Robbie Taggart

by Michael Phillips

  “Please, Robbie, don’t hate me,” begged Drew pitifully, dodging the thrust of Robbie’s question. “You’re the only friend I have. I used to be a man. I used to be able to face things. But now I don’t even know what a man is. Don’t blame me if I can’t face life anymore. It’s not my fault.”

  “Who’s fault is it then, Elliot?”

  The Vicar was silent.

  Robbie turned to go.

  “I’ll do better in the future,” pleaded the Vicar after him. “Please . . . give me another chance.”

  If the hard, cynical Drew frustrated Robbie, this groveling, sniveling one disgusted him. Yet how could he turn his back on him? A man like Robbie, although he counted many as his friends and needed no others, could not turn his back on one who had none but him. He did not hate Elliot Drew. How could he? Only the most heartless kind of man could hate one so pathetic.

  “We still have the storm above,” said Robbie. “Are you able to finish the watch?”

  “Yes . . . yes. I’ll finish,” replied the Vicar.

  Robbie strode from the cabin. He didn’t know if he was being too soft on the man for not confining him to some discipline in his quarters, or if he had been too hard on one so fragile. He only hoped his actions would not in the end prove harmful, even fatal, to anyone on the ship.

  Drew padded after Robbie. When they reached the ladder, he laid a hand on Robbie’s arm to detain him. Robbie stopped. Drew pulled him aside, looked about to make sure there were no listeners.

  “I want you to know one thing,” he said, and as he spoke his voice took on an uncharacteristic edge, reminiscent of a sense of pride. “I am no thief. Yes, I went into Turk’s chest—but not to steal anything. Not for myself at least.”

  “What for then?”

  Again Drew looked about down each corridor before speaking.

  “Several days ago,” he began, “we were on watch. I came below to—well, to have a drink. I passed by Turk’s cabin, and when I heard a noise, I stopped to look in. The door was open, but Turk had not seen or heard me. And there he was rummaging through his chest. I saw him pull out a pistol. At least, that’s what I thought I saw. One of those old kinds. Just what you’d expect an Arab to carry. He replaced it quickly, and I couldn’t be—you know, my eyes were a little blurry—exactly certain. I know it was foolhardy, but the first opportunity I got, I knew I had to have a look and be sure. This crew makes me nervous enough—but to think of one of them—and a man like Turk; he’s no one’s friend I can tell you that, except the bo’sun’s—to think of one of them carrying a weapon. Well, I thought I should have proof before I made accusations.”

  “Very wise,” agreed Robbie. “And what did you find?”

  “Nothing. It was gone. But I did find these.” He reached into his pocket and held up several slugs.

  “I don’t recognize the caliber. They almost look like the balls from an old dual-flintlock pistol,” said Robbie.

  “I couldn’t be sure.”

  “And you said nothing?”

  “My word against his.”

  “I appreciate your telling me. This is something I should know.”

  “I had to,” replied Drew. “Perhaps I’m not a total loss.”

  “No. Perhaps not.” Robbie’s mouth curved up into a reluctant smile as he turned to climb up the ladder.

  The instant they emerged, the storm whipped against Robbie’s face, reminding him of immediate realities. Yet he could not so easily forget all he had just heard. Once again Elliot Drew presented himself an enigma, a man of deep contrasts, as indeed did their skipper. Both displayed remarkably divergent personalities. One moment Drew was groveling at Robbie’s feet begging forgiveness, the next was braving the dangerous wrath of Turk to solve the mystery of a gun that might not even exist.

  Of even more concern to Robbie were his own unsettled reactions. Again his emotions found themselves stretched from pity to anger to something almost like friendliness toward the man.

  Again, that fleeting half-formed thought he had had on the night of their departure intruded upon his brain. He and the Vicar were perhaps more alike than he wanted to realize, each in his own way struggling to attain something—perhaps an elusive dream, or some part of himself hidden so deep that neither could readily identify it.

  Both were seeking meaning. However, one was doing so by running from it, or attempting to obliterate it at every opportunity. He feared that perhaps it was lost altogether, but feared even more lest it should be found, and he be forced to face the awful consequences. But the other, Robbie Taggart himself, seemed to wear his masculinity across his broad chest, as if that were all there was to life—as if he believed he had no further to look.

