Ghost Canoe (2 page)

During the night, Nathan and his father again took turns at the watch in the lighthouse. The fog dissolved during Nathan's watch, and the stars came out.

With daylight came no hint that a ship had passed between Tatoosh and the mainland. Filled with relief, Nathan hurried to tell his parents. “They cleared Jones Rock,” he said, bursting into the kitchen. “They must have passed safely into the Strait. They're probably in Port Townsend by now.”

“It's a miracle,” Nathan's mother declared.

His father nodded, then added, “The captain shouldn't have needed a miracle. He should have heard the foghorn.”

The next afternoon Nathan and his parents finally learned the sailors' fate from Lighthouse George, the Makah fisherman who delivered their mail once a week in his dugout canoe. The men hadn't been lucky, after all. Lighthouse George said that the ship had foundered in the fog, breaking up on the Chibahdehl Rocks, to the east of Tatoosh, just a few miles past Jones Rock.

The Makahs had found the bodies of fourteen drowned men. And one set of footprints on the shore.

Nathan pictured the schooner breaking apart under the feet of the sailors he had seen in their last hour. He could imagine their panic and the shock of the freezing waves. “How could this have happened?” Nathan stammered. “I just don't understand.”

“At sea, anything can happen,” his father replied.

They helped Lighthouse George as he pulled his fishing canoe a little farther onto the only landing Tatoosh offered, the small beach on its east side.

“
Hyas sick tumtum
,” the Makah said, making a mournful face. “Very sad.” Lighthouse George spoke in English mixed with Chinook, the trading jargon that the different Indian tribes used with each other as well as with the Americans and Canadians.

“But didn't they hear the foghorn?” Nathan in
sisted. “How could they have let themselves get between Tatoosh and Cape Flattery?”

“They'd have heard it,” his father agreed. “But they must have become disoriented somehow. Fog can play tricks on you, and so can the currents at the mouth of the Strait. From the sound of it, there was a survivor. We'll soon hear how it happened, no doubt—at least as much as that man knows. I pity the captain, but chances are he's beyond pity now.”

“Nothing like that ever happened to you, Father,” Nathan said. He was immensely proud of his father's long history at sea. At the age of fifty-one, with his commanding height, his thick gray hair and full silver beard, Zachary MacAllister looked every bit Nathan's ideal of a ship's captain. Until his retirement, he had captained the grandest sailing ships ever built, the Yankee clippers. For years he'd worked the trade route from the Atlantic coast of the United States around the horn of South America all the way to China and back.

Captain MacAllister replied humbly, “I had my close calls, believe me. When I made my mistakes, I had luck on my side, and there's no accounting for luck.”

Nathan's father prevailed upon Lighthouse George to stay the night on Tatoosh, as George had done several times after delivering the mail when bad weather had prevented his return to Neah Bay. The Makah fisherman hadn't survived into his mid-thirties by taking unnecessary chances, and it would be dark before he'd be able to return home.

Lighthouse George accepted amiably, stooping to
lift a string of three red snappers from the canoe. He brought a present of fish whenever he came, and Nathan's mother especially loved red snapper. After beaching the canoe above the high-tide line, the three walked up the steep path that wound through a break in the cliffs to the grassy top of the island. As he always did, for good luck, Nathan gave a tap in passing to the signpost he'd erected there several months before. With arrows pointing in opposite directions, the sign read in bold letters:
WASHINGTON TERRITORY
—½
MILE
and
CHINA
—6,000
MILES
. On the back he'd scrawled
Nathan MacAllister
, 1874.

Nathan was pleased to be in the company of Lighthouse George, whose gentle voice and easygoing manner understated the power of the man that was evident in his canoe strokes. On the days the mail was to come, Nathan kept a lookout for him from the rim of Tatoosh, and then ran down the trail to be ready to help with his landing. The fisherman steered deftly through the tricky waters swirling between Tatoosh and Cape Flattery in a graceful canoe fashioned from a single cedar log.

Running ahead of the two men into the house and using his favorite term from his limited Chinook vocabulary, Nathan called to his mother, “A guest for
muck-a-muck
!” The phrase meant just about anything having to do with food that a person wanted it to mean. His mother was delighted to have a guest. “And look what you've brought!” she cried. Her pale complexion brightened as she laid eyes on the red snappers.

