by Ferenc Máté
“Turn fast,” Lil’bit said.
Nello jumped to the cleats. Dugger spun the wheel. The ketch did a violent jibe. A wave slammed them abeam and the ketch shuddered. The sails thundered and the masts bent, but Nello threw the sheet off starboard, then dove across the deck and hauled in on the port. “Get the staysail!” he roared, and Lil’bit clawed the staysail loose and fell to her knees beside him to haul the line. She turned to Dugger.
“You can surf in easy,” she insisted, but her eyes were full of dread. “I’ll tell you when to turn.” She looked behind them and saw the next swell rise. “Start to turn slowly. Now,” she said, hard and precise. Dugger turned the wheel and the bow slowly swung.
“Tighter!” Lil’bit cried.
Dugger made the correction and headed back along the reef, the bow of the ketch pointing at the frigate.
“Now!” Lil’bit ordered. “Turn hard now!”
Dugger saw a monstrous swell coming at them now; he turned and they hauled the sheets side by side. The ketch lurched. The wave curled. Dugger felt it propel them with great force at the reef. The wave has us, he thought. No; I have the wave. The ketch surfed, pitching and yawing, toward the pass.
“Stay in it! Stay in it!” Lil’bit commanded. And Dugger tried to play the helm but he felt no resistance. The crest of the wave neared too fast and he felt the ketch sink as the crest passed them by. He had lost the wave. Its bowsprit pointing skyward, the ketch slid stern-first down the back of the great swell, all the way down to the bottom of a trough. They could see nothing but the mountainous waves and sky.
“We missed it! Turn back!” Lil’bit shouted.
“Cappy, we’ll break apart!” Nello cried. Over the side he could see the white-sand bottom of the pass. Dugger spun the wheel. The cable stopped it with a bang. The sea exploded on the reef around them. A shudder went through the ketch as the keel struck the outer coral, then she rose and turned free and sailed back into the deep.
The next swell came. The frigate sat atop it.
Lil’bit stood up. “Sorry,” she said.
Dugger grabbed her arm and pulled her behind the wheel. “You surf,” he said firmly, and put her hands on the spokes.
“But ... ”
“You surfed fine last night. You know the pass. You surf!”
“Cappy . . .” Nello protested.
“Our only bloody chance!” Dugger cried.
A flame burst from the cannon of the frigate. The shell shrieked, then the mizzen sail blew apart. It fluttered in shreds, like the tails of a hundred kites.
“It’s all right,” Dugger shouted. “We don’t need it. Surf!” and he knelt down beside Nello to work the sheets.
Lil’bit, with her shoulders forward, began to turn the wheel.
She pointed the ketch directly at the frigate as if she meant to ram it. The frigate fired. The shell flew by so close, its airstream flattened the sails. Lil’bit didn’t flinch. Her gaze was riveted on the swell that rose in a blue leap against the sky. She let it go by. The frigate was so close she could see sailors bucket water onto the cannon’s breech.
The next swell came pure and blue. It glittered and curled, then its crest began to spume.
Lil’bit turned the wheel. The ketch swung.
As if some giant hand had grabbed it and hurled it forward, the ketch began to fly. Lil’bit bent her knees. She no longer watched the sea—she felt its movement in her legs—but watched the reef beyond the small motu ahead. She played the wheel, surfing the ketch at a savage speed across the wave. She could see the break in the reef and edged her way toward it.
She clutched the spokes, surfing wildly down, the pass gleaming shallow to port, so she cut back into the wave to gain some height, then cut back again, pointing at the pass. The mountain of water now inclined over her.
The curling wave hung like a blue vault over the ketch, and they sailed enclosed in its luminous blue glow, in a vast azure tunnel; a road to another world. Kate looked back. How beautiful, she thought. If this is death, I don’t mind it a bit. And in all that roar and hissing she heard Lil’bit singing.
Then the wave collapsed and overwhelmed the ketch. Dugger held Kate as the sea tried to tear her from his arms; and the weight of the water pinned down Nello’s chest, then the wave let him rise, only to slam him down again.
