Run Afoul (10 page)

George cried, “Belay that!” Like an echo, he heard the other captain roar the identical command. The brigantine wasn't sinking—yet—but she was the one taking in water, not the brig, and it was obvious that she would founder without the
Swallow
to hold her up.

The boatswain had scrambled to his feet, unhurt. “Get a big sheet of old canvas,” George snapped. The good fellow nodded in swift understanding, and hurried off to the sail locker, yelling out for assistants as he went. They would have to fother a sail—stiffen it with ropeyarn—and then maneuver it over the hole in the brigantine's side, to stop the leak as fast as they could. The job required men who were good swimmers and divers—again, George wished that Wiki was on board. As it was, he knew he was lucky to have Sua and Tana.

There was a bump from the waist deck—boots hitting planks. George spun around, to see that the captain of the stranger had executed an athletic leap over the broken gangway rail. Even in the midst of his panic and racing thoughts, George registered that he was a striking figure. Though middle-aged, with an abundance of gray sprinkled in his thick black hair, he was still very handsome, broad-shouldered but otherwise as lean as a whippet.

Otherwise, the overwhelming impression was that he was utterly furious. A small slanting scar on the side of his face caused his left eyelid to droop in lizardlike fashion, half hiding a gray eye that flashed as belligerently as the wide-open right eye, and his clean-shaven jaw was pugnaciously squared.

Though George had certainly never seen him before, he was struck by a strong sense of familiarity. Then he saw the man visibly take hold of his temper, so that when he came to an abrupt stop, he was icily impassive. “Sir,” he said with a snap—and the snap clinched the impression.

“My God, old chap,” George exclaimed in great astonishment. “You're none other than Captain William Coffin!”

*   *   *

The lizard eye glinted in alert curiosity, but George was interrupted by the arrival of two boats from the
Vincennes.
Obviously, the lookouts on the expedition flagship had seen the emergency develop, and the officer on watch had responded without an instant's delay. Mystifyingly, though, Wiki was not with them. George wondered what was up with his old friend. Surely he hadn't been ordered to stay away? Captain Wilkes hadn't even sent a senior officer, as the fellow in charge of the two boats was a junior midshipman who was scarcely as old as Constant Keith.

“Midshipman Dicken, at your service, sir!” he barked in a voice that squeaked on the last syllable, his chubby face bright red with the importance of his mission. In strictly descending order, he saluted Captain Rochester, then Captain Coffin, and finally Midshipman Keith. Rochester's first officer returned the salute, and after that the two young men shook hands and clapped each other on the shoulder in the manner of two friends getting back together after quite a long time, while Dicken commiserated with Keith, because the accident had made him look so
lubberly.

“Quite,” agreed Captain Coffin dryly.

“The blame, sir, was not ours,” said Midshipman Keith stiffly, taking instant umbrage, but Rochester put a swift stop to that, pointing out that there was a great deal of work to be done if both ships were to be saved. In the process of the introductions, George Rochester had found that Captain Coffin's vessel was the brigantine
Osprey,
in the Salem—China trade. How much longer she was going to float, let alone sail to the Orient, was very debatable, though—and if she went down right now, she was going to take the
Swallow
with her.

“My instructions from Captain Wilkes are to carry back a written report of the accident,” said Midshipman Dicken in an obstinate kind of voice.

“Report be damned,” said George Rochester with vigor. “Get your men on board the brigantine, and see if the pumps are working. And at the same time send over all the members of the
Osprey
crew who are not needed on board; I don't want them to be caught there if she founders.”

“Thank you,” said Captain Coffin. At that moment George couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not—and didn't care, either, there being not a moment to be lost.

Within seconds, in response to hurried orders, a half dozen of the
Osprey
's crew were on board the brig, one of them carrying the brigantine's cat. The six hands were astonishingly young, George noted, but didn't waste time on speculation, instead setting them to work threading strands of ropeyarn into the big square of canvas the boatswain had found. They were a good bunch, he meditated as he strode past them some moments later. Even though their belongings, along with their ship's provisions, were all underwater, they were even managing a shaky laugh or two—though maybe that was because Stoker, being the gem of a steward that he was, had produced a huge kettle of hot chocolate.

