Night Birds On Nantucket (7 page)

Silenced for the moment, Dido scowled after him as he walked away. An hour or so went by and she was about to retire when she noticed the figure of Mr Slighcarp standing not far away. Something furtive and cautious about his manner attracted her interest and she watched him sharply as he made his way to the rail. Unaware of Dido, squatting motionless in the shadows, Mr Slighcarp looked quickly all round him and then proceeded to tear in tiny pieces some sheets of paper which he had carried hidden in the breast of his jacket, and drop them over the side.

‘What's he doing that for?' wondered Dido. ‘What's so tarnation private about a letter?'

Then she recalled that Mr Slighcarp had been asked to collect a letter for the captain, and that he had not done so. He had said Captain Bilger had made a mistake, the letter was for somebody else. Was it possible that he had lied? Could the letter really have been for Captain Casket after all? Suppose this was it? But why should he be destroying it?

There seemed no answer to this puzzle, or none that Dido could supply. She continued to watch Mr Slighcarp attentively, however, and was somewhat astonished by what he did next. Making sure, as he thought, that he was unobserved, he produced a pair of boots from under his jacket, and brushed them long and carefully.

Dido's heart beat fast and she nodded to herself grimly.

A brilliant tropical moon swam overhead and by its light, and that of a pewter lantern not far away, every detail of the scene was clearly visible. The boots that Mr Slighcarp brushed were no sailors' brogans, but a
pair of English ladies' buttoned travelling-boots in dull bottle-green.

At last, satisfied, apparently, with the appearance of the boots, Mr Slighcarp retired once more, in the same prudent and furtive manner.

Dido remained on deck for a considerable time longer. At first she had half a mind to tell Captain Casket about the incident. But then she decided not to. After all, what had she to go on but suspicion; who could say that the letter was not Mr Slighcarp's own? He had every right to tear up his own letter. Furthermore, if Mr Slighcarp realized that Dido had seen him tear it up, he would know that she had also seen him brushing the boots. He would be revealed as the accomplice of the stowaway lady in the blubber-room. Dido had not forgotten this lady's fiercely whispered threat, ‘Keep a still tongue in your head. Otherwise your chances of ever seeing London River again are very, very small!'

‘I'll keep mum,' she finally decided. ‘After all, if I did tell Captain Casket, like as not he'd only gaze at me in that moon-faced way o' his and start to talk about his everlasting pink whale. I dessay it wasn't his letter. And I don't want an up-and-a-downer with old man Slighcarp. I'll keep a still tongue. But I'll watch.'

Nate, whose turn it was on the middle watch, came on deck at this moment, and passed the time of night with Dido. Mr Jenkins, sitting on his shoulder, gave a polite croak, and remarked:

‘Your lordship's bath is ready in the tapestry room. I have warmed the morning paper, Sir Henry. Pray
bring his grace's bath-chair this way. Down with the scurvy Hanoverians!'

‘Best watch out for Mr Slighcarp,' Dido said grinning.

‘No danger, it's his watch below,' Nate said. ‘That's why I brought old Jenkins up for a breath of air.'

‘I wonder why he riles Mr Slighcarp so,' Dido said yawning.

‘Don't you know? Because Mr Slighcarp's English too, but he was a Hanoverian, on the other side. He wanted to get rid of that king you got. So he don't like it when the old bird says “Down with the Hanoverians”. He had to run abroad in a hurry or he'd a been clapped in prison, the militia was after him. Leastways, that's what Uncle 'Lije said. Mr Slighcarp hasn't shipped with Cap'n Casket very long, but he stayed in Nantucket a piece before that.'

‘He's English? Mr Slighcarp?'

‘Sure. You'd think he'd a taken a bit more of a shine to you,' Nate said, ‘seeing you both come from the same part.'

It was a long time, almost dawn, before Dido fell asleep, and when she did so her slumbers were soon broken short by a sudden and violent disturbance.

The whole ship seemed to give a tremendous bound, like a startled horse; there were loud and prolonged cries overhead; feet thudded on the deck and Dido heard the crash and rattle as sails were shaken out and the anchor was dragged bodily from the bottom.

‘What's the matter, what's happened?' Pen cried fearfully – she had been jerked out of bed by the ship's unexpected movement and was whimpering on the floor. ‘Is it a hurricane?'

Dido held up a hand for silence. She was listening attentively to the shouts overhead.

‘No,' she said drily after a minute. ‘It ain't a hurricane; a little thing like that wouldn't get your pa so stirred-up. Oh, well, one thing, it'll help us on our way home at a rattling good pace. That is, allus supposing the old gal plays her part and don't go skedaddling off to Timbuctoo or Tobago.'

‘How do you mean? What old gal?'

‘Why,' Dido said, ‘the pink 'un. Rosie Lee. Hear what they shouted? We're a-chasin' after that there sweet-pea-coloured whale of his'n.'

The days and weeks that followed were fierce and rugged. Careering after her quarry through the South Pacific Trades, the
Sarah Casket
flew along under every sail that she would take. Main-tops, top-gallants, and stunsails were set, the rigging thrummed like a banjo, and often, as they drove through the southern seas, their mainmast was bent over so far that Nate declared they might as well use it for a bow, if they ever got close enough to the pink whale, and fire off a harpoon from the mainstay.

Nothing would persuade Penitence on deck now, and even Dido, when they reached the wild easterlies and heavy squalls in the straits of Magellan, was glad enough to stay in the cabin playing pachisi.

