Shark Island (2 page)

Captain Wilkes strode over to a desk, and sat down at it, facing Wiki, who remained standing, not having been offered a seat. For long minutes Wilkes didn't speak, picking up a pencil and watching it as he rolled it between his fingers instead. The sonorous tick of a chronometer punctuated the heavy silence, and when Wiki shifted uneasily his right boot let out a loud, embarrassing squeak.

When Captain Wilkes looked up at last his narrow face was pale and fraught, his large, dark, intelligent eyes unfocused. As always, his full mouth was tipped into a constant small, artificial smile, but today it looked more like a painful grimace. Looking somewhere above Wiki's head instead of meeting his inquiring gaze, he said abruptly, “I have a mission for you.”

“Aye, sir?”

“I'm sending you to an island off the northeast coast of Brazil. I want it checked out, and you're the best man for the job. Go there, investigate, and report back to me.”

Wiki blinked. As the expedition's “linguister”—translator—he spoke Portuguese, but he hadn't expected to use the language until they dropped anchor in Rio de Janeiro, where they were headed after the job of charting reported shoals in this part of the Atlantic was finished.

He said cautiously, “Investigate what, sir?”

“Pirates—
pirates!
Captain Hudson strongly suspects that this island harbors a nest of buccaneers—which poses a danger because the island overlooks our route to Rio. I want his report checked out—and you're the best man to do it, being one of
them,
as it were.”

Wiki said blankly, “I beg your pardon, sir?”

“I can think of no one more qualified to decide if they are likely to attack the expedition—by stealth, when we least expect them. Not only do you speak Portuguese, but ‘Set a thief to catch a thief'—or so the saying goes—and don't your people make a custom of cutting out ships? I've heard of infamous cases where whole crews were barbarically slaughtered by pirates in New Zealand, the ships looted and then burned while the victors feasted on the bodies of the slain—and I am sure that even Brazilians have heard of this, too.”

Wiki shook his head in utter bemusement. He had often been puzzled by the strange processes of
pakeha
logic, but this was particularly baffling. He felt intrigued as well, though. The day before, the sloop
Peacock
had rejoined the fleet flying urgent signals, and since then her commander, William Hudson, had spent hours closeted in conference with Captain Wilkes. Rumors had flown about in abundance, but Wiki had heard nothing as dramatic as this.
Pirates?
He wondered why the devil Captain Hudson hadn't handled the problem himself—for, after all, the
Peacock
was a sloop of
war,
and while she didn't carry anything near her usual armament, she did have eight assorted cannon.

He ventured, “Is Captain Hudson absolutely certain they are pirates, sir?”

“It's difficult to decide what else they could be,” Wilkes snapped. “According to the charts the island is uninhabited, but cannon were aimed at the
Peacock
from a fortification on a headland, and Captain Hudson's lookouts swore they spied vessels on the beach below.”

Wiki thought about it. Ever since her humiliating defeat by the Argentineans in 1827, Brazil had been in a ferment of revolt and rebellion. The country had been ruled by a succession of unpopular regents, giving unruly elements of the population all kinds of reasons for raising hell. It was perfectly credible that a revolutionary group should have taken over an uninhabited island near the coast, so he said, “Insurgents, perhaps?”

“
Warlike
insurgents, then,” Captain Wilkes retorted.

“Captain Hudson didn't send in a party to investigate, sir?”

“The island lies in uncharted shoals—and the
Peacock
's timbers are tender. It was just last year that she was almost battered to pieces at the mouth of the Persian Gulf—and did the navy yard repair her properly?
No, they bloody well did not!
”

Captain Wilkes's voice had risen, and his face flushed red with rage, while Wiki watched him in alarm. It was common knowledge that the constant delays, hostility in the navy yard, and the petty parsimony of the administration had vexed the expedition's commander sorely, so everyone was used to his testiness on the issue. However, whispers about his nervous state were flying about the fleet; one of the other scientifics had confided that when he had accidentally dropped a jar in his stateroom while Captain Wilkes was trying to rest in his cabin next door, the commander's incoherent rage had been frightening.

