Shark Island (14 page)

She shrugged.

“Were you chatting with the cook?”

“No, that is not possible. My husband shipped him in Rio, you know, because our old cook ran away—and there is something wrong with this cook's brains. Ezekiel said that maybe it is because he has had a big bang on the head not so long ago, but myself, I don't even think he has our language—not French, not English; perhaps a little Cajun, but not enough to make any sense. When I heard Ezekiel screaming for another bottle of brandy, that fool of a steward was gossiping on the fo'c'sle deck, so I fetched it myself. Then my husband wished me to stay, so I remained to talk with Lieutenant Forsythe and that horrid Kingman—who made such a crude joke that Ezekiel became very angry, and drove them out with his stick.”

Wiki's brows shot up at the mental image. “And they went?” he asked.

“They went,” she said expressionlessly. “Then I, too, went. I started to go back to the galley—but instead I went back into the cabin.” Her voice was beginning to shake again. “And—and I f-found poor dear Ezekiel lying on the floor with a knife in his back, making a terrible, terrible choking noise, ch-choking on his blood. I tried to turn him over, to sit him up … but the b-blood, it made—made him so slippery and heavy. He dropped back and was silent.” She shuddered and said, “I don't remember much after that.”

“Can you remember why you went back into the cabin?”

“I saw someone by the door to this after house. There had been trouble enough, and I wished to stop more, if I could.”

“What!”
Wiki said very quickly, “Did you see who it was?”

“The man on the quarterdeck? It was Lieutenant Forsythe, I think,” she said, and nodded, her wide gaze earnest on his face. “Yes, of that I am almost sure.”

Fourteen

When Wiki came out onto the quarterdeck, Joel Hammond was striding toward him from somewhere forward, his face dark with suspicion and anger. He said, “What the bloody hell were
you
doing down there?”

Wiki said quietly, “I'm a family friend; I was passing on my sympathies.”

“Friend?”
Hammond reared back, his expression scandalized. His small eyes looked Wiki up and down. “How can you be? You're a godless Kanaka!”

Wiki remembered that according to Ezekiel Reed's letter Hammond was a Stonington man. However, he had no recollection of meeting him there—but then, he thought, it was highly unlikely that Joel Hammond would have been invited to Ezekiel's wedding, not being of the right social caste. He said stiffly, “Ask Mrs. Reed, if you don't believe me.”

Hammond muttered something about Mrs. Reed that didn't sound at all complimentary, and then demanded, “How did you get here? I don't see a boat.”

“Captain Rochester dropped me here after the burial. Perhaps you would oblige me by lending me a boat to get to the beach?” Wiki gestured to where the cutter was moored.

For a moment he thought Hammond would refuse, but finally he reluctantly nodded. A boat was lowered and manned, and Wiki jumped down into the stern. It was a relief to see the friendly face of Alphabet Green, who was standing at the steering oar; when Wiki asked jokingly if he could steer, his old acquaintance gave it to him with a mock bow and a grin, taking one of the ordinary pulling oars instead. Accordingly, Wiki was facing forward as they rowed into the cove and was the one who saw the cutter's men first.

They had a small fire going in the shade of a tree, and were busily cooking up a mess of fish. However, two of them plunged cooperatively into the water to hold the boat steady while Wiki handed the steering oar back. Then he clambered out, and helped the cutter's men turn it and push it back into the surf.

The moment the boat had headed off, he said, “Where's Lieutenant Forsythe?”

The six seamen looked at each other and shrugged. “Haven't seen him since the hour after breakfast, when he come around that headland yonder,” said one, and pointed at the rocky outcrop that barricaded the way to the beach where the sloop was wrecked.

“Why, what was he doing there?” said Wiki, puzzled.

The men all grinned at each other.

“Spent the night on the
Annawan,
he and the passed midshipman did,” said one.

“A-roistering,” said another. “It was a wake for Cap'n Reed. And they dropped him off at the wrong beach.”

“Lieutenant Forsythe looked the worst for wear I've ever seen 'im,” said a third. “Must've got most terrible drunk.”

Wiki said, “So where did he go?”

They all jerked their thumbs toward a steep track that straggled up the cliff. “Off a-huntin', I guess,” said one, and another confirmed this by saying that the lieutenant had been toting his gun when he left.

Wiki was prepared to guess that Forsythe had taken a bottle, as well. He looked at the fire, a shipshape affair with a wire rack across the top of it,
boucanier
style. They were roasting some fine fish on this, while an assortment of shellfish sat spitting on the outer edges of the coals, alongside a steaming coffeepot.

“Smells good,” he observed.

In truth, it was an aroma fit to lure a bear from its lair, so he readily accepted the men's invitation to join them in their feast. Not only was it a long time since breakfast, but he wanted to find out if they would confirm Annabelle's sighting of Forsythe on the quarterdeck just before Ezekiel Reed was murdered. What they told him now, he thought grimly, could condemn Forsythe as a killer—or vindicate him, by backing up his statement that he was hurrying forward at the time.

He didn't rush it, however, instead waiting for an opportunity to broach the subject in a casual kind of way. For a long while he and the men chatted casually, sitting in a companionable circle in the shade of the scrubby tree, sucking fish bones and throwing them to the gulls. It was a peaceful scene. Surf swished rhythmically, lacing the edge of the golden sand with white, and while there was a little puff of cloud clinging to the black and emerald triangular pinnacle that gave Shark Island its name, the sky was otherwise a deep, quiet blue. For these men, as Wiki knew from his own experience, being here was a luxurious respite from their hard life at sea.

Conversation came easily, as Wiki was a seaman who knew the ways of other seamen. Respect was given, and received: He knew they were the pick of the crews of the discovery fleet; and they knew that he had done his apprenticeship in whaleships, which might have been the most disdained of the merchant fleet of New England, but whose captains and officers were famous for training better seamen than any other branch of the trade.

“I hear you were royally entertained by the steward of the
Annawan
yesterday,” Wiki observed at last, throwing away the bones of the last succulent fish head. For some reason, he'd noticed, Americans didn't like to eat the heads. If Sua and Tana had been there he would have had to divide up the bounty, but as it was, he had them all to himself.

“Bit too slick, that Jack Winter,” said one with his lips pulled down.

“Winter?”

“The fat old steward,” said another, and spat to one side. The men were looking at each other with identical expressions of wry amusement. “Gammoned us good, he did,” said one. “When Cap'n Reed bid him carry us a bottle of grog, he brung lemon squash, too. Told us to drink up the lemon to take the edge off our thirst, so we'd 'preciate the rum better. But all the time we was working through the lemon, he was helping himself to the grog.”

“Gossips worse'n a woman,” said a man with a New Bedford accent, his tone disparaging. The other five nodded in agreement. As Wiki was very aware, having spent years in the crowded confines of the forecastle, proper seamen knew that minding one's own business was a virtue, and a buttoned-up lip a distinct asset.

“Did this Jack Winter leave the fo'c'sle deck at all?” Wiki pursued; he remembered that Annabelle had complained that the steward hadn't responded when Ezekiel had hollered out.

They all laughed. “Stuck to us like a leech so long as there was rum in that bottle.”

“What about the men who stayed behind when the boats went off? How many were there?”

The six thought a long moment, and then the New Bedforder said, “Four.”

“You're sure?”

“Aye—but not counting the captain, of course.”

So the crew of the
Annawan
totaled sixteen, Wiki mused; it was a number that seemed about right for a sealer. The schooner was small enough to be sailed by four, plus the captain, so the twelve extra men meant that two six-man sealing gangs could be put on shore once they arrived on the ground. Coincidentally, it exactly matched the number of crew on the
Swallow
when the cutter was off—George, Wiki himself, Midshipman Keith, the boatswain, the carpenter, the cook, the steward, the gunner, and eight hands. George Rochester had mentioned a complement of seventeen on the
Annawan,
he remembered, but realized that he must have included Annabelle.

He said, “I wonder who those four men were?”

