A Watery Grave (26 page)

Like many Yankee whalers, this ship had a hurricane house built over the stern; and Wiki, craning his neck to look upward, could glimpse the man at the helm in its sheltering shadow. As they came around the starboard quarter he saw a stumpy figure standing foursquare and brace legged on the roof of this house—the captain, without a doubt, and probably in a fuming mood as well. As they neared, he came to the rail-less edge, and glowered down at them with his thumbs hooked in his braces.

Forsythe bid the crew to still the boat by stirring with their oars, lifted his voice, and shouted, “Ship ahoy!”

The spouter skipper shifted aggressively from one boot to the other, but though the answer was grudging, it was clear. “
Mandarin
of Nantucket, Captain Israel Starbuck, three thousand eight hundred barrels of sperm, last port Lahaina, bound home.”

Wiki was impressed, thinking that three thousand-eight hundred was a cargo old Starbuck must have enjoyed reporting, because it meant that he had done very well with a ship of this size. On the New Bedford market, he could probably rely on a gross return of more than one hundred thousand dollars. That their last port was Lahaina, Maui, was less surprising. While the Bay of Islands, New Zealand, was the most common choice for whaling masters who wanted to reprovision their ships for the homeward passage, the ports of the Sandwich Islands were becoming more popular.

Forsythe introduced himself, his ship, and his mission in equally formal style. Old Starbuck did not bother even to pretend to be politely interested and refused to be impressed by the uniform. Instead, he snapped irately, “I'd like to know what gives the navy the goddamn right to chase a peaceful merchantman about his ordinary work, and bring him to with a shot across his bows.”

“Permission to come aboard?” said Forsythe blandly.

“And what happens if I say no, sir? You blow me out of the goddamned water?”

However, Captain Starbuck stepped back, disappearing from view in a tacit invitation to come on board. The boat pulled around to the gangway where there were falls awaiting, and the man in the bow hooked on. Then Forsythe reached up, grabbed a rope, and clambered up the side, jerking his head for Wiki to follow.

When he arrived on deck, Wiki looked about curiously. The deck planks were weatherworn, and scarred and chipped with much chopping of blubber, but they shone white with much meticulous scrubbing. The double-ended, graceful whaleboats had been freshly painted before they were chocked up tight to the sides of the ship, and the masts and yards were equally neat, varnished and slushed, with the tips of the yards painted white. But that, he meditated, was typical of old Israel Starbuck, a captain he remembered as being house-proud—a thorough, outstanding, farthest-limit skipper, who was determined to have the cleanest, most grime-free establishment on the whole wide ocean. In fact, gossip had had it that when his ships were refitting he spent twenty hours of every day on board, just to make sure that there were no slackers in the gangs. Wiki had even been told that he ran his home in the same shipshape fashion, demanding that his domestic help should turn out just like his watch at sea. If his wife despaired because the cook became mutinous and all the maids deserted, old Starbuck paid no notice because it was just part of his usual disciplinary warfare.

Now, on board the
Mandarin,
the only neglect was the tryworks furnace with its blackened bricks where the whale oil had been rendered from chunks of blubber, but Wiki knew that shortly the great cauldrons would be taken out, scrubbed until the metal shone, and then set aside, after which the tryworks would be torn down and the bricks hove overboard, in one of the rituals peculiar to American whalers, in celebration of nearing home. Meantime, there were men busily at work all about the decks and the rigging. Wiki recognized a few, and lifted his eyebrows and nodded. Then, he turned to study Captain Starbuck—and found the old skipper studying him right back, his bristling eyebrows hoisted high and a riveted expression on his deeply weathered face.

“Well, well, well,” the old fellow exclaimed. He had an air of suddenly enjoying the situation much better than he had expected. “Strike me blind if it ain't Wiki Coffin, the same damn rogue who absconded from this ship in Callao.”

Twenty-two

Though the smell of old whale oil rose to meet him as he descended the steep stairway, and the room itself was gloomy, the saloon of the
Mandarin
was as scrubbed and neat as Wiki remembered. A red-and-pink cloth covered the table; and the bottom of the mizzen mast, which protruded through the forward end of the saloon, was encased in highly polished wood. Out of sheer habit, Wiki seated himself on the starboard bench, in the same place where he'd eaten his meals for five reasonably pleasant months.

