by Lynn D'urso
“Could we see below, Mr. Severts?” asks Hannah.
Michael leads the way, sliding back a hatch over the companionway. “Watch the ladder. There’s a hand grip to port here, if you need it.”
Belowdecks, Tara is spartan and neat, with settees that double as berths to port and starboard in a main salon. There is another, wider berth forward over lockers and chests. A stove squats in the middle of the cabin, bolted to a sole of unpainted pine. Dishcloths and socks hang drying from a line above the stovepipe, which runs sideways beneath the overhead to exit through a portlight. Hans must duck to clear the roof beams as he looks into the forepeak, and Harky stands immobilized, afraid to move. Everything smells of cooking, kerosene, and dampness. When Hannah opens a cupboard, the odor of mildew leaps out.
Michael pulls aside a tarp, revealing a cast-iron engine. “A two-cylinder, twelve-horsepower Hundsted,” he says proudly. “Feeds on petrol or oil.”
Picking up a crank, he demonstrates the starting procedure, which is to fiddle with a gas pressure torch until it is burning well, then apply the flame to a glow-plug in the cylinder head until it glows cherry red. The heavy flywheel is turned over with a bar and screw until a piston is at its apogee, after which a fuel valve is opened, the flywheel kicked over, and the hopeful operator leaps back out of harm’s way—a process repeated over and over until with luck and the proper combination of mass, motion, heat, and compression, the Hundsted roars into action. A grooved wheel on the engine rotates a belt pulleyed to the inboard end of the propeller shaft.
“And she has the advantage of being able to reverse her propulsion,” says Michael, demonstrating how this is achieved by removing the drive belt, twisting it into a figure eight, and reinstalling it. “It can be done with the engine running, but you best be a regular pickpocket with your fingers, or you might come up short one or two.”
There is a long discussion of equipment and stowage, stores and supplies, and the details involved in mining. Dutch again draws the gold from his pocket, passing it from hand to hand for all to marvel at its density. Michael and Hannah do not look at one another, yet each is keenly aware of the other’s presence. It is Hans that brings the talk back to business.
“Even shares all around, then?” he asks Michael. “Your boat, our gear, Dutch’s gold, and Harky’s back?”
Michael hesitates before answering; there is the long journey to consider, then a summer of work and isolation. On the other hand, there is Hannah, who stands with her arms crossed as she waits for him to answer, running one hand from her shoulder to her forearm in a gesture so unconsciously sensuous and feminine that he imagines an intimate invitation in her voice when she entreats him, “Please join us, Mr. Severts. We will be partners.”
And he answers, “Yes, I’ll do it.”
There are handshakes all around to seal the company’s bargain. Michael and Hans lay out modest plans to remodel the cabin’s interior to maximize storage space and allow the heavier goods—chains, nails, tools, and canned goods—to be stored low in the hull, thus increasing the stability of the boat when fully loaded. Hannah and Harky stay with their jobs, adding what cash they can to the kitty.
Hannah slips from beneath the blankets in the dark, leaving the warmth of her sleeping husband behind, rising early in pursuit of the quiet moments she has come to value for writing in her journal. Slipping her feet into felt boot liners that double as slippers, she feeds a bolt of wood to the stove, muffling the noise as best she can, then opens the flue and damper. Holding her hands to the warmth, she moves a kettle from its trivet to the iron stove top when the fire begins to crackle. While she waits for the water to boil, she watches a full, late-rising moon clear the peaks above town, changing from orange to silver as it goes. The tea is a rough leaf from China and comes pressed hard in the shape of a book. It is bitter, full of stems, and much preferred by the Asian cannery workers over the loose Ceylon or Indian tea with which Hannah was familiar in England. That heady, delicious brew is unavailable in Sitka, as what little arrives in Alaska is quickly shipped off to the Yukon, where Canadian prospectors are willing to pay half its weight in gold.
After steeping and sweetening the tea, Hannah glances out the window, takes a sip, then sits to write in her journal. She writes slowly, as if considering carefully what she wants to say, and pauses often to watch the first new white light of morning rise along the half ring of mountains that guard Sitka’s eastern flank. With the sun’s rising, the bright tenor of a bell calls faintly but clearly to worshippers making their way to services beneath the onion-domed spire of the Orthodox church.
