Run Afoul Page 4

  Another great pitch, more yelling from outside, and a wash of water came pouring in the open afterhouse door, to gush in a wide stream down the corridor. Couthouy swore, let go his hold, and plunged back into his room, where they could hear him frantically getting dunnage off the wet floor. Jack Winter came out of the pantry as calmly and steadily as if he were walking on land, his expression as smarmy as ever, and unfolded several sets of fiddle boards—sticks which were laid on the tabletop to hold meal things in place.

  The Vincennes wallowed unhappily. The afterhouse door swung to and slammed shut, and the commotion of taking reefs in the sails became muffled. Another nasty roll, and then at last the feel of the vessel became stiff, indicating to Wiki that the helmsmen had been replaced with more experienced hands. Then, just as he set the coffeepot carefully to one side, he realized that Grimes had joined the company.

  The thin man’s stoop was more pronounced than ever, so that he had to crane his neck to bring up his head as he surveyed the room, looking like a suspicious tortoise. He came slowly round the credenza, holding on as the ship pitched her head, and silently chose a chair. As he sat down, his harsh breathing was audible. Lieutenant Smith looked at him, but didn’t bother to make any introductions. Instead, he sniffed loudly and luxuriously.

  Jack Winter had carried the fish to the table. Because of the rough conditions, they were piled helter-skelter into a wooden mess tub, and the top two were speckled with spray, but the aroma was perfectly wonderful. Robert Festin, Wiki deduced with deep pleasure, had regained his culinary abilities at the same time he had settled in the ship. The fish—if the top two, which were all he could see, were any guide to the rest—had stayed straight while being crisply fried, so that the succulent white flesh was evenly cooked.

  Wiki had to restrain himself from grabbing. Instead, remembering his manners, he passed the mess tub around. The first to help himself was Grimes, who was evidently hungry, because he took both top fish. Smith and Dr. Olliver took one each, before handing the tub back to Wiki. He could scarcely wait. When he slid his knife along the backbone, his mouth watered. Miraculously, soft bread came, too.

  The delectable meat slipped easily off the bones, and Wiki piled it onto a thick slice of bread, and ate greedily with his fingers. No one about the table was talking, producing happy eating noises instead, and so he was able to concentrate. Turning the fish over, he cleaned off the other side.

  Just as the mess tub was being handed round again, Couthouy stamped back into the saloon, swung a chair around, and sat down with a bad-tempered thump, judging his timing to the next weather roll of the ship. He readily helped himself to one of the fish, but didn’t make any remark about it, exclaiming moodily instead, “What the devil am I doing here, if I’m not permitted to make a collection? Of course the aims of the expedition are scientific—to state anything different is nothing less than ignorant bloody-mindedness!”

  Lieutenant Smith looked up from starting operations on his second fish. “I should have thought a shipmaster like yourself would agree most heartily with Captain Wilkes’s assessment of the primary aim of the expedition—which is to make the Pacific safe for American commerce!”

  Couthouy put down his fork, turned in his chair, and stared. “By charting the ocean?” he demanded.

  “Not just that, but also by flying the U.S. flag in a thousand lagoons! Our job is to tame rebellious natives and make the Pacific secure for American adventurers like you, sir!”

  “Goodness gracious,” said Dr. Olliver, lifting his wineglass in a sardonic salute. “So that’s why we’ve been practicing the cannon so assiduously? Is the intention really to terrify innocent natives into abject submission to your flag?”

  “Unpleasant, but necessary,” Smith declared roundly. “As a Salem shipmaster I know well could tell you, the disasters that have fallen on American adventurers have too often been the outcome of shipmasters putting their trust in savage chiefs. My friend has testified before the East India Marine Society in Salem to the grave dangers faced by American shipmasters, and he has made representations in Washington, too—he knows from personal experience what it’s like to see one’s crew cut out by bloodthirsty savages!”

  “Good God, has he?” said Dr. Olliver, his tone even more colored with irony. “And just who is this passionate gentleman?”

  “Captain William Coffin—Wiremu’s natural father.”

  Though Wiki had been half expecting this, he still felt a jolt in his gut. Everyone turned and stared at him, their thoughts—that he was living evidence that Captain Coffin had demonstrated quite a different kind of passion for at least one of the islanders in question—writ plain on their faces.

