The True Account (32 page)

The next morning old Chief Tillamook was dead. This somber event occasioned a philosophical discourse between Franklin and my uncle on the nature of heaven. Franklin said that each Indian nation had its own afterworld. The Blackfoot heaven, for instance, was located just north of a lovely land called the Sweetgrass, in the heart of the Land of the Glaciers. True, who was equally certain of a place of eternal reward, conceived of paradise as a sort of extension of Kingdom County, Vermont, only perhaps with slightly milder winters, like these here on the Pacific. And he said that all of its residents were about my age, for he could not imagine a more idyllic situation than to be a boy or girl forever in a place like Vermont. So, despite the departure from this world of the old Chinook chief, this interval of painting and fly-casting and maple sugaring and philosophizing beside the Pacific was another of those very happy times that seemed to make all of our ordeals worthwhile. At such times I understood perfectly why we had made such an arduous odyssey and I would not have traded the experience for anything. My uncle felt the same way and even coined another of his famous axioms: “To be human is to travel.” Franklin said this was perhaps the most philosophical statement made since the days of Solomon and Socrates. Doubting Seal agreed, pointing out that when you turned the axiom around—“to travel is to be human”—it made every bit as much sense.

In the meantime I finished my tableau, painting the whale-house burial vault of Chief Tillamook on the crag above the bay. Everyone said it was my best work. My uncle allowed that it brought to his ears the constant sharp cries of the seabirds, the crashing breakers, and the scrape of pebbles drawn back down the shingled scree by the retreating waves. He inclined his long tin ear trumpet to the picture to listen to the pebbles rattle along the beach and said aye, aye, he could surely hear them. As indeed he could, the actual beach and the breaking waves being about fifteen feet away. And he claimed to smell the briny tang of the ocean in the air around the painting as well.

 

Heading back toward Fort Clatsop, we encountered a cold and steady rain for three days, but Doubting Seal would not allow us to build a fire for fear of attracting a Tlingit raiding party. On the afternoon of the third day, the Seal and I were again in the lead canoe, two or three miles ahead of my uncle and Franklin, who had lagged behind to enjoy a few final hours of fishing.

As we started round the headland between us and the Columbia, I noticed a small cloud out at sea coming our way. Approaching quickly, it split into two clouds, then three. I trained my pocket glass on them, then sharply drew in my breath. In its lens was a three-masted sailing vessel.

“A trading ship!” I shouted, handing the glass to Doubting Seal.

But he shook his head and passed the telescope back to me, indicating that I should look again. What we had sighted was no trading vessel but a warship flying a coal-black flag!

As we continued around the breakers off the headland, the ship gave chase, and Doubting Seal chose this time to inform me that last fall, about a month before our arrival on the coast, the same vessel had put in at the mouth of the Columbia and sent a party ashore making inquiries for
an American expedition coming overland under the command of one Captain Lewis.
I demanded to know why the Seal hadn't told us about the ship sooner.

“Why, friend,” said he, “did not Captain Lewis expressly say that he was not interested in anything we had to tell him or in holding further commerce with us? We would gladly have informed him of the ship, but we did not wish to seem forward or impertinent.”

Ahead some hundred yards, a tall spout of water jetted up, as if a whale had breached. It was followed immediately by the dap of cannon fire. Another spray, fifty feet to our right, was accompanied by another report. A third ball, launched flatter, skimmed past our canoe, skipping several times on the surface of the ocean like a flat stone on a Vermont millpond. Whoever they were, these people meant business.

We were still a mile or more away from the big river when a thunderous, rolling explosion filled the air and water all around us with flying lead. The ship had fired a full broadside at us. Several stone formations just offshore were sheared off or entirely demolished by the volley; a massive cedar tree on the shore snapped completely in two, as if struck by lightning. When it fell into the water, a huge wave washed over our canoe, swamping it. All we could do was cling to the gunwales and await the next volley.

I
HAD AN IMPRESSION
of a boat swooping down on us full of red-coated soldiers and a club descending toward my head; of being hauled aboard a ship in a sort of net, of seeing Doubting Seal and his paddlers shoved belowdecks; and of passing out and coming to briefly, then passing out again.

