Clarity Putnam
RIO DE JANEIRO
DECR. 20, 1819
My dearest,
The boat has not left yet, so I break the seal to add just a postscript—there was a great debate upon this evening, and a vote was taken. By 5 to 2, the women present but not voting—the decision was made for observing Christmas as is done in the other churches! Their reasoning was, that the purpose of our mission is to bring the Lord to these far islands, and to waste energy attacking Christmas with the Catholics, Anglicans, and what not, would be a distraction. They also voted not to send notice of the same home to Cornwall. I wonder why! (I hope Reverend Beecher does not hear of it, it might prove fatal.)
C.P.
* * *
* * *
FIVE DAYS LATER, with fresh supplies taken on at Rio de Janeiro, the women of the company produced a Christmas feast of roast beef and vegetables, with fresh bread, and butter not yet grown rancid. The strange thing, apart from them celebrating Christmas at all, was to do it in the heat of summer, an inescapable reminder of their having reached nearly thirty degrees south of the equator. At the dinner’s conclusion it was Sybil Bingham, homely and all but chinless, who emerged from below bearing a succulent-looking pudding and set it before her husband, who headed the table. All stood as Bingham said grace a second time, but he was not too pious to wait for all to resume their seats before he began cutting slabs of the pudding and letting them fall onto the pewter plates.
“Well, now,” he said eagerly, “it has long been said that the proof of the pudding is in the eating.”
“Yes,” said his longtime friend Asa Thurston, “but are you referring to the pudding or the wisdom of keeping the holiday?”
“Either way,” Bingham rejoined with unaccustomed ease, “let us all now take our first bite of it together!”
In a few moments Blanchard rose, resting a knee on his chair against the unpredictable roll. “And now that you are enjoying your dessert, there is something of which I wish to apprise you all at once, for I must make a decision. In a few weeks’ time we will be at the latitude of the entrance of the Strait of Magellan. That is one way to the Pacific. Or, we can continue on for another two days to the Strait of Le Maire, and round the tip of South America on the open sea. The Magellan Strait is shorter, and more sheltered from wind and wave. It is also tortuous, and wickedly narrow, with rocks, lethal rocks close by both port and starboard. Also, the Atlantic tide is ten times or more the force of the Pacific tide, and as it enters the channels it cannot be resisted. The Strait of Le Maire, if we continue on, is a hundred times wider, and leads to the open sea, the Drake Passage, and so round the tip of the continent, with no land posing a hazard. There is room to maneuver, but in winds and seas of such terror you cannot imagine. However, weighing the wind which I can see against the rocks which I cannot, this is what I propose to do. I hope you can agree that this is the safer course.”
He resumed his seat, and Bingham waited a moment to see if there were any comments before speaking for the others. “Mr. Blanchard, you are the captain, and yours are the orders to give. We are grateful that you have told us, and we are confident that you will make the right judgments.”
For four days coursing past Patagonia they felt the seas grow higher, the wind behind them stronger, as though they were being sucked inexorably into some mighty and mortal vortex. Mariners had never written about Cape Horn in such a way, that its pull reached out as though it were some giant whirlpool. Blanchard assured the passengers that it was the coincidence of an approaching tempest but all knew the reputation of that dangerous passage.
Their fears were not eased when, on January 29, Blanchard assembled them in the large cabin and announced that this was the day they would enter the Strait of Le Maire. The Thaddeus was already pitching like a toy boat on a freshet. “Sometimes,” he said, “the seas will collide and rise higher than our masts. It is not likely, but if such a sea were to come over our stern, this cabin and everyone in it would vanish in a twinkling. For this reason, my crew have prepared a place for you in the hold, where you will be safer. There is a lamp, and pillows, and food and water, and for you, ma’am”—he looked at Muriel—“a backed bench nailed well down. Sometimes a ship must tack back and forth for days, awaiting a favorable wind to enter the strait.”
