The Dark Canoe (5 page)

After we had eaten supper, the old man and I went quietly off to the cove. There was no need to make excuses for our leaving. Indeed, no one saw us go. The barrel had been rolled into the forecastle, and when we left, the men were sitting around it, merrily drinking the jug of rum my brother had sent along, sniffing the heady fragrance that not only had the power to make a man feel drunk, but also was worth seven dollars an ounce.

The sky was clear except for a line of puffy clouds low in the south. Since the moon was nearly full, work on the chest went faster than before. In two hours Judd had chipped away the last of the barnacles.

With hatchet and claw hammer, we then set about the lid. It was held tight, water-tight, by oakum and pitch, as well as by square nails set two inches apart and deeply driven into the unyielding wood. It would have been far easier just to bash in the lid, but again the old man refused.

Prying at the smaller end of the chest, which was square and of a different shape from the larger end, we managed to unloosen four of the corner nails and draw them out. All the while the old man cautioned me to take care not to injure the wood.

It was past eleven o'clock by now, so we hid the tools and covered the chest with branches, as usual, and made our way back toward the cove. We had reached the edge of the mangroves, when at the same moment we saw beyond us a boat lying beside ours on the beach. The old man grasped my arm and instantly we drew back into the shadowed brush. A voice hailed us not more than a dozen paces away. It was Captain Troll and he was sauntering toward us, puffing on his pipe.

“At the clams again?”

Neither Judd nor I answered.

“I didn't know that you found them on trees,” he said.

“Not
on
trees,” Judd said, “but all around them.”

Troll looked at us as we stood there empty-handed.

“Where are they? The two of you have been out here since suppertime. You should have a bushel by now.”

I thought it wiser to tell him about the chest, but kept my silence and hoped that the old man would think of something to say.

“We've been hunting ducks,” Judd said. “They nest out here at night.”

“Yes, I've seen them flying,” Troll said. “But you had poor luck. You'd have better luck if you took a gun.”

“Yes,” the old man said, weakly.

We walked down the beach, Troll falling into step behind us. As we slid our boat into the water, Troll took hold of the old man's arm and jerked him around.

“What are you up to?” Troll said. “The two of you have been coming here every night. You don't think I believe it's to catch clams and hunt ducks, do you?”

The old man pulled his arm from Troll's grasp. “Believe what you want,” he said.

“What I want, is it?” said Troll. “Well, I believe that you've found something that's drifted here from the wreck, something valuable.”

The old man said nothing and I picked up the oars and set them in the locks and began to row.

Captain Troll took a step toward us, jumped back as a small wave washed over his feet, then shouted, “What is it you've found?” He waited. “You don't answer. Well, I'll find out or have you flogged, the both of you flogged.”

For a time he stood looking after us, then began to walk back toward the mangroves. He would not find the chest that night and he would need to look hard in the daytime.

When we reached the ship I went straight to my brother's cabin. I found him on deck, his eyes fixed upon the sky. I had to speak to him twice before he heard me.

“It seems,” he said, “that things are amiss above us. The heavens are paled o'er with a sickly look.”

During the excitement of the past hour I had not noticed that the cloud bank, which earlier lay on the south horizon, had moved quickly up the sky and now had begun to overrun the moon.

“In such a way,” Caleb said, “did the fateful storm come upon us. On such a night, after windless days and fearsome heat.”

Hastily I told him about the chest I had found, all that had happened to it, and how Judd and I had just been threatened with a flogging. Caleb seemed not to hear me, at least he did not answer, as he kept his eyes on the fast-changing clouds.

“Aye, 'twas on such a night,” he said and walked to the rail and back. “Couldst fate repeat itself and catch us once again? Couldst our good ship be wrecked as was the
Amy Foster
?”

Caleb gazed along the quiet deck. He raised his eyes and scanned the furled sails and the three bare masts. He glanced overhead at the racing clouds. Like something caged, he paced up and down, groaning to himself. It was clear that he wanted to take the ship out of the bay into the open sea, but some dark memory stirred his thoughts and held him back.

