by Joan Druett
“What the bloody hell do you think you are doing?” he screamed at the Virginian. “Don’t you realize that gravitational experiments demand a low-noise, low-vibration environment—or are you just a completely ignorant goddamned bastard?”
Low noise, low vibration—and Captain Wilkes carried out private gravitational experiments? Wiki suddenly put two and two together, and realized that there might be a very good reason for the infamous tirades that happened each time some unfortunate soul in the room next door dropped something heavy or made a commotion.
At the same time, however, he was staring raptly at Forsythe, just like everyone else, as Captain Wilkes screamed, “Give me a reason, sir—why the hell did you do it?”
Instead of answering, the Virginian pointed his rifle at the six-foot, rust-red-colored snake that was writhing out the last of its life against the back wall. Evidently it had wriggled into the hole in pursuit of the rats, blocking the light as it waited there until it sighted its prey—and then it had hurtled out, ready to strike, but instead to meet an abrupt end.
A marine sergeant shoved past Wiki, closely pursued by a half-dozen marines. “Is all well, sir?” he hollered, and then lurched to a stop as he sighted the serpent, which had worked itself into a final knot. “Aha,” he said, “is that what it is, sir? ‘Fer-de-lance,’ they call ’em here, sir, and vicious reptiles they are, too. There’s a nest of ’em somewhere about this place, and they’ve come out after the rats. I’m glad you got him first, sir, afore he could get at you. We’ve surprised two already, sir, and lucky not to lose a man, we were, on account of they strike on sight, without warning. Nasty creatures, very nasty.”
Captain Wilkes had his eyes tight shut, and was obviously battling with his emotions. When he opened them, he turned to Lieutenant Smith, and demanded, “Was there a ricochet? Was the equipment damaged?”
A hurried inspection, and then Lawrence J. Smith reported that all was well. The great pendulum swung on in oblivious grandeur. However, when Captain Wilkes turned to face Forsythe, his pallor was marked, and the lips that had been so happily upturned during his lecture were now pressed tightly together.
“I have decided to deny you the privilege of taking part in this historic experiment, Lieutenant Forsythe,” he said frostily. “Instead, you can practice your marksmanship elsewhere. The brig Swallow will be making a week-long survey of the coast as far as Macae, while a party of scientifics will trek through the jungles and marshes on a parallel path, charting the natural phenomena of the region—and you will accompany those naturalists, and take charge of them, and—and protect them from these—these fer-de-lance.”
“Aye, sir,” said Forsythe very humbly.
Wiki had never seen him so polite and submissive. Then he realized that the big southerner was undergoing a Herculean internal struggle—to hide his utter disbelief and boundless delight at this highly unexpected reprieve.
Sixteen
Having vented his wrath, Captain Wilkes embarked on the much more pleasant task of assigning men to the job of rostering the pendulum observations—which, as threatened, were to be kept up day and night until it was time for the fleet to leave Rio. During the process, Wiki suddenly recognized one of the officers—Passed Midshipman Ernest Erskine, who had been George Rochester’s second-in-command when Wiki had first joined the brig Swallow, in Norfolk, Virginia, back in August. Erskine, who looked older than the rest of the senior midshipmen because of a certain primness in his demeanor, was a courtly fellow with old-fashioned good manners. After Captain Wilkes, in one of his tempers, had shifted him onto the Porpoise, everyone on the Swallow had been sad to see him go.
When Wiki accosted him, Erskine immediately said, “How goes it with the brig?” After being reassured that she had survived the collision, he remarked, “I heard that she got off very lightly—much more lightly than the other ship.”
“That’s true,” said Wiki. “The Osprey is hove down at the shipyard now.”
“And lucky to be there. Other men would have left her to sink.” It was obvious by Erskine’s tone that he admired George Rochester greatly.
“What do you mean?” asked Wiki, puzzled, and for the first time learned about George’s gallantry in saving the Osprey, when he could so much more easily have taken her captain and crew on board, and then left her to founder. He had wondered about the warm friendship that his father and his best shipmate had evidently struck up, and now could guess the reason.