Meantime, Midshipman Keith was aloft with a gang, untangling the rigging that bound the two ships together, while others tore apart the combined wreckage along the shattered starboard rail. Captain Coffin had jumped back on board his own ship, and could be heard striding around the
Osprey
shouting orders, while the pumps thumped, and water gushed through the scuppers and over the side. Ominously, though, George could hear more water surging in through the hole.

Night fell as they all frantically toiled. When the wreckage that tied the two vessels in their fatal embrace was finally cleared away, the
Osprey
slumped over farther than ever. Obviously, the hole had to be stopped as swiftly as possible, as without the
Swallow
to hold her up, she was doomed. The piece of fothered canvas was lowered on ropes over the rail of the brigantine, the two ships were pried apart, and Tana and Sua dived into the narrow strip of black water between the two hulls, which were bumping back and forth with the tide.

It was appallingly dangerous work. Every sailor held his breath, watching the two black heads bob up and down, each man gripping one of the two lower corners of the fothered sail. Down they dived in the surging water, while the ships sagged perilously close together above them. A fraught moment, and then up they came, gasped for breath, and disappeared again, while the pumps labored and gushed.

The next time their heads bobbed to the surface, they both thrust triumphant fists upward, just before scooting up the side of the
Osprey.
The hands at the top of the canvas hauled manfully, and bowsed the fothered sail tight—and the gush of incoming water quietened.
Thank God,
thought George fervently. Sucked into place by the pressure of the sea, it would slow the leak long enough, hopefully, for them to tow the brigantine to the shipyard.

Rochester sent down the brig's two boats to help the two boats from the
Vincennes,
but even with four boats hauling it was a slow, painfully arduous trip across the harbor. The
Swallow,
sailed by a skeleton crew, slowly followed. It was midnight before they arrived—but, though there were awful signs that the brigantine was breaking up forward, she did not founder. Another hour, and both vessels were moored up tightly to a wharf in twelve feet of water with a soft mud bottom, and the
Osprey
was no longer in danger of sinking.

George sent Midshipman Dicken and the two expedition boats back to the
Vincennes
with a scribbled message requesting a survey, a carpenter, and a carpentering crew at first light. As he watched them disappear, and worked his sore shoulders to ease them, he abruptly became aware of how quiet it was, with just the rhythmic thud of the
Osprey
pumps to be heard, and the gush and ripple of water. The hulking shapes of shipyard gear rose up against the stars. He was sure he was alone, but when he turned round, he found that Captain Coffin was standing just behind him.

They looked at each other in the darkness, and then Captain Coffin said again, “Thank you.”

George still couldn't decide if he was being sarcastic or not, and was too tired to think about it, so he snapped, “Midshipman Keith was right, you know. You were too slow to put down the helm.”

“It was your lookouts who failed to see the
jangada,
” the other tartly pointed out. Then he sighed deeply and said, “But I thank you. Many others would have shoved free of me by force, and then left me to sink.”

An abrupt light flared across the quay as someone lit a cresset on the
Swallow,
and in its flickering glow Rochester could see how exhausted and drawn the other man looked. It was very understandable, he thought—Coffin's ship had looked magnificent as she flew along with all her sails set, and now she was little more than a wreck. Not only was she totally unfit for sea, but, until she was fixed, no one could even live on board of her.

Regretting his loss of temper, he said, “What about your cargo?”

“Tortoiseshell. We'll unload it tomorrow, and once dried, it should be fine. In fact, I'll probably put it on the local market. There's no point in warehousing it for the time it will take to get the
Osprey
mended.”

Thank heavens it hadn't been sugar, or rice, George thought. Then he wondered what price tortoiseshell fetched in Rio. To him, the cargo sounded very exotic. He supposed it had been loaded in some place like Manila, but thought that Coffin might have traded for it in some island in the Fijis, or that maybe his boys had gathered it themselves, picking it up on farflung beaches. They looked adventurous enough, he thought, and remarked, “Your crew seems very young.”

