by Terry Grosz
“Port, ho!” yelled the lookout as the Sea Witch turned landward toward where San Francisco lay.
The crew lined the rails as the ship moved closer to the docks, anticipating the debauchery that would follow their landing. Jacob and Martin had quietly agreed that if they were let free on the docks, they would kill any of their captors who were close at hand and then lose themselves in the waterfront crowd before the law could swap one form of captivity for another. But alas, it was not to be...Hearing the click of rifles being cocked, the brothers turned to find the chief boatswain’s mate, his first mate, and another seaman pointing rifles at them.
“What the hell!” exclaimed Jacob.
“The captain does not feel you two are entirely trustworthy, and until we leave port you will be confined to the lower decks. That is, until we resupply and leave for the sealing grounds south of San Francisco,” the chief boatswain’s mate coldly replied with a leering grin.
The brothers were escorted belowdecks and chained so they could not escape.
Jacob quietly put his finger to his lips for Martin to see as they were being chained to a ship’s timber. Martin caught the sign and held still, honoring his pledge to wait before he exploded at the crew members loyal to the captain.
When their captors had left and were out of earshot, Jacob said, “Well, this is something I had not planned on. In the future, we must secrete away a file and hammer in this area so if they do this again and the time is right, we can free ourselves and escape.”
“When they free us, my brother, I will go to the ship’s carpenter’s stores and steal a file, cold chisel, and hammer. Count on it being here the next time this happens,” Martin said through clenched teeth, a sign he was ready to kill someone once again.
For the next three days, as the Sea Witch took on supplies and offloaded casks of oil and piles of furs, the brothers remained chained to the beam belowdecks. They were fed and watered but never allowed on deck. On the fourth day, the Sea Witch sailed south on the evening tide. When land was several miles off the port beam, John Paul came belowdecks and freed Jacob and Martin from their shackles. With everyone falling to on the deck and setting the sails, no one noticed Martin’s brief absence. When he reappeared, he glanced over at Jacob and gave him the high sign that they now had a file, chisel, and hammer hidden near the place where they had been confined.
It will be a cold day in hell before we will be at the mercy of the captain and his cohorts again, thought Jacob.
For two days the Sea Witch slowly sailed south along the shore of California, finally dropping anchor in a quiet bay some forty miles south of Monterey. Sea otters abounded in the area along the coastline in the kelp beds, and soon the killing commenced.
It quickly became apparent that Jacob and Martin with their keen shooting eyes could provide far more sea otters than the crew on the ship could process. To rectify that situation, the captain reduced the kill boats from four to two, leaving Jacob and Martin as the main shooters in each boat. The crews from the two boats removed from the killing detail were then assigned to skinning and fleshing duties in order to keep up with the loads of otters and the occasional harbor seal or California sea lion provided by the brothers.
For the next several months, other than when the brothers were detained in the safety of the mother ship because of winter storms, the killing continued unabated. Christmas that year was celebrated with an extra cup of strong rum and nothing more. When the spring of 1859 arrived, the killing continued until the sea otters were decimated in their area. When that happened, the Sea Witch would pull anchor, move a few miles farther south, and drop anchor for the killing process to begin once again. Other sea-otter hunters were in the area, but the captain managed to keep those ships at bay with the liberal use of a swivel gun mounted on the flying bridge. After several shots through the offending ships’ sails and rigging, they got the message and moved to less dangerous hunting areas far from the Sea Witch and her crazy captain.
When the ship ran low on the firewood used to heat the rendering kettles and had holds almost filled with oil casks and sea-otter skins, the captain decided to head north to Monterey to take on more firewood and sell his oil and salted hides. He also planned to give his trusted crew members a day of shore leave to take out the kinks and take advantage of the “shady lady” trade.
