by Joan Druett
Wiki said, “What flagship?”
“USS Independence. The commodore is John Nicholson.”
“What’s he like?”
“They’re all bastards, but he’s one of the better ones.”
Then Wiki saw that just about the whole of the ship’s complement was gathered at the starboard rail, grinning. Dr. Olliver was bobbing slowly down the side of the ship, the progress of his balloon-like form assisted by at least three men. It took rather a lot of persuasion to get him to make the last jump into the boat, and then the craft bobbed up and down madly, with a great deal of splashing, threatening to capsize for quite a few seconds.
“Good luck with your letters,” said Forsythe, taking his departure.
“And good luck with your passenger,” said Wiki with heartfelt sincerity, because so much was at stake.
“I’ll manage. Movable ballast can be bloody useful at times.”
And with that, Forsythe scrambled down the side, landing with a thud of boots in the bottom of the boat. Orders were barked, oars were put out and canvas was set, and then the cutter gathered way. Considering the inconstancy of the breeze, she disappeared from sight surprisingly fast.
* * *
Ironically, Forsythe had been gone no more than two hours when a southeast topgallant wind abruptly whisked up. Down in the captain’s cabin, filling pages with his neat script, Wiki heard the sudden snap of canvas, a shout of, “Ready about!” and the piping of the boatswain’s mates. Planks echoed to the thump of many feet as men hurried to their stations.
“Helm’s alee!” came the cry. More shrilling of pipes as the jib-sheets and fore-sheet were let go and overhauled, and then, “Mains’l ha-a-a-ul!” Wiki sensed the thump as the main yard brought up against the backstays, and then the stiffening of the ship as the weather mainbrace was hove taut. The ship leaned into the wind and gathered way. By the time the third letter—the one to Commodore Nicholson—had finally been rewritten to Captain Wilkes’s satisfaction, and placed with those to El Capitão do Porto and the commander of the British ship, the Vincennes was standing up the bay with all sail set, gliding along at a good three knots through a descending afternoon mist.
Another haul, so they could brace up to the north to enter the harbor, coasting along between the two white sentinel-like forts with a dip of the flag. This was the time when the first salute of cannon should have been fired, but instead they glided through with just the hiss of water to mark their passage. Wiki, clambering onto the poop deck, having left the three letters, all signed, blotted, folded, and sealed, lying ready on Captain Wilkes’s desk, looked up to see the boys in the mizzen hamper staring ahead in a silence that was so transparently awestruck, that for the first time he fully realized the general youthfulness of the crew.
Then the vista opened—a sight that caught Wiki’s own breath every time he entered Rio, because this abrupt grandeur was like nowhere else in the world. Mountains rose above mountains, peak above peak, all dominated by the strange shape of Sugar Loaf, rearing its stark barrenness up against the sky. Wiki heard the officer of the watch, standing close by, shout orders through his trumpet. Men obeyed readily, to bring the flagship even more to the north.
A long way behind, he saw the two expedition schooners change their triangular shapes as they tacked to pass through the entrance of the great harbor, while the Porpoise sailed more demurely beyond them. He could just glimpse the Swallow flying along under a flamboyant spread of sail, silhouetted by the bold point of Santa Cruz. There was a brigantine, on the same tack, dashing along under an imprudent amount of canvas, too, so that it looked for all the world as if they were racing each other.
Wiki turned and looked ahead again. Now he could see the city, with Praia Grande opposite, shafts of late light pooling on white colonnades and cupolas, and terra-cotta roofs. Distant aqueducts marched in double rows of arches through the riotous tropical growth. Because there were no wharves, ships lay at anchor everywhere, brilliant flags flying, grouped according to nationality, most the lee of one or another of the little islets that dotted the emerald water. One was a huge frigate, with the Stars and Stripes flying brilliantly from her mizzen peak, and the broad blue swallowtail of a commodore’s pennant, with its twenty-six gold stars, fluttering from her main—the USS Independence. It should have been the moment for another salute of cannon. Instead, seamen clambered about the rigging of the Vincennes, harried by the shouts of boatswains’ mates, until the yardarms were lined.
