Peter Wicked

by Broos Campbell

  “Aye aye, sir!” He scampered off, I winked at Horne, and Gundy and Eriksson and O’Lynn pretended there was something interesting to see off the starboard beam.

  The Secretary was keeping a close watch on me. I couldn’t decide yet if that was annoying or reassuring:

  SIR The preparatory steps to be taken are—to call on all the officers formerly attached to the Schooner, not otherways appropriated to place themselves under your Command—and immidiately to recruit a sufficient number of Seamen, for the accomplishment of the present object—which may be entered either for the trip, or for 12 months—you may advance their pay up to two months, provided the proper security has been obtained, able Seamen at 17 dols. a month and ordinary at 14—As time is of the essence you are to proceed immidiately you have sufficient men to work the Schooner—any difficiency will be made up on your making station—Do not delay on any account—

  Wm. Pennock Esqre the Navy Agent in Norfolk, will furnish monies upon your requisition to enable you to carry these orders into effect . . .

  Monies would be good. I could sail the schooner with the men aboard her now, but shifting sails would be slow work, and an emergency could get dire plenty quick with only a couple of men on watch at a time. The first order of business would be to call on Mr. Pennock for some ready cash for recruiting. A dozen hands, half able and half ordinary, would be a hundred and eighty-six dollars—twice that if every one of them demanded the full advance. With wages in the merchant service coming a bit higher than that, sure as certain they’d demand everything they could get. Still, the navy had it all over the merchants when it came to victuals . . . which reminded me I needed a cook, which would fetch another eighteen a month. I amended the figure in my head to two hundred and four dollars, and hollered out, “Mr. Horne, get the jolly boat alongside.”

  I calculated it would take several days to get even a dozen hands, and I dasn’t wait to get any of the senior ratings and ship’s officers I needed, what with the Secretary breathing down my neck; but even if our mission was all-that-fired important, I still needed a few days to get some uniforms made. My reefer’s jackets would do for daily wear, but I only had one lieutenant’s uniform coat, which I had on, and no proper dress coat worth the name. And there were cabin stores to be bought, and furniture, and blankets, and oilskins; hell and damnation, I didn’t even have a piece of paper to write it all down on.

  I had given half my back pay to Constance, and now I regretted it. But if I could be said to be fond of anyone in the world, it would be her, and I put the resentment from my mind. I would go ashore, fetch my sea chest and that dratted cat, who’d begun to grow on me, acquire what clothes and furniture I could, and make do with that. I knew what my next meal would be, and that would be good enough. That’s what I told myself, anyway.

  When I set up my recruiting table at the Connaught House, the same as where I had stayed before, there was so much to do that I hardly knew where to begin. I got through it without going aground, though, having handbills printed, sending Peebles and my little band of Tomahawks out with hammer and nails to post them, and sitting in that tarnal taproom all day without allowing myself a drop, not so much as small beer, while a trickle of no-account sailors came and went. The ones with four limbs were missing an eye, or were ruptured, or were old; the ones with only two or three limbs all said they could cook, but they didn’t look worth the trouble it’d be to get an acting-warrant for them, much less the pay.

  I was Tomahawk’s commander, master, purser, surgeon, and clerk. I was also my own first lieutenant. Despite the Secretary’s advice to call on the schooner’s former officers who were “not otherways appropriated,” I had soon discovered that not only were they other-ways appropriated, they’d absconded with themselves and the dishes too. The shortfall was reflected in the gunroom, as well; except for Acting Bosun Horne, the standing crew—carpenter, sailmaker, and gunner, who were supposed to be attached to a vessel rather than a ship’s company—had been pulled out and distributed elsewhere. It was entirely illegal, but there was nothing I could do about it without sounding like a bellyacher. I confirmed Gundy in his rating as quartermaster, which he accepted without comment beyond his usual “Iss, zur.” Peebles, with his enthusiasm for that tarnation carronade, could be our gunner if it turned out he could be trusted not to blow us all to hell. Horne and I would be everything else between us.

  At any rate, at length I assembled a respectable assortment of ordinaries and enough ables to keep them honest. I could allow I’d done good enough, and with a fair wind and a favorable tide I could no longer get around that clause in my orders about having sufficient men to work the schooner. I calculated I could sail her with four men per watch and another at the tiller. It might take a while to do anything, and nothing fancy, but we could do it.

