Shark Island (15 page)

Wiki said, “Does Captain Hammond hold a grudge because he was forced to shift his berth to the forward house, perhaps?”

“Wa-al, according to the steward, he's got a bigger grudge than that,” said one.

“An incurable hand for gossip, that man,” said the New Bedforder with deep disapproval. “Stewards are ever so, I guess, but Jack Winter really ought to keep a stiller tongue in his head.”

“What did Winter tell you?”

“That Mr. Hammond and Mrs. Reed had an understanding once, but then she became the captain's wife.”

Wiki said, thunderstruck, “An understanding to be
married?
”

“Aye,” said the New Bedforder, and nodded with his mouth pulled down. He spat out one fishbone and picked his teeth with another, his expression disdainful.

“In N'Orleans, he told us,” said another. “She met Hammond when he dropped anchor there, and then Cap'n Reed later. Played 'em both like fish, or so I heard, and naturally became affianced to the one what was richer.”

“That Jack Winter should keep his mouth buttoned up,” said the New Bedforder. “Gossips like an old woman.”

As if in emphasis, the clap of a rifle shot echoed from the prison high above, followed by a shout. The cutter's men sat up, turning to stare up the cliff.

“That be the lieutenant,” observed one in a tranquil tone, and leaned back on his elbows again.

“Shot a rabbit, d'you reckon?” said another. “That would be a tasty treat.”

“I'd fancy a nice young goat, myself,” said the New Bedforder.

“Aye, a goat would go good—roasted over a fire with hot stones inside to cook the innards.”

“And sprigs of rosemary to make it proper nice.”

“Aye,” said another wistfully. “My ma used to cook a goat like that.”

Wiki grasped his chance to leave. Silently opting out of this culinary conversation, he clambered to his feet and set off up the track.

It was hot away from the shade where they'd been eating, and the gulls flew a long way up in the sky as if to avoid the reflected heat from the sea and sand, but it was good to stretch his legs. Wiki had his head bent as he climbed, his mind moodily turning over the distasteful notion that Annabelle had had a relationship with Joel Hammond. He felt as if she should have told him; it was a jolt to find that she had held back something so important. Perhaps, he thought, the scurrilous gossip wasn't true. The higher he clambered, though, the more uncomfortable the concept became.

Fifteen

When Wiki surmounted the last traverse toward the fortified walls, he looked up to find that Forsythe was aiming a rifle at him. He stopped, and surveyed the southerner with utter disgust. Forsythe looked like the last three days of a dissipated life and stank even worse, downwind. He was still wearing uniform, but stained white breeches, grimy knee-high boots, and an untied stock did not improve his appearance in the slightest. The fancy claw hammer coat had been discarded somewhere, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to bare the snake tattoos that coiled from wrist to elbow on each of his brawny forearms.

“Don't shoot me, I'm innocent,” Wiki growled, and clambered up the last slope.

Close up, the stink of rum and tobacco was overwhelming. Wiki stepped aside a pace to get into clearer air. “Weren't you jest a little nervous that my finger might twitch on the trigger?” Forsythe queried with a crooked grin. “You wouldn't be the first New Zealander I've shot, you know.”

“You've passed up too many good opportunities for me to start worrying now,” Wiki said ironically. And there was no point in trying to run away—Forsythe was a superb marksman, even when too drunk for speech.

They were standing where Wiki had glimpsed Forsythe that morning, and the view over golden sands and white-edged surf and sea was stupendous. Wiki could see the
Swallow
bobbing lightly on a tapestry of green and turquoise ripples, and the
Annawan
wallowing with a sick gush of water pouring from her side. The watch was pumping manfully, obviously, but their efforts looked increasingly doomed.

He turned to look about the huge courtyard that fronted the ruined prison. Close up, he could see why Ezekiel Reed had found it so hilarious that the
Peacock
lookouts had taken fright; if the
Annawan
had not been in such dire need of a good navy carpenter, it would have indeed been a capital joke. The cannon that had looked so ferocious from a distance were blotched with age, rust running from where they had been spiked. Judging by the abundant white splatters and blown straw, for many seasons past the gulls had used the fallen-in parts of the redoubt as nesting places. On the far side of the cracked, sun-scorched pavement the seaward wall of the prison reared up, looking even more decrepit than the side that overlooked the burial ground.

