Robbie Taggart

by Michael Phillips

  “At least opium’s legal. This is—”

  “So what’re ye plannin’ to do about it?” Pike stepped close to Robbie, forcing his back up against the wooden crates.

  “You won’t get this past Chinese customs.”

  “Ah, ’tis perfect for ye, ain’t it, laddie!” Pike’s tone was filled both with ire and irony. “Ye’d like nothin’ better than to sing like a bird to them.”

  “Ben, how can you say that? I’ve been loyal to you.”

  “Oh, ye’ve been wantin’ to get at me for years . . .” Suddenly the old man’s hand shot up, grasping the dagger he had once used against Robbie. He tore it from its scabbard at his side and before Robbie realized what was happening had its deadly tip pressed against Robbie’s throat. “It ain’t enough you took my leg—”

  He broke off suddenly, his voice shaking with passion.

  Even with the knife so dangerously close, Robbie could easily have overpowered him. But he stood as one stunned, and could not move. He felt a small trickle of blood running down his throat where the razor-sharp dagger had sliced the skin. Yet there was no pain, and still he made no move.

  The sight of the blood seemed to sober Pike back to reality. He stared horrified, and stepped back.

  “Ye’re just like him,” he muttered. “What am I supposed to do?” But the skipper’s words were not addressed to Robbie but rather to himself, or to some unseen demon hovering at his shoulder. He jerked around, still mumbling unintelligibly, and stumbled away, climbing awkwardly from the hold.

  Robbie made no move to help him, still too benumbed to move from where he stood. He hardly noticed that for the first time Pike was not his agile self. He looked like a decrepit old man hobbling on a crutch and wooden leg, hardly a threatening adversary. Yet the madman had come within an inch of killing Robbie.

  Mechanically he brought his trembling hand to his throat. It was bleeding more than he had realized. Still he stood, until his practical nature came suddenly awake and realized it must tend to the damage the dagger had done.

  As he made his way above deck, Pike was nowhere in sight. Robbie descended again and headed toward the galley, hoping he would encounter no one en route. But rounding a blind corridor, his instincts too dulled to react quickly, he almost ran into the Vicar.

  “Good Lord!” Drew exclaimed. “What happened to you?”

  “Nothing,” Robbie replied in a dry, taut voice. “Just a little accident.”

  “It’s the skipper, isn’t it?”

  Without answering, Robbie brushed past him and into the galley. Drew followed close on his heels. Johnnie was not there, and for that, at least, Robbie was thankful. He was in no mood for the cook’s constant chatter, and was relieved not to have one more source of rumors to head off. He opened a cupboard and fumbled about unsuccessfully through boxes and containers.

  “Let me help you,” said Drew, his voice stronger than Robbie had ever heard it. The words sounded like an order. He nudged Robbie aside, then quickly found the proper supplies. Soaking a piece of cotton in some pungent liquid, he reached up and began to clean Robbie’s wound.

  Robbie winced, but offered no further objection, passively accepting Drew’s ministration.

  “He’s going to kill you someday, Robbie,” said the Vicar, applying a bandage once the wound had been cleansed.

  Robbie made no reply.

  “And you’ll continue to take it, because of your inane sense of loyalty, until suddenly it goes too far,” Drew went on. “My advice to you is—”

  “I didn’t ask for your advice,” cut in Robbie sharply.

  “Well, you’re getting it anyway! You’d better desert at the next port and just pray you make it that far.”

  “That would be your advice,” replied Robbie sarcastically.

  “I’ve never denied my cowardice. And you can think of me what you will. I deserve your scorn. But your situation has nothing to do with courage or cowardliness. It would simply be downright foolhardy to stay aboard a ship where the master has made two attempts on your life, not to mention the boatswain.”

  “It wasn’t like that with Pike.”

  “Then what was it like?”

  Drew expected no answer to his probing question. And Robbie was not willing to form one. There could be only one answer, and that was to be found in Benjamin Pike’s face. Robbie shuddered still when he thought of his look. And he knew, though he might not be willing to admit it, that there was indeed murder in Pike’s wild eyes.

