Run Afoul (28 page)

“They're desperate men,” their host gravely concluded. “Thank God you had the lieutenant to protect you.”

So this, Wiki mused, was why Dr. Olliver had obeyed orders, for once, and kept with the party. Then, however, he learned another reason—that the trail had led through marshes and lagoons, with no dense jungle to conceal him. There had been plenty of specimens to gather, however. The insect life had been abundant, there had been frogs and exotic birds aplenty, and there had been many foreign flowers in the reeds, as well as the scented orchids in the trees.

While he was willing to carry the boxes of insects to the brig, Wiki again directed the two draftsmen to apply themselves to their sketchpads, and asked Assistant Taxidermist Dyes to skin the animals, so that Forsythe could discard their bulky innards. This time, however, he stayed, first to watch, and then to assist. As he discovered the fascinating logic behind the recording of plants—that the pattern of leaves was repeated forever, that the number of petals was always a multiple of the sepals, to the tune of one, or five, or three—he became absorbed in helping, by cutting sections of buds, and tearing calyxes neatly apart. There was a regularity and symmetry within flowers that was remarkably satisfying, he found.

When he looked up once, he found his father studying him with an odd little smile, the lizard eye more than usually half-closed. After Wiki left Forsythe to deal with the hysterically angry scientifics, Captain Coffin kept him company on the walk to the beach.

After a meditative silence, he said, “You remind me of yourself as a child—so eager to learn, and so quick about it.”

Wiki laughed. “You Americans are endlessly amazing—you weigh the world with clocks and telescopes, measure mountains with barometers, and make patterns out of plants. How could I not be intrigued?”

His father didn't smile back. “
You
Americans?” he echoed. Then he was silent for a long time, his expression grim as they walked down the grass slope to the sand. Finally, he said flatly, “So, even after all these years, you still don't think of yourself as American.”

Wiki shrugged. “It doesn't help that I don't
look
American,” he pointed out. “People take one glance and assume I'm a South Seas savage, and then marvel because I've assumed the trappings of civilization.”

Captain Coffin flushed. “But you
are
American—an extremely well educated and cultured American! And you're no darker than most Brazilians! You talk about
trappings
of civilization? Dear God, Wiki, you're more civilized than most Americans I know—you speak several European languages with ease; you talk philosophy and politics! Don't get me wrong,” he went on in a more moderate tone, “I think your mother's people are wonderful—they are gallant, brave, intelligent, and good-looking, but their culture is outdated and dying, and if they are to become part of the future, they will have to change. That is what
you
have done—
you
have adapted quite magnificently. I'm proud of what you have accomplished, Wiki—very proud—so why can't you accept that when I carried you home from the Bay of Islands you left your Maori past behind?”

Wiki was quiet, thinking this over. “Come on board the
Swallow
so I can show you something,” he finally said.

The boat from the brig arrived, and after stowing the boxes of insects, they clambered into it. As soon as they were on board, Wiki led the way aft. Opening the companionway door, he stepped down to the top stair, and then turned around. The wall above the door was broad enough to store a few weapons, out of sight and yet easily reached from both the saloon or the deck. There, George hung his sword, a few cutlasses, and his pistol, and below them, immediately above the lintel, a spearlike weapon lay on a couple of hooks.

Wiki lifted it down, and carried it outside. After motioning to his father to get out of the way, he whirled it around his shoulders, swinging it from hand to hand, and closing and unclosing his fists as its balance shifted.
“Ko te rakau na Hapai,”
he sang, while the weapon hummed through the air;

Ko te rakau na Toa

Ko te rakau na Tu, Tu-ka-riti, Tu-ka-nguha.

This is the weapon of the Ancestors,

This is the weapon of the Warriors,

This is the weapon of Tu, furious Tu, raging Tu.

Then, with a flourish, he handed it to his father.

