Robbie Taggart

by Michael Phillips

  “Taggart, eh?” His look and tone left little doubt that he was singularly unimpressed. “So ye’re the new mate.”

  Robbie had not seen Pike since that night at the Rum Runner; was the old seaman so confident of Robbie’s final decision that he had actually spread the word of his coming?

  “Is the skipper available?”

  Digger cocked his head toward Drew. “Run below an’ fetch the cap’n,” he ordered.

  Drew complied, and soon disappeared down the main hatch. Robbie and the boatswain stood silently together. Digger peeled off a sweat-soaked bandana tied around his forehead, and with strong fingers squeezed it nearly dry.

  “I’ll be headin’ back to work,” he said at length, turning to leave.

  “Tell me,” said Robbie, and as he spoke the bo’sun stopped, “is that other fellow a member of the crew?”

  “Just barely,” said Digger with a smirk; “he’s an ordinary seaman. Now if ye don’t mind, I gots me work.” Without waiting further leave, he swung away, scrambled up the ladder of the quarter deck where he had apparently been engaged in some activity at the back of the deck house.

  Robbie tried to return his attention to the ship, but now his thoughts were filled with these two men he had just met. Two more dissimilar characters he could not hope to encounter. He wondered what the rest of the crew would be like. As first mate, Robbie would be required to command them all. And though he did not fear leadership, he knew that every man was capable of presenting his own special kind of problems to someone in authority. He was not left to ponder his fate long, however, for within a few minutes Pike climbed into view from the main hatch.

  “Robbie—ha, ha! You son of a sea cook!” Pike’s barking laugh compensated for in volume what it lacked in merriment. “I knew I’d see yer ugly face afore long!”

  “I suppose I knew it too.” Robbie drew the words out thoughtfully. Then he laughed lightly: “Well, where do I sign on?”

  “No need for that, laddie. I’ll show you around the ship an’ we can end off in my cabin an’ have a drink on it.” Pike threw his arm around Robbie’s shoulders, and they started off.

  Pike launched immediately into a detailed and comprehensive description of his ship, such that would have bored most laymen. But to one like Robbie the words felt like spring water to the mouth of a thirsty man, and he listened to every detail with fascination. The Sea Tiger was an Aberdeen-built clipper, first launched in 1869. She was 930 tons and had distinguished herself nicely in eleven years of life. During six years in the China trade she had acquitted herself well, twice making the homeward passage with the new crop of tea in under a hundred days. But speed was not her only strength. When steamers making passage via the Suez Canal began to monopolize the tea trade, most lovely clippers had been relegated to long distant voyages to Melbourne or Sydney or South America, picking up whatever cargos were available. But the Sea Tiger still demonstrated her great stamina and had weathered the torturous gales of Cape Horn three times since then, and though dismasted once on that run, she had managed to limp into port only a week behind schedule. She was one of the few clippers still able to compete strongly in the changing world of late 19th-century shipping. She was well-seasoned now, yet still very much in her prime with many voyages left in her.

  Robbie liked what he saw. There was something comfortable and friendly about the Tiger, yet at the same time sturdy and reassuring. Out in the middle of the ocean a man trusted his life to the worthiness of his ship, and Robbie could feel—as if through the creaking timbers themselves—that such a trust would not be misplaced aboard the Sea Tiger.

  “What’s her cargo?” asked Robbie as he climbed down into the hold of the ship. The air was thick and stale and too humid for comfort, yet to Robbie it only added to the mystique he had been missing for four years.

  “General is all,” answered Pike. “Sheet iron, copper, yard goods—nothin’ interestin’.”

  Robbie slapped his hand on a large wooden crate. “This one’s not marked,” he said casually.

  “Them cursed loaders!” Pike exclaimed. “Can’t do nothin’ right. I’ll get it taken care of!” Pike seemed suddenly nervous on account of the unlabeled crates, and hurried Robbie off in another direction.

  “Will we pick up tea in Shanghai?” asked Robbie as they continued through the hold.

  “Ha!” barked Pike scornfully. “Them days is over, laddie. All we get is trinkets now—matting, paper, rattans, feathers!” He spat the last word out bitterly, as an ugly vision of a tea-laden steamship crossed his mind, all but blotting out memories of the glory days of the tea runs from the East.