  Robbie, unlike the Vicar, was aware of no fear in himself, and thus he was perhaps in greater peril than his crewmate. For where there is no sense of need, there is no seeking after deeper knowledge of self, and no search after the One in whom all needs are fulfilled, whether known to us or not.

  The blast of the storm was welcome to Robbie, for it released him from the wearisome task of introspection. Even working beside Turk on a troublesome sail for three-quarters of an hour was more pleasant than the train his thoughts might otherwise have embarked upon. The hard work, the lashing wind, and the driving rain cleared his brain. He could not focus on the more manageable reality presented by the sinister man, made even more so by the suspicion that he carried a firearm.

  18

  South Past the Cape

  The gales drove the Sea Tiger for five hours more, with a force of ten winds. She was driven on her beam ends for an hour and shipped water until her decks were flooded.

  The watches were abandoned as the entire crew labored against the squall. Every man worked to his limit, groaning at the pumps or hauling in sail. The main topgallant and the mizzen royal were lost, and twice little Sammy was nearly washed overboard.

  Still Lackey found opportunity, in spite of the amount of work pulled out of him, to wail, “This is the end, saith the Lord of the wind. The power of the air seeks its revenge on a sinful race! You will be lost before you round the Cape, says the servant of the Most High!”

  “I can’t think of a more fitting end to it all,” countered Drew, walking past Lackey. The prophet of platitudes had for the most part regained his old cynical self and indulged himself by poking fun at the ship’s prophet of gloom. The Vicar labored valiantly alongside his mates—almost bent, it seemed, on acquitting himself of his shameful behavior.

  It was Drew who spotted Sammy’s danger in the midst of the boy’s second dangerous foray with the torturous sea. Sammy had been making his way aft, carrying a large coil of rope. It had taken the boy nearly twenty minutes to traverse the length of the ship, hanging on to swinging rigging or stationary rails when available. He was aft the mainmast when a fifteen-foot wave broke over the port rail, knocking him from his feet. Momentarily rendered senseless by the fall, he slid across the flooded deck and could not gain his feet before the next crashing wave hit. His body slammed against the rail, and in the lurch of the ship that followed he would almost certainly have been washed over. Drew caught him just in time, however, and, hanging on to the boy with one arm and the rail with the other, he struggled to keep them both on board while still another torrent from the sea did its best to overwhelm them.

  Witnessing the struggle, Robbie managed to get a length of rope to Drew, and, waiting for a break between the swells, hauled the two to safety.

  He ordered Sammy below, helping him through the hatch, then turned to the Vicar.

  “You saved his life, Drew,” he said simply.

  “Please. No laudation of glory and honor,” scoffed the Vicar. “What I did was from reflexes alone.”

  “I doubt Sammy will believe that,” returned Robbie, wiping a fresh splash of sea-spray from his face.

  “In the evening a coward, by morning a hero—is that it?” said Drew with a raised eyebrow. “Come now, Robbie, no one changes quite that quickly.�
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  “I agree,” replied Robbie, “which only makes me wonder—”

  “Well don’t wonder,” rejoined Drew sharply. “Your estimation of me earlier was the correct one. A man cannot be what he isn’t, not even after a well meant lecture by a friend. I tried that long ago—being what I wasn’t cut out to be. I battered my head against the natural flow for a long time, but it was all futility. God said he’d make a new man of me—or so they told me—but it never happened. Perhaps even God himself wasn’t up to such an undertaking. Or perhaps, though he could have, he just wouldn’t. ‘Many are called but few are chosen,’ you know. Yes, that’s it, I was a lost cause from the beginning. So don’t you go trying to plant any hope in me, Robbie. I won’t have it.”

  “I doubt God gave up on you,” returned Robbie. “I think you must have given up on yourself. I don’t know as much about God as you do, but something tells me that he wouldn’t turn his back on anyone, even the likes of you.”

  “Well, if there’s any repenting to be done, I’ll undertake the project on my own,” rejoined Drew.