“Good God,” Captain Coffin said. “It's a—a—”

“A
taiaha,
” said Wiki, tired of waiting for him to find the long-forgotten word. The shaft of the four-foot-long
taiaha
was highly polished by constant contact with his hands. One end, teardrop in shape, was elaborately carved into a stylized head with a protruding tongue, while the other—the
rau,
the business part of the weapon—was shaped like a paddle, and hardened by smoking and heating to the smoothness of a hatchet.

“I made it myself,” Wiki said.

“It's—quite magnificent,” his father said, sounding awed. He turned it in his hands, and then spun it about his head a couple of times before examining it again. The teardrop-shaped head, the
arero,
had been intricately engraved with curves and whorls. A sennit collar had been twisted about its neck, and into this Wiki had braided feathers, along with long tufts of his own black hair, to distract the enemy by being flicked across his eyes. This spearlike end was for jabbing and feinting, while the other end, the
rau,
was used as a club.

“But I have indeed adapted, and I'll tell you something to prove it,” said Wiki, taking the
taiaha
back. “While I was making this, I kept it in the galley, on hooks over the stove.”

Captain Coffin's lizard eye closed even further. As usual, his quick intelligence caught on fast. He said, “Where food was being cooked? But wasn't that defying the law of
tapu?
”

“My reasons were practical—the smoke from the fire did a capital job of hardening the wood. Even if I had remembered that I was breaking the code, seasoning the wood seemed more important.”

At the time, too, Wiki had believed that making the
taiaha
was just an interesting and challenging project, a harking back to his roots. Then, he had been forced to use it in self-defense, and in the heat of the battle the force of Tumatauenga, the ancestor guardian of war, had flooded into the weapon. He had
felt
it—he had felt the wood
sing
as it absorbed the savage power. Because of
Tu, Tu-ka-riti, Tu-ka-nguha,
his life had been saved, and abruptly his
taiaha
had become
tapu.

Wiki was reluctant to tell his father about that, fearing he would be derisive, so he said, “Now, I store it over the stairs that lead to the saloon—so that it is under the roof of the place where we eat. However, I have very little choice. George would let me put it in his cabin, but he entertains guests there, which involves eating, too. When I live on board, I share a stateroom with Constant Keith, who eats day and night, I swear—he keeps biscuits beneath his pillow! The
tohunga,
” he said wryly, “don't have to grapple with the limitations of life at sea. In fact, I wonder how the people coped during the long migrations across the Pacific.”

His father asked curiously, “What have you done with the
mere
that Forsythe gave you?”

Wiki shrugged. “I braided a string for it, and it hangs on a hook by the
taiaha.
”

“I would have thought you'd keep it in your sea chest.”

His father was thinking like a seaman, Wiki knew, because a sailor's chest was his special private storage place, and therefore considered inviolate by his shipmates. He shook his head, and said, “It's much safer where we can see it from the table.
Pakeha
don't think of
mere
and
taiaha
as weapons, you know, as they're so obviously outclassed by knives and guns. Instead, they call them ‘curiosities,' and consider them valuable in terms of money, not
mana.
I've seen shipmasters bear them in triumph back to the States, where they sell them at an immense profit—and scientifics are even worse, because they so greatly benefit their careers by donating them to museums. No, there are too many opportunistic thieves who know the value of such things.”

Captain Coffin was quiet a moment, and Wiki wondered if he had traded in curiosities himself. Then he looked out at the darkening land, and said with a sigh, “I must go. Someone is bound to be doing or saying something to offend our hosts.”

“Forsythe is giving you trouble?”

“I had Olliver in mind. He'll be screaming for his dinner—which, as he knows perfectly well, won't be served until ten. Then, when it does come, he'll complain about the barbaric hours that Brazilians keep, right in front of our hosts, who understand more English than he thinks.”

“Well, thank the Lord that he seems to have seen sense about getting up early and keeping with the party—and long may it continue,” said Wiki.

