by Joan Druett
There had been a feast in the village that night, Wiki remembered now, and a great deal of shark meat had been dried for future meals. But had the shark-dreamer summoned them or had the sharks been chasing the mullet?
His mind jerked back to the present. Midshipman Erskine’s hand was gripping his arm, his tight fingers bruising. The Rotuman’s chant had come to a sudden end, with a long-drawn-out cry of, “Lok pakura—Hi!”
“What does it mean?” whispered Erskine. He sounded scared.
The words echoed in Wiki’s mind, and the hairs rose on the back of his neck. “It means it was a chant for death.”
The Rotuman was perfectly silent now, standing in the bows of the Porpoise and staring at the phosphorescent trails as they diminished, faded, and finally dissolved.
Nineteen
No one stopped George Rochester when he ordered a boat to be lowered from the Vincennes. No doubt, he thought, everyone expected him to steer for the Swallow, but the scuttlebutt was that Wiki was on the Porpoise with Erskine, so he ordered his boat’s crew to pull that way instead.
Ernest Erskine met him at the gangway, his welcoming smile rather wry. They exchanged chat about the storm, and Rochester boasted about the prowess of his gun crew, while all the time he looked about curiously. The gun brig, while less than a hundred feet long, had a crew of sixty-five; and because the weather was so mild, most of the off-duty watch was on deck, so it was a bustling sight. The watch worked about decks and in the rigging, while the off-duty men sat about reading, sewing, or doing their laundry, while others were catching up on sleep in sheltered corners. Rochester thought that the gun brig had a good feel, the feel of a contented ship.
His old second-in-command had nothing bad to say about the Porpoise, either. The gun brig was a fast sailer, he told George, with a responsive helm—she was the fastest ship in the fleet. “Save for the dear Swallow.” Like the Vincennes, the Porpoise had had a poop cabin built for the expedition—though not as large, of course—and this had a stateroom for the sole scientific on board.
“Which scientific?” asked George. He was curious to know the name of the civilian who was thus comfortably accommodated on the Porpoise, while the scientifics on the Vincennes were so notoriously cramped for space.
“An astronomer,” said Erskine.
“Ah,” said George, remembering that Wiki had told him that Astronomer Burroughs had originally been assigned to the Porpoise. “But he’s dead,” he objected, also remembering the horrible moment when the astronomer’s door had been broken down.
“You mean Burroughs? It’s his assistant that has come over in his place. Sorry-looking fellow by the name of Grimes. He’s an astronomer-proper now, not an assistant anymore.”
“Great heavens!” said George, impressed with Wilkes’s unusual magnanimity. “He’s overwhelmed with delight, no doubt.”
“I’ll hazard he was even more gratified to get away from Astronomer Stanton,” Erskine remarked unkindly. Like George, he had not enjoyed Tristram Stanton’s company on the Swallow.
“I’m sure you are right, dear fellow,” said George, and went in search of Wiki.
He found him on the fore hatch, squatting in a circle of six Polynesians, playing cards. It was an animated game, with a lot of laughter and scores being kept, but George suspected that it did not involve gambling—because in the Pacific, or so Wiki had informed him, wagers invariably were in the form of pigs, an impossible currency here.
George paused, watching the group with his head tilted and his hands lightly clasped behind his back, ruminating how un-American his friend looked right now and how well he fitted in with this gathering of natives. Wiki was sitting cross-legged, scowling down at his cards so that his fine, black, swooping eyebrows were like horizontal question marks above his flat nose. Like the other Polynesians, he had stripped off his shirt, and his snaky hair hung loose about his shoulders and his broad, smooth, hairless chest. Then Wiki looked up, sensing George’s inspection, and his face went triangular with the familiar creases of his grin, crescent-shaped blue eyes sparkling with delight.
“E hoa,” he exclaimed, and sprang to his feet, dropping his cards.
As usual, they locked forearms instead of shaking hands. “So at last you tracked me down,” Wiki said and smiled.