As my vision cleared, I realized that I was aboard the warship. I was thirsty and had no idea how long I had been unconscious. When I called out in a croaking voice that I wished an interview with the ship's commander, a rather elderly, dose-shaven man in a green frock coat stepped forward and identified himself as the ship's first mate. The mate, who seemed very friendly and spoke in what I believed to be a British accent, assisted me to my feet and ushered me into a large, well-lighted cabin at the stem of the ship, where an austere-looking gentleman in a black suit sat at a desk reading a Bible. “Captain John ‘Mute Jack' Jamieson, at your service, young sir,” said the mate.

The captain looked up, and I perceived that around his neck on a string hung a small slate much like that upon which I had learned my ABC's. The word “Speak” appeared on the slate seemingly of its own accord. As Mute Jack erased the word with a black cloth, his eyes, which were as black as the cover of his Bible, never left mine. He waited for my reply.

“Captain,” I said, “my name is Ticonderoga Kinneson. I am a member of an expedition of discovery and exploration led by my uncle, Private True Teague Kinneson, from Vermont and the United States.”

Jack Jamieson continued to regard me. Then the name “Meriwether Lewis?” appeared on the slate. I shrugged as if unfamiliar with the Lewis party, and repeated that I had come west with my uncle, and wished to be set ashore at Jack's earliest convenience.

The captain and mate then took me back out onto the deck, where the ship's marines were drilling, barefoot and soundless. Their discipline was impeccable, their silence terrifying. A wild thought of trying to lure the ship onto the breakers off the headland flashed across my mind. But by now my mouth was too dry to speak. At a nod from Mute Jack, the mate hurried to fetch me a drink. The beverage turned out to be seawater, and in a choking spasm I lost consciousness again.

 

It was now dusk, and I could see that we were anchored in the mouth of the Columbia. Under Mute Jack's gaze, the crew was practicing running the cannons in and out, working in deadly silent fashion, the cannon wheels being muffled in cloth. Presently he assembled the ship's crew, and the mate told them that he believed Lewis's party was encamped not far distant. Mute Jack's plan was to remain with the ship while the marines proceeded upriver in the cutter to locate the Americans by their campfires and report back. Just before dawn, the ship would sail into the estuary and bombard the Americans, after which the marines would mount an assault on the camp and finish off any survivors in whatever manner they saw fit.

As darkness fell, the captain dispatched the cutter and marines, with the elderly mate at the tiller. I could not think what to do, short of leaping over the side, which would have been pointless under the circumstances, the tide here being too powerful for any man to swim against. My head was beginning to spin again when, from the dark water below, a seal barked. Then another. Swarming up the side of the ship and over the rail in the starlight came an army of demi-creatures, with the arms, legs, and bodies of men and the heads of giant seals, walruses, white bears, sharks, and whales, each barking or roaring or bellowing or braying after its kind. And each came bearing a bow or a lance or a club, with which they immediately started round the ship's deck, prosecuting their grisly business, while I watched in horror. There were halibut-headed men and rayheaded men, men with the heads of giant crabs and mollusks and sea-denizens stranger still, beaked squid and octopi and, most ferocious of all, a man with the head of a salmon, wielding a great white club. At his side fought a warrior in a narwhal mask, bearing a bundle of the sharpened tusks of his watery namesake, which he hurled at the ship's crew with deadly accuracy. With one he skewered Mute Jack's arm to the wheel.

The captain wrenched free, then flung himself back onto the wheel, with the clear intent of spinning it entirely around and broaching the ship. The narwhal-man pitched a tusk directly through his chest, driving him over the rail and into the sea, where milling sharks converged on him with all the swift ferocity of their kind.

