Going Home

by Richard S. Wheeler

Skye and Victoria boarded and settled on the hard bench as the seamen backed the longboat and rowed toward the brig. It was a fateful moment: there he was, a seaman again, though he had vowed he never would be. He eyed the motley sailors, mostly white Yanks, but some half-castes he thought might be Caribbean or drawn from the dives of New Orleans. They looked hung over and surly and he supposed it would be a day or so before they sweated the booze of the sole grogshop in Yerba Buena out of their pores. The ruddy bosun in command eyed the Skyes and the two newcomers closely.

  The brig, Dedham, looked even worse close at hand than Skye had supposed from shore. Dickens, dressed shabbily in an ancient sweater, nodded them aft, and Skye poked around until he found above-deck quarters that had obviously been vacated by a bosun or master’s mate just previously. The two-bunk compartment was little different from the one on the Cadboro, except this was filthy.

  Victoria grunted. Skye knew that in short order this tiny place would be immaculate, unlike the rest of this creaking two-masted trading ship.

  Skye doffed his battered frock coat and reported to work.

  The deck hands were reeling the longboat aboard and the seamen were scaling the rigging, heading for the spars on the foremast where the square-rigged sails were furled. Men crawled out on the spars, oblivious of the height, and waited to release the gathered canvas which they would not do until the brigantine had passed through the gate and was at sea, because of adverse winds.

  He watched sailors hoist the fore-and-aft mainsail, drawing it up from the boom to the gaff atop the mainmast. That one looked well-used, much-patched, and heavily stained as it caught the air of the great bay.

  All this had proceeded in silence, which told Skye that this was a veteran crew needing no direction from the bosuns or master. That was the first good news.

  The brigantine heeled in the wind. The helmsman steered it north, and Yerba Buena swiftly vanished behind hills and mist, and the great gate lay ahead, cold and bright and mean. A small ugly thought wormed into Skye’s mind. He would know within the hour whether Dickens was a man of his word. Once they reached the sea, there were three directions the brig could go: south, west, or north. They passed the jaws of land, hit choppy waters, and then burst out upon the great Pacific, sparkling green and blue under a cloudless heaven.

  The men up on the spars of the foremast dropped the canvas with heavy thumps, and they swelled with the wind. These were as badly mended and worn as the mainsail. Dickens would be lucky to make his home port without losing his sheets. He wondered why the man ran such a ship unless he was very nearly bankrupt.

  Dickens approached him. “All right. You’ve seen the drill. I’ve good men, veteran seamen, but we’re shy right now. Ship’s company should be thirty-two; we’re at twenty-five not including the new boys and you and Mrs. Skye.”

  “At your service, sir.”

  “I’m making you a boatswain. Don’t ask me why; I’m just doing it. I’d thought about making Mrs. Skye a cook, but I need a sailmaker worse. That’s been part of the trouble. My sailmaker’s boy died of scurvy.”

  “She’ll take to it, sir. What do you want of me?”

  “You’ll do first watch. You can start by putting those boys to work holystoning the deck. After that, I want you to examine the ship stern to stern and report. After that I’ll introduce you to the crew.”

  Skye found the Mexican boys, Armando and Pio, hunted down the equipment and found it in a dock locker, and showed the boys how to scrape the good teak deck of the brig with blocks of soft sandstone. It was high time. The deck was slippery and gummy with the accretions of the sea and the animal cargo. The brig would be a safer place when the deck was immaculate.

  Skye inspected the brig, estimating it to be a hundred and five feet from stern to stern, and twenty-eight at the beam. The foremast had been spliced; a sign of sure trouble in times past. He found neglect at every hand, and thought maybe if given his freedom he could bring the ship around before reaching Astoria.

  ‘Tween decks he found a sailmaker’s and carpenter’s shop, a galley and mess, forecastle berths, storerooms, bosuns’ quarters, and abaft these, two cabins, housing the master’s mate and helmsmen. Below, in the cargo hold, he found stacked sea otter hides on racks well above the cargo deck, and a small collection of trade goods in crates and barrels. This brig was sailing half empty, which may be why Dickens was cutting every corner.

