Polaris

by Michael Northrop

  The group scattered to the edges of the berth, to the odd corners and slivers of space where they’d been exiled by the big, burly, and as often as not foulmouthed sailors. The Polaris not being the driest of ships, nearly all the sailors had opted for hammocks rather than thin mattresses. For the ship’s boys, there was no choice. They gathered their hammocks quickly. Some of them shouldered their small sea trunks and others just pawed through theirs for dry clothes or good-luck charms.

  Owen’s trunk was too large to carry easily, and he figured he could always come back for whatever he needed. He removed some essentials and then pulled his small silver cross and whalebone comb from their hiding place in the trunk’s lining and pocketed them both. As he slammed the trunk closed, a large wave passed under the ship—one last reminder of the storm. He wobbled on his feet. He heard the putrid bilge water slosh and slop in the hold below and prepared himself for the wave of foul odor that usually followed. But the scent that reached his nose this time smelled more of—

  “Flowers,” said Thacher.

  Henry said something in response, but it was drowned out by the sound of trunks slamming shut.

  “Let’s go!” said three of them at once.

  A moment later, the lamplight was heading back the way they’d come, the darkness shrinking before it and growing after it. Owen took one more look back as they retreated. What he saw was a dark and dank world. It had been so very familiar once, but now it seemed exceedingly strange. Death seemed to permeate the old ship right down to its beams.

  And then he saw something else. At the edge of the light, at the edge of his vision: a shadow. And true, it was but one shadow among many, but this one wasn’t deepening back into darkness.

  This one was moving. This one was following.

  A night filled with bloodshed and ghost stories was edging toward dawn now, but not all the dead, it seemed, were content to rest.

  And Owen, who’d been the last one down the hatch, was the first one to climb back up.

  Since he could walk, or at least since he could swim, it had been Owen’s dream to one day occupy the captain’s cabin on a ship such as the Polaris.

  But not like this.

  Comfort was not the issue. As the ship rocked gently beneath him, his hanging hammock cradled him softly and stayed more or less level. No, it was the tragic circumstances that bothered him. That, and the company.

  The others were arrayed all around him, anywhere they could hook two ends of a hammock. Every available sleeping space was taken, with the notable exception of the captain’s bed. It was a sturdy wooden shelf built into the wall and topped with a feather pillow and a soft red blanket. As comfortable as it looked, the thought of anyone else sleeping there seemed ludicrous. The once-stately cabin itself now felt more like a one-room schoolhouse. It was all so out of order that it boggled the cabin boy’s mind.

  It wouldn’t have been so bad if we’d set the watches, he thought. Then half of us would be on deck. But safely at anchor and exhausted, they’d called off the watches. It was a collective decision, made simply by not doing it. It troubled him, but he was so tired, and it was true enough: There were no mates left to lead the watches anyway. They’d figure it all out in the morning, he hoped.

  He rolled over, scrunched his eyes closed, and tried again to sleep. The Polaris did its part, gently rocking back and forth. But it was no use.

  Owen lay awake for most of the night. On the few occasions he managed to nod off, he dreamed of bloody mutiny. He’d wake, confusing it for memory until he recalled that he couldn’t possibly have seen any of it from inside the cabin. Then he’d remember the utter helplessness he’d felt, locked in as the fighting erupted, vainly ramming his shoulder against the thick door. Then came the tragic end, and the sight of the traitors cresting a wave in the launch, disappearing into darkness. Curse them.

  All around him, the others fought their own nocturnal battles. He heard Manny talking in his sleep a few feet away, mumbling something in Spanish before punching a half-formed fist at the air. Striking out at a nightmare, Manny nearly hit Mario.

  In a darker corner by the door, Aaron sniffled. Or was it the botanist’s assistant? It was too dark to tell, and Owen was honestly glad. Whoever was crying, they deserved at least that little bit of privacy.

  It was the first peaceful thought he’d had all night, and moments later, he finally fell into a sound sleep. He woke just before dawn. He shifted in his hammock and craned his neck over its canvas edge. He stared out the bank of windows at the back of the cabin until he saw it. There, he thought as the first streaks of gray rose like vapor from the eastern horizon.

  He loved this moment, how the sunrise brightened the ocean below faster than it lit the sky above. Faint light spread across the face of the sea, hinting at its vast depths and all the living things moving there, from the littlest minnow to the mightiest whale. He gave up on sleep and tried to think of nothing but what was happening beyond those windows.

  A thin slice of clear light spread across the horizon, and the sky turned a brighter gray above it, like lead melting upward. The sea lit up with the first subtle shades of green and blue. And then, like a big egg or a small miracle, the first golden rays of the sun cracked the horizon. Owen knew now that the day ahead would be sunny and fair, and he allowed himself a small smile.

  But a moment later, the memories came crashing back. The smile fell from his face, and his jaw locked in firm resolve. He looked around the cabin in the dim light. Drool ran down Henry’s cheek; Aaron rolled onto his side, away from the light; and Thacher lay so still that he might just as easily have been dead.

  With no one on watch and no officer to call all hands at first light, the others had overslept. The Polaris was theirs now, for better or worse. Strike that, thought Owen. For worse. And on their very first day, they were already running late—and on a storm-damaged ship, no less.

