by RA Williams
‘Yet here you are, a ship’s captain.’
‘It ain’t the same.’ Looking across the sun-drenched calm, he added, ‘Sea is all I know.’
Her gaze joined his. ‘On days like this, it’s not a bad place,’ Elle said.
‘Ain’t found yourself a yeoman?’
She screwed up her face.
‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘Swell girl like you. Must be boxing them off with a bullwhip.’
‘Something happened that night,’ she blurted, without meaning to. Leaning back in her lounger, she pulled on her sunglasses, hoping he would let go of her admission. Corky acknowledged her with a nod but made no comment. ‘You’re the uncle I never had, Cork. You know I don’t hold bellicose men in high esteem.’
‘Window-lickers, the lot.’
‘I don’t know. Maybe I’m too cynical,’ she said, taking a drag from her cigarette. ‘Mother and Father fostered in me an appreciation of the world. And I dove headlong into it. But, Titanic.’ Normally, this is where she would end the conversation. But not only was Corky like family to her, he was there that night. ‘Titanic hit me like a brick wall. What I was witness to is the reason I became an ethnographer.’
Corky fitted his pipe between tightly clenched teeth. ‘Crikey. Sound like a proper doctor as well, dun ya?’
‘I’m no society dame sitting around in pumps quoting Mauss. I’m true to my words. My wanderlust is a practical application of my degree—’
She bent to pull a stack of ungraded term papers from her valise, and gave them a shake.
‘—not this pedagogy.’
He nodded. ‘Well then, what do you and your pedagogy hanker for?’
‘Hanker for?’ She sighed wistfully, thumb touching the only trace of Balthasar she had. ‘“You’ve a long dark road ahead,” Balthasar said to me.’
The statement’s opaqueness had drawn her in.
‘I’ve been on that road since Titanic sank. I’ve faltered more times than I want to admit, praying for an end to my nihilism.’
She looked up at Corky, a smile crossing her face.
‘But not today. Today I’m confident, and that road is considerably brighter.’ She looked to the distance, the red-and-white-striped lighthouse of Hope Town just visible off the starboard bow.
‘I never shall forget the morning after the night before.’ Corky drifted away with his own thoughts now. ‘When we was picked up by the steamer Carpathia, your ma’ and da’ were right shaken.’
He turned to her. She hung on his every word. Never had she heard him speak directly about that terrible night.
‘When a man is pulled out a lifeboat after they been through something terrible, you see it in their eyes. Like some kind of shroud has been pulled over them, never to be taken off again. When I looked into yours…’
He paused, clearly muddling with what he was trying to say to her.
‘Go dtitfidh an oíche ort.’
Elle raised her eyebrows, awaiting explanation.
‘It’s Gaelic. Sorta means “that night will befall ya”.’
She shrugged.
‘Sort out what you witnessed, Eleanor. Sort it out before it sorts you out. I think you witnessed something terrible. More terrible than the rest of us seen.’
‘You see a lot, Corky.’
He did. He seemed to see right through her.
Standing from the lounger, Elle went to the bow rail, not wanting to look Corky in the eye. Fearful he would work out she wasn’t quite the hard-as-you-like character she oft portrayed.
‘Who was he?’
‘My vestige,’ she said, losing herself among the shimmering shallows. ‘I seek a world far bleaker than the one our awakened eye sees.’
For the longest time, she stood in silence, reverently watching the sea ebb and flow.
‘Suppose my inwardness is a by-product of my vestige. In a hiding place in my mind is a light that never goes out. “You’ve a long dark road ahead of you.” What is that even meant to mean?’
She was whispering now.
‘A long dark road before the reveal? Or to uncover his identity? Or perhaps he simply meant I had a long walk below Titanic’s decks ahead of me?’
She recalled his gaunt face, skin pale, and those fascinating, empty eyes. Her heart beat with what he had given to her. And it caused her no end of frustration that she couldn’t work out why the briefest of moments had left such an indelible mark upon her very soul. Maybe it was for that reason. A briefest of moments was not nearly enough.
‘My vestige caused a rift in my life, impossible to fill. So much changed in one night. Here I am. I walk alone. Yet never say goodbye.’