  Robbie wondered about the great riches Pike had promised. This hardly seemed the sort of cargo that would make a man wealthy. Had he been exaggerating merely to entice Robbie aboard? Yet what could be his purpose in that? They had never been that close as friends, so as to justify such efforts on Pike’s part to lure Robbie away from Her Majesty’s service.

  Robbie shrugged off the question. He was, after all, a good sailor, a hard worker. Perhaps that was reason enough.

  “But why go to China at all?” he asked.

  “The owners of the Cathay Mercantile are old die-hards, I’m supposin’,” answered Pike. “They won’t give in t’ the new ways without a fight. They’re still tryin’ to play by the old rules. An’ the Sea Tiger’s worthy o’ the attempt. But if we can’t pick up a cargo in Shanghai, I’ve orders to swing down t’ Melbourne.”

  Pike swung up the ladder almost effortlessly, slinging his crutch over his shoulder by a leather strap, then pulling himself up with extraordinarily strong arms. “As I recall, laddie,” he said with a grin, “ye was always fond of the galley . . .”

  Robbie laughed. “Show me the way!”

  The master of the galley was an elderly Chinese man whose unpronounceable name had been Anglicized years earlier—no doubt originally somewhat tongue-in-cheek—and the name had stuck. Ever since he had been known simply as Johnnie Smith. At seventy, the man was tough and sinewy, dressed in a combination of seaman’s attire of canvas trousers and peaked cap, and an oriental silk shirt. When he turned away from them, Robbie saw that he wore a braid stretching down most of the length of his back. He greeted them in a stream of Chinese which, working in combination with his furiously waving hands, gave the distinct impression of anger toward the intruders.

  “Shut up, Johnnie!” spat Pike coldly. “You want something, you bloody well better learn to speak like a civilized human being!”

  Pike’s outburst was met with another verbal barrage. Robbie would soon learn that words from Johnnie’s mouth hardly ceased from morning till night.

  “Foreigners!” growled Pike scornfully. “But he can cook. I ne’er knew a ship’s vittles t’ be so good. The only man ever could match him would be mysel’, but then it wouldn’t do for a captain to be putterin’ about the galley, now would it?”

  “It’s just as well,” quipped Robbie. “I don’t seem to have the same memories of your cooking.”

  “You know how to hurt a man, Robbie,” he said, attempting a laugh to accompany his humor, but the effort fell short. Then turning to Johnnie, he yelled, “Fix us some vittles!”

  Johnnie replied in Chinese that sounded as if it were the equivalent of, “Not on your life, you one-legged blag’ard!” But notwithstanding his outburst, he immediately began gathering the ingredients to a first-class captain’s lunch.

  “He can understand you?” asked Robbie.

  “The ol’ devil! He understands every word you an’ I are sayin’ an’ can probably speak better English than either one o’ us. But he’s a stubborn ol’ Chinaman!”

  While they waited for their food, another crew member poked his head into the galley. His round, perpetually sun-burned, fair-skinned face was topped with thinning blond hair. In his early fifties and short of height, the man was broad of chest with long muscular arms. Pike introduced him as Torger Overlie the coxswain.2

  “Glad to meet
you,” he said after he and Robbie had shaken hands, his thick Norwegian accent contrasting colorfully with the cook’s, and his grin revealing a perfect set of straight, white teeth. “We have da new fittings in and ready to inspect,” he said to Pike.

  “I’ll be right out,” replied the skipper.

  When Overlie had departed, Pike shook his head dismally. “More foreigners,” he said. “I’m glad ye joined us, Robbie.”

  “And what’s your trouble with foreigners, Ben?” asked Robbie. “Aren’t Scotsmen considered foreigners down here?”

  “And what makes you think I’m a Scotsman, lad?”

  “I always took it for granted. You sound enough like one, at least most of the time.”

  “Purely feigned, my boy! I put on whatever tongue suits me best—a bit o’ Cockney, a bit o’ Scots.”