“I was as impatient as a dog all the time the dear Swallow was out of sight.” Then George nodded at the Kanakas, still squabbling happily over the cards, and jibed amiably, “Rejoined the realm of the savages, I see.”
Wiki’s grin widened. These Kanakas did look more like canoe paddlers than seamen in the service of the U.S. Navy, he conceded—but that was because they were such seasoned sailors. Traditionally, when a Pacific Islander was first shipped on a big American vessel, he couldn’t wait to array himself in western sailor finery, exulting in stiff canvas trousers and shoddy frock shirts. Often, he wore his new outfit to bed. Within a few weeks, though, the glamour wore off, and he would be back to bare feet—and be bare-chested, too, if the officers were prepared to turn a blind eye. It was not unknown for some to revert to draping the traditional sulu or lavalava about their loins, and it was a rare Polynesian who returned from a jaunt on shore without a wreath of bright flowers about the crown of his hat.
“Where do they come from?” asked George.
“Oh, there’re a couple of Hawaiians—a Tahitian—a Samoan,” said Wiki, with a vague wave of his hand. Then he added, “One is a Rotuman,” and led the way to a place abaft of the foremast where they could hunker down against the stacked boats and chat in private.
First came the tale of the Rotuman and the sharks. Now the Rotuman was the most laughing and cheerful of the five card players—but George had learned long ago that though the Pacific Island nature might be dark and moody at times, it always bounced back to being sunny. Next, with ever-increasing alarm, he heard the story of Forsythe and the looming storm. “He left the deck without an officer on watch!” he exclaimed. “Is he mad?” he demanded, bright red in the face. “Thank God you were on board!” The account of the miraculous escape of the boatswain filled him with amazement. Then, with the description of the formal punishment of the two Samoans, at last Wiki silenced.
“He flogged them just because they were speaking Samoan?” George studied the card players again, listening to their loud chatter. They were talking in English, with some Polynesian words thrown in as a kind of punctuation—because they spoke different Polynesian dialects, he supposed, and English was their common language. However, Wiki did not give him a chance to comment, getting down to business by saying briskly, “Well, did you have that talk with Jim Powell? Did he stick to that story about giving the note to Forsythe?”
George paused and then said rather defensively, “I couldn’t find him.”
“What!” Wiki frowned, looking annoyed. “But you did go to the sick bay?”
“Not for a while,” George reluctantly admitted. “The storm was looming—there was much to do, and I couldn’t get away, not without being asked awkward questions. But as soon as the decks had been cleared of wreckage, rigging fixed, and so forth, I sallied there first chance—and most impolite the surgeon was, too. What a pompous ill-conditioned fellow he is! Rumbled on about the ingratitude of a man he was only trying to save. Said that Powell quit the sick bay the instant everyone’s back was turned and was apparently in hiding because no one had clapped eyes on him, despite a general call. So then,” he went on, his tone becoming ingenuous, “I took a few surreptitious peeks in the officers’ quarters.”
“The—what? But why?”
“I thought he might have sought out a soft bed in preference to a hammock in the dank confines of the orlop. When I was a junior mid, I had a running battle with the second lieutenant,” Rochester confided. “He was a stickler, I assure you! I was always finding cozy planks in quiet corners to snooze away my watch at night, and he always tracked me down and beat me. But as a kind of bet, he promised not to beat me if he ever didn’t manage to fi
nd me before the end of the watch was rung. He must’ve been a sleepy shirker himself in his youth because he was an amazing dab hand at finding out where I’d hid myself, and so I got beating after blessed beating—but then I had a famous inspiration. He hunted here, and he hunted there, but the bell rang, and so he was forced to give up. When he went to his quarters for his watch below himself, he finally found me—curled up fast asleep on his own settee.”
“And did he beat you?” Wiki inquired, with a distinct air of fraying patience.
“Of course not, dear chap! The second lieutenant might’ve been a beast, but he was also a gentleman of his word.”
“Well, he should have,” said Wiki flatly. “So did you find Powell’s messmates to quiz them about his whereabouts?”