  He watched them back with a deliberately impassive expression. It was a skill he had developed over the years—at moments like this, he remembered one of the proverbs that his iwi liked to quote: I nga ra o te pai, he pai; i nga ra o te kino, he kino. What is good, is good; what is bad, is bad. Live with it.

  For a moment there was an awkward silence, punctuated by a swish and a thump as the Vincennes lifted and plunged. Then Couthouy turned to the assistant astronomer, saying with a deliberate change of topic, “Grimes, isn’t it? Weren’t you living on the Vincennes when we sailed from Norfolk?”

  Grimes was eating stolidly, while Dr. Olliver, having demolished his second fish, watched him over the rim of his glass. Now the instrumentmaker looked up at Couthouy and nodded.

  “I don’t remember him,” the surgeon remarked to no one in particular. “And I was on the Vincennes, too.”

  “But you were infamously seasick at the time,” said Couthouy, and laughed. Then he looked at Grimes again, saying, “Assistant astronomer—right? And you’re an Englishman, ain’t you, just like Dr. Olliver here.” Again, Grimes nodded silently, and Couthouy turned back to Dr. Olliver and said, “He lived on the gun deck.”

  “Ah,” said Dr. Olliver with satisfaction, and toasted himself with a longer swallow of wine than usual. “That accounts for it. I was in the afterhouse, of course; I’ve always had the same room.”

  “After the sudden death of his employer, Astronomer Burroughs,” Lieutenant Smith elaborated, “Mr. Grimes was moved onto the Porpoise.”

  Again, Wiki found himself the focus of speculative stares. There had been rather a lot of sudden deaths on the expedition, most of them connected with him. Then the conchologist said abruptly, “I know your father, I think.”

  Considering that Captain Couthouy and Captain Coffin were both Massachusetts shipmasters, Wiki was not amazed. He said politely, “You were in the China trade, too?”

  Couthouy shook his head, but did not have a chance to reply, because yet again Lieutenant Smith chipped in. “I know Captain William Coffin very well, indeed—a most remarkable man,” he bragged. “His commercial exploits are famous! He left Salem in June 1830 to make the most profitable voyage on record, carrying tobacco for New Zealand, and flour for Sydney, which he sold at the rate of fifteen dollars a barrel—flour which had cost him four! Then he filled his holds with tortoiseshell and sugar, and sold that cargo in New York for no less than twenty thousand dollars. It’s for his kind of enterprise that we want to secure the Pacific for Yankee traders!”

  Wiki pushed his plate aside. In June 1830, as he remembered very well, his father had sailed away without him—he had abandoned his sixteen-year-old Maori son to the mercies of his legal Yankee wife. While that was an old memory, this was the first time that Wiki had heard that his father had sailed to New Zealand after leaving Salem. Back then, Captain Coffin had told him that he was bound to the Orient.

  “Astounding,” said Couthouy to Smith, his tone so flat it was rude, and said to Grimes with a deliberate change of topic, “You’ve been moved back to the Vin?”

  “Astronomer Grimes has been shifted from the Porpoise to assist Captain Wilkes with the apparatus for gravitation measurements at Rio,” said Lieutenant Smith, again without giving Grimes a chance to answer.

  “So he’s
working with Wilkes? The poor bastard,” said Dr. Olliver, again to no one in particular.

  Grimes said stiffly, “Checking and adjusting the equipment is an interesting assignment, and I am not to be pitied at all.”

  “Nonetheless, you have my liveliest sympathies,” returned Dr. Olliver, completely unabashed. He lifted his glass in an ironic salute, and queried, “What was your reason for joining the Deplorable Expedition?”

  “I must protest that appellation!” Lieutenant Smith exclaimed, but everyone ignored him, instead looking at Grimes, who said in precise and pedantic tones, “Astronomer Burroughs brought me on board in the capacity of his instrumentmaker and assistant.”

  “And was Astronomer Burroughs a despised Englishman, too?” demanded Dr. Olliver.

  Grimes said, more stiffly still, “He was American.”

  “So how did he find you? Come on, man, tell me,” the fat naturalist urged, his wineglass still poised. Wiki was beginning to recognize the look of unbridled curiosity on his face; Dr. Olliver was a man, he mused, who delighted in digging up odd stories, even if he had to be unbelievably ill-mannered to get them.

