by Margi Preus
Above him, the sunlight pierced the murky gloom of the water, and he lunged toward it.
A rush, and then a roaring sound. Air surrounded him the way water had a moment ago, and he took great, gulping mouthfuls of it. When he glanced up at the ship, he saw his mates stamping their feet on the decking and yelling. No, not yelling—cheering! And laughing. Even Jolly was smiling. The captain, however, was not. He glared down at Manjiro before turning sharply away.
30
SAILING CLOSE TO THE WIND
ometime during the night, Manjiro woke. Something was different. At first he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. But when he heard the whoosh of the water moving under the hull, the insistent ticking of the halyards, and the straining of sails filled with wind, he knew: The ship was moving!
Manjiro slid into his trousers and went above deck. A glorious wind pushed at his hair and billowed his shirt. Sea and sky were velvety, the night embroidered with a million glittering stars, every wave frosted with silver moonlight.
It seemed as if everyone on board had turned out. The wind had blown their foul mood away, and as he passed they clapped him on the back, shook his hand, offered a kind word.
It was all very strange. Why were they suddenly friendly, and why so quiet? The men practically tiptoed about on deck.
Jolly was standing near the tryworks, his crazily crooked eyes twinkling in the lamplight. A small group of men huddled around him, whispering. Manjiro recognized Gridley and Dunn and the blacksmith Lafayette among them. Nothing so unusual about it, except the intensity of their conversation.
They glanced at him and he moved away, assuming they would only scowl.
“Mung!” Dunn called out quietly.
“Over here.” Gridley waved him over.
Manjiro moved toward the cluster of men.
“‘Twas brave what you done today,” said Dunn. “Going after that sea turtle like that.”
“You turned our luck—see, now we got wind!” said Gridley.
Daniel padded up to them, panting. “Captain’s in his quarters,” he whispered. “Maybe we should lock him in!”
“A poorer idea I never did hear,” Jolly said, whisking Daniel’s cap off his head and whacking him with it, “for where do ye think the firearms are stowed? Let’s stick with the plan.”
“Jolly has a plan,” Daniel said.
Jolly whacked him again. “I just said that, didn’t I?”
“He ain’t got any plan,” Lafayette said.
“Who says I don’t?” Jolly snapped, then whispered to Manjiro, “We aim to take control of this vessel.”
“That’s … mutiny!” Manjiro said.
“Shh!”
“Mutiny is a serious business.” Manjiro lowered his voice to a whisper. “They can hang you for it.”
“Don’t you think we know that?” Jolly said. “But you can see for yourself how it is! I tried to warn you about Davis that first day, but you were stubborn and stayed aboard, didn’t you?”
“You were warning me about Davis?” Manjiro said.
“Of course!” Jolly said. “Who did you think I meant?”
“You!” Manjiro said. “I thought you were threatening me.”
“Pah!” Jolly spat. “You’re worried about me, when the captain goes around in his underclothes, ranting at the clouds, threatening his crew with a musket?”
“Cap’n’s going to kill somebody one of these days—count on it!” Gridley added.
“Does Mr. Aken know about this?” Manjiro asked.
There was a pause, and then Jolly said, “We aren’t sure about him. You, neither, tell you the truth. You being friends with Davis on the John Howland and all.”
Manjiro wondered for a moment if this could be an elaborate plot to get him into trouble. “What’s your plan?” he had begun to say when a loud blast interrupted him.
They turned toward the sound to see the captain appearing to float along the quarterdeck in his white nightshirt, musket in hand.
“A ghostly apparition,” Lafayette whispered.
Davis paused to reload, muttering and shouting by turns, “Ye’ll find whales, ye lazy louts, or ye shall feel the bite of the musket ball!”
He paced along the deck, raving and waving the gun. When he came to the tryworks, he turned his back for a moment and Manjiro’s shipmates seized the opportunity to dive behind a whaleboat. Manjiro turned back to see Davis glaring down at him.