  He swung over the side of his hammock, filling his lungs with the stale air of the cabin. “All hands!” he shouted. “Turn to, you dogs!”

  There had been enough slacking in the night. Tragedy, fear, confusion: Whatever the cause, they had already bent enough rules for a lifetime at sea. Captain Eagling was gone. Owen could deny it no longer. But every ship needed a leader, he thought, and there was still some of the Eagling bloodline aboard.

  A new day had dawned, and if no one else would do it, Owen was of a mind to crack the whip.

  “Come on, forward now,” called Owen. “Let’s man that pump!”

  Henry blinked up at the early morning sun, wiped the sleep from his eyes, and followed the others forward across the deck.

  “So we’re washing down the deck?” said Thacher.

  “Of course!” said Owen.

  Henry caught Manny and Mario exchanging quick glances. The crew began every day by washing the deck, a laborious task that could take two hours. Henry was all for cleanliness and routine, but the deck had gotten an extremely thorough washing down in the storm. And that wasn’t the only benefit of all that rain.

  “The scuttlebutt is full as a ripe berry!” said Aaron.

  The barrel of drinking water had been lashed securely to the foremast before the storm, and no one had thought to remove it afterward. Now it was brimming with fresh, clear rainwater. Henry’s throat was dry and his mouth was sour, but he hesitated. He knew by now that you never did anything without permission aboard a sailing ship. Was that still the case? And if not, then why was everyone else hesitating too? Could it be as simple as force of habit?

  “Drink up, then,” said Owen, halting his march toward the seawater pump. “Grab a cup.”

  Henry held back as the ship’s boys rushed the barrel. There were two cups hanging from the side of the barrel on lengths of moldy twine, and he waited as the others gulped down the cool water. His turn finally came, but as soon as he picked up the cup that Aaron had just dropped, Owen called out again: “Enough! You’ll drown yourselves!”

  The cabin boy turned and
resumed his march toward the elm-tree pump, and the others fell in line like ducklings. Henry gulped down half a cupful, coughed, burped, and followed. But once again, he held back as more knowledgeable hands set to work.

  The Polaris had two pumps: one to pump the bilge water out of the hold and another to pump seawater onto the deck. Henry stared at the latter. It was a marvelous thing, he thought: a hollowed-out tree trunk that went down through the decks and into the ocean below. It was only by the sheer wonder of science—air pressure, water pressure, and equilibrium—that it did not sink the ship immediately.

  As Owen grabbed the handle and the Spanish brothers grabbed the buckets, Henry ventured a quick look around the deck. Aaron was standing beside him, staring out over the rail as the sun inched its way above the horizon. The sunlight was straight on, nearly horizontal, and it skipped brightly off the tops of the little wind-tossed waves, turning the face of the sea into an endless field of sparkling diamonds. It astounded Henry that the sea could be so terrifying one moment and so casually beautiful the next.

  “You two!” bellowed Owen in between cranks on the pump handle. Henry knew before he even turned around that Owen meant him and Aaron. “Make yourselves useful and grab a swab.”

  Henry pulled his eyes from the sunrise and looked back at the cabin boy, just to make sure. He got a fierce glare and a Yes, you! nod for his trouble. He remembered Owen the night before, benumbed by grief and offering little opinion on anything. He was definitely back to his old bossy self today. Must not have slept well, he thought as he and Aaron headed for a little shack on deck. It had once been the goat house, before the poor creature’s milk had dried up and they’d eaten her. Now it was where they kept the mops and other instruments of drudgery.

  “Is he the captain now?” Henry whispered once they were far enough away.

  Aaron turned and looked back at Owen, still cranking away at the pump as seawater began to splash forth, half into the bucket and half onto Mario, who was holding it. Aaron whispered, “Only in his mind.” Henry chuckled as Aaron continued. “But he’s the best sailor, and I suppose we should listen to him if we don’t want to sink.”

  The smile fell from Henry’s face, and for the first time it hit him—really hit him—the situation they were in now. They would have to get this ship to port themselves. He turned and looked back at the others—really looked at them. Children, all of them, not one with any real use for a shaving razor. They had calloused hands and knotty muscles, to be sure, but what experience did any of them have running a ship?

  He glanced back over at Aaron. Did he seem a little nervous about it too? Yes, Henry decided, but then, Aaron was always nervous. His job had been carrying gunpowder.

  Henry swallowed hard, his throat already gone dry again.

  He spent the next two hours pushing an old rope-headed mop around the deck. He could see that he was just making things worse. The storm-blasted deck was clean to begin with. Even the four old cannons, perched vigilantly along the rail, seemed to gleam in the morning light. But the mop was old and moldy, and with the ship riding low in the stirred-up shallows, the seawater in his bucket was gritty with sediment. The little lump of lye soap dissolving inside seemed to do nothing but give it all a toxic smell.

  Still, Henry knew better than to point any of this out. He considered himself a scientist, and as such, he learned by careful observation. What he had observed so far in his weeks at sea: Routine trumped common sense every time.

