The Dark Canoe

by Scott O'Dell

  “’Twas here the Amy Foster went aground,” Caleb said as we neared the strait. “We should take soundings by the lead. No time for that, alas. Thou at the main brace, whoever thou art, look sharp. Aye, struck down. We shall not be caught again.”

  The moon was hidden behind a sheath of pearly clouds. The Strait of Rehusa loomed hard off our starboard bow, its winding waters checkered black and gray from the moon’s slanting light.

  “No, not again,” my brother said and spun the wheel to port. “She handles well, yet not so quick as the Amy. A little sluggish in that respect, but mayhap she knows her way to sea.” He held the wheel with one hand and cupped the other to shout aloft, “Mind the fore-topmast staysail!”

  Watching him, I could see despite the dangers which lay before us, both in the narrow strait and from the approaching storm, that he found this hour greatly to his liking. Long months had passed since he had stood at a ship’s wheel or given a command, often doubting that he ever would captain a ship again. The glow of the binnacle lamp showed his face set and grim, as it had been since that far day in Nantucket, indeed, since first I remembered him.

  Alert bore down the winding channel of Rehusa. She swung to port and then firm on a starboard tack, cleared the threatening shallows.

  “She hath eyes,” Caleb said.

  But he spoke, I felt, more out of pride in himself than for the ship.

  As we left Rehusa Strait and faced the first long waves of the open sea, my brother motioned me forward and put the wheel in my hands.

  “Set thy feet square,” he said. “Hold fast, ’tis a runaway chariot, pulled by a hundred rearing horses, thou guide now. Keep one eye upon the compass. The course reads westward—one eye upon the sails’ set. Thy third eye keep upon the wind.”

  “I’d rather steer another time,” I said, taking the wheel.

  “The time is now,” Caleb said. “Fair weather teacheth little. Thy father, rest his soul, was helmsman when bare seventeen, a captain at twenty-two. Aye, and his father before him. Stiffen thy knees whilst I go forward to cast a glance along the deck. ’Tis a tight ship we shall need ere morning dawns.” Suddenly I was alone with the heavy wheel. I glanced at the compass resting in its pool of yellow light. The needle showed true west. I glanced at the sails, taut as if made of iron. I felt the living movement of the ship beneath my feet, as she lifted high and hung there a moment and ran down a long, long wave, and then slowly, slowly rose to meet another. I listened to the wind in the rigging and it was a different sound to me now than ever before. The salt spray that stung my face tasted different also. And when in a short time Caleb came to take the wheel, I handed it over reluctantly.

  At three that morning, while the ship sped westward and the coast of Baja California lay safely astern, the chubasco struck. It drove us north for the rest of the day, our decks awash, and then through the night toward the east.

  We huddled below the quarterdeck, crawling on hands and knees when we needed to move, all of us save Caleb, our captain. He stood at the wheel, lashed to it by a stout rope. Twice I crawled to him with a mug of water, which he drank, but he refused food. And as the second day dawned, with the fierce wind giving way to squalls of lightning and thunderous rain, he stood there still. His body bound to the wheel, his eyes never closing, he was like a lightning rod that draws off the storm’s fury. He saved us all.

  At noon or thereabouts the chubasco died away. The sails were set and we wore around and headed back for Magdalena. When we were through Rehusa Strait, Caleb called me aft.

  “Take the storm-tossed ship,” he said, “and bring her nigh the buoy which marks the Amy Foster. Aye, the buoy still floats there.” He handed over the wheel. “Thou hast seen, Nathan, how she was lost, that fine ship, and how she might have lived had our brother Jeremy hearkened to my words.”

  12

  There was no sign that a fierce chubasco had struck Magdalena. As the anchor went down and I lashed the wheel and looked around, everything was the same as I had seen it two short days before. The bay swept northward in a long, unbroken curve. To the east the endless marshes and their winding inlets lay unchanged under the hot sun. Nearer at hand, small waves wandered up the beach and beyond stood the mangroves, seemingly untouched.