“I certainly did,” Rochester assured him earnestly. “Though it was confoundedly difficult to find ’em. There are two hundred men on board that ship—sixteen messes, and he could’ve belonged to any one of ’em!”
Wiki frowned, reminded of how little he knew about daily life on a navy warship. All his experience had been on whalers and traders, and the only messrooms he knew were saloons like the one on the Swallow, which were the province of officers and passengers, the ordinary sailors eating in the forecastle or on the foredeck. He had supposed that navy men perched on their sea chests in just the same way, but now he wondered if they owned any, perhaps they had kitbags instead.
“Messes?” he said.
“Aye. Each mess is made up of twelve men, and they have their own special place to eat, on the deck between two guns—they even issue ’em a bit of canvas to spread on the deck for service as a tablecloth, along with a couple of wooden tubs for carrying the food from the galley. The purser is in charge of it all—another confoundedly rude fellow,” Rochester complained. “He didn’t want to divulge Powell’s particulars in the slightest. Then, when I finally and at long last found his messmates, the surly fellows would only say they reckoned he had lost the number of his mess—in the storm, most likely.”
Lost the number of his mess? Wiki remembered the tin figures on the bulkheads of the gun deck and presumed that this strange saying meant that Jim had not turned up for meals. “But why did they never report him missing?”
“I don’t think they noticed it for quite some time. They thought he was in the sick bay.”
“And when you informed them he’d disappeared from there?”
“They seemed to know it already—had found out about it since, I suppose.”
So someone from his mess had gone to visit him and had found that Jim had vanished—and yet still his messmates had not reported his absence. Why not? Wiki opened his mouth, but Rochester abruptly changed the subject, saying, “What are you going to do about Ringgold’s idea?”
“What idea?”
“Haven’t you been told? Erskine says that Captain Ringgold would like to request that Wilkes move you onto the Porpoise. He was very impressed with your performance last night, he says.”
Wiki smiled wryly, remembering how relieved Ringgold had been that the Rotuman had turned back into a normal man, even though he did not have a shred of understanding as to what had happened.
“Tell him not to bother,” he said. “My place is on the Swallow.”
Rochester, predictably, looked relieved. However, he said gallantly, “If it’s too dreadful on the brig with Forsythe in charge, old chap—”
“My sea chest is there.” And the letter of authority. “But I must get on board the Vincennes.”
“I’m sure there will be opportunities aplenty, old chap,” Rochester assured him. “You’re bound to be invited on board for something fancy in the eating way. Why, Wilkes himself has invited me to a feast next Saturday, along with some other passed midshipmen and a passel of scientifics—in hopes, I think, that the Peacock and Sea Gull will have rejoined us by then and there’ll be something to celebrate, some quarterdeck alarm having been expressed about their welfare. I doubt that the wine will be plentiful, but the conversation should be amusing. Why, what do you want to do there?”
“I want to look for Powell—and I need to talk to that man who was Burroughs’s assistant—Grimes.”
“But he’s right here!”
“What! On the Porpoise?”
“I thought you knew. Where the devil did you sleep last night? Surely not the fo’c’sle!” protested George, sounding as scandalized as if he himself had never consigned his comrade to the forecastle of the Swallow.
“In the house,” said Wiki, meaning the cabin that had been built on the poop. Erskine had found him a small stateroom there. His eyebrows were high—it seemed very strange to think that the fellow he’d heard snoring on the other side of the partition could have been Grimes. Then he thought that it was even stranger that he had not seen him during daylight and wondered if the astronomer were avoiding him.
* * *
After George Rochester had headed off back to the Vincennes, the notion came to seem more and more likely. Wiki had unobtrusively but exhaustively searched the Porpoise for a couple of hours without finding hide or hair of the astronomer. When he finally located him, Grimes was in what Wiki would have considered the most unlikely place possible—the maintop. In fact, he’d only spied the gangly, hunched shape because he’d cast an eye upward to find Midshipman Erskine and ask for advice about where to look next.
