Run Afoul Read online

  Wiki looked around. The room was extremely cluttered, and did not smell very wonderful, either, but was more spacious than he had expected. A tier of lockers and drawers, some half open and spilling garments, was set against the side of the ship, its top lipped to hold a narrow mattress and serve as Forsythe’s bed. A sidelight above this berth cast grimy reflections of sun and water onto the opposite bulkhead, which was furnished with a sofa. There was a chart desk built between the head of the bunk and the settee, its surface marked with many rings from bottles and tumblers. Forsythe’s great rack of antlers was screwed to the wall above the desk, and his rifle hung from one of the horns.

  Forsythe was studying the room, too—with new eyes, it seemed, because he started to tidy up in a clumsy fashion, shoving drawers shut with a thump of a boot, and sweeping all the papers and books on the desk into one pile, which promptly fell apart with the next roll of the ship. It was the most bizarre demonstration of southern hospitality that Wiki had ever seen.

  “Festin can have the sofa,” Forsythe said. “And I’ll bullyrag that goddamned excuse for a ship’s purser into breaking out a hammock for you.”

  The cabin was certainly long enough to sling a hammock, about nine feet from the forward partition to the after bulkhead where the rack of antlers hung. Then Wiki forgot it, because the blows he had absorbed abruptly started to sting. He pulled up his left sleeve and gingerly inspected his upper arm, which was swollen even more than usual.

  Forsythe said with complete lack of sympathy, “Brown bastards like you don’t show bruises much, so no one will notice that you’ve been fighting, not if you have the brains not to point it out.” Then he looked at Festin, who was sitting on the sofa smiling at them both with his tooth in his hand and blood running down his chin, and observed on a much less optimistic note, “But he looks a right bloody mess—which is a goddamned pity, considerin’ he has to go back to work in the galley any minute.”

  “That’s true,” Wiki agreed, keeping irony out of his voice.

  “But someone once told me that if you shove a lost tooth back into the hole, it will grow back into place.”

  Wiki lifted his brows, thinking that he was learning a great deal in the medical line, this day. There were so many cuts and bruises starting out all over Festin’s face that it didn’t seem possible that putting back the tooth, even if successful, would be much of an improvement, though.

  However, Forsythe looked very animated. “I reckon we should try it,” he pronounced, and with no more ado he hunkered down, plucked the tooth out of Festin’s hold, spat on it to clean it, and then held the Acadian’s mouth wide open with one great hand while he wriggled the tooth back into his jaw with the other.

  Then it was done. Forsythe stood back, instructed Festin to open his mouth to expose his handiwork, and then frowned mightily. “It don’t look right,” he said.

  Wiki came over and peered. It certainly did look odd. He said, “You’ve got it in backward.”

  “What? You reckon? Goddamnit,” said Forsythe, after having another look. “You’re right. How about you having a go?”

  Wiki shrugged, thinking that he couldn’t do any more damage than had been done already. Festin was beginning to whine with pain as the numbness faded, so Wiki plucked out the tooth as gently as he could, washed it in a handy tumbler of water—which immediately turned an unpleasant brown—and put it back in place, with due care given to its orientation.

  “That’s done it,” pronounced Forsythe after another inspection. After grabbing up a tattered pair of drawers from the top of his bunk, he doused a corner with the water from the tumbler, and scoured the blood off Festin’s face. “You’ll do,” he said, standing back for another look. “Off you go to the galley, and don’t breathe a word about what happened. In fact, keep your mouth tight shut, or that damn tooth might fall out.”

  With perfect timing, eight bells sounded from above. Forsythe sprinted up the companionway to hand over the deck, urging Festin along as he went. A remarkably short moment later, he came thundering down again with a hammock over his shoulder. “Now,” he said energetically, and set himself into action again. Hammock hooks were screwed into the wall above the desk and into the partition opposite, and when Wiki clambered into the hammock to try it out, he found that he swung quite comfortably with his feet beneath the antlers, though the dead stare from the deer’s glass eyes was a bit disconcerting.

  To celebrate, Forsythe opened the door and roared for a boy to fetch a pot of coffee. “Wa’al, then,” he said, settling down with a mug, “tell me about this poisoning. Was it the fish or the pudding?”