  It would get him and Victoria to Astoria. Whether the decaying bark would take Dickens to Gloucester, Massachusetts, his home port, was a question.

  He returned to the spar deck and found Dickens and two bosuns. Wind swelled the sails. The ship laid a course due west. The California coast lay small and dark.

  “Mister Skye, meet your watch officers, Lars Pedersen, first mate this watch, and Amos Carter, second mate. The other lads are below. Gents, Mister Skye, here, likes to be addressed as I’ve addressed him, so that’s how we’ll proceed. He’s been in the Royal Navy and knows the ropes. His wife, Victoria, will work in the sail loft. And the dog will—what will the dog do, Skye, for his keep?”

  “He will keep watch over us, Mr. Dickens.”

  “Ah! I imagine that’s worth the salt beef. Very well, gents. There’s work to do, and two new boys to bring along.”

  Skye noticed the shadow of the foremast sliding across the teak deck. The brig was swinging north.

  forty

  Victoria knew at once what to do. Making a sail was very like making a new lodge. But instead of stitching with other women of her tribe, she was working with a strange little gnome of a man who talked so fast she couldn’t understand him. All she knew was that he was very fierce and had a leer that offended her.

  She found herself in a large room between decks, the sail loft. Great rolls of heavy fabric the little man called linen, or sailcloth, lay about, along with coils of manila rope, and scissors and knives and needles and thimbles and rolls of thick sail twine.

  “This here, she’s a new fore top sail. Foremast, top yard, that’s how you name them. Now I got her laid out and cut into panels according to pattern, and what you’re gonna do is sew them panels up with a real fine double stitch and no wrinkles that let the air through, got that?”

  She didn’t, but she nodded. “Now this here’s how it’s done. You take this big needle and thread it with twine like so, and then wax it so the right-hand twist lies true, and then you stitch like so, good straight line, double so she stands in a good gale.”

  On the floor, the pieces of the new sail were arrayed like the hides going into a new lodge cover, all carefully cut.

  “All right, you tackle them seams and I’ll sew patches on the corners. We get this sewn up, and we do the hems, the luff first—the forward edge—and then the foot, and then we put in the luff rope and the foot rope. Those help keep the sail from stretching out of shape, you see?”

  She didn’t, but she nodded.

  “Then we sew in the bolt ropes on the luff and foot, and add the grommets, reef points, and the rest.”

  Maybe, she thought, this wasn’t so much like sewing a lodge after all, except that the great pieces were on the floor, and cut according to a pattern.

  Two portholes, without glass in them, threw white sea-light over the floor. She could see the benign sea shimmering there, and hear the creak of the ship’s timbers as it skimmed the cold waters. She could scarcely imagine how white men had created these giant canoes, big enough to roam the seas and sturdy enough to weather storms. The whole ship had been a wonder to her.

  The little man, whose name she learned was Perkins Gouge, never stopped talking and she hadn’t the faintest idea what he was saying.

  “Them Mohawks was thick with them Redcoats, and the Hurons and Oneida were in the middle of it, too, and we was marching up there near Lake Champlain when we come upon Prevost’s column, and next thing was, they formed into a red wall, Brown Betsys poking out at us, bayonets on ’em, and they got on their knees and laid a volley and it sailed clear
over us.

  “We took cover and begin snipin’, but they just march forward in that line, like they is brushing off flies, except now and then a Redcoat topples like a tree, and they cut loose with more volleys, one rank moves up and fires, and then backs off and the next rank moves up and fires, and they’re driving us back right into the arms of them miserable Iroquois and that’s when hell breaks loose and I’m about to lose my topknot.”

  Victoria sewed, at least until the little man peered closely at her work and got mad.

  “That’s not the way, damn ye red hide, it’s done like this, see here?”

  “Goddam,” she said and waited for his instruction.

  He made her cut out her stitches, wax the twine again, and start over. The ship creaked, and her mind drifted. She wanted to be up above, on the deck with Skye, free in the morning air, the dog beside them.

  He was doing well, he said, training Armando and Pio, putting the rotting ship in shape, scraping away the neglect. He said the repaired sails and new sails were important. Without them Dickens wouldn’t make it to his port.

