AHMM, July-August 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "I swear he was dead when I went down there,” he insisted. “The cook must have been the last man to see him alive.” Except for the killer, he thought.

  "Do you have any witnesses to that?” Captain Smith queried.

  "No, I was alone."

  "So why did you go down there at all?"

  "The cook sent me with Alfonso's breakfast."

  The captain nodded because that made sense. When Mr. Starbuck had found that Alfonso paid no attention to orders, even though the officers spoke as slowly and loudly as they could, he told Wiki to take care of him because Wiki spoke the Brazilian's language.

  "So what happened then?” he asked.

  "There wasn't any sound as I came down the ladder, and no movement either, so when I got down to the bottom I put the plate down on the deck to keep my hands free. I thought that he might be ... hiding in ambush, ready to attack."

  Wiki shivered, remembering the dark shadows cast by the shaft of gray dawn light that filtered through one square porthole in the side of the forehold. The heavy beams of the deck hung low, and the place was suffocatingly close. It was not a nice place to be incarcerated, but the Brazilian had deserved it—he had been locked up because he was unpredictable and violent, and had drawn a knife during a fight with one of the crew.

  "And after you found him?” the captain said. “What happened then?"

  "Nothing happened—he was dead!” When he had spied the bundle of rags lying up against the side of the ship, directly under the source of that shaft of light, Wiki had known at once that Alfonso was dead. It had been a preternatural feeling.

  "So you keep on saying,” the first mate derided.

  "But why would I want to kill him? I don't have any motive!"

  "Because he did attack you,” Mr. Starbuck theorized at once. “And you don't have any trouble standing up for yourself, or so I've noticed."

  Mr. Starbuck was right. Wiki had stood up for himself several times this voyage, and because he was big and muscular he had won all the fights so far.

  "And you must've been feeling mighty irritated with him already, on account of you were the one in charge of the useless soger,” Mr. Starbuck went on, “soger” being a whaleman's most contemptuous term possible for an incompetent seaman. “You was supposed to show him the ropes—on account of he didn't have any English, and you speak the vernacular. And one hell of a horrible job you made of it too. All you had to do was translate orders, but he didn't learn nothing."

  "I did translate them!” Wiki protested, remembering how Alfonso, shambling about the deck or in the rigging, had paid no attention at all to his shouts in Portuguese. It had been very frustrating. Thinking back, there had been moments when he really had felt driven to the verge of murder. Then he added, “Until I realized he was deaf, that is."

  Both men stared, and Captain Smith exclaimed, “Deaf?"

  "Aye, sir. Stone deaf. Couldn't hear a sound."

  "But no one knew he was deaf!"

  Wiki felt surprised. “No one?"

  Mr. Starbuck shook his head. “Nope. You should've reported it to me, boy."

  "But, Miguel, his brother—"

  "Nope, Miguel didn't tell no one neither. How could he, when he don't have any English?"

  Wiki lapsed into silence because the first mate was right. Then he pointed out, “We didn't have any trouble with Miguel learning the ropes."

  The captain and his brother looked at each other, and then Mr. Starbuck said, “A brighter specimen altogether. Older too. God knows what goes on inside his head when he's trying to work out what the orders mean, but he's a steady man who tries his best."

  Wiki nodded. He'd found Miguel a dismal sort of character, apparently haunted by something in his past. However, unlike his brother, Miguel had certainly tried to do his best.

  Wiki said, “He—Miguel—told me how Alfonso's hearing was lost. It was quite a yarn too."

  "Yarn?"

  "Alfonso was deafened by insects, he said."

  "Insects?” the captain exclaimed.

  "Aye. It happened when Alfonso was a child—about four or five, I think. Miguel is quite a few years older, and I got the impression that there wasn't any other family, so he was responsible for his little brother. He woke up one night to hear Alfonso screaming in agony, and when he grabbed him the child was tearing at his ears, and after a few frantic moments Miguel realized that insects had crawled inside them. He found a lamp and lit it, and tried to poke the insects out with wires and sticks, but by the time he got the bits out, Alfonso's eardrums were entirely eaten away."

