Deadly Shoals

by Joan Druett

  As they galloped off, they shouted great promises that they would persuade their uncle, the governor, to release the pilots and send them along. Captain Ringgold was not prepared to wait for such a vague eventuality, however, instead allotting the job to Wiki. “You found your way upriver in the boat, didn’t you?” he barked. “Well, then, you can find your way back out to sea again.”

  Wiki himself didn’t feel nearly so confident, and was certain, besides, that there would be hell to pay if Captain Wilkes ever learned that his clerk had conned the schooner out of the river. However, Ringgold didn’t stop to listen to any argument, even when Mr. Peale tried again to interfere by pointing out that Wiki was supposed to be a scientific, not a pilot. Instead, the strong-minded captain hollered orders to raise the sails and get ready to weigh anchor.

  Hands assembled at the windlass, right in the bows at the inboard end of the bowsprit, while at the same time seamen prodded uncomprehending scientifics out of the way so they could take hold of their respective halyards. The mainsail was set first, followed by the foresail, the men who hauled at the ropes chanting “Ho—ha! Ho—ha! Up—ha! Down—ha!” to keep rhythm as the gaffs from which the great sheets of canvas hung creaked slowly up the masts. They were racing to get sail set before the windlass hands, heaving smartly on the windlass brakes, got the hook off the bottom. Then the jib was also swiftly set, because it was essential for the schooner to pay off as soon as she was free, as without steerage way she would drift broadside to the current.

  The hands seemed experienced, but Wiki, standing in the bow to study the water patterns unfolding before the bowsprit, remembered that this schooner had been grounded once already, and felt very tense indeed. As it was, no sooner was the anchor weighed and the canvas slapped full than the Sea Gull yawed horribly, which caused Wiki to look anxiously over his shoulder at the helmsman.

  The fellow worked too hard at the tiller, swinging it too far one way and then the other, while the schooner, responding fast because of her sharp lines and light displacement, frantically dipped and swung. Canvas flogged as it alternately gained and lost the wind. To complicate matters still further, the tide was on the ebb, vying with the current of the river to carry them pell-mell out to sea.

  Within seconds the rippling paleness of shallow water lay almost under their bow. “Hard-a-starboard!” Wiki urgently hollered. Under the helmsman’s heavy hand, the schooner staggered back and forth across the current like a drunkard, while Wiki shouted out frantically for corrections. The half-drowned seaman with the sounding lead, hanging over the plunging bow, called out readings that varied as wildly as their erratic course.

  The wind suddenly gusted from dead ahead, blowing spiteful sand in their faces and chopping up the water into nasty lumps so that it was impossible to see below the surface. The breakers at the mouth of the estuary surged and roared in Wiki’s ears. An angry wave rushed upon them, picked the schooner up on its crest, and then slammed the Sea Gull deep into the following trough. As her bowsprit rose high and her foredeck seethed with shed water, her stern dropped with a jerk, and her keel touched mud. The water about her sides foamed yellow.

  “What the hell d’you think you’re doing, mister?” Ringgold yelled at Wiki.

  Without bothering to reply, Wiki sprang up the foremast to the crosstrees, where he stood braced with his back against the naked upper mast, hanging on to a stay. Seventy feet above the tumbled surface of the water was no great height after having been aloft on the mighty 700-ton Vincennes, but it felt a lot higher because the mast lashed back and forth like a coach whip, swinging in spirals so that the deck revolved beneath him. But at last Wiki could see the bottom—and there was the black snake of the channel, the start of it fine on the starboard bow.

  After the briefest possible of pauses to memorize its course, Wiki jumped onto the spring stay—a great tarred rope that led from one of the two masts to the other—and swung his way sternward like a monkey. Dropping onto the afterdeck, he elbowed the helmsman to one side, and firmly took over the tiller.

  The schooner immediately responded to his much surer touch. Into the deeper water of the channel she nosed, and the yellow wash died down. Then the Sea Gull was easing safely through the shoals with her sails extended to each side like wings. Wiki was steering by instinct, helped only by the shouted soundings and the memorized track, but somehow, tense moments later, they were out of the shoals, through the breakers, and out at sea. With huge relief, he handed back the tiller, noting at the same time that Ringgold didn’t bother to congratulate him on the achievement.

