A Watery Grave (14 page)

The two nine-pounder Long Toms, however, were his special pride and joy. As Rochester confided to Wiki, on his previous ships his impression had been that the main job of the gunner was to keep up an incessant dissatisfied growl about his guns. Dave, by contrast, treasured his charges; he groomed the old stern chasers as if they were prized stallions, rubbing them bright with brick and canvas, and then coating them with a mixture of lampblack, beeswax, and turpentine until they shone like mirrors. The various rammers, sponges, priming wires, caps, and fuses were spruced up likewise—and then he turned his attention to training both captain and crew in the management of these pampered contrivances.

George Rochester's role was to stand on the quarterdeck with a speaking trumpet, while the Samoan, a large, intimidating figure in a loincloth that showed off his great tattooed thighs to advantage, drummed out a call to quarters on a length of log. “Silence fore and aft!” George cried, as the men hurriedly assembled, to be echoed by Midshipman Erskine:

“Wet and sand the decks!”

“Take off your muzzle bags and withdraw your tompions!”

“Cast loose your guns!”

This led to a bustle of activity, as the bags and barrel plugs that protected the muzzles of the cannon from saltwater were taken out and put aside, and the tight lashings that held the guns in place were cast away. Men hooked on rope tackles, one to each side of the carriage to heave the gun up to the gunport in the rail, and a train-tackle behind to run it back for loading. After that, they seized the breeching—a stout rope secured to the brig's hull by two ring-bolts, one to each side of the carriage—and looped it to a knob at the back end of the gun. This was long enough to allow the cannon to recoil after every shot, but prevented it from running amuck all over the deck.

All this, Captain Rochester watched benignly, his part in the drama being finished. It was now the turn of gunner Dave, who snapped out orders in quick succession: “Chock your luff—stop, vent, and sponge your guns—cartridge, wad, and ram home—load your shot, wad, ram home—man side-tackle falls, run out!”

The cartridge was a flannel bag with three pounds of powder in it, and it was rammed down the muzzle of the gun until the man assigned as gun captain, poking about in the innards with a priming iron thrust through the touch-hole, could feel it was in place, at which he hollered, “Home!” Then the nine-pound shot went down, followed by a wad, both rammed hard. That done, the men clapped onto the side-tackles and shoved the loaded cannon up to the gunport, pushing its muzzle out as far as it would go.

Aiming the brute was the next job. “Crows and ha-a-a-nd-spikes!” Dave roared, and crowbars and handspikes were thrust into place and levered, heaving the gun right or left according to the mountain man's whim, with a great deal of grunting and swearing.

“Elevate your guns for a long shot!” This was a job for the two gun captains, who used wedges shoved underneath the breeches to raise the snouts high enough to rip cannonballs through the sides of enemy frigates—the task for which stern chasers were specially designed.

“Cock your locks, blow your match, watch the weather roll, stand by … FIRE!”

The captain had punctured the cartridge with his priming iron, used a goose quill to fill the touch-hole and the powder pan above it with priming powder from his horn, the hammer of the flintlock had been pulled back; and just in case it didn't work, the slow match—a kind of fuse—was smoldering. The gun, theoretically, was set to blast.

Instead, they practiced hour after hour, all heaving and dumb show, with no satisfying smoke and thunder at the end, just a lot of dissatisfied swearing from mountain man Dave. While exciting at first, it rapidly became tiresome. The only man on board who was happy with the constant gun-drill was the Samoan, whose drumming was becoming more stirring by the minute.

Even if Dave had been pleased with the performance, Captain Rochester could not have allowed a live firing. “If I let 'em fire willy-nilly and without his say-so, Wilkes would have my intestines for a bandanna,” he candidly confessed to Wiki.

They were standing at the taffrail, the spanker boom swinging a little above their heads because they were yet again hauled aback. George had just returned from the
Vincennes,
where he had delivered his journal for Captain Wilkes's weekly inspection, journal keeping being another requirement of the expedition. “They're all finding this dumb exercising a bore,” he said, meaning the captains and officers of the other ships, with whom he associated quite freely. Wilkes encouraged his captains and officers to lower boats and exchange visits, particularly on Saturdays, to carouse in a temperate and seemly fashion, and drink a toast to wives and sweethearts. The officers of the expedition, he declared, were the cream of the U.S. Navy, and he wanted them to become a tight-knit team of loyal comrades, like Admiral Nelson's legendary Band of Brothers.