  "My God,” said Captain Smith, looking revolted. “I ain't heard nothin’ like it."

  "I have,” said Mr. Starbuck, who was not nearly as impressed. “A cockroach got into a shipmate's ear once when I was a boatsteerer on the old Atlantic. Was trying out blubber at the time, so we got some warm oil fresh from the cooling tank and poured it into his ear."

  "And it worked?"

  "The roach floated up fin out."

  "Good idea, worth bearing in mind,” approved Captain Smith. “You was the one who thought of it?"

  "Nope,” his brother admitted. “But I sure reckon a little warm sperm oil would've saved Alfonso's hearing.” He said to Wiki, “Was it roaches what chewed Alfonso's ears?"

  Wiki shrugged. He didn't know.

  "Something foreign and nasty, for sure,” the captain decided, and then asked, “So that was why he was such a numbskull, huh?"

  "It was more than that,” Mr. Starbuck said, before Wiki had a chance to answer. “Alfonso was nothin’ but trouble. It ain't no loss to this ship or the world that he's dead and done, for sure. But to murder him like that!"

  "The back of his head was smashed in, right?” said the captain.

  "Like an eggshell,” said Mr. Starbuck, who had been on watch when Wiki had come flying out of the blubber room with the awful news, and had gone down to check on the corpse. He added meaningfully, “It was obvious it was a savage what done it."

  Savage. DearGod, Wiki thought. He shifted from one broad bare foot to the other, abruptly very conscious of his brown skin and the black hair that trickled to his shoulders, while the two Nantucketers studied him dispassionately.

  Starbuck said, “I hear that Maori warriors kill with clubs in New Zealand."

  "So where is the club?” Wiki asked.

  The captain frowned. “What?"

  "The weapon that killed him."

  Captain Smith looked at Mr. Starbuck, who admitted, “He wasn't carrying nothing when he came tearing up the ladder to report he'd found Alfonso's corpse."

  "He must have left it in the blubber room. Did you see it when you went down to check that Alfonso was dead?"

  Mr. Starbuck thought a moment, and then shook his head.

  "Has anyone been down there since?"

  "Nope. I shut the hatch and bolted it, until the carpenter's made a coffin. No point in havin’ something that grisly on deck."

  "Right,” said Captain Smith. Morale was bad enough on board, without having a corpse out in the open for men to brood over. It was a mercy that they were so close to shore and Alfonso could be buried decently in a coffin in a regular churchyard, because there was nothing like a burial at sea to cast a pall over a ship.

  He stood up with decision, and said, “So let's go down and look. It should be easy to recognize the belaying pin or whatever else he used as a club by the blood and brains on the working end, I reckon."

  * * * *

  Wiki was right behind the captain and Mr. Starbuck as they strode out of the shade of the hurricane house that sheltered the stern. The whaleship was anchored just a hundred yards from shore, so his ears were filled with the rhythmic thud of surf. Beyond the blinding white of the curving beach, a parched sward of grass led up to the ragged stone walls and ancient-looking buildings of a small village, while foothills beyond rose toward a blue and purple mountain range in various shades of dark green, interspersed with the occasional glossy emerald
of a banana plantation. In the morning brightness, the colors were intense. The warm offshore breeze carried a resinous scent, and seagulls screamed as they swooped overhead.

  The men on watch were clustered curiously about the foremast, and a muttering rose up as they saw that Wiki was with the captain and Mr. Starbuck. The third mate, who was in charge of the deck, hassled them off to their work. Then he approached the captain, saying, “Sir, the cooper is complaining that the big maul has gone a-missing."

  "Not again!” Captain Smith exclaimed, highly irritated. The topping maul, a heavy, double-headed hammer, was used for knocking pins out of certain chains, such as the cat-stopper, which kept the anchor in place on the forecastle-head. When he'd ordered the anchor let go when they'd arrived at this little cove, there had been an embarrassing hiatus and the old ship had damn near run aground because no one had been able to find the hammer to knock the anchor free. At the last critical second the cook had come running up with it—he'd been using it to break up big lumps of coal into smaller pieces to fit in the stove, and had inadvertently left it by the galley.