Then he said, “Did you have much to do with Astronomer Grimes when he lived on the Porpoise?”
“He kept to himself. I had the impression he was reclusive by nature.”
“What about mealtimes?”
“He took a tray to his room. I think he worked while he ate.”
“Was he ever sick?”
“He coughed at lot, I noticed, but I never heard him complain of being ill.”
“Did he ever seek the attentions of the surgeon?”
“Dr. Guillou? Not that I noticed. You will have to ask him.”
Wiki had to be satisfied with that, because a bell was struck in the convent portico, and Erskine bid a hasty goodbye. Belatedly, he realized that Captain Wilkes, looking very impatient, was beckoning imperiously in his direction.
Captain Wilkes turned and stalked out into the cloisters, and Wiki hurried after him, up a winding flight of narrow stone stairs that led to a small chamber. This, it was immediately evident, had been taken over by the captain as his private quarters. A narrow bed had been set up in a corner, but otherwise the room was packed with desks, chairs, and tables.
In his characteristic fashion, Captain Wilkes walked to the other side of a desk before turning to face Wiki; it was always as if he wanted to put some official barrier between himself and his listener. Then he said, “I’ve assigned you to the brig Swallow, to assist with the survey that I mentioned earlier.”
So this was why he’d been so unexpectedly posted back on board the Swallow, Wiki mused. As careful as Forsythe not to betray his pleasure, he said, “May I ask which scientifics will be going?”
“The scientific party will be made up of the naturalists Dr. Winston Olliver, Joseph Couthouy, and Charles Pickering, assistant taxidermist John Dyes, and draftsmen Joseph Drayton and Alfred Agate. They will be land-based, exploring the jungle and the general terrain, while the brig will follow them up the coast. Lieutenant Forsythe will be in charge of the land party, while Captain Rochester will be in command of the ship.”
Wiki paused, thinking that this was one of the most sensible plans Captain Wilkes had ever devised. Not only was he getting six of the irritating scientifics out of his way while he carried on with his pet pendulum experiments, but he was doing it in a useful and orderly fashion.
Then he said, “And my part in the operation?”
“You will live on the Swallow, and act as the liaison between the scientific party and the Brazilians. Every afternoon, after the brig has dropped anchor, you will go ashore, and meet up with the scientifics, who should be at the assigned meeting place by nightfall. There, you will take orders from Lieutenant Forsythe, who will requisition any necessary provisions and gear, and put anyone who might be sick or hurt on board the brig. You will also inspect whatever specimens the scientifics collected that day, and choose which are fit to be taken on board. I strongly urge you to be both strict and judicious! If the specimen is large, instruct the collector to replace it with a smaller one; if a sketch will do instead, then insist that he throws it away.”
Wiki winced at the thought of the many loud arguments that would be the certain outcome of this, and Captain Wilkes snapped, “If you meet any objections, simply repeat that you have strict instructions from me. Be firm! Take no heed of even the strongest protestations! As well as that,” he went on, “you must make sure that they do nothing—I stress, nothing!—to offend the patron of the survey.”
Wiki, completely baffled, said blankly, “Patron?”
“Sir Patrick Palgrave!”
>
“Who?”
“Though an Englishman, he feels a lively interest in our great enterprise; he came here this very day to express that enthusiasm in person, along with extremely courteous and attentive friends and family.” Wilkes’s smile had widened wonderfully. “He has not only volunteered to provide horses, mules, servants, and ostlers, but when he left me he was setting off to contact other friends who have plantations along the proposed route, to ask them to host the land party each night. His own estate is at the remotest part of the survey, on the Macae River, and he informed me that the party could stay there in comfort to write up their reports, before everyone boards the Swallow for the return trip to Rio—a most significant contribution to our mission!”
“It certainly is,” said Wiki, feeling puzzled about Palgrave’s motives.
“And he was most specific that you should go along.”