“Best seaman I ever shipped, without a lie,” Starbuck informed Forsythe, meantime dispensing brandy with a lavish hand. The discovery that one of his old hands—albeit a confounded deserter—had come to call had mended his temper considerably. “Picked him up on the beach at Pitcairn,” he recalled. “What ship did you jump from there, huh?” he inquired of Wiki. “I did hear tell that Jed Luce of the
Concerto
was putting the word around the ports that he wanted to talk to Wiki Coffin real bad.”

With a broad wink, he placed a full tumbler in front of Forsythe and another in front of Wiki, and then set himself down at the head of the table with a great creaking of the chair. Forsythe, without bothering with any kind of salutation, disposed of half the contents at once, and smacked his lips appreciatively. Wiki nodded thanks, but let his drink alone.

“Gave you second mate's berth; would've made you first officer if anythin' had happened to Tobey,” said Starbuck, slapping down his own glass after absorbing a hearty slurp. “What did you want to go and jump ship in Callao for, huh? Not that he stole nothin' from the ship,” he reassured Forsythe, who was watching Wiki very thoughtfully. “Dived overboard at midnight just like a goddamned Kanaka, and swam off to shore. What the devil did you want to go and do it for?” he demanded of Wiki.

Wiki smiled, lifting his brows in recollection. He had indeed stolen something—one of the cooper's small tubs, which he had filled with his clothes and a few prized possessions, and floated to the beach. However, he chose not to reveal this, shrugging vaguely instead.

“Didn't I treat you good, young man?”

“You did,” allowed Wiki. Starbuck had a fist like a rock and could be merciless with boneheaded greenhands; but if a man worked well and willingly, he got good treatment in return.

“So why did you jump, huh?”

“Because of a girl?” Wiki hazarded. “Or maybe because you were headed for the Callao sperm whale ground?” He had jumped so many ships, it was hard to sort them out.

“That could be so,” the old salt allowed.

Then that accounted for it, Wiki meditated. Usually his immediate reason for jumping a ship was because he had no ambition to reach the next destination. The prospect of bucketing about for months on the notoriously rough Callao ground, along with all the hunting, killing, and cutting up of sperm whales that it involved, had not been attractive in the slightest. The whale-ships stayed on the ground as long as the season lasted, calling in at the uninhabited Galapagos Islands to collect huge tortoises that ambled the decks until killed for food, so there weren't even liberty times in port to leaven the monotony. Quite apart from all that, however, was the overriding fact that he just plain disliked the whaling business.

“But why South Americky?” Captain Starbuck demanded. “Did you think to make your fortune there? I've seen it happen before,” he informed Forsythe. “First good look at South Americky, and any resourceful Yankee sees the natural possibilities, even a Kanaka Yankee like this one—he thinks what a little hard work and ingenuity could do, and off he goes to make his fortune. I've seen captains do that, as well as common seamen, but it all comes to the same in the end. Every single manjack loses his money and is forced to move on, sore enough for certain. Is that what happened to you?” he demanded, swiveling his stare to Wiki.

Wiki, who by sleight of hand had managed to exchange his full glass for Forsythe's empty one while Starbuck wasn't watching, shook his head. There had indeed been a girl, he remembered, but when he'd arrived on shore in Callao it was to find she had married since he'd called there last. Then he had heard that the ship where Rochester was serving was lying at anchor in Valparaiso, and so he had shipped for the run south as the third mate of a coaster. He'd found George Rochester on the bark of war
Acasta,
and George, providentially, was at a loose end. The ship was refitting for the West Indies station, which involved a lot of waiting about and killing time. So they'd bought brown riding clothes and—after bargaining for two tough pinto horses with slit ears and the cartilage between the nostrils divided to give them better wind—had headed out into the hinterland plains, with nothing but their bedrolls, a small sack of big silver Chilean dollars, and their guns.