  "Have you asked the cook?” Captain Smith demanded.

  "Of course, sir. He used it again last night but swears he put it back."

  "I don't believe the lying hound for an instant. Set up a search party with him at the head of it—and keep an eye out for my mirror too."

  "Mirror?” said the third mate, looking very startled.

  "Aye. It's gone from by the companionway door. Don't you have any eyes in your head?"

  "Aye, sir,” said the third mate hastily. He beat a swift retreat, and Wiki could hear him yelling at the cook as the captain and Mr. Starbuck hunkered down by the fore hatch.

  Just as the first mate had testified, it was securely shut and bolted. The bolt gleamed in the sunshine. Despite its shiny appearance, it squealed as Mr. Starbuck drew it back, just the way it had screeched when Wiki had released it that morning. Then Wiki helped him slide the heavy wooden cover away. Sailorlike, they were careful to keep it right side upward, as it was very unlucky to turn a hatch cover bottom up.

  A short, strong ladder led down into blackness. Wiki went first, moving slowly as his sight adjusted. The planks between the bottom of the ladder and the small square porthole in the side of the hull were empty. This forehold was used as the blubber room, where the fat was chopped up when the whales were cut in, and because they had caught no whales, it hadn't been used at all, but it still stank of rancid oil from previous voyages. There was a metallic smell, too, from the bulk of the big iron freshwater tank, which glistened faintly with condensation. Forward, there was a pile of kindling for the cook's fire, all of it too fragile to be used as a weapon. Otherwise there was nothing but the corpse, the breakfast plate where Wiki had left it, and the mattress that Alfonso had been given to lie on while he was imprisoned.

  Captain Smith jumped off the bottom rung of the ladder with an echoing thump of boots, took one penetrating look around, then strode over to the corpse, which lay in the same huddled position, right under the sidelight where Wiki had found it. Without the slightest sign of a wince, he hauled it up and around so he could inspect the head in the light let in by the porthole. Then he hollered to his brother to fetch a lamp.

  A lantern was duly fetched, and the bloodied head was turned from one side to the other while the two brothers peered and probed. To Wiki's disbelief, the victim's ears interested them a lot more than the crushed state of the skull. However, try as hard as they could, they couldn't look deep enough to see the intriguingly insect-chewed eardrums.

  Giving up this absorbing pursuit, they turned to the job they had come down for, the search for a weapon. Listening to them throwing kindling around in the fruitless hunt, Wiki thrust his head outside the square sidelight, craning as far as he could before his shoulders stopped him. The bright broken reflections of the sun on the surface of the clear water were blinding for a moment, but then his eyes focused, and he could see down through the sea to the sandy bottom, marked with wavering shadows. Because of the delay when they'd come to anchor, they were almost in the shallows, and that, with the clarity of the water, created a tunnel effect that was so eerie he almost fancied he was falling. Then Wiki jumped with fright as Captain Smith spoke loudly from right behind his shoulder.

  He brought his head in and turned. The captain said, “So that's what you did with the club."

  Wiki said, “I beg your pardon, sir?"

  "Dropped it out that sidelight, because there surely ain't any weapon in here."

  Wiki paused, thinking this over, and then ventured, “So you need a volunteer to dive overboard and retrieve it?"

  "That's exactly what I do want,” said Captain Smith briskly, and strode over to the ladder.

  * * * *

  The trouble was, he couldn't find a volunteer. The search party, straggling along from their failed hunt for the maul and the mirror, all denied the ability to swim, as did the off-duty watch when called up to deck. Captain Smith ordered Wiki to tell Miguel Gomes to do it, his logic being that any man with black hair and olive skin would naturally be able to swim like a fish, but Miguel, looking more haunted and tragic than ever, shook his head. Wiki, it seemed, was the only man in the crew who was at home in the sea.

