A Watery Grave (25 page)

“I've never heard of any such regulation,” said Smith with a frown. “I can't imagine why there should be such a rule.”

Wiki paused, again briefly meeting Forsythe's murderous look, and then murmured, “The reason I was given was that they might be planning mutiny.”

“Well,” said Smith. He darted little looks at Forsythe and Wiki again, patently aware of the tension in the room. His tongue tip touched his lips and then he said, “It is possible to see some logic in that, I suppose.”

“But mutiny isn't part of
taha Maori
—the normal Polynesian way,” Wiki objected. “In all the Pacific societies I know, the people are used to being subject to the rule of the chiefs, no matter how tyrannical those rulers might be.”

“But once they become common sailors and liable to corruption and vice—”

Wiki waited for him to go on, wondering what kind of family the stocky little lieutenant came from. A lofty one, he thought, or else it would not be such second nature for him to despise the men who weighed the anchors, handed the sails, and hauled the ropes, straining their muscles to make his ships sail.

However, Smith did not finish the sentence, so Wiki went on reminiscently, “I once shipped on a whaler out of Sydney where the strangest form of discrimination was practiced. The forecastle had a line strung down the middle, with sheets sewn onto it to make a partition, and the white seamen lived on one side of it, and the others, the opposite. So the Kanakas talked together in a kind of Polynesian polyglot because that seemed to be what was expected of them—but it was just the usual sailor growl about the food, along with bold boasting about wild sprees in port. The white sailors didn't know it, but on both sides of the dividing line they were saying the same things.”

“Exactly as I was saying about sailors' predisposition to vice—” said Lieutenant Smith, but he had lost all his heartiness. Instead of completing the sentence, he finished off his meal in what looked like a hurry. Then, with an obvious air of relief, he swung his legs around and stood up from his perch on the bench. Seizing his hat with its brave cockade, he popped it on his head, said, “Well, the watch awaits,” and hurried off up the stairs.

Wiki had not heard the bell for the change of watch. He waited until the busy clatter of Smith's shoes had crossed the quarterdeck above their heads and then turned his frown on Forsythe to find the southerner glaring back.

“Interfering bastard.”

Wiki ignored it. “What the devil is afoot?” he demanded. “What's he doing here?”

“Wilkes reassigned the prating arsehole to the
Swallow
as my second-in-command.”

“Then Captain Wilkes is a shrewder man than most people would credit.” Wiki paused for emphasis, and then said coldly, “If you ever punish a Kanaka for talking in his native tongue again, I swear I'll report you, not just to Lieutenant Smith, but to Captain Wilkes as well—and at the same time I'll make sure he learns that the
Swallow
was left without an officer on the quarterdeck when the storm was brewing.”

Forsythe said nothing, but his expression was lethal. Unmoved, Wiki said, “So where is Passed Midshipman Kingman?”

“He's been reassigned to the schooner
Flying Fish,
” Forsythe bit out, and stood up and slammed into his cabin.

Twenty-one

Next morning, to the great alarm of Lieutenant Smith, the
Vincennes,
the
Porpoise,
and the
Flying Fish
were all out of sight, and the
Swallow
was sailing alone in an empty sea. Forsythe had taken full advantage of a brisk topgallant wind that had sprung up in the night, and, as the day went by, it became obvious that he was intent on putting as much distance between himself and the fleet as possible. The breeze increased to a gale, but still the brig was kept under whole sail, leaning over at a steep angle with the foam running along her lee bulwarks, her timbers groaning while everything aloft strained and vibrated.

“The ship is laboring,” Lieutenant Smith protested in the middle of the afternoon.

Forsythe gave the hamper a glance. “Aye,” he agreed. “We do have a smart press of canvas.”

“The main topgallant is struggling hard. Don't you think—”

“It holds a good full, Lieutenant. Let it stand.”

“But we must rejoin the fleet! Captain Wilkes is holding a feast for officers and scientifics on Saturday, and it's imperative that I attend!”

“Wa-al, he did not invite me,” Forsythe retorted, and kept the canvas flying.