The cutter's men consulted among themselves. One, of course, had been the steward, Jack Winter. But, while they had distinct memories of him, as he had been with them—and their bottle of rum—just about the whole of the time, they were otherwise exasperatingly vague. Because they had sat in the bows, forward of the windlass, they hadn't had much of a view of the deck, not unless they stood up and turned round for any reason.

“What about the man who was working aloft?” one of them prompted.

“He was a Gee,” said the New Bedforder, using the whalemen's derogatory term for a Portuguese.

“Aye,” said the other. Now that the old whaleman had mentioned it, he, too, remembered seeing a Spanish-looking type in the mizzenmast lower rigging, after he'd stood up and looked to see what Mrs. Reed was making her ruckus about.

Then another seaman reckoned he'd seen the cook come out of the galley—but that had been a lot earlier, and had been just a glimpse because he hadn't been stood up at the time, and no sooner had he glimpsed him than the fellow had vanished, he said.

“He went back into the galley?” Wiki asked.

“Well, I didn't actually see him get back inside,” the seaman allowed. “But it stands to reason that he did, don't it, because Mrs. Reed spoke to
someone
in there.”

“You mean when you first arrived at the schooner?” said Wiki, puzzled.

“No, no. Well, she was in there when we first boarded,” said the seaman. “Not that we knew it, not until she left the galley to go aft to the captain's cabin. But about a half hour later, just after we heard the lieutenant and the midshipman calling out to us and started to turn around to look, I glimpsed her hurrying helter-skelter to the galley. When she got there she called somethin' through the doorway, which proves that the cook was there, don't it? Then she whirled around and ran back to the cabin. A couple of minutes after that, and out of the cabin she burst again, yellin' murder and mayhem, and that's when we stood up for a proper look at what the hell was goin' on.”

“And you saw Lieutenant Forsythe and Passed Midshipman Kingman come along the deck?”

“Aye—though they was running back and forth, too, what with all the commotion.”

“Did you hear what Mrs. Reed called out to the cook?”

The seaman frowned mightily, but finally shook his head. “Even if I heard it, I reckon it was foreign.”

So that accounted for three of the men on board—the steward, the cook, and the man aloft—and seemed to substantiate what Forsythe had said, even if the details were blurred. Wiki pursued, “So who was the fourth man left on board?”

“The bo'sun's mate,” said one of the men positively.

“How can you be so sure?”

“He's a big cove, very noticeable. He came out of the sternward end of the forward house when Mr. Hammond called for two boats' crews, with a knife and a hammer in his hands. Another man came out with him, an older feller, and I reckon he was the bo'sun, because he gave the big young feller instructions before he departed.”

“And after the boats had left, this man went back into the forward house?”

“Aye. And then we heard a lot of hammering. He was working in there, all right.”

Wiki said carefully, “Any idea why
two
boats went to the
Swallow,
when there was only occasion for one?”

There was a bit of a silence, while three of the cutter's men leaned back on their elbows ruminating at the sky through pipe smoke, and the New Bedforder leaned forward to pluck up an oyster from the edge of the fire. As he bent over he accidentally broke wind, and everyone laughed, including the culprit himself. Then he said around the carefully slurped hot mouthful, “I don't reckon there's very good feeling on board that there schooner. They could've been glad of the chance to get away for a bit.”

“I don't hold with women a-going to sea,” said one.

“Never a truer word,” agreed another.

“They're powerful unlucky,” said another, and they all nodded sagely. “Thank God Cap'n Wilkes don't carry his wife on the
Vin.
Two cap'ns on the quarterdeck be one too many by far.”

To Wiki, it was news that the commodore of a U.S. Navy fleet had the option of carrying his wife. He also meditated that Mrs. Wilkes, if present, might have moderated Captain Wilkes's increasingly erratic behavior. However, instead of responding to this, he asked, “So you think Mrs. Reed is to blame for the bad morale on the
Annawan?
”

“Oh aye,” said the New Bedforder. “I mean to say, it figures, things bein' the way they are with Hammond. There's not a man on board who likes her, and Hammond in particular. Truth be told, he can't stand the sight or sound of her.”