  The conditions were even more uncomfortable, however. The schooner bucketed and pitched, and took huge quantities of water over her decks, giving Wiki a great deal of respect for the men who were making the long voyage in her. What would it be like for them off dreaded Cape Horn? He didn’t like the feel of the deck beneath his feet at all, and wondered what strains the groundings and thumpings had put on the fabric of the wooden hull.

  The temperature was plummeting with the change in the direction of the wind, as if the blizzards of Cape Horn were beckoning. Wiki was glad of his poncho, huddling it closely around him as he stood at the rail with the wind in his teeth, watching the foreboding weather as the schooner laboriously beat toward the flagship, which was plunging at her anchors a mile off the shore. Mountains of black cloud gathered to landward, while the breakers at the mouth of the river crashed higher still, thundering loud in his ears despite the increasing distance.

  The Vincennes fired a gun, evidently a signal, because Wiki could see the small expedition boats hastily raising anchor, dumping shot, strapping tide-staffs across the thwarts, and heading for the nearest ship, which was the Porpoise. Then a great wave rushed upon the Sea Gull and the boats dropped out of sight as she fell into the trough with a sickening plunge.

  At last the starboard side of the Vincennes was towering above them, a tall black wall interrupted by one white streak marked out with black squares. Because the flagship was broadside on to the wind and tide, she was rolling away and back again, but at least they were in her lee, and so were in comparatively calm water. Rain was starting to lash down. The four scientifics were shoved up first, each one launched upward by a powerful seaman as the Vincennes rolled and the ladder loomed over the schooner, and then Wiki followed.

  When he scrambled over the gangway rail, he looked back to see the Sea Gull brace up and tack away. Ringgold was obviously anxious to beat farther upwind for a better offing before dropping anchor. The scientifics, meantime, were running for the shelter of the big afterhouse. With a wave of the hand, Wiki headed there, too.

  * * *

  The marine corporal standing sentry in the portico snapped a salute so smartly that he lost his balance as the ship pitched her head, and had to take a couple of quick sidesteps. “Mr. Coffin,” he exclaimed with obvious relief. “Cap’n Wilkes has been wonderin’ where the devil you’d got to, and gettin’ right angry about it.”

  “Oh dear,” said Wiki. As he and the four scientifics followed the corporal up the wide passage that led to the big chartroom at the sternward end, infuriated shouting echoed from beyond the shut double doors. The corporal cast an unmistakably sympathetic glance over his shoulder before he knocked.

  When the doors opened, Captain Wilkes was exclaiming, “As I have said time and time again, Mr. Couthouy, this is not your private goddamned yacht! You have no right to order an expedition artist around, and abuse him when he works for others instead of rushing to obey your every command! His employment is under my control, not yours!”

  Once Wiki, with the others, had squeezed into the back, the big room was so full of men that it was almost impossible to see the shelves of books and racks of specimens that lined the walls. When the ship executed a smart roll toward weather the crowd hardly moved at all, everyone being braced against everyone else. However, the expedition artist was easily distinguished from the rest because of his uncomfortably self-conscious expression. Natural
ist Couthouy’s huge russet beard was jutting out with fury. The only person who was smiling was Captain Wilkes’s crony, the tubby and self-satisfied Lawrence J. Smith. Though he was a lieutenant, he was there, Wiki presumed, because he was considered to be a scientific as well as an officer.

  Captain Wilkes was standing behind one of the chart desks, giving his customary impression of keeping a barrier between himself and his audience. He was in an evident state of rage, with sweat on his brow and a flush across his high cheekbones as he stared furiously at Joseph Couthouy, who glared back equally aggressively. Wiki winced, knowing Couthouy’s temper well, having once lived with him in the afterhouse of the Vincennes. A shipmaster out of Boston and a highly intelligent man, Couthouy had crossed swords with the volatile commodore of the expedition often before, but this battle of wills promised to be the nastiest yet.

