Song of the Silent Harp

by BJ Hoff

  Evan strained to focus his eyes on the face lowered to his. The bunk, the stinking lantern hanging from the ceiling—even the woman’s face—swayed drunkenly in front of him.

  Now he stared into twin faces, two Nora Kavanaghs. He saw himself reflected in both pairs of eyes. The eyes were worried…or was it fear that stared back at him?

  He tried to speak, but someone had sewn his mouth shut. There was a weight on his tongue, a hot coal…

  In lieu of speech, he attempted to lift his hand, to make a signal of sorts. But his arm had been tied to the bunk. Pain held it fast; his other hand was free, but stiff and numb, lifeless.

  He struggled to sit up, but hands held him down, pressing him into the bunk.

  “It’s all right, Mr. Whittaker. We’ll take care of you. Be easy now, just rest yourself and be easy…it’s all right.” Both faces spoke as one, smiling with kindness.

  Hot…he was so hot…and a host of knives stabbed, slicing into his shoulder.

  The twin Nora Kavanaghs were saying something, their voices echoing, drifting away.… Young Daniel hovered closer, frowning, his eyes burning, heating Evan’s skin even more. Why did the boy look so frightened?

  Again he tried to speak. Nothing came. Humiliated, he felt tears track his cheeks…hot tears…scalding hot, like his skin and the pain in his shoulder.

  “Please don’t struggle, Mr. Whittaker. We’ll take care of you…try to rest.” The boy’s voice was thin, distant, fading…

  Something cool touched his forehead…so good. He mustn’t weep…what would she think? He didn’t want her to think him weak. He was supposed to be taking care of her…

  33

  Where Is God?

  If it be stormy,

  Fear not the sea;

  Jesus upon it

  Is walking by thee.

  JOSEPH SHERIDAN LEFANU (1814–1873)

  Daniel straightened, his gaze going from Evan Whittaker, who lay writhing on his berth in obvious agony, to his mother, her eyes frantic, her face pale with alarm in the swaying light from the overhead lantern.

  With trembling hands she gingerly parted the torn sleeve of the Englishman’s shirt to examine his bandaged shoulder. The vile odor issuing from the blood-soaked wrappings forced Daniel to turn away momentarily, but his mother continued to hover over Whittaker, shaking her head worriedly while tending to him as best she could.

  “Daniel John, we must have the surgeon, and soon!” she whispered hoarsely. “His wound is infected, I’m sure of it. He’s failing badly!”

  “I tried, Mother!” Both he and Hugh MacCabe, the farmer in the next bunk, had made three futile attempts that day to get a crewman’s attention by banging on the closed door to the hatch. “They wouldn’t answer us!”

  His mother glanced toward the ladder, unused for over two days now, except for those times when someone would ascend it out of sheer desperation, to hammer on the door in appeal. They were desperate; a number among them were bordering on hysteria. They might just as well be in prison, so hopeless did their plight seem.

  The stench in steerage, intolerable before, was now unbearable. The very act of breathing had become another kind of misery. Beneath most bunks lurked wet, soiled rags, rotting food scraps, even feces. Without ventilation, the overpowering odors of stale air, human waste, and rank filth filled the entire dungeonlike hold with fumes deadly enough to fell a sailor—had one taken it upon himself to venture down into this pit of horrors.

  Barred from the latrines, without access to fresh air or cooked food, the doomed passengers were falling ill by the dozens from seasickness, diarrhea, and fevers. Three new cases of suspected Black Fever had developed. Even now, a new corpse lay in the men’s section, an old man who had screamed the entire night before dying.

  Nothing in Daniel’s worst nightmares could have prepared him for the horror of this pit in which they were trapped. He felt himself to be existing in a dark abyss, as if the sea itself had swallowed the Green Flag and was now bearing it upon some dread course of doom.

  Darkness engulfed them, a shroud of evil drawing them in, closer and closer each day. Last night he had fallen asleep to the cries of the suffering and dying, his last thought a silent cry of his own: Where is God in the midst of all this madness, this misery? When evil is so powerful a presence…where is God?

