Run Afoul (12 page)

George saw the fleet commander's mouth purse up tight, before he said curtly, “I'll send you a shipwright.”

“
One
shipwright?” Coffin leveled a stare with his half-closed eye.

“All right, then, a gang of carpenters will come with him.”

“For insurance purposes, I need a formal survey.”

“I will instruct the shipwright to do the necessary paperwork.”

“And the financial loss, being forced to sell my cargo locally—”

“Absolutely not!” Captain Wilkes snapped. “I have conceded enough!”

And, with that—or so George realized in his stupefaction—the horse-trading was over. Captain Wilkes scribbled a note, shoved it at Captain Coffin, and dismissed them.

*   *   *

“My God,” said George Rochester with awe, and, though he was not, in fact, wearing a hat, went on, “I take off my hat to you, Captain Coffin.”

“I was only asserting my legal rights,” said the other. “And my name,” he added, “is William.”

They were back at the shipyard. In contrast to the plight of Captain Hudson, who could be heard shouting with utter frustration over by the
Peacock,
William Coffin had accomplished a great deal. Not only had he managed to get the attention of a foreman, but he had introduced him to the navy carpenter, who had arrived accompanied by a gang; he had made arrangements for the pumping out and heaving down of the
Osprey,
and he had extracted a promise that the work would start that very afternoon.

Now, it was noon, and George, as he ushered him up the gangplank of the
Swallow,
said, “You are most welcome to stay on board while your ship is being fixed, William.” The previous night, when they had finished talking, he had given Captain Coffin his bed, and had bunked very comfortably in Wiki's berth.

“That's very good of you, and I would very much like to accept,” said William Coffin, casting an appreciative eye over the repast Stoker had set out. “But I have a friend here who would be offended.”

George threw off his uniform coat, sat down in the captain's chair at the end of the table, and helped himself to ham and pickles, while Captain Coffin industriously buttered a thick slice of soft bread. “A Brazilian friend?”

“Well, he lives here, but he's an Englishman—though his wife is Brazilian, a member of a prominent local family. I met him three years ago when I rescued him from shipwreck,” William Coffin added.

“Shipwreck?” George echoed.

“He'd been some years in Uruguay, collecting orchids, but was urgently summoned back to England to attend his father's deathbed, and had taken the first London-bound ship he could find. Three nights out, it foundered.”

Disregarding the rest for the moment, Rochester exclaimed, utterly thunderstruck,
“Orchids?”

“Orchids are big business, or so he told me.”

“Good God,” said George, greatly wondering. “And he was wrecked—and you saved him? How did it happen?”

“The ship struck something in the water, and sank within moments. He was the only passenger—and the only survivor, as it turned out. We found him floating in one of the ship's boats, with all his provisions and drinking water gone. He'd been exposed to the sun for nine days, and was so shockingly burned his face seemed scarcely human.”

It was every seaman's nightmare, and the main reason most mariners refused to learn to swim, preferring drowning to such an awful prospect. George marveled, “It's a wonder the ordeal didn't kill him.”

“I was so certain he would die before we got to port, that I ordered the carpenter to make a coffin. However, by the time we made Rio he was sitting up and telling me all about it. He credits me with his recovery, but I put it down to his constitution, myself.”

“He must have been as strong as a horse to survive years in the jungle,” Rochester agreed. “So, what happened after you got him here?”

“Put him in hospital—and then a Brazilian family took him into their house, just out of the kindness of their hearts. By the time he recovered, he had fallen in love with one of their daughters, so he sold his father's estate after he arrived home, came back to Brazil, married her, and settled.”

Rochester, who always enjoyed a romantic story, shook his head very appreciatively, indeed. “The gods were surely on his side,” he marveled.

“They were on the side of the girl, too,” said William Coffin soberly. “After the marriage, his wife's parents took the chance to visit the old country, leaving the family businesses under his management, but caught smallpox in the first port their ship touched, and died soon after. Their two girls—his new bride and her sister—had no support in the world, save for the usual vast host of distant relatives, and would have been quite lost without him. As it was, he was there to take over the management of the family estates.”

