Deadly Shoals

by Joan Druett

  Wiki flinched at the open sarcasm. It was as plain as if the mate had said it out loud that he’d been presumptuous to offer advice on his father’s ship.

  He said doggedly, “It’s just a suggestion—and I would also like to say that I’d be happy to help out on deck and in the rigging while I’m on board. I’d be very glad to be considered just another member of the crew.”

  “Why, Mr. Coffin, what could you do to help?”

  Wiki shrugged, thinking that even if Mr. Seward knew he was one of the expedition scientifics, surely his father had mentioned that his son was an experienced whaleman. The trade might be a despised one, but whalemen were famous seamen, both on deck and in the whaleboats, because the toughened officers knew how to pass on their remarkable skills both quickly and efficiently. Within a week of shipping on the Paths of Duty, Wiki had learned how to haul out an earring in a howling gale, and furl the main royal by himself. Within three months, not only could he heave a harpoon and command a whaleboat, but if his ship were gale-bound on a dangerous lee shore, he knew how to bring the square sails hard aback, strike the after sails, and boxhaul her out of trouble—he could sail a ship backward just as easily as he could steer her going forward.

  For God’s sake, he thought, Alf Seward had seen him at the steering oar! He said in a stiff tone of voice, “I’m considered a good hand at the helm.”

  “I’m sure you are very talented, Mr. Coffin, but we have apprentices for that, thank you very much,” said the mate, and turned his attention to relighting his pipe, which had gone out.

  Wiki stared, stung by the studied insult. He had not meant to brag, even if it had sounded like it, because what he’d said was nothing but the truth. He had a natural instinct for the wind on his cheek, the shiver in the weather clews of the uppermost sail, and the heel of the deck beneath his feet. He used the minimum of helm, knowing intuitively the exact distance the wheel had to be turned to check the swing of the ship. He liked to think it was a skill that had come down to him from his voyaging ancestors.

  And what about his father? Over the years, they had exchanged many tales of deeds done at sea. Wiki looked at him challengingly, wondering if he would express any confidence at all in his seafaring skills. However, Captain Coffin said nothing to ease the situation. Instead, he cleared his throat, and looked away to study the sagging sails.

  Furious to the point of indiscretion, and too angry to remember the fog, Wiki opened his mouth to demand a boat to take him back to the Swallow. However, he was forestalled. The tense silence was broken in the most unexpected manner—by the splash of oars, and a disembodied hail from the water.

  * * *

  A whaleboat emerged from the mist, so phantomlike that the loud click as the bow touched the side came as a surprise. Heading over to the rail to see who was clambering aboard, Wiki got even more of a shock when Captain Stackpole’s head hove into sight, and the whaling master was equally stunned to see him.

  “Wiki Coffin!” he exclaimed, and hauled himself over the gangway, bringing a nauseating smell of blood, oil, and tryworks smoke with him. He had taken the time to shave his cheeks and upper lip, so that his New Bedford beard was back in shape, but he looked as exhausted as Wiki remembered, and his little eyes were as bloodshot as ever. Obviously, he’d taken little or no rest since rejoining his ship.

  He looked around, appearing confused. “Ain’t this the Osprey?”

  “It certainly isn’t the Swallow,” Wiki dryly agreed.

  “What the devil are you doing here?”

  “We were trying to sail in search of you, as it happens.”

  “You were?” Stackpole sniggered, looking at the impotent sails, and said, “Well, you ain’t getting very far. Why were you looking for me?”

  “When I reported the pirating of the Grim Reaper to Captain Wilkes, he gave me orders to collect an affidavit from you, to give him the legal right to hunt for the schooner, and to report the theft to any American men-of-war we encounter.”

  Instead of expressing gratification at this good news, Stackpole grimaced, shifted his feet uncomfortably, glanced about the decks where men and boys were openly listening, and appeared relieved when Captain Coffin arrived beside them.

  “Stackpole!” he exclaimed. “I thought you were making an offing?”

