A Watery Grave (16 page)

“Would you like me to open it, sir?” he said.

Wiki paused. On the main deck above a drum was rolling for the six p.m. distribution of grog to the men. They were standing directly below the deckhouse where Captain Wilkes and most of the scientifics lived and worked, he thought. He looked up at the beams and solid oak planks, meditating that their thickness must be the reason no one had heard the commotion when Stanton had been hammering at this door and shouting out—while all the time Burroughs, inside this room, had been swinging from the noose about his neck.

Which made it odd, he thought later, that a sudden crescendo of unearthly shrieks of horror filtered down from the main deck so clearly.

*   *   *

Wiki whirled and sprinted for the ladder, the six boys close at his heels. When he burst out into the light, the first man he saw was Lieutenant Forsythe, who was evidently in charge of the deck again, because a speaking trumpet dangled from one hand. The southerner was staring rigidly up at the main topgallant sail but saying and doing nothing—all the noise was coming from the boatswain, who was screaming incoherently. Then Wiki saw the human pendulum that was swinging with the roll of the ship a hundred feet above the deck, writhing and fighting the noose about his neck.

A hand pushed Wiki out of the way. It was George Rochester, snapping at the screeching boatswain, “Calm down, sir! What the hell has happened here?”

The petty officer's eyes were round and staring with horror. “There was somethin' amiss with the main topgallants'l, sir—it was snagged. The lieutenant—Lieutenant Forsythe—he called out to slack the main topgallant buntline, at the same time ordering Powell on the topgallant yard to overhaul it. The sail bellied out full and the rope whipped out, snapped back, caught Powell around the neck, whipped out again with him snarled up in it, and snatched him off the yard. One awful cry came from his lips—and there he dangles now. I saw it happen, sir—”

Powell? It couldn't be,
thought Wiki confusedly. It was odd enough that George Rochester had materialized—though it was Saturday, the day the journals had to be handed in to Wilkes, and Rochester was wearing dress uniform. But Powell was on the
Porpoise,
surely. He remembered him swearing to murder Captain Wilkes if he was ever shifted to the
Vincennes.
The squirming body was horribly distinct, swinging against the clear sky with every roll of the ship.

Lieutenant Forsythe seemed to gather his wits. Wiki saw him take a breath and lift the trumpet. “Let go that rope!” he blared to the gang of men at the foot of the mast who were numbly hanging onto the buntline. Rochester spun round, exclaiming, “Lieutenant, if they let that rope run he'll be dashed to the deck, you'll kill him—” but Forsythe did not seem to hear, instead screaming into the speaking trumpet, “Let that bloody rope run, I say, let go at once!”

And Rochester shouted at the top of his lungs, “Belay that! Don't do it!”

Forsythe dropped the trumpet. His face went red and then white. His eyes, like the boatswain's, were staring. He spluttered,
“What?”

George merely cast him a harried glance. “Slack the rope gently—handsomely now! Gently! Gently!” he shouted, and the men at the foot of the mast numbly started to obey. Then he looked at Wiki and jerked his chin upward. The unspoken order was clear. Wiki kicked off his shoes, leapt for the rigging, and tore upward, hand over fist.

It was as if the whole ship was emerging from a paralysis, brought to life by Rochester's vigor and force. All about Wiki ropes sang and vibrated as a host of sailors followed him up the rigging. He was the first to reach the main yard. Then he rapidly sidled outward, reached up, grabbed Powell around the waist—and it was indeed Jim Powell, though almost unrecognizably black in the face.

He was still struggling, though feebly, and making horrible strangling noises. The ship rolled, and Powell kicked as he swung. Wiki slipped, lost his grip, snatched at a rope, missed, snatched again, and snagged it with the tips of his nails. Somehow he saved himself. Then two, three, men were alongside him. On deck, sailors were easing the rope gently, hand over hand, and gradually the buntline slackened. The body was dangling over the maintop. They were able to bring him in.

Jim Powell was laid down on the lofty platform. Rigging thrummed, and Wiki saw the ship's surgeon mounting the shrouds, as sedate as if the ratlines were the rungs of a ladder at home, his medical bag hanging from one shoulder. With a detached part of his mind Wiki meditated that someone should advise the doctor to hold on to the shrouds, not the ratlines, because ratlines were notorious for coming away. His main thought, however, was that the surgeon may as well have saved his breath—Powell was certainly dead. The rope had wound about his neck several times, like the coils of a boa constrictor.