“But of course we simply have a good growl and drink rather a lot of wine,” said George. Then he handed a card to Wiki and said, “Your company is craved by the mids of the
Vin.
”

“My what?” Wiki blinked.

“Next Saturday. The junior midshipmen of the
Vincennes
have invited you to a feast. I had to deliver many soothing reassurances that you would not try to eat any of
them,
” he added with a grin. “And then they asked if you ate your meat cooked.”

Twelve

“Do you think us awful outrageous, Mr. Coffin, sir?” inquired a red-cheeked lad.

Wiki withdrew his stare from a fascinated survey of his surroundings and gazed at his questioner. Obviously, the young man expected an answer, but Wiki found it very hard to think of one.

He did not think his hosts outrageous at all, just extremely high-spirited. There were six of them, their enthusiastic chubby faces belying the primness of their uniform—dark blue claw-hammer coats with a single line of gold buttons running down from gold-embroidered stand-up collars. Their trousers were white—two of them were grand enough to have white satin breeches to haul out for special occasions such as this. It was beyond Wiki to guess why they had invited him here, but it was certainly an interesting experience.

The midshipman who had spoken was named Dicken, Wiki thought—his friends called him Jack. Like the rest, he was fit to bust with the honor and glory of sailing with what they all insisted on calling the first, great, national exploring expedition. “Just imagine, sir!” one of them had cried—“a country that but a short time ago was a mere discovery itself, taking its place among the most elevated nations of the world!” Captain Wilkes, they were all quite certain, was a genius of the stature of Captain Cook, and they hero-worshiped him unquestioningly. “Long life to him!” had been the first of their spirited toasts.

Wiki smiled and said, “Why should I think you outrageous?”

“Because we are not refined, Mr. Coffin!”

They were also rather drunk. Wiki said very solemnly, “Does a midshipman need to be refined?”

“Assuredly, sir! It is by no means enough that an officer of the U.S. Navy should be a capable mariner!” the young fellow declaimed, and to Wiki's surprise the other five joined in the chorus: “He should be a gentleman of liberal education, refined manners, punctilious courtesy, and the nicest sense of personal honor!”

Wiki hazarded, “You're quoting someone.”

“Aye, sir!”

“The great John Paul Jones, sir!”

“It's drummed into us all by our superiors, sir!”

Then the mids competed vigorously to relate the story of the epic battle that took place on September 23, 1779, between the English
Serapis
and the American rebel ship
Bon Homme Richard,
commanded by the immortal John Paul Jones. It had been a bloody conflict, Wiki was assured, the two ships tightly locked together in combat. The first raking broadside had cruelly blasted the
Richard;
but though the English commander had called out to Jones to surrender, he and his crew had tenaciously fought on, their ship sinking fast beneath them. So withering had been the fire from the tops of the rebel ship that the English captain had torn down his colors—and the
Bon Homme Richard,
foundering fast, was the victor.

“I have not yet
begun
to fight!” a midshipman by the name of Keith roared, and all the other midshipmen roared it out, too, raising their glasses of wine in salute. This, Wiki gathered, had been the immortal reply made by John Paul Jones when the English had invited him to surrender. The party was getting very merry, he meditated further, and he wondered if Captain Wilkes would hear about it and send a lieutenant to calm them down.

Meantime, he returned to a fascinated study of his surroundings. This might be the mess room of the mids, and the place where two of them slept, but it reminded him of nothing so much as the reception room of some low house of entertainment. The bulkheads were entirely draped with white-and-crimson curtains. There was a large mirror on one wall and silver candlesticks perched all about. A huge vase was filled with artificial flowers made out of painted feathers—a souvenir, he supposed, of Madeira. A bureau stood in one corner, and a fancy washstand, its china bowl and pitcher dedorated with sprigs of green and gilt, was set in another. Brussels carpet and Chinese rugs covered the floor, and two long couches were built along the fore-and-aft walls. Though upholstered in blue damask they were evidently used as berths at night.