Twenty-one

For the next forty-eight hours it looked as if Wiki's wish would be granted. While the brig ghosted gently north, charting shoals and rocks on the way, the party trekked through a maze of lagoons and marshes to Mandetiba, where the fazenda was a twin of the one they had left behind at Maricá, and then fifteen miles through dunes to the next stopping place, near Ingetado. After that, however, the trail led inland. Not only did lush forests beckon, but from now on the brig would have to sail up uncharted rivers to keep in contact with the scientifics.

George Rochester ordered the anchor weighed before dawn on the day they left the cove by Ingetado, because the challenge of doubling Cape Frio lay ahead. Link by clattering link, the anchor chain writhed up the hawse pipe, and then, “Brace the yards, there!” Midshipman Keith cried. Luminous canvas slapped hollowly as it dropped, and then was swiftly sheeted home. The
Swallow
heeled slowly as she took the damp, dark breeze, and nosed gently out to the open sea.

Soon she began to pitch uncomfortably, but George held her on to the easterly course, because he wanted to get a safe offing. As the sun rose, the great bulge of Cape Frio loomed. This was where the
Vincennes
had been becalmed, back when Grimes had still been alive, but now, there was a wind, and a fair one, too. The brig sailed sweetly on, leaving the cape astern, and then George ordered a change of course, to bring her closer to the coast. A half hour later, they started to search for their next anchoring place, the San João River.

Clouds had descended. The landscape was flat, and heavy with mist-shrouded trees, and the hot, damp atmosphere clung to the skin. Thick vapor drifted up from the surface of the water, and an amazingly evocative smell surged out from the land, of leaves and flowers, rampant growth and equally speedy decay, and incredibly fecund earth. Water ran on every visible surface, so that the lookouts didn't recognize the river until the brig was actually crossing its mouth.

Sua, setting the foremast to creaking and swaying, waved and hollered, and Tana was sent out into the chains with a lead line. George hesitated, going aloft to study the prospect minutely through his spyglass, and then, when the tide turned, he came down and gave orders to sail cautiously upriver, sounding the bottom all the way.

It was a nerve-racking business. The dense trees on either side stole their wind, so that the big lower sails slatted, and finally George ordered the foresail brought in. The
Swallow
crept against the river current; the only reason she was getting upriver at all was because of the tide and the landward breeze in the topsails.

“How deep?” asked George.

Tana had the lead line loosely wound about his hand. He spun it out, the lead line revolved in great circles with the ten-pound lead weight at the end whistling, and then the lead dropped. A silent moment as the brig glided up to the rope, and up came the line again.

“By the mark, three!”

Three fathoms was barely enough to float the little brig. Great green clots of camalote weed bumped along her sides, and the banks were lined with palms which rose higher in the air than her masts. Alligators floated like fallen logs, watching with cold bubble eyes. At last, the forest was interrupted with sugarcane fields, and after that, fences, and dirt roads could be glimpsed between the fields, and, in the hilly distance, a track that was evidently the way the scientific party would come. The sugarcane grew tall, its seasonal growth already twice as high as a man, and the jungle loomed and threatened. From aloft, however, Wiki could glimpse a sprawling building, which had a sugar factory with a couple of tall chimneys behind it—their destination, thank God.

A primitive wharf jutted out into the river, but George chose not to try it. Not only did he suspect that the water there would be too shallow at low tide, but the middle of the stream was out of the range of mosquitoes. Accordingly, they dropped anchor in the deepest part of the river, and Wiki was sent on shore in a boat. There were a few shacks among the palms, with their owners sleeping in the shade beneath. As the boat arrived, they didn't even waken.

The road that led from the jetty to the house ran through the fringe of the primeval forest. It was wide and well used, but there was a constant feeling that the jungle was waiting to take over. Bright birds flickered through branches bearing huge, vibrant flowers. Wiki heard the cry of a monkey, and once a muffled growl from somewhere beyond the factory. Then he emerged onto the lawn in front of the house, which was studded with a row of old brass cannon set in stone. While he was contemplating these, his host came out onto the veranda.