“Those six lads are cadets,” Captain Coffin said briefly, apparently unsurprised by the abrupt change of topic. “It's a Salem custom.”

“Ah,” said George. Undoubtedly, they were sons of prominent Salem shipmasters, shipowners, and merchants, and some would have brilliant careers in front of them. “Six is quite a number,” he observed.

“They pull their weight, believe me—and I like them, anyway,” Captain Coffin said. “Men bring problems on board that would have been better left on shore, but boys are uncomplicated.”

George silenced, abruptly remembering that this man had sailed away from Salem when Wiki was sixteen years old. He thought how Wiki must have envied the cadets who had sailed with his father instead of himself.

Then Captain Coffin said with a hint of dry humor, “I couldn't help but notice that your first lieutenant is very young, too.”

“Seventeen,” said George ruefully. “And with an amazing capacity for doing the wrong thing—but he does the wrong thing so cheerfully that we have no trouble forgiving him, and so he survives to err yet another day.”

To his surprise, the other man laughed, and before he knew it, George found himself inviting him to spend the rest of the night on board the
Swallow
—“And whichever of your hands are not on duty.”

“I've sent the boys to the lodgings we use here, and the rest are tending the pumps. The mate is in charge of the lads; they'll be fine.”

Rochester led the way up the gangplank that had been slung from the starboard side of the brig, and then through the small saloon to his tiny private cabin, which was crammed to bursting with just his berth, a sofa, and his chart desk and chair. As he took the chair, he observed, “You sound as if you come to Rio quite often.”

“The market's good, and I have a good friend here.” Captain Coffin sank back on the sofa with a deep sigh, and when George offered brandy, he accepted gratefully. For a long moment there was silence, as both men slowly relaxed. Then, with a sharply intelligent glance across the rim of his glass, Captain Coffin observed, “You make me very curious, Captain Rochester.”

“I do?”

“Busy as we have been, I couldn't help but notice you studying me a lot of the time—and, right now, you're doing a great deal of that.”

George smiled rather sheepishly, because he couldn't help casting constant glances at this man, and mentally comparing him with his son. Up until today he had thought that Wiki was the epitome of a New Zealand native—smoothly brown-skinned and muscular of physique, with long, snaky, black hair, and a nose that was Roman in profile, but flat in full-face view. Indeed, Rochester had suspected that when Captain William Coffin had claimed the quick-witted twelve-year-old Wiki as his son, he had been indulging in wishful thinking.

However, the resemblance was remarkable—especially when the color of the eyes was considered. Wiki's eyes, like this man's, were light brown in repose, but had the same ability to change to gray with anger. The eyebrows, too, were the same—fine, black, arched, and very expressive. There were differences that fascinated him, too—Captain Coffin's ears, for instance. They stuck out a little, while Wiki had neat, lobeless, Polynesian ears, set close to the sides of his head.

“In fact,” Captain Coffin remarked, after waiting in vain for an answer, “you remind me much of a butcher sizing up a side of beef.”

George was surprised into a hoot of laughter, suddenly liking this man.

“And, what's more, you knew my name—and yet I don't believe we've ever met.”

“I am sure we have not,” Rochester agreed, and leaned back in his chair with an amiable grin. “But I know your son, Wiki.”

“Wiki?” Coffin echoed. His expression went blank.

“There's quite a resemblance,” George assured him.

“Good God, is there?” Captain Coffin seemed absurdly pleased by the revelation. “Have you been shipmates?”

Rochester paused again, before he said gently, “We met eight years ago—at a college in New Hampshire.”

Both he and Wiki had been sixteen, and had been sent to the missionary college as a punishment. On the first day, when George had galloped out of his grandparents' carriage into the dim college portal, he had fallen over Wiki, who was glaring at the massive door. After they had picked themselves up George had spotted Wiki's brown skin and black hair, jumped to the conclusion that he was one of the benighted Indians he was to be taught to save, and with a braying adolescent laugh had declared, “Should be converting you, old chap, not knocking you down!”