Good Friday
We leave in two days. Much of our cargo has now been packed and stowed aboard, with the exception of our clothes, dishes, a few mechanical items for which Hans still searches, and what fresh meats we will take. All have been quite busy shopping and stowing, striking out endless items on endless lists. I feel a good deal of trepidation, but at the same time, what excitement! I shall miss Mr. Witt, who has been most invaluable in our preparations. If not for him, I would have forgotten the need for a Dutch oven and garden seeds! The men think only of mining and tools, thus, obtaining a thorough supply of all other goods is left to me.
Mr. Witt makes much of the date of our departure, speaking of Passover and Easter as a time of transition, the coming of light and rebirth, and so on. I pray our departure date is as auspicious as Mr. Witt claims. The weather seems much gentler now, and daylight extends itself rapidly. We gain seven minutes of sun each day, three-quarters of an hour every week! Everything in these northern latitudes seems expansive or extreme. There is little subtlety in nature here.
Our new captain seems a splendid choice! He seems quite a physical man.
Late in the afternoon, after the turn of the tide on Easter Sunday, the mainsail rumbles aloft on its halyard. The billowing canvas runs rampant, slapping at the wind with a sound like tumbling boulders, and Michael hauls on the mainsheet. The sail fills, forming a perfect, arching belly, and Tara immediately heels, surging forward until Michael tugs at the helm to turn downwind. As the boat gains speed, Hannah’s heart lifts at the rush and gurgle of water building around the bow, and she sees Michael smiling, a great, broad grin that seems to infect all the crew. They point, laugh, and shout as Michael instructs Hans and Harky in setting the jib. Dutch assists with random yells of “Ahoy!” and “Heave away!”
Michael eases the sails, paying out jib and main sheets with both hands as he steers with one foot, controlling the power of the thundering sails with the casual delight of a teamster reining a span of spirited, well-trained horses. Sitka Sound is nearly flat, with only a low swell running in from the southwest; perfect conditions for sailing. Tara roars along with a bone in her teeth, foam hissing from her bow.
Michael works at a chart with parallel rules and dividers, plotting a course that will clear a scattering of rocks and small islands. The torn edge of the tree line above Sitka recedes quickly, becoming a smooth line. As Tara pulls away, the high peaks along the spine of Baranof Island climb into view and a full deluge of rare, high-latitude sunlight breaks over the sea in a variety of precious colors and shades.
Day passes into evening, and the hue of the water grows deeper and stronger. Gulls maneuver, rising and falling in Tara’s wake. Hannah’s chestnut hair is loose in the wind, lifting in waves that curl about her face, and each of the men aboard is, in his moment, stricken by her beauty.
Michael looks around at the others, then asks Hannah to take the helm while he goes below to rummage for a cap. Pausing in the companionway, he watches her eyes grow large at the feel of the tiller, which trembles from the flow of the rudder through the water. She cries out, laughing, “It’s like holding the wind in your hands.”
Tara runs perfectly west into the evening sun, pushed along by the wind and the tide. Hannah goes below to build sandwiches of salt ham and cheese for the crew, and listens, swaying and slicing in time with the roll of the boat, to the chuckle of pas
sing water as she works.
The sandwiches are passed around. The wind holds steady. On a low sandy island to starboard a distant cloud of gulls flowers tentatively aloft at the passing of a young eagle and settles again to form a line of white that could be a late-spring snowdrift or a dune of fine sand.
In the distance stands a mountain as symmetrical as if it had been turned on a potter’s wheel, with volcanic shoulders that are even in all directions and a smooth crown. Beyond it lie a number of lower broken peaks.
“Mount Edgecombe,” Michael murmurs, making an adjustment to the ship’s heading to swing the bow to bear on the inactive volcano. Pointing to an abrupt-sided island rising from the sea at the base of the mountain, he says, “Saint Lazaria Island. Chart says there’s a cove on the east side. That’ll be our anchorage for tonight.”
As Tara ghosts into the shadow of the island, passing between columns of rock carved from the island by millennia of hammering winter storms, Michael instructs Harky in preparing the anchor.