Then, just as the first hip-hip-hurrahs were bawled, cheering being the best alternative to the roar of guns, Wiki heard the lookout in the foremast shriek over the din, “Ahoy the deck!”
The seaman was pointing at the water ahead. Wiki shaded his eyes, and the watch officer trumpeted, “What is it?”
“Our boat, sir!” the lookout hollered, and sure enough, it was the ship’s cutter, coming fast toward them on the wind. Within seconds she was close enough for Wiki to see Dr. Olliver’s massive shape in the stern sheets, and Forsythe at the tiller.
The watch officer called out more orders, and the Vincennes was hauled aback, with just her momentum driving her along. Then, just as he heard the cutter click against the side of the ship, Wiki registered that Captain Wilkes had arrived alongside him. When he turned inquiringly, he saw that Wilkes was holding out one of the letters.
With his habitual meaningless smile, Captain Wilkes said, “After we have taken Dr. Olliver on board, you will oblige me by taking the cutter to the Independence. Tender this letter to Commodore Nicholson with my compliments, and inform him I look forward to the privilege of a meeting after we are safely anchored and I have attended to my other business.”
Dear God, thought Wiki, shocked; was Captain Wilkes really determined to exasperate the commodore of the Brazil squadron beyond bearing? The lack of a salute of cannon was crime enough, without this studied insult. However, there was nothing he could say, so he nodded, took the letter, and headed down the poop ladder to the waist deck.
As he arrived at the gangway Dr. Olliver came up, red in the face and with a hand clapped over the pocket where the precious package was presumably stowed.
“Success?” said Wiki.
“Success,” the surgeon confirmed. Thank God, thought Wiki, because the noises he had heard from Grimes’s berth while he had been penning the letters had been truly alarming.
Forsythe’s reaction, when Wiki arrived in the bottom of the cutter and passed on Captain Wilkes’s instructions, was predictably sardonic.
“Wa’al, let’s see if we can survive this pretty little mission—and that Robert Festin doesn’t get into any more trouble while we’re both away from the Vin,” he drawled.
And with that, he brought the little craft about with a flourish, while the band on the deck of the great U.S. flagship struck up the welcoming strains of “Hail Columbia.”
Eight
The harbor of Rio de Janeiro was opening up before Captain George Rochester like a great panorama. The waters were hectic with the local felucca-rigged galleys—fallua—battling for room with queer fishing rafts—jangadas—which were made of logs strung together, and tacked by shifting their single masts from one notch in a log to another. Big ships of all nations maneuvered through the lowering late afternoon mist.
George stood on the foredeck of the Swallow with his hands clasped behind the seat of his trousers and his boots braced apart. His expression was benign as he took in the brilliant scene, but behind it he was wishing that it were Wiki Coffin who held the helm, and that his first officer was something better than an unseasoned seventeen-year-old youth. Despite that, he was determined to make a great show. Green water foamed white as it curled about the cutwater below, and then bubbled as it dashed along the brig’s steeply leaning side.
As if in tacit encouragement, the brigantine that accompanied them through the harbor entrance was standing under flamboyant canvas, too, a few fathoms off their starboard beam. Like the Swallow, she was heeled far over
in the freshening breeze. When she straightened up for the anchorage, Captain Rochester heard Midshipman Keith, who was standing importantly in charge of the quarterdeck, call out orders to do the same. In the distance, he could see two great men-of-war lying at anchor off the city, and hear distant strains of “Hail Columbia” from one of them. The other, he deduced, was HMS Thunderer.
Then, just as George was about to request the old boatswain to pass on a message to bring in the topgallants, the totally unexpected happened. A jangada piled deep with a load of fish appeared from nowhere. The whole of Rochester’s fifteen-man crew was on deck and in the rigging, but not a single hand had seen her coming.
The unwieldy craft staggered athwart their bows, so close that George could clearly see the faces of her crew gawping up at him. He roared, “Hard to starboard the wheel!”
