by Scott O'Dell
“‘September twenty-first,’” he read. “‘The southern storm approacheth. Do not be caught in Magdalena. Take the ship to sea. Heed thou my command, Jeremy, take the ship to sea. Thou shalt…’”
The sentence ended abruptly. The last word was scrawled across the page as if at that instant Caleb had dropped the pen.
“‘Thou shalt,’” Caleb said, slowly repeating the final words. “’Tis unfinished. Yet enough. Whilst the fever raged, still did I give the command. Aye, ’tis plain, ’tis plain that I did give it.”
Caleb set the lantern back on its hook and gazed down at me. I waited for him to say a word or give some sign of rejoicing. He had come five thousand leagues and searched for weeks to learn if he had given this command or if instead he had only dreamed it. On that morning in Nantucket, saying not a word as they stripped him of his captain’s license, he did not know. But now at last the log sat there on the table for all to see.
I waited. The cabin was quiet, save for the big white cat who lay purring on a pile of books, and the creaking of timbers as the ship rose and fell to the movement of the tide. Silently Caleb looked down at me. Perhaps he felt that his long search had been for nothing, now that Jeremy was dead. Perhaps this was the same sad moment for him, despite the years of hatred between them, that it was for me.
17
There was no answer when I knocked on Caleb’s door early the next morning. But Sapphire was crying for food, so I went in and fed him part of my brother’s breakfast.
The lantern had burned through the night, and having guttered low, was filling the cabin with streamers of gray smoke. I turned it off and set it aside to take below. On the chart lay the lumpish pages of the log, now bound together with a piece of heavy twine. Caleb was asleep, lying on his bunk fully clothed, as if he had fallen there in a moment of deep exhaustion.
I gave Sapphire the rest of Caleb’s breakfast to keep him quiet and picked up the lantern. As I tiptoed to the door and glanced back to see if the sounds had awakened my brother, I was struck by something I had not noticed before.
Summers in Nantucket when the family went to the shore to swim, Caleb never came along. And aboard ship at times when everyone dove from the deck or rowed ashore to swim, he stayed in his cabin. For that reason I had never until this moment seen the twisted leg he hobbled around on. Now, as he lay sprawled across the bunk with one trouser leg pulled up, the long, twisting wound was exposed.
I closed the door quietly behind me, feeling that I had seen something I should not have seen. And yet, as I walked down the deck trying to blot it from my mind, the scene in the cabin persisted. I then realized that I wanted it to, that for the first time in my life I had seen my brother whole. Always before he had been an object to fear and to pity, but never someone, a human being, who could be liked and perhaps loved.
The news I brought to the forecastle was a surprise. When I told Captain Troll and the crew that Caleb was asleep, everyone began to grumble. Troll paused with a spoon of mush halfway to his mouth.
“Asleep,” he said, “with all that ambergris waiting out there?”
“Winter’s coming,” Blanton put in. “You can’t dive with the wind blowing fits and waves running.”
Troll shoved the mush into his mouth. “Asleep,” he said. “Clegg’s asleep!”
I went into the galley and got my breakfast and brought it back to the table.
“Caleb Clegg’s asleep,” I said, “because he’s tired. For a month now he’s been the first on deck in the morning and the last to go to bed. He found the ambergris. You have two casks of it. Another morning or even another day won’t make any difference to any of you.”
Troll jabbed the table with his spoon. He puckered his smooth, pink face and was about to say something in reply when Tom Waite walked in.
“Nathan’s right,” he said. “Let Caleb sleep if he wants to.”
Tom went up the ladderway, motioning us to follow, and we manned the launches and rowed over to the Amy Foster. It was hard work getting Tom into the diving suit because his arm still pained him. But once the helmet was bolted on, he slipped over the side and sank with a wave of his hand, graceful as a frisking dolphin.
An hour or more passed while the pump wheezed and rattled, sending air into the depths, and Tom’s breaths came floating back to us in a chain of bright bubbles. Then the first signal came on the line, but not for the grapple hook. It was a signal to pull Tom in.
