Going Home

by Richard S. Wheeler

  In any case, he knew Simpson would flatly refuse.

  So the dog would find itself among the Mexicans, and for that reason Skye stayed aloof, not welcoming the dog, not wanting his heart to be torn to bits once again in a few days.

  They had reached the treacherous tidal waters of the Columbia the morning after they received the yellow dog. The river had broadened to three or four miles there, and seemed wrapped in permanent cold haze. Simpson slowed the schooner, raised the keel, and drifted over the ever-changing sand bars where the river dropped its burden into the sea. Then the master wheeled the schooner south, turned the ship over to the master’s mate, and ran the Pacific coast, rarely out of sight of land, whipped along by the Japan current and the westerlies.

  Skye found himself loving the sea. He had thought he would hate it after his years of captivity. But here the benign sea sparkled and the salt air refreshed him. Gulls alighted in the booms and watched the world travel by. The cutwater prow sliced cleanly, parting the ocean around the smooth hull, leaving an arrow-straight wake behind them. Clean air swelled the headsail anchored to the bowsprit, and whipped into the two mighty gaff sails hung from the masts until every cord and rope grew taut and the ship hummed.

  His own bright spirits affected Victoria’s and helped her past her nausea and the strange circumstance of being upon a white man’s ship, living according to white men’s schedules, eating upon the sound of a bell, sleeping by shift, never pausing night and day so long as the horizons and stars and waters were visible to the men stationed high above. The air was never warm but never cold, and Skye found his frock coat suitable while Victoria usually wrapped a shawl over her shoulders during her endless circumnavigation of the short, slim deck, the ribby No Name at her heels. The dog was devouring every scrap the seamen gave it.

  Sometimes when land was in sight he thought about the New World, of which this was the westernmost shore. Across a void lay ancient Asia, and ancient Europe beyond that. Here, in the unknown continent, he had grown into a man. The New World had rescued him from a short brutal life of slavery and had filled him with hope. But he did not reject the civilization from whence he sprang, for in its measured law and charity and protections, most people flowered, and in its sacred beliefs most people found courage and a means to transcend their worst instincts. Maybe some day the old and new would be fashioned into a great nation that protected the peoples it harbored even while granting them the chance to make anything they chose of their lives.

  Simpson joined him at the rail.

  “That’s Mexican California, Mister Skye. A vast land, barely settled. One of the most isolated places on earth. Tomorrow I’ll be stopping at Yerba Buena briefly; fresh water and whatever sealskins we can buy. An hour or two, if possible. There’s an amazing inland sea there, where several rivers converge. Some day it may be among the world’s greatest ports.” He paused. “You might see about some salt beef for your dog.”

  “I’ll do that, Mr. Simpson.”

  “You’re partial to that dog; is he a good hunter or bird dog?”

  “Truth to tell, sir, he’s nothing. Just a tagalong.”

  “Well, tomorrow’s your chance to get rid of him.”

  Skye stared moodily at the foam-girt swells. “I guess I’ll wait until Monterey, sir.”

  “I’ve the feeling you’re an old salt.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Oh, I’d say the practiced eye. The way you examine a sail. Only an old salt looks at sails as you do.”

  “What do I see, sir?”

  “Where the sail is weak; where they’ve been patched. How they hang wrong, sagging and bulgy, defying the wind. How the ship cuts the water. What sort of wake it leaves. What’s in the bilge. How the seamen behave. Whether they respect their master. Whether the deck’s holystoned. Whether there’s rot in the timbers. Whether the cannon are loose. Whether the crew eats gruel or gets a tasty morsel now and then …”

  Simpson waited, an eyebrow cocked, but Skye did not oblige him with the opening of his past. Skye liked him. He did not rule the way a naval captain ruled, though Skye didn’t doubt that Simpson and his chief mate and bosuns could be just as tough as circumstances required.

  The next morning they sailed through an amazing fog-shrouded passage into an inland sea, and hove to at Yerba Buena, a scattered collection of adobes huddled on a chill inland shore. Skye dismissed it at once. Such a mud village had no future.

