The Dark Canoe

by Scott O'Dell

  Nor did I feel differently when we reached the life buoy.

  “Keep thy wits about thee,” he cautioned us. “She is to be fair to the eye, as on that fateful day when the White Whales set her adrift in southern seas.”

  After about two hours of work, the lid was ready to fasten down. But then, as Judd set it in place and started to drive the first nail, Caleb remembered that his dark canoe lacked a new packet of biscuits and a flask of fresh water. I was sent back to the ship, therefore, to fetch them.

  Tom Waite was still in the rigging, along with the rest of the crew. As I climbed over the rail, he paused and again made a circle in the air and pointed to his head. There were also some scattered calls from the crew.

  I went to the galley posthaste, filled the flask, wrapped a dozen biscuits in a piece of oil cloth, and was at the bottom of the ladderway when I saw Captain Troll standing above me. I stepped aside and he came slowly down.

  “How long is your brother going to putter around out there?” he said. “All day?”

  “Perhaps longer,” I replied. “They’re just beginning to nail on the lid. There are lines to fasten and seams to caulk. I don’t know what else.”

  “Looks like another day of it,” said Troll. He turned, glanced up the ladderway, and listened for a moment. “When you were over on the island, the time you found Jeremy’s body, did you by any chance see gold lying around? A chest or anything like that?”

  “No.”

  “Did you look?”

  “I didn’t think to.”

  “The chief had a whole bag of gold coins when he came to the ship. Remember? There must be more where they came from.”

  Steps sounded above us and two of the men stopped for a drink at the water cask. Troll waited until they had finished and walked on.

  “You know the way to the island,” he said. “Besides, the chief and you are friends since Caleb gave him the ring. I was thinking we could row over and have a look around. Pay them a friendly visit. Just the two of us. If we find gold there’s no sense in dividing it up, is there?”

  Suddenly, as I listened to Troll, I had a strong suspicion that it was he who had gone to the island with my brother on the day Jeremy drowned.

  “You’ll be helping over at the cove the rest of the afternoon,” he said. “But that don’t matter. The tide won’t be changing for three hours yet.”

  “The tide?” I said. “What has the tide to do with it?”

  Troll stood in the dim light that came down the ladderway. I watched his eyes shift away from me and back again.

  “I hear there’s a bad one between the island and the coast,” he said. “Strong enough to capsize a good-sized boat.”

  “And it did capsize a boat,” I replied, “the boat Jeremy was in.”

  Troll was surprised by my words. At least he was silent for a while, thinking about them. But at that moment I doubt that he cared whether or not I knew that he had been with Jeremy on that morning. His mind had fastened upon the Indian gold.

  “When we’re over there,” he said, in a further effort to interest me in the plan, “we’ll bring Jeremy back.”

  “It would take every man in the crew and every gun we own. They worship him. They think more of him than their gold.”

  “You may be right,” Troll said. “We’ll go over first and look around.”

  He slipped past me, quietly climbed the ladder, glanced fore and aft along the deck, and came quickly back.

  “There’s a lot of big ears around,” he explained, lowering his voice. “You said that the Indians think more of Jeremy than they do their gold. I take it that you saw some of it sitting around.”

  “I saw a little,” I said, angry at myself for having mentioned gold at all.

  “How much?”

  I said nothing and Troll stood for a moment staring at me, not waiting for me to answer, but lost in some wild dream that made his thin mouth quiver.

  “The tide turns in about three hours,” he said. “Take the stuff back to Caleb and then leave. Tell him I need you here. An important matter. That will give us time to reach Isla Ballena when the tide’s right.”

  “I can’t get away.”

  Troll ran his tongue over his lips. “You can’t get away?” he said. “Why? Because you blame me for your brother’s death? Well, get it through your head that it was his idea from the first. Not mine. I never thought of going over there for the Indians’ gold until he brought it up.”

  “No, I don’t blame you for Jeremy’s death. But I do blame you for not telling us what happened to him. Why didn’t you? Was it because you planned to go back to the island again? By yourself this time, so you wouldn’t have to share what you stole with someone else?”