  “Because I was a horticulturalist who enjoyed astronomy,” Grimes replied with spirit, and then fell into a fit of coughing.

  “Horticulturalist?” Couthouy echoed, looking puzzled. It was as if he had never heard the word before.

  “A man who specializes in the science of gardening,” Lieutenant Smith informed him.

  “But where?” said Couthouy to Grimes.

  “On an estate near Cambridge,” said Grimes, wiping his mouth with the soiled handkerchief.

  Captain Couthouy turned to Dr. Olliver. “Weren’t you at Cambridge assisting Charles Darwin after he got back from the Beagle voyage?” The portly naturalist nodded, and Couthouy said to Grimes, “I can’t imagine the connection between gardening and astronomy.”

  “I was in charge of the glasshouses, you understand—glasshouses that I designed myself. I also constructed heating equipment. Sir Roger—our master, the owner of the estate—was a notable amateur astronomer, and because he noticed I was so handy in the gadget-making way, he paid for me to be taught the science of optical instruments. Then Dr. Burroughs came to Cambridge—he’d paid Mr. Darwin to make some observations on his behalf, and wanted to see the results—and while he was in town he became acquainted with Sir Roger, who was kind enough to show him some of my inventions. Dr. Burroughs was so impressed that he begged Sir Roger to allow me accompany him to America as his assistant.”

  “That’s quite a story,” said Couthouy. He sounded admiring.

  “Sir Roger—who?” The query came from Dr. Olliver.

  “Palgrave,” answered Grimes.

  Dr. Olliver lifted his glass and emptied it in one mouthful. Then he picked up the stopper that had been rolling back and forth between fiddle boards, and carefully inserted it in the neck of the decanter.

  “Never met him,” he said without interest.

  “He’s dead,” said Grimes.

  “Of natural causes?” inquired Couthouy on a ghoulish note.

  Grimes snapped, “Of course,” and then added, “His only son sold the estate after he inherited it, so there’s no Palgraves there anymore.”

  There was an odd, awkward little silence, broken, unexpectedly, by the arrival of Robert Festin. The squat little man came around the corner of the credenza with a small covered dish in his hand, and the same sly grin that Wiki had seen before on his face.

  He went straight up to Grimes, pushed the plate toward him, and said in English, “For you.”

  “What?” The assistant astronomer scowled. Then he slowly took the cover off the dish, while they all watched in fascination.

  It revealed an individual baked pudding, golden in color and liberally sprinkled with grated brown sugar. It steamed, wafting out a delicious aroma of sweet potato that had been mashed and blended with butter, molasses, and rum. Everyone leaned forward with blatant envy as Grimes plied a fork, puffing damply on each morsel to cool it before inserting it into his mouth. Even when he had finished, he made no comment, but Festin’s grin was broader than ever.

  “Now,” he stated, “you say aye, yes?”

  Wiki, having suddenly deduced what it was all about, tensed warily. Grimes was slower on the uptake, saying blankly, “What?”

  “Me sleep in your room, on floor. You say yes, no?”

  “Absolutely not!”

  “But Wiki said—”

  To Wiki’s enormous relief, they were interrupted. The afterhouse door slammed open, and Lieutenant Forsythe strode in. His burly form was swathed in a wet oilskin coat, making him look bigger than ever, and he was carrying a speaking trumpet, evidently set to take over the deck when eight bells rang and the watch changed.

  He swung around a chair, threw himself into it, reached out, grasped Dr. Olliver’s decanter, unstoppered it, and poured wine liberally into a mug, while he used an elbow planted on the table to brace himself against the roll of the ship. Then he gulped deeply, before looking at Lieutenant Smith with an evil grin, and saying, “Found you at last, you treacherous little bugger.”

  Assistant Astronomer Grimes let out an audible gasp, while Lawrence J. Smith’s eyes popped. “So you’re back on the Vincennes, huh?” the Virginian remarked. “Last time I saw you, you was in charge of what passes for the quarterdeck of the U.S. schooner Flying Fish, taking off for the horizon like the devil himself was on your tail, having solemnly promised not to leave me and my men stranded at Shark Island with just the cutter to get us back to the fleet. So what are you doin’ here? Your career taken a mighty downturn?”