Wiki looked at Forsythe again and said, “What
were
you shooting at, anyway?”

Instead of answering, Forsythe said, “Is Zack down on the beach?”

Wiki frowned, because he hadn't given Kingman much thought at all. “No—I took it for granted that he was with you.”

“The silly bastard's asleep somewhere with an empty bottle in his fist, I reckon. I fired the shot to rouse him up.”

“Your men are going to be disappointed,” Wiki observed dryly. “They're expecting a tender young goat at the very least.”

“Have you been pestering those poor bastards?”

“Just passing the time of day,” Wiki said. “They settled in very comfortably, down there.” Then he looked Forsythe up and down again, and said with distaste, “Didn't you wonder what they would get up to on the beach while you and Zachary Kingman spent the night on the schooner?”

Forsythe looked affronted. “As you noticed, my men are perfectly capable of looking after themselves—and we only went to pay Mrs. Reed our respects, and be a supporting presence during the prayers. How were we to know that the wake was goin' to turn into a goddamned spree?”

Wiki said, “Mrs. Reed informed me that you invited her to sail to Rio on the brig, and read her a lesson on ranking in the U.S. Navy—you explained that George Rochester outranks you only when you're on board his ship, and that you outrank him everywhere else.”

Forsythe flushed red with anger, and snapped, “Wa-al, it ain't nothin' but the goddamned truth! And
Annabelle
had no objection to my reassuring company, neither,” he said, and leered.

An unexpected rush of hot, jealous rage hit Wiki. Involuntarily, his elbows flexed, and his quivering fists clenched at the level of his bulging biceps. He wanted to yell at Forsythe that Annabelle had virtually accused him of murdering her husband, and that he had questioned the cutter's men in the hope of proving that she had been mistaken. Instead, he turned away to hide his expression, striding off across the courtyard in the direction of the prison entrance.

He heard Forsythe's footsteps, and glanced back to see the southerner following him, rifle hanging loosely from one hand. Then he was through the doorway. It was suddenly much cooler, and very gloomy.

He was in a cavernous stone hall. Corridors leading off to either side were lined with cells, most of them with their bars rusted loose. Ahead, a wide stone staircase wound on and on upward. There was rubbish everywhere—fallen rubble, broken furniture, collapsed racks that had once held firearms. Curious, Wiki went down the left-hand passage and into a few of the cells, where he made an attempt to read the scratched words—names, dates, enigmatic messages—on the walls, all very old and meaningless. There was a chilling sense of …
waiting,
a preternatural recognition of the thousands of hours that had been waited out by hundreds of imprisoned men, endless time endured in the numb hope of release or even, maybe, just for an explanation of why they were here.

He returned to the hall, where Forsythe was standing looking around, and said, “What kind of men were incarcerated here—did Captain Reed say?”

“Nope, he did not,” Forsythe said. He spat a yellow gob onto the old stone floor. “But I hear that prisons on islands like this are reserved for the worst kind of bastard, on account of it's harder for 'em to escape when surrounded by sea.”

So they would've been hardened criminals—or men with the wrong political views. Then Wiki's attention was seized by a big stack of squared timber beams leaning against the highest wall. He went over and hefted one, bracing his feet in a pile of rubbish to do it—and Forsythe fired his gun. The ball whistled past Wiki's thigh. The deafening report sent echoes crashing back and forth in the huge stone space.

Wiki shouted, “What the hell?” Then he saw the snake, headless and writhing beside his right boot, and heard Forsythe's derisive grunt of laughter.

“You oughter take more care,” he said. “This island is alive with 'em.”

Wiki said nothing, waiting until his heart stopped hammering.

“They don't have snakes in New Zealand, huh?” Forsythe queried on the same sardonic note.

“No,” Wiki said shortly. When Forsythe had finished reloading the gun, he nodded at the lengths of lumber and said, “What do you reckon those were for?”