“Should we sail?” I said.

Caleb stopped his pacing and looked at me. “Aye,” he replied. “We should have sailed an hour past.”

“Then give the order,” I said.

As if all this time he had been one of the crew waiting for a command, Caleb roused himself and said quietly, “Call the men.”

I hurried to the forecastle, shouting as I went, and after a time awakened the crew. Mumbling, they staggered up the ladderway and were met on deck by an order to hoist the anchor and man the rigging, to bring in the tethered launches.

“Where hides the loutish Troll?” Caleb said to me, casting a look toward the captain's empty station.

“On shore,” I answered. “Remember that I told you we left him there.”

“The ship shalt also leave him there,” Caleb said. Cupping his hands to his mouth, he shouted aloft, “Full sail, hear me, full sail and break thy backs to do it.”

The launches were hoisted on deck and fastened down. A light, copper-tasting wind now blew from the south. It caught the sails, the ship lay over and began to move slowly seaward, Caleb at the wheel.

I looked astern and though the moon was veiled saw a boat well out from shore, coming toward us. “Troll,” I said and pointed.

Caleb made no move to change the ship's direction, but placed his feet apart and took a firmer hold upon the wheel. Looking off toward Rehusa Strait and the gathering clouds, my brother then said softly:

“And now the Storm-Blast came and he

Was tyrannous and strong:

He struck with his o'ertaking wings,

And chased us west along.

With sloping masts and dipping prow

As who pursued with yell and blow

Still treads the shadow of his foe.”

Between Isla Santa Margarita and Isla Creciente, lies the Strait of Rehusa, which leads by a twisting channel from the bay into the sea. The shores of the two islands are rocky, separated by shelving sand bars and little more than a ship's length of deep water.

“'Twas here the
Amy Foster
went aground,” Caleb said as we neared the strait. “We should take soundings by the lead. No time for that, alas. Thou at the main brace, whoever thou art, look sharp. Aye, struck down. We shall not be caught again.”

The moon was hidden behind a sheath of pearly clouds. The Strait of Rehusa loomed hard off our starboard bow, its winding waters checkered black and gray from the moon's slanting light.

“No, not again,” my brother said and spun the wheel to port. “She handles well, yet not so quick as the
Amy.
A little sluggish in that respect, but mayhap she knows her way to sea.” He held the wheel with one hand and cupped the other to shout aloft, “Mind the fore-topmast staysail!”

Watching him, I could see despite the dangers which lay before us, both in the narrow strait and from the approaching storm, that he found this hour greatly to his liking. Long months had passed since he had stood at a ship's wheel or given a command, often doubting that he ever would captain a ship again. The glow of the binnacle lamp showed his face set and grim, as it had been since that far day in Nantucket, indeed, since first I remembered him.

Alert
bore down the winding channel of Rehusa. She swung to port and then firm on a starboard tack, cleared the threatening shallows.

“She hath eyes,” Caleb said.

But he spoke, I felt, more out of pride in himself than for the ship.

As we left Rehusa Strait and faced the first long waves of the open sea, my brother motioned me forward and put the wheel in my hands.

“Set thy feet square,” he said. “Hold fast, 'tis a runaway chariot, pulled by a hundred rearing horses, thou guide now. Keep one eye upon the compass. The course reads westward—one eye upon the sails' set. Thy third eye keep upon the wind.”

“I'd rather steer another time,” I said, taking the wheel.

“The time is now,” Caleb said. “Fair weather teacheth little. Thy father, rest his soul, was helmsman when bare seventeen, a captain at twenty-two. Aye, and his father before him. Stiffen thy knees whilst I go forward to cast a glance along the deck. 'Tis a tight ship we shall need ere morning dawns.” Suddenly I was alone with the heavy wheel. I glanced at the compass resting in its pool of yellow light. The needle showed true west. I glanced at the sails, taut as if made of iron. I felt the living movement of the ship beneath my feet, as she lifted high and hung there a moment and ran down a long, long wave, and then slowly, slowly rose to meet another. I listened to the wind in the rigging and it was a different sound to me now than ever before. The salt spray that stung my face tasted different also. And when in a short time Caleb came to take the wheel, I handed it over reluctantly.