In the meantime the mate's raiders in the cutter, hearing the death screams of their fellows, raced back to the ship. Under the salmon-warrior's direction, two of the forward cannons were charged with grapeshot. As the sloop passed below the ship's bow, the guns were trained directly down onto the marines and a double volley fired point-blank, clearing the deck of living men, all but the mate in the frock coat, who came running up the sheer side of the ship like an ape and leaped lightly onto the rail. His coat now glowed a bright green; two short red horns sprouted from his head, a flaming pointed beard from his chin, and two hairy cloven hoofs appeared where his feet had been. “I'll see you in Hell yet,” he boomed out to the salmonheaded man in the voice of twenty demons. Spreading his cloak, he made a great leap upward toward the mast; but the salmon-man reached up as he passed overhead, caught him by one ankle and the tail of his frock coat, and, spinning entirely around, hurled him far out to sea, where he vanished like an extinguished meteor.

“Tooleroo,” said my uncle's voice from inside the mask. “Hell is the place for him, Ti, and I think we won't pursue him there. But what a play it would make if we did!”

“Water,” I managed to say. I remember drinking as though I would never stop, and after that I remember nothing else until morning.

“W
HEN
F
RANKLIN AND I
saw the pirate ship,” my uncle was telling me, “we headed for shore. Our intention was to carry our canoe over the headland, cross the Columbia, and return with the captains and their men to attack the ship by night and rescue you. But up a little creek we ran right into the Tlingits, who were on their way downstream in three war canoes. I confess, Ti, that for a few uneasy minutes it appeared as though all was over for us. I won them over by offering them maple sugar on wappato bread, toasted, which they declared the best dish they'd ever laid a lip over. As it turned out, the pirates had just attacked and burned several Tlingit villages north of Vancouver Bay, and the Tlingits were eager for a way to avenge these depredations. I spoke to them first in Norse, but discovered that they have unfortunately lost the language of their Viking ancestors. So I was obliged to address them in Russian, of which they have some rudiments. I asked if they were familiar with the old saw ‘to kill two birds with one stone.' They were not, but had an equivalent saying, ‘to catch two salmon on one hook' Therefore, I inquired if they would like to catch two salmon on one hook by eliminating the crew of the warship which had destroyed their villages and then annihilating, in the bargain, the Russians at Fort Barrow, who have oppressed their people for nearly a century. The Tlingits said yes, they would very much like to do that; but they did not see how it was possible. I laid out my plan for a nocturnal attack on the ship, I to lead the assault in the mask of a king salmon, and Franklin wearing the headpiece of a narwhal. Is that not a very pretty story?”

“It is, sir. But tell me, who were these pirates?”

“Why, Ti, according to papers in the captain's cabin, no more nor less than a gang of renegade Englishmen, sailing under a letter of marque, or private commission, with orders to capture or kill Meriwether Lewis to prevent America from establishing a claim on the Northwest Territory. We have saved the expedition's skin again, nephew. Though Franklin and I agree that it will be best not to mention this little episode to anyone, including the captains, lest it provoke another war between America and Great Britain.”

I said, “I congratulate you, sir, on the success of your attack. And upon finally dispatching your Gentleman friend back to where he belongs. But I was very surprised that it was the first officer who turned out to be he and not the captain, who was a hideous mute, bloodthirsty fellow.”

“It is not astonishing, Ti. My old friend, you see, is much more of an
abettor
than a doer. It's odd. I rather miss him already. I was not entirely in jest when I said that an expedition to his fiery purlieus would be matter for a great play. There is precedent, you know, in Virgil and Dante. But let that go for the nonce. Paint a picture of me in the salmon mask applying the Old Scotch Spin or, as it is also called, the Devil's Ceilidh, to my friend. He will trouble us no more, I think. It—I mean the Ceilidh—is guaranteed to keep him away.”

While a crew of Tlingits acquainted themselves with the particularities of sailing the captured warship, my uncle introduced me to his new friends from the north. There were three divisions in the Tlingit raiding party, each consisting of fifty men. The names of their chiefs were Ice Bear, Walrus, and Tsar Nicholas, and under their escort we now repaired to the stream where they had surprised my uncle and Franklin. The creek was hemmed in on both sides by tall western cedars. A soft spring rain had begun to fall, and the raindrops slipping off the trees into the still water, the dense fog, and the silence of our paddlers all enhanced the mystery of this place. Soon we put in at a little sandy shore. The Tlingits then led us along a faint path up a knoll and down the other side into a twilit clearing. Silently, Chief Ice Bear pointed upward.