Shark Island

by Joan Druett

  “Captain Nathaniel Palmer is a Stonington man, too.”

  “You’re from Stonington?” Well, thought Forsythe, that figured. When the old man drained his glass instead of answering, he said, “So what the hell was he doing in the Antarctic Ocean? Looking for seals?”

  “That is exactly what he was doing.” Feeling around for the bottle, Captain Reed found it, lifted it, and topped up all their tumblers. “That sloop was just forty-four tons register—did you know that?”

  Forsythe shrugged.

  “Nat was just twenty-one when he discovered that great land mass seven hundred miles south of Cape Horn, which in the log he called ‘Antarctica.’ But,” Ezekiel Reed added with a sigh, “he was really supposed to be looking for rookeries, and not a single seal did he find.”

  “So he made a losing voyage?”

  “Aye—which makes me wonder what the use is of this so-called exploring expedition of yours. What good is it going to do for our great country, huh? Tell me that! Well,” Reed exclaimed, forestalling anything Forsythe might want to say; “you don’t need to bother!—for I know the answer already!—none! I know that to my personal cost, because this schooner that we are setting on now—this same schooner Annawan!—has been on an exploring expedition already, but they didn’t discover a goddamned thing, let alone a profitable rookery.”

  Forsythe was so stunned he almost dropped his glass. “But the Wilkes expedition is supposed to be the first damn American exploring expedition ever!”

  “Well, it ain’t,” the old man snapped. “Back in 1829 a passel of Stonington merchants put up the money for a three-ship fleet to survey and discover in Antarctic seas, and I was ill-advised enough to be one of those investors. There was the Annawan, with Captain Nat Palmer in command, the Penguin, commanded by his brother, Alexander, and the Seraph, with Benjamin Pendleton in charge, and the fleet was called the South Sea Fur Company and Exploring Expedition. And,” Reed said sourly, “we lost a whole heap of money.”

  “But they found Antarctica?”

  “I don’t know where the hell they went, but they never found nothing.” Shaking his head, Captain Reed let out a grunt of angry laughter, and said, “And now the poor bloody American taxpayer is funding another of the same. And what are you doing, huh? Discovering? No! You’re hunting pirates, for God’s sake, a month too late to do any good! Why, goddamn it, why?”

  Forsythe shrugged, and told him about the Peacock and Captain Hudson’s report.

  “So that’s what it was!” Reed exclaimed. “Saw her myself, I did—Peacock, was she?” Then, to Forsythe’s amazement, the old man’s mood changed like a weathercock, and he shook with gusts of raucous laughter. “Most comical thing I’d seen in years!” he shouted between spasms of mirth. “An enormous great sloop of war taking fright at the sight of an old ruin of a fort! Oh, it was a treat to see how she kicked up her wake,” he cried, as jolly as a country priest, while Zack Kingman giggled in his affable but uncomprehending way.

  Forsythe, who didn’t see the joke at all, watched Reed without expression, thinking this was bloody strange behavior for a man in such dire straits. When the laughter died down he said, “I would’ve figured you’d have signalized her—or sent boats after her, considering the leak you’ve got there.” He could hear the thump of the pumps, a dismal sound because of the soggy feel of the deck beneath his feet.

  “Didn’t know we had a leak then, did I?” the old man retorted. “Didn’t know until I got back on board that that damn fool Hammond had run her on a rock. And when I arrived they was fothering a sail that he reckoned would get us to Pernambuco.”

  “But it didn’t,” Forsythe finished for him.

  “Not even out of the channel where she lies.”

  “So what were you doin’ here, anyways?”

  “I called at Rio expecting to find the Hero there, but she wasn’t. All I got was news that she’d been attacked by insurgent privateers—and run ashore in an effort to escape.”

  “So you came to salvage her?”

  “Aye. Bad decision—bad.”

  Bloody bad, Forsythe mentally concurred. “And she’d been looted?”

  “The holds are quite empty.” Reed looked around at the nightmarish clutter of the cabin, and sighed heavily. Then he looked at his drained glass and tipped the bottle over it, but with no result.

  “So where are these privateers now?” Forsythe pursued.

  Reed didn’t answer, instead shaking the brandy bottle as if he couldn’t believe it was empty. He lifted his voice, hollering for the steward, so Forsythe raised his voice, too, saying, “If you have any idea where the thieving bastards might have fled, we can go after them.”