  Troll blinked. He started to speak and stopped after mumbling one word. I waited for him to go on, but there was no need to, for I could see by the confused look on his face that I had already answered for him. Turning away, I went up the ladder.

  “Be back in an hour,” he shouted, suddenly regaining his voice. “If you’re not, I’ll give the order to sail. I’ll leave you over there in the cove. You and your brother and Old Man Judd, too. Maybe you and your crazy brother would like that. Since you’ve got a good life buoy with thirty handholds hanging on it, and an armful of provisions, you can all sail to Nantucket or somewhere.”

  I untied the launch and rowed off to the cove. I told Caleb about Captain Troll’s threat as soon as I waded ashore. He was driving one of the big square nails. He did not even look up.

  21

  The sea biscuits and the flask of water were stowed away in the life buoy and carefully roped so they would not roll around. The lid was nailed, the seams caulked tight with oakum and pitch, the thirty Turk’s head knots, beautiful to behold in their intricate weaving, fastened to the six sides of the lid with long, square nails, new as the day they came from the foundry.

  Throughout the blazing afternoon, I kept a close eye upon the ship. But so far as I could tell, Caleb never glanced at her once. He knew Captain Troll better than I did.

  The last nail was driven at sundown and on a neap tide we pushed the life buoy, which Caleb called the dark canoe, down the sloping shore. It floated high in the water, now that all the barnacles had been scraped off save those that covered the bottom, on an even keel like the best of the little Nantucket boats. And like a boat we towed it back to the ship and moored it at the stern.

  We would have sailed that hour on the turning tide, with a good breeze at our backs, except that Captain Troll was not on board. He had rowed off soon after I had left the ship, Tom Waite told us, in the direction of Isla Ballena, saying that he would return around midnight.

  At midnight, as I went on watch, he had not returned, nor did he appear at dawn. When noon came and he still was missing, Caleb sent three of us—Judd, Tom Waite, and me—to search for him on Ballena and in the waters nearby.

  We were unable to reach the island because of the heavy current, but close to nightfall, as we were about to give up the search, Tom Waite spotted Troll’s wrecked boat, wedged in a crevice of the rocky headland. Troll we never found, though we went back the next morning, searched once more, and asked Chief Bonsig about him.

  With a thumb and four fingers, the little chief made the sign of a jaw, a shark’s jaw I presumed, then rapidly opened and closed his hand to describe Troll’s fate. My brother’s body I saw again, lying there on the headland. Tom Waite wanted to risk his life to carry it away, but Judd and I persuaded him not to.

  When we reached the ship I found Caleb at once and gave him the news of Troll’s death. He was in his cabin, standing at the high table, the lantern burning overhead and a chart of the coast he made on his previous trip spread out before him.

  Beside the chart lay his ebony protractor, which apparently he had been using to plot the ship’s course southward. I was surprised
to see it there for during the whole of the voyage, from Nantucket to Magdalena Bay, it had been hidden from sight. With an embarrassed look, as if I had caught him in the act of pilfering the ship’s funds, he opened a drawer and put it away.

  “Troll’s left us,” he said. “’Twas somehow fated. Dost think the Indians will make him a god shouldst they find him floating about? No, unlike our Jeremy, he hath not the shape nor physiognomy for such a lofty role.”

  “We have a problem,” I said. “The ship lacks a captain. Jim Blanton is next in line…”

  “Blanton!” Caleb broke in, giving me the impression that he had never heard of the first mate before.

  “The tall, hungry-looking one or the round one of well-fed mien?”

  “Neither,” I replied. “Blanton’s bald and wears a beard.”

  “I’ve glimpsed him. What thinkest thou, Nathan, wouldst make us a proper captain? Doth he know the ship’s pointed end from the blunt end? Canst scan a sail and read the wind and limn the lurking shoal?”

  I hesitated with my answer, overcome because never before had he asked me a question of importance.