When Wiki arrived on the broad platform at the top of the lower mast, the astronomer was perched on a folded sail with a sextant on his knee. He had evidently been taking observations because he was making copious notes, which made his being aloft more comprehensible. The glance he cast at Wiki as he came over the futtock shrouds, however, was not welcoming in the slightest; and, in an obvious attempt to discourage conversation, he busied himself with his note taking again.
Wiki stood watching him in silence a moment, one hand casually holding a lanyard as he swayed lightly with the slight roll of the vessel, wondering about the reason for the hostility. Though Grimes’s demeanor was not as fraught with misery as the day he had questioned him, he still seemed hollow eyed and depressed—a sorry-looking man indeed.
Wiki said, “Perhaps you don’t remember me, sir—William Coffin Jr.”
“The sheriff’s deputy,” said Grimes ungraciously, without even looking up. “Of course I remember you—how could I not?”
“I wasn’t aware until just now that you’d removed to the Porpoise.”
“Captain Wilkes was kind enough to shift me to our—my old quarters.”
Burroughs had originally been stationed on the Porpoise, Wiki remembered. However, he also recollected that Grimes had said that both he and Burroughs had been jubilant at being moved to the flagship, so he asked in puzzled tones, “And you’re pleased?”
“That’s what I said, sir,” Grimes snapped.
Wiki thought that wasn’t what he had said at all and was tempted to snap right back. However, he kept a tight rein on his temper, contenting himself with insinuating, “If it’s so pleasant to return on board the Porpoise, can I take it that you didn’t find Astronomer Stanton an easy man to work with?”
Grimes’s mouth tightened. For a moment, just as in that first interview, Wiki had the impression that he was going to break out into some kind of revelation. In the end, however, the astronomer merely said in precise tones, “Captain Wilkes promoted me from the station of assistant to fully rated expedition astronomer—an elevation that I find most agreeable, naturally.”
“Then congratulations are in order, sir.”
Grimes gazed distantly about at the water instead of meeting Wiki’s eyes, while Wiki considered the averted head thoughtfully and wondered what Tristram Stanton thought about the promotion. In the distance a boat was putting out from the Vincennes. He could just discern a burly figure in the sheets and wondered if Astronomer Stanton was coming over for a consultation with Grimes. In a few moments, however, it became evident that the boat was heading for the Swallow, not the Porpoise.
Wiki said abruptly, seeing no other way of getting the man’s complete attention, “There’s a question I forgot to ask you back on the Vincennes.”
Grimes frowned. For the first time his eyes flickered up to Wiki’s face. “What?”
“I forgot to ask where you were when Mr. Burroughs ended his life.”
Grimes stared. His face went red and then white, and he cried, “What the devil are you accusing me of?”
Wiki began to protest, “Nothing!”—but the thin man was gathering up his notebook and sextant with sharp, furious movements, stuffing them into a leather bag that he slung over his shoulder, before standing up and stepping over to the hole in the platform of the maintop that civilians used on the way up and down the shrouds, and which the sailors derisively called “the lubbers’ hole.”
His body began disappearing in angry jerks, as he shouted, “I was right here, Mr. Coffin—right here on this gun brig! Don’t you realize I would have turned the whole world upside down to stop him if I had been there? And I don’t believe it was suicide, neither! If you’re so interested, why aren’t you finding out the true facts instead of tormenting me?”
Wiki shouted, “Stop!” And to his amazement Grimes did stop, looking queerly like a half man, because he was through the hole as far as his waist.
Wiki took a deep breath and said, “Please tell me why you feel so sure that Mr. Burroughs did not commit suicide.”
“Because he was happy! Because he had no reason for it!” Grimes cried. “Don’t you understand? He was fulfilling a dream that he had cherished all the years I worked with him. He was a member of an illustrious scientific corps and on the road to scientific glory! Why should he commit suicide? Tell me that!”
Wiki opened his mouth, but it was as if a floodgate had opened, for the astronomer rushed on: “He hummed and whistled as he worked—he was doing exactly what he wanted most in the world. I tell you, he was happy! He even wrote poems in praise of his happiness!”