Just as he said this a great sea slammed their starboard quarter, causing Blanchard to catch himself on the edge of the table to keep his balance as the rest caught their tumbling bowls of pudding. “You see my point. Now, we have the coincidence of approaching the strait with the perfect wind hard at our backs, and my intention is to shoot straight through as fast as I can. So, by your leave—or really without your leave—I will ask you to gather what is necessary and descend to the hold.”
In their cabin Clarity and Muriel looked over their things, gathering a change of clothes should they be confined longer than they hoped. “Well,” ventured Clarity, “whether we stay up here and get washed over the side, or hit a rock and drown in the hold, I rather think that my mother’s gold locket will not provide much comfort in either case. We might as well leave our keepsakes here.”
“Yes, my dear, but I do not believe that things will come to such a pass.”
They gathered again in the great cabin. “It is not raining at the moment,” said Blanchard, “so let us take advantage. Come.” He led them out and stood at the head of the port ladder down from the poop deck. He grasped each firmly by the hand and helped them halfway down, where they were taken by James Hunwell, the first mate, who saw each safely onto the well deck. They repeated the procedure from the well deck down into the hold, seeing chairs and a parson’s bench arranged on the flat stowage of clapboards for their house, and amid chests of tools, and bolts of cloth as gifts for the native women.
Once they were all together in the hold, they were startled to hear the hatch cover being slammed down and battened into place. For the duration of the day and night they felt the vessel by turns sit back on her haunches like a great bear and then suddenly lurch forward and down until her bow knifed deep into a trough and lifted back again—either with or without a sickening thirty-degree roll. Their whole space was ill lit by a single thick-glassed battle lantern. Bingham stood, one hand clinging to one of Thaddeus’s ribs, the other gripping Sybil’s chair until the blood was squeezed from his fingers. She sat grimly upon it, clutching the seat, determined that she would drown where she sat before suffering the indignity of being pitched off it. The Thurstons and the Chamberlains sat cross-legged on the clapboards with the children, from which lowness they could not be pitched anywhere, and close enough together that if one started to tumble away the others could catch him.
Clarity was frozen to a trunk, her hands gripping the edge so as not to be thrown off. Only once—when the ship shuddered at the top of a mighty sea and then fell down and to the left so long it seemed she could not recover—she cried out, not a word, just a syllable. It escaped her lips before she could check it.
In her nailed-down parson’s bench, elderly Muriel Albright sat in her plain black dress and white cap, leaning passively with the attitudes of the ship. She gazed evenly at Clarity until their eyes met, and she patted the small space on the bench next to her. “Come sit next to me, dear.”
“I am not afraid, truly,” protested Clarity.
“Indeed, you are not. But come keep an old lady company.”
Clarity waited until the ship buried herself up to the catheads and was steady for a second, and she lurched across the hold and reached the bench next to Muriel before the vessel’s coming massive lift could vault her across that space. Muriel took Clarity’s hands in her own and held them as the ship rolled several more times. It became obvious from the ferocity of Clarity’s grip that, contrary to her protest, she was indeed scared half to death.
Muriel shook her hands for a second as though they were first greeting and inclined her
head toward Clarity, who thought for a moment that Muriel would lead her in a prayer, and leaned in close as well. “Do you believe in God, my dear?” Muriel almost whispered.
The question wounded her almost to the core. “Why, yes!”
“Yes, girl,” she whispered, “but do you trust God, truly?”
“I should hope I do.”
“Then there is no need to fear this. My dear, our very being here is an act of trust, and faith. There is not one thing that any of us can do at this moment to alter whether we are going to live or die. See how completely we have put ourselves in His hands? If the dear Lord wishes us to reach these Sandwich Islands and bring the light of the gospel to those suffering people, we shall attain that object in safety. But if the Lord in his wisdom should call us unto Himself even in the next instant, we would stand before Him humbly, but justified. It is in God’s hands.”
Clarity’s lips twitched almost to a smile. “Well, yes, but let’s not count Captain Blanchard out of it altogether.”
