Run Afoul Page 9

  Captain Hudson shrugged grimly, and George Rochester wondered if the poor dog of a ship had sunk. Within days of leaving Norfolk the Relief had demonstrated such awful sailing qualities that Captain Wilkes had sent her on ahead to Rio, so she wouldn’t retard the rest of the fleet. She should have been waiting here, but instead, she was not, and there was no word from her captain, Andrew Long.

  “So what the hell has happened to her?” Captain Wilkes was breathing heavily, and there was sweat on his brow. “And what the hell does Long think he is doing? Is he a seaman, or just another witless bastard?” he demanded in a shout. Then he swerved round at George, and shouted, “Well, Captain Rochester? When am I going to receive your written report of yesterday’s disgraceful affair?”

  Stung, George protested, “It was an unavoidable accident, sir.”

  “You think so? Then you’re even less competent than I imagined! Your seamanship is an utter disgrace, lubberly beyond belief! And in full view of the whole port, by God! And where the hell is the bloody report?”

  George winced, because he hadn’t set pen to paper yet, and then to his surprise he heard Captain Coffin say firmly, “I have a detailed report right here.”

  Captain Wilkes’s fine, large eyes blinked. “Report?” he echoed blankly.

  “My accounting, Captain.” And, as George watched, bemused, William Coffin produced several pages, all closely covered with arithmetic.

  “What the devil is this?”

  “My expense sheet, Captain Wilkes—and I would be obliged if you’d check it now, so that my account can be settled without undue delay.”

  Wilkes looked stunned. “Your account?”

  “Exactly, Captain Wilkes. My ship has incurred a significant amount of damage as a result of her collision with a ship of the U.S. Navy, and it is my strong belief that the U.S. Navy should foot the expenses for her repairs.”

  Captain Hudson, George saw then, had beaten a hasty diplomatic retreat. Captain Wilkes reluctantly took the pages, winced as he got to the very impressive total at the end, and then looked up at William Coffin with scarlet patches of fury high on his cheeks. “You’re a goddamned rogue, sir!”

  “On the contrary, I’m an American shipmaster of good repute, who has always paid his taxes and duties,” Captain Coffin informed him calmly. “I’ve heard a lot of soft soap in the past about how the U.S. Navy prides itself on being a bastion of support and succor to all its citizens everywhere, and those in evil straits at sea and in foreign ports, in particular. My ship was reduced to a wreck when run afoul of by a navy brig under your ultimate command; it lies now at the shipyard in dire need of heaving down and fixing by a carpenter’s gang, and I claim that rightful support, sir.”

  George saw the fleet commander’s mouth purse up tight, before he said curtly, “I’ll send you a shipwright.”

  “One shipwright?” Coffin leveled a stare with his half-closed eye.

  “All right, then, a gang of carpenters will come with him.”

  “For insurance purposes, I need a formal survey.”

  “I will instruct the shipwright to do the necessary paperwork.”

  “And the financial loss, being forced to sell my cargo locally—”

  “Absolutely not!” Captain Wilkes snapped. “I have conceded enough!”

  And, with that—or so George realized in his stupefaction—the horse-trading was over. Captain Wilkes scribbled a note, shoved it at Captain Coffin, and dismissed them.

  * * *

  “My God,” said George Rochester with awe, and, though he was not, in fact, wearing a hat, went on, “I take off my hat to you, Captain Coffin.”

  “I was only asserting my legal rights,” said the other. “And my name,” he added, “is William.”

  They were back at the shipyard. In contrast to the plight of Captain Hudson, who could be heard shouting with utter frustration over by the Peacock, William Coffin had accomplished a great deal. Not only had he managed to get the attention of a foreman, but he had introduced him to the navy carpenter, who had arrived accompanied by a gang; he had made arrangements for the pumping out and heaving down of the Osprey, and he had extracted a promise that the work would start that very afternoon.

  Now, it was noon, and George, as he ushered him up the gangplank of the Swallow, said, “You are most welcome to stay on board while your ship is being fixed, William.” The previous night, when they had finished talking, he had given Captain Coffin his bed, and had bunked very comfortably in Wiki’s berth.