Wiki blinked. A stray draft must have come into the stone-walled room, because gooseflesh rose on his arms. He said involuntarily, “Why me?”
Captain Wilkes frowned. “Isn’t Sir Patrick your father’s close friend? I certainly got that impression when Captain Coffin brought him here today.”
So his father had been the unseen man in the fallua, Wiki realized. Not seeming to notice either his silence, or his sudden lack of enthusiasm, Captain Wilkes chatted on. “It should be a capital excursion, and I do wish I could have come along, too. However, not only do I want to closely supervise the gravitational observations, but I have too many pressing engagements on shore. Did you know that the quality here speak French?”
Wiki shook his head.
“A great convenience for me,” Captain Wilkes confided, and then went on in that language. “You’re not the only linguist with the fleet, you know! Had you heard that my French is considered excellent?”
“Assurément,” lied Wiki, who hadn’t known at all. He thought he should have guessed that Captain Wilkes could speak French, though, because he had toured Europe extensively in his search for scientific instruments. In fact, Wiki mused, Captain Wilkes’s French was probably a lot better than his own.
Captain Wilkes laughed as he said jokingly, “We mustn’t be wasteful—we must be prudent with our resources—so why use a translator when I can deal with the local gentry perfectly well myself?” Then he said, “Which reminds me,” picked up a folded card from the table, and handed it over.
Wiki took the card, unfolded it, and read it twice, with growing disbelief. It was from Sir Patrick Palgrave, inviting him, with Lieutenant Forsythe, to a dinner party at his house on Praia Grande, on the opposite side of the bay to Rio de Janeiro, at seven in the evening in three days’ time.
He looked at Captain Wilkes again, and said quietly, “I don’t think I can accept this.”
Captain Wilkes flushed. “You certainly will accept it.”
“But surely I will have sailed with the survey by then?”
“Certainly not. December second is the emperor’s birthday, and it would be most undiplomatic for the Swallow to leave before that.”
“But why me?” demanded Wiki. Even more pertinently, he meditated, why Forsythe? Inviting him to a formal affair was a recipe for disaster.
Captain Wilkes’s lips pressed together. “I trust you will both behave with the good reputation of the expedition in mind.”
“Of course, sir,” said Wiki, hiding a wince, and was dismissed.
* * *
When Wiki arrived at the boat stairs, it was to find that the cutter crew had disappeared, so he asked the sentinel to hoist a signal for a boat from the Swallow. Then, instead of waiting, he went along the gravel walkway to the far end of the convent. Here, another path wound up to the plateau where the sailors and marines were camped. He followed this to the top, and found that a deep ditch, maybe once a moat, lay between the hilltop and the back wall of the building.
The convent reared above him. The stonework was unplastered, and the visual effect was solid and dramatic in the afternoon sun. Very few windows interrupted the rugged expanse, and so it took a while to work out where the pendulum chamber lay. Then Wiki spied a small pile of rubble, which looked as if it marked the place where the rats and the snake had wriggled into the room, and skidded down the steep side of the ditch to that spot.
At the bottom, he found that the hole was much bigger than it had looked from the inside of the chamber. He wondered about the thickness of the wall. About two feet from the outer side to the inner, he decided, judging by the size of the stones. Then he speculated about the size of the cavity. That snake had been six feet long and sturdy in build, and it had been coiled up in the hole for quite some time before it had lunged out after the rats. More crevices might fan out from it, winding through the gaps in the stones and crumbling mortar—indeed, there could be a complicated network of holes inside the wall. A nest of snakes, the sergeant had said. When he hunkered down and tossed in a pebble, he heard rustling sounds from the darkness.
Wiki had contemplated putting his ear to the hole to see if he could hear the swish of the pendulum and the tick of the clock from this side of the wall. Instead, however, he stood up in a hurry, and, abandoning dignity, he scrambled hastily up the steep slope, and headed briskly for the waterfront.