“Ha! Yes, he may still have a say in the matter.”
Clarity leaned over and kissed her cheek. They sat together for two hours more, until shortly before sunrise, when the wild vaults and plunges ceased, transformed into a deep, steady roll. Some lurched to the mattresses that the crew had spread out for them; others, exhausted by terror and seasickness, drowsed where they sat. Clarity awakened at the sound of the hatch cover being removed, her head on Muriel’s shoulder as brilliant morning sunlight streamed in, illuminating the dingy chaos of the hold.
“You may come out now,” called Captain Blanchard, “but mind the deck, it is still slick.”
They emerged cautiously from the ladder, Clarity thinking about Socrates and the cave, wondering whether once they saw the world above they would scuttle back down to the familiarity of their darkness. But what they saw astonished them.
It was just as she had read about the Strait of Magellan, for from the terror of Drake’s Passage they had entered the Pacific—the pacified ocean. They found themselves in a heavy swell and running before the wind, stiff and following. The sunlight was brilliant; the sea glittered. The sails were set up to the topgallants and they raced as though God Himself were filling the canvas with His breath.
The women tightened the chin straps of their bonnets until they bit into their jowls, but still the bills and ruffles whipped and snapped around their faces. Muriel came with some effort up the ladder and steadied herself on Clarity’s arm. They strolled to the starboard rail, where they shielded their eyes from the brilliance of the sun, equally blinding from above and from glinting off the rolling swell. Muriel was seized suddenly with a fit of laughter, and supported herself on the railing.
“Muriel, what is it?” Clarity smiled at her quizzically, wanting to share in the mirth.
The elder lady closed her eyes and howled in laughter until she lost her breath. But her face was shining and she held out her arms to the limitless ocean.
Clarity feared she might be hysterical and put an arm around her. “Yes, we are safe now. Can you see? We are quite safe?”
She waved her off. “Oh, no, my dear. That is not it. I laugh for my name’s sake.”
Clarity’s face went slack. “Your name? Muriel?”
“Yes! It is Irish; it means the bright sea! Oh, I was meant to be here! I am—” She began to calm down. “I am where I was meant to be.” She maintained her voice loud enough to be audible above the wind and creaking timbers, and she said, “Do you not see, dear Clarity? He was testing us. He does mean for us to reach those islands.”
“Yes!” Clarity shouted back. “It seems He heard my prayer to speed us there quickly, too!” They held hands tightly and watched the sails pull against the masts, the standing rigging pulled taut to take the strain.
That was not, however, the true meaning of the Pacific Ocean. This they discovered a month on, as they reentered the tropical latitudes and were becalmed, with no breath of wind, on a sea of blue glass, sweating under the February sun. Four of the men said they could swim, and stripped to their trousers and shirts, enjoyed a frolic in the ocean. For fifteen minutes they whooped and splashed, when First Mate Hunwell ordered them back aboard.
“Why?” hallooed Ruggles. “Do you see a great mighty wind coming?”
“No, but I see, as you do not, a great mighty dorsal fin cleaving the water two hundred yards out. So unless you wish to be luncheon for a shark, you will hie thee back aboard, and be quick about it.”
The word “shark” brought the women crowding to the rail, searching the water until it was seen, and then they jumped up and down, shouting, and urging the men to haste. After the last was safely aboard, Clarity walked up to Hunwell. “Are sharks good to eat?”
“Yes, the flesh is very good, although the innards are poisonous.”
“Well, if he came around to find some lunch, perhaps you could catch him and he could be the main course instead.”
“Well, by God.” He stared at her. “By God, maybe.” From below deck he produced a set of heavy tackle and a wicked, heavy six-inch hook, which he baited with a pound of rancid pork, and flung the line out as far as he could in the shark’s direction. It was the best sport imaginable, the whole company quietly urging the beast closer to it, as though they were betting on a horse race, encouraging him to come back when he turned away, as his circles drew tighter. When it took the pork and ran, Blanchard grabbed Hunwell by the seat of his pants to keep him from flying over the rail, and together they pulled the line. Clearly they saw the fish in the crystal water thrashing against the side of the ship. “There is a pistol in my cabin,” Blanchard shouted. “Somebody get it! Bring it to me.”