  Just as quickly, another question seized his thoughts to torment him. How could Morgan have done this to us?

  Hadn’t he bothered to investigate the ship and its crew? Daniel couldn’t believe he would have set them aboard had he held even the slightest suspicion about the ship. Yet how could he not have known? He had made the arrangements, after all.

  But what did it matter now? There was no turning back, no escape.

  And no Morgan to settle their grievances. It was up to him now to do whatever he could to protect his mother and the children. And to help Evan Whittaker.

  Daniel looked down at the Englishman. Drenched with perspiration from the fever, the man was out of his head with pain. His once-neat white shirt was ripped and bloodstained, his thin face smudged with grime. Daniel was struck by the thought that without the odd little spectacles Whittaker always wore, he looked surprisingly young and vulnerable. Strange, up until now he had not thought of Whittaker as young, and certainly not as a vulnerable human being like himself.

  A fresh surge of emotion coursed through him as he realized anew the debt of gratitude they owed this man who had involved himself in their misery and now lay suffering in their midst—all because he had tried to help them.

  Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends…

  But they weren’t his friends, Daniel thought, a lump rising to his throat. They were virtual strangers, even enemies, when Evan Whittaker risked his life for them. They were nothing to him, nothing more than unfamiliar names and foreign faces.

  From somewhere deep inside his spirit, something stirred. A slow, gentle kind of warmth began to rise from the very depths of his being.

  And suddenly Daniel had the answer to his question. He knew where God was.

  He was here, in the throes of their wretchedness. In the midst of their suffering. In the sacrificial love of the pain-racked Evan Whittaker. In this humble heart from which the love of Christ had so freely flowed. God was here.

  Still stronger and brighter than the evil that lurked all around them, seeking an opportunity to conquer, God was here—

  “Daniel John?”

  He blinked at the sound of his mother’s voice, looked from her to Whittaker.

  “You must try again. Perhaps someone will come this time.”

  “Yes, all right. I’ll go right now, Mother. I’ll go and pound on the door of the hatch until somebody comes. I’ll make them open it, or drive them mad trying!”

  Nora’s eyes swept over her son with a questioning look. Then she nodded and turned back to Whittaker. Crooning to the delirious man as she might have a child who needed soothing, she continued to swab his flushed face with gentle strokes. “Aye, you try again, Daniel John. Mr. Whittaker cannot go on so. We must get help for him at once!”

  Daniel scurried up the ladder, ignoring the splinters that pierced his hands. Reaching the top, he pounded as hard as he could on the door. When his efforts were met by silence, he shinnied back down to grab an iron pot lying discarded amid some rubbish in a corner.

  This time when he reached the top of the ladder, he began to crash the pot against the door, over and over again, shouting like a wild thing as he pummeled the rotting wood. “We’ve a dead body in here! Open the hatch and help us take him out!”

  At last, the door flew open, and the sailor in charge of passing down their daily ration of water appeared in the opening. His face was ugly with rage as he glared at Daniel. “Stop with that racket, you little Mick!”

  Daniel reared. Flinging the cooking pot to the floor, he squeezed his left arm and leg through the opening, past the sailor’s brawny frame. Then, grabbing
hold of the coaming, he managed to push by the crewman, throwing him off as he hit the deck at a run.

  He had no idea which direction to go, where he would find Dr. Leary, but he headed aft, toward the stern, hurtling down the deck like a fired arrow in search of a target.

  It came as no surprise to William Leary, the surgeon, that Abidas Schell had a stone for a heart. He had known the man too long to believe otherwise. Thus far this voyage had only served to confirm what he already knew.

  Schell stood now, stiff and straight on the quarterdeck, entirely indifferent to Leary’s protests on behalf of the poor wretches in steerage.

  Leary was sober for a change, a condition in which his temper flared far more quickly than when numbed with whiskey. Schell’s arrogant coldness had already torched the surgeon’s anger, and with every minute’s passing the flame blazed that much higher.