  “Very well,” I gulped, taking a last look around the roadstead and noting the ships in motion and the direction of the wind. I was wearing Juge’s beat-up old hat for luck. Juge wasn’t scared of anything when he was alive. I pulled it down snug and felt some of his cheer coming over me. I grinned at Gundy and Horne. “Let’s get underway.”

  “What ’ee gaakin’ at?” said Gundy to Eriksson, O’Lynn, and the new Tomahawks. He pointed his thumb aloft. “Get abew and loose the tops’ls.”

  “D’ye hear the news there?” cried Horne, stalking the length of the deck and looking for shirkers. “All hands to make sail! All hands!”

  One man elbowed his mate in the ribs. “Listen at that nigger making a noise like a bosun! It ain’t natural, Bob Wilson.”

  “I should say not,” said Bob. “I don’t think we got to obey a nigger, do we?”

  Before I could open my mouth, though, Horne solved the problem by clopping Bob Wilson across the back of the head. Bob went sprawling, and Horne leaned over him, roaring, “It’s heavy duty for you, man! Get forrard to the windlass! Go! Go!” He reached out for Bob’s mate, too, but he scampered off on Bob’s tail, crying, “Anchor cable, aye aye, Mr. Horne!”

  With half a crew we passed through the Capes and struck out east to give Cape Hattaras a wide berth. After five days we got out of the Gulf Stream and into the true green of the deep Atlantic. There we turned south and boomed along, which I accomplished by letting Horne and Gundy see to the work and showing myself on deck whenever we needed to shift sails or shoot the sun. Mostly I paced the quarterdeck, looking officer-like and impressing Mr. Peebles, who needed impressing, it seemed to me. My first command—my first command!—and it began to dawn on me that I wasn’t entirely sure what to do about it.

  Tomahawk turned out to be nimbler than she looked, an eager and agreeable boat, not brilliantly fast but easy to work to windward. I tried not to love her; I guessed the Secretary’s haste was just his way of seeing I got down there without wasting any time, and that I’d be turning her over to some lieutenant with more experience and greater clout. But my chronic headache lifted in the sea breeze, so clean and cool after a summer in the city that I woke at first light every morning, even when I’d been on watch half the night, with energy and joy surging in my veins. And as I paced her spray-damp planks, I’d find myself patting her railings or gazing aloft just to see how prettily she carried her square topsails on her swept-back masts.

  The only mar in my happiness was a recurring nightmare in which I saw Peter Wickett in the Breeze, her decks awash and dismasted as she broke up beneath his feet. In the dream I saw his mouth working as a maelstrom sucked him down to the bottom of the sea; I couldn’t hear what he said. And then when the sea had calmed and closed, and I thought it was all over, he rose like a hideous fish to lie bloated and stinking among the wreckage. The port wine stain stood out like a bullet hole in his pale forehead. And then he opened his dead eyes and stared through me.

  Ten days out we spoke the Pickering, one of the fourteen-gun jackass brigs that had been laid down a few years earlier for the Revenue Cutter Service and that had been turned over to the navy, Master Commandant Benjamin Hillar
commanding, that was wallowing along in the company of a couple dozen merchantmen out of New Castle, Delaware. She was the new darling of the Rattle-Snake’s old sailing master, John Rogers, who looked as indestructible as ever with his granite jaw and oaken arms, and his tarry queue leaving brown dabs on the back of his white shirt in the heat. The day stands out with unnatural clarity in my mind, as if it shone through a camera obscura, but in truth it was an entirely ordinary day. As the breeze was gusting up about as windy as a mouse fart, I accepted Hillar’s invitation to dinner, and over his second-best Madeira I caught up on news and gossip.

  “Did you hear about the Breeze?” I said.

  “Aye, I read it in Claypoole’s Advertiser,” said Rogers. “Her people presumed drownded. That just means no one saw it happen, nor found any wreckage. But as you know Peter Wickett and I didn’t get on in life, I don’t guess I’ll humbug myself by grieving for him.” He thought about that, rubbing the bristles on his jaw. “I guess enemy is too harsh a word, but if ever there was a dangerous man to know, it was him.”