At the same instant, to do him credit, Midshipman Keith screamed the same order, though with an embarrassingly adolescent squeak of panic. Canvas cracked and booms slammed, and for a tense moment Rochester thought the brig wouldn’t respond. Then around she came like a game little terrier, and hissed past the raft with yards to spare. For an instant, George was engulfed in evocative smells of charcoal, rice, fish, and cordage. Then, thank God, the fishing boat was gone.
Midshipman Keith screamed, “The brigantine!”
George’s neck cracked as he jerked round to stare with horror at the brigantine, which, not having followed the abrupt change of course, was now bearing right down upon them. He lifted his trumpet, and bawled, “Brigantine ahoy!”
“I see you, goddamnit!” shouted the reply.
“Keep your luff, sir!”—and to the man at the helm of the Swallow, “Hard up the wheel!” Even as he uttered the order, though, he knew it was far too late. He saw the brigantine’s mainyard come round and her canvas flutter, but she was right on his starboard quarter.
The crash as she hit was deafening, followed by a series of pounding thumps that were almost as loud. The brig pitched, rolled, and shuddered under the onslaught. George staggered, and the old boatswain fell down. Then it was as if the other craft were determined to utterly destroy his beautiful ship. With horrible scraping noises she carried on forward, breaking up rail as she went. As the two tangled vessels lost momentum their combined wake caught up with them, and again the brigantine slammed hard against the Swallow.
The concussion was awful. Again, Rochester stumbled, and several men were thrown to the planks. Looking up in horror as he straightened, he saw the two tall masts of the brigantine, still carrying whole sail, tipping slowly over, casting their slanted shadows over him. Dear God, he thought, she was holed! She was sinking! He could hear the rush of water pouring into her, while she became even more intricately tangled with his brig. The terrible commotion of sundering timber was replaced by an ominous creaking.
On both decks, there was a moment of appalled silence, broken by shouts of consternation. On the Swallow, seamen grabbed poles to shove the intruder away, terrified that if she sank she would take them down with her. On the other craft sailors were pouring up the hatches with billets of wood in their hands, similarly determined to free themselves of the burden of the other vessel, which they were convinced was taking them down.
George cried, “Belay that!” Like an echo, he heard the other captain roar the identical command. The brigantine wasn’t sinking—yet—but she was the one taking in water, not the brig, and it was obvious that she would founder without the Swallow to hold her up.
The boatswain had scrambled to his feet, unhurt. “Get a big sheet of old canvas,” George snapped. The good fellow nodded in swift understanding, and hurried off to the sail locker, yelling out for assistants as he went. They would have to fother a sail—stiffen it with ropeyarn—and then maneuver it over the hole in the brigantine’s side, to stop the leak as fast as they could. The job required men who were good swimmers and divers—again, George wished that Wiki was on board. As it was, he knew he was lucky to have Sua and Tana.
There was a bump from the waist deck—boots hitting planks. George spun around, to see that the captain of the stranger had executed an athletic leap over the broken gangway rail. Even in the midst of his panic and racing thoughts, George registered that he was a striking figure. Though middle-aged, with an abundance of gray sprinkled in his thick black hair, he was still very handsome, broad-shouldered but otherwise as lean as a whippet.
Otherwise, the overwhelming impression was that he was utterly furious. A small slanting scar on the side of his face caused his left eyelid to droop in lizardlike fashion, half hiding a gray eye that flashed as belligerently as the wide-open right eye, and his clean-shaven jaw was pugnaciously squared.
Though George had certainly never seen him before, he was struck by a strong sense of familiarity. Then he saw the man visibly take hold of his temper, so that when he came to an abrupt stop, he was icily impassive. “Sir,” he said with a snap—and the snap clinched the impression.
“My God, old chap,” George exclaimed in great astonishment. “You’re none other than Captain William Coffin!”
* * *
The lizard eye glinted in alert curiosity, but George was interrupted by the arrival of two boats from the Vincennes. Obviously, the lookouts on the expedition flagship had seen the emergency develop, and the officer on watch had responded without an instant’s delay. Mystifyingly, though, Wiki was not with them. George wondered what was up with his old friend. Surely he hadn’t been ordered to stay away? Captain Wilkes hadn’t even sent a senior officer, as the fellow in charge of the two boats was a junior midshipman who was scarcely as old as Constant Keith.