  Reed said, “Don’t be a bloody fool.” Then he shouted out for the steward again. “Jack, goddamn it—Jack Winter! We need another bottle here, rouse it up!” Then, as the echoes died away, he looked at Forsythe, and said, “When do you expect your brig to arrive? I need to talk to the real boss of your outfit—the captain! I don’t want you chasing off after insurgent privateers and creating all kinds of international situations, I want to claim my rights of succor as a citizen of the United States—a taxpayer, damn it! What’s his name?”

  “George Rochester,” Forsythe bit out sourly. “But I gave him orders to lay off and on until the cutter returns.”

  “What? Who the hell are you to order your captain about?” Without waiting for a reply, Reed heaved himself out of his chair, grabbed his stick, stumped along the passage to the foot of the stairs, and shouted, “Goddamn it, you stringshanked bastard of a steward, don’t you hear me? Brandy, more brandy!” Then he turned, looked at Forsythe, and said, “The brig don’t come until summoned, huh? Well, I know how to fix that.” And he lifted his voice again, hollering, “Hammond, there! Where’s the mate, damn him? Hammond!”

  “Don’t bother,” said Forsythe, coming out of his chair in an angry rush, and heaving past Reed up the stairs. “Zack,” he ordered over his shoulder as he arrived out on deck. “Tell the men to get ready to get under way for the brig.”

  “What?” said Captain Reed, hurrying up the companionway after him. “You’re going? But you ain’t even looked at the damage yet. Write a note for your captain—this Rochester—and appraise him of the sad situation. Hammond will carry it for you.”

  Like hell, thought Forsythe; he couldn’t wait to get off this sinking tub and away from this crazy old man. He opened his mouth—and saw the young woman who was walking along the deck toward them. She was carrying a bottle of brandy in one hand, and a tray of edibles in the other; and she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever clapped eyes on in the whole of his life. Her uncovered hair, thickly braided, was as smooth as black silk; she was small and voluptuous, with a tiny, nipped-in waist, and large round breasts that were only half-concealed by the low bodice of her gown. Her eyes, huge and lambent in a pale, heart-shaped face, were fixed on Forsythe as she walked with swaying hips toward him.

  So he shut his mouth and didn’t complain, even when Hammond set off for the brig Swallow with both whaleboats—a total of twelve men, which seemed rather too many for the simple delivery of a message.

  Six

  Even after they returned to the cabin, Captain Reed didn’t bother to introduce the woman, instead addressing her as Annabelle. Forsythe took the same chair he had before, avidly watching her as she filled the brandy glasses and then handed around a plate of small savory pies. Every now and then her dark gaze slid sideways to meet his hot stare, while a slow smile tugged at the corners of her lips. The implied invitation was incredibly arousing. Forsythe shifted about restlessly, crossing one meaty thigh over the other and then changing back, thinking that it was a long time since he had been with a woman—it was two months since the expedition had left Norfolk, Virginia, and he had not been on shore even once.

  The miniature pies were delicious. “Our cook is a Frenchie—or some other kind of foreigner,” Captain Reed said, back to being affable. “Picked him up in Rio af
ter our old cook ran away, so we ain’t had him on board much more than a week. He don’t speak a goddamned word of English—or any other language so far as we can tell, and don’t understand much, either. Mebbe the knock he took on his head addled his wits,” he added.

  “You had to knock him on the head to persuade ’im to ship with you?” queried Zack Kingman, who was not noted for his tact.

  “Nope,” said Reed. “Whosoever did his best to brain him did it before we arrived on the scene. Been in some kind of brawl, perhaps? But he can cook—my God, he can cook.”

  Forsythe wasn’t listening. Instead, he was watching the girl—Annabelle—go through a strange little ritual. Taking a bit of pie and a hollow straw, she went over to the table and uncovered the birdcage, revealing a large, white parrot. Crouching, she cooed, and then put the straw between her pursed lips and sucked the pastry fast to the end of it. After pushing that end between the bars, she held the straw with her full, pouted mouth while the parrot pecked the tidbit free.

  “It’s her pet,” said Captain Reed. “Would take the damn bird to bed, if she could.”