  “The ship was fifteen miles out when we lowered, and the mate has orders to keep south—not that he would’ve got far, on account of the wind died within thirty minutes of us leaving the Trojan,” Stackpole replied in gloomy tones. “We were forced to strike our own sail, and just when we’d rowed far enough to raise the masts of the squadron, the bloody fog descended.”

  “You must have been confoundedly glad to find us.” Captain Coffin’s voice was amiable, as if the unpleasant little altercation between his son and his mate were quite forgotten. “Bring your men on board and make yourselves at home. We keep a set of davits on the larboard quarter for visitors, and you’re most welcome to hoist your boat.”

  “Coffee and a bite to eat would go down first-rate,” Stackpole confessed.

  Captain Coffin shook his head, contemplating the thick fog yet again. “You’ll be on board for more than that,” he prophesied. “You’re here for the night.”

  As the six men of his boat’s crew assembled on the waist deck, Wiki was interested and pleased to see that it was the same crew that had originally carried him to the beach of the Río Negro, including the two Polynesians. They grinned at him amiably, but it was impossible to tell what island they hailed from until they spoke, or at least exchanged names, and before he could get into conversation, Mr. Seward materialized, looking as affable as his captain. Wiki performed introductions, and the mate of the Osprey led the whalemen toward the hospitality of the steerage and the forecastle, while Captain Coffin ushered Stackpole down the companionway to his cabin.

  It became immediately apparent that Stackpole had never been on board the brigantine before. His bristling eyebrows shot up when he saw the horseshoe-shaped settee with the green cushions to starboard, and the red padding to port, and hoisted even higher as he looked about at the shining glass and gleaming mahogany. As well as the curved settee that was set under the sweep of many-paned windows, and had its own knee-high table, there was a dining suite with wonderfully carved legs sited farther forward. Above this, an ornate lamp hung down from a long skylight, flanked by two swinging castor racks of cut-glass decanters and matching crystal glasses, which made the slightest of tinkling noises as the brigantine rolled. As Wiki remembered from his youthful voyages on the Osprey, when the sun shone they cast little rainbows on the paneled walls as they caught stray sparks of light. Captain Coffin’s massive chart desk was right up against the forward bulkhead and next to the pantry door, so that he could look up and see the compass in the binnacle when seated in the chair. There was an ornate chronometer case on the desk, and the barometer and thermometer hung on the wall above, framed in shining brass.

  Captain Coffin waved a hospitable arm at the settee, and Captain Stackpole perched his rump on a red cushion, still looking around with an expression of disbelief. A large cat made an appearance, a handsome black and white animal who pushed open the pantry door, paused to sum the company up, undulated forward, sniffed Captain Stackpole’s boot, decided his aroma was absolutely wonderful, and leaped up onto his knee.

  Captain Coffin sat down on a green cushion. “You’re greatly honored,” he observed.

  “Honored?” his guest echoed. When the steward, a gray-haired, hard-done-by-looking fellow, came in with a tray of coffee, Stackpole grasped a mug gratefully.

  “That animal is the most disgusting snob. If a captain and his mate pay a call on board, she will unfailingly choose the captain for her attentions. She will consent to visit the bo’sun every now and then,” Captain Coffin ruminated. “Particularly if she has noticed that he was in charge of the deck the previous watch. But as much as the boys do to entice her, she won’t deign to put her nose into the foc’sle. Up until
this moment,” he added, “I didn’t know how she felt about whalemen.”

  There was a pause, and then Stackpole said blankly, “It’s a she-cat?”

  “Indeed. She belongs to Mr. Seward, who strongly believes that every ship needs a female of some sort on board. It’s a kind of superstition, with him.”

  “Good God,” said the whaling master, sotto voce. He cautiously stroked the cat’s cooperatively arched neck, and then queried, “But don’t you get kittens?”

  “Kittens aplenty,” Captain Coffin admitted. “We keep the ship off-limits to tomcats, but she has different ideas. The instant we drop anchor off some busy waterfront, she vanishes like magic, reappears days later looking confoundedly smug, and produces a litter somewhere mid-sea. Alf Seward,” he added, “is the midwife.”

  Stackpole looked around, but no other cats made their presence known, so he said, “How do you dispose of them?”

