A Watery Grave (27 page)

“When he committed suicide, it seemed to bear it out. Everyone who knew him has said how proud he was of his reputation. He put his head in a noose because he was on the verge of being exposed—or so I thought, for a while.”

Starbuck was looking at Wiki very alertly indeed, his little eyes bright and shrewd. “But you don't believe that anymore?”

“In my report to the sheriff,” said Wiki, nodding at the packet in Starbuck's hand, “I've told him how strongly I doubt it. Everyone who knew him seems to think he was too contented with life to end it all. He even wrote a note telling the world how happy he was.”

“A letter?”

“A poem. An ode to happiness.”

Starbuck snorted, for a moment sounding like Forsythe, but then said abruptly, “It sounds to me like someone knocked him on the head, broke his neck, and strung him up to look like he put an end to hisself. What do you reckon about that idea, huh?”

“It fits,” said Wiki, and nodded emphatically. “Quite apart from the poem, the ceiling simply wasn't high enough for the drop to break his neck when he kicked over the chair. If it
was
suicide, it's much more likely he would have strangled to death—and not very quickly, either.”

“So who do you reckon snapped his neck?”

“The obvious candidate is Tristram Stanton. When George Rochester arrived at Burroughs's door, Tristram Stanton was hammering on it, on the verge of breaking in—but George had been with Wilkes quite a while before that. Stanton had plenty of time to kill Burroughs, fashion that noose and string him up, and then get outside the door to put on a show of having to break it down.”

“The door was locked?”

“The key was never found. Astronomer Stanton reckoned that Burroughs threw it out the sidelight.”

“And no one searched Stanton's pockets?”

“Of course not.”

“H'm!” Starbuck grunted. “It does seem logical that he would've wanted him out of the way. This Burroughs fellow knew too much by far.”

“Aye,” said Wiki. That had been another of the suggestions he'd made in the sheriff's report. The hard part, he mused, was proving it.

“And this unreliable man, Powell—what do you reckon about him and the note he told you he delivered to Forsythe?”

“He tells so many lies it's impossible to know when he's telling the truth,” Wiki said, letting his frustration show. “And now he's disappeared. His messmates reckon he lost the number of his mess—which means
‘dead'
in navy language.”

“What?” said Starbuck, looking more alert than ever. “You mean to say that he's been murdered, too?”

Wiki remembered the fleeting look of terror that he had glimpsed in Powell's bloodshot eyes and nodded grimly. “Though there is the chance he went overboard in the last big storm,” he amended. “At least, that's what his messmates think.”

“H'm,” Starbuck grunted, and then said abruptly, “This was on the
Vincennes?
”

“Aye.”

“And what's the complement?”

“About two hundred men, all told.”

“And no one would've noticed him going over? That's a bit hard to believe.”

The whaling master was right. Wiki remembered the panic as the boatswain of the
Swallow
had floated out of reach on the tossing waves, and the way the men had watched the sea as if mesmerized, as the immense billows rolled in from the night. Even though the brig—one-eighth the size of the
Vincennes
—had just seventeen men on board, it was impossible to believe that someone could have fallen overboard unnoticed.

“Nope,” said Starbuck roundly, “he's been put out of the way.” He pursed his lips judiciously and said, “Even then, there's the problem of his corpse. It ain't that easy to get rid of a body at sea, you know, accidentally or otherwise. Lubbers might think that a body could be slipped overboard while no one was watching, but you and I know that bodies float. Three voyages back,” he said reminiscently, “a couple of my Portugee greenhands got into a fight, and one knifed the other and tipped him over the rail. And do you know what? The body got caught on the rudder. We couldn't work out what was up with the ship, not until we looked over the taffrail and saw an arm poking up out of the water.”

Wiki grimaced. “What did you do with the murderer?”

“Handed him in at Talcahuano. He was hanged, I do believe,” Starbuck said carelessly, and then looking animated went on. “So where do you think the corpse might be stowed, huh? One would think it would have given away its presence by now,” he ghoulishly observed. He picked up the brandy bottle and pointed it questioningly at Wiki's empty glass, bristling eyebrows lifted.

