Run Afoul (37 page)

Involuntarily, he exclaimed, “That's Robert Festin!”

“Robert Festin?” Josefa echoed, without turning round to look. “It can't possibly be Robert Festin,” she assured him with wide-eyed innocence. “Didn't you know he's getting married on Saturday?”

“No, I didn't,” confessed Wiki.

“His bride's family treat him very badly, I hear. They charge a great deal for his services, but he never sees any of the money. And his mother-in-law slaps him about to make him understand better, because he isn't very bright.”

“I wonder what happened to my invitation?” Wiki wondered aloud, and she laughed. When he looked again, Festin was safely out of sight, so he turned back to Josefa and said, “Here is the present you gave me.”

He gave her the ring he had thrown at William Olliver's gleaming eyes—a huge emerald, probably worth more money than he would ever make in his lifetime, impossible to wear, impossible to sell, and impossible to give away.

“It saved my life, and I don't need it anymore,” he said. “Instead, I want to give you something to remember me by.”

Josefa didn't argue. Instead, she put out her hand. Then her mouth fell open in vast surprise—he had given her a length of his own black hair, neatly braided and tied. He wondered if she would ever understand what a declaration of trust this gift involved.

Instead of thanking him, she ordered, “Turn around!”

He turned his head, grinning at her over his shoulder.

“You cut your hair!”

“Aye.” Though it was actually Sua who had done the cutting.

A voice called down from the deck, politely informing him that they were about to sail, and that Captain Rochester would be vastly obliged if Mr. Coffin would take the helm.

“So we say good-bye?”

“Aye,” said Wiki. “May I kiss you?”

“Certainly not,” she said, sounding scandalized, and he laughed, bowed, and lifted her fingers gallantly to his lips, before scrambling back up to deck. As he climbed over the rail, he heard her distinctive giggle, along with a few derisive cheers from the crew.

The
fallua
bore away with a last wave of a ring-laden hand. Aloft, the men were unfurling the sails, which fluttered delicately before being tamed and clewed down. The other ships of the fleet were doing likewise—and the brigantine
Osprey,
too, was putting on her canvas for her journey home. Where, Wiki wondered, would he see his father next?

The vessels at anchor in the bay were flying flags in salute. Whistles sounded, and the crew of the USS
Independence
gave six hearty hurrahs as the
Vincennes
sailed grandly by—which, considering the circumstances, Wiki thought, was very gallant of Jovial Jack. Out of the harbor sailed the
Vincennes,
with Captain Wilkes in charge of the quarterdeck, while the other expedition ships followed in grand formation. Captain Coffin's
Osprey
was picking up pace on the larboard tack, and putting on more sail as Wiki watched.

Then all at once yells of utter outrage disturbed the happy scene, along with the sounds of a nasty collision. Sails fluttered on the
Vincennes
as she hurriedly reduced canvas. Wiki shaded his eyes to see what had happened, and then exclaimed, “My God, I don't believe it!”

The
Vincennes
had blundered off her course, and run afoul of the
Osprey.

Suggested Reading

Darwin, Charles. Beagle
Diary.
Edited by Richard Darwin Keynes. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Erskine, Charles.
Twenty Years Before the Mast: with the more thrilling scenes and incidents while circumnavigating the globe under the command of the late Admiral Charles Wilkes 1838–1842.
Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1985.

Philbrick, Nathaniel.
Sea of Glory: America's Voyage of Discovery, the U.S. Exploring Expedition 1838–1842.
New York: Viking, 2003.

Reynolds, William.
The Private Journal of William Reynolds: United States Exploring Expedition, 1838–1842.
Edited by Nathaniel Philbrick and Thomas Philbrick. New York: Penguin, 2004.

Reynolds, William.
Voyage to the Southern Ocean: The Letters of Lieutenant William Reynolds from the U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838–1842.
Edited by Anne Hoffman Cleaver and E. Jeffrey Stann (and with an excellent introduction and epilogue by Herman J. Viola). Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1988.