  Captain Coffin’s expression became vague. “The boys sell ’em, I think.”

  “Sell them? Where?”

  “Oh, sometimes to other ships, and sometimes in port.”

  “They eat them in China,” Wiki helpfully contributed.

  Both shipmasters stared. “What the devil gives you that idea?” his father demanded.

  “A shipmate who’d dropped anchor once in Hong Kong told me that the sampans come around the ship selling delicious dishes called ‘cats and dogs.’”

  Mr. Seward’s cat was an extremely perceptive specimen, Wiki saw then, because he became the object of a coldly disapproving emerald-green stare. He delivered her a wicked grin, while his father snorted, “Whatever your shipmate ate in Hong Kong, it was something else, I assure you.”

  “What was it, then?”

  “You’re being difficult, my son. And don’t ever breathe a word of it to Mr. Seward.”

  With remarkably bad timing, the steward came back with a tray of hot meat pies. However, everyone helped themselves with appetite, and took more coffee, too. Wiping his mouth with one of the monogrammed linen napkins that was another of his father’s eccentricities, Wiki observed, “When I was a lad your mate was a different man—a long Yankee, as thin as a whalebone whip.”

  “Evans? You remember him?” Oddly, his father seemed pleased.

  “I certainly do—a gloomy fellow who complained all the time, mostly about the un-American way the locals behaved in South America. He blamed the sun, as I remember—reckoned that it made the inhabitants lazy and gave them too many vacations.”

  “You remember him well.” Captain Coffin was amused.

  “So what happened to him?”

  “Captured by cannibals.”

  Captain Stackpole’s mouth fell open, releasing a lot of crumbs into his beard, and Wiki exclaimed, “What!”

  “They plucked him out of a boat while we were collecting bêche-de-mer in Fiji. However, they threw him back, on account of there wasn’t enough flesh on his bones to be worth the trouble of lighting a fire. Delivered him to the beach completely unharmed, but the fright knocked the stuffing out of him. Took his discharge the instant we moored up to Derby Wharf, and hasn’t put a foot on board a vessel since.”

  Wiki said, “So you shipped Mr. Seward?”

  “Nope. I shipped a Salem worthy who promenaded the town in a silk hat and gloves, an ivory cane in one hand, and a Testament in the other—a man who attended church every day of his life. A highly respectable fellow, you would think? I started to suspect the truth when his private trade goods included three half-gallon jars, which he hid where no one could find them, no matter how hard we searched.”

  “Holding wine?”

  “Brandy,” said Captain Coffin. Reminded of liquor, he stood, went over to one of the castors in the skylight, and reached up for a decanter and two tumblers. “There was hardly a day when he wasn’t drunk,” he went on, pouring liberally for himself and Stackpole. “He’d vanish belowdecks, and come back breathing fire. By the time we were two months out he was wearing a green eye patch to try to correct his double vision. Then he started seeing phantoms and hollering about it, which got the hands so upset they began to see ghosts themselves. The matter came to a head when he blundered up to deck in pursuit of some invisible demon with a loaded pistol in each hand. The entire crew took to the rigging, and I was forced to sort it out myself.”

  Captain Stackpole reached out for a proffered glass with an air of great need, engulfed a reviving slurp of liquor, and said, “How?”

  “Tricked him into going down to his stateroom by telling him I’d left a bottle there. Down the whole confounded companionway he went, in just one step. When I got to him he was stretched out snoring and senseless at the bottom. So I clapped him in irons and discharged him at the next port we touched—which happened to be Batavia, but that was just his bad luck. Providentially, Mr. Seward was on the beach and out of money, and took a pierhead jump onto the Osprey the day before we left.”

  “Why, what was he running from?” Captain Stackpole asked.

  “I’ve never inquired,” said Captain Coffin. The hand he waved was casual, but there was an evasive glint beneath his lowered eyelid. “How could I make difficulties with a man who cherishes my ship the way the Osprey deserves?”

  Stackpole looked around the magnificent cabin again, still with an air of wonder. “In the housekeeping way?”