  However, while Couthouy was still sucking in an infuriated breath, a handsome young man with a leonine mop of hair spoke up. “Captain Wilkes,” he said, his tone eminently reasonable. “I was under the impression that this meeting was called to sort out disagreements between the scientific corps and the officers, not to berate particular individuals.”

  “I do understand that the scientifics are experiencing some degree of dissatisfaction with the officers, Mr. Dana,” Captain Wilkes stiffly answered.

  “Only some of the officers, Captain Wilkes,” the other corrected. He seemed amazingly calm and composed, considering that he looked just a year or so older than Wiki’s own age of twenty-four. “Some of the officers are quite accurate in the observations that we ask them to make. Others, unfortunately, are less punctilious. When I ask them to carry thermometers to the masthead, for instance, the readings they take are tantamount to useless, because half the time the thermometer is in the sun, and the rest of the time in the shade.”

  “The problem must lie with your instructions, Mr. Dana.”

  “I’m careful to be precise, Captain Wilkes. Unfortunately, they do not listen. While I’d hesitate to condemn all and sundry, there are certain officers who display little interest in the scientific aims of the expedition.”

  Dead silence. Everyone was holding his breath in suspense, waiting for the explosion. Then Captain Wilkes astounded one and all by sighing, “Unfortunately, I have to agree with you, Mr. Dana.”

  There was a blank pause. Then Mr. Dana said cautiously, “Yes?”

  “In my own department of astronomy I have found officers who are sadly listless in their attitude, being markedly unwilling to carry out the scientific duties I assign them. I believe there was a great deal of muttering about the round-the-clock pendulum observations that I required the officers to carry out in Rio de Janeiro. Some, quite frankly, were so astoundingly ignorant of the science that they had not even heard of using a torsion balance to detect gravitational attraction between metal spheres! Hopefully, this situation will be mended by the passage of time, with patient instructions from you all, and strict attention to discipline from myself. In the meantime, we must all make allowances.”

  “What allowances?” Couthouy echoed in dangerous tones.

  “Mr. Couthouy, I would have expected you, of all people, to understand the cold, hard fact that while it would be ideal for all the expedition officers to take the liveliest interest in scientific work, their own work must come first,” Wilkes snapped, the flush rising high in his cheeks. “Even naval scientists—like myself, and Lieutenant Smith, here—must give priority to the everyday demands of the ships.”

  They all looked at Lawrence J. Smith, who smirked and said, “You should count your blessings, gentlemen—you have unlimited leisure to follow your hobbies in the name of science, a luxury not allowed to the officers, who are responsible for the safety of your seagoing homes.”

  “Hobbies?” someone echoed, outraged.

  “It’s much more than the prior call of proper duty,” Titian Peale objected. “Even when the conditions are ideal, the officers regard us with contempt. Our treatment on the Río Negro is a miserable illustration of this. We were dumped on shore and quite forgotten—for the next twenty-four hours our signals were ignored. Yet the weather was hot, and we had no gear and no provisions; all we could find was brackish water to drink, and we had to hunt our own game. As it was, the two surgeons were overcome by the heat. When I brought my specimens to the riverbank, I was informed that Captain Ringgold had issued orders to the boats to hold no communication with the gentlemen of the scientific corps after landing them! It is incomprehensible! My specimens had to be abandoned to shrivel and rot in the sun, along with the carcass of a fine buck I had shot for the officers’ dinner. Even as dark fell, we received no sign that our presence was remembered, until Mr. Hale came from the pueblo with a message from Captain Ringgold that we were to attend the landing place on the riverbank at nine. That was yesterday morning, sir—but did the boat from the Sea Gull arrive? No, sir, it did not!”

  This had no discernible effect on Lieutenant Smith’s impervious self-satisfaction, but Wiki saw that the skin around Captain Wilkes’s nostrils had become pinched and white, and that Dr. Fox was watching him with concern. Again, however, Wilkes failed to explode. “Write it down,” he said wearily at the finish. “And I’ll arrange for Captain Ringgold’s court-martial.”