She turned to Corky. He sat in her lounger, head see-sawing to the side as he softly snored.
Weezy was the bee’s knees. Built by Bahamian chippies, the yacht’s sixty feet of decks and railings were accented with teak, while her interior was fitted out in cherry. Twin three-fifty engines and a five-hundred-gallon diesel tank gave the ship enough range to ply the Abacos a week at a go. Sitting in her lounger on the bow, Elle had nothing more to do than watch Corky navigate into Hope Town harbour at half a knot. It wasn’t too tricky, but Elle had seen plenty of boats stray from the red channel markers, beaching on shifting sandbars.
Inhabited by anglers, transient breakers and a few pirates, Hope Town had not ripened much since British loyalists, fleeing the newly independent United States, founded a trading station there. Some of the cays had added tarmacadam airstrips, electricity and even telephones. Others remained uninhabited. A two-week holiday here offered Elle exactly the seclusion she required to reconsider the theory Dr Mauss had proclaimed à ses débuts. In its infancy.
She’d had two days on the train to mull over his revelations. The truth felt ever closer, with her wild sign explained. But where did Balthasar Toule fit into her theory?
À ses débuts.
Letting off the engines, Corky helmed over, allowing the yacht to pass the lighthouse warning ships of the thorny reef to the windward side of the island.
‘Hasn’t changed titch nor tittle,’ he shouted through the open bridge windows.
Elle smiled. ‘You say the same thing every year.’
‘Reflector come from Manchester fifty years ago. Imagine the locals’ surprise the first time it lit up the night?’
‘You say that every year as well.’
‘Slips are chock-full.’
Weezy slowed to a drift. Anchor dropping, she joined other pleasure craft moored between smack boats and sponge schooners.
Tucking her ungraded papers into her clunky Gladstone bag, Elle hefted it over her shoulder, lowering the brim of a straw hat over her eyes. She found Corky and an able-bodied seaman making ready the launch. Tossing her bag into the little boat, she sat at the bow.
‘That long dark road…’ said Corky, knocking his pipe against the rail and emptying its tobacco into the water, ‘Can you make a detour?’
‘You were actually listening?’
He nodded. ‘Ain’t much I miss. So listen then, there’s an old ship captain in Hope Town.’
‘There’s a lot of old ship captains in Hope Town, Corky.’
‘This one lives in a blue-painted cottage, bit down the path from the ferry dock. Can’t miss it. His schooner is tied up round the back. Adel, she’s called. Ask for Captain Henrikson.’
She didn’t recognise the name. ‘Thanks. Perhaps I shall.’
‘No perhapsing,’ he replied with an authority she wasn’t used to. ‘See him directly.’
‘What’s this about?’
‘It’ll be worth your while, Eleanor. I can promise you.’
‘All right, then. I’ll stop round and see him,’ she replied, firing the launch’s outboard. It puttered more than roared. Engaging the prop, she pulled away from Weezy, Corky waving her off. She waved back, trusting him without reservation.
She hadn’t the first idea why visiting an old sea dog was important, but it couldn’t be any less so than h
er alternative plan of sitting under a coconut palm soaking up the Bahamian sun.
Making for the rickety ferry dock, she moored alongside a dozen tied-off launches, straining in the current. Grabbing her bag, she ambled barefoot off the dock’s creaking wooden planks, following a narrow dirt path edged with roses that spilled sweetness into the air.
True to Corky’s word, a modest Bahamian-blue cottage appeared. A battered Model T, back seat piled high with seafaring jumble, hissed and pinged beside a boathouse. She felt the hood. It was still hot. Someone had just returned from a supply run. Tipping the brim of her straw hat, she looked over the cottage’s shingled roof. Twin masts jutted above.
A towpath led to an impressive schooner, its teak handrails and boom gleaming from a fresh application of marine spar. Stores of every description sat on the dock. Supplies for keeping a working ship at sea for weeks.
Touching a hand-cranked air pump, Elle’s fingers came away sticky with red paint. She wiped them on an old discarded rag before inspecting copper diving helmets and coils of air hose, piled on a sea chest. Bare-chested crewmen manhandled a clunky winch onto the schooner’s quarterdeck.
