Bride of the Baja (3 page)

"One other matter, Mr. Malloy."

"Sir?"

"I don't need your assistance in looking after the welfare of my daughter. Understood?"

"Aye aye, sir."

Malloy spun on his heel and climbed the companion-way. As soon as he reached the deck, he began shouting his orders. Damn him, he thought. Clenching his fists at his side, he directed his fury at the job at hand. I'll show him. Before I'm through, he vowed, Captain Bradford will be able to eat his dinner off the deck of the
Yankee's
hold.

In his cabin Captain Bradford stared after his mate. He'd noted the twitch, of course, as he'd noted it before in times of stress. As he had many times, he asked himself whether Malloy was ready for command, whether he would ever be ready. He was a good mate, worked hard and knew the ways of the sea. And yet Captain Bradford, without knowing precisely why, didn't completely trust the man. The captain shrugged. He was probably finding flaws where none existed.

Samuel Peters died shortly before noon on the following day. After his body was washed and toweled dry, it was sewn into a length of canvas sail to which lead weights had been attached. Alitha, head bowed, stood beside her father while he read the burial service. The seaman, she knew, was only a half-year older than she was. So young to die. She blinked back tears as, with the captain's final "Amen," the earthly remains of Samuel Peters were lifted on a canvas stretcher to the rail and committed to the waiting sea.

Alitha walked to her cabin knowing that the dead man's belongings would now be brought to the mainmast so the bosun, as was the custom, could auction them off to the rest of the
crew. Alitha had opened Peters’ sea chest and listed his effects so her father could make a record in the ship's journal: three shirts, two pairs of trousers, boots, a knife, a pocket watch and a Bible. The man who bought the dead man's clothing, she knew, would not wear them until his next voyage—to do otherwise was to tempt fate.

Five more men died in the next three weeks, the disease striking with lightning suddenness and seemingly at random. Two healthy men would bunk down across from each other and in the morning one would wake to find the other dead. By the end of the fourth week, half the crew had become ill, and even those who recovered—only one in three did—were too weak to climb the shrouds.

As day followed day with no break in the epidemic, Alitha noticed a change in her father. The captain, always a taciturn man, became even more uncommunicative. He stood for long hours on the poop deck staring at the rise and fall of the empty sea, always looking off the port side toward the islands thousands of miles beyond the horizon, the islands of the South Seas where he had sailed as a young man. On other days Nehemiah Bradford took to his cabin, and Alitha wouldn't see him for twelve hours or more at a time.

Nothing favored the
Flying Yankee
except the weather. The ship sped north, the days blue-bright, the nights lit by a thousand stars. They crossed the equator, sailed along the west coast of Mexico, heading for their next port of call, Yerba Buena in San Francisco Bay. From Yerba Buena they would sail westward to the Sandwich Islands.

Where Thomas Heath waited.

Alitha, with most of her waking hours spent in the forecastle nursing the crewmen, rarely thought of Thomas now. When she did, her memory of him seemed faint, almost dreamlike, as though he belonged to another time, to another Alitha—a younger Alitha who intended to marry a man she scarcely knew.

Strangely, her thoughts turned more and more to the captain of the
Kerry Dancer
, Jordan Quinn. She could no longer recall exactly what he looked like. Was he tall? Did his black hair curl? Had he smiled when he saluted her? She thought his eyes must be blue.

Alitha shook her head. Forget Jordan Quinn, she told herself. As for Thomas, there'd be time enough for Thomas and marriage when this voyage, so well begun and now so ill-fated, was over. She poured brandy into a glass and held it to the lips of the man the crew called English George, the ship's carpenter. English George, in the third day of his torment, weakly shook his head.

"You'll feel better if you drink some," she told him.

When he shook his head again, she put the glass on the deck beside the bunk and raised her scented handkerchief to her face, trying to breathe as little of the stench of the cabin as she could. When a man moaned from a bunk near the bow, English George opened his eyes and began mumbling to himself. Alitha lowered her head to hear his words.

"I pray the Lord my soul to keep ..."

She whispered the rest of the child's prayer along with him: "If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take."

English George's mouth twisted into what could have been a smile. His head fell to one side.

Alitha took a small magnifying glass from her pocket and held the lens close to his mouth. Nothing. Opening his shirt, she laid her hand on his chest. Again nothing. She drew in her breath--another man gone to meet his Maker. Would the dying never end?

She clenched her right hand into a fist and raised it above her head. "How can you be so cruel?" she demanded. Instantly ashamed, she lowered her hand, closed her eyes and repeated a silent prayer.

When she opened her eyes, she saw Amos Malloy standing just inside the forecastle, his hair matted, a beard blackening his usually clean-shaven face. In the dim light from the spirit lamp, his eyes seemed even smaller than usual.

"I must speak to you, Miss Alitha," he said.

Reluctantly she followed him up onto the deck, where she blinked in the light of the warm April sun rising between streamers of red-hued clouds. The wind disarranged her hair and she had to put her hand to her forehead to keep the loose strands from blowing into her eyes. Spray wet her face as the ship, still under full sail, swept northward.

"It's about your father," Malloy said.

"Is there something the matter with him?" she asked, suddenly alarmed.

"No, no. It's that he's kept to his cabin these last twenty-four hours and more. Some of the crew think he's afraid."

"Afraid? How could they think that? A man who's rounded the Horn ten times?"

"They think he fears the cholera, miss. There's a difference between outlasting a gale at sea and facing cholera."

Not so different, she thought--both are the will of God. She recalled a verse from one of Thomas's favorite poems:

God moves in a mysterious way,

His wonders to perform.

He plants his footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm.

"What do you want from me?" she asked Malloy.

"I want you to talk to your father. See if you can get him to show himself on deck where the crew can see him. As it is, I don't have enough able-bodied men to handle the sails, if worse comes to worst. We don't need grumbling besides."