  “That’s very good of you, and I would very much like to accept,” said William Coffin, casting an appreciative eye over the repast Stoker had set out. “But I have a friend here who would be offended.”

  George threw off his uniform coat, sat down in the captain’s chair at the end of the table, and helped himself to ham and pickles, while Captain Coffin industriously buttered a thick slice of soft bread. “A Brazilian friend?”

  “Well, he lives here, but he’s an Englishman—though his wife is Brazilian, a member of a prominent local family. I met him three years ago when I rescued him from shipwreck,” William Coffin added.

  “Shipwreck?” George echoed.

  “He’d been some years in Uruguay, collecting orchids, but was urgently summoned back to England to attend his father’s deathbed, and had taken the first London-bound ship he could find. Three nights out, it foundered.”

  Disregarding the rest for the moment, Rochester exclaimed, utterly thunderstruck, “Orchids?”

  “Orchids are big business, or so he told me.”

  “Good God,” said George, greatly wondering. “And he was wrecked—and you saved him? How did it happen?”

  “The ship struck something in the water, and sank within moments. He was the only passenger—and the only survivor, as it turned out. We found him floating in one of the ship’s boats, with all his provisions and drinking water gone. He’d been exposed to the sun for nine days, and was so shockingly burned his face seemed scarcely human.”

  It was every seaman’s nightmare, and the main reason most mariners refused to learn to swim, preferring drowning to such an awful prospect. George marveled, “It’s a wonder the ordeal didn’t kill him.”

  “I was so certain he would die before we got to port, that I ordered the carpenter to make a coffin. However, by the time we made Rio he was sitting up and telling me all about it. He credits me with his recovery, but I put it down to his constitution, myself.”

  “He must have been as strong as a horse to survive years in the jungle,” Rochester agreed. “So, what happened after you got him here?”

  “Put him in hospital—and then a Brazilian family took him into their house, just out of the kindness of their hearts. By the time he recovered, he had fallen in love with one of their daughters, so he sold his father’s estate after he arrived home, came back to Brazil, married her, and settled.”

  Rochester, who always enjoyed a romantic story, shook his head very appreciatively, indeed. “The gods were surely on his side,” he marveled.

  “They were on the side of the girl, too,” said William Coffin soberly. “After the marriage, his wife’s parents took the chance to visit the old country, leaving the family businesses under his management, but caught smallpox in the first port their ship touched, and died soon after. Their two girls—his new bride and her sister—had no support in the world, save for the usual vast host of distant relatives, and would have been quite lost without him. As it was, he was there to take over the management of the family estates.”

  “Fortunate, indeed,” said Rochester, and then both he and William fell silent. Footsteps echoed on the quay, and they waited for them to come up the gangplank, but instead they passed on by.

  “Where the devil is he?” William Coffin demanded.

  Rochester knew exactly whom he meant. Coming back through the afterhouse of the Vincennes, he had searched for any sign of Wiki. However, the only person he had recognized had been Robert Festin, who had been te
nding to someone who was obviously very ill. The squat little cook had been cradling the patient as gently as a baby, as he spoon-fed him something that smelled nourishing and good, but the sick man had been squirming feebly in the Acadian’s hold.

  So where was Wiki? He must have heard not only about the accident, but that his father was in Rio, too. “I haven’t a single damn idea,” said George.

  Ten

  “Here comes the storeship Relief,” announced Commodore Nicholson. Lowering his spyglass, and cocking a bright eye at Wiki, he remarked, “They reckon she sails like a drover’s nag.”

  “I’ve heard that, too,” Wiki agreed amiably.

  If he hadn’t been so worried about Astronomer Grimes and Robert Festin, he would have quite enjoyed the past three days, because he liked his host so much. Commodore John Nicholson might be the august commander of the Brazil squadron, but to Wiki’s hidden amusement the middle-aged, rolypoly fellow looked and behaved like the most affable of publicans.

  It had been disconcerting to be kidnapped, though. When Nicholson had read the letter explaining the lack of a proper salute of guns, he had gone red in the face, and exclaimed, “I don’t believe a word of it! Does Wilkes have no idea of the insult to my pennant? Within the past six months we’ve been saluted with proper ceremony by both the British and the Russians, and now a fellow national snubs us—and an upstart lieutenant, at that! Good God, man, it’s insupportable!”