  “Speak up,” Caleb said. “Thou hast seen a goodly part of the watery world. Thou hast seen men stand before their God and lie. Thou hast seen men die ignobly. Thou hast found a wondrous treasure in the sea. Unloose thy tongue, therefore. Thoughts unsaid clutter the mind and do in time make it bilious. What dost think of Blanton? Doth his manly beard conceal a coward?”

  Emboldened, I said, “From what I’ve seen of him Blanton would be a bad choice. He knows the ship but little about navigation. When there was talk of mutiny he and Troll were always the ringleaders. Also, the only man in the crew who likes him is the cook.”

  “How doth Tom Waite strike thee? He seemeth a lively fellow. Perchance too lively, since the good captains I’ve known are more the sober-sided kind, those given to long thoughts.”

  “Tom’s all right,” I said.

  “Wouldst trust thy life to him and the life of the crew and the ship’s life?”

  As I thought about his question, my eyes fell upon the chart spread out on the table. The straight line of the course he was plotting when I entered the cabin showed clear.

  “What say, Nathan? Dost thou wish to summon Tom Waite?”

  We looked at each other across the width of the cabin.

  There was no doubt at all that his question was sincere. If I had agreed upon Tom Waite as our new captain, he would have summoned him that instant, of this I am certain. But it was not the right choice and I did not make it. I took from the drawer the protractor, which Caleb had hidden, and placed it on the table beside the chart he had been working with only a few minutes before.

  “Captain Clegg,” I said, “what are your orders?”

  My words sounded dramatic, overly so I suppose, for I felt embarrassed as I spoke them, and Caleb, tugging at his beard, looked away. He picked up the big white cat and put it down, walked slowly to the porthole, and gazed out.

  “Have the men on deck at once,” he said, in a voice that now had a different sound to me. “And stir thy stumps about it. We waste precious time whilst thou stand there gawking.”

  22

  In high spirits I ran forward along the deck to give Caleb’s orders to our first mate, Mr. Blanton. He was not at the bow where I had seen him earlier or below, but I found him at last on the quarterdeck. He stood at the wheel, idly moving it back and forth, his feet squared and his cap set at a jaunty angle.

  “Captain Clegg,” I said, “has given the order to sail.”

  I spoke twice before he heard me, so lost was he in his own thoughts. For a moment his hands tightened on the wheel. Then they dropped to his sides and hung there, two great fists with which he had been known to drive a nail into a hard pine plank.

  I was tempted to explain to him why he had not been chosen as our new captain, but watching the menacing, knotty fists that hung at his side, decided not to. “Caleb Clegg once was captain,” I said, “and is again.”

  “He has no right,” Blanton said. “He’s got no captain’s papers.”

  “He will have them when he reaches Nantucket,” I replied.

  “He’s crazy to boot,” Blanton said.

  “About some things,” I answered, “but not about sailing a ship.”

  Blanton thrust his fists behind him. I felt that he was weighing the possibilities of mutiny, going over them step by step in his slow mind, balancing the rewards against the consequences.

  “We are more than a thousand leagues from home,” I said. “We need an experienced captain. Without one, none of us is safe—neither us nor the ambergris.”

  It was the mention of the ambergris, the casks that were worth more than twenty thousand dollars, that I think brought him to his senses. As he thrust his fists into his pockets, I started for the ladderway.

  “Ask your brother about the thing,” he said surlily, “the thing that’s hanging to our stern. Shall I cut it loose or hoist it?”

  I was minded to tell Blanton to put the life buoy on deck, but not being sure what my brother intended to do with it, I said nothing and departed.

  Caleb was bent over the table with a chart spread out before him, the ebony protractor in his hand. He had taken the lantern down from its hook and it sat on a pile of books beside him, casting a strong light across the table. I saw at a glance that it was not the chart of the Pacific Coast which lay in front of him, which he had been working on before, but a new chart, one of the broad Pacific and the islands of the southern seas. Truthfully, I must say that at the moment, at the sight of it lying there, my blood ran cold.

