The Dark Canoe (4 page)

Soon after dawn we went back to the place where we had searched the previous day, anchored the launches in a circle, and set up the pump. As my brother was getting ready to go down for his first dive, two trim canoes filled with Indians came from the direction of Rehusa Strait. Each canoe carried six paddles and they pulled up beside our big launch and waved a friendly greeting.

The little, mud-colored chief we had met before held out a handful of pearls. Caleb let him know that we wished to barter, and by making the sign of a ship, one that lay beneath the water, and the motions of diving, he was able to strike a bargain.

As a result of the signs, repeated over and over for the better part of an hour, and the gift of an iron bar, the chief sent out his men to look for the
Amy Foster
.

These Indians were fine divers. They regularly dived for abalones and scallops, which they ate, and for pearls which, they told us, they took eastward on foot across the high mountains to barter for cloth.

It was a good bargain. With eight of our men diving and twelve of theirs (the little chieftain did not dive, but sat in his canoe, eyeing the pump) we covered a wide circle that day. At sunset, after Caleb had given him a piece of leaky hose and three broken screws, the chief promised to bring his men back the next morning. They left us, skimming the water like flying fish, and disappeared around a headland that lay to the north.

That night Judd and I set off with a lantern and fishlines. We said that we were going out to catch sierra, but hidden in our clothes were the proper tools to use on the chest. We fished our way toward the cove. When we reached the cove we doused the lantern and waded into the mangroves. Then we uncovered the chest, and Judd set to with chisel and hammer.

He worked as he had before, like a jeweler cutting gems, yet the work went faster and by the time we were ready to leave, he had cleaned off an area about four feet square. It seemed to form an end, the larger end of the chest, where one of the sides joined the top.

“Shine the lantern close,” he said, and when I did he tested the wood with a thumbnail. “A strange kind of wood,” he said. “I've never seen its likes before. Tough as iron. Good wood, good carpenter, I'd say.”

We covered the chest as we had before and hid the tools. On our way back to the ship Judd lighted the lantern and put out two lines and started to fish for sierra.

“Something to show Captain Troll,” the old man said. “He's got his eye on us, me especially. Ever since the murder, he's been snooping around, acting like a policeman.”

The old man jerked on his line, waited and jerked again and pulled in a silver-sided fish as long as his arm. He unhooked the fish, straightened the feathers on the jig, and threw it over the side while I rowed on toward the ship.

Then he said, “Appears to me that your brother should hold court and talk to everyone, call them in one by one and find out what they know.”

“Caleb's not going to do that,” I said. “He told me the night after the murder that the best idea was to wait until the ship docked in Nantucket and turn everything over to the regular court.”

“For instance,” the old man said, “there're a few things I haven't told.”

“You heard the big white cat yowl about an hour before dawn.”

“Yes, and an infernal racket it was, too.”

Judd had another fish on the line and I quit rowing until he brought it in.

“What else do you know?” I said.

“Well, I heard a voice about that time. Talking to the cat, I guess.”

“Whose voice?” I asked.

“I couldn't be sure, but it sounded like Caleb's. Then I heard a cabin door slam shut. But a short while later, perhaps a minute, I heard someone walking along the deck, going toward the forecastle. I know Caleb's walk, sort of a thump, but it wasn't his. It sounded more like the way Troll walks. Kind of jerky and fast, as though whoever it was might be in a hurry.”

The old man tossed the jig overboard and I began to row toward the ship. Around us the waters were black, but we left a long trail of phosphorescence and fiery drops fell from my oars. Whenever I turned to glance at the ship, her decks seemed deserted except for a man standing watch at the stern.

Yet once again, Captain Troll met us as we crawled over the rail. He glanced at the two fish and the lantern and for a long time at the hatchet which I held in my hand, it being too large to hide.

“You have a new way to catch fish,” he said.

“Yes,” the old man answered. “Nathan here shines the light around and when the fish come up to find out what's happening, I just hit them over the head with the hatchet.”

Troll gave one of his small coughs. He might even have smiled in his tight-lipped way, I could not tell. But as we walked on along the deck and went down the ladderway, Judd said that we had better wait and not go to the cove the next day, and I agreed.

But on the second day, when we planned to go back to the island, one of the Indians, who was the best of the divers and could stay underwater for a full three minutes, discovered the wreck of the
Amy Foster
.

The ship lay in ten fathoms of water, about a mile from the cove and the mangroves, wedged at the foot of a shallow reef. Looking down through the clear currents that swirled around her, you could see her wavering form, the masts broken off at the deck, and dim, trailing pieces of canvas that once were sails.

There was jubilation among the crew when the Indians brought news of the discovery. The little chief, whose name was Bonsig, came flying over the water with his three canoes and pulled in at the launch as my brother was resting between dives. The chief pointed northward toward Isla Ballena, then downward several times, drawing in the air the outlines of a ship.