Wiki looked down at the table—saw Forsythe's empty tumbler, and abruptly realized that the southerner had never come back. “My God!” he exclaimed. “Where is he?”

“What? Who?”

“Forsythe!” Wiki swung his legs around, leapt off the bench, and sprang up the companionway—and arrived on deck just in time to see the brig
Swallow
putting on the last of her sails. Even as he watched, the topgallants snapped taut with wind.

“He's marooned you!” Starbuck exclaimed, arriving at Wiki's side. He looked as if he was on the verge of a highly entertained guffaw. “So I get you as fourth mate,” he observed merrily.

“But I have to get back on board!”

“Why? Do you reckon he's the imposter?”

Wiki shook his head. For a long time he had indeed considered Forsythe a prime candidate, especially after Powell had claimed to have delivered the note to him. Since then, however, the southerner's own actions had convinced him that he'd told nothing but the truth.

“It was his idea to mail the report to the sheriff, along with his testimony,” Wiki said, the hasty words spilling out. “He's not likely to do that unless he's innocent.”

“So why is he so anxious to get quit of you?”

“Because he dislikes Kanakas, and he dislikes me interfering with his mistreatment of them.”

“He don't like Kanakas? How odd!” exclaimed Captain Starbuck, who—as Wiki knew well—didn't care if a man was brown, black, white, or brindle, just so long as he had sharp eyes and broad shoulders. “Well, then,” he said briskly, “I most surely don't want to lose you; but seein' as you're determined, the least I can do is get you there, it being my own fault for holding you up.” And he spun on his heel, shouting, “Clear away the starboard boat!”

Men dashed up to the roof of the hurricane house and released the cranes that supported the bottom of the boat, so that it was swinging loose from the davits. Two of them jumped into it, and then swiftly worked the falls so that it lowered with a single splash. Three more scrambled down the side of the ship, Wiki with them. Then, as he braced himself to jump, he found that Captain Starbuck was close behind.

“Are you sure?” he said.

“Wouldn't miss it for the world,” replied the old salt with a savage grin and gripped the steering oar.

Three minutes had elapsed. The
Swallow
was still just a couple of ship lengths off, but gathering speed fast as she headed downwind.

“Take oars,” snapped Captain Starbuck. The five oarsmen picked up the rhythm at once, bracing their legs and feet, and hauling mightily.

“Step mast.” The wind gusted, whipping Wiki's hair out of its knot and lashing it about his face, so his eyes streamed as he manhandled the long mast into the step and locked it in place with a fid. The sail snapped and then roared full, and the whaleboat lifted and danced across the waves.

Starbuck's steering oar dug deep, bending like a newly cut willow as he brought them around to the curling edge of the fleeting wake of the brig, so that the seethe of the water was in their favor. “Spring to it, boys!” The boat surged strongly with the double force of muscle power and the sail.

Then Wiki felt the wind drop. The boat sail fluttered and sagged. As the canvas slapped and flopped, he glimpsed the same tremble in the
Swallow
's sails. “Pull!” cried Captain Starbuck—and they were catching up as the brig lost way, running by momentum alone in the sudden calm. Pull by pull the boat was drawing closer—close enough for Wiki to discern two figures on the quarterdeck, one much shorter than the other, and doing a lot of gesticulating. Lieutenant Smith arguing strenuously with Forsythe, he thought, and tautly grinned.

Then the wind flicked up. The
Swallow
fled on. She had lost much of her lead, though—and now they were gaining still more, slowly but surely, with the extra power of the oars. Suddenly, they were level with the taffrail. It was time to take down the mast, as the hull of the brig stole their wind. Still the long oars dipped and swung, bringing them farther along the
Swallow
's starboard side. Standing in the back of the boat, leaning powerfully on his steering oar, Captain Starbuck kept them just outside the hollow of green water that rushed and swirled along the
Swallow
's hull. Then, as he rapped out orders, they ventured closer.

The whaleboat began to dip and sway sickeningly with the conflicting forces in the inner edge of the wash—one unwise bump, and the light cedar planks would be stove. Wiki stood up, balancing precariously. A rope banged and scraped as it dropped over the rail. Looking up, he saw Sua's broad brown face, his huge fists gripping the rope, ready to haul him on board. Wiki reached out, grabbed, and missed. The boat swept outward, and he seized his balance by bracing his palm on the nearest oarsman's hat.