A thick gyre of seabirds whirls from the cliffs, alarmed at the rumble of the anchor chain and the slow flap of the jib. Thousands of beating wings stir a sound that comes and goes like surf as the cyclone of birds passes overhead. Puffins, guillemots, cormorants, petrels, and kittiwakes crowd the sky, diving into the air and spiraling in frightened coils before attempting to resettle on narrow cliff-side perches, only to startle at the panic of their neighbors and launch again, fluttering and piping into the flocking throng. The mirrored water is a litter of broken feathers and down. Slowly the storm of birds eases and the shrill calling and whistling settles into an arrhythmic discord like the tuning of an orchestra.
Belowdecks there is the sound of objects being shifted about and muttered conversation. Lockers and cupboards open and close, and Hannah hears Hans chuckle at something Michael says. The lid to the stove clangs, and the smell of wood smoke drifts in the air. It grows dark, and stars begin to twitch overhead. Alone in the night, Hannah relives the drive of the sails, the sounds and the light, and the bubbling life that filled the sky and the sea, trying to carve the sensory impressions into her memory.
Harky comes on deck carrying a blanket roll and looks about for a space large enough for his bed. Hans and Hannah will share the large berth forward, Dutch and Michael the single bunks of the salon.
The cabin is crowded. As bedding and gear are shifted in preparation for the night, Hannah and Michael pass each other within the close space of the passageway between forepeak and salon, and his hand in the small of her back sends a rush of heat through her veins. Later that night, as the spirit-cries of night birds wheel overhead, she learns of a special form of dream, of lifting and rising with an unlimited sense of freedom, that comes only to those who travel under sail, by the wind, on the sea.
SIX
Sunrise unfolds, and it is as if a dam has burst, inundating the world with silver light. The cove is windless and still, and the snarled thickets of brush covering the island glow emerald amid patches of burning gold. When Hannah goes on deck to brush her hair, she laughs aloud at the antics of a seabird splashing about with webbed feet as red and outsized as a clown’s.
The anchor rises muddy and dripping from the sea floor and is stowed in its roller. The Hundsted fires at first try, and Hans and Dutch maneuver Tara out of the cove while Michael teaches Hannah to light a kerosene stove that swings from a gimbal on the bulkhead, raising his voice to be heard above the pok-pok-pok of the engine. The burner smokes and stinks while he fiddles with a lever, pumping at the pressure tank until the flame is blue. The coffee beans that Harky grinds in a small hand mill smell warm and wonderful.
As Tara clears the entrance, a black cormorant squatting goggle-eyed on a rock peers like a simpleminded dowager over its hooked yellow bill at the passing boat. Hans remarks that the bird resembles Dutch in appearance and intelligence. No one laughs. Dutch stares away in the distance. Harky rumbles, and Hannah feels shame at her husband’s unthinking cruelty.
Michael blows at his coffee. “Damn fine bird, the cormorant. Swims as well as it flies.”
Dutch, more easily reassured than he is offended, spins into a tale that no one believes, of seeing cormorants “in the land o’ the heathen Chinese,” tethered by the neck to long cords, diving into the water to fetch fish for their Butler.
“They fishes ’em at night. There’s a torch what attracts the fish to the light and ever’ man’s got a half-dozen birds. They just choke ’em by the neck and shake the fish right out into a basket.”
Hans makes a Pinocchio motion with his fingers to his nose and rolls his eyes.
A light breeze ruffles the surface of the sea. Harky and Dutch haul at the sails as Tara settles on a heading that will pass them well clear of a reef. Hannah fries eggs and bread on the stove as Tara moves west at a slow, steady pace, all sails set and drawing.
Michael drills all hands in the operation of the vessel, defining sheets and halyards, sail trim, and the finer points of following a compass. He demonstrates tacking and reefing, passes on tips for avoiding oversteering in a following sea, and provides a minimal education on balancing the helm “so the rudder doesn’t fight you or you fight the boat. Nothing will wear a man faster, and the sea never tires.
“There’ll be times when I need you, especially after we clear Cape Spencer. After that, there will be no more shelters until we fetch Lituya Bay. We’ll shorten sail at night, but keep going, and I’ll need a wink or two of sleep now and then.”