“What’s down there?” Troll asked, trying to speak calmly, as soon as Tom’s helmet was off. “How much ambergris? Ten casks? Twenty? Sit down. That’s it, take your time and get a good breath. What’s your guess? Twenty-five casks?”
After a while Tom got to his feet, took a deep breath, and glanced down at the wavering outlines of the sunken ship.
“Thirty?” Troll said.
“Nothing,” Tom answered. “I didn’t find one cask of ambergris. And the sperm oil is beginning to float. Every cask I saw was breached.”
Troll took off his square-crowned hat and mopped his brow. He stared at Tom.
“Breached?” he said. “You saw no ambergris?”
Tom nodded. “If there’s ambergris down there, it’s hidden deep. We’d have to haul every barrel to find it. And there’s not enough good oil to fill a lamp.”
Troll glared down into the water. “Things are becoming clear,” he said, his voice rising to an angry whine. “Little wonder that Clegg’s asleep.”
Taking a quick step forward, he gave the helmet a swipe with his foot, then a kick that sent it tumbling overboard. He watched the helmet slide away from the launch and sink. Again he wiped his brow.
“Man the boats,” he shouted. “We’re finished with the Amy Foster.”
18
The ship was quiet the rest of the morning. Troll sent off three men to fill the water casks and three to hunt geese in the marshes. The rest of us he ordered into the rigging with tar pail and brush. Troll gave no reasons, but it seemed that he was getting the ship ready to sail.
About noon Caleb appeared in the galley and asked for a cup of coffee. A short time later, Captain Troll came down the ladder. You could never be sure how Troll felt, except that when he was in one of his bad moods a thin smile often lurked around the corners of his mouth. The smile was there as he spoke to my brother.
“I guess we’ll be sailing anytime,” he said, “now that we’ve found all the ambergris.”
Caleb looked at Troll over the rim of his cup. “How dost thou know that all hath been found?”
“While you were asleep this morning,” Troll replied, “Tom Waite made a long dive. That’s how I know, Mr. Clegg.”
Caleb finished his coffee and put his cup on the table. “Tom is a fine diver, whilst I am poor,” he said. “Thou canst trust him about all things that lie beneath the sea.”
Troll for a moment seemed to be taken aback by my brother’s willingness to believe Tom Waite. The thin smile around his mouth grew thinner.
“Tom also reported that the barrels are breached,” Troll said. “Oil is leaking everywhere.”
“Yes, I have noted this,” Caleb said. “On my last dive. ’Tis a bad sign, yet some good oil must remain.”
“If any does,” Troll answered quickly, “it will take a month to haul it out, Tom tells me.”
“Aye, a month, yet canst be done if all turn a hand,” Caleb said. “Dost wish to search or sail? ’Tis for thee to choose.”
Captain Troll walked to the ladderway, glanced above at the hot sky, came back, and thrust his feet apart.
“I choose to sail,” he said. “I’ve already sent men for supplies. We can sail before nightfall.”
“Nightfall?” said Caleb. “’Tis too soon, Mr. Troll. There are certain things that must be done ere we sail.”
“Well, let’s do them,” Troll said.
“No, ’tis so
mething thou canst not do. Thou hast a practical turn of mind, Mr. Troll. What’s needed here is the impractical. More the flighty sort, so to speak, that sees the bone beneath the flesh, the star behind the cloud.”
Troll glanced at me as if he thought I would know what Caleb was talking about. Disappointed, he came to a decision. At least he set his hat squarely upon his head, walked with measured steps to the ladderway, and disappeared above.
I should have known what Caleb meant to do. Since the log had been found and he had little interest in trying to recover Jeremy’s body, there really was only one project left for him. But I did not know until he sent me flying off to fetch Old Man Judd that he meant to do something with his canoe.