“It's just one more problem to add to my troubles!” Wilkes exclaimed. “It's just two months since we left the shores of home, and yet I feel as if there is a year's worth of burden on my shoulders already!” Then his stare focused on Wiki's face again, and he demanded, “Did you read what the editor of the Norfolk newspaper had the
sauce
to publish on the eve of the expedition's departure?”

Wiki had read the newspaper every day that he was in Norfolk, and thought that he remembered the editorial quite well, but warily shook his head.

“The editor of the
Norfolk Beacon
published his strong opinion that the organization of the expedition had been a disaster, and that only with strict discipline would good come out of evil, and honor out of shame. And the editor was
right!
The management of the exploring expedition has been a disgrace to the navy and those who direct its councils! The whole process has been deeply marked by both evil and dishonor—on the part of those in the corridors of power!
I've
done nothing wrong and
will
accomplish a great deal to the glory of my country, but
all
my efforts will go unrewarded—as unrecognized as ever!”

Sweat was beading on his upper lip, and he was going red and white by turns, while he rubbed his forehead as if in terrible pain. Wiki looked about desperately, hoping that someone—the steward, perhaps—would come to investigate, but there were no steps in the passage, and no one tapped on the door.

He said as calmly and reassuringly as he could, “I honestly believe that without your efforts the expedition would never have got to sea. You have accomplished a great deal, sir.”

He was speaking nothing less than the truth. Captain Wilkes had never faltered in the challenge of choosing scientifics and officers and organizing the departure of the expedition; he had demonstrated a faith and optimism that the past two months of voyage had justified. A great deal of scientific data had been collected. Huge tracts of the Atlantic had been surveyed, and charts corrected. Currents had been tracked. There had been storms and squalls; twice the fleet had been scattered, and with difficulty had been assembled again, but throughout it all—and despite those ghastly murders—the job had been done. Wiki had often heard Rochester declare that Captain Wilkes was conceited, ambitious, and arrogant, but his own opinion was that there was dedication and intelligence there, too.

“Indeed, I have,” the commander agreed, his face flushed with gratification. “And I will accomplish a great deal more, including an assault on the last great
unknown
continent—despite the difficulties
they
put in my way!”

Wiki concealed a grimace, because he shouldn't have been hearing this. Officially, no one save Captain Wilkes himself knew where the expedition would steer, though every sailor who dipped his mug into the scuttlebutt of fresh water by the foremast—the place where seamen traditionally gossiped—was perfectly aware that one of the goals of the exploring expedition was the formal discovery of the Antarctic continent.

He said in a neutral voice, “That would be wonderful, sir.”

“You're right! It
should
be an American discovery, by right of history! And yet the
French
could easily get there first.”

“The French?” Wiki echoed blankly. It was the first he had heard of it.

“Aye, the goddamned
French!
Dumont D'Urville sailed as long ago as September last year—with a well-equipped expedition of two corvettes, assembled in less than six months while our own project was dying of inertia! And, by God, if they do get there before me, who will be blamed?
Me!
I'll be the laugh of Washington! But if by some miracle this expedition
does
beat the Frenchmen to the official discovery of the continent, the glory will go to the navy and the nabobs, not to the person who truly deserves it! Did you know that the men are constantly restless?” Wilkes demanded with an abrupt change of subject. “That there was a mutiny on the
Peacock
before we even dropped down the river? That the word of
that
got back to the administration—and we had to quash it by sending a letter ashore saying that it had been nothing more than a little improper language?”

Wiki shook his head, completely at a loss to know how to respond, and the expedition commander wildly exclaimed, “They expect us to keep tight discipline, and yet they refused to give Captain Hudson—the second-in-command of the expedition!—a rank befitting his station. He is still officially a
lieutenant!
And they have been equally neglectful of
me,
goddamn it! Yet I command an expedition of seven ships that will circumnavigate the globe—will discover unknown territory, will fly the Stars and Stripes in a multitude of foreign ports! It's unbearably insulting! How
can
they expect me to maintain order when they offer me so little respect themselves?”

