of the dark, grotesquely over-furnished room, but Forsythe ran straight over to the body that lay sprawled on the floor. Ezekiel Reed. The light was dull on the handle of the knife that was stuck deep into his back.

  Captain Reed lay facedown, his feet toward the after bulkhead where an array of sealing weapons hung, and his head toward the companionway stairs; he was lying alongside a rucked-up rug which was soaked with his blood. It was obvious without looking that he was dead—and yet there was a strong sense of a living presence in the room. This was the dangerous time, when the kehua—the shocked ghost—had just been freed from its earthly shell. Forsythe hunkered down by the corpse, but Wiki seemed frozen to the spot.

  There was a mixed reek of brandy, female scent, tobacco, birdseed … and spilled blood like hot, wet rust. The nape of Wiki’s neck crawled with a preternatural sense of being watched; he thought he heard a stealthy scrape and rustle. He looked around—at heavy drapes on every bulkhead, the massive furniture, and the clutter on the table: lamps, a covered cage, a box of ship’s papers. There were too many crooks and crannies in this room, he thought with a grimace. The ship’s rats were responding to the smell of blood.

  Then at last he moved, very stiffly. He had to steel himself to go over to the body and lay a hand on Captain Reed’s neck. The rough skin was warm, but, as expected, there was not the slightest flutter of life inside.

  He said to Forsythe, “Bear a hand here.” Together, they heaved the corpse up to its side. The congested face, though contorted with what looked like rage and fury, was perfectly recognizable. Ezekiel Reed. The last time Wiki had seen him was at his wedding; now he was dead.

  “Jesus,” said Forsythe. The knife had been shoved into Reed’s back with such solid force that the point had penetrated all the way through his chest, so that his shirt was completely sodden with blood, back and front. As they lowered the body again, Wiki could smell brandy on the southerner’s breath. Had he killed Captain Reed in a drunken fight? It wouldn’t be the first time the hot-tempered Virginian had got into a brawl with a drinking partner, he thought as he straightened. The knife had penetrated Reed’s bulky torso as if it were butter, and Forsythe was a powerful man.

  Instead of speaking, however, Wiki concentrated on hauling a handkerchief out of his pants pocket. When he wiped his hands the cloth became smirched with blood. Looking down at it, he said, “My father and Ezekiel Reed were close friends.”

  “You were closer friends with Annabelle.” Forsythe’s tone was thick with contempt.

  Wiki said warily, “Why, what did she tell you?”

  “She taught you to waltz, she said.” Forsythe made waltz sound like a dirty word.

  Wiki winced, but instead of answering he looked about the room again, studying the way the slack, bloodied corpse of Annabelle’s husband lay on the floor. Finally, he said in matter-of-fact tones, “There’s no berth in here. So where did they sleep?”

  “In those two staterooms down there.” Forsythe nodded back at the passage.

  “So where did Hammond berth?” It was usual for the first and second mates to live in the after house.

  “You’ll have to ask him,” Forsythe grunted—and as if he had heard his name Joel Hammond came running down the stairs, his weather-reddened face confused.

  He said, “What the hell has happened? Mrs. Reed is having hysterics and there is blood—blood!—but I can’t get a word out of her, and…” Then, sighting the corpse, he gasped, “Oh, sweet Jesus.” He seemed to recover fast, though—swinging round on Forsythe, he shouted, “So you killed him!”

  “What?”

  “You got into a fight!”

  “I didn’t lay a hand on the old bastard,” Forsythe retorted. “And neither did Zack Kingman. If you think I was the one who knifed him, you can put that little notion right out to pasture, because we wasn’t even here—just ask Zack, if you don’t believe me! The first we knew that anythin’ had happened was when she come out onto deck screamin’ hell and bloody murder.”

  “But I heard you quarreling before we left for the Swallow.”

  “He was making aspersions about the exploring expedition! If you want to know what he was really riled up about, it was you! It was you who ran his precious schooner on a rock and then made a cock-up of fixing the leak! Oh, for God’s sake,” Forsythe said in disgust. “What kind of seaman are you? You’re in charge here now. Instead of making wild goddamned accusations, exert a little authority. Try and behave like a captain.”

  Hammond’s mouth sagged open. It was as if it were the first time the implications of Reed’s death had dawned on him.

  Forsythe looked at him with utter scorn as the blank silence drew on, and then said with an elaborately patient sigh, “For a start, it would be a bloody good idea to order this room cleaned up, so Mrs. Reed can come back inside.”

  Hammond stuttered, “But what do I do with the c-corpse?”

  “Jesus,” said Forsythe, sotto voce, and then, raising his voice, said, “Send for the steward, and get him to sew it into a winding sheet, and then stow it somewhere while you get a coffin built. You have a ca
rpenter, don’t you?—or mebbe not, considering you weren’t capable of fixing your own leak. But you must have a bo’sun—get him to build a coffin. Tell him to save the knife for when we inform the Brazilian authorities, because they are bound to ask for it. But the most important thing is to get this cabin cleaned up so you can get Mrs. Reed out of sight of the men. The quicker she’s down here, the better for morale. And she’s Roman Catholic, so you’d better get ready to hold a wake tonight. I presume you have a Bible on board?”

  “Of course we damn well have a Bible on board!” Hammond shouted. For some reason this seemed to cause him more affront than anything else Forsythe had said.

  Wiki, delighted to leave Forsythe in charge, removed himself without a word. It was a relief to get out into the bright light at the top of the companionway. Both boats’ crews had arrived back on board in the interval, while the six cutter’s crew were huddled with Kingman on the foredeck, so that the decks seemed packed. The racket was deafening. Men asked each other what the hell was going to happen next—that the ship was sinking under them was bad enough, but now the captain was dead. He’d been murdered while most of them were away from the ship—which cut the list of suspects down to a handful, and most of them could guess the name of the foul killer, or so they reckoned. The ship’s pigs and hens clucked and squealed agitatedly, infected by the panicked atmosphere.

  When Wiki looked around to see where Annabelle had got to she was collapsed onto a bench set against the after house, weeping wildly. There were streaks of blood on her face where she’d cradled it in her hands. He stood watching her, at a complete loss to know what to do, wondering what in God’s name she was doing here on this sinking tub. Every time he had thought about her over the past eight years, he had pictured her presiding over Reed’s substantial house in Stonington. It would have been a prosperous and comfortable way of life, and he had assumed that she would realize her remarkable luck, forget her wild past, and gracefully take on the role of a decent matron.