Across the Endless River (10 page)

“That's England!” one of the woman passengers cried, her relief and delight apparent in her broad smile.
So it is,
Baptiste thought. To the left rather than to the right, where France, their destination, lay. His disappointment was intense, but his spirits were lifted when he asked a bosun's mate for particulars.

“We're well into the Channel, sir. We'll make the entrance to Le Havre by this evening. Then we can dock and unload tomorrow morning if she doesn't come on to blow.” He hurried to the bow as he offered this last piece of news, then scrambled up the rigging like a treed raccoon and was gone. Baptiste marveled at how these youngsters, five or six years younger than him, climbed up, down, and around the constantly moving masts and sails with no more concern than if they were walking up a flight of stairs.

The knowledge that they were now so close made it worse to have to remain on board another night, and the idea that a storm might keep them on the ship even longer was unbearable. He moved to the opposite rail and, gripping one of the lengths of taught hemp rigging, stared at the clouds and the sea, willing the coast of France to appear on the steadily brightening horizon. He desperately wanted to leave this ship and stand on land again.

He had imagined the voyage would be like a long canoe trip on the widest part of the Mississippi, but it was nothing like that. When the river had threatened and shouted danger, as it often did, his reaction had been direct and immediate: he had paddled furiously to avoid swirling tree trunks, he had leaned and pushed and back-paddled to make his way through rapids and boils, he had peered anxiously into the roiling water to discern rocks and sand and sunken logs that could tear the bottom out of a canoe.

On the ship, though, the water was a great abstraction from which you took refuge when a tempest howled. Unlike any river he knew, there loomed no distant bank to make for if lightning suddenly lit the sky, no sheltering inlet or quiet cove where canoes could be hurriedly beached and protection sought in the rocky overhang of the shore. No, in those times the ocean became a wild horse that had to be ridden for hours or days at a time, and the only ones who could do anything to affect the outcome were the captain and his crew. Occasionally manning the pumps with the crew when water flooded the hold at a furious rate proved an unsatisfying way to help, removed from sight of the immediate danger. Baptiste could not even glimpse the battle.

He had seen them come in from the deck, wild-eyed, gasping for air, and streaming with seawater, as if they had been wrestling a band of watery demons. Sometimes he saw in the eyes of a crew member a look that hovered between pity and contempt.
We're out in it,
it seemed to say,
and all you can do is hole up in here and wait.
Baptiste had found this arrangement profoundly disquieting. He was not used to being helpless.

A Pawnee chief who had been to England and back in earlier years described the ocean to William Clark when Baptiste had been in the Council Room. A sense of awe and wonder lit his features as he summed it up for his listeners as “the endless river.” It was, Baptiste now understood, an apt description.

“Good day to you, Baptiste. Have you turned your back on England so soon?”

“Good morning, sir. I am not facing away from England, but toward France.”

Paul laughed and approached the rail to stand beside him. He wore one of his gray broadcloth coats with a black velvet collar, a dark green wool waistcoat, and a broad black silk tie. His spotless white dress shirt must have been one of the last of the stock Schlape had had laundered before they set out from New Orleans. The effect was regal. By the shirt alone, Paul could lay claim to a higher station than everyone else on board. Even the captain, the uncontested master of the ship and every crew member and passenger, could not produce a perfectly clean shirt. People were impressed or intimidated by him, but they were seldom surprised to discover that he was Duke Paul of Württemberg, a member of a reigning royal family. Everything about him said
nobleman.

“You shall soon enough lay eyes on the Continent.”

“I want to lay my feet on the Continent,” Baptiste responded. Paul smiled; he was as excited as Baptiste to be showing him a new world. Their anticipation was palpable, and added to their companionship a new level of understanding, one for the other.

N
INE

D
UKE
P
AUL, FROM HIS PRIVATE JOURNAL
F
EBRUARY 13, 1824
A
BOARD THE
S
MYRNA

The pilot is on board, and we shall enter Le Havre harbor tomorrow morning. It occurs to me that I should keep a record of Baptiste's progress—for progress I assume there will be—during his time in Europe. I am wary of treating him as an experiment for he is no animal any more than I am a gamekeeper. But the improbability of his circumstances continues to fascinate me, as it has since the day I first met him. Now that we are about to arrive, I find myself wondering what he will see in a world that is so familiar to me and so utterly new to him. We will talk about his impressions, of course, and he can be quite forthcoming and original in his observations, as when he told me that what he calls his “spirit bird” had brought him a vision of the ship as a fallen branch with its leaves still attached, blown before the wind on a limitless river. When I asked about the spirit bird, though, he simply told me that it was his spirit but refused to explain or describe how he acquired it (or it him?), under what circumstances it brings him visions, or any of the other questions that to me seemed pressing.

There is a part of him that is like any young man embarked on an adventure. When Baptiste saw his first whale close by the ship, blowing a spout fully thirty feet into the air, he jumped about like a demon possessed: delight and excitement brimmed out of him with such abandon that I thought he would fall into the sea for his wonder. When we talked about it later, he said with a voice full of awe, “I've been in a whale before, but this is the first time I've seen one alive.” What to make of such enigmatic pronouncements? Perhaps it is his “spirit bird” business, or a nuance of English usage that has escaped me. Fortunately, Baptiste has made the acquaintance of several of the crew members, young men of his age, who can answer his many questions and explain the workings of a sailing ship, and this occupies much of his time.