  They were following the coast but sometimes it was so far from the ship she couldn’t see it, or could see only a thin and mysterious blue line. But then Dickens veered toward shore, reaching a settlement of some sort. He went ashore in a longboat rowed by crewmen, and returned with a stack of sea otter pelts, lifeless, eyeless furs that made her feel cold. She was not allowed on deck, so she knew almost nothing of what transpired, but Skye filled her in.

  He said there were settlements along the California and Oregon coast, some Indian, other half-breed, that did business in otter and sealskins, and Yank merchant ships like this one, along with the HBC, bought every pelt they had to offer and paid with trade goods not unlike those her own people acquired in the Rocky Mountains.

  She finally rebelled at the little tyrant who worked her until her hands went numb, and took breaks when she felt like it.

  “Lazy, worthless redskin,” Gouge bawled.

  “You sonofabitch,” she replied, remembering trapper words with joy. “You ain’t worth spit.”

  She needed the air, and relief from him and his grisly stories of butcheries, massacres of Indians, battles at sea, great fires, roasted flesh, on and on.

  Perkins Gouge was asking for a scissors in his belly, she thought. She’d do it, too, and then jump into the sea so as not to shame Skye.

  All the while, she was getting an education in sailmaking. They completed the tight-stitched double seams welding the panels of the great sail together, and he actually smiled. Then he showed her how to table the sail: sew hems on its edges, beginning with the luff, or top, and then sewing the rope tightly into the luff. The task was just as intricate and artful as sewing a good buffalohide lodge together, and she began to enjoy making everything tight and strong.

  “We finish this, and then we start on a mainsail,” he said during a less bloodthirsty moment. “She’s got a rip from gaff to boom, and we got to cut out the rotten panel and sew in a new one. That sail, she’s too big to stretch in here, so we gotta do it a piece at a time.”

  But mostly he talked of war and blood and beheadings and amputations, and surgeons with saws, and mortar, and canister, and chain shot. When he was tired of that he talked about swords, dirks, stilettos, and beheading axes. He favored beheadings one whole day. He had seen several, or so he led her to believe.

  He was the bloodiest little man she had ever encountered, but she knew she would soon be rid of him. His leering never stopped, but she ignored it. Skye would deal with him if it came to that.

  One good thing came of her labor. She discovered that scraps of new and rotten sailcloth were available to any seaman who wanted them, and these leftover pieces were constantly being fashioned into britches and jackets and shirts and even slippers by industrious seamen in the fore castle. She and Skye had nothing, scarcely the clothing on their backs, so she set out to manufacture some. As weary as she was of sewing, she worked hard during their half-day rest, and made him some britches and shirts, a thick blouse for herself, and several sailcloth moccasins for them both.

  The sea rose and fell in eternal calm, and she wondered when a storm would come. Whenever they were beyond landfall, she grew taut and upset and cursed these white men for taking her so far from her home. But then the blue rib of the continent would rise out of the mist. It was beyond swimming, but she comforted herself with the notion that she could somehow reach there if she had to.

  One twilight the second watch discovered a bonfire on the distant shore just before dusk, and Dickens steered the brigantine shoreward. That was usually a trader’s signal. The twilight offered safe passage and they made the coast in a half hour and beheld a great crowd on the distant shore. Black cliffs leapt up behind the settlement.

  Skye and Victoria watched as the crew dropped anchor and prepared the longboat for Dickens. But even before the seamen could winch the longboat to the water, a swarm of giant canoes set sail for the brigantine, their high prows brightly painted and the paddling oarsmen stroking the dugout canoes to a great speed.

  She thought there were two or three hundred villagers on the beach, and she wondered what people they were. She didn’t know the people here on the edge of the world. Behind them was a village consisting of giant longhouses of bark, and racks for drying fish, and carved poles with spirit-figures on them to ward off evil. At least that was how she interpreted them.

  These people were barechested even in this cold season, but wore leather skirts or pants, and great necklaces of gleaming things she couldn’t make out.

  “Good trade, many skins,” she said to Skye.