  Simpson launched a jollyboat and was rowed to shore, the Skyes and No Name with him. Skye and Victoria set foot in Mexico for the first time. Yerba Buena was not an impressive village, at least to Skye, but Victoria saw it through other eyes, and exclaimed at the assortment of whitewashed buildings and the brightly clad Mexicans who crowded around the crew and master.

  Skye hunted for a butcher, looking for salt beef, and found none. No Name scarcely budged from Skye’s shadow.

  The negotiations didn’t last long. The alcalde, who greeted them on the muddy tidal flat of a small cove, announced that a Yank trader had cleaned out every pelt in town only the day before and had sold numerous trade items, including bolts of calico, at better prices than those of HBC.

  Simpson didn’t tarry. Within the hour the Cadboro set sail, fighting a furious tide as it pushed through the shrouded gate and into the cold Pacific once again.

  “I hope things aren’t as discouraging in Monterey,” he said to Skye once the schooner reached open water. “It’s a much larger place and we have consignors and agents there, and those gentlemen have a warehouse and do a regular trade. Did you inquire about salt meat for the dog?”

  “I made an effort but without success, sir.”

  “Well, we can subsist the mutt to Monterey. It’s not far down the shore. We’ll spend a day there.”

  The coastal mountains of California erupted high above the Pacific for most of the journey south. Simpson steered far out to sea to avoid hazards, but the coast was usually visible that afternoon. Skye sensed that the weather was moderating a bit; the air seemed more inviting than it had been during the north California passage, where the timbered coast was forbidding and dark.

  The second morning found them closing on Monterey Bay.

  “What about the dog?” Victoria asked.

  “We find a family that’ll take him. We’ve a day to do it.”

  “He will only die.”

  Skye sighed. “We will find him a master.”

  “This dog knows no master. He will run until he dies if we leave without him.”

  Skye felt bad. “What would you do?” he asked.

  She shook her head, not knowing, and he saw the pain in her eyes. He held her, and then supplied the only assurance he could: “I’ll see about some preserved meat for a sea voyage. Maybe he’ll take the dog if I buy the chow. If Simpson agrees …”

  She buried her face in his shoulder.

  The yellow dog stared, and Skye swore the beast knew every thought crawling through Skye’s brain.

  They swept into a hook-shaped bay, not a true harbor but enough of a shelter to provide quiet water. Monterey, the rustic capital of the rural province, was indeed a larger place, with whitewashed buildings crawling up steep green slopes, the buildings topped with red-tile roofs.

  But that wasn’t what caught Skye’s eye.

  The Royal Navy’s Pacific squadron was anchored there.

  twenty–nine

  Suddenly Skye’s world darkened. He spotted a man-o’-war and two frigates. The Union Jacks fluttered lazily from the mainmasts. He could not tell whether one of the frigates was the H.M.S. Jaguar, from which he freed himself years earlier by slipping at night into the icy waters of the Columbia.

  The Royal Navy had a long memory.

  He watched helplessly as the HBC schooner saluted the king’s navy and slid toward an anchorage well off shore. The Mexicans had never built a proper wharf. Simpson anchored the Cadboro about a hundred yards from the nearest frigate; too far for Skye to make out i
ts name.

  But there would be officers on these ships who would know him, or know of him, and delight in throwing him into irons and dragging him to England, or more likely, arranging for Skye’s demise at sea.

  The chances of his survival were slim if the navy caught him here. And the likelihood was overwhelming that the navy would. There would be courtesy visits. Simpson and any civilians on board would be piped onto the flagship to meet the commodore and his officers and share some rum. In turn, the officers of all three royal warships would be invited for grog by the master of the merchant ship.

  Around him, the crew was anchoring the Cadboro fore and aft to avoid collision with the fleet. Others were lowering a jollyboat to take Simpson ashore, even as several Mexican craft were launching themselves toward the merchant vessel.

  Skye felt that choking feeling that comes of foreknowledge of ruin, but swallowed it back.

  Victoria and the dog stood beside him.

  “That’s the Royal Navy and I’m in trouble,” he said. “We’ve got to get off this ship, leave everything behind, and make for shore and hide.”

