Shark Island (27 page)

The
Annawan
was being unloaded faster than anyone could have imagined. Soon the captain's cabin was cleared, and the trapdoor to the lazaretto—the captain's private hold in the stern—was opened, and Captain Reed's personal store of trade goods was heaved up to be taken on shore, too. Rochester, watching interestedly, saw a stream of the usual kind of things—kegs of tobacco and bales of cloth, plus crates of the goods like scissors, clocks, folding combs, and mirrors that were colloquially known as “Yankee notions,” and which found a ready market all about the Atlantic and Pacific.

There was not a single silver coin amongst the lot, so George Rochester went on shore to cast an eye over what had been dropped on the beach. Annabelle Reed was sitting on a lady chair just inside the opening of her tent, trunks and baskets scattered around her feet. Bizarrely, someone had propped a tall vase of painted feathers on one side of the entrance, making a strange contrast to the live birds that cawed and circled in the air overhead. They were angry, it seemed, by having been evicted from the shrub that grew luxuriantly nearby, and which provided some shade. She'd made no attempt to unpack, but instead was moodily watching the frenetic activity in the bay.

Rochester directed men into collecting up bric-a-brac as it was dropped without ceremony from the floating table. Lacking any kind of direction from their owner, who seemed utterly uninterested in the fate of her chattels, they piled it up on a dry patch of grass. George opened trunks and dressers, but found nothing but clothes and table linen. Then, the last of the furniture having been stacked, the gang set off a decent distance to erect two big tents for the seamen of the
Annawan,
and a smaller one for Hammond and his first mate.

George watched them go, and then approached Annabelle. She was still perched on the low chair, her head bent in deep thought, but when she sensed his presence she looked up. George watched the black-fringed eyes focus, and then she demanded without any preamble, “Where's Wiki Coffin?”

“I've put him in charge of the brig while we're working on the schooner.”

“But why?”

“There is the ever-present danger of privateers,” he said smoothly.

“Oh,” she said, and looked down while she thought. Then her lashes lifted again and she said, “Have you finished with my husband's box of papers?”

George shook his head. He had no intention of returning it to her, because he didn't trust her not to burn the lot before the Brazilian authorities had a chance to check the certificates.

“But it's mine and I need it!”

“Why?” George inquired. His tone was light, but he was studying her alertly.

“My husband's personal papers are in the box, as well as the ones for the ship—and I'm his widow, so I need them, don't you see?”

George kept silent, and after a moment she tilted her head on one side, looked up at him appealingly, and said, “Why won't you allow me to move onto the
Swallow?
”

“The quarters are cramped; you would be very uncomfortable there.”

She pouted, and said, “Who is going to watch over me at night?”

“Why do you need someone to watch?” She was no more at risk on shore than she was on the schooner, George thought—except, perhaps, for snakes. There was a barrel just inside the tent that was filled with the knives, clubs, muskets, and pistols that had hung from the wall of the after house. He poked around in it, making a lot of noise but finding no silver coins, and then, straightening, he said to her, “Do you know how to load a gun?”

To his surprise, she laughed. “Didn't Wiki tell you that I am fisher folk—Cajun? Captain Rochester, I could load a gun and shoot a copperhead before I could even talk.”

“Perhaps you should carry a couple of pistols.”

“Perhaps.” She looked around vaguely and said, “There will be a belt with holsters somewhere. I could wear that, I suppose.”

“Do that,” said Rochester encouragingly. The shadows were growing long, and in the distance a plume of smoke wisped from the chimney of the
Swallow
's galley. Midshipman Keith and the carpenter's gang had already returned on board, and the boatswain and his men were waiting at the edge of the surf. It was time to get back to the brig.

“I'm starving,” Annabelle complained. “Where's our cook? The
peeshwank
hasn't even started a fire yet.”

“Robert Festin's on the
Swallow,
” Rochester said. “It seemed more efficient for him to take over our galley and prepare food for all.”