“Monterey,” rang out a shout from the crow’s nest. The lookout followed with the command, “Ten degrees to starboard.” Reefing in his mainsail, the captain moved into the port of Monterey running on his jib and boom an hour later. Slowly running with the tide, he adroitly maneuvered his ship alongside a long dock jutting out into the bay. Seamen jumped from the deck onto the dock and secured the Sea Witch tightly with hawsers both fore and aft. The first mate ran out the ship’s gangway, and the captain, leaving the chief boatswain’s mate in charge, headed for the port authority building at the end of the pier.
In the meantime, John Paul and an armed able seaman escorted Jacob and Martin belowdecks, where they were once again shackled to avoid any attempt at escaping.
When the two seamen left, Martin turned to his brother and said, “Do you want to try and escape now?”
Jacob thought for a moment and said, “No. They have an armed gang on the dock plus several more loyalists close at hand. If we tried to escape now, we would be shot down like the dogs they are.”
Martin, not to be denied, said, “Jacob, I have the hammer, chisel, and file hidden within reach. We could overpower the crew, take their rifles, and shoot those on the deck.”
“And then what? The captain would have the law on us in an instant, and they would believe him over a couple of scruffy - looking seamen, especially if we killed some of his crew. No, we will wait for a better opportunity, and for some reason, I have a strong feeling that is soon to come.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
A Black Man Comes Again, and Trouble Follows
Jacob and Martin were awakened from a fitful sleep by the arrival of drunken sailors returning from the shore party. Much yelling and singing was accompanied by someone lifting the deck hatch over where Jacob and Martin were shackled. Three bodies were roughly rolled down the steps to their level, and the hatch was once more quickly latched shut.
Three more men shanghaied, Jacob thought disgustedly.
The men groaned softly and soon lay still in deep sleep from having been drugged before being taken. Unable to do anything or even see in the dark hold, Jacob and Martin just sat there. Soon they could hear running feet and extra activity taking place on the ship’s deck. Then they could feel the ship slowly moving, followed by the command to unfurl the mainsail. Within moments, the sails filled with a spirited wind, and the usual creaking and groaning of the ship under full sail could be heard. That motion soon rocked the two brothers back into a fitful sleep until they were awakened several hours later when the hatch was loudly opened and the bare feet came running down the stairs.
“A vast, you sons of a whore, it’s time to hit the deck and earn your keep,” shouted the chief boatswain’s mate.
Three armed seamen loyal to the captain stood on the stairway to the hold, hollering and prodding the three recent additions to the crew. It took some work to get the drugged men to rise, but eventually that was accomplished, and they staggered up the stairs onto a rain-covered deck.
While waiting their turn to be freed and let out, the two brothers sat looking on in shock at the three men leaving the hold in the light of day. One of the three was a huge black man! It was none other than Cain, their long-lost brother from the plains!
Jacob and Martin just looked at each other in profound disbelief, so surprised that neither could utter a word. The last they had heard of Cain was the Indians’ tale of his walking away in the middle of the night during a blinding spring snow storm after he had lost his wife in childbirth. Now, bigger than life, there he was back from the dead!
Jacob got hold of his senses and whispered to Martin, “Don’t let on
we know him. If we do, the captain will keep us isolated from one another out of mistrust. Let’s try to give Cain a high sign telling him to remain quiet. Otherwise we may not get the chance to team up and get off this rat-infested bucket.”
Martin nodded as he understood the significance of Jacob’s words. It was apparent to them that Cain had been drugged and shanghaied. If they could team up with Cain and possibly the other men dumped in the hold with him, along with John Paul, then maybe they could take over the ship and escape. For the first time in months, they thought they saw a possibility of escape so that they could return to their life as ranchers and finally marry the loves of their lives, who they hoped were still waiting for them in Sierra Valley.
Their rapid thinking was interrupted when John Paul came down the stairs and released them so they could return to their duties on deck.
“We best hurry and get up on the deck. The captain is in a killing bad mood, and we don’t want to make him any madder,” whispered John Paul.