  Fear lit Victoria’s eyes. “So big,” she breathed. “I thought this boat big, but now …”

  “That man-o’-war’s four times the length of this, and two or three times wider, and it carries forty-eight cannon.”

  “Skye—”

  “We’ll try to get off. Before the visits start. We’ll be on foreign soil but not safe even there. If one of those frigates is the Jaguar, my shipmates are going to be in every grogshop in the city. And some’ll be pleased to turn me in.”

  Simpson materialized beside them.

  “We’ll, Mister Skye, it’s a sight, eh? The royal presence. It always fills me with a certain awe, seeing the fleet. They’re flying the welcome ensigns and we’ll run up our own, eh?”

  Skye smiled crookedly.

  “But those pleasures will come in a bit, eh? I’m heading ashore to do business.”

  “We’d like to join you, sir. Stretch our legs. I need to do some business.”

  “I have a boatful this time. I’ve promised some shore leave to the men, and of course I’ll need to take my bosuns and master’s mate to negotiate.”

  Skye swallowed back his fear and nodded. “You might employ the other jollyboat, sir,” he said softly.

  “No, not just now. Later, of course. I’m having my crew clean it out and ready it. We’ll take it over to visit the commodore when we’re invited. We’ll do this by turns.”

  “Yes, sir,” Skye said.

  Deckmen lowered the jollyboat from its stanchions and a Jacob’s ladder as well, and soon it was bobbing on the azure waters of Monterey Bay. The oarsmen descended, followed by the master and his officers, and the little vessel whirled toward the golden shore, the beach divided by outcrops of dark rock. Skye watched it bitterly, as if watching his sole hope for staying alive grow small. On that very beach, seamen wearing whatever they chose, and officers in blue, watched the progress of the little boat. Most of the seamen were loading water casks into longboats, or storing crates of fruit and vegetables and firewood into other longboats. A lighter carried six bawling Mexican cattle to the man-o’-war. Monterey was alive with the navy, and not just those on the waterfront. Every grogshop in town would be pouring rum into the gullets of the limeys.

  He watched Simpson’s jollyboat tie up at a crowded jetty on the rocky strand, and watched Simpson shake hands with the Royal Navy. He watched the officers converse, and remembered that he had never disguised his name. He was Barnaby Skye to the master of the Cadboro; the navy’s most notorious deserter was Barnaby Skye. Sooner or later, when Simpson described his shipboard complement, he would name Barnaby Skye. It was only a matter of time.

  It was but early afternoon. Skye thought the mutual visits wouldn’t begin until the dinner hour and would stretch through the evening. Darkness was always a friend of fugitives and maybe darkness would preserve him in its gentle hand. Maybe it was pure luck that Simpson declined to take him and Victoria and the dog on the first shore visit.

  “Victoria,” he said low and soft and out of earshot, “we have to think this through. We’re a hundred fifty yards from shore.”

  “I can swim that.”

  “Not in that heavy clothing, dress and petticoats and all. And I can’t swim in this getup for long.”

  “The dog can.”

  She was smiling tautly.

  He felt helpless but determined. He lacked a weapon and carried nothing more than an old Green River knife that he had acquired at his first rendezvous. He and his family had to get off this ship, and do it at night, and escape Monterey. If that meant leaving their entire wardrobe behind, he would do it. If it meant abandoning his vision of England, he would do it. The thought wrought pain in him, but the prospect of capture and probable death at the hands of his former officers, feasting on their triumph, was the vision that controlled his every act.

  “Victoria, make a small bundle, nothing obvious, of all the clothing you can carry, whatever we’ll need. And one for me as well. We’ll be going ashore here. We will never reach England.”

  She glanced sharply at him and wordlessly headed for the cabin.

  His mind whirled with ideas but none of them seemed very good. He watched the navy’s seamen load cask after cask of water and row out to the warships; he watched Simpson and the Cadboro officers dicker with the Mexicans crowding about on the shore. He watched Simpson signal for the second jollyboat, and watched seamen lower and row it to shore, filled with empty casks. He itched to board that boat with Victoria and the yellow dog, but they would step ashore in the midst of ten or twelve midshipmen and petty officers of the navy, very likely some under whom he had suffered. He told himself to be patient; darkness would tenderly cloak them.