She brightened. “So we eat on board the
Swallow?
”

George shook his head. “No, it's easier to bring the cooked food out to the beach.”

“Like a picnic?”

She pronounced the word
picnic
in a very foreign way,
peek-neek.
George said easily, “Picnics are fun, I am told.” The cutter's men certainly enjoyed them, he thought.

He turned to take his leave, and she called out anxiously, “But how about you and your men—don't you picnic, too?”

“No,” he said. “The crew of the
Swallow
will eat on board the brig.” Without looking at her again, he left her and walked down to the boat.

As they pulled for the brig they passed the floating table, which was heading shoreward yet again, this time loaded high with a great mixture of clutter, evidently from tidying up the last of the paraphernalia in the captain's cabin. Though it was obviously unstable, it was plain that the men who were poling it couldn't have cared less. When the top of the heap teetered dangerously, they simply stood back and let the bulk of it thunder overboard instead of attempting to save it. The heavier pieces fell to the bottom at once, leaving a whirl of clothing and pieces of occasional furniture.

An empty birdcage floated by. George bent down, scooped it up, and dropped it into the bottom of the boat. Now, he thought with great satisfaction, he would get his chair back; he would sit in his rightful place at the saloon table while he tried out the first, doubtlessly ambrosial, meal cooked by Festin on the brig. They had killed a couple of the hogs from the
Annawan,
and he looked forward eagerly to fragrant roast pork.

Instead, Midshipman Keith met him at the rail, his expression utterly tragic. “Nothing went right for him,” he mourned. “The stove heats to the wrong temperature, and has an oven that's not quite the right size. The firewood sparks too much, the tormentor is nothing like the right size and shape, and everything is crooked, or bent, or not clean enough, or stowed in the wrong place. Now, the great cook is in tears.”

George blinked. “What's a
tormentor?
”

“A kind of big fork,” said Wiki, arriving up alongside Constant Keith, and confirmed the sad news. Robert Festin, the famous creator of succulent salt pork dumplings and truly magnificent chicken stew pie, had dashed all their wonderful expectations by burning the anticipated roast.

Thirty

Sua said in Samoan, “Did you see Sekatoa's red arse?”

Wiki looked at him consideringly. The two Samoans were sitting cross-legged on the deck of the
Swallow
in the shade of the foremast, chatting while Wiki worked on his
taiaha.
It was toward the end of their watch below—their four hours' off duty—and Sua, as usual, was harping on about the great white pointer,
mango taniwha,
which had attacked Wiki and carried off Kingman's corpse while he, Sua, was watching. It had made a strong impression on him, and over the ten intervening days he had convinced himself that the shark was none other than the great Sekatoa, the shark spirit of Tonga.

“No,” said Wiki. “I did not see his red arse. And why should he be in the Atlantic?”

“Maatu, the chief of Niuatoputapu, has the right to call on him whenever he feels the need,” Sua informed him. “His people throw some kava root in the sea, and first the remoras—Sekatoa's
matapule
assistants—come, and then Maatu's people send the remoras away with a message; then a small shark comes, perhaps one of your
kuwai,
and they give him a message, too, and send him away; then a bigger shark comes; and so it goes until at last Sekatoa himself arrives and asks what Maatu desires.”

“But Niuatoputapu is a Tongan island, and there aren't even any
Tongans
here, let alone any chiefs by the name of Maatu, just you sorry Samoans,
e hoa ma,
my friends.”

However, as he worked on his
taiaha,
from the corner of his eye Wiki could see Sua rocking back and forth as he wound himself up into a yarn-spinning frame of mind, and resignedly realized that yet another tale of Sekatoa was on the way.

“Did you know of the time that Samoan ghosts stole the mountain from Niuafo'ou?”