  Bed. The light from the low fire on the other side of the table illuminated Annabelle as she crouched, silhouetting the shape of her breasts. The fabric of her single gown and petticoat was so translucent in the reflection of the flames that Forsythe could distinguish the inward curve at the base of her spine, and the fullness of her buttocks. Oh, Jesus. He thought of the tumbled double berth in the starboard stateroom. God, he thought, give me an hour with her in that bed—and pictured what would happen.

  When she straightened, she smiled first at Zack and then at Forsythe, so teasing that Forsythe wondered if the crazy old man would be willing to share her with them. Kingman was staring at her with a slack, lustful grin, making no attempt to hide the bulge in his breeches. Dirty bastard, thought Forsythe, even though they had shared the occasional woman in the past. He wished very much they were both wearing uniform—not only would he look so much finer, but the girl would see that he, Lieutenant Forsythe, had the higher rank.

  Coming over, she perched on a “lady chair” that was so low-legged Forsythe could see down the front of her dress. Because her head was in front of the birdcage, he couldn’t see the parrot any more, but he could hear it pecking—tap, tap, tap—at the crumbs that had fallen to the bottom. Above the hard, clicking noise, he heard her say, “Tell me about your expedition, pray—what you do, and where you sail. Will it be dangerous, perhaps?”

  It was the first time Forsythe had heard her speak. He was so surprised by the rise and fall of her accent and her foreign choice of phrasing that for a moment he didn’t take in the words. What the hell was she? French, he thought—Creole, perhaps, because there was a southern rhythm in her speech.

  “Where are we going? Why, to distant seas and far-off lands.” His tone was sardonic when he finally replied, because he was echoing a phrase that Captain Wilkes was overfond of repeating. “To the Antarctic and the Pacific,” he elaborated.

  She clasped her hands in the lush hollow of her lap and said, “To the Pacific islands?”

  “Aye.”

  “Oh, how do I envy you!”

  “Why?”

  When her lips parted he expected her to say something about the romance of tropical paradises, but instead she confided, “Once I knew a young man from the south Pacific who told me wonderful tales of the land of his birth.”

  Forsythe frowned. “A Kanaka?”

  “Kanaka? What is that?”

  “A native—an islander from the Pacific. You’d recognize him by his brown skin,” Forsythe said ironically.

  She looked at Captain Reed, her expression oddly taunting, and then back at Forsythe. “His skin was brown, yes—a warm gold, and very smooth, like satin. He was very handsome. His face creased up into an absolute picture of humor when he laughed—just so.” Annabelle lifted her fingers and pulled her cheeks upward and outward into an urchin grin, while her dark eyes sparkled wickedly.

  Jesus Christ, thought Forsythe without returning the smile, what the hell was she telling him? Anger stirred, and he demanded, “And did this native inform you that the Pacific islands pose a danger for Americans? That every year whaleships from Nantucket and New Bedford are cut out by treacherous Kanakas, and whole crews of Salem traders are trapped and slaughtered?” Turning to Reed, he exclaimed, “You told me you reckon the American taxpayer is funding a senseless mission—that the exploring expedition is just an expensive joke! Wa’al, jest let me inform you, sir, that we will fly the U.S. flag in a thousand lagoons, and teach those bloody upstart Kanakas to respect it! We’ll seize the bloody perpetrators, and hang ’em if necessary; we’ll burn down their villages, and learn them a lesson. Our job is to make the Pacific safe for shipmasters like you, sir!”

  “And I’m right glad to hear it!” Captain Reed replied with spirit. “Why didn’t you tell me that before, you bloody fool?” he demanded, his tone jocular rather than insulting, and leaned forward to top up their tumblers. “For too many goddamned years the East India Marine Society has been lobbying for ships of war to patrol the Pacific, with no response at all from those jackasses in our government! My God, friend Coffin will be glad to hear of this!” Reed cried, and swigged brandy with gusto.

  Forsythe and Kingman drank deeply, too, but at the same time they looked at each other with identically lifted brows. Then Zack lowered his glass to query, “Coffin?”

  “Aye—Captain William Coffin, who has made many a journey to Washington to talk those jackasses into understanding the hazards that the pioneers of American commerce face. He’s a Salem man himself, who knows from personal experience what it’s like to lose a portion of his crew to bloodthirsty cannibals. By God, he’ll be pleased—I wonder if he knows it?”

