The King's Indian: Stories and Tales

by John Gardner

  “I’d gotten comfortable with the flow of things. So I knew myself what Wilkins was slyly telling me, though not to the exact degree and second. (Nor did he, of course. That is, the pipe-puffing lizard knew because he knew what the Captain was hunting.) Thanks to Wilkins’ hint, I too was soon informed, at least partly. I kept those bearings in mind (scowling, bent over like a man too familiar with shovels), and the first chance I got in the Captain’s chartroom, I had myself a look. On the point signified, I found two words, if you could call them that: Van Is. I puzzled and brooded, then ventured a question to blind Jeremiah, where he sat at the Captain’s chessboard fingering the pieces. He smiled, his cheek twitched, and he leaned over sharply sideways toward me. ‘The Vanishing Isles, me boy! Hsst! Not a word!’ and he threw a half-terrified blind-man’s look toward the Captain’s bedchamber. That was all the old loon would say, and I knew, from the excitement the words stirred up in him—fear like Augusta’s, so intense that it verged on manic joy—that I’d better ask nobody else.

  “ ‘Game of chess, lad?’ says he.

  “ ‘Sorry, I never learnt the moves, sir,’ says I. (As a matter of fact, my father’d won tournaments, and he never beat me in a game since I was seven.)

  “Well, I kept, from then on, a more careful watch on the Captain’s meanderings as he swept the seas for whale. We were cruising, at this time, north-northeast, bound due for Alaska; we were farther north than we’d ever come formerly, as if the attraction of the south had lost its hold on Captain Dirge, and we were free now to visit the North Pole. Six hundred miles from the Alaskan coast, the ship tacked west in hot pursuit of a mighty school of sperm whale. It was a great kill and, except for the loss of a longboat and two men of the second mate’s crew, it was an incredible piece of luck. I half expected, despite all I knew, that the Jerusalem would sail for the Cape and home. We veered southeast, as if that were exactly the Captain’s intention. By the fourth day, as if sucked along by an undertow, we were sliding perceptibly southward. The whole crew was aware of it, and not happy about it. We were loaded full, and heading for anywhere but home was plain madness. But still we slid southward, strewing the sea with skeletons of whales. (Birds flew busily, like gnats, above them, sharks thrashed around them, snatching what we’d left and from time to time snatching some absent-minded bird. From miles away you could see the white bones floating in the sun and the white spray heaving up skywards against it. ‘Up goes the spray,’ Mr. Knight said grimly, bending close to me, ‘and straightway trembling fingers set it down—Shoals, rocks, breakers hereabouts: beware! For years navigation shuns the place. Aye, there’s the story of yer obstinate survival of ancient beliefs …’ ‘Mr. Knight, I’m a Unitarian,’ I said. ‘Nothing you say, however so blasphemous, can offend me.’)

  “And still we bore southward. The grumblings and mutterings of the crew grew fiercer. Even gentle souls like Billy More grew sullen and intractable, huddling to themselves—and from more than the numbing cold, I could see. The sea and sky were gray as slate. The birds that took a moment’s rest in the rigging were peculiarly formed, if you judged them by temperate standards. The Captain, sickly but ferocious in his cabin, would be obstinately silent when Mr. Knight or the second mate, Wolff, asked questions about the course we steered. What they said when I was listening in the neighboring chamber was elliptical, coded, but the fact of disagreement was clear as day. Even blind Jeremiah seemed dead-set against the Captain, though he ventured very little, remembering his place. Augusta, listening to those angry debates—loud enough to sound like thunder if the Captain’s ears were as sensitive as he claimed they were—Augusta, I say, was pale, shivering; her large, gray eyes were like the southern sky before a storm. In the forecastle, nights, Billy More began mentioning, in a guarded way, the laws regarding replacement of a captain judged incompetent.

  “Then, for complication, there where no ship but a madman’s should be, we met a stranger. As soon as the crowsnest cry went out, Captain Dirge and Jeremiah came tottering to the poopdeck, Captain Dirge hardly able to move without help, and the order was given to approach her. No sooner was the lunatic order sounded than Mr. Knight went striding aft. We went with him, every man on deck, hanging back, for fear of the Captain’s fury, but eager to hear what Mr. Knight would say. We heard nothing, of course; Mr. Knight was too discreet. But we saw pretty well that, once again, Captain Dirge was indifferent to all wills but his own. What could make visiting a stranger so important—important enough to risk turning the Jerusalem’s crew to mutineers? It was past my imagining, and I decided then and there that this time when the Captain and Jeremiah went over, I’d be with them, come hell or high water.