A racket arose below decks – a flurry of effing and blinding. Someone evidently wasn’t happy. A moment later, a tousled character, skin weathered from adventure, appeared from an aft stairwell, his thin white moustache twitching as he carried a dead rodent to the rail. Tossing it overboard, he removed his pork-pie hat, wiping the sweat from his brow. Replacing his hat, he noticed Elle standing on the dock looking at him.
‘Rats eating holes in the wirework.’ She noted his accent. It wasn’t quite American, nor English. Removing a rag from his pocket, he rubbed his greasy hands once over. ‘All right there, missy?’
‘Looking for a Captain Henrikson.’
Sauntering down the brow, he met her on the dock.
‘That’s me.’
‘Lovely schooner.’
‘Adel’s been round the horn a few times, but I wouldn’t dare change a jot of her,’ he replied proudly. ‘Found her in a knacker’s yard. Shame to see a lady stripped and sold off in bits. She’s fast, but at two hundred and fifty feet she’s a big girl for the sort of racing done these days.’
Tossing the rag aside, he took a half-smoked stogy from his shirt pocket and clenched it in his teeth.
‘A bit sharp with her cod’s head and mackerel tail, but Adel’s spry enough to run when there’s good blow.’
Distracted by his crew manhandling the red pumps up the brow to the deck, he yelled out, ‘Careful with those, lads! Make doubly sure they’re well lashed down. If we lose ’em in a squall we’ll have a devil of a time replacing them.’
Henrikson turned back to her. ‘You got me at a disadvantage.’
She gave him her quizzical look.
‘We’re not yet acquainted.’
‘Elle Annenberg,’ she said, thrusting out her hand.
‘Dr Eleanor Annenberg?’
Caution. She never liked when anyone knew more about her than she them. She nodded.
‘Aren’t I a berk?’ Grasping her hand, he shook it gladly. ‘Half expected you to look like Eleanor Roosevelt, not Greta Garbo.’
She nearly blushed. ‘You’re too kind.’
‘Thank goodness you arrived before we made way.’
‘I’m not entirely sure why I’ve come.’
‘Cork didn’t tell you?’
She shook her head. He smiled. There was wisdom in it.
‘I’ve a kettle on, Doc.’
‘I’d not refuse a cuppa, Captain Henrikson.’
‘Skip,’ he said, showing her towards his cottage. ‘We’re not much on formality in these cays.’
Settling into a bleached wicker chair, she watched as he disappeared through the kitchen door. He reappeared some moments later with a tea service.
‘Detroit, eh?’ he said, laying out cups and saucers. ‘Lake-effect winters – that wind coming off Lake Michigan, turning a snow flurry into an arctic blizzard – I wish to forget being that cold.’
‘Dreary this time of the year.’
‘I sailed the Great Lakes as a young man. I come from Halifax.’
That explained the accent. ‘How did you come to know Corky?’
‘Weezy’s skipper. Fine ship, she is. And he’s a fine chap.’ Pouring her tea, he returned the pot to the service, sat down and smiled again, his lean face bunched with wrinkles he had surely earned. ‘He lent me an interesting read… “Mayan Wild Signs”.’
Elle felt a small pang of caution again. ‘Whatever am I to make of a skipper who reads a mundane paper, published in a prep school magazine?’
‘An imaginative paper,’ he replied, offering her the sugar bowl. ‘Ethnology and penny dreadful all in one.’
‘Thank you, I prefer my tea bitter. Like me.’
‘Can’t imagine why,’ he replied, pouring half of the bowl into his cup. ‘I admit to having found the grizzlier details of your paper disturbing for such a presentable young lady.’
‘Now I’m the one at a disadvantage.’
‘I hardly think you would permit yourself to be at a disadvantage,’ he said with a sureness Elle admired.
‘It’s just I don’t know a thing about you,’ she replied.
Henrikson wiped his moustache with a linen napkin. ‘Some months back, I had a dab at a shipwreck lying on the reef off Man-O-War Cay. A squall came up and swamped my launch. I was left bobbing about in an angry sea without so much as a lifebelt. Cork was transiting between cays on Weezy – if he hadn’t happened upon me, I’d be a sea sponge on the reef by this time.’
