The Dark Canoe (6 page)

We awakened to a cloudless sky and a breeze that drifted in from the west. Blue dolphins played around the ship. A flight of pelicans skimmed the bay, searching for small fish. Sea hawks searched the waters, too, and along the shore great turtles sunned themselves.

“A pretty day,” Captain Troll said at breakfast, “the finest I've seen since we sailed to Magdalena.”

Everyone agreed, glad to be alive, I suppose, after the storm, and thinking, no doubt, of the barrels of precious ambergris that still lay in the hold of the
Amy Foster
.

The Indians had survived the chubasco and sat waiting for us in their three canoes, beside the marker. To show good will, Caleb allowed the little chief to take a short turn at the pump. The chief appeared to be thankful for this gift, although the work was hard and each time the heavy handle rose he rose with it and dangled in the air. He seemed happier, however, with the wheezing, whumping noises than with anything else. Caleb had been down for about five minutes when I noticed something that made my blood run cold. I had pushed on my end of the handle and the chief, clinging to his end, was in the air, a foot or so above the deck of the platform. As he came down, the breeze lifted his long hair and blew it from his face. I caught a glimpse of a bright gold ring fastened to his ear. I saw the ring for only an instant, but the band was broad and set with a large, green stone. It was the ring that had belonged to my brother Jeremy.

Saying nothing to the chief, I called Old Man Judd to help at the pump and when the chief had crawled back into his canoe, told him what I had seen.

Judd went on pumping for a time. “We'd better wait until Caleb's here,” he said at last. “If we start a fight, there's no telling what will happen. The air hose might get fouled or the pump pushed overboard.”

Caleb came to the surface at midmorning and as soon as he was out of his diving helmet, I told him about the ring. He took the news calmly.

“'Tis ten of us against twenty of the savages,” he said. “A poor bargain, they being armed with spears and heathenish arrows and we with nothing. Let's wait the morning. We'll meet them then with a brace of pistols.”

“What if they disappear?” I said.

“Small chance of this,” Caleb said, “while still there's treasure to be found. Aye, I recall the ring. 'Tis made of Inca gold and green turquoise mined by Aztecs. We shalt have it back.”

We bolted on Caleb's helmet and he was ready to dive when a school of killer whales swam in. They came to prey upon the seals that were frolicking around our boats, watching us with their beautiful eyes as if there only to keep us company.

These mammoth black and white fish are shaped like fat torpedoes and weigh almost a ton, but they swim with great speed and slash about, using their teeth like razors. Their first rush drove the playful seals together, much as a herder herds his flock of sheep. With the gnashing of a thousand teeth, the killers set about the slaughter. As they left, the sharks sneaked in and began to cruise around, scavenging all that remained. Caleb, therefore, decided to quit for the day and sent all of the crew back to the ship, except Captain Troll, Judd, and me.

“Hast seen the chest-coffin-canoe?” he said to Troll.

It was plain that Captain Troll had not, for his ears grew red and he began to stammer.

“Then thou hast no idea which canst be,” my brother said, “canoe, coffin, chest?”

“I haven't seen anything,” Troll said.

“Thou shalt see it now,” my uncle said, “and tell truthfully what thou seest to the crew, lest they fear that we cheat them of something.”

With proper tools, an ax, two chisels, and a prying bar, we rowed ashore and made our way into the mangroves. The storm had scattered the brush that Judd and I had placed atop the chest, but the chest itself had not moved from its resting place in the deep mud.

At the first sight of it, Caleb drew in his breath, then took a step forward and placed a hand upon the smooth dark lid.

“Aye, as I thought,” he said, “a heathenish color, war-wood hewn from the aboriginal groves of the Lackaday islands.” He stepped back and passed a hand across his forehead. “But let's move it from this dismal place and set it rightly in the sun where we canst scan it better.”

We pushed the heavy chest out of the mangroves and guided it through the water and shoved it up the beach. Judd and I set to work at once and chipped away at the barnacles, while Caleb walked around the chest and surveyed it from every side, talking to himself as he did so.

For most of an hour the old man and I worked, while Troll stood aside and Caleb paced, never stopping, never speaking save to hurry us on. At last, all sides being cleaned, as we started chipping at the bottom, Caleb said, “Leave the bottom be. These barnacles shall serve for ballast and keel to guide it straight upon a future voyage.”

Whereupon he took up the prying bar and set to work upon the lid. He was as gentle as the old man had been, but still impatient.

“That gray builder of yore,” he said, “set many a nail and deep. Yet 'tis good that he did, else it would not have lived through heaven's many storms, come sailing into us as fit a ship as poor Ishmael mounted when on that day the black bubble burst.”

Having read the last page of
Moby-Dick: or, The Whale
, I understood my brother's words and why he had spoken them. Captain Troll did not, for he glanced at me and squinted his eyes in a knowing way.