Stanton, William.
The Great United States Exploring Expedition of 1838–1842.
Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1975.

Viola, Herman J., and Carolyn Margolis, eds.
Magnificent Voyagers: The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838–1842.
Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1985.

Wilkes, Charles.
Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition.
5 vols. 1844. Reprint, Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Gregg Press, 1970.

 

 

Read on for a preview of

Deadly Shoals
,

coming from St. Martin's Minotaur
in December 2007

copyright © 2007 by
Joan Druett

Off the coast of Patagonia, January 24, 1839

Wiki Coffin was in the saloon of the U.S. brig
Swallow
when he heard the man at the masthead call out for a sail. The
Swallow
was flying south on the breast of a favorable nor'west wind, so he assumed the sighting was of a homeward-bound ship passing on the opposite course. However, it was the first sign of company on the seas for the past eight days, and so he ran up the companionway to the deck and then climbed the mainmast to see what it was all about.

It proved to be a whaleship, about five miles away but coming down fast from the east, with all sails set but flying no flags. Her four boats were triced up in davits on the outside of the vessel, ready to be lowered at an instant's notice if whales were sighted, but her canvas was pristine white, unmarked by tryworks smoke, an indication that she hadn't done any whaling of late. Even from this distance, Wiki could discern a glint of copper under her foot as she crested the top of a wave, so knew that this was no northbound whaler deeply laden with oil.

Instead, she was racing to come up with them. Looking about the empty sea from his lofty vantage point, Wiki frowned, touched with uneasiness. They were off the Patagonian coast, with the shoal-ridden estuary of the Rio Negro on the western horizon. It was notorious as a hotbed of revolutionaries, having been deliberately impoverished by General de Rosas, the tyrant of Buenos Aires. Wiki also knew that de Rosas was currently waging war with the French over his territorial ambitions in Uruguay—and had heard rumors in Rio that the French were issuing letters of marque to their merchant vessels on this coast, which included a number of whalers. He swung down a backstay, and approached the quarterdeck.

Captain Rochester was standing on the weather side, one fist gripping the starboard shrouds. He was scowling, too. The instant he sighted Wiki he said, “What do you reckon, old chap?”

“Her captain seems determined to intercept us, but he isn't flying any signals—not even his ensign.”

“Do you recognize her?”

Wiki grimaced. For the past seven years he had drifted from one American whaleship to another, deserting at exotic landfalls whenever he had become heartily tired of whaling, or fed up with the captain and officers, or simply wanted to get back to the Bay of Islands to pay a call on his
whanau
—his folks in New Zealand. However, this made him no authority on the identity of individual whalers.

He said, “It's infamously hard to tell one whaleship from another, George.”

The trouble was, they were all built for the same purpose, with no variety in the pattern. There had been one captain of his acquaintance who had painted his command in a myriad of colors just to make himself different, but most of his crew had promptly jumped ship, declaring that their garish appearance frightened off the whales. Accordingly, the old spouter master had returned his typically beamy old tub to her former livery of black, interrupted with one white streak painted with black squares to fool innocent savages into thinking she had gunports with cannon behind them. And, with that, she had returned to being indistinguishable from the rest of the whaling fleet.

“So how do we know she's American?”

Wiki, who'd had the same thought, said flatly, “We don't. She could be French. If she is, she could be a privateer—which seems likely, as she looks far too clean to be a working whaler.”

“Then let's make sure that her master knows beyond doubt that we're a United States Navy brig,” Rochester decided. “Bo'sun,” he hollered. “Get the biggest ensign aloft.”

It took just a moment to comply, and events followed fast. No sooner had the bright flag been run up to flicker from the gaff of the
Swallow,
than smoke puffed up from the stranger's foredeck, and a cannonball screamed across the rapidly diminishing gap between the two ships. “He's fired a shot across our bows!” George exclaimed in shocked disbelief. “Beat to quarters, by God—
beat to quarters!
”

The stunned silence fore and aft turned into commotion. Sua, the brig's Samoan drummer, rushed into the forecastle for his drum—a length of log—and set to hammering out a primitive, blood-stirring rhythm even before he arrived back on deck. Rochester's youthful second-in-command, Midshipman Keith, raced up from below, the off-duty watch tumbling hard on his heels. As usual in any emergency, Wiki, who was the best helmsman in the ship, took over the wheel.