  To make matters worse, Leary was as edgy as a wounded polecat about the storm blowing up. Already the Atlantic breezes had increased to strong winds. The tightly tuned rigging hummed and keened as the waves lifted the ship’s stern, sweeping the deck with spray.

  Leary wiped the salt foam from his face and raked a hand over the muscles at the back of his neck, strung tight with tension. The thought of a storm at sea never failed to make his blood run cold, but battling a storm with a daredevil captain like Schell at the helm made it freeze in his veins.

  The grim-visaged captain was using the pretext of preparing for the approaching storm to ignore Leary’s presence, but the surgeon wasn’t fooled. This man was entirely capable of barking out a set of clipped, precise orders while absorbing half a dozen other conversations at the same time.

  Schell simply had no interest in, no compassion for the poor devils below.

  Leary almost wished he were as heartless.

  He felt a sudden, vicious stab of spite at the expression on the captain’s face as he watched the crew work feverishly to bring in some of the standing sails and double-reef the topsails.

  He knew it set Schell’s teeth on edge, having to haul in canvas. The man would fly every possible square foot of sail he dared, running the ship to the limit of her potential. The few knowledgeable seamen on board—and they were few—grumbled nervously from time to time that they would all eventually suffer for their captain’s irresponsibility. One or two had even dared to challenge Schell’s orders, but he had ordered them flogged senseless, thereby putting an end to any further questioning of his judgment.

  Making another attempt to get Schell’s attention, Leary now moved to stand directly in front of the man. “At least let them take turns coming up, just long enough to suck in some fresh air,” he said. “A few at a time will do no harm, and the healthier we can keep them, the better off we will all be.”

  “The entire steerage is under quarantine and will be until I’m assured of no further outbreak of typhus.” Schell’s reply was distracted, his gaze set above, to where a nimble-footed youngster was climbing a towering mast.

  Finally, he lowered his eyes to look at Leary. “As the surgeon, I should think your concern would be for the welfare of the entire ship, not just the few Irish paupers in steerage.”

  “Few?” Leary shot an incredulous look at Schell. “There are over two hundred of them down there!”

  The captain shrugged.

  “And what about those poor Chinese girls you’ve got locked up in the cabins with the opium? They’re children, God help us! Just children! Is there nothing that means as much to you as gold?”

  He paused, enraged at the other man’s lack of response. “Well, answer me this, man, what happens if you deliver your Irish unfortunates and your little-girl whores dead instead of alive? Where will that leave your business then, eh?”

  Schell’s icy blue gaze never wavered, but the threat in his voice was unmistakable. “I believe our arrangement had your blessing, Doctor. It was you, after all, who handled the negotiations.”

  Leary swallowed. “You gave me no choice, and you know it,” he muttered, forcing himself not to shrink beneath Schell’s frigid stare of contempt.

  “Doctor! Dr. Leary—please, sir, you must come!”

  Leary whirled around, and Schell blinked in surprise as a wild-eyed boy came upon them at a run.

  It was the young colt of a lad who was traveling with the injured Englishman. Gasping for breath, he looked faint, perhaps even ill.

  “What are you doing here?” Schell’s voice cracked like a gunshot. “How did you get abovedecks?”

  Panting, the boy looked from Leary to the captain. “Please, sir, I’m sorry, but we need the surgeon badly! My friend, Mr. Whittaker, may be dying!”

  Schell glared at the boy as if he were a worm. “Denker, here!” he called out to a nearby crewman. “Put this beggar back down in steerage where he belongs.”

  “No. Not unless the surgeon comes with me!”

  Schell made no move for an instant. Then, without warning, his hand shot out to slap the boy across the cheek with enough force to make him reel.

  Instinctively Leary put up a hand, as much to ward off the enraged captain as to steady the boy. But Schell had already dropped his arm, the implacable mask once more in place.

  The sailor he had summoned now moved behind the boy, yanking both his arms hard behind him. The lad struggled, crying out. His eyes flashed with fury as he stood, legs outspread, facing Schell.

  “Our fares are paid,” he said, his voice trembling with resentment. “We’re entitled to a doctor, and that’s all I’m asking!”