“Fortunate, indeed,” said Rochester, and then both he and William fell silent. Footsteps echoed on the quay, and they waited for them to come up the gangplank, but instead they passed on by.

“Where the devil is he?” William Coffin demanded.

Rochester knew exactly whom he meant. Coming back through the afterhouse of the
Vincennes,
he had searched for any sign of Wiki. However, the only person he had recognized had been Robert Festin, who had been tending to someone who was obviously very ill. The squat little cook had been cradling the patient as gently as a baby, as he spoon-fed him something that smelled nourishing and good, but the sick man had been squirming feebly in the Acadian's hold.

So where was Wiki? He
must
have heard not only about the accident, but that his father was in Rio, too. “I haven't a single
damn
idea,” said George.

Ten

“Here comes the storeship
Relief,
” announced Commodore Nicholson. Lowering his spyglass, and cocking a bright eye at Wiki, he remarked, “They reckon she sails like a drover's nag.”

“I've heard that, too,” Wiki agreed amiably.

If he hadn't been so worried about Astronomer Grimes and Robert Festin, he would have quite enjoyed the past three days, because he liked his host so much. Commodore John Nicholson might be the august commander of the Brazil squadron, but to Wiki's hidden amusement the middle-aged, rolypoly fellow looked and behaved like the most affable of publicans.

It had been disconcerting to be kidnapped, though. When Nicholson had read the letter explaining the lack of a proper salute of guns, he had gone red in the face, and exclaimed, “I don't believe a word of it! Does Wilkes have no idea of the insult to my pennant? Within the past six months we've been saluted with proper ceremony by both the British and the Russians, and now a fellow national snubs us—and an upstart lieutenant, at that! Good God, man, it's insupportable!”

And with that, he'd wreaked what he called a “poetic” revenge—by stealing Wiki! As he kept on pointing out,
he
was the senior American officer in this port, and it was ridiculous that a mere lieutenant like Wilkes should have a Portuguese-speaking clerk when the commodore of the squadron did not, and so he had appropriated that clerk, forthwith—which meant that Wiki had found himself in the very strange position of penning a formal letter from one of his bosses to another, at the start of a campaign that over the next two days turned into a paper war.

The first of the barrage from the
Vincennes
was delivered by a junior midshipman by the name of Dicken. Wiki, recognizing his flushed face from a long-ago but well-remembered feast in the junior mids' wardroom, greeted him by name. Then he asked if Captain Wilkes was exceedingly furious that his linguister had been kidnapped.

“Of course, Mr. Coffin, sir!” said Midshipman Dicken brightly.

“Oh dear,” said Wiki, though it was nothing less than expected. Then, with foreboding in his heart, he inquired about Grimes. Forsythe, who
had
been allowed to return to the
Vincennes,
had reported that Festin slept on his sofa as serenely as ever, but had no news of the sick instrumentmaker, save that he was still confined to his bed. Then, ominously, he had repeated that he had bloody well better not die, as he could not be responsible for what happened after that.

“Recovering well,” Dicken assured him, to Wiki's huge relief, but then added on a doubtful note, “Well, Dr. Olliver says so. He found some new medicines in Rio, they tell me—though scuttlebutt still reckons the poor fellow was poisoned by that Festin's fancy cooking, and is utterly doomed.”

That dire prediction delivered, he announced that the brig
Swallow
had run afoul of a merchantman. Wiki, greatly alarmed, said, “Is she badly damaged?”

“Nothing but a little rigging pulled astray and some railing smashed to splinters,” said Dicken, and then puffed out his chest, saying, “
We
—that is, Captain Rochester, with the help of my men—sailed her to the shipyard, and she'll be as right as a cricket in a couple of days. She almost sank the poor barky, though,” he added, still on a note of pride.

“What ship was it?” Wiki asked, but the young midshipman had gone, leaving Captain Wilkes's letter behind.