  But as I looked closer, hoping the chest had ridden out the storm, I saw something that made me jump. Against the rocks at the north end of the cove, strewn with kelp and pieces of brush, was a pile of splintered wood. For a while I stopped breathing; I then saw that a section of the wood was painted white and was marked in red with the two letters of a name. It was a boat from the Alert, the one Troll had taken.

  In a moment, from a deep cave near the head of the cove, Troll appeared. He walked down the beach to the edge of the water and stood there, shading his eyes against the sun, staring out at the ship. I don’t know who went over to pick him up or when, but I do know that he was there for supper, sitting by himself at the table near the galley door, and in the foulest of tempers.

  Nor had his temper changed when we went out at dawn to dive again. He seated himself in the launch without a word, his shoulders hunched around his ears. When he did speak it was with a bite to his words.

  My brother glanced at him now and again, and after an especially sharp command, which Troll shouted at Old Man Judd, cleared his throat. It is possible that he just remembered that the ship had sailed off and left Troll behind, alone on the island.

  “Pouting art thou,” he said. “For whatever reason? Oh yes, because we went to sea and saved thy ship. Whilst thou lived snugly upon the shore. What, tell me, wert thou about when the wind came and we needed thee aboard?”

  Troll’s ears grew red and he began biting his lips.

  “What, tell me, wert thou about there on the shore,” Caleb went on, “when we needed thee aboard? Stretching thy legs? Gathering seashells? Snooping out trouble? Whichever it was, Mr. Troll, henceforth give thy attention to the ship. Recall that this is the season of storms.”

  Afterward, Troll left off his shouting and for the rest of the day seemed in a better mood, at times, when my brother was around, even lighthearted. But at supper he left his food untouched and went above to pace the deck.

  Judd and I decided that it was not wise to go to the cove that night, with Troll prowling up and down, on the watch for whatever we might do. There was a chance that he had found the chest. We agreed, however, that I should tell Caleb about it once more and ask his advice, which I did without delay.

  “Thou think it a Spanish chest,” Caleb said. I had found him again at the door of his cabin, looking across the water at the place where the Amy Foster lay. “Three paces in length and half as wide? Large for a chest, I’d say. Did thou tell me it hath the look of a canoe?”

  “Yes, sometimes.”

  “Sometimes? When would that be? When thou has smelt a rum cork, mayhap.”

  “In certain lights,” I said, “it looks like a canoe and in other lights like a chest.”

  “Hast seen it by light of day?”

  “Yes.”

  “What doth it resemble then, chest or canoe?”

  “Neither one, exactly. In the daylight it looks like a coffin.”

  “What dost thou say? A coffin?”

  “Like Grandfather Caleb was buried in, the one with the big brass handles.”

  “Brass handles? A coffin? Thou must be joking, Nathan.”

  “It doesn’t have brass handles,” I said, “at least none I’ve seen. Also it looks like a canoe. I think it’s a chest.”

  “Chest, canoe, coffin. Thou hast a choice there. Cradle to grave, aye, a wondrous choice.”

  “It has a lid, with long, square nails in it. More than a hundred.”

  “Then canst not be a canoe. Hast thou seen a lidded canoe, ever? No, nor I in all my worldly wanderings. ’Tis a monstrous thought, a lidded canoe, though the Esquimox hath one
decked o’er save for a small hole wherein they sit.”

  Caleb paused, looking aloft where the tall spars swung to the tide and the waning moon wheeled westward. He ran a finger through his beard.

  “Yet I do recall something from the book,” he said. “Aye, it comes clearly now. ’Tis there on the hundredth page, more or less. Hast thou met a canoe in the book? Hast read this far?”

  “Yes, beyond a chapter called ‘The Doubloon.’”

  “Doubloon! Aye, ’tis a thing I remember.” I likewise remembered it, for as I had read the scene where Captain Ahab nails the gold doubloon upon the mast there flashed before my eyes the time when Caleb had nailed the golden coins the Indians had given us. In my mind, the two scenes had become one—the three coins and the two strange men.