  "Jes’ what you expect of a kanaka,” someone was heard to mutter derisively, “kanaka” being the Yankee whaler name for a Pacific Islander, which Wiki was generally considered to be, disregarding the fact that the half of him that was not American was actually New Zealand Maori. Captain Smith, ignoring this, warned Wiki that he would be closely watched from the rail, and then stood back as Wiki stripped, jumped, and dived.

  The cool water closed pleasantly around his head and gurgled in his ears. All the world turned pale green. Wiki surfaced, shook his long hair back, blinked salt out of his eyes, and checked that he was directly under the porthole of the blubber room. Then he ducked, kicked, and arrowed down.

  It wasn't hard to find his first objective because it was attached to a long cord that had become snagged in the weed that grew freely on the old ship's bottom. With a great splash Wiki surged to the top, the end of the cord in his grip. Again, he shook hair and water out of his eyes, and then with his free hand he grasped a dangling rope, and walked his way up the side of the ship.

  "What you got there?” Captain Smith inquired.

  Instead of answering, Wiki concentrated on hauling up the object that hung from the end of the cord. It was the lost mirror. The glass face was sadly cracked and shattered, and its fancy gilt frame was chipped, but it was unmistakably Captain Smith's property.

  "What the hell?” said Captain Smith blankly. Wiki thought he'd discerned a swift intake of breath at the back of the group of clustered men. Without turning to look, he jumped onto the rail and dived overboard again.

  This time he had to use his strength to wrestle the second object to the surface. Instead of trying to heave it one-handed up the side of the ship, he lashed it to the hanging rope, and then, after he had clambered back to deck, he hauled the dripping object up.

  The topping maul. Captain Smith exclaimed, “You killed him with that hammer!"

  "I did not,” said Wiki, and turned to the cook. “Tell the truth!” he ordered.

  The cook, who was a black man, had gone a sort of gray color. He stammered wordlessly, and then wept.

  Mr. Starbuck cried, “But Cook can't be the killer! I heard Alfonso creating all kinds of hell after he came back on deck, and no one went down after that—not until you did, Wiki Coffin!"

  "But he did leave the maul at the back of the galley again,” said Wiki. “It's just he's scared to admit he made the same mistake twice."

  "So why did he throw it overboard—and my mirror?” the captain demanded.

  "The mirror wasn't thrown overboard,” Wiki said. “It was dangled by the string to attract Alfonso's attention, so that he put his head out the sidelight. Then the maul was dropped on top of his head, killing him instantly. If the
porthole had been bigger, he would have toppled out of it, and into the sea. Instead, he flopped back inside the hold."

  "The cook did that?” Captain Smith echoed. His face had gone quite blank.

  "Not the cook,” Wiki contradicted. “It was Miguel."

  Another gasp from the back of the group, and then a flurry of movement. For a moment it looked as if Miguel would jump overboard and make a break for it, but the quickwitted third mate grabbed him just in time. For a moment the Brazilian stood rigid, but then he collapsed in the officer's grip, sobbing inconsolably.

  * * * *

  "His own brother!” said Captain Smith to Wiki as they trudged down the path past the little graveyard where Alfonso was buried. They were coming back from the indictment, which had been presided over by the local justice of the peace, who was the fellow who administered law, order, and the collection of taxes in this village from a building flying the green and gold flag of the Brazilian Empire. Miguel had made a full confession, witnessed by the captain, the magistrate, and a dozen taxpaying citizens, and then had been led away in chains to face trial in Rio de Janeiro.

  "His own brother,” Captain Smith repeated and shook his head. “The very last person I would have suspected! How did you figure it was him?"

  "Miguel was the only man on board who knew that making a noise wouldn't attract Alfonso's attention—that he had to lower something that would catch the moonlight and make Alfonso curious enough to put his head out the sidelight."

  "The only man who knew he was deaf?"

  "Aye,” said Wiki. Apart from himself, of course. That didn't count.

  "But ... why kill him? His own brother!"