But there is another, more reserved side to his person that is without the exuberance of youth. He does not enjoy the company of strangers, I have noticed, especially when he is expected to engage in the general conversation. Coming down the Mississippi, and in New Orleans itself, our dealings were very rarely with more than one or two others at a time, and then only for limited periods. This suited him. It occurs to me that New Orleans was surely his first contact with the frenzy of commerce typical of a port city. Everywhere it was apparent that slavery makes the wheels turn, and I wonder if Baptiste saw a vision of what St. Louis might soon become. For a while yet, the upper river is protected by its wildness, its danger, and its inaccessibility, but that can only change. In the face of so much that was new, it is small wonder that Baptiste was quiet and aloof as we made our preparations to embark.

Aboard ship, however, there is no escaping one's fellow passengers, and when the twelve of us gathered for meals with the captain and his two officers, the effect on Baptiste was noticeable. He can be civil, even quite talkative, when the matter is between him and his neighbor and involves a subject of interest to him, such as the way in which various animals manage to fool the eye and disappear in their surroundings, or the clothing and adornments of the several Indian tribes he has come to know. However, when the talk becomes purely social and the entire table is attentive, he withdraws altogether from the discussion.

At the beginning of our passage, he was pressed by a foolish lady missionary from England with a commanding manner that masquerades as concern. “How have you come to be traveling in the company of Duke Paul, young man?” she asked in a tone that made the cabin quiet. Baptiste looked at her evenly and replied, “It is a complicated set of circumstances. You would have to ask the Duke, I suppose, if the specifics matter to you.” A neat dodge, and an effective one, too. The chirpy Christian lady was left with her mouth hanging open. She looked at me hesitantly, ready to begin her investigation again, I think, when I assured her most jovially that the details were unremarkable, merely that Baptiste and I had many friends in common. She didn't dare pursue. There are, most certainly, advantages to being a duke in such situations.

Baptiste, by contrast, was defenseless or, rather, unwilling to attempt any defense other than evasion or downright flight. He has taken to climbing the masts with some of his friends from the crew, planting himself in the crosstrees and gazing upon the wide ocean for hours at a time, safe from the probing questions and relentless small talk he so despises. When I mentioned it to him as a necessary evil of social life among most peoples, he protested that such “busy talk,” as he calls it, is an affliction he cannot countenance. “It's only when people don't really want to know you that they ask about your circumstances.” He has a point, and the demands of a garrulous society are also burdensome to me.

But what will Baptiste make of the salons of Paris or—far more taxing—court life in Württemberg? If I am to avoid regarding him as an experiment, I must give what advice I can and then step back and allow him to act for himself.

T
EN

F
EBRUARY 1824

T
hey docked at Le Havre early the next afternoon. After the French customs officials came aboard to collect documents, the passengers were directed to the low limestone building marked
DOUANES
at the center of the wide basin where several of the extended piers converged. Paul stayed behind at the
Smyrna,
concerned for the unloading of his boxes, and promised to catch up with Baptiste during the customs formalities. As Baptiste followed the others, he felt as if had swallowed several measures of Captain Clark's best brandy: his knees were unsteady and his head spun.

The ship that had seemed so substantial when first he went aboard in New Orleans now looked small compared to the other ships that filled the basin. Some were tied up two and three deep at the piers, while the largest ones lay moored in the placid open water, protected by stone jetties, their bows and sterns secured by anchor lines. Most were sailing vessels—schooners, brigs, ketches, even two French ships-ofthe-line. Baptiste also noticed a number of steam-powered vessels; several crisscrossed the wide part of the enclosed port between the anchorages, towing barges and ferrying crews from one side to the other. The low reports of their engines echoed over the water like a hammering while their narrow funnels spewed forth gray and black smoke in profusion. One of the
Smyrna'
s crew members told him that such ships were beginning to cross the Atlantic and were the likely mode of future conveyance. The musky smell of burned coal reached him as it wafted across the harbor in the light breeze and mingled with the strange odor of the city that lay before him.

The light streaming through the clerestory of the customs house was a relief. For two months he had known only the cramped interior when he was not on deck, but here was a spacious and light-filled structure whose proportions were majestic after the ship's narrow cabins and companionways. The floor was made of huge slabs of dark stone, and the bustle at the far end of the hall echoed against the high ceiling, fully thirty feet above.

He found two lines of people waiting for the inspectors, one for the passengers from the
Smyrna
and the other, he learned, for passengers who had just disembarked from a large sloop from Cork. An air of agitation surrounded the others as they talked animatedly among themselves. At first he did not recognize the language in which they were conversing, but as he drew closer he picked out words and phrases that told him it was indeed English, in an accent he initially found hard to understand.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, too! The waves as high as a church steeple, and none of God's mercy shining down from the black!” a florid-faced man said as he gesticulated wildly to his neighbors, his face a study in mock horror that called for agreement, or at least understanding, from anyone standing nearby. Several nodded their assent and voiced their own disbelief and indignation at the ordeal they had been through.

“God and Mary in heaven, you can say what you like, but I'd sooner hurl myself from the mountaintop than set foot in anything that floats! Never, by St. Brigid's wimple, I say,
never
again!”

The woman who spoke had a piercing voice and a commanding presence. Her voice rose and fell in dramatic inflections, as if her rich contralto might break into a song of lamentation. She was swathed in layers of black, a complication of rich draped cloth, topped by an enormous bonnet lined in white tulle and encased in the hood of her voluminous cape. The lack of color in her clothing was relieved by the billowy red hair that filled the hood and by her lively blue eyes, clear as cornflowers, which shone in a face that was very white. Her massive headgear obliged her to move her entire head and shoulders in fluid sweeps from side to side in order to convey the relief and amusement that animated her performance. For it was indeed a performance, a ritual cleansing of her fear now that the danger had passed and she stood upon land once again. She reminded Baptiste of the Mandan shaman in his towering buffalo headdress.