The Dark Canoe (3 page)

That morning Captain Troll ordered us all on deck and to the mainmast.

The day dawned clear but already a blanket of heat had settled over the ship. The men stood around in sullen groups of two or three, waiting to hear why they had been called, hopeful that it would be word that the
Alert
was sailing home at last. Captain Troll also waited. From time to time he gave me a questioning glance as if I might know why we were there. I knew no more than he did, except that we were not sailing back to Nantucket.

Caleb came limping along the deck. In one hand he carried a wooden maul and in the other two bright coins, the golden doubloons we had received from the Indian chief. He burnished the coins on his sleeve and with two square nails he nailed them to the mast. Stepping back, he then surveyed the men who had gathered around him. He looked from one to the other in turn, calling them by name.

“Whoever among you,” he said, “doth find the wreck of the
Amy Foster
, it is he who shall have yon Spanish coins. Sharpen thine eyes and hone thine wits, therefore. Each golden piece is worth a full year's pay.”

The faces of the crew brightened somewhat at this news. Still, for men who had dreamed of riches, of a shipload of sperm oil and ambergris, it meant little.

“Whilst pondering in the night,” Caleb went on, “there hath come to mind a likely spot, past which strange currents writhe and run and where the
Amy Foster
hath drifted. There we shall find our ship and when 'tis done my share of oil and ambergris I shall divide among thee equally.”

Since this was better news by far than the offer of two Spanish coins to one lucky man, the crew went off in high spirits. The launches were manned and rowed down the bay to the new place Caleb had chosen. It was about a mile from the ship and closer to the mangroves, so close, indeed, that I could make out the path I had left and the mound of branches where the chest lay hidden.

We moored the launches in a wide circle, around the chosen spot, and set up the diving platform. The platform held a two-handed pump, which forced the air into the hose that fed the diver. Hitherto, we all had taken turns at the pump, but on this morning my brother gave the task to old Judd and me. It was a clear sign that he no longer trusted any of the crew save us. The others were sent off to dive on their own, using goggles made of wood and glass.

Judd and I got my brother into his suit, which did not fit him so well as it did Tom Waite, and began to push up and down on the handle. Caleb slipped over the side and disappeared in a cloud of bubbles. He was clumsy and could not go down in the deep waters, but through determination he still had become a diver.

Judd was a grizzled old man of forty or more, with cold blue eyes and a bad temper. I had not liked him much when first we had left Nantucket, but during the time at sea and the weeks at Magdalena he had proven to be a friend. While I pushed at the heavy handle, I cast a glance toward the mangroves. The mound of branches stood up so clear by daylight that I was sure that sooner or later someone would see it. Tom Waite would not be able to go there with me for at least another week, so I told the old man about the chest. He would know best how to open it, since he was the ship's carpenter.

The old man listened to me silently, as if a chest of Spanish gold was of no interest. But I noticed that the pump handle soon began to move up and down at a faster rate, and from time to time he would pause to give the mangroves a sidelong look.

“We'll go over tonight,” he said at last. “I'll take along a chisel and hammer and we'll open her up. Why would a Spaniard, though I've known some crazy ones in my life, hide gold in a chest seven feet long? Chances are she's empty.”

“My grandfather had a Spanish chest which was six feet long,” I said, speaking half the truth.

At noon my brother signaled that he wanted to come to the surface and we pulled him in. By then a hot land wind had risen and white-capped waves were racing across the bay. Besides, the hammerheads had begun to swim around the launch, so Caleb decided to quit diving for that day.

Judd and I seized our chance and took the small boat, saying that we were going to hunt for abalones, and rowed off to the cove. As we ran the boat up the beach, I saw two of the other men following us. It turned out that they had come for abalones, too, so we had to lose ourselves among the rocks until they left. When they were out of sight, we took off our shoes and waded into the mangroves.

A pair of black, long-beaked hell-divers sat preening themselves on the mound of branches that covered the chest. As we came upon them, they rose with wild, chilling cries and flew away. To me they were ill omens, but the old man said that the hell-diver was a sure sign of good fortune, that two hell-divers were twice as good.

He had brought along a rusty hatchet, which I wanted him to use on the chest, but the old man was against it.