"Is there foul weather coming?"

"The glass has been falling fast for the last eight hours." Malloy nodded to the clouds building in the east and south. "I don't rightly like the looks of it."

"I'll talk to my father," Alitha told him.

Fearful of Malloy's forebodings, she tapped on the door of her father's cabin. There was no answer. When, after she knocked again, louder this time, there was still no reply, she pushed against the door. It was unlocked.

Alitha stepped into the captain's cabin, drawing back momentarily when she found the air so fetid she had to put her handkerchief to her face. The spirit lamp had burned low and at first, seeing his empty berth, she thought her father had left the cabin for the deck above. She gasped as she realized that what she had thought was a pile of discarded clothing on the deck was a man's body. Her father's. She ran to him and knelt at his side.

He's dead, she thought, my father's dead. Then he moaned, turning to her and opening his eyes. She was shocked by his appearance. His graying beard was unkempt and matted with vomit, his pale face shriveled, his eyes sunken and staring. He opened his mouth to speak, but his words strangled on his phlegm.

Looking around the cabin, she saw a whiskey bottle on the deck next to his bunk. She found a mug, poured the liquor and held the drink to her father's lips. He swallowed, gagging and coughing. She wiped his face dry with her handkerchief.

"Norah," he said. "Norah, my love."

How can he call her that, Alitha wondered, after betraying her.

"I'm not Norah," she told him. "It's Alitha."

"Alitha?" He struggled to sit up, his back to the bulkhead. "I'll take her to look for mayflowers," he said.

What was he talking about? Then Alitha remembered. She must have been five or six when her father, home on one of his infrequent visits, had walked hand in hand with her to Shelby's Pond and through the small wood beyond, up the sun-swept slope of a field with a long lightning-blasted pine, across a cow path and into another wood. Following a dirt road, they had crossed a wandering creek on a succession of stone bridges. On the far side of one of the bridges, where the creek curved to hug the side of a wooded hill, they climbed a knoll. When they reached the top, her father had pointed ahead into a shaded glen. Alitha ran to kneel on the soft moss, her fingertips touching the flowers, the blood-red flowers shaped like hearts. A short way on she could see the delicate pink blooms of mayflowers.

"I remember, father," she told him. "I remember. Years later I tried to find that spot and I never could."

He took her arm, his fingers surprisingly strong. "Norah," he said, "help me dress."

"No, you should be in your bunk, resting. You're sick, father. You need to rest to get well.”

"I'm dying, Norah, I know that." His voice rose and sharpened into a command. "Help me dress."

Alitha found a basin of water and used a cloth to bathe his face before she helped him off with his soiled shirt and trousers. He was already in his stocking feet. Her father sat on the edge of his bunk watching as she opened his wardrobe.

"The blues," he said, his voice now low and indistinct, infinitely tired.

He wanted his best clothes. She nodded and took down the blue trousers and the blue jacket with the gold buttons and the braid, then helped him put them on. She sat on the deck beside him and pulled on his boots.

"Give me a hand up," he said. She grasped his arm and guided him to his feet. Leaning against her, he staggered to a mirror nailed to the bulkhead. "My hat," he said as he smoothed his hair with his hand. She found the visored cap in the wardrobe and set it squarely on his head.

As he started for the companionway, the ship rolled and he fell, striking his shoulder on the bulkhead. Alitha steadied him and put his arm around her shoulders.

"Take me to the wheel," he told her.

"No, there's no need for you to go on deck. Mr. Malloy can handle the
Yankee
. Stay here while I get you laudanum."

He ignored her, making for the companionway. She sighed, realizing he wanted to command his ship for the last time, see the billow of the sails over his head, hear the creak of the masts, feel the rise and fall of the deck under his feet. How could she blame him? He will not die, she vowed. He'll live. I'll make him live.

"Don't believe them, Norah," her father said in a hoarse voice as, together, step by tortuous step, they climbed the companionway. "Don't believe the preachers. They lie. They say there is a God and there is none. Enjoy life while you can, Norah. Don't listen to them. Pay no heed to the preachers."

Alitha had never heard her father talk this way before. He's delirious, she told herself, he doesn't know what he's saying.

They reached the deck, where the wind and spray stung her face. As they made their way slowly to the wheel, she saw, from the corner of her eyes, Mr. Malloy approach, look into her father's face, then motion the helmsman from his place at the wheel. She had the impression of several crewmen staring up at them from the quarterdeck, heard Malloy shout at them to get on about their business.

Her father gripped the wheel with one hand while Malloy steadied it from the far side. The ship crested a wave and shuddered, and for a moment Alitha thought her father was about to fall. Instead he seemed to call on an inner strength, pulling himself erect and looking up into the rigging.

"Furl the sails, Mr. Jones," he called out.

Ephraim Jones, she knew, had been dead more than seven years.

"Aye aye, sir," Malloy answered.

The captain's gaze went to the port side, where whitecaps flecked the sea. With his right hand on the wheel, he raised his left, pointing ahead. "Land," he shouted. "Land ho!"

He glanced down at Alitha. "That's where we saw their fires burning in the night," he said softly. "Look, isn't she a beauty? Did you ever see such a wonder of an island? The mountain shaped like a woman's breast, rising into the clouds, the waterfall cascading from her flank, the palms, the white sands. Can you see it yet, Norah?"

"No, I can't, father," she said.

"You will, once we're closer in to shore. My eyes are sharper than most. Wait till we're anchored in the bay. Look you there." He raised his arm again. "The natives, they're rowing to meet us in their outriggers, bringing coconuts and bananas to barter. And they're bringing women. See the bare-breasted women, brown Venuses they are. And there--" He leaned forward. "And there ..."