  “Neither,” said Wiki flatly.

  “You reckon the fish were fresh?”

  “Tana and Sua caught them just that morning.”

  “Those black bastards? They put a barbaric curse on them.”

  Wiki received this in a cold silence which was wasted on Forsythe, because he didn’t even notice, demanding instead, “So who carried them over from the galley after they were cooked? Festin? Or that po-faced steward?”

  “Jack Winter, of course.”

  “So he could have done it. Does he have any access to poison?”

  “According to Dr. Olliver, he swears all the time that he’s going to lay poison for the rats, but the rats are as lively as ever, which probably means he has no poison to lay.”

  “So who ate the fish?”

  “Everyone at the table—Dr. Olliver, Captain Couthouy, Lieutenant Smith, Grimes, and myself.”

  “And did anyone else get sick?”

  “Just Grimes.”

  “So mebbe it was a particular fish.”

  “Aye, we thought of that, too—or, at least, Dr. Olliver did. The fish were piled in a mess tub, and Grimes ate the topmost two.”

  “Aha—so that’s where we should have a bloody good look at Jack Winter,” said Forsythe with an air of triumph. “I betcha that while he was carrying the bucket from the galley, he sprinkled somethin’ on top.”

  “But he doesn’t have a motive!”

  “He does, if he expected Wilkes to be at the table,” the southerner said with an evil grin. “His majesty would naturally take the first helping—and Smith, considerin’ himself the next most important, would follow. And I bet what Jack sprinkled was a big spoonful of salts! The way you described it, I reckon it was a dose of salts what sent Grimes to the pot.”

  “It’s a theory,” Wiki allowed, concealing his amusement.

  “It’s more than a bloody theory! And you’d better hope like crazy that I’m right, because if anyone else gets sick, or Grimes gets even sicker, I can’t do anythin’ more for you and Festin.”

  Wiki glanced at Forsythe curiously, “Why are you doing it?”

  “Doin’ what?”

  “Why are you looking after me and Festin?”

  Forsythe looked astounded. “Because you’re my men,” he stated as if it were obvious. “My crew!”

  Wiki blinked. “What crew?”

  “Of the bloody cutter, of course.”

  It was then that Wiki learned, to his complete stupefaction, that the horrible five-day passage in the cutter from Shark Island to the fleet had been positively enjoyed by Lieutenant Forsythe—that it had been a challenge he had relished. While for Wiki it had been an uncomfortable ordeal, for the southerner it had not just been a chance to demonstrate his remarkable seamanship and gifted navigation skills, but a triumph of camaraderie, as well.

  Festin, Forsythe readily allowed, had been nothing but a confounded encumbrance, while Wiki was one of the best bloody helmsmen he had ever known. However, their various skills and talents made no difference, because now he felt a fierce loyalty to all the men who had shared the experience.

  “Well, I never,” marveled Wiki.

  “As I said, there is only so much I can do for you, though,” Forsythe warned. “You and Festin can live in here with me—in the meantime. But you better hope like the devil that Grimes don’t drop dead, because if he
does all bloody hell is going to break loose, and I’ll have to stand by and watch Festin swing, and see you sent back to the States in irons.”

  Which, in the light of the instrumentmaker’s mad accusations, was probably very true, Wiki grimly thought.

  Seven

  “Did you find another berth?” Dr. Olliver inquired.

  “On the gun deck,” Wiki replied. He had the comfortable sense of telling nothing but the truth, because Forsythe’s cabin was indeed on the gun deck, a few doors forward of the officers’ wardroom. However, when he asked about Assistant Astronomer Grimes, the answer was not encouraging.

  “His lungs are clogged with pus and full of fluid,” Dr. Olliver pronounced, and drank wine as if he needed it. “Listen to his breathing,” he said—and Wiki could indeed hear the harsh, stertorous rasping from where he sat at the table.

  To make matters even worse, the meal was horrible. The beef was burned and the potatoes almost raw, which was a worrying indication of Robert Festin’s state of mind, and maybe even the battered state of his brain. However, a night spent sleeping soundly on Lieutenant Forsythe’s sofa improved the Acadian’s outlook considerably, with the result that the following day the provender was vastly improved.