The wall opposite the looking glass was hung with dirks, daggers, a couple of the famous Elgin cutlass-pistols, fancy swords, and two massive cutlasses. Wiki studied them with mixed feelings of avarice and discomfort. In most of the Pacific communities he knew, weapons as valuable as these were kept wrapped in mats or tapa cloth so that their
mana
and
kaha
could not be stolen by malicious spirits. A hand weapon not only assumed the strength and valor of the owner, but acquired the power of the lives it had taken as well. After all these years he still found it amazing that Americans should take the substantial risk of so boldly putting their arms on display.

Then, again, his attention was claimed. A voice piped up from the head of the table almost as if he discerned Wiki's thoughts. “Mr. Coffin, could you tell us something of your history? The traditions of your ancestors? Stories of your youthful days?” he cried.

It was Keith, one of the two midshipmen who lived in this room. He looked sincere and serious, but was possibly rather drunk. Wiki smiled, leaning back easily in his chair, and said, “You want me to recite my
whakapapa?
I warn you, it takes a long time.”

Whakapapa?
The strange word excited them. Two of them asked him how to spell it and carefully wrote it down. “Your … ancestry?”

“Aye—my mountain and my river, my ancestral canoe, and my genealogy, too. Anyone who cannot recite his
whakapapa
is
tutua,
‘a nobody.'”

“Oh dear, then we are all
tutua,
” one said, and they all laughed.

“No one expects a
pakeha
to recite his or her genealogy—except perhaps for Queen Victoria.”

“Is that what you call us—
pakeha?
” And again the scribes wrote the new word down. “Sir, can you tell us how your people felt when Captain Cook arrived?”

Wiki paused for thought, studying them with hidden amusement, and decided to tell them a story. “My grandmother told me that when the first European ship came into their bay,
her
grandfather declared to the people that the men who sailed on such outlandish craft must be wandering ghosts—
tere tu paenga roa
—because they had come from the far side of the horizon where the spirit realm lies. Then the ship came to anchor, and the boats pulled to shore.

“And when the people saw the men facing backward as they worked at their oars, they knew that
koro
was right—that they were goblins, whose eyes were in the backs of their heads. The children and women ran into the trees, my grandmother with them, but the warriors stayed on the beach, ready to fight. Instead of attacking the warriors, however, the goblins began to collect shellfish and eat them with enjoyment, so the women calmed down, thinking they must be quite a lot like ordinary men. They took
kumara
—our sweet potato—and fish to the goblins, and showed them how to roast it in an oven in the ground. And when they saw them taking pleasure in the well-cooked food, my grandmother said that the women thought perhaps they were not goblins after all.

“Next day the boats pulled ashore again, and this time the men brought a gift of some of the kind of food they ate on the ships. My grandmother said that some of it was very hard.” Wiki held up a ship's biscuit. “She thought it was pumice stone that had been enchanted because it tasted sweet. She said the people liked it very much. The sailors' meat, however, was fat and salty, and the people disliked it greatly. She told me that this was what convinced her grandfather that these were ordinary hungry mortals and definitely not supernatural beings. These men had heard about the good food of Aotearoa, and they had come because they wanted to find out what good food was like.”

This part of the yarn was a joke, because the cold winters, thick forests, and poor soil of New Zealand made growing food notoriously difficult; and Wiki's people sighed often, in proverb and folklore, for the fertility of their lost ancestral land, Hawaiki. However, he did not bother to explain, feeling quite sure that his audience would not understand the wry humor—and, anyway, his little story had enchanted them enough, he saw. They were childlike themselves, and so the simple tale appealed.

Then a shout of delight went up as the door opened and their mess steward arrived with a great sea-pie made of meat and onions and potatoes—“Hash with an awning,” they called it, because of its pastry top. “Rouse up some more of that capital claret, dear fellow,” said Keith to the steward, and more bottles were fetched. A toast was drunk to wives and sweethearts—“May they never meet!” quipped one, and they all rolled about with laughter as if they'd never heard the joke before. “A blessing, a blessing,” someone cried, and they chorused irreverently: