Shark Island (6 page)

Forsythe paused, and then decided that telling the truth might do more good than harm. “We're on a mission after pirates.”

“You're after those goddamned insurgent privateers? You're a whole month too late, by God!” Reed stamped his foot, then jumped and cursed with the pain, which didn't appear to do his temper any good at all. “Why couldn't you have come four weeks ago, huh? Then you could have seized a prize, instead of me losing my sloop.”

“The
Hero?
” Forsythe said alertly. “She was attacked by pirates?”

“She was, indeed—though the captain had the common guts to sail her right up the beach to escape 'em.”

“And they looted her?”

Captain Reed let out a huge sigh instead of answering, and then turned and stumped off, waving his free arm and saying, “Come, come. Come and discuss a bottle in my cabin.”

Forsythe and Kingman followed the old man along the deck, casting wary glances from side to side as they went. The crew was a weathered, surly-looking bunch; most were heavily bearded, and some had scarred hands and fingers missing, evidently the result of past battles with seals. Joel Hammond was standing by the mizzenmast, and Forsythe slowed as he came alongside him. He wanted to ask why the hell either he or Reed hadn't sent a boat after the
Peacock
to beg assistance, but instead he cast a significant glance at the fort.

He said, “What goes on up there?”

“Nothin'.”

“What d'you mean,
nothin'?
”

“Exactly what I say,” the mate retorted. “It used to be a prison, or so I heard, but it ain't been used for many years. The cannon have all been spiked, and the rest is in ruins. Go up there yourself, if you don't believe me.”

“And what about the island?”

“It's deserted, and it ain't no use asking me more, on account of there ain't anyone left here to tell the tale.” Then Hammond grimly advised, “You'd better get a move along. The old man is awaiting, and he gets uncommon angry when impatient.”

The door to the after house companionway was open, and the uneven echoes of Captain Reed's progress echoed in the short passage at the bottom. Forsythe negotiated the half-dozen steps easily enough because of a shaft of sunlight that dropped down there, but then he paused, because the captain's cabin at the end of the corridor, where Ezekiel Reed had disappeared, was so dark he needed to wait while his sight adjusted. He did see that a stateroom was sited to either side of the corridor, because their doors had been left open. He glanced into the one on the larboard side; it was small and Spartan, with sea chests stowed neatly beneath the single berth. Then, when he was about to move on, Zack Kingman came up behind him, grabbed his arm, and hissed, “Bloody hell, look at that.”

“What?”

“Look at that, I say.” Kingman's grin was loose, his whisper lascivious. He was pointing at the second stateroom, the one on the starboard side of the corridor, a relatively spacious affair which had evidently been enlarged by taking over the steward's pantry and knocking down the partition between them.

“Wa'al, I'll be damned,” said Forsythe, equally sotto voce. “The old bastard's got a woman with him!” This room had a double berth, the covers tossed and rumpled, and was otherwise cluttered with female garments. Hats and bonnets dangled from hooks, and frilly petticoats and lacy corsets trailed out of baskets and trunks. The air was dense with perfume, and the cleanest object in the room was the mirror. It looked and smelled like a bordello.

Then Reed's voice sounded out from the captain's cabin. “What are you hanging about for?” he hollered, and the two men turned reluctantly away.

Stepping over the threshold of the captain's cabin, Forsythe saw why it was almost too dim to see a goddamned thing—the sidelights in the upper parts of the fore and aft bulkheads were all blocked off with heavy furniture.
Jesus Christ,
he thought; he had never seen the like in all his seafaring life. Walls were hung with heavy drapes, and side tables perched against them. Great jars of feathers stood in corners, and fancy lamps, a box of ship's papers, and a large birdcage cluttered the top of the saloon table. The resemblance to an overfurnished New England parlor was astonishing—even to the stifling heat, because there was a low fire in the stove. The only evidence of male occupation was the collection of skinning knives, muskets, and cutlasses that hung on the forward bulkhead, with a rack of sealing bludgeons at the foot.

Captain Reed was sunk deep in an easy chair and didn't bother to get up as Forsythe and Zack walked in. They looked about hopefully, but the mysterious female wasn't present. After getting them seated, Reed lifted his voice, and a portly, prissy-looking man trotted in—Jack Winter, they were told, the ship's steward. A bottle of brandy and three tumblers were produced, and then the steward was ordered to go to the forward house, break out a bottle of grog, and entertain the cutter's crew on the foredeck.