  “If you get any leanings in that direction,” laughed Robbie, “it wouldn’t hurt if you brought some of the rest of these scalawags with you!”

  About noon Pike and Robbie managed to get the Tiger before the wind, and were finally able to heave-to on a starboard tack. They had covered nearly two hundred miles in winds as fierce as sixty miles per hour. Heavy gales continued to assail them the rest of the day and through the night, but gradually moderated. And by the following morning they were able to trim all the sails, replacing those that had been torn or ripped apart in the storm.

  Once the storm had completely subsided, the Tiger encountered the southeast trades and ran close-hauled for two weeks against strong headwinds. This took them at last to the Cape known as Good Hope, but it was not hope it seemed bent on giving the Tiger on this particular voyage. The winds remained so contrary that Pike decided to take the Tiger much further south than usual in order to catch the more favorable westerlies.

  They swung wide and south, past latitude 50° and almost to 55° before encountering the winds that would take them northeast through the Indian Ocean. Though they were now well into April, this southerly detour took them so far south that they ran into groups of stray icebergs and air so frigid that ice lined the yards, the weight on one occasion nearly snapping the bowsprit in two. It took two men on the forecastle, and a man on mid-deck to relay instructions to the helmsman, in order to negotiate the treacherous path during the nighttime hours in and out of icebergs, during which time the sails flew at only partial strength to keep their speed to a minimum. Beyond issuing the occasionally necessary order, Pike remained in his cabin throughout most of the perilous escapade. It was left to Robbie to guide them through the hazardous path, a fact which by this time most of the men greeted with a certain relief. And though Robbie by this time had his sea legs and ship’s wits firmly under him and about him, and felt competent enough for the responsibility, he did not feel altogether comfortable in the position. Pike’s words during the calm were still etched harshly in his memory—“Yes, ye could, an’ ye’d like to . . .” Nor could he forget the look which had accompanied them.

  Two weeks after passing the Cape they swung north and once more toward the warmer latitudes. With the wind at their backs and the Tiger’s sails full, it was but a week back to Capricorn and the eastern shore of Madagascar.

  One morning Robbie went into the chart house and there found Pike bent over a map making some calculations.

  “When do you figure we’ll reach the Sunda Straits?” Robbie asked. “We seem bearing a bit too much north for Indonesia.” Though he loved the open sea, he had begun to anticipate a day or two on land for a change, and the Straits were the gateway to Jakarta, the China Sea, and many exotic ports that had long remained indelibly imprinted in his mind from his younger days.

  “Oh, did I forget to tell ye, mate?” replied Pike offhandedly. “We’ll be stoppin’ by Calcutta first.”

  “Calcutta! No, you didn’t tell me! That’s four thousand miles out of our way!” Robbie was perturbed not only at the oversight, but because he strongly suspected why Pike had never mentioned India in connection with the voyage. Calcutta and Bombay were the major opium market places of the East. And while the drug trafficking trade with China had been legalized since the Opium Wars of the forties and fifties, it was nonetheless abhorrent to Robbie. Legal or not, drugs brought no good to those who dealt in them. From Pike’s tone, Robbie was certain the skipper must have recalled the youth’s outspoken opinions of the trade years ago. Why else would he have kept quiet about such an important layover?

  “Not if we take our way south through the Straits of Malacca and by way of Singapore.”

  “You know better than that, Pike,” insisted Robbie. “That would save us only five hundred miles, or less, over Sunda. And wouldn’t be as safe.”

  “Well, suit yourself. We’ll go through Sunda. But not until we’ve stopped in Calcutta!” His eyes for an instant took on a glow Robbie did not want to recall.

  “I don’t like your keeping me in the dark!”

  “No need to get touchy, laddie,” said Pike.

  “You said nothing because you knew I wouldn’t sign on if I knew you were dealing in opium.”

  “Well, ain’t it true?” But before Pike gave Robbie the chance to respond, he hurried on. “’Sides, I wouldn’t waste my time on opium. China grows her own now an’ there ain’t enough money in it. Oh, I expect to pick up a couple chests of the stuff; ye can still make a sale now and then. But I got somethin’ bigger to attend to in Calcutta.”