Saint Lazaria falls behind, growing smaller as the lessons proceed. Hannah proves an apt pupil, but plays herself down. After Hans tries the helm and sends the boom crashing from port to starboard in an accidental jibe, she takes the blame, claiming to have been too slow on the sheet.
The Sound widens, the islands draw apart, and the horizon expands as Tara rounds Cape Edgecombe. Dutch scans the immense distance with darting eyes, peering left and right in search of some dire symptom of doom: a squall line—though he has no idea what one looks like, but supposes to be something dark and furious in the distance—or an angry sea spout, a rogue wave; surely something in all of that space must lurk evil and hungry for men’s bones.
Harky is silent and stares into the distance before asking, “How deep would the water be here? Below us right now?” He thinks of how little it is that separates them from the might of the ocean and the impenetrable darkness of deep water.
Michael’s answer is to sing. Throwing back his head, he hails the great ocean’s spirit in a fine, ringing tenor, wailing out a song of Inishbofin, where he and his brother fished tub trawls for cod out of a two-man dory, rowing for hours across the gray, heaving waters and running home under a leg-o’mutton sail only after the dory had settled low under the weight of a dozen hauls of fish. The words are in Gaelic, alien and magic, and Hannah wonders at their spell when she sees Harky’s foot begin to pat in time with their ancient rhythms.
Beyond the cape, the wind strikes up a tune and the sea becomes a willing dancer. A swell rising from the southwest builds until the cutter must dip and bow to each passing wave. Michael orders the sails sheeted in until the leach of the main flutters like a bird’s wing at the top of each surge. The ship heels. Small gear left loose in the cabin shifts and crashes to the sole. Hannah smiles at the exuberance on Michael’s face.
The crew settles into a routine, hopscotching from harbor to harbor up the coast. On the afternoon of the third day, which has been nearly windless and seen little distance marked off on the chart since noon, Michael starts up the Hundsted and uses precious fuel to motor into an islet-studded bay. He manhandles the dinghy over the side, touching his nose and says, “The lot of us are stinking. It’s time we did something about it.”
Ferrying back and forth to the shore, he carries first Dutch, then Harky, who sits upright, clutching at the gunwales, trying not to make any sudden motions. Hannah and Hans go in last together, then they wait as Michael returns to Tara a final time before returning with
a shotgun and pack.
Leading the group up a faint trail, he grins, bursting with barely controlled eagerness. At the end of the track, above a rocky beach sheltered between slabs of dark stone, there is a split in the bedrock from which steaming, sulfurous-smelling water flows.
“A fisherman told me about this hot spring. It’s the only bath for a hundred miles.” He opens the pack and passes out towels, soap, and a change of clothing for each of them. Hannah feels her cheeks burn at the thought of his hands sorting through her things.
“Ladies first, hey, gentlemen?” says Michael, leading Harky and Dutch away. Hans stands guard while the heat of the water turns Hannah’s skin pink. When she is done, her muscles feel relaxed, her skin smooth and elastic. She dries herself languidly before dressing. Hans’s face turns ruddy and fierce from the bath, and he wishes aloud for a razor.
There is a haloo from the bush, and Hannah shouts back that the coast is clear. The three men emerge from the trees, grinning and waving. Harky and Dutch each hold a brace of grouse in their hands.
“Our captain’s a crack shot,” whoops Dutch, waving a bird overhead. “Six birds out of the flock with only two shots!”
Hans and Hannah walk back down the path to give the others their privacy, then sit on a log, plucking at the birds. The soft, warm feathers drift at their feet.
“This is all fine,” grumbles Hans, “but I wish we could get on to the goldfield.”
Hannah is about to chide her husband for his impatience but swallows the admonishment when Michael comes along looking fresh and invigorated. The others are close behind him.
Harky drops to his haunches beside Hannah, measuring out shreds of tobacco into a straw-colored paper. Licking and twisting the makings into a cigarette, he inspects it closely, then uses it to gesture at a stand of tall, straight trees.
“Good timber around here,” he rumbles.
“That’s true,” says Hans. “But we’re after gold, not trees.”