Lil’bit closed her eyes and surfed. Even with the sea upon her, she felt, through her legs, the shifting of the ketch. She nudged the wheel slightly to port as the sea around her exploded into fountains. The ketch wallowed, scraped bottom, shot forward again. A loose sheet hooked the reef, and the coral sliced it to shreds. The great wave pushed her on. Then the blue water drained away, sliding benignly from the cabin top and deck, then tumbling over the rail, back into the sea.
The ketch rose. Stood upright. The wave pushed her through foaming green-blue water, through the school of silver big-eyes, into the lagoon.
THE FRIGATE TURNED to line up the pass.
Chapter 59
The gunner plunged his singed hands into the bucket of water and cursed.
“S’il vous plaît,” the admiral said, his voice as dry as chaff.
“My hands, sir,” the gunner explained.
“It’s all right, Blusson,” the captain cut in quietly. “I will load.”
“Hold your course,” the admiral ordered.
“Holding course,” the captain said.
They slid down the back of a wave and he waited for the next one to hurl them into the pass. Before them, the ketch wallowed, its sails slatting, its shredded mizzen tangling on the jackstays. The admiral factored in the range and rising swell, cranked the bronze handle to bring the cannon barrel down, then, out of breath but self-satisfied, he gave the order to load and hold.
The captain told the gunner to take the wheel while he loaded. The gunner steered and leaned close to him. “Shall we prepare the lifeboats, sir?”
A wry smile twisted the captain’s lips. “It’s too late for that, Blusson.” He pushed in the shell and wet his hands before he cranked the hot breech shut. Then he took back the wheel. With a roar that drowned out the engine, a great wave broke and buried them in foam. A dim grayness blocked out the sun. The sea seethed over them. “Fire!” he heard coming through the din. He could barely make out the outline of the ketch. The frigate pitched. Then came up again. “Fire!”
God help us all, the gunner thought, as he pulled the lever down.
THE KETCH CRABBED, rolling into the lagoon. Dugger was on his knees looking aft. Atop a towering swell he saw the frigate flounder, only its bow and cannon sticking out into the sun. It rode high on the wave as if, having taken flight, it wanted to dive onto the ketch from above. But the face of the wave it rode now grew sheer, kicking up the stern and pointing the bow down.
The frigate dove.
It dove in a deadfall, bow-down, onto the reef. As the wave around it shattered into foam, the sleek bow drove with violence into the coral. The cannon fired; the frigate blew to pieces.
The next wave rolled its shattered remnants on the reef.
Chapter 60
The old woman held the small goat under her arm while it lapped milk from the tin cup in her hand. Darina smelled the goat milk mingling with the smell of the sea. The old woman sat on her haunches beside her, talking softly, often holding her gaze, sometimes smiling as if she had just told herself a joke, at other times, frowning at the gravity of what she said.
Darina couldn’t understand a word, but she sensed the meaning from the woman’s gestures and her eyes, the tiny shrugs her shoulders made, and her rising and falling, ever-changing smile. Then the old woman fell silent and pushed the goat away. It bucked and leapt impatiently in the windblown waves of grass. She said a single word, then dipped two dark and wrinkled fingers into the cup, and crooked them as she pulled them out, to save the milk. She held them to the baby’s mouth and let the milk trickle down her fingers. The baby closed her small lips over them, her chubby red cheeks hollowin
g as she sucked. The old woman now dipped her little finger and held it to the baby’s trembling lips. The baby sucked and smiled.
After a while the old lady stopped and put the cup next to Darina. She said something short and firm. Then she pulled open a tear in Darina’s shirt so her breast fell out into the sun, dipped her fingers in the milk, then raised them and let the milk run down Darina’s breast, let it dribble to the tip. Then she guided the baby’s head until the milky nipple touched the baby’s mouth. The baby drank and, with her tiny hands, she poked Darina’s breast.
A tear filled Darina’s sun-reddened eyes. With great patience she dipped her fingers and dripped the milk. The baby fed.
The little goat came bounding back and poked its small head playfully at the baby’s dangling legs. The baby gently kicked and the goat licked her leg, licked the rivulet of milk that ran down and trickled from her toes.
THE WIND BLEW WITHOUT A SOUND over the plateau. Darina held the sleeping child softly to her breast. They stayed there for a long time, with the shadows of passing clouds washing over them.