The old man was acting surprisingly hospitable, considering he had lost one ship and was on the verge of losing another, thought Forsythe—but it was no skin off his nose, he ruminated on. Reed was the boss, and if he preferred sinking a bottle of brandy to getting the damage in the hull of the
Annawan
assessed, then that was perfectly fine by him.

“Tell me again why you're here,” the old man demanded after the steward had gone.

“We was sent here by Captain Wilkes of the Exploring Expedition,” Forsythe said succinctly, after sinking half the glass he'd been given. Kingman, to his right, was smacking his lips as he gazed affectionately at his own tumbler, which he'd already drained, and Reed affably leaned forward and tilted the bottle again.

“Exploring? Exploring for what?”

“Wa'al, for the continent of Antarctica, for a start,” said Forsythe, who knew it was common knowledge and didn't care that it was supposed to be a secret.

“What? When most of America is still unexplored as yet?” Captain Reed shook his head in disgust. “So that's what they do with the taxes I pay, huh? Madness! And, what's more, it's bloody pointless. Antarctica has been discovered already—by Stonington sealers!—and, what's more, in that sloop of mine that lies out on the beach.”

Forsythe didn't bother to hide his total disbelief. It was Wilkes's ambition to go down in history as the discoverer of Antarctica, and the idea that it had been “discovered already” was very amusing; Forsythe had never felt much love for Captain Wilkes, and having had the command of the brig
Swallow
whipped away from him hadn't improved that sentiment in the slightest. However, it was impossible to credit that the old bastard wasn't raving. The wrecked sloop on the beach wasn't much bigger than the cutter.

“It's true—and I can tell you the date right down to the day,” Reed assured him. “It was November 17, 1820, when my neighbor Nat Palmer, in command of that sloop
Hero,
raised thousand-foot cliffs in a sea filled with ice. He wrote it in his logbook.”

Jesus God,
thought Forsythe. Just to keep this crazy conversation going, he said, “Neighbor?”

“Captain Nathaniel Palmer is a Stonington man, too.”

“You're from Stonington?” Well, thought Forsythe, that figured. When the old man drained his glass instead of answering, he said, “So what the hell was he doing in the Antarctic Ocean? Looking for seals?”

“That is exactly what he was doing.” Feeling around for the bottle, Captain Reed found it, lifted it, and topped up all their tumblers. “That sloop was just forty-four tons register—did you know that?”

Forsythe shrugged.

“Nat was just twenty-one when he discovered that great land mass seven hundred miles south of Cape Horn, which in the log he called ‘Antarctica.' But,” Ezekiel Reed added with a sigh, “he was really supposed to be looking for rookeries, and not a single seal did he find.”

“So he made a losing voyage?”

“Aye—which makes me wonder what the
use
is of this so-called exploring expedition of yours. What
good
is it going to do for our great country, huh? Tell me that! Well,” Reed exclaimed, forestalling anything Forsythe might want to say; “you don't need to bother!—for I know the answer already!—
none!
I know that to my personal cost, because this schooner that we are setting on now—this same schooner
Annawan!
—has been on an exploring expedition already, but they didn't discover a goddamned
thing,
let alone a profitable rookery.”

Forsythe was so stunned he almost dropped his glass. “But the Wilkes expedition is supposed to be the first damn American exploring expedition ever!”

“Well, it ain't,” the old man snapped. “Back in 1829 a passel of Stonington merchants put up the money for a three-ship fleet to survey and discover in Antarctic seas, and I was ill-advised enough to be one of those investors. There was the
Annawan,
with Captain Nat Palmer in command, the
Penguin,
commanded by his brother, Alexander, and the
Seraph,
with Benjamin Pendleton in charge, and the fleet was called the South Sea Fur Company and Exploring Expedition. And,” Reed said sourly, “we lost a whole heap of money.”

“But they found Antarctica?”

“I don't know where the hell they went, but they never found nothing.” Shaking his head, Captain Reed let out a grunt of angry laughter, and said, “And now the poor bloody American taxpayer is funding another of the same. And what are you doing, huh? Discovering? No! You're hunting
pirates,
for God's sake, a month too late to do any good! Why, goddamn it,
why?
”

Forsythe shrugged, and told him about the
Peacock
and Captain Hudson's report.