“Gather thy best tools,” he told the old man, “and thy sharpest nails. No bent ones, mind thee, none drawn hastily from common wood for we undertake a most uncommon task. Likewise gather a goodly length of oakum and a brimming pot of pitch for we shalt require them.”
Judd did as he was told and within the hour we set out for the cove. The canoe was where we had left it, high above the tide, its odd-shaped lid, the packet of sea biscuits, and flask of water lying nearby.
With his hands clasped at his back and his head cocked to one side, Caleb strolled around the canoe—stalked is perhaps the better word—studying it from all angles, saying to himself, “Aye, ’tis the dark canoe, which comforted Queequeg as he lay upon the brink and in time bore good Ishmael safely homeward. Aye, ’tis the one, the one.”
Not until he had made a dozen circuits of the canoe did he turn to Judd. “Now where wouldst thou begin?” he asked. “Not from the beginning for it hath already a shape given by a master hand, proven seaworthy by the years and circumstance. What say about this, Judd?”
Thinking no doubt of Nantucket, Judd was for nailing the lid on at once.
Caleb looked askance, shook his shaggy head. “Nay, thy haste confounds me. Back the mainsail and plot a different course. Toward the north, Judd, the true, polar north.”
“What?” said Judd. “What do you aim to do with it?”
“Hast thou not been told already?” Caleb said, as though to a half-bright child. “To sail, Judd, upon the sea, the sea that lies beyond yon headland. This first. Then upon the airier seas that foam and swirl within the mind.”
“Well,” said Judd, “if such is the case we best had smooth her down a bit.”
“Aye, use a cautious hand. There’s only one of this. Thou canst not make another should you try from now into eternity. Take care. Thinkest twice before thou unloose thy skills.”
With a slight shrug, Judd thought for a while. Then of a sudden, somehow caught up in the spirit of the task, he set to work. He worked slowly, as he had before when together we had removed the lid, filled the nail holes with putty, and planed all edges satin-smooth.
“Canst tie a Turk’s head,” Caleb asked while we were rowing back to the ship at sundown, “the size to fit a grasping hand?”
“No,” I said, “but I can tie a bowline.”
“A good knot, but ’tis cumbersome to the eye. Judd, canst thou tie the Turk’s head? Aye, so I thought. Thou hast tied many in thy day. Then have for me in the morning early fifteen such knots. I myself shalt tie the rest. Nathan here can lend a hand. Tom Waite also. And mind ye, line of the best quality, an arm in length, the bitter end worked with pitch, the other in a fulsome Turk’s head.”
19
After supper Judd collected materials for Caleb’s thirty knots and I persuaded Tom Waite to help with the tying. The three of us took ourselves to the far stern of the ship, where we would not have to listen to the jibes of the crew, and set to work by the glow of a small lantern and a waning moon. Tom and the old man wove the intricate knots, while I cut the line to the length Caleb had demanded and bound the loose ends with stout linen thread.
We were still working away when the ship’s three clocks struck midnight. From time to time during the past hour, I had caught glimpses of Captain Troll pacing the foredeck, pausing to look over the side at the star-flecked water, or from the shadows to cast an eye in our direction.
At the sound of the bells he came sauntering aft.
The night was hot and he stopped for a drink at the water cask. He climbed the ladder and took up a place outside the circle of our lantern.
“I suppose,” he said, glancing down at the row of finished lines I had laid out on deck, “I suppose all this knot-tying has to do with that thing you fished out of the bay. You’re wasting good hemp, that’s what you’re doing.”
His voice rose as he spoke. My brother’s cabin was just below us and the door was open. I wondered if Troll wasn’t speaking to him instead of to us.
“You’re wasting good time, too,” he went on, “holding up the ship that’s all ready to sail.” He walked over to the binnacle, glanced at the compass as if he were steering the ship at sea, then stood for a moment at the head of the ladder, staring at us. “If you ask me,” he said, “you’re a pack of fools.”
The three of us said nothing and he went down the ladder, softly whistling to himself.