  For the next several days he avoided both Pike and Drew. When he did run into the skipper, Pike seemed to have forgotten the entire sordid incident. But he had not been able to erase the Vicar’s words from his mind: You’d better desert at the next port and just pray you make it that far.

  It would not be long before they would be making port. In Shanghai he’d have no problem signing aboard another vessel, a foreign one, perhaps—German or American. It didn’t matter which or where it was bound, as long as it was far from Pike and, if he was lucky, away from some of the mental confusion of late. He wouldn’t be the first sailor to jump ship, and many with far less cause.

  Late one evening Robbie went on deck to try to clear his thoughts. He stood for several moments on the forecastle, then walked across to the rail. It was the midnight watch, and all was quiet except for a brisk breeze playing along their starboard quarter. The Tiger made her way with a bone in her teeth, as they said, the white water at her bow shimmering fluorescent in the light from the half-moon. There wouldn’t be many more days like this with the prevalent southeast monsoon. He had not even noticed the mournful tones of Torger’s harmonica. But now the soft sounds began to filter across the night into his ear.

  How could Overlie have so accurately probed his present mood, thought Robbie. And how did he always manage to know the perfect Scottish or English tune?

  The minor-key melody was familiar to Scotsmen the world over, carrying the melancholy lament of their own favorite poet throughout the ends of the earth. Ah, Mr. Burns, thought Robbie of his famous namesake, how could you know so well the heart’s call of a roving Scotsman?

  The harmonica’s tone was louder now. Did Torger know what he was thinking, wondered Robbie? Had he sensed his homesickness? Or was he merely an unknowing instrument in some divine plan of which he knew nothing? A lump rose in Robbie’s throat as he turned his gaze back out to the sea, the words to the sad pibroch stinging his brain out of memory for his beloved homeland:

  My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here,

  My heart’s in the Highlands a-chasing the deer,

  A-chasing the wild deer and following the roe—

  My heart’s in the Highlands wherever I go!

  Yes, it would be easy to desert right now. Eventually he’d find his way home . . . to Scotland . . . to the Highlands. Oddly, he had never realized how much home had meant to him. Scott had been right when he had penned the words about a man’s soul burning within him upon seeing his native land after “wandering on a foreign soil.” Though Jamie had taught him a deeper appreciation for many things, and for the land of his birth through her own veneration for her beloved mountain of Donachie, somehow tonight it seemed more real than ever. Now that his world—the world he loved, a world of travel and adventure and excitement—appeared to be crumbling around him, Scotland seemed a refuge.

  Oh, how he longed for those grand Highland hills at this moment—always solid and barren and unchanging!

  Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,

  The birth-place of valour, the country of worth!

  Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,

  The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.

  How many times had he, unthinking, unfeeling, bid farewell to that dear land, that place of his birth? In all his youthful years he had not quieted his restless heart long enough to feel the security of his roots. He was, after all, a world traveler, a seeker of adventure, a roamer his mother had called him. Robbie
Taggart, Highland sailor, soldier of fortune! But where had his lust for adventure brought him now? Standing on the deck of the Sea Tiger, Robbie Taggart was more lonely of heart than he had ever thought possible to one such as himself.

  Oh, what he wouldn’t give at this moment to be able to stoop down and grasp a handful of black Highland peat, to twist off a tiny branch of blooming heather from its wiry root to give to a passing child, to look upon the homey face of a country woman tending her small garden of “tatties” and kail outside her cottage of gray granite blocks and black slate roof. What wouldn’t he give for just one pass through the streets of Aberdeen! Or one glass of ale from the hand of Sadie Malone!

  There he had known no confusion, no loneliness, no deception. There everything had been simple.

  Farewell to the mountains high cover’d with snow,

  Farewell to the straths and green valleys below,

  Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods,

  Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods!