  XVIII

  “To any man who casually passed my bunk it would’ve seemed that young Jonathan Upchurch lay sleeping as peaceful as a newborn babe. But if he tipped back the covers, I’m sorry to say (and sorrier because of what the sequel must tell), he’d’ve seen a poor black man, bound and gagged, misused and victimized beyond human toleration. I had no choice, as I explained to the fellow. He didn’t look persuaded. He may have been told such things before, in Africa, maybe, by the blacks who trapped him, or in Boston by the Christian who purchased his wife. To be sure of his continued cooperation, I popped him on the back of the head with the blunt of my marlinspike. Away he sailed to dreamland.

  “Then, mittened and wrapped and sou’westered head to foot, I waited by the rail with my fellow blacks, praying the spray wouldn’t wash off my cork-black skin. Jeremiah was frantic with excitement, as he always was on these occasions, one arm supporting the Captain (in an irritable sort of way), the other arm waving like a tree in a hurricane, impatient to be into the longboat. Moving all around us but keeping their distance like grouchy wolves, the crew of the Jerusalem was muttering, just loud enough to hear, about Dirge’s whims. Mr. Knight’s stern looks had no effect, and the second mate, Wolff, was more with them than against them.

  “If Dirge heard their grumblings, he showed no sign. Relaxed, almost limp, his face as still as a pile of old potatoes, his black suit majestic, he watched the heavy stranger. She flew no flag, which seemed to some of us an ominous business. But she was a cumbersome old tub and apparently unarmed—a three-masted schooner, too lumbering and slow to suit a pirate—and her captain, at the rail, looked far from dangerous. He was a heavy old Russian or Slav or Pole in a seal-fur hat and a seal-fur coat, with a muff to keep his hands warm. He chewed at his mustache and kept glancing behind him like a man expecting trouble, but though he was puzzled and dubious, his peasant decency— or else our Captain’s bullheadedness—gave him no choice but to receive us.

  “ ‘Get the niggers in,’ Captain Dirge commanded. His voice was more muffled than usual. Mr. Knight gave the order, reluctantly; and with his left arm—the arm not supporting the Captain—blind Jeremiah waved at us again, more angrily than ever. We went into the longboat as if there were ships raised to hurry us, and scrambled like monkeys for rowing positions. Then, with help, Jeremiah got the Captain in and sat down beside him. Ten seconds later, Captain Dirge gave the order to lower away. The longboat gave a jerk, as if to fall the whole distance to the gray, grinding waves, then caught itself and moved down slowly. Wilkins stood smiling, watching us go, his arms folded and his frog-face like a mask. Though he pretty well hid it, I had an idea he was as excited by the whole affair as was old Jeremiah. Then the first wave hit us. We went flying like a cork, thumped hard against the side of the Jerusalem, then sank like a pail into a well-hole. I was sure we were goners, but up we came two seconds later like a breaching whale, and I pulled at my oar the way the others were doing. In half a minute we were out in the wave-swells, flailing away like a centipede fallen in a cistern. Jeremiah, unable to see what was happening, clung to the Captain with both arms and shouted, maybe to Heaven, maybe to us, it was impossible to tell.

  “The blacks around me were as frightened as I was, mouths gaping, sucking in air, eyes rolling. Only the Captain seemed indifferent to the sicke
ning pitch and yaw, the dizzying leap and collapse of the horizon. He sat bent over, staring at his boots and puffing at his pipe, as motionless, I’d’ve sworn, as a man fast asleep. But I had no time for more than fleeting impressions. I pulled with all my strength, striking deep to get under the troughs between waves. And then I received a stranger impression. The black behind and to the left of me was different from the others. As soon as I could manage, I swung my head for another quick look. The impression came more strongly, though even now I Couldn’t get it clear. I studied the image I’d fleetingly snatched, and suddenly I knew. The black was small, far too small for an oarsman; but that was the least of it. The man’s eyes weren’t brown, they were gray as mist. When the truth dawned on me I could hardly believe it. The oarsman was—Augusta! That same instant a huge swell came under us, and I reached back to steady her. Her icy, furious eyes stopped me dead, and I at once put all my attention back on rowing.