“So that's what it was!” Reed exclaimed. “Saw her myself, I did—
Peacock,
was she?” Then, to Forsythe's amazement, the old man's mood changed like a weathercock, and he shook with gusts of raucous laughter. “Most comical thing I'd seen in years!” he shouted between spasms of mirth. “An enormous great sloop of war taking fright at the sight of an old ruin of a fort! Oh, it was a treat to see how she kicked up her wake,” he cried, as jolly as a country priest, while Zack Kingman giggled in his affable but uncomprehending way.

Forsythe, who didn't see the joke at all, watched Reed without expression, thinking this was bloody strange behavior for a man in such dire straits. When the laughter died down he said, “I would've figured you'd have signalized her—or sent boats after her, considering the leak you've got there.” He could hear the thump of the pumps, a dismal sound because of the soggy feel of the deck beneath his feet.

“Didn't know we had a leak then, did I?” the old man retorted. “Didn't know until I got back on board that that damn fool Hammond had run her on a rock. And when I arrived they was fothering a sail that he reckoned would get us to Pernambuco.”

“But it didn't,” Forsythe finished for him.

“Not even out of the channel where she lies.”

“So what were you doin' here, anyways?”

“I called at Rio expecting to find the
Hero
there, but she wasn't. All I got was news that she'd been attacked by insurgent privateers—and run ashore in an effort to escape.”

“So you came to salvage her?”

“Aye. Bad decision—bad.”

Bloody bad, Forsythe mentally concurred. “And she'd been looted?”

“The holds are quite empty.” Reed looked around at the nightmarish clutter of the cabin, and sighed heavily. Then he looked at his drained glass and tipped the bottle over it, but with no result.

“So where are these privateers now?” Forsythe pursued.

Reed didn't answer, instead shaking the brandy bottle as if he couldn't believe it was empty. He lifted his voice, hollering for the steward, so Forsythe raised his voice, too, saying, “If you have any idea where the thieving bastards might have fled, we can go after them.”

Reed said, “Don't be a bloody fool.” Then he shouted out for the steward again. “Jack, goddamn it—Jack Winter! We need another bottle here, rouse it up!” Then, as the echoes died away, he looked at Forsythe, and said, “When do you expect your brig to arrive? I need to talk to the
real
boss of your outfit—the captain! I don't want you chasing off after insurgent privateers and creating all kinds of international situations, I want to claim my rights of succor as a citizen of the United States—a taxpayer, damn it! What's his name?”

“George Rochester,” Forsythe bit out sourly. “But I gave him orders to lay off and on until the cutter returns.”

“What? Who the hell are you to order your captain about?” Without waiting for a reply, Reed heaved himself out of his chair, grabbed his stick, stumped along the passage to the foot of the stairs, and shouted, “Goddamn it, you stringshanked bastard of a steward, don't you hear me? Brandy, more brandy!” Then he turned, looked at Forsythe, and said, “The brig don't come until summoned, huh? Well, I know how to fix that.” And he lifted his voice again, hollering, “Hammond, there! Where's the mate, damn him? Hammond!”

“Don't bother,” said Forsythe, coming out of his chair in an angry rush, and heaving past Reed up the stairs. “Zack,” he ordered over his shoulder as he arrived out on deck. “Tell the men to get ready to get under way for the brig.”

“What?” said Captain Reed, hurrying up the companionway after him. “You're going? But you ain't even looked at the damage yet. Write a note for your captain—this Rochester—and appraise him of the sad situation. Hammond will carry it for you.”

Like hell, thought Forsythe; he couldn't wait to get off this sinking tub and away from this crazy old man. He opened his mouth—and saw the young woman who was walking along the deck toward them. She was carrying a bottle of brandy in one hand, and a tray of edibles in the other; and she was the most beautiful girl he'd ever clapped eyes on in the whole of his life. Her uncovered hair, thickly braided, was as smooth as black silk; she was small and voluptuous, with a tiny, nipped-in waist, and large round breasts that were only half-concealed by the low bodice of her gown. Her eyes, huge and lambent in a pale, heart-shaped face, were fixed on Forsythe as she walked with swaying hips toward him.