However, the old medic, after inspecting the victim, was merely astonished. “My God!” he exclaimed, his countenance red with amazement. “What stuff do they use to make these hardy tars? He's alive!”

*   *   *

They put Powell in the stateroom nearest to the door of the deckhouse to recover his wits and his equilibrium before attendants arrived to take him down to the regular sick bay in the bowels of the orlop deck. Small as this stateroom was, it was packed with men, and the babble was deafening. The air stung with the fumes of the spirits of hartshorn the surgeon was wafting back and forth under Powell's nose. Then everyone shouted out excitedly as Powell's bloodshot eyes blinked twice and stretched wide. They all waited for his first words.

“I heard the drumroll for grog,” he croaked, and lifted himself on an elbow. “My ration—where is it? I want it.”

“There's none for you,” the surgeon advised sharply.

“What's that you say? No grog for me? Why so?” Powell demanded in that awful rasping voice. His face was turning from black to purple, and his eyeballs were flushing even redder.

“You should be thanking the good lord above for your miraculous delivery from the jaws of death,” said the doctor primly, “and not lusting after liquor.”

“No grog? When I came as close as
that
to breaking my bloody neck? That's damned hard, damn my eyes it is!”

Judging by the expressions on the faces of the seamen who had helped lay Powell on the berth, they heartily agreed. However, they kept their counsel. They also headed out of the cabin, having been reminded that they would forfeit their own grog if they didn't hurry along. Wiki reluctantly began to move, realizing he was beginning to look conspicuous, but all at once the door was blocked by the ship's purser, who, it seemed, had heard about the exciting near-tragedy and had come to check on the victim.

“His first words were to ask after his grog,” the surgeon said, not bothering to lower his voice. His tone was scandalized.

“Seamen!” expostulated the purser, and looked down at Powell in magisterial fashion, his hands clasped behind his back. He made an impressive figure in white breeches and a blue claw-hammer coat with two rows of buttons swerving down from a stand-up collar, white silk stockings, and shiny black pumps with little bows on the toes. He smelled of cigars and sherry.

“Do you expect he will live?” he asked the doctor.

“A mustard plaster, cupping, and blistering will set him up as right as rain,” the surgeon declared. “I'll fetch a couple of loblolly boys to get him down to the sick bay and will attend to them there. There ain't no emergency that I can see, the good lord be praised. But I flatly refuse to prescribe paregoric, and as for grog—” He snorted. Then he headed out of the cabin, no doubt back to his own wineglass, Wiki mused, sipping and supping being standard throughout the fleet on these convivial Saturday afternoons.

“Jim Powell, you should prepare yourself to thank God for your providential escape,” said the purser, evidently ready to offer a prayer.

“Hard lines, I call it,” Jim muttered instead. “Might as well be dead, for all the use of what being saved has done me.”

“You must put your faith in our noble surgeon. Hold hard to hope, my boy!” Then—after reminding Powell that according to the terms of his contract with the ship, the expedition, and the navy, the cost of medications would be subtracted from his pay, along with the sick bay bill—the purser departed in the surgeon's wake, and abruptly Wiki and the man he and Rochester had saved were alone.

Jim was mumbling constantly, his head rolling from side to side in a manner Wiki thought must be very painful, considering the condition of his neck. Feeling increasingly alarmed, he wasn't sure that Powell could see him, let alone know who he was—the red eyes were terribly unfocused. “Damned hard,” the seaman kept on hoarsely mumbling. His arm lifted, and his fingers groped blindly at the air in Wiki's direction. Wiki's first reaction was to take a step back toward the door, ready to yell for the doctor, but then Powell said his name.

“No grog, think on that,” he muttered, so low that Wiki could scarcely hear him. “And that bloody purser only called to make sure I was alive on account of I'm in debt to the ship for fifty dollars, damned hypocrite. Him and his sick bay bill, when he don't give a damn otherwise if I'm alive or dead, cheating bastard. I almost break my bloody neck, and they won't spare me my rightful grog. Hard lines, I call it—hard lines indeed. It's my fair ration, and I goddamn need it.”

Without a word Wiki turned and left the cabin. He looked about the deck, spied the butt where the master's mate was rationing out rum mixed with lemon juice and water, asked for a tot, and carried the brimming pint carefully back to the stateroom. Powell was still alone and still cursing in a black mutter, which stopped abruptly as one eye opened wide and he spied what Wiki held.

“Gawd bless yer, my friend,” he croaked, and sat up with amazing alacrity, all at once looking quite alive, instead of hovering on the doorstep of death. Wiki, who—like everyone else in his
iwi
—greatly disliked the taste of alcoholic spirits, watched, unwillingly impressed, as the pint went down like a creek down a hole.

Then Jim had finished and was feeling about with his tongue for droplets in the stubble on his chin. Wiki said, “How long have you been on the
Vin?
”

“Could've felled me with a feather when I was bloody summoned to appear on board the flagship,” mumbled Jim instead of answering. “That bloody tartar Wilkes shouldn't be restin' easy, knowin' the black murder what lives in my heart.” Then, after peering into the mug to make certain sure it was empty, he held it out to Wiki with a coaxing grin that looked truly awful in the congested wreckage of his face. “Get a tot for yoursel',” he wheedled. “You get a ration, just like everyone else in this goddamn' fleet—and then if you ain't all that thirsty, perhaps you could spare a few drops—”

Wiki merely looked at him, folding his arms to emphasize the silence.

“Not that I ain't grateful for what I got already,” Jim hastily assured him, and then added with an elaborately penitent air, “I've been thinkin' about that note—”

“What note?”

“You're a good friend, fer a Kanaka, and I 'ave to tell you it's bin on me conscience that I told you a lie.”

“Which lie?” Wiki asked sardonically.

“I do regret telling it, I swear! I told you I tossed that note Lieutenant Forsythe sent me to Newport News to fetch, but I didn't. I delivered it. And I read it on the way,” Powell husked triumphantly. “I c'n read, you know. I ain't as ignorant as some might think. And I reckon I might remember what I read, given a little something to lubricate me wounded voice and me poor shocked brain.”

Wiki studied him meditatively, wondering whether to believe him. “You delivered it to Mrs. Stanton?” he queried.

“No, I did not.” The seaman was grinning craftily. “I could tell about how it went to a cove what you nivver would believe—that the man who was waitin' for it was—”

The harsh rasp stopped dead. A shadow had fallen over them. When Wiki turned he saw George Rochester standing in the doorway, with two wooden-faced, red-coated marines at his shoulder. Wiki had scarcely taken in the shocked expression on his friend's paper-white face when still more men arrived—the surgeon, still looking as if something directly under his nose smelled bad; two sick bay attendants—loblolly boys—in disgustingly spattered aprons; and, behind them all, the bulky shadow of Forsythe—no, not Forsythe. Instead, it was the astronomer, Tristram Stanton, easily confused with the lieutenant because they were so much the same build. The doorway was packed with men—the scene had all the confusion of a dream. Wiki was frowning. Why was Stanton here, when it was Forsythe who should be checking up on the man he could have killed with his poor judgment?

Then he heard Jim Powell husk, finishing the interrupted sentence, “…
Forsythe!
”

Wiki said blankly, “What?” When he turned and stared at Jim, the suffused face was still writhing in a wheedling smirk, but in his eyes there was a flicker of awful fear—or so Wiki thought, but then the seaman began to sing. Had Jim Powell gone mad? He was drunk—of course he was drunk. Wiki turned back to the door, and his attention was seized again by the shocked, fraught look on George Rochester's face.

Rochester seemed unaware of the surgeon pushing past him to get into the room and grip Jim's shoulder to stop the drunken crooning. His long face was so bleached of color that his cheekbones stood out, and he said in a queer, flat voice, “Wiki, you have to come with me now—the boat is leaving; we have to go straightaway to the brig.”

Wiki said blankly, “To the
Swallow?
” He didn't want to go to the brig at all; he wanted to question Jim Powell further, but the loblolly boys were heaving the seaman up from the bunk, so he reluctantly backed out of the way. Rochester seemed unaware of what was happening, not even turning his head as he stepped aside to let them out, all the time keeping his desperate eyes on Wiki's face.