  “You’re entitled to be strung up on the ratlines,” retorted Schell, pointing to the tarred ropes used as a ladder, “if you so much as open your mouth once more. As it is, you’ve earned yourself a night in the wheelhouse.”

  “Oh, give over!” Leary blurted out. “I was going below tonight anyway, to check the lot of them. I’ll go with him now instead of waiting.”

  For an instant he thought Schell would refuse, would stick to his intention of locking the boy up. A muscle tightened at the corner of one eye, and the nasty scar seemed to pulse and blaze. But at last he gave a short nod of dismissal, telling the sailor, “Let him go. There’s more important work to be done than wasting time with an Irish beggar boy.”

  “Come on, you little fool!” Leary snapped, now angry with himself for stepping in. His impulsive defense of the boy would serve neither of them well.

  Taking the lad by the arm, he half dragged him back up the deck, grumbling all the way. “Why would you be fretting yourself so over a stinking Englishman is what I’d like to know? What is he to you? Not worth incurring the wrath of a man like Schell, I can tell you.”

  “Mr. Whittaker saved our lives!” The boy twisted in an attempt to tug himself free from Leary’s grasp. “We can do no less for him.”

  Leary looked at him. “What you’d best be doing is staying out of the captain’s way from now on unless you’ve a mind to end up at the end of a lash! He makes no distinction for age.”

  “He has no right to flog a passenger! I know that much!”

  “You know nothing at all!” Leary shouted, again grabbing him by the arm and bringing him to a stop. “Nothing! Schell is the law on this ship, and you are no more than a flyspeck to him. If you value your skin, you’ll stay out of his sight!”

  The boy was quiet for a moment, his piercing blue eyes making Leary increasingly uncomfortable.

  “What kind of a ship is this?” he asked in a low voice. “Not what we were told, that much is certain.”

  Leary flared, tightening his grasp on the lad’s arm. “I don’t know what you were told, boy, but you’d best listen to what I’m telling you. You’ll do neither yourself nor your family any good by making trouble. Stay quiet and stay out of the way if you hope to see America.”

  Leary studied the boy for a moment more, relaxing his grip slightly but still holding on to him with care.

  “All right, come on now,” he ordered, somewhat mollified as he again started to tug the la
d along beside him. “If you want me to have a look at your Englishman, give me no more grief. And if you’ve more than a pea for a brain between your ears, you’ll not show your face outside steerage again until you’re told. This ship is a dangerous place for meddlesome children.”

  The boy’s gaze stabbed at Leary’s conscience. For an instant he felt as if his defenses were being cut away, layer by layer, and his soul laid bare. Something in those eyes belied the youthful countenance, something old and wise beyond the lad’s years.

  Chilled by the thought that he had been seen for what he was, Leary gave the boy’s arm a vicious yank and quickened his pace still more.

  Nora pressed her clasped hands against her lips, her gaze going back and forth between the scowling physician and the semiconscious Evan Whittaker.

  In his delirium, the Englishman had struggled so fiercely against the surgeon that Daniel had to help hold him down.

  “Please, Doctor, can you give him something for the pain?” Nora ventured uncertainly, somewhat intimidated by the doctor’s rough impatience.

  Ignoring her, he straightened, his shoulders bent slightly to keep his head from grazing the ceiling. For a moment he continued to stare down at Whittaker’s shoulder, his lined face twisted into a taut, resentful grimace.

  “There’s nothing for it but to take the arm.”

  The words were spoken with such a resentment it almost sounded as if he were indicting Whittaker for his failure to heal.

  The room swayed. Nora stared at the surgeon, then Whittaker. “No…oh, no! Please, there must be another way…some medicine—”

  “I said I’ll have to amputate!” snapped the surgeon, still not looking at anyone but Whittaker. “It’s his arm or his life.”

  “But he’s not aware enough to even have a say in it—”

  The physician turned to look at her. “He has no say in it, woman, if he wants to live!”

  Dear Lord, all this is happening to him because of us! It’s so unfair; he saved our lives, and now…this?