Scrambling up on deck, the brothers could quickly see why the captain was so mad. One of his eyes was closed, and the other was bloodied and almost closed. His lip was split, and he had a huge cut over his left eye that still trickled blood down the side of his face. Then they saw the first mate, who was another evil son of a bitch. His jaw hung limply, looking as if it had been broken in a vicious fight, and the entire side of his face was purple, black, and blue. His left arm also hung limply as if it had been broken, and one of his eyes was a reddish-purple, swollen orb. It quickly became obvious that the captain and the first mate had tangled with something neither of them had ever faced before and probably never wanted to face again.
“Lash that black bastard to the main!” bellowed the captain.
It took four men to lift and secure the semiconscious Cain to the main mast, but they finally got it done. For the next five minutes the captain took out his fury on the back of the black man with his whip. Finishing and out of breath, he had his chief boatswain’s mate continue the beating with his one good arm. Soon Cain’s back was a mass of torn and bleeding flesh, with the white bone of his ribs and backbone showing.
“That is enough!” shouted the captain. “I want that bastard to live so I can grind him into the decking as an ordinary seaman.”
Cain had long since passed out, and when they cut him down, he collapsed onto the deck in a bloody heap.
“John Paul,” yelled the captain, “you, Jacob, and Martin take this piece of crap belowdecks and shackle him with leg shackles. He is one mean son of a bitch, and I don’t want him roaming the ship unless he is shackled.”
“Aye, sir,” said John Paul. He turned to Jacob and Martin and said, “Give me a hand with this bastard so we can do as the captain says.”
Jacob and Martin, not wanting to face the captain’s wrath at that time, jumped right in to grab Cain. Leaving a bloody smear along the deck, they dragged him to the hold. As the ship’s carpenter manacled Cain’s legs, Jacob and Martin looked at each other with a knowing grin. Both could tell it would be a real battle among the three of them, once Cain healed and they found an opportunity to right their wrongs, especially as to who would get to kill the captain.
“Jacob, go up and get me a bucket of seawater. We need to fix the back of this man or he will be crippled all his life. Martin, go see the carpenter’s assistant and tell him we need some thread and a sail needle so we can sew him up before infection sets in,” ordered John Paul.
As the Sea Witch sailed south before a brisk winter wind, Martin, Jacob, and John Paul bathed Cain’s back and sewed the loose chunks of flesh into the holes in his massive back where the captain’s whip had tom them free.
It took Cain three days to come out of the delirium caused by his brutal whipping. But when he did, he found himself looking into the grinning faces of Martin and Jacob. When he recognized the two brothers, his eyes looked as if they would pop out of their sockets. Then he reached out with his massive hand as if to convince himself and touched both men. Tears came to his eyes, and then he passed back into his world of pain—but not before Jacob had whispered to him that he was not to mention that he knew them, and when he was feeling better they would let him in on why they were on the same ship.
Anchoring sixty miles south of Monterey, the captain sent Jacob and Martin overboard to kill sea otters. Before going, Jacob and Martin conferred with John Paul, whom both men felt they could now trust, and told him to take good care of the black man. Not knowing what was going on but now being a good friend to the brothers, John Paul agreed.
For the next month, between bouts of winter storms, the brothers killed sea otters as if nothing were out of the ordinary. In their spare time in the evenings, they could be found huddled with Cain below decks as John Paul kept watch. As Cain healed, the brothers had the opportunity to fill him in on their lives after they had separated. They also used the time to explain how they had come to be working on the vessel. Cain in turn brought the brothers up-to-date on what had happened to him after he had disappeared from his band of Lakota. In a daze of grief, he had wandered the mountains trapping and killing animals to live. Finally running out of supplies and recovering a bit from his personal losses, he had ventured to Fort Bridger. While there in conversation with Jim Bridger, Cain discovered that the brothers had taken a wagon train to California. Remembering that Martin had always wanted to see the Pacific Ocean, he too came west looking for his friends. After crossing the Sierra Nevada Mountains on horseback, he landed in Monterey and found work in the fur houses processing sea-otter pelts. One evening while drinking at a bar called the Sandpiper, he had run across the captain of the Sea Witch. The captain had offered to buy him a few drinks and had spiked Cain’s drink. Cain was such a big man that the potion only half knocked him out, and when the first mate and the captain tried to shanghai him, he naturally resisted to the point that he was really working the two of them over when the rest of the crew jumped in by cracking him in the head with a belaying pin. That was the last thing he remembered.