As soon as night had fully fallen and Forsythe had left the deck for his four hours below, Smith sent the watch aloft to take in sail. The hands complied with alacrity, having felt some alarm themselves. However, the instant the fast thud of the hull through water slowed to something more sane and rational, Forsythe came storming up to deck to countermand the order. Lieutenant Smith obeyed, but when Forsythe came up at midnight, again he begged him to reduce sail. Men were standing at every belaying pin, holding halyards by a single turn, ready to let go and clew up the straining canvas.

“Let it stand,” said Forsythe.

Still the gale strengthened, but still he kept every stitch of canvas flying. Halfway through the next morning, when the fore topgallant tore out of its bolt-ropes and disappeared downwind like an errant kite, he simply sent up another sail in its place. When that one ripped, he set the watch to clewing up the remnants and ordered the old boatswain to go aloft, with two hands to help, and mend it in place. It was wild and dangerous work and took all of two hours, but after that the sail held. No one could fault Forsythe's seamanship—when he was paying attention to his ship—but nevertheless Wiki felt that the southerner was simply taking out his evil temper on the gallant little brig.

When Wiki arrived on deck the morning after that it was to find to his surprise that though the brig was still under a full press of sail, Forsythe had ordered a change of course. No one offered an explanation, so Wiki went aloft to see if there was anything in sight that would account for it. His curiosity was soon satisfied. Five miles ahead, a homeward bound whaler was dashing along on the breast of the wind, obviously anxious to get her valuable lading onto the New Bedford market. She was a magnificent sight, low down in the sea because she was full to the bung-hole with oil, but nevertheless flying along like a racehorse, with studding sails alow and aloft.

The brig
Swallow,
having altered course, was following fast in her wake. For a long time Wiki wondered why, but then, as an hour ticked by, it became increasingly evident that Forsythe was determined to overhaul her—for no reason other than simple bloody-mindedness, it seemed. The Yankee whaler captain, equally stubborn, was determined to outrun the brig. Instead of taking in sail in response to Forsythe's signals to heave to for boarding, he found another sheet of canvas and sent it up as a royal to the main, meantime keeping doggedly to his course.

The chase was both exciting and spectacular. Wiki stood on the waist deck, holding on to the lee shrouds of the foremast with the wind lashing his hair about his shoulders, watching the flying spouter with fascination, and wondering why the old ship was so obviously determined to defy the navy and show the
Swallow
a clean pair of heels. Then he bit back a grin, abruptly remembering George Rochester's little yarn about the merchantman who had done his utmost to run away from the brig in Chesapeake Bay because he had mistaken her piratical lines for the real thing. This, without a doubt, was the explanation for the whaler's recalcitrance.

Relentlessly, despite the whaling master's magnificent ship handling, they came up with her. Even then he refused to heave to in response to their flags, kicking up his wake instead, so Forsythe fired his rifle, felling an innocent gull as a signal. There was still no response, the old spouter skipper obstinately maintaining his pose of being both blind and deaf, so Forsythe ordered one of the stern chaser cannon charged, and a shot fired across the whaleman's bows.

Lieutenant Smith was nothing short of appalled, and vociferous about it, too, but mountain man Dave was more than happy to rouse up the gun crew that belonged to the starboard chaser. “Cock your lock, blow your match, watch the weather roll, stand by,” he cried—

“A-n-d … FIRE!”

Luckily, his aim was true. There was a huge explosion, the cannon carriage screeched backward across the complaining planks, and the cannonball whistled across the bows of the whaleman, before plunging to the depths far beyond.

Where signals and musketry had failed, this demonstration of firepower worked. The spouter captain hastily backed his fore and mizzen topsails, and waited for the
Swallow
to come down. The brig luffed up and rounded to with a flourish, and then, as sail was taken in, she slowed. Wiki felt her sink lower in the water, the deck leveling and steadying, and then the
Swallow
lay still. No sooner had their wake stopped catching up with them, than Forsythe barked out orders to put down a boat. Then he looked at Wiki, who was studying the whaleship very thoughtfully indeed, and snapped, “You're coming with us, Mr. Deputy Coffin.”