“It's the chest we got to think about,” he said. “Might have belonged to an Egyptian king. The thing's full of air, most likely.”

The barnacles grew in dense clusters, one cluster upon another, small ones upon big ones the size of a gull's egg. Thus, the six sides of the massive chest were encased in an armor of shell, the whole of a faint, pinkish color.

“It's been in the sea a long time,” the old man said, “before you were born, maybe.”

Setting to work with the hatchet, Judd chipped away at the top of the chest, which was some five inches above the water. He worked slowly, with his tongue between his teeth, studying each stroke before he made it, as if he were working on a jewel.

“At this rate,” I said, “we'll never know what's in the chest.”

The old man did not reply but went on, thoughtfully chipping away at the chest. He even stopped to light a pipe and stand for a time examining a space no larger than his hand which it had taken him more than an hour to clean off.

“Smooth as silk,” he said, running a finger over the wood he had laboriously bared to the sun. “Planed and rubbed by a master of the trade, whoever he was.”

Watching him, realizing that he was far more interested in the chest itself than in what was hidden inside, I made up my mind that as soon as Tom Waite was well, together we would open the chest in a hurry.

The old man chipped away until night came and then we carefully put the branches back on top of the chest and waded out of the mangroves, taking care not to leave any signs.

At suppertime I carried a tray of food to my brother's cabin. He was standing in front of the table again. Before him lay the chart of Magdalena, which he had made and was always changing. The tides and currents as he knew them were marked in green, waving lines and the places where we had searched for the lost ship, with red circles.

“What thinkest thou of this watery stretch,” he said, motioning me to the table and placing a finger upon the chart, “southward here from Rehusa Strait and close by yon small isle? Dost look promising to thee?”

He often asked me questions like this, not expecting an answer and more to put his mind in order, I believe, than for any other reason. For the first time, I decided to say what I thought.

Since we had dived that morning within plain sight of the mangroves, it was wiser for me to agree with him that the new spot seemed promising. Where we searched, it mattered little, for I strongly doubted that we would ever find the
Amy Foster
. Yet the slump of his shoulders and the white cast of his face touched me for a moment.

“You thought this morning that you had found the right place,” I said. “We haven't finished diving there. There's nothing to gain by hopping around all over the bay like a chicken. Let's go back and search again.”

Surprised, Caleb glanced up. Then he walked past me to the door and for a long time looked out into the night.

“Thunder and lightning that day,” he said at last in his far-off voice, “a southeast wind blowing, stronger far than any wind that blows around the Horn. A foul and fearsome day, Nathan, the spinning world aswirl about our battered ears, our eyes cringing in their sockets. Yet well I remember where the ship went down.”

He walked back to the table and put his finger hard upon the chart. “'Twas here. Aye, here upon La Perla Reef.”

“When the ship went down,” I said, “you were in the cabin, out of your head with fever.”

“Aye, but whilst carried ashore by the raging tide, in that brief moment before my senses did depart, I didst glimpse the rocks which mark the reef.”

He again placed a finger upon the outlines of La Perla Reef. “'Twas here, I tell thee, here. But wherever, here or there or yonder, 'twas a needless thing. Plainly I wrote in the log, which now lies lost somewhere about us. I wrote it for thy brother Jeremy, knowing that the fever hadst stealthily crept upon me. ‘Beware the southern storm,' I wrote. ‘Do not be caught in Magdalena. Take the ship to sea. Heed my command, Jeremy, take the…'”

Suddenly Caleb stopped. He stepped back from the chart table and passed a hand across his eyes. For a while he did not move, but stood staring straight before him.

“You had a chance to testify,” I said, “to tell Captain Wills and Captain Sterne and Mr. Reynolds what you have just told me. Yet you heard the testimony against you and spoke not a word to defend yourself. Why?”

Caleb turned his eyes slowly toward me. They had a lost and wandering look. He said, “Why? Why? 'Tis possible, Nathan, that I didst write nothing in the log. 'Tis possible that I did dream it all.”

Once more he passed a hand across his eyes. Then, limping to the doorway, he looked up at the evening sky. I think that he was already sorry for what he had said. It is likely that he had meant to relive that moment before the storm only for himself and not for me.

I was about to leave when he turned around and smiled, a rare thing for him.

