Peter Wicked

by Broos Campbell

  He squinched his eyes at me. He was already on his knees, but he didn’t look scared at all. He just looked sad.

  “It were a good piece of actin’ all around,” he said. “An’ I guess I’d of gotten away with it if ye hadn’t poked your nose in where it weren’t wanted.”

  I put my boot on his shoulder and shoved him back on his rump. Without his legs under him he wouldn’t be tempted to jump up on me.

  “Tell you what,” I said. “Count me out a hundred of them dollars so I got something to show the commodore, and I’m gone. You remember now—he was French.”

  “Oh, ay-yuh, that he were. Short and fat, he was. An’ he stank like Old Harry’s outhouse, too.”

  “Don’t be making up anything your people didn’t see. Just keep saying he was French, and I’m satisfied. I’ll be sending over some chocolate and sugar, and some milk from my goat as well. Be sure Martha gets it.” I rubbed my shin. “She’ll be expecting it, you know.”

  “Oh, ay-yuh,” he said, also rubbing his shin.

  “Good-bye, good-bye,” Martha called as we pulled away from the Horseneck.

  “Good-bye, dearie, good-bye,” the Tomahawks called in return, waving their hats and missing their stroke.

  “Eyes in the boat,” growled Horne. “Give way, dearies!”

  TWELVE

  As I lay in the stuffy darkness of my cabin that night, waiting for daylight before making the run down the West Channel through the Virgin Islands, my eyes kept springing open. It wasn’t just worry that kept me from sleeping, and it wasn’t just being bent double in a hammock instead of swaying gently in a hanging cot, neither. It was Greybar, rumbling on my chest like a Watt steam engine. The vibration was comforting, but a hot fur plaster ain’t what you want in the tropics.

  It hadn’t sat right with me, coercing Browbury into lying about Peter. I thrashed around in my hammock till Greybar dug his claws into me and I lay still again.

  Browbury had it coming, but I hadn’t gave it to him. What I had gave him was a bagful of silver for dealing in smuggled goods. I told myself it was just on account of his daughter that I’d let him keep the money; but it weren’t my money to give, which meant I’d as good as stole it.

  And I couldn’t believe that Commodore Gaswell was conducting this charade willingly, but conducting it he was, and I had to follow his lead wherever it went. And that fool cat kept a-digging his claws into me every time I fidgeted. I hauled him up by the scruff, dropped him on the deck, threw my legs over the edge of the hammock to follow him—but if I did that then the watch on deck would know I couldn’t sleep. I flopped back into the hammock.

  “Shit and perdition,” I whispered in the dark, but a whisper don’t carry the comfort that a full-gale bellow does. I trailed my hand, letting Greybar bat at my fingers.

  I didn’t want anybody but me going after Peter. Anybody else would kill him or die trying. It was like trying to get a badger out of a steel trap. I just wanted him out and gone. “But I want to keep my fingers, too,” I said to Greybar, withdrawing my hand, and he thumpered off somewhere in the dark.

  I sat up again and swung my feet. So, what was justice? Peter had a fine sense of it, or at least he’d showed himself highly sensible of in justice—if it was even Peter I was looking for. Maybe the commodore hadn’t come at it direct because he wasn’t entirely sold on the notion that Peter and Captain Mèche were the same man. But his cook sure sounded like Doc, and the handsome fellow and the dirty one sounded an awful lot like Corbeau and Ben Crouch.

  Whoever it was I was looking for, he had two days’ head start on me, according to Browbury. They’d sailed south-southwest with a load of silk and dressmaker’s dolls. The direction made the Dutch islands of Saba and Saint Eustatia unlikely, and they were too near the British naval base in Saint Kitts, anyway. Mèche might be making for a port to sell his cargo, or heading for a depot of some sort. He was shorthanded, else he wouldn’t be taking men every time he detained a ship; and from what I’d gathered from Browbury, the raree-show had occurred with Saba in sight about ten leagues north-northeast.