  “Why, how you talk! He never posed a danger to neither one of us. And he’s past that now, anyway.”

  He shrugged. “A dead snake still bites.”

  “Listen at how solemn you are! Now, see here, John Rogers, I recollect perfectly well how you two got along.” I caught Hillar’s eye and laughed as I remembered. “You won’t credit it, sir, but them two was like brothers—whatever one wanted, the other was again’ it. One of ’em couldn’t say it was Tuesday without the other one taking his affidavit it was Sunday.”

  “Can I help it he was ornery?” said Rogers, breaking into a smile. “And I allow his mean streak come in handy in a fight. I got no doubt them picaroons would’ve gotten the best of us if he hadn’t insisted on fighting.” He glanced uncomfortably at Hillar. However remote the chances might be, a charge of mutiny could still be levied against us if someone had a mind to.

  “I know all about that,” said Hillar, before I could speak. “Leastways enough to guess that what really happened isn’t what really happened, if you follow. I won’t ask you to tell me which stories are true and which aren’t. Were it my business to know it, I guess you’d have told me already. But say there, Mr. Graves! You ain’t told us about that fight betwixt the Rattle-Snake and those two privateers, and how she came to grief.”

  Hillar was a big pink man and had unshipped his seagoing face when we sat down to table. No doubt he’d put it back on as soon as we went up on deck again, but for now he was as mellow as brandy.

  “Oh, as for that,” I said, “I guess Mr. Rogers here has told you all about it.”

  “Why, yes, he did,” said Hillar. “And from what I can gather, you did it blind-staring naked, with a cutlass in every hand and a bandage over both eyes. He thinks you’re a lunatic.”

  I smiled at Rogers. “That right, John?”

  “Maybe that’s coming it a bit high.” He laughed, but he kept an eye on me. “Let’s just say unpredictable.”

  “There,” said Hillar. “Can’t say fairer than that.” He leaned sideways so he could see past me to the passage and shouted, “Hi, there! Fetch us in another bottle! Now, then, Mr. Graves, I hope you’ll do us the kindness of spilling all.”

  “Well, sir . . .” I waited for the steward to open the wine, till I realized he was taking his time about it so he could hear the story too. “Well, sir,” I said again, “I had been banished below when it all began, as Surgeon Quilty had taken the notion that I was out of my wits from having been kicked, stabbed, and shot out of a cannon five or six times.”

  “That’s putting it mild,” said Rogers.

  “Not a word of truth to it,” I said. “I just had been larruped in the head a couple more times than was good for me.”

  “You were addled-pated,” said Rogers. “There was some as wanted you put over the side.”

  “No! Say it ain’t so.”

  “It’s so. It made Peter Wickett plenty sore, too.”

  “That’s just like him not to mention it.” I weren’t sure if he meant Peter had been sore because someone wanted me gone or because I’d been a-booming along with all sails set and no one at the helm, so to speak. “Anyway,” I said, “I disremember exactly how it come about, for I had been strapped down, but suddenly there I was on the quarterdeck in nothing but my shirt. It was the first I knowed of it. I can’t hardly explain it, except it was like I was sleepwalking and then all on a sudden I woke up. ‘Where’s the captain?’ says I, peering around in the smoke. ‘Taken below just the minute, sir,’ says the quartermaster, an Irishman name of Brodie, ‘for the topmast cap has struck him a cruel blow.’ Smacked him, sir, right here on the brow, I believe,” I said to Hillar, tapping my forehead, “right where he has the port wine stain. Have you ever met him, sir?”

  Hillar had taken out a jackknife and was whittling himself a chaw off a plug. He shook his head. “Can’t say as I have.”

  “You can’t miss it when you see it, sir. It’s in the shape of Africa.”

  Rogers gave Hillar a look, but it wasn’t till later that I realized I’d been speaking of Peter in the present tense.