At first Dido was inclined, like the others, to believe that Captain Casket had merely imagined his glimpse of the pink whale at Galapagos, until one evening, south of Cape Horn, she saw something between two wildly blowing williwaws that she at first took to be a
momentary view of the setting sun – except that it lay to the east. It was like a rosy, iridescent bubble balanced amid the black, leaping seas. Then the storm came down again and they saw it no more. But Captain Casket, with a frantic, exultant light in his eye, kept the ship under a full press of canvas, heedless of danger, clapping on new sails as the old ones ripped away. Without regard to tempest, tidal wave, or terremoto, he fought his way round the Horn, making a record passage of it, while his men served four hours on and four off, becoming haggard and thin from wear and tear and lack of sleep. The captain himself never seemed to sleep at all and his eyes were red from scanning the horizon.

There were few chances for Nate to come down to the cabin now; he was kept busy all the time as a lookout, or taking soundings, or mending the tattered sails. Sometimes he could be heard singing as he sewed, with Mr Jenkins (who had acquired a wholesome respect for Mr Slighcarp) supplying the chorus in a subdued croak:

Mr Jenkins spent a good deal of this time with the
girls in the cabin; Nate was glad to know that his pet was in a safe spot, and the girls were glad of the company, particularly as Mr Jenkins made an extremely civil guest. He would play tiddlywinks (if ever they struck a long enough patch of calm weather), flipping scrimshaw counters into a cup with great dexterity and enjoyment; while his grave observations about life in high society kept Pen and Dido amused for hours.

Past Trinidad they chased, past the Brazilian coast, through the Sargasso Sea (which slowed down the pink whale a little, for she got weeds caught in her flukes), past Bermuda, past Cape Hatteras, and so home. But the pink whale, unfortunately, seemed disinclined to stop, and mutterings were to be heard among the men that at this rate they'd likely be skating past Newfoundland before they discharged cargo and had their pay.

A deputation waited on Captain Casket and pointed out to him that they were low on stores and water, that there wasn't a single unmended sail on board and that what hardtack was left would walk away from you along the deck if you let go of your ration for a moment. With great difficulty he was persuaded to put in to New Bedford.

And so it was that, almost seven months to the day after she had first opened her eyes on board the
Sarah Casket
, Dido had a chance to set foot on solid ground.

‘New Bedford!' she said ungratefully. ‘Where's that, I ask you? Land sakes, Cap'n Casket mighta just as well nipped across to Dover, it wouldn't a taken him but a few more weeks.'

She glared with disfavour at the trim roofs of the town climbing its hill above the harbour. ‘Still,' she
admitted in acknowledgment of the forest of masts, ‘I will say there's a-plenty o' shipping here; maybe I'll find some bark as'll take me on to England.'

‘You promised you'd come home with me first, you
promised
,' Pen reminded her anxiously.

‘All right, all right, I ain't forgotten,' Dido growled. ‘I've said I'll see you right and I will – if we can only get your pa to tend to your affairs for two minutes together. You know you had a notion your cousin Ann Allerton might put you up.'

Captain Casket hardly even attended to the business of getting his ship safely docked. His eyes were constantly turned back towards the open sea, and his thoughts were all with the pink whale, who had unfairly taken the chance to nip off round Cape Cod and into the Gulf of Maine. Would he ever catch up with her again?

It was dark before the
Sarah Casket
was alongide the wharf and made fast. Penitence begged to go ashore then and there, but Captain Casket wouldn't hear of disturbing Cousin Ann Allerton so late in the evening, and left them to spend one more night on board. Dido stayed awake for hours, sniffing the land-smells, listening to the shouts and the splash of oars in the harbour and the cry of gulls, and the music coming from the sailors' taverns. She dragged a chair to the port and squatted there looking out at the lights as they gradually dimmed and died along the wharfside and in the streets above the warehouses.

Strangely enough, although she was now nearer home than she had been for the last year, she felt more lonely and homesick than ever before.

‘Pen!' she whispered after a while. ‘Hey, Dutiful! Are you awake?'

The only answer was soft, even breathing. Dido sighed, and was about to climb down from her perch and go to bed, when she heard a faint splash, close to, and the creak of oars. Turning back, she was just in time to see Mr Slighcarp, his foxy features visible in the light of a lantern, help a tall, veiled woman over the
Sarah Casket
's side into a dory, and row quietly away across the harbour.

¹
Actually Sankaty Light was not built till 1850, but for the purpose of this book I have brought it into existence thirty years earlier.

‘
WE CAN'T STAY
with your cousin Allerton,' Dido said glumly, ‘and
that
's for sure.'

It had taken her less than ten minutes to reach this conclusion. After ten days she was of the same mind.

Cousin Ann Allerton was a frail, erect old lady dressed in black silk with a white bib and cap. She almost fainted when her snapping black eyes first took in the untidy appearance of the two girls – even Pen's dress was fairly bedraggled by this time with oil and tar on its frills. And as for Dido –!

‘Don't stand on the clean doormat!' Cousin Ann said frantically. ‘Keziah! Keziah! Fetch an old sheet directly and put on a pail of water to heat. Mercy! Just look at that child's feet! And her
hair
! Bring some towels, every stitch they have on will have to be burned. Get out the tallow and kerosene, gracious knows how we are going to get that grease off. Fetch the sulphur and calomel, I don't doubt they need a good dose after eating dear knows what foreign truck on board ship. And when
you've done that, run down the road and ask Miss Alsop to step up, they'll have to have everything new, I can see that – furs, flannels, merinos, poplins, and tarlatans. Bonnets, of course, and boots; mercy on us what a pair of little savages.'

‘I'd ruther keep my britches,' Dido said scowling.

‘Quiet, child! The idea! Pass me the bath-brick, Keziah, till I give them a good scrubbing.'