  And with that, he’d wreaked what he called a “poetic” revenge—by stealing Wiki! As he kept on pointing out, he was the senior American officer in this port, and it was ridiculous that a mere lieutenant like Wilkes should have a Portuguese-speaking clerk when the commodore of the squadron did not, and so he had appropriated that clerk, forthwith—which meant that Wiki had found himself in the very strange position of penning a formal letter from one of his bosses to another, at the start of a campaign that over the next two days turned into a paper war.

  The first of the barrage from the Vincennes was delivered by a junior midshipman by the name of Dicken. Wiki, recognizing his flushed face from a long-ago but well-remembered feast in the junior mids’ wardroom, greeted him by name. Then he asked if Captain Wilkes was exceedingly furious that his linguister had been kidnapped.

  “Of course, Mr. Coffin, sir!” said Midshipman Dicken brightly.

  “Oh dear,” said Wiki, though it was nothing less than expected. Then, with foreboding in his heart, he inquired about Grimes. Forsythe, who had been allowed to return to the Vincennes, had reported that Festin slept on his sofa as serenely as ever, but had no news of the sick instrumentmaker, save that he was still confined to his bed. Then, ominously, he had repeated that he had bloody well better not die, as he could not be responsible for what happened after that.

  “Recovering well,” Dicken assured him, to Wiki’s huge relief, but then added on a doubtful note, “Well, Dr. Olliver says so. He found some new medicines in Rio, they tell me—though scuttlebutt still reckons the poor fellow was poisoned by that Festin’s fancy cooking, and is utterly doomed.”

  That dire prediction delivered, he announced that the brig Swallow had run afoul of a merchantman. Wiki, greatly alarmed, said, “Is she badly damaged?”

  “Nothing but a little rigging pulled astray and some railing smashed to splinters,” said Dicken, and then puffed out his chest, saying, “We—that is, Captain Rochester, with the help of my men—sailed her to the shipyard, and she’ll be as right as a cricket in a couple of days. She almost sank the poor barky, though,” he added, still on a note of pride.

  “What ship was it?” Wiki asked, but the young midshipman had gone, leaving Captain Wilkes’s letter behind.

  The contents did nothing to improve Commodore Nicholson’s state of mind, being a peremptory request that he exchange volunteers from the Independence for the invalids in the expedition ships. “Goddamnit,” expostulated Nicholson. “Don’t he know we’re shorthanded?”

  However, as the letter also assured him that the invalids were fit enough to help work the ship, he sent back a reasonably obliging reply. Unfortunately, however, it was addressed to Mister Wilkes, over Wiki’s most strenuous objections. Predictably, the answer that came back fairly sizzled, accusing the commodore of lack of respect for the great enterprise, and berating him in no uncertain terms for failing to address him as “captain.”

  “Good God,” expostulated Nicholson, after reading it with his eyebrows bristling. “This ain’t language that even the most senior officer would dare to use to me, without he was a child or an idiot.” Forthwith, he dictated a sarcastic reply wishing him every success in his efforts to attain the rank he thought he deserved.

  In the meantime, too, the invalids from the Vincennes arrived, and proved to be wholly unfit for duty, one being deranged, another epileptic, and the rest in the last stages of consumption. Nicholson promptly sent them all on shore to the hospital, and shot off another letter, informing Lieutenant Wilkes that he was responsible for the cost of shipping them back to the States, which Wilkes riposted with a long complaint about the surly nature of the volunteers the commodore had sent.

  However, throughout the insults and acrimony, the lack of a proper gun salute was what rankled most. On the third day, Forsythe having lounged on board with yet another shrill epistle from Wilkes, this time hotly demanding that his clerk should be returned to the Vincennes, the commodore queried of the messenger, “How many confounded chronometers are you carrying, anyway?”

  Forsythe shrugged. “Fifty?” he hazarded.