  “Which is?”

  “Guess there ain’t no harm in ye knowin’ now, seein’s how ye can’t jump ship on me. Well, I gots me a connection in Calcutta what’s got a high grade strain of a similar drug. But ’tis purer an’ stronger than any opium ye ever seen. We got us a distributor set up in China—an’ they’re payin’ big money for it. You ain’t opposed to makin’ a bit of siller, are ye, lad?”

  “You know I don’t care about that,” replied Robbie flatly.

  “That’s right, I forgot.” Pike drew out the words to gain the maximum sarcastic effect. “The noble Taggart breed—”

  “That’s not the reason, Ben, and you know it.”

  “It’s always been true! Ye was always better’n the rest of us, eh, laddie?”

  Though Pike’s tone seemed congenial enough on the surface, the cutting edge of his words were no less evident. Again, one look into Pike’s eyes told Robbie that he was not imagining the glare he saw there. In them was the same look they had contained when he had attacked Robbie—cold, cruel, and chilling. Robbie looked away, an involuntary shudder passing through his body. The Benjamin Pike of those eyes was not a Benjamin Pike he knew—nor wanted to know.

  “I wish you didn’t think that,” Robbie tried to reply, but his voice was hesitant. It was difficult to form a logical reply to such words. What was Pike harboring against him, anyway? And if there was something, why had he been so determined to make Robbie his first mate?

  “I’m sorry if I’ve done something to give you such an idea. Whatever I’ve done, Pike, I didn’t mean any harm.”

  Suddenly Pike’s demeanor changed and grew softer. He threw an arm around Robbie.

  “Of course ye didn’t, laddie!” He seemed completely in earnest, a different man. “But ye can see, can’t ye? I had to go to Calcutta. Ye’re like a son to me, laddie. An’ once I seen you again, I couldn’t sail without ye.”

  “I suppose I can understand—”

  “Ye ain’t gonna jump ship, are ye?”

  “No,” replied Robbie, his tone indicating, however, that he was still not fully resolved to Pike’s Calcutta scheme. But what could he do about it? And he could not so easily abandon his loyalty to the ship or his father’s friend. “Let’s just forget all this happened,” he said finally.

  Pike flashed a relieved grin, but as Robbie slowl
y left the chartroom, he found he could not quickly forget his recent interchange with the skipper. It left him with an eerie feeling he could not shake. The man was out of balance, or so it seemed, displaying widely divergent personalities at different times. His propensity to outbursts of violence worried Robbie. Whether he was just suffering from the stresses of the voyage, Robbie could not tell.

  Nine years ago it had been the same way with Pike. He had been able to forget that, though now bits and pieces began to come back to him out of memory. He had been just as puzzled then by the man’s erratic behavior. And now he saw another dimension to it that had escaped him before. It was not so much what Pike always said that was troubling, but rather what the man left unsaid. And more—how it was left unsaid. It weighed so heavily upon him now that Robbie wondered how he could ever have forgotten.

  19

  The Vicar’s Attempt

  Several mornings later, Robbie lay on his bunk relishing the last few moments of repose before he would have to spell Digger and his watch. The winds had been favorable and the skies mostly clear, and had he thought about it he might have known some new episode was due on board this ship of seafaring eccentrics. But he was hardly prepared for it when it came. It was the last thing he would have expected.

  Gradually a voice bore in upon his waking consciousness. At first he paid little attention, but as the voice persisted, even grew louder, he could not ignore it. The sound was apparently coming from above deck. There was a monotonous ring to it, a droning sound as if a lecture were being read. Getting to his feet, Robbie could not imagine its source. He opened his door and proceeded down the corridor, and by the time he reached the ladder up to the hatch he knew well enough the source of this oration. The voice was the Vicar’s.

  Robbie climbed onto the deck.

  Around the forecastle were gathered a half-dozen or so of the men whose watch would be ending soon. Above them, perched on a section of the foremast, which he had appropriated for a makeshift bench, sat the Vicar, waxing eloquent as he must once have from his own pulpit.