We raised our anchors and made ready to follow him, but first he demanded gifts. Fascinated by the wheezing noise, his choice was the pump. At last he settled for a hammer, a pocket comb which one of the men owned, six square nails, all of them bent, and two torn cotton shirts, one belonging to Blanton and the other to me.

We left the cove and followed Chief Bonsig up the bay and past a small island. He kept pointing ahead, but we could see that he had not left a float to mark the site of the wreck, and for a while we feared that he would not find it again. Yet, like a homing bird, he went straight to the place, and now clothed in my torn shirt, stood up in the canoe and gave us a toothless grin, then a speech in a language which I took to be Spanish.

We anchored the boats midst wild shouts and singing. The men had forgotten their grievances, or at least had laid them aside—how only a few days before they had watched my brother dive and quietly wondered how they could cut his air hose without being caught. They even gave three loud cheers for the
Alert
, the finest ship that ever sailed out of Nantucket, and three for Caleb Clegg. My brother must have heard the cheers as we bolted on his helmet, but he gave no sign.

The bay was calm except for a pod of whales that swam about in the distance and sent up misty fountains and struck the water thunderous blows with their mighty flukes. Everyone, including the Indians, pulled in and anchored around the diving launch. There were many offers of help, but Judd and I refused them and set the pump in motion.

The crew cheered again when Caleb slipped over the side and went down in a whirling cloud of bubbles. I saw him reach the deck of the ship and walk slowly along it, a small school of fish swimming beside him. Then, as he drew near the forward hold and bent over to examine the hatch, the movement of the hose disturbed the silt that had gathered upon the wreck and he was lost to view.

My brother was not down long, for it was near nightfall, and he brought back little news, but the men cheered him again. We rowed off to the ship and took the pump with us, fearing that the Indians would steal it in the night.

There were more songs at supper and much laughter. It was a different ship from the one I had been living aboard. But I knew how suddenly their mood would change if Caleb found that the cargo of the
Amy Foster
had drifted away through some hole rent in her bottom.

After supper I took Caleb his tray of food. He was standing at the door of his cabin, with his gaze fixed upon the horizon. He did not speak and I put the tray where the big cat could not reach it. I was leaving when he called out to me.

“Avast there,” he said. “How dost thou fare with the Whale? Dost the white monster excite thee? And what of Captain Ahab who pursueth it over the world's far seas? Yes, what of Ahab? How doth he strike thee?”

“I've not read all the book,” I said.

“How far hast thee trod?”

“As far as chapter fifty-eight.”

“Thou readest fast.”

“I skip parts.”

Caleb laughed. “Thou skip because thou fiercely pursuest something and do not wish to be checked by wily circumlocutions. Chapter fifty-eight? Oh, yes, I recall it. It goes, ‘Consider the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure…Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other…Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of men there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from the isle, thou canst never return!'”

Caleb paused, took from his mouth the pipe he was smoking, and threw it, still lighted, into the waters beneath.

“‘What business have I with this pipe?'” he said.

“‘This thing that is meant for sereneness, to send up mild vapors among white hairs…I'll smoke no more…' not until the log is found. But tell me, Nathan, what dost thou think of Ahab? In thy reading of the book, surely thou hast come upon him ere now?”

I recalled, as Caleb paused to throw his lighted pipe away and explain why he had done so, that I had read in
Moby-Dick
a description of this same curious act. Captain Ahab himself had thrown his lighted pipe away, giving up his right to peace while the White Whale still lived in the sea.

Some of the things that long had puzzled me about Caleb became clearer in my mind. I saw that his own misfortunes at some time in the past had drawn him toward the luckless Ahab. Both men had riven faces, both walked with difficulty, my brother upon a short and twisted leg, Ahab upon one of ivory. Moreover, Ahab had vowed to search out and slay the White Whale that had maimed him; my brother had sworn to find the
Amy Foster
, whose loss had likewise maimed him.

“What dost think of Captain Ahab,” my brother asked again, “so far in thy readings of him?”

Yet at this moment, with Caleb's gaze fixed upon me, I doubted that he was aware that his appearance, his acts, his words were those of Captain Ahab. There was a secret sympathy between them, that was all. He was not slavishly acting out a part, a role which he had devised. He was not Captain Ahab, but a man tortured in body and mind who had read of Ahab and in time unknowingly had become Ahab.

“From what I've seen of him,” I said, “he's to be pitied.”

“He would not welcome thy pity,” Caleb answered.

“I suppose not,” I said. I wanted to say, “Both of you are madmen, and madmen have no need of pity.”

“Dost think Ahab right? Would thou pursuest a fiend that hath snatched a limb from off thy body?”

“No. I'd be afraid that he might snatch another limb. Perhaps my life, too.”