“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to,” he said.
Manjiro felt sweat trickle down his back.
“You’re planning to steal one of my whaleboats!” the captain said.
“No, sir!” Manjiro protested, relieved at least that the captain didn’t seem to know about the mutiny. “Even if I was, we’ve left the islands of Japan far behind. They’re too far away now for a boat to do me any good.”
“So you admit you plan to steal a boat?”
“No, sir! I only meant …”
“Go ahead, take a boat,” the captain said. “Lower a boat now!”
Manjiro paused.
“Spring to it, man!” Captain Davis shouted. “Why don’t ye jump?!” He slammed the butt of his musket down on the deck. “Lower away!”
For a moment Manjiro dropped his eyes, unsure of what to do. He couldn’t disobey a direct order! But if he obeyed, would Davis really insist Manjiro cast off? Here? Alone? In the dark and the wind and hundreds of miles from anywhere?
Manjiro looked up when he heard the hammer of the musket being drawn back. Davis had hoisted the gun to his shoulder and sighted down the barrel—at Manjiro.
31
THE HARPOONER
fter an initial rush of fear, Manjiro realized he was shaking, not with fear, but with anger. He told himself not to get angry, but he was. Davis had never intended to let him go home to Japan. It had been a ruse to get him to sign on—for a steward’s lay.
What would Captain Whitfield do in this situation? Manjiro wondered. He did get angry at his crew sometimes, and he let them know he was angry, but he kept his temper under control.
“Mr. Davis!” Manjiro said sharply, as he imagined Captain Whitfield might say it. Davis jumped a little—Manjiro had surprised him. Even so, Davis managed to keep his gun leveled at him.
“Remember your place!” Davis growled, poking the musket barrel at him. “You’re a subordinate! You don’t talk to your captain that way.”
Manjiro’s anger boiled up. Anger for every time he’d been treated as someone who didn’t deserve a voice, as someone with nothing to say, as someone whose opinion did not count—whether it was because of the family he was born to, because of the way he looked, because of his poor language skills, or because of his lowly rank.
“I’ll have my say!” he said firmly.
Davis flinched and took a step backward, and Manjiro moved toward him. “I’ll spend three or four years on this vessel, and for what?” Manjiro said, walking deliberately toward Davis. Davis, meanwhile, stepped backward. “I’m an educated navigator, a trained cooper, and I’m doing a full seaman’s work on this ship for a steward’s lay. You promised me a chance to go home! You did that just to get me to sign on as a steward—for what amounts to no pay—didn’t you? What did you promise the others?”
By now Davis had been backed up to the whaleboat behind which Manjiro’s shipmates crouched. Manjiro lunged forward and knocked the musket from his hands, and Jolly and the others jumped up from behind him and wrestled him to the ground.
At the same time, a shout rang out from the top of the main mast. “Flukes and spouts!” called the lookout.
There was an eerie pause while they all looked at one another. Were there really whales? If there were indeed whales sighted, the captain should call out the orders. But he was in the process of being bound with a hook rope.
“Thar she blows!” cried the lookout.
“Where away?” Jolly shouted up to him.
“Two points on the weatherbow!” came
the call.
“How far off?” Jolly called.
“A mile and a quarter” was the answer.
“Set a course to follow through the night,” came a voice outside the circle.
Manjiro spun around. It was Mr. Aken.
“You realize, I hope, the implications of your actions.” Aken stooped and picked up the captain’s musket from the deck.
“Yes, sir,” the men murmured.
“Mutineers might dance at the end of a rope,” Aken said, “if just cause be found.”
The men’s heads drooped.
“However,” Aken continued, “if we can come home with our cargo crammed full of oil barrels and casks filled to the brim with spermaceti, I warrant the owners will be pleased enough to forgive us such transgressions. Especially since it’s as plain as daylight that poor Mr. Davis’s wits are scuppered.”
The men rumbled their agreement.