“How you do, Beth-Mac,” George said to Nathan's mother. A gentle smile spread across his rugged, dark
face as he removed his hat made from woven strips of cedar bark. Somewhere George had learned the custom of doffing his hat in the presence of a lady. His black hair spilled past his shoulders. Other than his hat, he dressed in white men's clothes, except that he never wore shoes.

Nathan was fond of Lighthouse George's names for them. His mother's was short for Elizabeth MacAllister, his father's was “Cap'n Mac,” and his own was “Tenas Mac.”
Tenas
, in Chinook, meant “little.”

After greeting Nathan's mother, Lighthouse George followed Nathan and his father up the iron stairs of the lighthouse to watch them light the lamp, which they always did half an hour before sunset. The three watched as Vancouver Island, often called the Graveyard after the many shipwrecks along its shores, began to take on a reddish tinge twelve miles across the Strait. Nathan's father happened to mention to Lighthouse George that he was concerned about running out of oil for the lamp.

“How 'bout whale oil, Cap'n Mac?” Lighthouse George suggested.

Zachary MacAllister's bushy gray eyebrows rose with interest. “Sperm whale oil would be excellent, but no other whale oil will do. Is there some at Neah Bay, George?”

“Only
kwaddis
oil,” the fisherman replied, shaking his head. “Gray whale. Too bad.”

The next morning, Nathan helped Lighthouse George launch his canoe, watching as he sliced his way through the incoming surf with sure and powerful strokes. A fairly short man, Lighthouse George nonetheless had considerable height from his waist
up. He seemed to have been born for the canoe, in which long legs would have been no advantage. Paddling had made his chest and back thickly muscled, as were his neck, shoulders, and arms. Nathan hoped that one day he would take a ride in Lighthouse George's canoe, possibly even paddle the five miles to Neah Bay with him. But he couldn't see how the opportunity would ever come up.

The next day, still no ship appeared on the horizon, no sign of the overdue government lighthouse tender. Nathan was anxious for the new assistant keepers to arrive. He hoped there would be three of them, to bring the station back to full strength. He hoped they would be good men this time. But right now what the station needed more was lamp fuel, or the Tatoosh Light would go dead. The lighthouse tender would also bring more coal for the fog trumpet, plenty of
muck-a-muck
, and a hundred other essentials his father had requested.

At supper they finished the last of the red snappers. His mother's cough was worse, and she wasn't able to finish her supper. Sometimes her cough scared Nathan, and he knew that it scared his father as well. His father poured her a cup of tea, which usually helped.

“With May coming, and summer,” she managed apologetically, “I'll put this behind me. I just haven't had a chance to dry out my lungs, I suppose.”

“Summer will be raw on Tatoosh,” his father replied soberly. “Windy and cold, you know that, Elizabeth. You won't be able to grow much of a flower garden, or your vegetables either, as you could on the coast of California.”

Nathan knew his mother and his father must wonder if they ever should have left California, but he'd never heard them say it. He'd never said it either.

“Ah, but there's a wild beauty here,” she said instead. “Even if the flowers and vegetables might do poorly.”

“Elizabeth…,” his father said, with a tone that signaled he was about to make a request, an important one.

His mother looked away, and then brought the teacup back to her lips, waiting for what he would say.

“The doctor's house at the Agency in Neah Bay is still sitting empty. They haven't found another doctor, and from all accounts they won't anytime soon. They tell me it's a snug little cottage with two perfectly operating stoves, one for heating and one for cooking. You wouldn't be alone; you'd have Nathan with you. Please, I want you to reconsider, not only for your sake, but for all three of us.”

His mother sat up straight, twisting her finger around a strand of dark hair at the side of her face. Her hazel eyes reflected her habitual determination. “I've never been frail—you know that. I still think I can hold out until they build the new quarters here. We've always been together.”

It had been nearly five months that his mother had lived in these damp and smoky rooms, and she'd been sick since the end of the first month. Nathan could still remember her face when they'd first come through this door. She'd been crushed with disappointment upon seeing the moss growing inside on the plaster walls, and the soot from the fireplaces over
everything. “Well,” she'd managed with her brave cheerfulness, “we have some work to do.”