  Robbie closed his eyes and sighed deeply, still fighting that strange sensation in his throat. He could picture the very stream old Robert Burns must have been writing about! There was just such a one near his mother’s house. In the spring, the amber, peat-stained water rushed down from the rain-soaked mountains with a vengeance, boiling and frothing white, as if to impress the very life of the rugged Highlands into every inch of land below. He had foolishly tried to swim the raging torrent the last time he was there, and had been nearly frozen as well as dashed to bits against the rocks in the swirling tide. What a frightening and glorious memory it was! Oh, for a splash of that crisp, icy water against his face! Could it be possible that it was even more delightful than sea spray?

  Robbie sighed again. The memory only deepened his sickness for home. But he knew, as certainly as his feet were perched on that gently heaving deck, that he would not soon lay eyes on his Highland home. Whether it was for loyalty, misplaced perhaps as the Vicar implied, or whether it stemmed from his own insatiable desire to roam, he would not desert the Sea Tiger, nor her perilous master. He did not know what he should do, if anything, about Pike’s larcenous business dealings. Nor did he know what to make of Pike’s bizarre treatment of him. Whether he was actually capable of murder, Robbie could only guess. It seemed Pike hated him one moment, loved him as a son the next. He had asked himself a hundred times what was the root of Pike’s seemingly possessed behavior. But still no logical answer presented itself. Perhaps, too, it was because he had to find the answer to that question that he was compelled to remain aboard, and loyal to the very man who might one day kill him.

  My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here,

  My heart’s in the Highlands a-chasing the deer,

  A-chasing the wild deer and following the roe—

  My heart’s in the Highlands, wherever I go!

  As Torger’s harmonica drew out the final strain and then faded into silence on breezes of the night, Robbie’s heart was pierced through with the pain only a wanderer could know—the longing for something he knew he would never have, for something he was not even certain he’d be happy with once it was obtained.

  Robbie was being borne on the winds of the sea toward a land he did not yet know, toward a future he could not foresee, toward a place which would satisfy the longing of his heart. His new homeland would little resemble the rugged land of his birth. It was a Kingdom not made with the hands of men toward which he was bound. And thus it was Homeland for all the people of the earth, of which the roots of one’s earthly fathers and mothers are but a faint and nostalgic echo.

  23

  Typhoon on the China Sea

  The favorable weather did not last.

  Three days later, toward sunset, a great bank of clouds appeared off the starboard bow. They rushed up to meet the ship as if on a headlong collision course, heedless of the wind which seemed going in the very opposite direction. The brilliant sunset of yellow and orange was quickly swallowed by the approaching blackness, and in less than an hour after the storm’s first sighting, the Tiger found itself engulfed in a vortex of wind and sudden driving rain. They would soon be caught in the midst of a dreaded Asian typhoon.

  It took mere moments for the crew to come alive in a frenzy as if their lives depended on their every action, which in very truth they did. Some manned the lines to haul in sail, while others scrambled aloft to fasten down the canvas. Johnnie killed the galley fire and bustled from his private domain to give a hand with the foremast clew lines. The winds had already risen to such force that an Ethiopian by the name of Suderia, whom they had picked up in Calcutta to replace Turk, was knocked into the angry sea.

  Robbie immediately issued an order to lower a boat. But already, even before the lines could be unhitched, the African was lost to his sight in the gathering darkness as the ship continued to race furiously ahead. Not only would there be no hope of finding him, the lifeboat would not stand a chance in that sea; additional lives would be lost and the rest of the crew and the Tiger all endangered.

  He rescinded the order with a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  Yet there was no time to lose weeping over one man if they hoped to save the rest from following him.

  One moment the ship seemed about to be swallowed at the bottom of a great ice-green valley with infinite walls of water on each side, the next suddenly heaved to the very top of one of those mountain-walls, to perch precariously for a moment before tumbling back down the other side into the next trough. Hoping at least to save the sail, Robbie scrambled up the mainmast of the heaving and pitching clipper.