  “Exactly,” Captain Coffin heartily affirmed, then lowered his voice. “In Rio he came to me because he wanted some money for gilt decoration on the figurehead—to give the bird a gold beak, for God’s sake! And when I refused he paid for gold leaf out of his own pocket, and painted the beak himself! He treats the Osprey as if she were his own, but how can I make any objections when he loves her so well?”

  “Good God,” said Captain Stackpole, and wagged his head. As Wiki knew well, whaling masters made great demands of their officers in the seamanship and whaling way, but a mate who wanted to fancy up the ship would have been considered insane. In fact, most whaling captains and officers of his acquaintance lived in a state of comfortable squalor. Wiki had once served as third mate on a ship where the settee in the aftercabin was in such an embarrassing state that the captain covered it up with the big ensign whenever visitors called, which was amusing when the more patriotic ones were squeamish about sitting on the Stars and Stripes.

  Setting his empty plate aside, he remarked, “Maybe that’s why Mr. Seward so strongly resents the captain’s son being on board of his pride and joy.”

  Stackpole’s stare shifted to Wiki’s face, while his expression became knowing. Captains’ sons tended to be an arrogant lot, with a high opinion of their status and abilities, because of their privileged place in the cabin, so were universally disliked by their fathers’ officers, and despised by the rest of the crew.

  “Nonsense,” Captain Coffin snapped. “He’ll soon get over it. It just that he’s used to ruling the roost around here, and doesn’t like his position being threatened.”

  Wiki asked curiously, “How does the second mate feel about that?”

  There was a pause, while Captain Coffin cleared his throat. Then he said, “We don’t carry a second mate.”

  “What?” Involuntarily, Wiki looked at Stackpole, whose eyes had widened in equal disbelief. Whaleships carried at least three mates, for the simple reason that there had to be an officer for each whaleboat, to take charge of the boat in the chase. However, the mates were useful on board as well—between them, they kept the crew in order, supervised the stowing and issuing of stores, and looked after the ship’s gear and rigging. Not only was it economical, because it meant that the captain didn’t have to ship a boatswain, but it gave the captain the freedom to concentrate on navigation, plotting the voyage, and entertaining visitors, as whalemen were often apt to do, mid-sea.

  Masters of freight-carrying traders might be derisive about this, reckoning that whaleships were as extravagantly overmanned as men-of-war, and overfond of gamming, too. However, it was unheard-of for a blue wat
er vessel, even a relatively small two-hundred-ton ship like the Osprey, not to have a second mate. Without a second officer to back him up, the captain would be forced to take charge of every second watch, meaning that he had to take over the quarterdeck for eight hours every second night, and four hours the next.

  Wiki observed, “I thought you were too fond of your bunk to rouse up for midnight watches.”

  His father exclaimed, “You saucy young whelp!”

  He was staring at Wiki with such affront that he scarcely noticed Captain Stackpole clear his throat in an embarrassed fashion and then, with the muttered excuse that he wanted to check the fog and his men, retreat hurriedly to deck.

  “You’re not getting any younger, you know,” Wiki pointed out.

  “I’m as fit as a fiddle, and have all my faculties, including an excellent memory. Have you ever heard me tell the same story twice? And anyway,” Captain Coffin said, “Mr. Seward keeps both ship and crew in good order, and doesn’t need help.”

  Remembering the boy with the bruised jaw, Wiki observed sardonically, “He seems to enjoy keeping the cadets in good shape.”

  His father saw the implicit meaning at once, and took umbrage. “Apart from the occasional swat with a cane across the backside, Alf has never laid a hand on any one of my cadets! They all revere him!”

  “But one of them has certainly been in a fight. Are you trying to tell me that he got into a scuffle with his shipmates?”

  “I’m not trying to tell you anything—and the boys know better than to get into scuffles. Any bout of fisticuffs would definitely earn a swat across the butt. If you really want to know what happened, he got into a scuffle with one of those goddamned string-shanked carpenters!”

  Surprised, Wiki asked, “Boyd, or Folger?”

  “The younger one, Boyd—but the older one, Folger, always backed him up, just like he was his father, or something.”

  “Folger is his uncle,” Wiki said. “He raised him as his own after his sister died, or so he testified to me.”