“For gallows trees—and for making triangles for floggin' the poor buggers against.”

“What makes you so sure of that?”

“Figures, in a place like this.”

He was probably right, Wiki thought. In Sydney Town, in the penal settlement of New South Wales, a flogging triangle was permanently set up beneath the windows of the barracks where the female convicts were held, to wrest the maximum humiliation from the public punishment, and the ground beneath it was eternally sodden with blood. However, balks of timber like these were also used in shipyards.

Looking at them thoughtfully, he said, “When you promised Annabelle that we would carry her to Rio on the
Swallow,
did it occur to you that we might be forced to carry the entire complement of the
Annawan
there?”

“Wa'al, it does look as if that poor bloody schooner is going to sink beneath the waves at any minute.” Forsythe paused, staring in the direction of the courtyard, and then said frankly, “Bloody horrible thought, ain't it—I have to admit I dislike the notion of those goddamned sealers boarding the brig for the passage; I've a bad feeling in my gut about it.”

Wiki looked at him consideringly. Forsythe had been away from the
Swallow
when the twelve
Annawan
men had boarded, bringing an indefinable sense of menace with them, and yet it was evident that he shared his own instinctive uneasiness. He and the Virginian had regarded each other with animosity since the time Forsythe had confronted him in an inn in Norfolk, and picked a quarrel just because Wiki was squiring a fair-haired southern girl. Yet, in the weeks since then, Wiki had been surprised by how often they shared the same thoughts. He supposed it was because they were both seamen, with similar experiences behind them.

“We could make the
Annawan
seaworthy,” he suggested.

“You think we can mend her? Tell me how,” Forsythe said scathingly.

“Thinking up a way of getting at that leak isn't easy,” Wiki agreed.

Then he watched Forsythe surreptitiously through his thick, lowered lashes, wondering if he would take up the implied challenge. Finally, the southerner shifted from one foot to the other, and said, “We could warp her up onto the beach—lay her on her side alongside the sloop, and use timber from the wreck to replace the damaged planking.”

“Careening her on the beach is a good idea, but I'm not sure it would work,” said Wiki, remembering what George had said. “The
Annawan
is pretty old, and she's had a lot of hard usage—her timbers might not take the strain. There's a big risk that the planking on the grounded side would give way. I'd rather have her hove down close to where she is, away from the channel but with enough water under her to give her buoyancy.”

“Heave her down to what?” demanded Forsythe.

This was indeed a problem, which they set to discussing in workmanlike fashion. The job of heaving down the schooner so that she tipped over on her good side, bringing the damaged side up into the air, would call for two mighty blocks, one at the head of the mainmast, and the other securely fastened to a belaying point outside the ship, plus a heavy cable rove between them, and some kind of capstan at the end. This, as it winched the cable up, would haul the schooner over. Normally, the belaying point was a large heaving post on a wharf, where the winch was sited, too—but obviously that was impossible, here.

“How about a raft?” said Wiki. “We could build one out of those beams, and anchor it up to the good side of the schooner. Fitted out with a post and winch, it would serve as a floating wharf. Maybe we wouldn't even need a capstan on the raft, but could work out a way of using the schooner's own windlass.” Once the hole was patched, the schooner could be righted by letting the cable out again—though the ballast would probably have to be shoveled from one side to the other. It wouldn't be easy, but it was possible.

“But hell, a thousand strokes an hour means a bloody big leak. I'll give it more thought,” Forsythe interrupted impatiently as Wiki opened his mouth to object. “But right now I'm a damn sight more interested in finding Zack. Tell the truth,” he said, his eyes sliding away, “I'm starting to get bloody worried.”

“When did you see him last?”

“On the beach where they dumped us—up over by the wreck.” Then Forsythe grimaced and said, “I think so, anyways. Maybe I'm wrong. I was pretty drunk, and I guess I just assumed he was with me. But when I come to he wasn't there, and when I got round to where the cutter is anchored, he wasn't there, neither, so I figure he's passed out someplace on this island.” His tone was careless, but his stance betrayed inner tension.