“Thou would rather live half a man and see thy enemy go unscathed? But I shalt not ask thee more until thou finish with the book and knowest Ahab's inner workings. Avast, get thee at it.”

I left him there in the doorway looking off across the moonlit waters, climbed into my bunk, and opened the book where I had stopped reading. As I read on, whenever Captain Ahab came into the story, it was not he whom I saw standing alone upon the quarterdeck or shouting commands into the wind, but my brother, Caleb Clegg.

At gray dawn we sailed north toward Isla Ballena, closer to the sunken ship. With the sun we were ready to dive. Again, each man of the crew was eager to work at the pump. Even the little Indian chief wanted to take a hand, though the air was hard to breathe and the sun was fierce. My brother grimly smiled at all the eagerness and while Judd bolted on his suit, from within the brass-bound helmet I heard something that sounded like a hollow laugh.

Our four launches were anchored in a circle around the wreck. The men crawled to the gunwales and cheered once more as Caleb went down. The water was clear except for myriads of small fish that had found a home in the sunken ship. I saw him reach the deck, brushing the fish away from his helmet as if they were so many flies, and disappear into the hold.

When half an hour passed without a signal of any kind, uneasiness began to spread from boat to boat. Blanton wondered how he could find the barrels of ambergris among all the hundreds of barrels that held sperm oil. Second mate Still doubted that one man could handle the heavy barrels by himself. Everyone had a question or some uneasy doubt.

The men fell silent as another half hour went by, then a faint signal came along the line, four short pulls twice repeated, telling us to send down the grappling hook and chain. We watched the gear go down, Caleb crawl out and drag it back into the hold. Minutes passed, the ship's bells struck nine, struck the half hour, then the signal came to haul.

It took the strength of three men, heaving hand over hand, to bring the line in. Nearly the size of a hogshead, the cask came up in slow circles, like a hooked shark that had grown tired. Trailing weeds covered most of it, but as it drew close to the surface I clearly saw, burned deep in the rounded top, the letter A.

“‘A' stands for ambergris,” Troll said.

“Two hundred pounds of ambergris,” said Blanton who had helped to haul it in, “or more.”

“Two hundred pounds worth seven dollars an ounce,” someone said in a shaky voice.

The cask was hauled into the launch and an ax found to breach it. Captain Troll hesitated, thinking no doubt that Caleb Clegg should be there to oversee such an important undertaking. But the angry mutterings of the crew quickly changed his mind, and with one blow he split the oaken top.

Slowly, as we pressed around the barrel, there oozed from it a small gobbet of dull-gray matter, waxy soft. We all, except Captain Troll, stared down at the unpleasant sight. I had never seen ambergris before, but surely this was not the fabled substance from which perfume was made, such things as pastiles and hair powder and precious candles, and which the Turks carried reverently in their caravans to Mecca.

Captain Troll thrust a finger into the gray gobbet and waved it under our noses. I was suddenly enveloped in fragrance, so powerful, so enchanting that it made my senses reel.

The only one who was not awed by the ambergris was Chief Bonsig. He reached up and pushed his nose into it, then backed away, made a horrible face, and climbed back into his canoe, where he sat as though numbed.

“The barrel's worth twenty thousand dollars,” said Captain Troll.

“And there's more to come,” Blanton said.

“If what Caleb Clegg said is true,” Troll added.

Again we let down the grappling hook. Silent and breathless, the men watched while Caleb picked up the hook and carried it into the hold. An hour went by, but I knew that my brother was not looking for ambergris.

At last he signaled and we pulled him in, taking a long time to do so lest he suffer from quick-changing pressures. As the brass-bound helmet was lifted off his shoulders, I saw that his face was white and drawn from the hours below. Yet the grim smile that I had seen when he went down still was there.

“When do you dive again?” Blanton asked.

“How many barrels did you see?” Captain Troll asked.

A chorus of questions followed, but my brother did not answer them. He stood looking around at the peaceful waters of the bay, at the whales playing, at the ship, and the hot sky. At last he looked at the row of grinning faces.

“Dost thou now believe Caleb Clegg?” he said hoarsely. “Sailors of fair weather and shirkers of the storm, tell me, art thou now of a different mind than oft before?”

“Aye!” spoke the crew as one, each man at that moment willing to suffer whatever insult that might be heaped upon him.

“Dost thou now wish to remain at Magdalena until yon rich harvest is gathered in?”

“Aye,” came the answer, every man knowing that without Caleb Clegg more casks of ambergris might never be found. “Aye, aye!”

Without further words Caleb turned his back upon them and had me row him to the ship. Nor did he confide in me, as he sat in the stern staring out over the bay. Yet I was aware that he had sent up the barrel of ambergris and promised the men still a richer harvest, only to buy the time he would need to find the log of the
Amy Foster
. And find it he would, no matter how long it might take him.