  “Court-martial?” Mr. Peale exclaimed. All the scientifics looked at each other, horrified at this development. “I didn’t intend the matter to go as far as that! I would rather ask to be returned to the United States at the first opportunity—”

  “Impossible, Mr. Peale.”

  “But it would be better for all concerned if I left—”

  “Obviously, sir, you have forgotten the terms of the agreement you signed.”

  “Agreement, Captain?” The naturalist’s voice rose. “The way I remember it, the agreement was with you—an agreement in which you gave us a reassurance of protection and assistance for all the members of the scientific corps!”

  “Mr. Peale, you have always had my protection and guaranteed assistance—just so long as it is possible without sacrificing the greater interests of the voyage. I’m sure you’d be the first to complain if your ship sank under you, sir! And the same applies to all my officers—including the officers on board the surveying schooner Sea Gull. Obviously, they had a great deal more to do than cater to the whims of civilians.”

  “That’s it!” exclaimed Mr. Peale. “We’re civilians, and beneath notice! The officers regard us as mere spectators—people who have an irritating habit of making strange demands, and who get in the way of their proper work. We’re subject to the etiquette of a man-of-war without any of its privileges!”

  “Etiquette?” Captain Wilkes echoed, his voice rising again. “But you’ve made no attempt to follow the etiquette of a man-of-war!”

  The ship dipped and surged again, so abruptly that this time the scientifics lurched against each other, at the same moment looking at each other in a puzzled fashion, mystified to a man by this strange accusation. “We’ve all done our best to adjust to the circumstances,” objected one.

  “Have you picked up a looking glass lately?” Captain Wilkes demanded. “If you’d followed orders—orders handed down by the Department of the Navy!—you would have the appearances of men who are worthy of being treated as officers! Instead, you all—save for a few outstanding examples, such as Mr. Dana and Mr. Hale—have insisted on being a horrid example! How can I keep discipline when the scientific corps, who are utterly dependent on my goodwill, disregard my strict instructions?”

  Silence. The scientifics all stared at Mr. Hale, who had turned bright red with embarrassment, and Mr. Dana, whose good-looking face was quite blank beneath his great mop of waving hair.

  Then Dr. Fox bravely spoke up, saying, “I’m sorry, Captain Wilkes, but we don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about the matter of dress! The instruction from the Navy Department to all the scientifics was to obtain lieutenan
ts’ undress uniform, and wear it on all public occasions. You mess with the wardroom officers, and have the same rations, and so you should dress accordingly. But only two—Mr. Dana and Mr. Hale—have complied. How can you expect to be treated as anything but civilians, if you insist on wearing civilian clothes?”

  Uniform? It was the first Wiki had heard of it, though he now saw the reason why Mr. Hale had been wearing uniform for the jaunt to El Carmen. The rest of the scientific gentlemen were glancing at each other, obviously as ignorant as he was of the ruling. At the same time, they were shuffling uneasily, distancing themselves from Mr. Hale and Mr. Dana, and making a space around them that revealed that both were wearing the complete undress uniform of a lieutenant, though Wiki noticed that they did not have epaulettes.

  The other scientific gentlemen, by contrast, were wearing broadcloth suits, some with shawl-collared long jackets, and others with swallowtail coats. Some even carried silk hats. Wiki thought they presented a most respectable appearance, considering the way most of them looked when they worked at their studies. One of the surgeons was infamous for appearing on deck in the old frock coat he’d used as a gown in the operating theater, which was so stiff with blood and pus that it could stand up by itself.

  Their silence was uncomfortable in the extreme, and Captain Wilkes’s expression was derisive. “Look at you! Look at the bloody lot of you!” he shouted. His infuriated stare shifted from face to face—and, for the first time, focused on Wiki.

  “My God!” he breathed. His eyes widened with utter incredulity. For a second, as everyone turned and looked at him, Wiki’s mind went blank. Then he abruptly realized that it would have been a good idea to shed his bandanna and poncho before he entered the room.