It had been one of their best adventures. During the long days on the southern plains, they had watched the wild horses play; and when the sun lowered, turning the sky to a luminous indigo, they had watched long lines of pink flamingoes rise from the lakes, their wings translucent in the golden light. After about a week, they had joined a roaming band of gauchos and had learned to hunt with bolas. About the campfire at night, they had sipped the aromatic tea called maté through hollow stalks from a common gourd that was handed around, and traded yarns of the sea for tales of the pampas. Then it had been time for George to return to his ship, so Wiki had kept him company as far as the port. There he had signed articles on a homebound California hide-and-tallow trader, and after a long and tedious passage he had arrived in Boston in time to get a message from his comrade suggesting the exploratory expedition.

So Wiki grinned reminiscently at Captain Starbuck as he said, “I didn't try anything in South America, save take a look at the scenery. And then I went home and made up my mind to explore the Pacific with the navy.”

“But why the hell should you do anything like that? I thought you had more brains.”

“He didn't join,” remarked Forsythe. “He's a civilian.”

“Ah,” said the whaling master alertly.

“He ain't bound by navy articles.”

“Aha!” said Starbuck, and swiveled around to stare at Wiki. “I can't offer you more than fourth mate's berth right now, the whaling being over,” he said swiftly, “but I'll ship you as first mate next voyage and be right glad to do it. What do you think of that plan, huh? Four months in New England to get acquainted with your folks again—on account of I heard that your father be back in Salem—and then it's the Pacific for you and me.”

Wiki said, “But—” and stopped, as a shout echoed down from the deck.

Without a word Forsythe drained the brandy glass and went up the stairs to investigate.

When Wiki started to rise from his seat to follow, Captain Starbuck detained him by barking, “Why not?”

“I signed on as the expedition's linguister—to translate Spanish, and the various Pacific languages—so I'm committed, even if I haven't signed articles. And,” Wiki went on, fishing the package for the sheriff out of his pocket, “I have a job to do—an investigation, which means I have a favor to ask.”

“Favor?” Starbuck echoed blankly.

“Aye. It would be a considerable help if you would get this on the way to Portsmouth, Virginia, as soon as possible after you make home.”

Starbuck took the packet and turned it over in his huge gnarled hands, scowling down at the address. Then he looked up and said aggressively, “What's all this about, young man? Just what the devil have you been up to?”

“There was a murder in Virginia before the expedition sailed, and the sheriff strongly suspected that the man behind it was with the fleet, and so—” Wiki paused and then said wryly—“he appointed me a kind of sheriff's representative with the expedition—a deputy, if you like—with instructions to keep on with the investigation.”

“You?” said Captain Starbuck, and guffawed, as derisive as Rochester had been. But he was greatly interested as well, Wiki saw. The old man enjoyed mysteries, he remembered. Starbuck carried more than a hundred history books with him on voyage; he had willingly allowed Wiki to read them, and then had discussed the puzzles of the past with enormous animation, his mind tugging at old conundrums like a thrush at a snail.

So Wiki told him all about it, starting with the discovery of the body and going on to the theory that someone had posed as Stanton in order to get into the plantation house. Having piqued the old skipper's curiosity, Wiki was not allowed to stop there, and so he went on to describe the discovery of Burroughs's broken-necked body and the seemingly insoluble mystery of the note.

It flowed remarkably easily. Back when he was second mate of the
Mandarin,
he and Captain Starbuck had paced the deck together during many a night watch, the Nantucketer being an incorrigible and entertaining spinner of yarns. The recounting took not a few minutes, but Captain Starbuck listened with deep attention throughout.

“Well, it sure do look to me as if the woman's husband is the prime choice for the feller who put the body in the boat and then tried to sink it with those shots,” he observed at the end, “especially as the servants were so positive they saw him.”

“It's physically impossible. Many men have testified that he was at Newport News at the time.”

“Unless a powerful lot of fellers were makin' a big mistake, there's no getting around that, that's for sure,” Starbuck agreed. Then he said, “What about this Burroughs feller? You reckon he was the one who posed as Stanton to get into the house and take Mrs. Stanton away—maybe because he was bribed?”