Chapter 61
The ketch sailed all day across the calm lagoon, now and then passing a deserted motu with its ring of sand, a cluster of palms, and shoal seas all around it. The water around the ketch teamed with shifting colors as schools of zebra surgeonfish and lemon-peel angelfish, blue-green chromis and red-lipped parrot-fish skittered quickly by.
They sailed under main alone, drifting, with Lil’bit sitting astride the bowsprit, directing them around coral heads that loomed just below the surface. By late afternoon the heads were hard to see. Ahead of the ketch the sun blazed on the water; behind her, the sea was filled with shifting shadows.
A crescent-shaped motu lay invitingly ahead, with flopping banana leaves yellowing the shore. Dugger eased the main; the sail fluttered, then hung still. Frigate birds came by, swooping, curious as the ketch drifted shoreward in water so clear and a sandy bottom so white that he could see every detail of her shadow. They dropped the anchor and watched it touch bottom, sending up a puff of sand. The chain fed out slowly through the rollers, then went taut. The ketch stopped. They dropped the main, crumpling, to the deck. Beyond the motu, the surf moaned on the reef.
LIL’BIT CAME BACK FROM A SWIM TO THE MOTU, pushing two coconuts ahead of her as she swam. The clouds blazed pink behind her in the west; in the east they towered red above the squalls, the colors of the sky rippling on the sea.
She crushed bits of coconut meat, mixed them with cut mangoes, and Dugger drowned the pulp in a deep pot of rum. They sat in the cockpit under a red-streaked sky.
They raised their tin cups and toasted to good health, then they toasted to the squall, then Kate lay in Dugger’s arms and raised her cup “to the best surfer of them all.” Lil’bit blushed visibly even in the twilight. The clanging of the tin cups sounded festive in the silence.
They drank.
Nello unrolled the chart, held it up to the fading light, and searched it for the crescent-shaped motu that lay before them. With the cup raised to her lips, Kate stopped. “What’s that?” she said, pointing at a patch sewn with big stitches to its back.
At first Nello didn’t seem to understand. He looked at the chart and saw only the normal lines, fathom marks and arrows indicating currents, until in the corner he saw stitches rise. Kate reached over and folded back the corner; a patch of paper had been sewn onto the back. On it was some writing and some faded curving lines, but she couldn’t make things out precisely in the dusk. Dugger struck a match. Written were a few words, and below them, now faded but still possible to make out, a drawing of atolls and lagoons and, in the middle of one, an arrow pointing at the shape of a pear.
The match burned down and Dugger threw it in the sea.
“Guillaume’s map,” he said.
“And the writing?” Nello asked.
Dugger smiled and shook his head. “Bonne chance and bon voyage.”
A SKY FULL OF STARS DANCED ON THE LAGOON. An albatross took flight from shore and headed west to try and find the sun.
Acknowledgments
This four-year voyage would not have been possible without major contributions from a vast array of people.
First were those who helped with historical and anthropolog-ical research: New York’s Museum of Natural History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tahiti’s Musée de Tahiti et des Iles, and a team of New York-based researchers lead by Courtney Fitch and Heather Brown.
Invaluable assistance came from Sandy and the most gracious crew and owners of the passenger-freighter Aranui III, who were exceptional hosts and an endless source of stories and informa-tion. Huge thanks to Jonathan Reap at Tahiti Tourism who assembled dozens of jigsaw details into three months of unforgettable work.
A lifetime of thanks to my dear pal Starling Lawrence, W.W. Norton’s scathing, gut-splittingly funny and—it kills me to say this—almost-always-right, Editor-in-Chief, for enduring another hand-to-hand, word-to-word battle, and clarifying, unraveling, and making intelligible such a complex narrative.
A huge thanks to Candace for her great sailing help in the Society Islands, her editorial travails and constant and encouraging companionship.
And much gratitude to my long-time cohort Céline Little who researched, plotted, dramatized, edited, criticized, and—thank God—patiently persevered.
The biggest debt I owe is to the wonderful people RW, CL and Lil’bit, for breathing life into this story.
Ferenc Máté
Tuscany, 2011