“Now,” Mr. Aken said, “let’s get to the business of electing new officers. We’ve got whales to catch!”
After Davis had been secured belowdecks, Mr. Aken was voted captain, the second mate was promoted to first mate, and others moved up to fill open positions. Discussion ensued on how to fill the remaining harpooner position. Manjiro’s mind drifted as he wondered what the plan for mutiny had been. He did not think the mutiny had gone according to any plan. It had just happened.
“It’s important we choose our boat steerers and their crews with care,” Mr. Aken was saying, and he went on to remind the crew of their sacred duty to catch whales. “Else-wise, how will our wives and daughters maintain their tiny waists, without whalebone to stiffen their corsets? Think how the horses will loll in the streets, stopping to nap, while those in stalled buggies curse us for not bringing them baleen for buggy whips. Think of unstiffened caps and hats, suspenders, bonnets, ribbons. What of the fishing rods, divining rods, back supporters, tongue scrapers, penholders, boot shanks, shoehorns, and brushes of every description that won’t get made without the help of the mighty whale? All the machinery of our modern world would grind to a halt without whale oil for its lubrication. And most of all, consider our friends and neighbors, our families, sitting in the darkness without oil for their lamps!
“A pod of whales awaits us at first light. As you know, we need harpooners with experience and most especially mates we can trust with our lives.”
There was silence while everyone thought this over. Everyone wanted the most reliable, levelheaded, and steady person in a job like this.
“John Mung!” someone shouted.
“Aye! Aye!” a chorus of voices sang out.
“A vote,” Captain Aken said.
The vote went all the way around the group with “ayes” from everyone until the last person: Jolly.
He was silent for a moment and then said, “I know John Mung. I was with him the first time he went out on a whale chase, on board the John Howland. He didn’t understand a word we spoke.”
Well, that wasn’t entirely true, Manjiro thought.
“And I gave him a wee bit of a hard time, I warrant.”
And that was a bit of an understatement, Manjiro thought.
“And I was none too pleased to see him aboard the Franklin, truth to tell. But I will admit he has courage, showed when he flung himself into the sea after our supper. And he has nerve, demonstrated tonight in his going toe-to-toe with our former captain. The fact that he can last an entire watch with Danny-boy there,” he jerked his thumb to indicate Daniel, “shows he has patience. And he can put up a fight when necessary which I know from … personal experience.” He paused to scratch at his bad eye. “So I guess my vote is ‘aye.’”
The vote was unanimous. Manjiro would be John Mung, harpooner.
32
THE WHALE
anjiro did not have time to even consider whether he wanted to be a harpooner before he found himself standing in the bow of the whaleboat, his knee jammed into the “clumsy cleat,” braced to throw a harpoon. He was vaguely aware of the coaxing coming from the headsman in the stern of the boat.
“Pull, lads! Pull like vengeance! That’s it, we’re gaining! Crack your backbones. Burst your hearts. Burst your liver and your lungs. But pull! Pull, me hearties; pull, me heroes. Don’t give up now, blast ye! Lay on, lay on! Are ye awake or asleep?”
Because the rest of the men faced backward to row, only the headsman and Manjiro, who both faced forward, could see what was going on in front of them. Just off the starboard bow, an island seemed to rise out of the ocean. The island grew and grew until it was the size of a continent, a continent with one enormous eye.
“If you could see that whale, mates,” the headsman urged, “you’d pull till your eyes popped like buttons.”
Manjiro wished they wouldn’t pull so hard.
“Softly now! Easy, lads, easy … There! There! Harpooner. Stand by your iron.”
Manjiro remembered the first time he’d been in a whaleboat, and had turned to see Jolly standing where he stood now. He remembered how repulsed he’d been that these foreigners could kill so cruelly and his fear that they might kill him and his shipmates, too. Now the lance rested in his hand. Next to the whale, it seemed no more than one of Mrs. Whitfield’s darning needles.