The contents did nothing to improve Commodore Nicholson's state of mind, being a peremptory request that he exchange volunteers from the
Independence
for the invalids in the expedition ships. “Goddamnit,” expostulated Nicholson. “Don't he know we're shorthanded?”

However, as the letter also assured him that the invalids were fit enough to help work the ship, he sent back a reasonably obliging reply. Unfortunately, however, it was addressed to
Mister
Wilkes, over Wiki's most strenuous objections. Predictably, the answer that came back fairly sizzled, accusing the commodore of lack of respect for the great enterprise, and berating him in no uncertain terms for failing to address him as “captain.”

“Good God,” expostulated Nicholson, after reading it with his eyebrows bristling. “This ain't language that even the most senior officer would dare to use to me, without he was a child or an idiot.” Forthwith, he dictated a sarcastic reply wishing him every success in his efforts to attain the rank he thought he deserved.

In the meantime, too, the invalids from the
Vincennes
arrived, and proved to be wholly unfit for duty, one being deranged, another epileptic, and the rest in the last stages of consumption. Nicholson promptly sent them all on shore to the hospital, and shot off another letter, informing
Lieutenant
Wilkes that he was responsible for the cost of shipping them back to the States, which Wilkes riposted with a long complaint about the surly nature of the volunteers the commodore had sent.

However, throughout the insults and acrimony, the lack of a proper gun salute was what rankled most. On the third day, Forsythe having lounged on board with yet another shrill epistle from Wilkes, this time hotly demanding that his clerk should be returned to the
Vincennes,
the commodore queried of the messenger, “How many confounded chronometers are you carrying, anyway?”

Forsythe shrugged. “Fifty?” he hazarded.

“Fifty? Good God.” Then Nicholson read the letter, and said to Wiki, “I'd better let you go, I suppose—but make sure the letters you pen to me are a damn sight more moderate than those we've been getting of late, young man. This nonsense has gone on long enough, I say!”

Wiki, who thoroughly agreed, said, “Permission to leave now, sir?”

“Not just yet. There's fellows in the wardroom who say they're anxious for a word with Lieutenant Forsythe—probably on account of monies he owes 'em, but what the hell, it's time for supper.”

The wardroom hospitality proved boundless, unfortunately, which meant that Wiki was detained for yet another night, because Forsythe got too drunk to get back into the cutter. The next morning, the southerner slumped at the tiller, his battered face cut in several places where a borrowed razor had slipped, while he contemplated the spectacular, mountain-rimmed scene with jaundiced eyes.

It was certainly busy enough. Fleets of fishing rafts were heading out to sea under their enormous gossamer lugsails, while
fallua
zigzagged everywhere, driven by the vigorous strokes of black crews who stood to work their huge oars. The
Swallow,
Wiki saw, was moored up to a quay at the shipyard, but the only activity on board of her was laundry, it seemed, because a host of shirts and drawers hung in the rigging. Beyond her, a ship was lying hove down with a gang of men at work on her exposed side. This, he deduced, was the “poor barky” that Dicken had described.

The
Vincennes
was now securely anchored off Enxados Island, where the turrets of the disused convent caught the early morning sun. On the summit of the grassy hill, men were setting up portable laboratories, and lighters loaded down with provisions, men, and implements were plying from the flagship to the beach. Captain Wilkes, having obtained permission to use the whole of the island for scientific purposes, had concluded to empty the
Vincennes
of everything possible, and then have her smoked to kill rats.

After clambering on board the ship, which felt much lighter already, Wiki hurried to the afterhouse. The saloon was empty, which seemed strange, as the table was set for breakfast. Jack Winter poked his head out of the pantry, and Wiki said, “Where's Dr. Olliver?”

“Gone off a-collecting,” said the steward, looking very sulky about it.

“Where?”

“He and Couthouy requisitioned a boat and a crew, and are off about the harbor. They went off yesterday,” he went on, more resentfully than ever.

“But what about Mr. Grimes?” Wiki glanced at the shut stateroom door. “Who's looking after him?”