  And almost as clearly as if he stood before me in the flickering shade of a paw-paw tree, with a wicker basket dangling from his hand and the Atlantic stretching out at his back, I heard Peter back in San Domingo saying, “I shall go where the birds dwell.” And with that memory to spark it, my mind’s eye conjured up the map of the Caribbean that I’d been looking at day and night.

  I leaned my head and give a yell: “Ahoy on deck! On deck there, fetch me a light!”

  When it didn’t magically appear right at that very second, I grabbed a candle, ran up the ladder, and stuck my head through the hatchway. In the dim glow of the binnacle light I saw O’Lynn at the tiller and Horne at the conn beside him, both of them looking at me like I had horns on my head.

  “Here!” I held out my candle. “You got nothing quicker then light it off the stern lantern.”

  Burning candle in hand, I hopped back down the ladder and into the alcove that served as the Tomahawk’s chartroom, yanking out drawers and pawing through charts till I found one that showed the whole West Indies.

  Considering his cargo and his poverty of documentation, Browbury would have kept Saint Kitts and its cruisers at a respectful distance, but long habit and a natural desire to make good time would have held him within a reasonable distance of the Leeward Islands. If I was to run contraband into the United States I would have stood out into the Atlantic, to keep all islands and shipping lanes as far away as possible, but more than likely Browbury’s deep-water navigation left something to be desired, and he poked along from landfall to landfall. He wouldn’t be the first ship’s master to be bested by sines and cosines. But a man like Peter, a man with mathematics and an understanding of old-fashioned saltwater sailing, the kind you did with taste and smell and a feeling in the gut—

  Somewhere . . . for the life of me, I had no idea what—there! A tiny footprint out in the middle of nowhere, south-southeast of Saint Croix and a hundred-something miles west of Guadeloupe. It was about as far from land as you could get in the eastern Caribbean, and probably so low it was near about invisible till you rode right up onto it. I smacked my hand on the chart table.

  Blinking in the light of the single candle, the big man edged beside me into the alcove under the ladder. Drops of spray on his peacoat filled the tiny space with the smell of damp wool.

  “Mr. Horne, how is your navigation?”

  He looked at me kind of sideways. “That’s Gundy’s department, ain’t it, sir?”

  “It ain’t like you to shirk, Mr. Horne. He’s a rating, you’re a warrant officer.”

  “I’m not—yes, sir.” He rubbed a knuckle against his nose. “Well, I can box the compass.”

  “You say it like pulling teeth out of your own head. Can you read and figure?”

  “Yes, sir. A bosun has to be able to keep a log.”

  “I guess we should have Mr. Peebles here. Is he on deck?”

  “No, sir, the child’s asleep. Want me to roust him out?”

  “Not yet. Now, this is important.” I pointed at an X I’d penciled on the chart and a line I’d drawn away from it. “There’s our position. Where are we, what course is that, and where will it take us?”

  “Looks like seventeen degrees, forty-five minutes north by forty-five degrees, forty-five minutes west. That can’t be right. Oh, I see—it says here, ‘Longitude west from Ferro,’ which is the northwest tip of Spain. We’re using Washington City as zero degrees now, ain’t we?”

  “Them charts is a mish-mash of American and French and Spanish and British. The British use their observatory at Greenwich as zero degrees, and considering how many ships call at London, that’s good enough for me. I’ve wrote the differences in the margin.”

  “Yes, sir, I see it now.” He picked up a pair of dividers.

  “This here chart’s six years old,” I said, “but I don’t imagine the islands have moved much in that time. Now, how do
we get from here to there?” I tapped my finger on here and there.

  He adjusted the dividers against the scale in the chart’s margin. “After we round East End on Santa Cruz, we head southeast by south for . . .” He walked off the distance with the dividers. “About forty-five leagues, looks like, till we get to fifteen degrees forty minutes north. Then we start looking for this Birds Island, it says here.” He ignored the Spanish name in capital letters, isla de aves, in favor of the English name below it in italic.

  “Don’t forget about leeway and the prevailing current.”