“I don’t know how you feel,” Tom said when Troll was out of earshot, “but I think we are a pack of fools. Who else but a fool would sit here on his haunches for five hours and tie knots. Turk’s heads at that. Why not something simple like a Granny.”
“A Granny wouldn’t look proper,” said Judd, sounding a little like Caleb.
Tom stood up and walked around the binnacle to stretch his legs and sat down again.
“This whole thing puzzles me,” he said. “Why thirty knots. What’s the idea, anyway?”
“That’s how it is in the book,” I explained.
“What book?” Tom asked.
“Moby-Dick: or, The Whale,” I said.
“What’s Moby-Dick got to do with it?”
“Everything,” I said.
Before I could say more, Tom rose without a word and went down the ladderway. For a time I heard him talking to Captain Troll.
“Thirty nails stuck up about half an inch all around the lid,” Judd mused.
“As if something had been fastened to them once,” I said.
“And then rotted away in the sea.”
“Strips of wood could have been nailed to the lid.”
“All the wood wouldn’t have rotted. Some would be left,” the old man said. “The nails must have been fastened down with thirty lengths of Manila line. Manila doesn’t last long in the water.”
The gray fog quietly swept past us, leaving the sky clear and aswarm with stars. In the dim light of our lantern we looked long at each other.
“Does the book say anything more?” the old man asked me at last.
I thought for a while, going back over all that I had read about the dark canoe. “Yes, there was something else,” I said. “After Queequeg decided not to die, he used his coffin for a sea chest and emptied into it his canvas bag of clothes. In his spare time he then carved the lid with all kinds of odd figures. They were copied from the tattoos on his body, which had been put there by a prophet who lived on the island where Queequeg was born. These odd figures gave the complete story of the heavens and the earth and also told how to find the truth about all things. Queequeg made the carvings before Ahab ordered the coffin made into a life buoy, but the carpenter probably left them there when he worked on the lid.”
The old man pulled at his lower lip. “I remember, I remember,” he said in a voice so low I could scarcely hear him. “Strange looking, they were. I took them for the borings of sea worms and planed them out, every one of them. Carvings, you say, made by a prophet?”
“Likely, you’re right, thinking they were made by sea worms.”
The old man slowly shook his head. “No, too regular for worms, now that I think about it. Sort of geometrical. More like drawings, drawings on an Egypt tomb. Hierogl
yphical, so to speak.”
The old man got to his feet and bundled up the lines we had made that night. For a time we stood by the binnacle, looking off toward the cove where small waves left trails of phosphorescence and the dark canoe lay.
“All this is against nature, unnatural, if you ask me,” the old man said. “But strange things go on. Once—it was before you were born—I was sailing through Sundra Strait. A night just like this, with more stars in the sky than fish in the sea. I was at the wheel, thinking we might do with a mite more sail. Of a sudden, right there, right in the middle of the mainsail, I saw a face. It was my mother’s face, but all out of shape as though she was crying and calling out to me. That night was the fourth of August and I recall the hour because I had just gone on watch. Three months later to the day, back in Nantucket, the first news I heard when I stepped ashore was the word that my mother had died. Died on the fourth of August, at the very time of night I stood there at the wheel and saw her face, as plain, Nathan, as I see yours. Yes, strange things do go on about us.”
Listening to the old man’s words, while an unseen tide tugged at the ship and set its timbers to creaking softly, as the great constellations silently wheeled over our heads, I more than half believed him.
20
Caleb finished his share of the Turk’s head knots, toiling at them all night, and around noon the three of us started off for the cove. Captain Troll and the crew watched us leave. Standing at the rail they sent us off with a shower of catcalls and jeers. Tom Waite, who was the only man at work, paused high in the rigging and with his tar brush made a circle in the air, then pointed at his head to let us know that, like Troll, he thought us a pack of fools.
In the light of day with the sun bearing down upon us, Caleb sitting in the stern with his hair wildly blowing in the hot wind, his arms full of Turk’s head knots, I could not blame him much.