* * *
Back at the boat stairs, he found the boat from the Swallow waiting, with Tana at the tiller, and Sua at one of the oars. Because of the other four boat’s crew, they couldn’t talk in Samoan, but their broad grins testified to their pleasure that he was part of the brig’s complement again—because of Sir Patrick Palgrave, Wiki remembered. Instead of going straight on board the brig, he walked along the quay to where the Osprey was hove down, just in case the fallua had brought Captain Coffin back.
However, he was nowhere to be seen, though it was noteworthy that even in his absence the carpenters were working hard. Wiki could hear Captain Hudson, in the distance, shouting with obvious frustration as he tried to harry along the workers who were supposed to be mending his poor, hard-used, ill-maintained ship, while on the Osprey the air was loud with the busy clangor of hammers and thump of caulking mallets. It was a testament to the force of his father’s personality.
Lying over the way she was, the Osprey appeared clumsy and vulnerable. There was certainly nothing about her to remind him of the times he had sailed with his father as a lad—but then, it was hard to know what a ship looked like when you were constantly on board of her. Wiki remembered an incident on one of his whaling voyages when his captain had called him to the rail to look at another whaler passing by. She looked kinda familiar, the old salt had said, but he was damned if he could put a name to her. It wasn’t until after the old man had hailed her and got an answer, that he realized that he had once commanded her—on a three-year Pacific voyage! Both the captain and Wiki had considered it a huge joke, but now he wondered if his father would laugh.
In truth, he hardly knew his father at all. Captain Coffin had sailed away when he was barely sixteen, after he had been in New England for just three years. Before that, Captain Coffin had taken him on the Osprey for short West Indies voyages, but now it was hard to remember what that had been like, except for the balmy evenings when his father had regaled him with yarns—which were probably farfetched, Wiki realized now, but which he had absorbed greedily at the time. While he had helped out with the work of the ship to the best of his ability, he’d had no role on board except that of the captain’s son.
Since then, Wiki had sailed with a dozen or more masters, because he had quickly adopted the habit of jumping ship whenever it suited him—when he was keen to visit home in the Bay of Islands and the ship was not steering for New Zealand, for instance, or when he had become so disgusted with whaling that he needed a break. At other times, he had deserted to get away from a captain he disliked, though he had been lucky enough to never have served under one of the sadists who were the subject of ghoulish whispers all about the whaling fleet.
Whaling captains were an assorted l
ot, he’d found. There were some who were gentlemen, and others who were hogs in human form; there were poets, and musicians, and men who were so morose they did not seem sane. He’d been second mate for a master who’d carried a complete set of Hume’s History of England to sea, and had willingly loaned the books to Wiki. They had walked the deck in the quiet spells, discussing wars and kings and politics, and though they had been steering for the northwest coast, where Wiki did not want to go at all, he had delayed jumping ship until he had finished the last volume. Would sailing with his father have been like this? It was impossible to tell.
Hearing a step behind him, Wiki turned hopefully, but instead of Captain Coffin, it was George Rochester. The afternoon sun glinted on his fair hair and fluffy side whiskers, and lighted up his broad smile. “I see you’ve shifted your duds into your cabin,” he observed. “It’s good to have you back.”
Wiki grinned, and then said, “I wondered where my father was berthed.”
“Living with Sir Patrick Palgrave until the Osprey is back on her keel. I offered him a bed on the Swallow, but he didn’t want to offend an old friend.”
Wiki looked at the Osprey again. “Tell me about running afoul of her.”
“He ran afoul of me, remember,” Rochester reminded him, and then described the incident with drama and flourish. “I doubt it would have happened with you at the helm,” he admitted at the end.
Or if he’d had a more experienced first officer, Wiki thought silently, but merely said, “It sounds as if it happened too fast to do much. What amazes me,” he added, “is that you recognized my father.”
“There’s quite a resemblance, you know.”
“Good God!”
“He was flattered.”
“And I am, too.”
“You are?” George looked surprised.
“Of course,” Wiki said complacently. “My father is a handsome man.”