His mother was looking at him now. Nathan knew this was not a time to hide his fears for his mother's health. “But that will be another year, Mother,” he said, “maybe longer, before the new quarters will be completed. It might be like waiting for the lighthouse tender, only worse.”

His mother had heard the quaver in his voice. With a nod of her head, she acknowledged his concern, then gazed out the window for such a long time that she seemed to have left them.

“I just don't like to give up,” she said finally, with a half-smile, as her eyes returned to them and to the present. “We were to be the first family to live here. It's apparent that when the head keeper is a bachelor, as they've all been, they just won't stay. How many head keepers have there been since this light was commissioned in '57?”

“Eleven,” his father admitted. “Twelve in seventeen years, counting me. But none of that matters compared to your health.”

“I'll pray on it this evening,” his mother said. “Nathan, what do you think?”

His reply was simple. “You need to get well, Mother. I've heard it's warmer some in Neah Bay. Drier, too.”

His father nodded. “That's what they say.”

“We'd be leaving your poor father on Tatoosh, with bachelors who will probably be much more adept at spitting, chewing, and smoking than they are at cooking.”

She'd made them laugh, but it was short-lived laughter. Nathan was certain she hadn't been swayed, that she would insist on staying at the lighthouse. He was as afraid of having his family split apart as his mother was. But he was even more afraid for his mother's health. She was only thirty-four years old, much younger than his father. His mother had always been strong. She shouldn't be so sick.

Nathan was surprised the following morning by his mother's decision. Over breakfast, she said calmly, “We can have Lighthouse George bring the vegetables we grow to your father every week, and some flowers, too, when he brings the mail. Your father is right, Nathan. The village will be a better place for us.”

 

As they began their preparations for the move to Neah Bay, the watch continued for the lighthouse tender, which failed to arrive the next day or the next. They were surprised, however, by the sight of Lighthouse George nearing Tatoosh in one of the “great canoes,” as Nathan had heard them called. The canoe was more than thirty feet long and paddled by eight men.

To Nathan the great canoe seemed an apparition from ancient times. Its high tapering prow lifted above the waves, carved with the likeness of a wolf's head, as if the entire canoe behind it were a charging, wave-riding sea wolf. Nathan spotted George at the rear of the canoe, seated against the squared-off stern. He was ruddering with his paddle and leading the high-pitched, eerie singing that the others used to time the strokes of their paddles.

Lighthouse George brought news of the lighthouse
tender, the steamship so long delayed. Dockside in Portland for mechanical repairs, it wouldn't sail for yet another week.

Lighthouse George also brought one hundred gallons of pure sperm whale oil for “Cap'n Mac.” The Makahs had paddled the great canoe from Neah Bay all the way across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the Canadian port of Victoria on Vancouver Island, in order to find sperm whale oil. There was undisguised satisfaction in their faces as they watched Nathan's father's astonishment, both at the feat of crossing the Strait in an open canoe and at the gift itself.

The Makahs would accept no payment for the oil. George insisted this was
potlatch
, the Chinook word for gifts and the giving of gifts. Nathan had heard about the legendary gatherings called potlatches in which they were said to give away nearly everything they owned. This gift-giving was their greatest pleasure, his father had told him, and the faces of these Makahs, as they gave the whale oil, showed this to be true.

Before the Makahs left, Nathan asked Lighthouse George if there was any more news about the ship that had wrecked. An hour hadn't gone by without Nathan puzzling over the wreck of the
Burnaby
and the meaning of the footprints. It was going to trouble him until he'd made some sense of it. He wondered if this had been an ordinary shipwreck, or if something strange might have happened, something mysterious.

George seemed reluctant to speak of the
Burnaby
, but at last he did. “
Hyas cultus
, Tenas Mac,” he said, as he raked the back of his hand against his chin whiskers. “It's very bad.”

“Was the survivor found?”

Lighthouse George shook his head. No survivor had been found, but another body
had
washed up on shore, he told them. But not between Cape Flattery and Neah Bay, where the others were found. This one was discovered about thirty miles south of Cape Flattery, near the Makah village of Ozette. The body was removed by sea to Port Townsend, where it was identified by the owner of the
Burnaby
as that of the captain of his ship.

“But he didn't drown,” George said. “He died of a stab wound to the heart.”