At three that morning, while the ship sped westward and the coast of Baja California lay safely astern, the chubasco struck. It drove us north for the rest of the day, our decks awash, and then through the night toward the east.

We huddled below the quarterdeck, crawling on hands and knees when we needed to move, all of us save Caleb, our captain. He stood at the wheel, lashed to it by a stout rope. Twice I crawled to him with a mug of water, which he drank, but he refused food. And as the second day dawned, with the fierce wind giving way to squalls of lightning and thunderous rain, he stood there still. His body bound to the wheel, his eyes never closing, he was like a lightning rod that draws off the storm's fury. He saved us all.

At noon or thereabouts the chubasco died away. The sails were set and we wore around and headed back for Magdalena. When we were through Rehusa Strait, Caleb called me aft.

“Take the storm-tossed ship,” he said, “and bring her nigh the buoy which marks the
Amy Foster
. Aye, the buoy still floats there.” He handed over the wheel. “Thou hast seen, Nathan, how she was lost, that fine ship, and how she might have lived had our brother Jeremy hearkened to my words.”

There was no sign that a fierce chubasco had struck Magdalena. As the anchor went down and I lashed the wheel and looked around, everything was the same as I had seen it two short days before. The bay swept northward in a long, unbroken curve. To the east the endless marshes and their winding inlets lay unchanged under the hot sun. Nearer at hand, small waves wandered up the beach and beyond stood the mangroves, seemingly untouched.

But as I looked closer, hoping the chest had ridden out the storm, I saw something that made me jump. Against the rocks at the north end of the cove, strewn with kelp and pieces of brush, was a pile of splintered wood. For a while I stopped breathing; I then saw that a section of the wood was painted white and was marked in red with the two letters of a name. It was a boat from the
Alert
, the one Troll had taken.

In a moment, from a deep cave near the head of the cove, Troll appeared. He walked down the beach to the edge of the water and stood there, shading his eyes against the sun, staring out at the ship. I don't know who went over to pick him up or when, but I do know that he was there for supper, sitting by himself at the table near the galley door, and in the foulest of tempers.

Nor had his temper changed when we went out at dawn to dive again. He seated himself in the launch without a word, his shoulders hunched around his ears. When he did speak it was with a bite to his words.

My brother glanced at him now and again, and after an especially sharp command, which Troll shouted at Old Man Judd, cleared his throat. It is possible that he just remembered that the ship had sailed off and left Troll behind, alone on the island.

“Pouting art thou,” he said. “For whatever reason? Oh yes, because we went to sea and saved thy ship. Whilst thou lived snugly upon the shore. What, tell me, wert thou about when the wind came and we needed thee aboard?”

Troll's ears grew red and he began biting his lips.

“What, tell me, wert thou about there on the shore,” Caleb went on, “when we needed thee aboard? Stretching thy legs? Gathering seashells? Snooping out trouble? Whichever it was, Mr. Troll, henceforth give thy attention to the ship. Recall that this is the season of storms.”

Afterward, Troll left off his shouting and for the rest of the day seemed in a better mood, at times, when my brother was around, even lighthearted. But at supper he left his food untouched and went above to pace the deck.

Judd and I decided that it was not wise to go to the cove that night, with Troll prowling up and down, on the watch for whatever we might do. There was a chance that he had found the chest. We agreed, however, that I should tell Caleb about it once more and ask his advice, which I did without delay.

“Thou think it a Spanish chest,” Caleb said. I had found him again at the door of his cabin, looking across the water at the place where the
Amy Foster
lay. “Three paces in length and half as wide? Large for a chest, I'd say. Did thou tell me it hath the look of a canoe?”