Lifting a plate of sandwiches, he offered one to Elle.
‘I’m fond of him too,’ she said, accepting a sandwich gratefully. She hadn’t eaten since the train in Miami. She took a bite, thinking it was potato and cheese, but the texture was all wrong.
‘It’s breadfruit,’ he offered, before she could ask. ‘I brought a couple of saplings back from my first trip to Honduras.’
‘Honduras?’ Now she was intrigued.
‘Heard of Henry Morgan?’
‘Great rum. Silly hat.’
‘A man who wore many hats,’ Henrikson replied. ‘One as a nobleman, another as Brethren of the Coast.’
‘You mean piracy.’
‘That’s his other hat. Buccaneering was a respectable trade, you know. Morgan had a habit of raiding fat Spanish gold fleets on their return from the Central Americas.’
As Henrikson twined on, Elle’s eyes were drawn to Adel just as crewmen carried copper diving helmets up the brow.
‘You appear to be provisioning.’
‘Replenishing,’ he corrected. ‘I returned from Honduras two days ago. I’ll heave anchor soon enough and head back.’
‘All right, Skip,’ she said, putting down her sandwich. ‘Now you have my full attention.’
Henrikson leaned forward in his chair and gave her his in return.
‘In the 1600s, conquistadors were looting and razing what remained of the ancient Maya. Copán in particular.’
She nodded, game for the conversation. ‘Copán wasn’t merely a treasure chest of Aztec gold,’ Elle said. ‘It contained a trove of Mayan stelae, lost by time.’
‘No, they’re not lost.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘The Spanish discovered the Copán trove.’ He had a dainty sip of his tea. ‘And took it.’
‘I’m no expert, Captain Henrikson, but—’
‘Skip.’
‘Okay, Skip. If those spokes were put into the wheel of history, we’d know all about it.’
‘I’m not talking guff, Elle. Hear out my sea yarn.’
‘Surrender another one of those sandwiches, then.’
Passing her the entire plate, he continued.
‘Spain’s gold fleets were in constant danger of attack, be it from French corsairs or British buccaneers. So concerned were the Spanish they formed flota for their plunder.’
‘Flota?
’
‘Like the American navy convoys, to protect merchant ships crossing the Atlantic from German submarines in the Great War. The Spanish flota consisted of two very heavily armed galleons – Capitana and Almirante – protecting nine merchant naos. But the Spanish made a critical mistake: they consigned the Copán haul to the fleet’s fastest ship, Señora de Marisol.’
‘With all due respect, where exactly is this supposed great haul?’ Elle asked between chews.
‘Henry Morgan,’ he replied, matter-of-factly. ‘His buccaneers intercepted the flota off Islas de la Bahia, mere specks of land off the Honduran coast. His ships bombarded the galleons, separating them from de Marisol. Morgan, on his own flagship – Griffin – boarded her, and with sword and rapier he overpowered the Spanish crew, transferred the haul to his vessel and sank de Marisol with enfilade fire.’
Elle continued chewing. ‘Enfilade?’
‘A volley from multiple guns.’
She shrugged.
‘You’re not convinced,’ he said, resting his teacup on its saucer. Henrikson stood and invited her to inspect his schooner.
Taking one more sandwich to keep her going, they boarded Adel.
‘She’s a big sucker. Must be three times the length of Weezy,’ Elle remarked.
‘Won the America’s Cup.’
‘She’s beautiful, Skip. Why would anyone break her?’
‘Adel’s too heavy for the racing style nowadays.’
‘It’s a fantastic sea yarn, Skip,’ she finally said about his tale. ‘I really liked it. But you speak of a haul of vast historical importance, never mind millions of dollars in gold. The missing stelae of Copán could crack the mystery of what caused the Classic Maya to vanish.’
‘And turn your theory into fact.’
He had her there.
‘Doesn’t change the fact that none of the nine missing stelae have reappeared.’
‘The sea took ’em,’ he said. ‘Morgan’s own ship was sunk in a hurricane between the islands of Roatán and Utila. All hands lost.’
The crew struggled by, carrying a load of diving apparatus. She suddenly realised what Henrikson’s expedition was all about.
‘You found Morgan’s ship.’
He directed her towards the foredeck.