  Not so the state of Grimes’s health, which continued to get worse. At dinnertime on the third day, as Dr. Olliver consumed forkfuls of pâté à la râpure, washing down ambrosial mouthfuls of chicken and grated potato with a great deal of gulped wine, he confessed that matters looked very bad, indeed.

  “If it wasn’t for the nourishing soup that Festin sends up from the galley,” he grimly ruminated, “I fear he’d be dead by now.”

  Wiki frowned, thinking that this boded even more badly for Festin if Grimes did indeed die, and said cautiously, “Does Grimes know that it’s Festin who cooks the soup?”

  The surgeon laughed. “He still vows he was poisoned by either the fish or that pudding, and I wouldn’t get a single drop of the stuff down his throat if he had the slightest notion that Festin was the cook.”

  Wiki silenced, feeling very worried, indeed. He wanted to suggest that it would be a good idea if someone else prepared the invalid food, but realized it was impossible to do without making it look as if he, too, suspected that Festin laced his cooking with poison.

  “I’ll consult with Dr. Gilchrist this afternoon, and see if he has any better ideas,” Dr. Olliver heavily went on.

  “So what did Dr. Gilchrist say?” Wiki asked at supper.

  “That we should keep to the same medication,” Dr. Olliver said. His expression, as he concentrated on filling his wineglass, was preoccupied.

  “Is that a problem?”

  “Indeed it is,” the naturalist said, frowning as he took his first sip. “I’ve only seven pills left, and, as you know, I’ve run out of Peruvian bark. Tomorrow we drop anchor, I hear, and it can’t come soon enough for me.”

  They were certainly close to port. When Wiki went out on deck it was to see land on the horizon, one immense peak with many little hills peeping up from either side of its bulge. In the last of the sunset, the mountain was deep purple, rising from a dark green sea. Cape Frio, he thought. It was the first indication of the port of Rio for those vessels approaching from the north, and a familiar sight from previous voyages.

  As he headed for the companionway, Wiki heard Forsythe, who was the officer of the deck, relaying Captain Wilkes’s orders to take in sail and prepare to lay to for the hours of dark. With the first light of dawn, he mused, the ship would put on all her canvas again, and proceed grandly into port. Provisions and fresh water were low, Captain Wilkes and his officers were anxious to know how the Peacock was faring, and the storeship Relief, sent on ahead many weeks ago because she sailed so slowly, had not been heard of at all. Getting to port would be a relief for everyone on board.

  When Wiki came back to deck at the start of the morning watch, however, it was to find that the wind had died. The glorious morning dawned, and they all waited for the customary sea breeze, but it failed to rise.

  The great peak of Cape Frio loomed over them, stealing whatever wind might come from the west. The sea was like shimmering satin, olive in color, with a deep swell that was not enough to break the surface, but made the motion of the ship uneasy. The sailors had spent the last three days preparing the ship to make a fine appearance in port—every glint of brass was burnished to a dazzle, deck planks scrubbed to the color of bone, deck furniture given yet another coat of varnish, bare patches in the rigging carefully touched up with tar—but now the watch did nothing but tend braces and haul up and down the courses for every trifling catspaw of breeze.

  To be so close to their destination and yet get nowhere was frustrating for all, but particularly for Dr. Olliver. Wiki watched him pace the decks, massive in form and yet remarkably light on his feet. At noon, when the junior midshipmen lined up along the rail with their sextants to take a sight of the blazing sun, he disappeared to tend to his patient. When Wiki followed, it was to find him crouched at the foot of the credenza with his great rump in the air, swearing as he groped beneath the dresser.

  “I’m down to the last three pills,” he announced, breathing heavily as he clambered to his feet. “And one of the bloody things rolled underneath.”

  Wiki cooperatively hunkered down, but couldn’t even see the lost pill, let alone retrieve it. A rat darted out from the darkest corner, and he flinched back and scrambled to his feet.