Wiki said with complete sincerity, “It's a damned shame, sir.”

“Indeed it is—indeed! Rank is of prime importance and the whole fleet knows it! They laugh at me—
laugh!
—and defy me at every turn. But, by God, I'll exert discipline—I know how to be a martinet, I assure you! I know how to punish the witless virgins!”

Wiki could hear Wilkes's heavy breathing, but to his huge relief the rant had come to an end. Silence fell, while Captain Wilkes's restless gaze flickered about the big room, settling on jars of dead fish and seaweed and then moving on. Finally, he said, “I have taken the command of the brig
Swallow
away from Lieutenant Forsythe, and restored it to Passed Midshipman Rochester.”

Though that was what Wiki had guessed already, he was still very glad to hear it. However, he checked, “May I ask which ship is carrying me to the island, sir?”

“The
Swallow.
” Captain Wilkes added, “Lieutenant Forsythe will be going with you.”

This came as such a shock that Wiki involuntarily exclaimed, “Surely not as Captain Rochester's second-in-command!”

It was a terrible prospect. Not only was there bad blood between Forsythe and Rochester, but it would lead to a most peculiar social situation: George Rochester would outrank Forsythe only when both were on board the brig. Away from the
Swallow,
George would be a mere passed midshipman, and Lieutenant Forsythe would be the senior officer.

“Certainly not,” said Captain Wilkes tartly. “Lieutenant Forsythe will have a command of his own.”

Wiki blinked in surprise. “A second craft is going with us, sir?”

“Aye. I'm giving him the
Peacock
's big cutter.”

Wiki thought of the boats he had seen stacked on chocks on the waist deck of the
Peacock,
nesting one inside the other. There had been three, he remembered—the launch at the bottom, and then the two cutters, one bigger than the other.

He asked, “How big is she?”

“The big cutter?” Captain Wilkes's tone became practical and seamanlike—at long last he seemed in control of himself. “Just a touch under thirty feet, and very fast even when beating upwind—two masts, dipping lug foresail, standing lug mainsail. I have ordered her to be decked over forward as far as the foremast, with two berths underneath, and fitted with a tarpaulin to haul over the main boom when she is at anchor. The carpenters are working on her now. She'll carry two swivel guns, and have a crew of six, with two officers.” Then he added, “Captain Rochester will be in control of the mission while the brig is at sea, but once you are at the island Lieutenant Forsythe will be in charge, and you will follow
his
instructions. His orders are to get you on shore and support you with force, if necessary.”

It was a dreadful plan, Wiki thought with a wince; it would take all Rochester's diplomatic skills to avoid a power struggle even before they got to the island. With foreboding, he asked, “Who will be Lieutenant Forsythe's second-in-command, sir?”

“Passed Midshipman Kingman.”

This was no easier to digest. Zachary Kingman was Lieutenant Forsythe's special drinking crony; they were almost always seen together on sprees in port. Thin to the point of emaciation, and with a constant loosely stupid death's-head grin, Kingman was older than most passed midshipmen because he had wasted so much time at the gaming tables, and he was a troublemaker still. However, both he and Forsythe were handy with their weapons, Wiki silently admitted; they were men who never hesitated to charge into danger, and might be exactly what the situation demanded.

But who, then, was going to be George's second-in-command on the brig? Over the past three weeks Lawrence J. Smith had been the first officer of the
Swallow
—and loathed cordially by all, Forsythe included. Carefully, because the pompous, much detested Lieutenant Smith was a particular crony of Captain Wilkes's, Wiki said, “Will Lieutenant Smith be Captain Rochester's second-in-command, sir?”

Captain Wilkes said stiffly, “I have other plans for the good lieutenant, and have assigned Midshipman Keith to the position of Captain Rochester's first officer.”