  “You’re a remarkable man, Ben, I have to admit! You’ve got more sides to you than an African diamond!”

  When they had finished lunch, the best Robbie had ever enjoyed aboard a ship, Pike led the way back to the top deck and fresh air. Robbie breathed deeply and looked around him with satisfaction.

  “The rest of the crew’ll be comin’ aboard soon,” said Pike. “Sixteen in all, countin’ you.”

  “A bit on the small size to run a clipper, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll take sixteen good men any day over fifty dullards!”

  Pike’s so-called “good” men proved to be a thorough hodgepodge of characters, of which those he had already met were a typical introduction. Robbie wondered if the captain could have selected a stranger lot of shipfellows. Already he’d met the genteel Drew, the surly bo’sun Digger, the talkative Chinese cook, and the grinning Norwegian coxswain. But the bunch ushered aboard that afternoon by Digger made these Robbie had first seen ordinary by comparison. Unkempt and bleary-eyed, they had probably been picked by Digger at the various boardinghouses for sailors after a long night of carousing.

  As they shuffled on board, at least half of the ten men looked not just willing, but in some cases eager to pick a fight with anyone who might cross them. The look of one was particularly alarming, yet he seemed on friendlier terms than the rest with the bo’sun, sauntering next to him apart from the others. Robbie later learned he was the ship’s carpenter, a wiry, swarthy-skinned Arab who was known as Ahmed Turk. It seemed he was accorded some authority among the group, and, as Robbie learned soon enough, both Turk and the bo’sun exerted considerable influence over a certain contingent of the crew. The bo’sun did so by the sheer might of his imposing being and his position of responsibility in the hierarchy of the ship’s authority structure. But Turk leveled his influence with one piercing glance from his black eyes that looked out in evil stare from a face scarred with evidence of fights innumerable.

  Immediately Robbie could sense the man meant trouble. Never had he beheld such scars. They ran from forehead to cheek, two in particular perfectly bisecting each eye. Robbie didn’t want to even consider what awful rite or battle could have inflicted such wounds. Moreover, he didn’t want to think of the possibility of opposing the man who had survived such an ordeal. Yet if he was to be first mate, having to be in charge of the whole motley crew, how would it be possible, in months at sea, to avoid an impasse with Turk? He hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

  At first glance these new arrivals hardly seemed worthy to fulfill Pike’s boast, and if Robbie had been in the habit of praying, he might have prayed that his initial estimation was wrong. As if to confirm the worst of his fears, Robbie’s eyes gave him another surprise when they reached the end of the line. Wondering to himself why he didn’t see Kerr walking on board, considering his apparent and puzzling intimacy with Pike, Robbie looked up to see one Jeremiah Lackey, whose presence seemed always cause for alarm. Robbie knew him well; he had sailed on the Macao. He had to be nearly seventy by now, and looked every day of it, with a face as lined as a map, leathery and toothless. But his yellowed eyes were bright and alert. He was one of those ageless creatures who always seemed to haunt the sea and anything that sailed upon it, and though he looked ancient, he did not appear a day older than when Robbie had last seen him nine years earlier. It was very likely he had always looked seventy.

  “Why, bless me!” he croaked like a piece of old rigging, “’tis little Robbie Taggart. If we dinna sink or flounder or mut’ny betwixt ourselves, we’ll do all right!” But the moment his feet touched the deck, his wrinkled countenance sagged. “’Tis a rum ship! I can feel it! Saints preserve us!”

  Robbie had never forgotten the man’s capacity for instilling gloom and fear. By Lackey’s estimation, any ship that dared wet its hull was always on the verge of some catastrophe visited upon it by an angry Providence. He had taken upon himself the role of prophet of doom. And if none of his prophetic pronouncements ever came to pass, it hardly mattered. Seamen were a superstitious lot, and he could always find plenty of timorous souls willing enough to listen, and to fear the one time when his words just might turn out to be true.

  1. Boatswain—petty officer who has charge of the deck crew and rigging.

  2. The coxswain steers the ship.

  9

  Midnight Visitations

  Robbie was surprised to learn they would sail the next day. When he commented to Pike on his good fortune to show up when he did, the unlikely captain merely responded with a mysterious half grin, as if he knew luck had nothing to do with it.