  “No, sir, I haven’t. That’s why I figured on sou’east by south instead of sou’-sou’east. Let’s see now.” He took up a pencil and made some calculations. “I go with that,” he said, showing his numbers. “Then when I got about here I’d start heaving the lead. No need to break out the deep-sea line—anything less than twenty fathoms puts us on the Aves Bank. I’ve sailed across the north end of it, up by Saba, same as near about everybody else in the schooner, though I never heard of this island before. I’d charge the lead, too—muddy bottom puts us to the west of the middle ground, and sand puts us east. Rock puts us in the middle. Once I’ve found those rocks, then I know where I’m at on the bank, and once I know that, it’s just a matter of walking down south and a little west till we fetch up against it.” He pointed at a dotted line and a mess of crosses around the north side of the island. “Hopefully not at night, though, because of this reef here.”

  “Very good. Any questions?”

  “Yes, sir. What’s at Birds Island?”

  “Dunno yet. Now rouse out our young gentleman. I want a word with him.”

  Our young gentleman was eager but unequal to the task of figuring out where Tomahawk was, much less where she was to go. His guess that we fetch Birds Island by sailing southeast along a line penciled on the chart was accurate in that the island lay in that general direction, but by his method we might fetch bang-up against Trinidad before we knew we’d missed our mark. I couldn’t remember the last time my head didn’t hurt, and a dreary sense of responsibility began to temper my enthusiasm for command—a notion I recoiled from as soon as I thought it.

  I made myself look around my cabin—my cabin!—while Peebles labored over his figures. I still had to sleep in a hammock, true, but that was because I hadn’t bothered to get someone to knock a cot together for me. Same with a table—I could’ve had at least Peebles and Horne in to share my salt pork and beans. If I was lonely it was my own dang fault.

  I had to guide Peebles into useful subordination, not force him. Of course he was near useless, it being the natural state of boys, as I well knew from my own self, but it was my responsibility to make him useful; and if I did it right, it might be well worth the effort in years to come. But right now I had to find some way for him to pay his own freight.

  Despite myself I was feeling a bit of appreciation for my old captain in the Aztec, Asa Malloy, who’d promoted me over Dick and the other fellows. He’d rarely had me beaten—just that one time, really. He’d gave me all the responsibility I could handle and then some, which naturally rendered me capable of more responsibility. I’d misliked it at the time, wanting to skylark in the rigging by day with Dick and the other reefers, playing follow-my-leader through the rigging or running along the yard with arms thrust out for balance, praying I reached the topping lift before I lost my balance and ran off into the void. I wanted to pull pranks again, like the time half a dozen of us ran through the gunroom at four bells in the middle watch, cutting down the warrant officers’ hammocks and then scampering for our lives up the rigging as the gunner roared and the sea officers like to died laughing. I’d wanted to sleep the night away like the others. Instead I climbed out of the fuggy warmth of the midshipmen’s den to stand watch in the middle of the night, and got my ears boxed by the sailing master when I was stupid about answering questions, and tended to the schoolmaster and his perdition trigonometry in the forenoon, and learned my knots and splices from my sea daddy in the dogwatches. It was only that Malloy had knocked me down with his bare hand instead of dealing out proper ship’s discipline that had brought on our falling out. And Peter had put up with a good deal of inconvenience on my behalf as well. It must’ve been a burden to him that I was the captain’s cousin when we were in the Rattle-Snake, and a raving looby half the time before the end, but he’d managed to terrify me into obedience at the same time he helped me build a belief in my own abilities as navigator, sailor, and leader.

  I’d been lax with Peebles. I didn’t guess he’d respond too well to terror, but he was so tarnal inoffensive that I wanted to thump him sometimes.

  I gave him an impromptu lesson in basic seamanship, coaxing him through the thirty-two points of the compass and then showing them to him on the compass rose, printed right there on the chart, and then making him box the compass again.

  “Here,” I said, showing him the chart once more. “That mark is where we are, and that island is where we want to get. And the chart has some remarks on the island, see?”

  He peered at the faint script, his lips working as he read.

  “Says there’s a couple trees, or were at one time, and those marks around the”—he broke off to consult the compass rose again—“around the northeast, that’s a reef, or rocks, I expect.”