  Again, Forsythe and Kingman exchanged looks. Then the girl interrupted. “But how will you know that you punish the right natives?”

  Forsythe blinked and said, “What?”

  “Perhaps you will punish the innocent, not being able to distinguish them from the guilty. Perhaps to you they all look alike?” Her tone was derisive. “And even if you can tell one from another, it is certain that you cannot understand their speech, and therefore they cannot plead for themselves. So how can you know that you are dealing out justice, instead of committing crimes of your own, and disgracing the American flag?”

  Forsythe bit out angrily, “We have a linguister—a translator—on board.”

  “Wiki Coffin,” said Zack helpfully.

  “Wiki!” she exclaimed. Her mouth fell open and her eyes widened. “But he is the same young man of whom I spoke!”

  Somehow, thought Forsythe, that did not come as a surprise. Nonetheless, it made him furious. Wiki Coffin had strolled the streets of many a port, and didn’t exercise nearly enough goddamned caution about where his amorous glance might fall. In Norfolk, Virginia, Forsythe had picked a fight with the upstart half-breed after seeing him keeping company with a fair-haired southern girl, a quarrel that he reckoned was wholly justifiable.

  Annabelle said softly, her smile mysterious, “I taught Wiki how to waltz. I was just eighteen; he was sixteen … and already a man.”

  Her long, black lashes lowered secretively as she murmured the last phrase, and when she raised them she was not looking at Forsythe, but at Captain Reed, her expression alive with mischief. It was as plain as if she had said it out loud that she and Wiki Coffin had done a damn sight more together than waltz, and that it had been highly enjoyable, too. The look Ezekiel Reed cast back at her was nothing less than vicious—and understandably so, in Forsythe’s opinion. In Reed’s place, he would have slapped her, and then, by God, he would have thrown her onto the double berth, flipped her petticoats over her face, and learned her a lesson she would take a bloody long time to forget.

  Then all at once, in the midst of his anger, Forsythe placed Annabelle’s accent. Damn, he thought, she’d been born in some Louisiana bayou—she was Cajun! He tossed brandy
into his mouth, swallowed, and then said with contempt, “You know the waterfront of New Orleans better than even I do, I’d be prepared to place a bet on it.”

  To his surprise, it was Ezekiel Reed who snapped back. Belatedly, he saw that the old shipmaster had gone white with rage, his tight lips rimmed with blue. “Your manners are a bloody disgrace!” Reed exclaimed. “I’ll have you know that my wife was convent-educated! And she met Wiki Coffin at our wedding!”

  This little tart was Reed’s wife? Bloody hell, thought Forsythe. If Reed was telling the truth, he was a substantial Stonington merchant—and yet he had married nothing better than a swamp rat, and a Kanaka-lover at that! Then he realized that marriage must have been the price for letting him into her bed. Ezekiel Reed was twice her age at the very least, so without a doubt she’d done it for his fortune. By God, though, his hot thoughts ran on, she surely was a tasty morsel, and he would have been sorely tempted himself, in the old man’s situation.

  Then Zack Kingman spoke up, immediately demonstrating that not only was he lagging behind in the conversation, but was impervious to atmosphere, too. “Convent? That’s a new name for it,” he said, and giggled.

  Forsythe thought the joke amusing. Not so Captain Reed. “You goddamned insulting dog!” he roared. He staggered drunkenly as he flung himself out of his chair, but the swish of his stick was eloquent enough.

  “Jesus,” said Zack Kingman as he dodged the blow. “Let’s get the hell outta here!”

  Seven

  A sailor stood in the chains beneath the bow of the Swallow, holding himself in place with a crooked elbow, the coil of the sounding line in his left hand and the other fist gripping the end of the twenty-fathom rope. For Wiki, he was a black shape beneath the forward curve of the starboard bow, silhouetted against brilliant ripples and the purple and turquoise shadows of underwater coral. As he watched, the seaman swung the line back and forth in widening arcs, the ten-pound lead weight a black blob at the end. The rope whirled three times, audibly whistling, and then was expertly dropped dead ahead of the brig. The Swallow glided forward while every man on deck held his breath. When the bow was level with the line the leadsman hauled it in, muttering as the bits of leather and bunting that marked off the fathoms threaded through his right hand.