  Sleepless in his bunk later, Robbie tossed about restlessly. Finally around midnight, attributing his lack of sleep to anticipation of the following morning’s departure, he rose and made his way topside, hoping a stroll on deck might soothe his nerves into slumber.

  He climbed the companion ladder to the forehatch, and had only just poked his head above deck when he saw three shadowy figures crossing up the gangway. Robbie would have given them little thought except by their very stealth, with many covert glances over their shoulders, and their obvious attempts to remain quiet, the men drew the attention that Robbie instinctively felt was the very thing they wanted to avoid.

  Two of the men carried a crate, hoisted above their shoulders, strikingly similar to the unmarked containers he had seen earlier in the hold, and were followed by another man limping along after them. Robbie was about to call out when he realized that the third man was Pike himself. He decided his best course of action was to remain silent. Curiosity was not one of Robbie’s strongest characteristics, be it virtue or fault, and he was content to shrug off the incident as none of his concern and of little sinister significance. If Pike had private belongings he wished delivered to the ship under cover of darkness that was his business—he was master of the ship. But whatever their intent, Robbie judged it better to pause several moments until the trio had descended down the aft hatch leading to Pike’s cabin before he completed his exit onto the deck.

  The crisp February air stung Robbie’s face and invigorated him rather than offering promise of sleep. He remembered a brace that had been troublesome that afternoon, and wandered to the foremast to have a look. Forward of the mast he noted Drew perched somewhat precariously on the capstan puffing on a pipe, attempting to effect the perfect smoke ring, but finding each of his efforts immediately whisked away by the gentle night breeze.

  “Evening, Drew,” said Robbie, climbing the ladder to the raised forecastle where the capstan was located. He was quite willing to forget the brace in light of an opportunity to chat with this odd mixture of sailor and poet known as the Vicar. For of all the assorted assemblage he had viewed that day, this one intrigued Robbie the most.

  “Ah, ’tis the first mate,” replied Drew. “Out for an evening stroll, or were you perhaps investigating our late night visitors?” Drew’s words were slightly slurred and his eyes bloodshot. Robbie suspected his condition was not entirely due to lack of sleep.

  “Only out for a walk . . . I couldn’t sleep,” Robbie replied.

  “Sleeping with one eye cocked, as you sailors like to say, will do yo
u no harm on this little cruise.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Well, ’tis plain to see that Captain Pike—and I use the term captain only for the present. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard of a man in his condition being given his own ship! Makes me wonder, Taggart—but, as I said, ’tis plain to see that he did not recruit his crew from any Church of England congregation, no, nor a Dissenting one either.”

  Drew took a long draw on his pipe before speaking again. “And those late night deliveries—this was not the first.”

  “A master has a right to his personal ventures.”

  “True, true,” agreed the Vicar, blowing out a long stream of smoke. “And I’m the last man with a right to judge his actions, for we are told not to judge our neighbor. But there is still the matter of the crew—of which, I might add, you are rather the anomaly.”

  “I was thinking the very same thing about you,” replied Robbie with a friendly grin. “And what do you mean by you sailors? What do you call yourself?”

  Drew laughed dryly. “Certainly not a sailor! I just humor the men I work for by going along with their little games of pitting their masculinity against the powers of the sea. It’s all futile, you know. You can’t win. The Powers”—and as he spoke the word he gestured grandiosely toward the darkness of the sky above—“of the heavens are infinite beside our puny little selves.”

  “If you can’t win, and you’re no sailor,” said Robbie, “then why are you here?”

  “Oh, I said you can’t win—you sailor types. Men like me, we’re the only ones who can win, because we recognize the futility in the universe.” He laughed again, but there was almost a pathetic ring to it. “Don’t you see, Taggart? It’s all a gigantic, cosmic game! But you’ve got to know the rules! And most of your sailors—they don’t know what they’re up against. But,” he added, in a softer tone, almost as if it pained him to make the admission, “I fit in more than you might suppose, Taggart. I do my job, and try not to let my past interfere in any other way than through the sayings that seem so bent on coming out of my mouth.”