  An hour ticked by and then one of the bosuns, Abner Gilbert, approached Skye at the rail.

  “Mr. Simpson says to catch the next jollyboat in,” Gilbert said. “He’s mindful you have business ashore. About the dog, you know. He’s met a Mexican who’d take it and he’ll introduce you. We’ll be loading sealskins and water and vegetables until well after dark. Lift anchor at first light.”

  There it was. Fate hung. Skye could scarcely refuse. But there was advantage. On shore, on foreign soil, he had a chance. On board, he didn’t.

  “All right, sir,” Skye said.

  He found Victoria bundling clothes.

  “We’re going in. Simpson’s invited us. Forget this,” he said, waving at the wardrobe in their trunks.

  Victoria grinned. That grin, famous and huge in his mind, had lifted him past the worst moments of his life. They would leave everything behind if that’s what it took. Who needed clothing like that in the mountains?

  Victoria did stuff her doeskin dress, and his buckskins, and the two capes into a carpetbag, and they headed for the rail. The jollyboat bobbed on the water below as they descended the jacob’s ladder and set foot in the careening little vessel. Minutes later the oarsmen beached the boat on the sand—the Royal Navy had commandeered the little jetty—and Skye helped Victoria jump the last foot from the prow to the sand.

  Land! All about them the Royal Navy was at work. The seamen paid no attention to a burly man in a frock coat and top hat, or his dusky wife and ribby mutt. Skye proffered an arm to Victoria, and they paraded amiably past sailors too busy wrestling kegs to study them. Skye pushed the top hat lower on his face to deepen the shadow. His long dark and graying hair, gathered with a string at the nape of his neck, further altered his face.

  They ascended a rocky incline that took them above the tidal shore and walked slowly toward the line of small adobe merchant buildings that disgorged or swallowed the burdens of visiting ships.

  He began to relax a little: they had passed, in the bright afternoon sunlight, the thickest concentration of tars and officers unscathed.

  He spotted Simpson talking earnestly to a Mexican before the yawning doors of a warehouse, and headed that way, a
s casually as he could manage.

  The Mexican delighted the eye: he wore a short black coat, tight britches of fawn-colored cloth, a bright red sash, and a great sombrero. He was much better dressed than the rest of his people, who toiled barefoot in soiled white cottons, loading long, velvety, tan sealskins upon mule-drawn carts.

  “Ah! Mister Skye! And Mrs. Skye! May I introduce Don Emilio Baromillo, a fur merchant here, and also Senor Esteban Larocha, Mexican customs, who’s making sure we pay our tuppence for every pelt.”

  They shook hands. “Mr. Baromillo says he might consider the dog—”

  But Skye was watching the swift approach of an ensign posted at the next warehouse, a man he suddenly realized he knew.

  “Skye!” bellowed the officer, drawing his bright sword. “I’d know that ugly nose anywhere!”

  thirty

  Skye resisted two impulses. One was to run; the other was to bull straight into the skinny ensign—his name was Plover—and wrest the sword from him.

  It was too late, anyway. Plover thundered down on Skye as he stood next to Simpson and the two Mexicans, waving his glittering blade and summoning his work detail to join him with his shrill boatswain’s pipe.

  A half-dozen tars swarmed out of the next building and swiftly surrounded him.

  Victoria was aghast and backed away. She had a way of becoming invisible. The world somehow never paid her much attention, which had saved their lives more than once. No Name joined her.

  “Got you, Skye, and don’t tell me you’re someone else. Oh, what a day this’ll be for the Pacific squadron!” He bawled at his seamen, “Hold this bloody devil. Don’t let him get away. We’ve been after him for years, and now he’s walked into our parlor.”

  Skye stood as quietly as he could manage, knowing his chances were slim and growing slimmer by the second as the burly seamen circled him, ready to pounce.

  “A damned deserter!” Plover cried to those who were watching.