Wiki had been to the Tongan island of Niuafo'ou. He stood up and sighted down the
taiaha,
which was now unmistakably a weapon—and a viciously beautiful weapon, too. The
rau,
the flat striking blade, had been hardened by smoking and heating to the smoothness of a hatchet, and because he and George practiced every evening, the shaft was highly polished by the constant rubbing of his hands. The nightly contest had become so lively that George used an ordinary ship's cutlass instead of risking his dress sword, and the whole crew watched with great excitement. Undoubtedly, bets were laid. Wiki's skill with the
taiaha
had improved beyond bounds, but George's swordsmanship had come along amazingly, too, and so they were very evenly matched.

Wiki sat down again, and said, “There is no mountain on Niuafo'ou.”

“That's because the Samoan ghosts stole it,” Sua informed him.

“Ah, why didn't I guess?” said Wiki sardonically. “Why did they want it?”

“They wanted to take it to Samoa, but Sekatoa saw what they were doing. It was at night, of course, as Samoan ghosts cannot stand the light of the sun, so he decided to trick them. First he sent his
matapules
in the form of roosters, to crow as if it were dawn.”

“So the ghosts took fright and dropped it?”

“Not yet. They simply pulled faster, telling each other, ‘Hurry, it is almost morning.' So Sekatoa decided to handle the problem himself. He swam up to the ghosts and showed them his red arse—
mata tuungaiku
in Tongan—and they were so alarmed that they dropped the mountain, and it became the island of Tafahi.”

“The ghosts thought his red arse was the sun?”

“Aye.”

Wiki said firmly, “I did not see any red arse. And, furthermore, it is time you two relieved the lookouts aloft,
e hoa ma.
”

After they had gone, he concentrated on the teardrop-shaped end of his
taiaha.
He had carved it into a stylized head with slanted eyes and a long protruding tongue, which he was now engraving with elaborate curves and whorls. A sennit collar had been twisted about its neck, and into this Wiki had braided the feathers of the bird that had led him to the staff, along with long tufts of his own black hair. This was designed to distract the enemy by being flicked across his eyes.

“Ko te rakau na Hapai,”
Wiki sang as he wielded the tip of his knife:

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.

Tu was
Tumatauenga,
the ancestor-guardian of war. The verse was not meant to be a song, not really—it was supposed to be a chant, a
karakia,
but Wiki sang it because he was feeling so good about the way his
taiaha
was progressing. Secretly he was not even sure he used the right words—there were
karakia
to be used by children, others for laymen like himself, and still more reserved to elders and
tohunga,
priests. Perhaps, he thought, he was being unwittingly presumptuous, but still the words sounded right in his head, and he felt happy about them.

The sun reached its zenith in the sky as the song trailed into silence. It was hot, the sun sparkling fiercely on the rippling surface of the water. Aloft, the two Samoans were silent. A plume of smoke wafted up to the paling sky from the galley chimney, and a redolent steam was drifting out of the door. Wiki went inside and reached over the stove to stow the
taiaha
back on its hooks until it was time for his match with Rochester that evening. Then he lifted the lid of one of the two great caldrons to peer at the bubbling contents.
“Ka pai,”
he said to Festin. “
Oligen, yo.
It smells good.”

“Bloody good,” agreed the cook.

Over the past ten days Festin had come along by leaps and bounds, and not just in the quality of his cooking. He still had trouble forming sentences, but obviously the bang he had taken on his head was mending. Disconcertingly, the English words he adopted most easily were profane—learned from Forsythe, whom Festin greatly admired—but he also seemed fascinated with
te reo,
Wiki's native language, and had readily picked up a few phrases.

In turn, Wiki was beginning to get a grasp of Festin's strange dialect—something that, oddly, was helped along by memories of the months in New Hampshire when he and George played truant to sit about the campfires of the Indians they were supposed to be converting, because a number of the words the strange little man used were very close to Abnaki—such as the word for greeting,
kway.
The rest seemed to be based on some ancient French provincial dialect, so Wiki theorized that he had originally hailed from one of the remote maritime communities of Nova Scotia or Labrador. How Festin had got to Rio de Janeiro—or, indeed, how he had been hit on the head—was still a mystery, however.