  “But our thoughts fly afield,” he said. “Back to the canoe. There’s a fanciful part thou will soon overtake. Queequeg, the painted savage, thou hast met already, since he comes early. Thou wilt recall that this Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, ‘an island far away to the West and South,’ and that he was the son of a king on his father’s side and of unconquerable warriors on his mother’s. Dost follow?”

  “I remember Queequeg well.”

  “And thou wilt remember likewise that far along in the book, in chapter one hundred and ten, Queequeg is taken by a chill, which brought him to the very threshold. Whereupon they placed him in a hammock to die. But swinging there, while the rolling sea rocked him, he made a most curious request. Dost recall poor Queequeg’ s last request?”

  “He asked them to build a coffin and put him in it, which they…”

  “No, thou scamp things badly,” my brother broke in. “It follows a fuller course. ‘He called one of the crew to him and taking his hand, said that while in Nantucket he had chanced to see certain little canoes of dark wood, like the rich war-wood of his native isle, and upon inquiry, he had learned that all whalemen who died in Nantucket, were laid in those same dark canoes, and that the fancy of being so laid had much pleased him, for it was not unlike the custom of his own race, who, after embalming a dead warrior, stretched him out in his canoe, and so left him to be floated away to the starry archipelagoes.’”

  “I remember.”

  “Aye, ’tis memorable. But tell me, hath the wood of this canoe-chest-coffin a darkish cast? Dost it remind thee somewhat of old, heathenish lumber hewn from aboriginal groves?”

  “Whether it has a heathenish cast, I don’t know. But it is a dark wood, almost black and very hard.”

  “Black it is and hard? Aye, it wouldst so appear, after countless suns have scorched it and seas tumbled it about, pickling it in brine.”

  My brother said no more and fell into a deep silence from which I made no effort to arouse him. I must confess that standing there as the moon cast shadows upon the deck and upon his white face, and the waves lapped softly at the ship, with a sound like that of people talking far away, I felt a cold hand upon my spine. And afterward while I lay reading in my bunk, the pages blurred and I could see only Caleb and not Ahab, and hear him talk, using words from the book I held before me.

  13

  We awakened to a cloudless sky and a breeze that drifted in from the west. Blue dolphins played around the ship. A flight of pelicans skimmed the bay, searching for small fish. Sea hawks searched the waters, too, and along the shore great turtles sunned themselves.

  “A pretty day,” Captain Troll said at breakfast, “the finest I’ve seen since we sailed to Magdalena.”

  Everyone agreed, glad to be alive, I suppose, after the storm, and thinking, no doubt, of the barrels of precious ambergris that still lay in the hold of the Amy Foster.

  The Indians had survived the chubasco and sat waiting for us in their three canoes, beside the marker. To show good will, Caleb allowed the little chief to take a short turn at the pump. The chief appeared to be thankful for this gift, although the work was hard and each time the heavy handle rose he rose with it and dangled in the air. He seemed happier, however, with the wheezing, whumping noises than with anything else. Caleb had been down for about five minutes when I noticed something that made my blood run cold. I had pushed on my end of the handle and the chief, clinging to his end, was in the air, a foot or so above the deck of the platform. As he came down, the breeze lifted his long hair and blew it from his face. I caught a glimpse of a bright gold ring fastened to his ear. I saw the ring for only an instant, but the band was broad and set with a large, green stone. It was the ring that had belonged to my brother Jeremy.

  Saying nothing to the chief, I called Old Man Judd to help at the pump and when the chief had crawled back into his canoe, told him what I had seen.

  Judd went on pumping for a time. “We’d better wait until Caleb’s here,” he said at last. “If we start a fight, there’s no telling what will happen. The air hose might get fouled or the pump pushed overboard.”

  Caleb came to the surface at midmorning and as soon as he was out of his diving helmet, I told him about the ring. He took the news calmly.

  “’Tis ten of us against twenty of the savages,” he said. “A poor bargain, they being armed with spears and heathenish arrows and we with nothing. Let’s wait the morning. We’ll meet them then with a brace of pistols.”

  “What if they disappear?” I said.