It was the moment of truth when they pulled it out of the water: the hook might bend, or the rope break, or he might wrench himself free. “Stand back, everyone!” They pulled mightily and the fish flew over the rail and landed on the deck with a whump. It was eight feet long, twisting left and right in that space bounded by the hatch cover and the ladders to the poop, a trickle of blood coming from the hook embedded in the corner of its mouth, files of curving, serrated teeth visible within the awful crescent of its mouth.
But for all the violence of its thrashing, it was helpless. When it was still for just a moment, Blanchard advanced and fired into the back of its head, causing a violent spasm, then stiffness, then limpness. None of the company had seen a shark before. They had grown accustomed to leaving a lantern on the deck at night, and feasting the next day on the flying fish that launched themselves onto the deck by morning. But this was new to them.
Lucy Thurston advanced as close as she dared. “All my life I have heard of the terrors of the deep. Now I understand.”
“Behold the work of His mighty hand,” said Bingham.
“Ah, posh!” waved Blanchard. “He is just a baby. I have seen them three times this size.”
The four older of the Chamberlain children evinced a keenness to touch it. “Children!” cried Jerusha. “Get away from there!”
Hopu and his Hawaiian fellows watched the proceedings from the fo’c’sle, staring dully but saying nothing. At length Clarity approached them. “Hopu, are you upset about something?”
He framed his words. “In my country, the word for spirit, for power of spirit, is mana. The word for shark is mano. We have great respect for sharks.”
“Oh, I apologize sincerely if we have offended you. We didn’t know. You don’t eat them, then?”
“Yes, we eat them, excepting one kind, but we do so with reverence.”
“Is this shark of the kind your people do not eat?”
“This one would excite no comment. We know now, the Bible says that such matters are of no importance. My thought is for how such a thing could make your mission more difficult, when you are ashore.”
How much we have to learn about these people, she thought. “Dear Hopu, how impo
rtant you are to us. Will you teach us about sharks at our next lesson?”
Hopu nodded. “Most surely, if you wish it.”
One thing that they all agreed upon was that the steaks cut from its flesh were delicious. In the following days, some of Thaddeus’s crew dried its gritty skin into razor strops and presented them to the men of the company, and made keepsakes of its teeth, which they distributed to all. None suspected that this would be the most excitement they would enjoy for weeks, for the hot calm doldrums they had entered before encountering the shark intensified to such an extent that they wondered the ocean did not steam beneath them. After two more tortuous weeks of the sea as smooth as glass, with not a breath of wind to break the heat that grew more oppressive, Clarity approached Captain Blanchard as he took his noon sextant reading. “Is this normal?” she asked.
“Oh, yes, ma’am,” he answered. “It is a known feature of this ocean in this latitude. We will drift out of it eventually. I shouldn’t worry before we spend another month in it. The trick is, to not let it drive you mad first.”
“Indeed.” She looked out at the horizon, then up at the limp rigging, and shook her head. “I rather believe we should have brought more books.”
* * *
* * *
AFTER MOTIONLESS WEEKS that tried the tempers of all, they drifted into a trade wind that carried them, gently at first but then with more vigor, toward their goal. “Five months out,” said Blanchard at lunch on March 29 after taking the noon reading on his sextant. “We have made excellent time despite our delay in that long calm—almost record time. It should be right there.” He pointed ahead, northwest. “We should sight the island almost at any time.”
“Oh! Oh, please,” cried Kanui. “Will you let me be lookout? See farther from up there!” He would not be dissuaded, and he and the other natives stormed out of the cabin and into the rigging. Within half an hour they began screaming. “E ke Mauna Kea! E ke Mauna Kea!”
The Devil in Paradise--Captain Putnam in Hawaii Page 12