Then he was standing steady again. Starbuck snapped, “Pull three, stern two!” The boat spun round in a tight curve, arriving close alongside again—and the
Swallow
was losing way at long last, as some sense prevailed on the quarterdeck and clew lines were released. Wiki waited, gauging the moment, then launched himself into space. His wildly flailing fist hit the rope and gripped, the other came up above it in an equally tight grasp, and he was being drawn upward. He kicked powerfully at the planks as he rose, and then Sua heaved him over the gangway, and he was standing on the deck.

“E hoa,”
he said to the Samoan and clapped him on the shoulder. Then Wiki looked over the side at Starbuck and his men and formally saluted them. After that, deliberately, he turned and headed aft, where Forsythe was waiting at the break of the quarterdeck, his arms folded, his expression aggressive.

“Bastard,” said Wiki, but did not feel as if he really meant it. The exhilaration of the chase was still buzzing through his veins, and all about the decks men were cheering—cheers that were echoed by hails of triumph from the whaleboat.

At that perfect moment there came a great cry from the lookout, “Ship ahoy!” The
Vincennes
had found them, drawn by the sound of the shot they had fired across Captain Starbuck's bows. As the brig changed course to meet her, they could see she was now tagged by three ships—the
Porpoise,
the
Flying Fish,
and the
Sea Gull.
The second schooner had joined the fleet and only the
Peacock
was missing.

Twenty-three

“It was truly wonderful,” Lieutenant Smith enthused, “to see what a difference the firing of a cannon can make! No sooner had the echoes faded than this personification of Yankee republicanism backed his fore and mizzen topsails and graciously permitted us to speak his ship.”

It was late Saturday afternoon, and Captain Wilkes's feast was in full and rowdy progress. When George Rochester had come along the main deck on his way to the afterhouse, the scene had been wonderfully tranquil, the other ships of the expedition fleet lying aback like gulls sitting on their own reflections. Because the weather was so mild, the sailors had taken their supper on deck, and were now quietly preparing for the dogwatch. In the big saloon of the
Vincennes,
by contrast, it was noisy in the extreme, in a jolly celebration of good food, good wine, and much gossip. The
Peacock
might still be among the missing, but the return of both the
Sea Gull
and the
Swallow
was something to celebrate, and so Captain Wilkes had turned out to be an unexpectedly jovial host.

Lieutenant Smith, his red face shiny with delight that he had been able to keep the appointment and attend the party, was the life and soul of the table. His account of the prowess of the
Swallow
was racy and exciting, drawing grunts and comments of appreciation, along with much laughter at the besting of the independent old blubber hunter. As George meditated with some amusement, many of the men sitting about the big table might not even be aware that it was actually Forsythe who had command of the brig. Throughout Smith's account the overriding impression he gave was that the brig had sailed like a bird simply because he, Lieutenant Smith, had been in charge of the quarterdeck, and that it had been his idea to force the whaleman to back his headsails—by firing a shot across his bows, for God's sake! That, George could believe of Forsythe, whom he did not consider quite sane; but he thought he knew Smith well enough to predict that the only part he would ever play in anything so rash was to make a verbose and nervous fuss. However, not only was the chubby lieutenant telling it as if he had been totally in charge, but Wilkes appeared to believe him, smiling with obvious enjoyment as he listened.

George took no part in the conversation himself. Just as at the banquet at Newport News, he had been placed well below the salt, right at the bottom of the table, with a junior midshipman on either side of him. Both these young men were poor company, being so overwhelmed by the honor of being there that they were distinctly tongue-tied, and making up for their silence by drinking rather a lot of wine. Fourteen assorted scientifics and officers sat seven to each side. At the far end, Captain Wilkes presided, with the highly exhilarated Lieutenant Smith on his right, and Astronomer Stanton on his left. All three gave every appearance of enjoying themselves in famous fashion, thought George, though it was Smith who was dominating the conversation, while Stanton was focused on the decanter.