  “So then what’s the correct course? Listen,” I said, when he mumbled another wrong answer, “you got to learn your trigonometry, Mr. Peebles. Someday it might keep you off a lee shore or close you more readily with an enemy. You can use it to find your position, or tell if a chase is closing the distance or pulling away from you. You can use it to discover the exact distance of an object of known height, like a mountain or a lighthouse or, say, the Columbia’s maintop.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Trigonometry ain’t an arcane and frightening science. It’s just triangles, is all it is, and the compass points are just another way of expressing the number of degrees in an angle.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “If you know one side of a triangle—say, a lighthouse that rises eighty feet above sea level—and two of the angles—in this case a right angle, because the lighthouse is perpendicular to the sea, and whatever angle you get when you shoot the lighthouse with your sextant, or octant, or whatever you happen to have—why then, you can calculate any of the other sides or angles.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” He stifled a yawn, opening his eyes a little wider to keep looking like he was interested.

  “Triangles are the simplest of shapes,” I said, “and a pleasure once you get used to ’em. That might seem pretty strange to you now, but when you’re a post-captain booming along in your very own fortyfour-gun frigate, I guess you’ll see what I mean.” I felt like an idiot as soon as I said it. What did I know about booming along in my very own forty-four? But the boy wanted perking up. He was droopy. “And who knows,” I said, “maybe you’ll even be a commodore someday, with a line of frigates at your beck and call!”

  “Aye aye, sir. I mean, yes, sir.”

  “Now then, mister, to brass tacks. In a frigate there’d be a schoolmaster to learn you your numbers, and learn you your grammar and make you write a fair hand, and learn you drawing and watercolors for making maps, but in a little old schooner like Tomahawk we’ll have to toss you in and see can you swim. But I know you can keep your head above water until you find your stroke.”

  “Yes, sir. Aye aye, sir.”

  “We are in a delicate situation, Mr. Peebles. You’ve heard rumors of this man Mèche we’re seeking?”

  “Yes, sir. Real name’s Peter Wickett and he’s gone a-pirating, sir.”

  “Oh. Yes.” I cleared my throat. “It looks that way. Well, we’re to bring him to heel. There’ll be no margin for error. There are certain extraordinary steps I got to take to make sure of our success.” I reached over and knocked on the wooden bulkhead to ward off hubris. “I got to make the most of every advantage that presents itself.”

 
“Yes, sir. You want Mr. Horne as mate instead of pretending like I’m second in command.”

  Out of the mouths of babes! “What makes you say that, Mr. Peebles?”

  “Stands to reason, sir. He’s your only warrant officer besides me, and he’s a man-o’-war man through and through, which I’m not yet, and the people like him. He occupies himself taking sightings when it’s his watch. He’s been trying to teach me but without much success. I think I’m getting close. It makes sense when we’re talking about gun trajectories—which, now that I think of it, is much the same thing.”

  “Horne takes sightings when he’s on watch?”

  “Yes, sir. He plots our dead reckoning, but always sort of on the quiet, as if it’s a hobby or something. And he shoots the sun at noon, and he takes at least two star sightings at morning and evening twilight both. I think he’s got the star almanac memorized.”

  “Well, I doubt that—”

  “Besides, sir, it’s the guns I love,” he continued, unmindful that he’d interrupted his captain. “Mr. Horne’s amazing quick when it comes to elevations and ranges, but I think I’ve begun to headreach on him. I don’t have to work out the calculations, though he makes me do it, and lord how tedious that is, I don’t mind telling you, sir. I can feel the trajectories—I know when a gun is laid right. Don’t know how else to describe it, sir.”

  “But that’s exactly how navigation is, Mr. Peebles. The difference is that with navigation, you don’t have to deal with trajectories—it’s as if the shot didn’t drop but kept going in a straight line after you fired it, and at a constant speed, too. Except that the wind varies, sure, but that’s analogous to the sea’s currents. There’s no gravity to skew the results, is what I mean. It’s much simpler than gunnery.”