In the distance he could see his shipmates’ whaleboats surrounding the shining backs of other whales. Those whales looked like islands, he thought, shuddering at the image of Japan’s islands, like a pod of whales, all surrounded by whalers with their killing lances raised.
“Harpooner, stand by your iron,” the headsman said, and Manjiro’s attention snapped back to his task. The water boiled around them as the beast rose higher and higher.
“Now … give it to him!” the headsman called out.
As if on its own, the lance left Manjiro’s hand. Everything seemed to stop as the harpoon spun toward the whale, its steel shaft flashing in the sun. He could not pluck it back. What would happen now was inevitable.
The whale’s spout would gush blood until the water became thick with it; his blow hole would choke with blood; he would bellow in pain, thrash, and die.
Manjiro knew his whaling days were done. He wanted—needed—to go home.
As the boat pulled its cargo back to the ship, Manjiro pondered on his vision. Would the Western world destroy the country he remembered as home? It would be better if the Japanese welcomed the West, rather than waiting, unknowingly, to be destroyed by them. But how could that ever happen? His countrymen hated and feared the “offal-eating demons” of the Western world. How could they ever welcome them?
Beyond the desire to see his mother, his family, his homeland, Manjiro felt he had another purpose there. He had started to have an idea back in America—he supposed it was a kind of dream. Now, he thought, if he had helped to change Jolly’s prejudices, maybe he could do the same in Japan—even if it had to be one person at a time. Maybe he could help change the world.
He would need money—more money than he would make on this whaling voyage. Somehow he would have to find a fortune.
Then he would retrieve his friends from Oahu and go home.
33
TORI
February 1849 (2nd Year of Kaei, Year of the Hen)
anjiro breathed in the scents and drank in the color of the island. Chattering monkeys scampered up trees. Birds darted among the branches in a blur of red, a flutter of blue, a streak of yellow. After so long on the sea, it was pleasant to dig his feet into the warm sand and listen to the pounding surf—the sound of sea meeting earth.
The Franklin would take on fresh food and water here, and some of the mates had been allowed to come ashore and do some shopping of their own. Life on board had improved since Mr. Davis had been handed over to a whaling office in Manila. By now he probably had been sent home on another American vessel.
Islanders rushed to greet the sailors with things to sell: sweet potatoes, breadfruit, coconuts, grass skirts, chickens, and monkeys. A man jogged along leading a pig at the en
d of a piece of twine. People carried masks made of coconut shells, necklaces made of sharks’ teeth, woven mats and baskets, and wooden carvings.
Manjiro studied all these things, hoping to find a gift for William Henry. He counted up the years he’d been gone. Manjiro was now twenty-two, and William Henry would be five years old by the time Manjiro returned to Fairhaven. Young William deserved a very fine gift considering all the missed birthdays and Christmases.
He was pondering what would be the right thing when a voice croaked behind him.
“Konichiwa?” the voice said.
Manjiro spun around and looked into the crowd, searching for a face that looked like his. Konichiwa meant “hello” in Japanese.
“Konichiwa?” he answered. “Hello?”
Where had it come from, this voice? Not from anyone he could see.
“Konichiwa?” the mysterious voice said again. Manjiro’s eyes darted toward the sound, his gaze drawn up and up until he spied a brightly colored bird perched on the branch of a palm tree: a parrot.
The parrot studied Manjiro with one glittering eye, then winked. Manjiro winked back. He was quite sure he had found a special new friend for William Henry.
Manjiro bargained with the owner of the bird, who had purchased it from someone, he said, who “look like you!” Maybe another shipwrecked Japanese sailor. He had met a few in his travels—all trying to find a way home. Manjiro didn’t know of any who had succeeded.
Manjiro hurried to the Franklin, anxious to introduce the parrot to his shipmates. But when he arrived, the ship was abuzz with exciting news: “Gold! There’s gold in California. Loads of it! They say there are chunks as big as slush buckets littering the ground. All you have to do is get there and pick it up!”