“Midshipman Dicken, at your service, sir!” he barked in a voice that squeaked on the last syllable, his chubby face bright red with the importance of his mission. In strictly descending order, he saluted Captain Rochester, then Captain Coffin, and finally Midshipman Keith. Rochester’s first officer returned the salute, and after that the two young men shook hands and clapped each other on the shoulder in the manner of two friends getting back together after quite a long time, while Dicken commiserated with Keith, because the accident had made him look so lubberly.
“Quite,” agreed Captain Coffin dryly.
“The blame, sir, was not ours,” said Midshipman Keith stiffly, taking instant umbrage, but Rochester put a swift stop to that, pointing out that there was a great deal of work to be done if both ships were to be saved. In the process of the introductions, George Rochester had found that Captain Coffin’s vessel was the brigantine Osprey, in the Salem—China trade. How much longer she was going to float, let alone sail to the Orient, was very debatable, though—and if she went down right now, she was going to take the Swallow with her.
“My instructions from Captain Wilkes are to carry back a written report of the accident,” said Midshipman Dicken in an obstinate kind of voice.
“Report be damned,” said George Rochester with vigor. “Get your men on board the brigantine, and see if the pumps are working. And at the same time send over all the members of the Osprey crew who are not needed on board; I don’t want them to be caught there if she founders.”
“Thank you,” said Captain Coffin. At that moment George couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not—and didn’t care, either, there being not a moment to be lost.
Within seconds, in response to hurried orders, a half dozen of the Osprey’s crew were on board the brig, one of them carrying the brigantine’s cat. The six hands were astonishingly young, George noted, but didn’t waste time on speculation, instead setting them to work threading strands of ropeyarn into the big square of canvas the boatswain had found. They were a good bunch, he meditated as he strode past them some moments later. Even though their belongings, along with their ship’s provisions, were all underwater, they were even managing a shaky laugh or two—though maybe that was because Stoker, being the gem of a steward that he was, had produced a huge kettle of hot chocolate.
Meantime, Midshipman Keith wa
s aloft with a gang, untangling the rigging that bound the two ships together, while others tore apart the combined wreckage along the shattered starboard rail. Captain Coffin had jumped back on board his own ship, and could be heard striding around the Osprey shouting orders, while the pumps thumped, and water gushed through the scuppers and over the side. Ominously, though, George could hear more water surging in through the hole.
Night fell as they all frantically toiled. When the wreckage that tied the two vessels in their fatal embrace was finally cleared away, the Osprey slumped over farther than ever. Obviously, the hole had to be stopped as swiftly as possible, as without the Swallow to hold her up, she was doomed. The piece of fothered canvas was lowered on ropes over the rail of the brigantine, the two ships were pried apart, and Tana and Sua dived into the narrow strip of black water between the two hulls, which were bumping back and forth with the tide.
It was appallingly dangerous work. Every sailor held his breath, watching the two black heads bob up and down, each man gripping one of the two lower corners of the fothered sail. Down they dived in the surging water, while the ships sagged perilously close together above them. A fraught moment, and then up they came, gasped for breath, and disappeared again, while the pumps labored and gushed.
The next time their heads bobbed to the surface, they both thrust triumphant fists upward, just before scooting up the side of the Osprey. The hands at the top of the canvas hauled manfully, and bowsed the fothered sail tight—and the gush of incoming water quietened. Thank God, thought George fervently. Sucked into place by the pressure of the sea, it would slow the leak long enough, hopefully, for them to tow the brigantine to the shipyard.
Rochester sent down the brig’s two boats to help the two boats from the Vincennes, but even with four boats hauling it was a slow, painfully arduous trip across the harbor. The Swallow, sailed by a skeleton crew, slowly followed. It was midnight before they arrived—but, though there were awful signs that the brigantine was breaking up forward, she did not founder. Another hour, and both vessels were moored up tightly to a wharf in twelve feet of water with a soft mud bottom, and the Osprey was no longer in danger of sinking.