Wiki lifted his brows. “Why should I want to do that?” he inquired.

“Because you have a letter to deliver—right? She'll be in New Bedford in three or four weeks, and if you ask very nicely she'll send it along to Portsmouth, Virginia. And then,” Forsythe said, his expression both vicious and smug, “your job will be finished. You can take a little vacation—on board another ship.”

“What job?”

“Don't pretend to be thick skulled when I know a damn sight better. The sooner you get quit of that damned report that you've been so busily concocting for the sheriff, the better. That done, Mr. Deputy Coffin, you can pick up your sea chest and move—if you can find a ship where an interfering bastard Kanaka might be welcome.”

Wiki looked at Forsythe curiously. He found it surprising that the lieutenant had even noticed that he had been writing his report of the investigation, because he had been forced to work on it in his stateroom. While it would have been a great deal easier to spread out the sheriff's instructions and make notes on the saloon table, the saloon had been far too public for coherent thought—because when Forsythe was on deck, Lieutenant Smith was below. And Lieutenant Smith could not cope with silence, not when he had a captive audience.

The first time the lieutenant had sat down for cozy conversation—pushing Wiki's papers to one side to give himself more room—he had announced that his intention was to watch Wiki closely. “Something of human nature can be learned even from a savage, only think!” he had enthused. However, as Wiki had swiftly found, all he wanted to do was rattle on, regardless of his listener's fraying patience. So, to avoid Smith's constant self-absorbed chatter as well as Forsythe's boorishness, Wiki had kept to his stateroom, where he had carried out his thinking lying on his back with his feet propped up on that accursed locker panel. When he wrote, he had seated himself on the edge of his berth with his notepad on his knee.

Now he studied Forsythe warily and prevaricated, “But I haven't finished yet.”

As it happened there was only a name to be inserted in a key sentence. Itemizing his observations had helped clarify his thoughts, and now he was certain he knew who had murdered Ophelia Stanton. The precise progress of the events that had followed the killing still evaded him, but he sensed that the puzzle was on the verge of being solved—that if he asked the right question of the right person, or someone inadvertently revealed just one more fact, he would have the whole answer.

“Then get it done,” Forsythe snapped. “You've got five minutes.”

Wiki's eyes narrowed at his tone, but then he abruptly thought,
Why not?

Without a word he went below, and wrote down the name of the murderer of Ophelia Stanton in the appropriate place—and filled in the same gap in the copy he had made to give to Rochester to hand on to Captain Wilkes. Then he swiftly shifted into his cleanest dungarees, wound up his hair into a knot on the top of his head, stabbed it with a quill to keep it in place, put the folded and addressed report to the sheriff in his pocket, went up on deck, and nodded curtly to Forsythe.

Forsythe had changed into the kind of uniform Wiki had been accustomed to seeing George Rochester wearing on formal occasions—lieutenant's blue claw-hammer coat, gold buttons and lace, proud epaulette on the right shoulder, lieutenant's fore-and-aft hat. Obviously, Wiki meditated dryly, Forsythe was going to board the whaler in the full gold lace and glory of a commanding officer of the U.S. Navy, in order to exact revenge for the run the old spouter had given him.

Ominously, the southerner's expression was more complacent than ever. However, he simply called out, “Prepare to lower,” and stepped into the boat as it swung in the davits, standing easily in the middle as the two hands who were already there worked the falls to make sure it touched the water evenly. Wiki waited until it had settled, and then jumped down, along with the rest of Forsythe's boat's crew.

The sun was high in the sky, turning the chunky hull of the whaleship into dense black shadow as they approached, and pointing up the tops of the masts so that they shone orange in the warm light. She was a well-kept ship, Wiki observed—he could see figures at work in the rigging, taking advantage of the pause in the onward rush of passage to take down a sail and bend on a new one. Seabirds fluttered and swooped about the broad stern, quarreling over the widening patch in the sea where a man in a white jacket had emptied a pail of garbage. As the boat pulled close, they rose in a screaming flock, and the sun on their wings made them look like flying bits of paper.