“Yes, sometimes.”

“Sometimes? When would that be? When thou has smelt a rum cork, mayhap.”

“In certain lights,” I said, “it looks like a canoe and in other lights like a chest.”

“Hast seen it by light of day?”

“Yes.”

“What doth it resemble then, chest or canoe?”

“Neither one, exactly. In the daylight it looks like a coffin.”

“What dost thou say? A coffin?”

“Like Grandfather Caleb was buried in, the one with the big brass handles.”

“Brass handles? A coffin? Thou must be joking, Nathan.”

“It doesn't have brass handles,” I said, “at least none I've seen. Also it looks like a canoe. I think it's a chest.”

“Chest, canoe, coffin. Thou hast a choice there. Cradle to grave, aye, a wondrous choice.”

“It has a lid, with long, square nails in it. More than a hundred.”

“Then canst not be a canoe. Hast thou seen a lidded canoe, ever? No, nor I in all my worldly wanderings. 'Tis a monstrous thought, a lidded canoe, though the Esquimox hath one decked o'er save for a small hole wherein they sit.”

Caleb paused, looking aloft where the tall spars swung to the tide and the waning moon wheeled westward. He ran a finger through his beard.

“Yet I do recall something from the book,” he said. “Aye, it comes clearly now. 'Tis there on the hundredth page, more or less. Hast thou met a canoe in the book? Hast read this far?”

“Yes, beyond a chapter called ‘The Doubloon.'”

“Doubloon! Aye, 'tis a thing I remember.” I likewise remembered it, for as I had read the scene where Captain Ahab nails the gold doubloon upon the mast there flashed before my eyes the time when Caleb had nailed the golden coins the Indians had given us. In my mind, the two scenes had become one—the three coins and the two strange men.

“But our thoughts fly afield,” he said. “Back to the canoe. There's a fanciful part thou will soon overtake. Queequeg, the painted savage, thou hast met already, since he comes early. Thou wilt recall that this Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, ‘an island far away to the West and South,' and that he was the son of a king on his father's side and of unconquerable warriors on his mother's. Dost follow?”

“I remember Queequeg well.”

“And thou wilt remember likewise that far along in the book, in chapter one hundred and ten, Queequeg is taken by a chill, which brought him to the very threshold. Whereupon they placed him in a hammock to die. But swinging there, while the rolling sea rocked him, he made a most curious request. Dost recall poor Queequeg' s last request?”

“He asked them to build a coffin and put him in it, which they…”

“No, thou scamp things badly,” my brother broke in. “It follows a fuller course. ‘He called one of the crew to him and taking his hand, said that while in Nantucket he had chanced to see certain little canoes of dark wood, like the rich war-wood of his native isle, and upon inquiry, he had learned that all whalemen who died in Nantucket, were laid in those same dark canoes, and that the fancy of being so laid had much pleased him, for it was not unlike the custom of his own race, who, after embalming a dead warrior, stretched him out in his canoe, and so left him to be floated away to the starry archipelagoes.'”

“I remember.”

“Aye, 'tis memorable. But tell me, hath the wood of this canoe-chest-coffin a darkish cast? Dost it remind thee somewhat of old, heathenish lumber hewn from aboriginal groves?”

“Whether it has a heathenish cast, I don't know. But it is a dark wood, almost black and very hard.”

“Black it is and hard? Aye, it wouldst so appear, after countless suns have scorched it and seas tumbled it about, pickling it in brine.”

My brother said no more and fell into a deep silence from which I made no effort to arouse him. I must confess that standing there as the moon cast shadows upon the deck and upon his white face, and the waves lapped softly at the ship, with a sound like that of people talking far away, I felt a cold hand upon my spine. And afterward while I lay reading in my bunk, the pages blurred and I could see only Caleb and not Ahab, and hear him talk, using words from the book I held before me.