Upon hearing the story, Jacob had to quietly laugh. Cain was still the horse of a man he had always been, and with him at their side, the brothers began to seriously plot their escape.
One evening, as the men relaxed, Jacob asked Cain how his back was. Cain moved his huge, muscular arms over his head, and Jacob saw him wince in pain.
“You still have a way to go before you are your old self, my brother,” said Jacob.
“Give me another month and I think I will be all right,” said Cain.
“Either way, my brother, you must be at full strength. We mean to take this ship over at the earliest opportunity and kill about half the crew who either support the captain or were in on our being shanghaied. As near as I can figure, we will have John Paul at our side, and that is good because he is a good shipwright. I am also hoping that when the time is right, we can count on those two men who were shanghaied along with you. That might just give us enough men to take the ship, kill those needing killing, and sail her back to San Francisco and our freedom,” Jacob said grimly. “It would be better if we had a few more men for the crew, like another shipwright and a good helmsman, but when the time comes those few of us willing to fight will just have to make do.”
“Jacob,” said Martin, “one of those guys that came with Cain is named Ran Slaten. He has been on ships that sailed to Alaska, and I think he might join us. I will feel him out some evening when we are up on the deck having a smoke, and if I am wrong, I will break his neck to keep him quiet and toss him overboard to keep our secret.”
John Paul couldn’t keep to himself after hearing bits and snips of the mutiny being hatched. “Jacob, I just can’t sit here and be the lookout. I need to say something,” said John Paul. “That other fellow who came onboard with Cain is named Bill Black. He used to be a ship’s master till he ran aground in the fog off the coast of Alaska. His helmsman at the time had been drinking and got off his bearings. When the ship went aground, he drowned
trying to get into a lifeboat. According to Bill, he fell from the deck into the longboat, bounced out into the icy water, and was never seen again. As a result, there was no one to testify on Bill’s behalf that he wasn’t manning the ship at the time, and he lost his ship’s papers. He bounced from pillar to post until he, like the two of you, was shanghaied. I am here to tell you, we had better hurry if either of you wants to kill the captain because Bill is already planning to do so even if he is killed in the process. He is that good of a man.”
“I will meet this fellow where we can talk, and if what you say is true, we will include him. However, if he is not what he represents himself to be, I think a trip to Davy Jones’s locker will be his fate as well,” Jacob said quietly.
“There is another good man in the crew, Jacob,” continued John Paul. “His name is Leo Suazo, a Mexican, and one hell of a man with a knife and pistol. He is my friend and can keep his mouth shut. He also has a hankering to kill the first mate for all he has done to him and would welcome the chance to join our merry band if it meant his escape.”
“Then it is set,” said Martin. “I will get together with my man, and you do the same with yours, Jacob. If we are successful, there will be six of us to take over the ship and do what needs doing. I will also get together with this Mexican fellow, and if he is what John Paul says, then we will have a seventh man in the fold. If not, he will float clear to Mexico with the gulls picking at his flesh before anyone knows he is gone.”
With their plans set into motion, the men went about their business as usual. Cain, now sufficiently healed, was given skinning and fleshing duties but was always in manacles and watched closely by the first mate. That way the captain felt that if Cain tried to get at him, he would have time to draw his pistol and kill him since he could only shuffle slowly while his ankles were chained together.