  “Small chance of this,” Caleb said, “while still there’s treasure to be found. Aye, I recall the ring. ’Tis made of Inca gold and green turquoise mined by Aztecs. We shalt have it back.”

  We bolted on Caleb’s helmet and he was ready to dive when a school of killer whales swam in. They came to prey upon the seals that were frolicking around our boats, watching us with their beautiful eyes as if there only to keep us company.

  These mammoth black and white fish are shaped like fat torpedoes and weigh almost a ton, but they swim with great speed and slash about, using their teeth like razors. Their first rush drove the playful seals together, much as a herder herds his flock of sheep. With the gnashing of a thousand teeth, the killers set about the slaughter. As they left, the sharks sneaked in and began to cruise around, scavenging all that remained. Caleb, therefore, decided to quit for the day and sent all of the crew back to the ship, except Captain Troll, Judd, and me.

  “Hast seen the chest-coffin-canoe?” he said to Troll.

  It was plain that Captain Troll had not, for his ears grew red and he began to stammer.

  “Then thou hast no idea which canst be,” my brother said, “canoe, coffin, chest?”

  “I haven’t seen anything,” Troll said.

  “Thou shalt see it now,” my uncle said, “and tell truthfully what thou seest to the crew, lest they fear that we cheat them of something.”

  With proper tools, an ax, two chisels, and a prying bar, we rowed ashore and made our way into the mangroves. The storm had scattered the brush that Judd and I had placed atop the chest, but the chest itself had not moved from its resting place in the deep mud.

  At the first sight of it, Caleb drew in his breath, then took a step forward and placed a hand upon the smooth dark lid.

  “Aye, as I thought,” he said, “a heathenish color, war-wood hewn from the aboriginal groves of the Lackaday islands.” He stepped back and passed a hand across his forehead. “But let’s move it from this dismal place and set it rightly in the sun where we canst scan it better.”

  We pushed the heavy chest out of the mangroves and guided it through the water and shoved it up the beach. Judd and I set to work at once and chipped away at the barnacles, while Caleb walked around the chest and surveyed it from every side, talking to himself as he did so.

  For most of an hour the old man and I worked, while Troll stood aside and Caleb paced, never stopping, never speaking save to hurry us on. At last, all sides being cleaned, as we started chipping at the bottom, Caleb said, “Leave the bottom be. These barnacles shall serve for ballast and keel t
o guide it straight upon a future voyage.”

  Whereupon he took up the prying bar and set to work upon the lid. He was as gentle as the old man had been, but still impatient.

  “That gray builder of yore,” he said, “set many a nail and deep. Yet ’tis good that he did, else it would not have lived through heaven’s many storms, come sailing into us as fit a ship as poor Ishmael mounted when on that day the black bubble burst.”

  Having read the last page of Moby-Dick: or, The Whale, I understood my brother’s words and why he had spoken them. Captain Troll did not, for he glanced at me and squinted his eyes in a knowing way.

  The last nail came loose. Caleb grasped the lid and slowly raised it. The lid was heavy and taxed his strength, but he did not swing it aside nor let it fall. For a moment he stood cradling it in his arms, peering over it, down into the chest. Then he set the lid gently on the sand and came back and peered again into the chest, which, so far as I could see, was empty. Troll snickered; Judd and I were silent.

  Caleb reached down and drew forth from the chest a shriveled sea biscuit from among many that were ranged inside. Then he lifted out a large flask, which was sealed with wax, filled with a quantity of brackish water. He held both up for us to see, the square biscuit and the flask.

  “Aye, the Canoe,” he cried triumphantly, “the Dark Canoe. ’Tis as oft I’ve pictured it. As Queequeg ordered it built to send him safely to heaven’s archipelagoes. As the old gray carpenter built it, of coffin-colored wood.”

  Silently Judd and I looked at each other, while Troll turned his head away and grinned.

  Caleb put back the flask and biscuit, and taking up the lid, carefully placed it upon the chest.

  “I’ll make a further test, though none be needed,” he said, running his hand along the lid’s top edge. “Aye, ’tis certain proof. Come ye, feel the holes where the thirty Turk’s heads were hung.”