Every man was at his station; every head turned to watch the captain. “Wear ship, Mr. Keith, if you please,” instructed Rochester. Not only would this bring the brig around so that the two chaser cannon on the deck at the stern would come to bear on the stranger, but the
Swallow
would present a much smaller target.

“Sta-a-a-
tions!
” Keith yelled, and hands clapped on to the weather braces and the spanker sheets. Men tailed onto lines, orders were shouted, and the spanker was hauled in with muscular jerks. Wiki heaved the wheel to weather, and the
Swallow
's fine bow turned away from the wind. His broad back suddenly chilled as a splash lifted over the taffrail and wetted his shirt.

“Brace round foresails! Set spanker!”
Down
went the helm as Wiki shoved on the spokes, and
round
the brig came. When he looked over his shoulder the whaleship was firmly in their sights. Crews hauled manfully at train tackles to drag the guns inboard, and powder and shot were rammed home. Then, with the cannon run out again, they were ready for action.

It had been a matter of mere moments. “Let's return the compliment, and fire a shot across
his
bows,” Rochester suggested to the gunner, Dave. “Let's see how
he
likes being brought to,” he added, and received a broad grin.

There was a huge explosion, the gun carriage screeched backward across the planks, and the cannonball whistled across the bows of the whaleman with wonderful precision. The result was both dramatic and effective—to Rochester's immense gratification, the spouter captain backed his fore and mizzen topsails in a panic-stricken hurry, slowing to a near standstill.

His blood being thoroughly up, however, he was determined to teach the impudent stranger yet another lesson. In response to his orders the brig luffed up, rounded to with a flourish, hastened up the wind, and bore down on the whaleship with all sails set. Moments rushed by in the creaking of rigging and the swish of water, and then Wiki could see the expressions on the faces of the men who were standing at the rails of the whaler. They were staring paralyzed with horror as the brig tore down upon them.

Just as impact seemed inevitable, “Ready about!” George bellowed, and around the
Swallow
came. Losing speed fast, the brig sheered past the whaleship's stern, while the sailors who could read called out the name on the sternboard—“
Trojan
of New London, Connecticut”—to those who could not. Their voices were incredulous. A fellow national had fired at them—a countryman! Oaths echoed from all about the decks, and the boatswain hollered for quiet.

Like most American whalers, the
Trojan
had a hurricane house built over the stern, which was designed to shelter the helmsman, and contain such amenities as the sail locker. The master was standing on the flat roof of this, his fists propped on his belt, and his wide-brimmed leather hat crammed well down on his head. He was a middle-aged, deeply tanned, extremely wrinkled character, wearing a New Bedford beard—a fringe of short whiskers around the edges of his cheeks and chin—and a deeply wounded expression.

Such had been the precision of Rochester's maneuver, the captains were able to converse without speaking trumpets as the brig slid slowly past the whaleship's stern. According to protocol, this chat should have been an exchange of formal details, such as names of ship, captain, and last port, but instead the spouter skipper inquired in unmistakably aggrieved tones, “Why the hell did you fire a gun at me, sir?”

“I could say the same to you, sir,” Rochester replied.

“Well, ain't you a United States navy ship?”

“U.S. brig
Swallow
—and I'm uncommon glad you recognized me as such,” Captain Rochester said dryly.

“So why didn't you respond to my flag of distress?” the other demanded. “You carried on without giving me a chance to run down and speak! All you did was send up a bloody big ensign—as if you wished to taunt me! What choice did I have but to fire a gun to make you pay attention?”

There was a moment of utter silence, disturbed only by the swish of the sea. Then George queried gently, “
What
flag of distress?”