  He grunted.

  A dozen canoes were closing on the ship, each canoe with twenty or more men in it.

  She caught glints of metal things in the bellies of the canoes.

  And no furs. No skins, unless it was to dark to see them.

  Dickens had pulled the longboat up and lowered the Jacob’s ladders so the visitors could clamber aboard and trade.

  “Damn, Skye, I don’t like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Them warriors.”

  “Warriors? They’re trading.”

  No Name’s hair bristled.

  “Look at the dog, Skye.”

  “Mr. Dickens,” Skye bawled. “Raise those ladders.”

  The master turned to glance at Skye. “What are you talking about, Mister Skye?”

  “War,” Skye cried.

  But it was too late. The first barrage of arrows from the bows hidden in the dugouts found their mark. Dickens took an arrow through the mouth, tumbled, and fell over the rail.

  Another arrow caught the bosun.

  A whirling axe struck a seaman who was trying to raise one of the rope ladders. Then, with a ululating howl, the warriors scrambled to the deck, dealing death at every hand.

  forty–one

  Skye hurried Victoria aft, deep into darkness. The big, stocky tribesmen poured aboard, their faces hideously painted with red ochre, scaling the rope ladder with breathtaking speed. Volleys of arrows from the high-prowed dugouts felled most of the deck hands. Indians clubbed and stabbed others racing from the forecastle up the gangway. Still others raced to the pilot house and butchered the helmsman and master’s mate with sickening speed. A howl of red joy bloomed among them, sending chills through Skye.

  “Drop the Jacob’s ladder off the stern and go,” he whispered to Victoria. She slid to the rail, tossed the manila-and-wooden rung ladder over while he grabbed a belaying pin, the seaman’s first and last recourse, and braced to fight two of the naked savages who were bearing down on him. He parried the lance of one easily and ducked under the war axe to club him hard. Skye whirled toward the other as a spearhead blurred by him, tearing cloth. The dog leapt, clamped jaws over an arm, and bit furiously. The red-painted warrior howled and tumbled down. Skye caught him across the head, knocking him senseless. The cur let go and leapt at another huge warrior thundering to
ward Skye.

  Too many warriors. Skye whirled his belaying pin at one, the dog bit another, and then it was time to leap or die.

  His heart pumped hard. He leapt over the taffrail, fell a sickening distance, hit brutal cold, and rose again to the surface. The sea swelled high about him. He caught his breath, realized he couldn’t swim with his boots on and paddled desperately.

  “Skye,” cried Victoria.

  He could scarcely see her in the blackness. She clung to the slippery rudder. He grabbed it too, feeling the icy water numbing him. Neither of them could endure that blast of cold for long.

  Above, the dog howled, lonesome and eerie.

  “Jump!”

  The dog whined.

  “Jump!”

  The cur gathered itself and leapt, just as dark demons loomed above, and fell in a graceful dive. The dog slid easily into the briny, and Skye grabbed him by the nape of the neck.

  The huge swells of the ocean poured over them. The ship had anchored at a roadstead, there being no sheltered water at this place, and the full might of the Pacific beat on her.

  “My shoes,” Skye growled.

  He managed to lift a leg out of the whirling water, and Victoria undid the laces. It fell away. With struggle they got his other shoe off. Skye was still half-snarled by clothing, as was Victoria in her voluminous skirts.

  Above them the shrieks and thumps of struggle diminished and Skye believed not a soul of the ship’s company remained alive, save for himself and Victoria. It had all taken three or four minutes. The howling of the victors sent chills through him and he wondered what mad celebration was occupying them as they stomped rhythmically upon that newly holystoned teak. Who were they? He did not know. The brig had passed the Klamath River and Dickens thought he would be trading with the Yurok or possibly the Hupa as he dropped anchor. But there were also the Tolowa and Karok thereabouts. Maybe even Clatsop or Chinook.

  One by one, butchered bodies of men he had known splashed into the sea. He gasped at the roiling body of the Mexican boy, Armando, who had only just signed on, and at a second-watch bosun he’d smoked with, bobbing lifelessly in the swells.