  He’d been lucky, in one sense, during those weeks. Death may have fallen all about him like wintry hail, but he’d been spared the endless physical labor aboard the ship. After the doomed expedition had returned, he’d made himself useful by helping the purser out with the ship’s logs. In fact, by the end, he’d basically been doing the man’s job for him, recording every keg of salt pork, butter, and water opened and every piece of equipment cracked. He hadn’t been at all surprised to spot the good-for-nothing purser riding away on the launch among the mutineers.

  So now he pushed his old mop without complaint as the others scrambled around doing their share of the chores and maintenance that seemed to occupy every waking moment aboard the ship. Before Dr. Wetherby disappeared into the Amazon, he’d explained it to Henry this way, “A sailing ship is like your Latin: always in need of work.” He missed the old doctor so powerfully that even the memory of this insult made Henry’s eyes begin to water.

  “Hold up,” called Manny.

  Henry held his swab still as Manny and Mario knelt down in front of him and removed the storm cover from a grating. Once they stood back up, he proceeded to coat the latticework of little wooden squares with grungy seawater. As he did, he peered down through the open squares into the shadowy murk below deck. He remembered the night before: the fear and shifting shadows. That strange smell again. Standing in the morning light, he wanted to dismiss it, to write it all off to the feverish imaginations of the night. But he was a scientist, after all. He learned by careful observation. And at the end, just before they’d fled back up the hatch, he had seen something.

  He shivered deeply in the warm morning and pushed his mop quickly across the grate. A quick twirl around the old goat house, back where he’d started, and he was done. He mopped around the old shack once more, for good measure, dreading what he’d be assigned next. Something shipish and sailory that I’ll have no idea how to do, no doubt, he thought. But when Aaron returned to the shack too, Henry gave up and put his mop away.

  For a moment, the two stood side by side in the sun. There were no officers left to call out the time, but dawn was over and it was well and truly morning.

  “Must be seven bells by now,” said Aaron.

  Owen, who was climbing in the rigging ten feet above their heads, either heard him or was thinking the same thing. And seven bells into the morning watch meant one very particular thing on board a working ship. “Who wants to go down to the galley and fetch breakfast?” Owen called down.

  Everyone looked around at each other. Henry’s eyes flicked back over the grate. The galley was below deck, deep in the ship’s shadowy heart.

  “Two of you should do,” Owen shouted, issuing his orders literally from on high.

  No one volunteered, and Henry looked over at Aaron in a slight panic. Was it too late for them to grab their mops and try to look busy again?

  “Right!” called Owen. “No breakfast this morning. A dozen rules were broken last night.” He paused, and Henry wondered if he would acknowledge his own part in the general disobedience. Instead, he barreled on. “An empty belly seems fit punishment. And it’s past time we set sail for home.”

  As Owen scrambled down the rigging—the angled rope shrouds that kept the masts centered and the horizontal ratlines that turned it all into a vast network of rope ladders—the others exchanged glances again. These looks were different, and Henry saw the hesitation in them. By some unspoken agreement, they’d all consented to accept orders from Owen, at least for now. He was certainly the most experienced sailor: All but raised at sea, he scurried down the ratlines now with the instinctive ease of a monkey on a vine. But he was no older than the rest of them, and it was highly debatable whether he was any wiser.

  Manny looked to Mario. Aaron looked to Henry. Thacher stared back up at Owen.

  Orders were one thing—but should they really accept punishment from this boy as well?

  Owen reached the last ratline, swung down, and landed squarely on the gently rolling deck. His bare feet slapped the freshly swabbed wood, and he turned to face the others. “Work hard and we’ll have an early dinner,” he said, “when the sun is high overhead.”

  Everyone nodded. When the sun was high overhead and the sunlight through the grates and hatches was at its brightest. That was when they’d go back down there for their meal.

  Suddenly, everyone was in agreement.

  “Fair enough,” said Thacher.

  “I’m not hungry yet, anyway,” added Aaron in a lie so obvious that Henry
nearly laughed out loud.

  The young crew made another trip to the scuttlebutt. A cup of water would be their breakfast. And then it would begin: the complex and grueling set of tasks that went into weighing anchor and setting sail.

  The United States of America. The words floated into Henry’s head as he dropped the cup and wiped his lips. Still a young nation but already a large one.

  He pictured the globe back in Dr. Wetherby’s study in Boston. They were on the fat part now, near the equator. They needed to climb the slope, not over a few inches of blue ink and dotted lines but through hundreds of miles of treacherous ocean. He could picture the painted outline of the United States clearly.

  If they were ever to set foot on its soil again, this would be their first step.

  And if they were to die trying? This would be the first step for that too.

  “Weigh anchor!” called Owen.

  And while Henry admired the brisk can-do tone of the cabin boy’s voice, he understood immediately that the problem with weighing anchor was how much an anchor actually weighed. Henry had seen the things splash down into the water, two big double-sided iron hooks that had held firm during the storm. Each one, he was sure, was wedged in firmly and weighed more than all the remaining crew put together.

  “Port side first!” called Owen, and Henry remembered the little phrase he’d come up with to remember which side that was. “Just left port,” he mumbled to himself, and turned to the left a moment after everyone else.