  “Hast given the order?” Caleb said, not looking up.

  My answer must have come forth in a mumble, for he asked me again, “Hast given the order?”

  “Blanton wants to know about the life buoy,” I said. “Do you wish it hoisted aboard or left tethered at the stern?”

  Caleb straightened up and glanced at me as if I as well as Blanton had lost our wits. “Aboard! Aboard! ’Tis not a kedge to tow or yet a sea anchor in a storm. ’Tis a life buoy, the dark canoe which is tethered there. Have Mr. Blanton bring it aboard and seest thou that it’s lashed down securely. Who knows when we shalt need it, in what great storm or dire confrontation?”

  I stumbled out of the cabin and up the ladder to the quarterdeck, where I gave my brother’s orders to the waiting Blanton. On my return, finding Caleb again bent over the chart table, I quietly approached and glanced over his shoulder. He had drawn a line from Magdalena Bay to the southernmost of the Hawaiian Islands and was about to draw a second line from this point southeastward to the Marquesas. It was not the course that would take the ship homeward to Nantucket.

  I decided to wait no longer. I could already hear the winches at work, hoisting the life buoy on board. In less than a half an hour the anchor would be raised and the sails unfurled.

  “What,” I blurted out, “what’s the reason for plotting a course to the South Seas?”

  Caleb slowly finished the line he was drawing and laid the protractor aside. “Dost think we shall not find him there?” he said.

  “Find who?” I asked.

  “Thou know him well from thy reading,” Caleb said. “The monstrous Moby Dick. Dost think him there or doth the devious-cruising Whale push his pleated brow through colder latitudes? Off Nippon’s shores, mayhap? Where thinkest thou he now spends his crafty hours?”

  Caleb’s eyes were calm. And his question was spoken in a calm brotherly way, as if he meant to consider my answer whatever it might be.

  “I think that Moby Dick is dead,” I answered. “Dead many years ago.”

  “Thou knowest, Nathan, that ordinary whales have longer lives than mortal men. Twice as long, I’ve heard. And Moby Dick lives not by ordinary rules, either of beasts or man. We shall find him, I think, still in life�
��s prime, though he may now prefer warmer, equatorial seas to those of northern climes.”

  “He’s dead,” I repeated. “If not from old age, then from a ship’s harpoon.”

  Caleb’s eyes clouded for a moment at the thought of the White Whale’s death, but he said, “No, ’tis our harpoons alone he waits for.”

  On the deck I could hear the scurrying of feet, the preparations for departure. “Let’s say that the White Whale is alive,” I said, taking another tack, “and we decide to hunt him down, who will go with us? Not the crew aboard this ship. There’s not a man, except Judd, who wouldn’t rise up against us. Everyone is anxious to get home. Don’t forget their unspent wages—the casks of ambergris—that they talk about day and night. What will be their pay for hunting Moby Dick?”

  It was a strong argument I gave him in this warning, since I spoke the hard truth, yet he passed it over with a shrug.

  “They’ll do what I command,” he said. “Did not Ahab’s men follow him?”

  “Yes, to their death, but you are not Ahab and this is not his crew,” I said. “Listen, Caleb. You’ve found the Amy Foster, after a search which few men would have the courage to make. You’ve brought up a fortune in ambergris. And most important of all, you now have the logbook. It lies there in front of you. We are taking it to Nantucket. The board of inquiry will see that you were right and Jeremy was wrong.”

  Caleb was listening to what I said, yet deep behind his gaze I saw the lurking image of Moby Dick. It was there; it had been there for all the years I remembered, this unloved man’s hatred of a world that in its indifferent way had also hated him. But how in the passing of an hour do you slay the white-humped monster?

  At this moment Mr. Blanton knocked at the door and said that the tide would be turning in a quarter hour and asked if we should wait.

  “Wait!” I shouted and turned again to my brother. “More than likely the Whale is dead,” I told him. “The crew will not obey your orders. You have found all that you came to find.”