  “Maybe the rat ate it,” Dr. Olliver said gloomily as he sat down at the table. He filled his glass and drank it all, abandoning his usual ritual. Grimes was worse than ever, quite delirious, he said, and if they didn’t get to Rio within hours, he wouldn’t be responsible for the consequences.

  At four bells in the afternoon watch, a riffle of wind skipped over the tops of the waves. The weather leech of the main topgallant fluttered, and every man leapt to his station. The helm was put hard up, and the ship paid off, but then a flaw in the breeze brought her aback, and she was left hanging in the middle of the maneuver, with the canvas as straight up and down as ever.

  After that, the wind clung to the surface of the sea like a lover, undoubtedly affected by the great shadow of Cape Frio. The Vincennes wallowed helplessly and the boatswain swore foully at his mates. Cries of, “Ready about!” echoed from the two fore-and-aft schooners, but their efforts were equally useless. Clearly, only very small craft would be able to make way in this weather, and that by using oars as well as sails. Captain Wilkes made the decision to lower one of the ship’s boats and send it into port with Dr. Olliver, to procure medicine before it was too late to save his instrumentmaker. Lieutenant Forsythe, who was the obvious choice, having acquitted himself so well on the passage from Shark Island, was assigned the Vincennes cutter, and told to choose a crew of good oarsmen.

  He immediately asked for Wiki Coffin, but though Wiki was summoned, Forsythe’s request was refused. “Not only is Mr. Coffin a scientific and not a seaman,” Captain Wilkes said coldly, “but I require his services before going into port.”

  They were standing in the big drafting room. “May I ask the nature of the services?” Wiki queried cautiously.

  The captain’s expression became lofty. “I assume you can read and write Portuguese, as well as speak the language?”

  Wiki inclined his head, wondering what the devil was coming.

  “I want you to write a letter to whoever is the local official in charge of harbor operations in Rio de Janeiro.”

  “El Capitão do Porto?”

  “Exactly.” Captain Wilkes’s habitual small smile completely disappeared as his lips compressed. “The letter is to explain that we must dispense with the usual salute of cannon—because of the delicacy of the chronometers. Their accuracy is so crucial to the mission that I cannot risk it with unnecessary jolting. I assume delicacy would be the right word, once translated?”

  Wiki had to pause to keep his astonishment out of his face, because there had been plenty of cann
on-firing during the voyage already. Not only had Captain Wilkes ordered all his captains to appoint gun crews and exercise the cannon every flat calm, but he had staged gunnery competitions to boost morale after times of stress, such as murders and storms. Never, to Wiki’s knowledge, had any fears been expressed on behalf of the chronometers.

  He didn’t dare meet Forsythe’s jaundiced look, but managed to say, “The word fragilidade should fit the bill, sir.”

  “Excellent. There will be two letters to be written in English, too, each of them bearing the same message. Please attend me in my cabin in an hour.” And Captain Wilkes stalked out and down the corridor.

  “The bloody hell he’s worried about the chronometers,” Forsythe muttered a few minutes later. He and Wiki were standing in the waist deck watching a gang sway out the cutter from the main yard.

  “So what do you reckon is the reason, then?”

  “He just don’t want ’em to find out how pitiably few cannon he has at his disposal. When you think of it, all he’s got is two long toms. Can you imagine the poor bastards of gun crews trying to reload and fire without an embarrassing time lag between each pair of shots? The Brazilians will expect him to fire twenty-one guns to their flag as we pass the fort, and then I hear that the British ship of the line Thunderer is likely to be lying here—so that’s another twenty-one-gun salute, adding up to forty-two. The flagship of the U.S. Brazil squadron will be there, too—and that means twenty-six more, in honor of Old Glory! Firing a total of sixty-eight guns is asking the impossible of the poor sod, and he don’t want to knuckle his forehead to a superior officer, anyways.”

  Wiki knew exactly what Forsythe meant, the matter of rank being one of the greatest of Charles Wilkes’s grievances. Though the Navy Department had given him the command of a fleet, they had not thought fit to assign him a rank to fit the position. Both Wilkes and the second-in-command of the expedition, William Hudson of the Peacock, were still lieutenants, called “captain” only because they were in charge of ships, and it was an injustice that rankled sorely.