  The pompous lieutenant gobbled, at a loss for a dignified answer, and Forsythe laughed. “Don’t bother,” he advised. “I’m merely here to deliver a message—that your presence is desired in the wardroom.” The ship’s bell rang, and the big southerner drained the mug, heaved himself to his feet, grinned unpleasantly at them all, and left, kicking at a rat as he went.

  Wiki got up, too, abandoning Festin to his doomed argument with Grimes. By the time he arrived on the windswept deck, Forsythe had disappeared, but nonetheless he stayed outside. The brisk air was invigorating. Spray, mixed with drizzling rain, flew across the decks, wetting his shirt and trousers, but on impulse he walked forward to the waist, kicked off his boots, jumped onto the bulwarks, and began to climb the mainmast shrouds. The wind tore away the lashing of his long hair, so that it whipped out behind him. Reaching the futtock shrouds that braced the platformlike top of the lower mast, he threw himself bodily outward, swarmed over the top with the roll of the ship, and then carried onward up the ladderlike ratlines to the topgallant crosstrees, where he wedged himself into place, hanging on to a lanyard.

  The view was tremendous. The big ship, cracking on with the gale on her starboard quarter, was leaning well over, plunging every now and then, and the wake that curled away from her hull, a hundred fifty feet below, was white with rushing spume. The sky was streaming with broken cloud, full of holes that let through great shafts of rain-streaked moonlight, which gleamed on the spread of canvas below him, and lit up the scudding sails of the other ships of the fleet—the multiple triangles of the two schooners, Flying Fish and Sea Gull; the double pyramid of the brig Porpoise, and the piratical silhouette of the Swallow, dashing along at a terrific rate under her steeply raked masts.

  The gale was on the rise—it was high time to take in more sail. Wiki heard Forsythe, on the roof of the afterhouse, bellow into his trumpet—“Stand by t’gallant halyards!”—and boatswains’ mates shrilling their calls. A sudden gust of rain swept down, and men slipped and slid on the distant deck as they hauled on buntlines and clewlines to slacken the hard bellies of the sails.

  Then, “Away aloft!” and hands were crawling up the rigging toward Wiki. Some, braver or more agile, were outpacing the others, and so the first topgallantman arrived well ahead of his shipmates. Wiki moved aside to make room for him, so he could sidle along the jolt
ing yard to take the weather earring, and then, on yet another impulse, went out on the opposite end. Other men arrived on the footrope alongside him, and together they bent over the yard and heaved at the heavy wet canvas.

  At last the job was done. The other seamen headed deckward, some casting Wiki curious looks. However, he lingered, watching the Swallow take in sail, imagining what it was like on board the smaller and much more lively craft. The decks would be a cacophony of shouted orders and trampling feet, the creaking of blocks and the groan of hauled ropes. Below decks, the little brig would be creaking like a basket, with every particle on the move, the rattling of cutlery punctuated by the smashing of plates.

  Yet even in these conditions, he mused, compared to the chaotic state of society in the afterhouse of the flagship Vincennes, the atmosphere on board the Swallow would be remarkably tranquil.

  Five

  That night, Wiki woke to hear a grating sound as Grimes’s chamber pot was dragged out from under the double berth, followed by a bout of loud, wet coughing as the pot was shoved back with yet another scrape. Worse was to come—at four in the morning, as eight bells rang for the start of the morning watch, Grimes was overtaken with griping pains, and groaned most horribly as he crouched.

  The moment he was back in bed, shuddering and whimpering, Wiki swung down from his berth, and retreated into the empty saloon, carrying his clothes. The instant he was dressed he tapped on Dr. Olliver’s door. The naturalist opened it almost at once, more whalelike than ever in a billowing nightshirt. After silently listening to Wiki, he nodded and went back inside.

  It seemed to take an endless time for the surgeon to put on his clothes and come out again. Then Grimes objected strenuously to a medical examination, vowing that he did not want to be poked and prodded. Marveling that any man could be so obstinate when he was suffering so much, Wiki retreated to the saloon, leaving Dr. Olliver to it. By the time the echoes of the argument faded and the naturalist had set to work on his reluctant patient, coffee arrived on the table.