  “We’d now come to within yards of the stranger. They threw down ropes and we secured them to the rings, and up we went, swaying. When we came level with the rail, the Captain and old Jeremiah went aboard, Captain Dirge bowing and gesturing and muttering to the seal-furred captain of the stranger. They were already withdrawing toward the other captain’s cabin when the rest of us began clambering out. ‘Pleased to meet you, sir,’ Captain Dirge was saying in a voice far more lusty than usual. He leaned as hard as ever on the blind man’s arm, but the way he bobbed up and down and wagged his head made me wonder if he really was as doddering as he liked to pretend on the Jerusalem. When they came to the mainmast, they paused and admired a grizzly that was chained there, silent and mournful of eye as a Liverpool orphan. Now my cork-blacked Augusta was beside me, furtively touching my hand, guiding me portside, away from the others.

  “When none of the Jerusalem’s Negroes was in earshot, though the stranger’s common seamen were packed tightly around us, Augusta said, ‘Jonathan, what have you done? This is madness!’

  “I jerked my head, indicating the big, grinning sailors all around us.

  “ ‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘They don’t understand a word of English.’ Then, jabbing her face at the nearest of them—a small, darkish fellow with a nose like an onion and friendly brown eyes—she said, slowly and distinctly, ‘Do you speak English?’

  “He beamed and nodded, answering in gibberish, and she turned to ask all the others the same. It was soon clear that we could speak as freely as we pleased around them.

  “ ‘And what of you?’ I said to her, hurriedly whispering. ‘Surely such a risk—’

  “ ‘Don’t question me, Jonathan! I assure you I have reasons.’ Her small, mittened hands closed tightly on my arm.

  “I could see that it was true. Her eyes shone with a wildness that alarmed me, and I knew that no arguments of mine could have the slightest effect on her.

  “ ‘Well, if we’re here to spy we may as well spy,’ I said.

  “She flashed her radiant smile and squeezed my arm again, fiercely and gratefully. Then, bowing with exaggerated politeness to the sailors around us, we slipped aft along the rail toward the poop, where the captains were conversing. A dozen of the strangers followed us, smiling a little foolishly, as if hoping even now that we might find some way to trade words with them. When we reached the poopdeck companionway I hesitated! The stranger’s first mate (or some other officer—they wore no markings) stood at the door of the captain’s cabin rather like a guard, though apparently not taking his work too seriously, since fur-coated sailors were crowded all around him, trying to peek in through the hatch and ports. Augusta started boldly up. He looked through her as if she were invisible, and after a moment I started up behind her. Any man looking at her hips and seat, I thought as I went up, would know in an instant that that was no oarsman. But then, if old Dirge were to get a good look at my cast left eye …

  “I was light-headed with fear for both of us, but there was nothing I could do. Two of the stranger’s common seamen came timidly behind us, still smiling. Even when we peeked in the cabin window, crowding in beside a man with a coarse leather eyepatch and sharp red ears, the man who stood guard seemed oblivious.

  “Inside the schooner captain’s cabin there was a crowd, mostly men we hadn’t seen before, fur-coated like the others (one or two of them with ear-rings and one with a parrot, which gave me, let me tell you, one devil of a turn). Most of them stood with their backs to us. At the center of the crowd, across the table from the schooner captain, sat Dirge in all his finery, with Jeremiah, as usual, beside him. Billy More had misled me on one minor point. Dirge spoke nothing but English, and the other captain spoke nothing but whatever strange lingo he’d been born to. Yet both of them chattered with considerable animation, Captain Dirge fanatically puffing at his pipe and slugging whiskey down between bursts of conversation, the other captain laughing sort of strangely and hollowly and pouring and drinking, from time to time glancing at Jeremiah with a look of utter bafflement. Jeremiah, seated beside our Captain, was smiling like a man in a Hindoo trance, hearing not a word either one of them said, even when directly addressed.

  “ ‘The Lord God is in his Heaven,’ Captain Dirge was saying, waving three white-gloved fingers. ‘Our redemption’s as plain as the nose on yer face. I bear witness myself. The whole of this universe is a miracle.’