  But it was too late. The sail was already gone. Below, Digger was having trouble securing the topgallant. Robbie shimmied down the mast to assist him.

  “Get on yer way, mate!” barked the bo’sun. “I don’t need none o’ yer help!”

  “We all need help!” Robbie shouted over the deafening wind, “and I’m not about to lose any more good sailors because of your stubborn pride!”

  Digger vouchsafed no reply. Together he and Robbie managed to bring the sail under control and secure it. Digger said nothing more, only offering a disgusted snort whenever communication was required. Carefully they descended the mast to the deck. Digger stalked away. If Robbie had been capable of despair, it would have overtaken him at that moment, for how could they possibly hope to survive if the crew were not united as a team, and instead were battling each other as well as the storm?

  Robbie carefully made his way aft—no easy matter in the wind with the deck treacherously slippery—to inquire about the status of the helm. The winds and seas had already wrought so much havoc on deck that the ship was unrecognizable. Ladders had been washed away, along with two of the four lifeboats. The galley was flooded, and a huge section of the forecastle cabin roof had been smashed to pieces. Before Robbie reached his destination, he heard the awful cry through the howling wind:

  “Man overboard!”

  He rushed ahead to the site of the calamity, looked over the rail along the line where Jenkins was pointing. Already the ill-fated crewman had fallen half a furlong behind the ship and disappeared from sight.

  “Who was it?” Robbie shouted.

  “Collins.”

  Robbie rubbed the rain from his eyes and sighed. With two boats lost, he could not give thought to risking another on the hopeless attempt. Two men gone was no small loss. But with their already meager crew, to lose another two or three men and a precious lifeboat besides would be suicide for those that remained. Such was the seaman’s life. The potential for tragedy always lurked nearby. But there was no time to grieve. The Tiger’s peril still lay very close.

  “I told you all!” wailed Lackey. “I told you when we left—she’s a rum ship! We’re headed down!”

  “Quiet, Lackey!” yelled Robbie. “Why aren’t you at the pumps?”

  “It’s a lost cause.”

  “Shut up! Move to your station or I’ll throw you
over the rail!”

  At length Robbie reached the poop just as a huge violent wave gathered itself to crash over the front of the ship, sending the aft-section breaking down into the momentarily created trough unprotected. Even in the noise of the storm he heard the distinct snap of the rudder as it was wrenched from its pintle, before the next instant the ship rose with the great heave of water. Torger was whipped to the deck as the helm suddenly lost traction.

  “We lost the rudder!” he shouted, but the coxswain’s announcement was hardly necessary as the already rolling ship nearly lurched to her side.

  The next moment Pike and Digger made their appearance.

  “What’s happened?” asked Pike, his gravelly voice hardly distinguishable from the sounds of the windy fray.

  “The rudder’s gone,” answered Robbie.

  “Lor’!” exclaimed Pike, suddenly heedful of Lackey’s evil pronouncements.

  “The fool Lackey must be right,” muttered Digger.

  “We don’t need that from you!” said Robbie harshly.

  “Yeah! An’ what do ye intend—” But his threat remained unsaid.

  “We gots to make port!” interrupted Pike.

  “You know we can’t make it,” Robbie replied, struggling to keep his head. He thought a moment. “The same thing happened to Cutty Sark in ’72 on a run to Melbourne.”

  “I remember it,” said Pike, calming a bit. “She was in a race with Thermopylae. She lost, after what happened, but there never was a finer piece of seamanship.”

  “We can do what she did!” said Robbie. “They built a jury rudder from spare parts, and fit it right at sea.”

  “Ye’re crazy!” put in Digger. “This ain’t no squall; this is a full-blown typhoon. Those are hundred-mile-an-hour winds hittin’ us!”

  “We can do it—it’s our only chance,” argued Robbie. “You got any better ideas to see us through this! Now, go get Jenkins on cutting the spars. And we’ll need a forge—”

  He stopped suddenly and shot a glance at Pike, realizing he had rushed ahead without the skipper’s approval.