  “Fifty? Good God.” Then Nicholson read the letter, and said to Wiki, “I’d better let you go, I suppose—but make sure the letters you pen to me are a damn sight more moderate than those we’ve been getting of late, young man. This nonsense has gone on long enough, I say!”

  Wiki, who thoroughly agreed, said, “Permission to leave now, sir?”

  “Not just yet. There’s fellows in the wardroom who say they’re anxious for a word with Lieutenant Forsythe—probably on account of monies he owes ’em, but what the hell, it’s time for supper.”

  The wardroom hospitality proved boundless, unfortunately, which meant that Wiki was detained for yet another night, because Forsythe got too drunk to get back into the cutter. The next morning, the southerner slumped at the tiller, his battered face cut in several places where a borrowed razor had slipped, while he contemplated the spectacular, mountain-rimmed scene with jaundiced eyes.

  It was certainly busy enough. Fleets of fishing rafts were heading out to sea under their enormous gossamer lugsails, while fallua zigzagged everywhere, driven by the vigorous strokes of black crews who stood to work their huge oars. The Swallow, Wiki saw, was moored up to a quay at the shipyard, but the only activity on board of her was laundry, it seemed, because a host of shirts and drawers hung in the rigging. Beyond her, a ship was lying hove down with a gang of men at work on her exposed side. This, he deduced, was the “poor barky” that Dicken had described.

  The Vincennes was now securely anchored off Enxados Island, where the turrets of the disused convent caught the early morning sun. On the summit of the grassy hill, men were setting up portable laboratories, and lighters loaded down with provisions, men, and implements were plying from the flagship to the beach. Captain Wilkes, having obtained permission to use the whole of the island for scientific purposes, had concluded to empty the Vincennes of everything possible, and then have her smoked to kill rats.

  After clambering on board the ship, which felt much lighter already, Wiki hurried to the afterhouse. The saloon was empty, which seemed strange, as the table was set for breakfast. Jack Winter poked his head out of the pantry, and Wiki said, “Where’s Dr. Olliver?”

  “Gone off a-collecting,” said the steward, looking very sulky about it.

  “Where?”

  “He and Couthouy requisitioned a boat and a crew, and are off about the harbor. They went off yesterday,” he went on, more resentfully than ever.

  “But wh
at about Mr. Grimes?” Wiki glanced at the shut stateroom door. “Who’s looking after him?”

  “Me! That’s the man—me!” the steward said furiously, and pointed a long, knobbled finger at his own chest. As he ranted on, Wiki gathered that Dr. Olliver, feeling perfectly sanguine about Grimes’s recovery now that he had the new medications, had left bottles of medicine and a vial of pills in Jack Winter’s care, along with instructions.

  “But I don’t like it, I swear I don’t! What happens if he dies? I heard Dr. Olliver’s wicked aspersions about me and his wine, you know, and it ain’t nothing else but bloody lies—I’ve never touched his wine, I swear, and I didn’t give none of his wine to Mr. Grimes, neither! In fact, I didn’t give Mr. Grimes nothing to eat nor drink, except for the medicine, and if anyone is blamed for him being sick, it should be that Festin, with his poisonous foreign muck! And now Mr. Grimes complains that the medicine is bitter and that it gives him pins and needles, but what am I s’posed to do about it, I ask?”

  “I don’t know,” said Wiki, feeling very uneasy. They were interrupted by the echoes of a shrill of pipes from the starboard gangway, announcing the arrival of someone or other. A stamp of boots, and a challenge from the doorway of the afterhouse, and then not one, but two captains marched down the corridor—Andrew Long had come with Captain Hudson, for what would doubtlessly be an awful interview with Wilkes. Both looked grim-faced as they were ushered into the drafting room, and the corporal who had announced them rolled his eyes at Wiki as he retreated back to his post.

  The big double doors slammed shut, and Wiki winced. After that, as he sat at the table eating breakfast alone, he couldn’t help but overhear Captain Wilkes’s rant, a tirade that was only occasionally interrupted by Captain Long’s lower-voiced, apologetic replies. He’d been becalmed for days on end in the doldrums, and bedeviled with light, contrary airs, he explained. Even with all sail out, the Relief had never trundled faster than three knots.