  “The stranger-captain nodded, eagerly agreeing, though by no means clear, it seemed to me, on what it was he was agreeing to.

  “Captain Dirge stood up, tottering a little, and walked a few feet—a thing I’d rarely seen him do before without the blind man’s help—then came back, still chattering of God’s holiness and power and blowing up smoke like Mount Vesuvius, and sat down again. Augusta, beside me, seemed strangely excited. I could make neither head nor tails of it all and resigned myself to the probability that I never would.

  “ ‘There’s no such a thing as Death,’ Captain Dirge was saying now. ‘I don’t mean some fool resurrection in Heaven. Nothing of the kind. I mean this cabin is filled to the beams with the departed. Listen!’ He pointed at the ceiling, stern as Reverend Dunkel when he talks about Love. ‘Ghost of Elijah Brown,’ he shouted, ‘speak to us!’ Everyone was still, squinting at where the Captain pointed, and suddenly, from the ceiling, came an agonized moan you never heard the likes of in all this world. The Captain swung his eyes and his pointing finger to a bare patch of bulkhead. ‘Ghost of Hiram Billings, if ye can hear me, speak!’ There came another moan, this time from the bulkhead. Their mouths were wide open—all those I could see. I glanced at Augusta. She was wide-eyed, shining like a sinner just converted. Captain Dirge was saying, ‘We’re in the region of the Vanishing Isles, ye see. Jeremiah, the charts!’

  “The blind man blinked, coming out of his trance, and drew a rolled-up map from inside his coat. Those in the cabin crowded eagerly around him; the schooner captain stood up and bent close. As Jeremiah spread the map on the table, the huge, heavy-mustached sailor beside me gave a pull at my shoulder and whispered in English, ‘He’s not the real Captain—the Captain’s dead. The man in control—’ His face went contorted and he fell toward me, gagging. Augusta, on the other side of him, gave a scream, and the very same instant I, too, saw the spurting blood. There was a dagger buried to the silver-virled hilt in the sailor’s neck. I suddenly remembered the fat man with the patch and the sharp red ears, the other side of me. With all my might I shouted, ‘Treachery! Pirates!’ The huge man standing to the right of Jeremiah turned, and I knew him—my old friend Pious John the Pirate! ‘Treachery!’ I tried to shout again, but they were all over us, grabbing us, yelling like baboons.

  “Right there the history of Jonathan Upchurch would have terminated, but suddenly a very queer thing occurred. Blind Jeremiah swung his arms out and caught Pious John’s thick chest, and he whispered something in the pirate’s hairy ear and Pious John staggered and blinked a time or two, looking baffled as the Devil, staring at Captain Dirge. Then he shouted, ‘No wickedness!’ and thre
w a look at Jeremiah. ‘No wickedness!’ he shouted again. ‘Leave ‘em be!’ Jeremiah bent down to help our Captain up—he sat puffing at his pipe as if he’d been through such foll-de-roll a thousand times—and the two of them came walking out the cabin door, and the devils who had hold of Augusta and myself let their arms drop, meek as lambs. Like charmed beings we walked to the longboat and climbed aboard, and twenty minutes later we were standing safe and sound on the Jerusalem. Augusta pretended to be as baffled by the whole affair as I was, but I knew pretty well there was more going on in that crafty little head than she let on to me. Before she could slip away, I caught her arm and said, ‘What’s the secret, Augusta? I’ve had enough. Tell the truth!’ I didn’t mean the obvious and petty secret, that the Captain’s carpetbag was for carrying the collection.

  “ ‘What secret, Jonathan?’ she said. But her lip was trembling. I refused to release her arm, and it flitted through my mind that the cork-black skin looked as natural as her own.

  “I squeezed her arm more tightly. ’Tell me the secret!

  “Billy More stood watching us.

  “She glanced at me, then away again in panic, and I knew all at once that Augusta’s sickness went deeper than I’d guessed. It was as if I was suddenly seeing her plain, without stagelights, without make-up. She was small, a mere child, and yet she was one of the damned—hopeless, remorseless, filled with terror. ‘You’ll learn sooner than you like,’ she whispered. And then she was free of me, running for the hatch. Billy More stood frowning, examining his shoes.