“Hath slipped my mind about thy birthday,” he said. “'Tis thy sixteenth among us. Come, I have a gift for thee.”

I never entered my brother's cabin without the thought that it was an old bookshop on some dusty byway of London, which Charles Dickens might have written about. Books were scattered everywhere. Stacked against the bulwarks, they framed the two portholes. They lay on the bunk and underfoot. To reach the small table where Caleb ate his meals, you had to take a crooked path and each step carefully, as if you were traveling through a thicket. And the cabin had about it the musty smell of an old bookshop, with nothing of the sea.

Caleb swung his arms up and made a fulsome gesture. “A book, I wish to give thee,” he said. “Search and find one that suits thy temper.”

Looking about here and there, on the bunk and under it and along the bulwarks, I at last saw a book that struck my fancy. It was called
Moby-Dick: or, The Whale
, a large tome bound in green and gold leather, written by an author named Herman Melville.

“I like stories about whales and whaling,” I said, tucking the book under my arm. “I guess it's natural that I do, since I've heard of little else from the time I was in the cradle.”

My brother gave me a curious glance. A frown crossed his forehead and I had the feeling that I had taken a book which he especially prized. I was about to put it back and select another, when he stopped me.

“'Tis odd that thou like this one,” he said, “but take it with thee. 'Tis a true leviathan of a book and thou shalt learn from it much of the whale and his ways, enough to beguile the hours of thy youth. When older thou may find among its dire circumambulations things to give thee pause. And if thou art deserving, knowledge of an uncommon kind. Aye, a true leviathan. Perhaps thou art right to hold it gingerly as thou do, between thumb and forefinger. Who knows? Who knows?”

Caleb threaded his way to the table and once again began to study the chart of Magdalena. Then, of a sudden, he glanced up as if he had just remembered that I was still in the cabin.

“I would not give thee the book,” he said, “unless I knew it all by heart. Aye, every word from truck to keelson, fore and aft and amidships. Now avast and leave me to muse upon the problem alone. I venture that thou shalt find Captain Ahab better company.”

Again I tucked
Moby-Dick: or, The Whale
under my arm and walked through the litter of books toward the door. Caleb's birthday present was the first gift I had ever received from him. As I reached for the door catch, the thought crossed my mind to tell him about the chest I had found. At that moment the heavy book slipped and fell with a clatter of fluttering pages.

Caleb glanced up. “Take care,” he said in one of his softest voices. “'Tis not a ball to kick about.”

I stiffly thanked him for his gift and went below and sat down to supper with the book propped in front of me. The crew had gone above for air, so the forecastle was quiet. I found the first pages of much interest, being in the form of short writings about whales and whaling, collected from over the world. There were writings from the time of King Alfred, even from the Bible, and such things as “The aorta of a whale is larger than the main pipe of the waterworks at London Bridge.”

Later that night I fixed a fat candle to the bulkhead and lay in my bunk and began the story of
Moby-Dick: or, The Whale
. First I read the chapter names. There were one hundred and thirty-five of them, a goodly number, besides an Epilogue, which in a way is a chapter too. All of them sounded exciting, especially such names as “The Pequod Meets the Rose Bud,” “The Doubloon,” “Fast Fish and Loose Fish,” and “Ambergris.”

There was also a chapter called “Ahab.” As I read the word I recalled that when I had taken leave of my brother he had said, “Thou shalt find Captain Ahab better company.” I therefore turned to this chapter and began to read. Not far along, I came upon a description of Ahab: “Threading its way out from among his grey hairs, and continuing right down one side of his tawny scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in his clothing, you saw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish.”

These words amazed me. They could have been written, every one of them, to describe the scar that disfigured my brother's face.

Farther on I happened on this: “…not a little of this overbearing grimness was owing to the barbaric white leg upon which he partly stood. It had previously come to me that this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished bone of the sperm whale's jaw. ‘Aye, he was dismasted off Japan,' said the old Gay-Head Indian once; ‘but like his dismasted craft, he shipped another mast without coming home for it. He has a quiver of 'em.'”

This also amazed me. For though my brother did not have an ivory leg, let alone a quiver of them, he did stand upon a leg that was stiff at the knee and short by a full two inches.

I quit at this point and somewhat unsettled went to sleep pondering what I had read.