  I got through the story all right, judging by Hillar’s contented chawing and spitting, and the way the steward and the mess boys lingered in the passage instead of getting on with the washing up. If I faltered a little when I got to the part where Alonzo Connor, the conspiring blackguard whose treachery near cost us all our lives, stuck himself through the throat on my sword and then heaved himself to the sharks, or the part where I found my friend Juge surrounded by the bodies of Connor’s followers, croaking at me about honor and glory as the life leaked out of him—if I quavered, nobody told me about it. I could see the uneasy glances Hillar and Rogers gave each other when I finished the story, or rather when I got tired of it and just stopped talking. I drank off my wine and poured myself another.

  Rogers cleared his throat. “How’s your mate Dick Towson getting on? Last I heard, you two were waiting on Captain Tingey.”

  “Dick’s no mate to me.”

  “Oh, is that so? How’d that come about?”

  “He beat me out for a berth in the Insurgent.”

  “Berth as what?”

  “Fletcher wanted two mids and would’ve took me as senior. We spliced the mainbrace a time or two, me and Dick. Next thing I knew it was morning and he had shoved off without me.”

  Rogers and Hillar stared at each other, the way you do when you’re not sure how to react to what someone’s said. And then they both laughed, and before I knew it I was laughing right along with them.

  “Well, if you aren’t an ungrateful pup,” said Hillar, slapping the table. He was laughing too hard to get any more words out for a while, but at last he managed, “Here you are a lieutenant—with a command—and you’re—har har!—you’re crying because your best pal is a reefer and you aren’t. That’s just too many,” he said, wiping his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I am flummoxed.”

  I watched the watery track my tumbler made as it rolled along the tabletop. A wicked swell was coming up from the south.

  “I guess maybe it’s his sister I’m put out with,” I said—to my instant regret, for it obliged me to sketch out my failed courtship of Arabella Towson. I even had to tell them about Roby Douglass.

  “Aye, she’s a looker, all right,” said Rogers. “But flighty. She’d never do as a wife, except for her father’s money. Ever an eye for the next chap. Word is she played merry hell with the young bucks of the Eastern Shore, you don’t mind my saying.”

  “I do mind you saying. But I calculate you’re right.” I took a little more wine. “With a stepmother like that, how could she be such a bitchy sailer?”

  “I’ve met Lily Towson,” said Rogers. “There’s an angel among women.”

  “You’ve met her? Where?”

  Rogers put a finger alongside his nose and said, “I dasn’t be telling tales.” He winked. “But I will say she was gentleman’s friend i
n her day. Delightful and handsome. Cake and lemonade with her offered a more satisfying memory than a week with the finest whore in Philadelphia.”

  “I’d place a higher value on her than that,” said I. “She’s a first-rate among a fleet of wormy tubs. So say I with all my heart, John Rogers, and I’ll knock you down if you say other.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me. And don’t think anything ungenteel happened betwixt us, because it didn’t.” He put his hand on my arm, and I pulled away. “It appears to me someone’s fonder of the hen than of the chick,” he said. “Dick Towson wrote me you’d spent your mornings with her and could scarcely take your eyes off of her. He thinks of you as a brother and gave it no deeper thought. But d’you think of her as a mother, I wonder?”

  As he spoke, my resentment of Dick came flooding back worse than ever. I guessed he could’ve stood up with me if he’d wanted. It didn’t matter if it didn’t make sense—I just couldn’t shake it.

  “You’re stepping on dangerous ground, there, John Rogers. I’m warning you fair and square.”

  His honest brown eyes grew troubled. “Ease off, Mr. Graves, I meant no offense.”

  “Well, let’s just say Dick Towson is no brother of mine.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it. You’d do worse for a brother than him. He’s a good chap with only the kindest of motives, despite his money. Less wicked than some, says I.” He rapped his knuckles on the table. “Though I hate to speak ill of the dead, lest I meet the same fate.”

  I’d been listening with half an ear to the creaking of the rigging and feeling the motion of the Pickering with my belly as much as anything. I glanced out the stern windows at the breeze playing across the sea, and saw the topsails of the brig astern of us begin to fill and shiver, and heard footsteps crossing the deck overhead toward the after hatchway. Before the man could call down that the wind was fetching out of the southeast, I stood up so sudden that I even surprised myself.

  “Thank’ee for a most excellent dinner, Captain Hillar.” My headache had roared back up, and I had to think about each word. “I’ll see you both in Le Cap, I guess. I don’t expect you aim to keep company with this lubberly set of merchantmen.”