The last nail came loose. Caleb grasped the lid and slowly raised it. The lid was heavy and taxed his strength, but he did not swing it aside nor let it fall. For a moment he stood cradling it in his arms, peering over it, down into the chest. Then he set the lid gently on the sand and came back and peered again into the chest, which, so far as I could see, was empty. Troll snickered; Judd and I were silent.

Caleb reached down and drew forth from the chest a shriveled sea biscuit from among many that were ranged inside. Then he lifted out a large flask, which was sealed with wax, filled with a quantity of brackish water. He held both up for us to see, the square biscuit and the flask.

“Aye, the Canoe,” he cried triumphantly, “the Dark Canoe. 'Tis as oft I've pictured it. As Queequeg ordered it built to send him safely to heaven's archipelagoes. As the old gray carpenter built it, of coffin-colored wood.”

Silently Judd and I looked at each other, while Troll turned his head away and grinned.

Caleb put back the flask and biscuit, and taking up the lid, carefully placed it upon the chest.

“I'll make a further test, though none be needed,” he said, running his hand along the lid's top edge. “Aye, 'tis certain proof. Come ye, feel the holes where the thirty Turk's heads were hung.”

I stepped forward and dutifully felt the edge. As I did so, I remembered a scene from
Moby-Dick
. In it, Queequeg had recovered from his illness and had no further use for his coffin. Captain Ahab then ordered it sealed tight with pitch and oakum and made into a buoy. Also it was hung round with thirty pieces of rope, three feet long, each piece ending in a Turk's head knot, for use if the ship went down but the crew survived the killing of the great White Whale.

Troll and the old man did not step forward until my brother summoned them again. They then ran their hands along the edge, back and forth. There were a hundred and more holes from which the nails had been drawn, so they could say that a length of rope with a Turk's head knot might have hung there and there and there, which they did.

Caleb said no more, except to order the canoe pulled farther up the shore, out of reach of the tide. We rowed back to the ship in silence. It was a bad moment for the old man and me, for we had thought to the last that our work would be rewarded by a glittering horde of Spanish gold. But Caleb's silence was not ours. He sat in a trance, his eyes wildly staring, as if he had just found the world's richest treasure.

Armed with a brace of pistols that belonged to Captain Troll, we rowed up to the marker at dawn. The Indian chief and his followers were nowhere in sight, so the weapons were hidden away and we made ready for Caleb to dive.

As soon as the pump began to groan and wheeze, the Indians came gliding over the calm water from the direction of Isla Ballena. The little chief climbed out of his canoe and onto the diving platform and smiled, waiting for Caleb to invite him to take over the pump. Instead, Troll pressed a pistol against his chest.

The chief no doubt was surprised, for he made no effort to defend himself. His followers, however, instantly paddled away, beyond range of the pistols (apparently they had seen one before) and brandished their spears.

Troll wished to kill the chief without further ado. “The only good Indian,” he said, “died long ago.”

Caleb made no reply to this suggestion, but took hold of the chief's hair, which fell to his shoulders, and pulled it back. The ring hung from his ear, held there by a hook fashioned from a piece of seashell. Caleb snatched it away.

The chief looked at the ring and then at Caleb. He seemed more surprised than outraged at what had happened to him, until Caleb put the ring on his own finger and began to make signs. It was not good sign language that Caleb spoke, but at last the chief understood and spoke back.

He jumped in the water, turned over on his back, and closed his eyes, which we understood to be a dead man floating. Then he climbed into the launch and pointed down the bay, in the direction of Isla Ballena.

It was plain from his actions that the little chief meant us to believe that he had found Jeremy's body floating somewhere in the bay.

“He's lying,” Troll shouted. “He goes around with a dead man's ring in his ear and wants us to think he found it.”

Glancing at the little chief and then at Troll, my brother seemed to make up his mind. He fished in his pocket and took out the ring. As he turned it over in the palm of his hand, there came back to me the time long ago when he had brought back to Nantucket, after a year-long voyage, the beautiful green stone and the rough piece of Inca gold. I recalled that he had asked Smith the jeweler to make them into a ring to fit my father's finger. I suppose, looking at the ring now, he remembered that when Jeremy had sailed off on his first voyage our father had given the ring to him, his favorite son, as a token of good fortune.

Whether or not Caleb believed the little chief's story, I had no way of telling. Perhaps he had his own idea of who the murderer was. Perhaps he thought, as I did, that it was Captain Troll. Whatever it may have been, suddenly he placed the ring in the chief's hand and pointed to the pump.

Chief Bonsig beamed, placed the ring carefully in his ear, and grasped the pump handle. As it began to move up and down, the other Indians came back and clustered around the launch.

“There are waters under waters,” Caleb said. “But know ye, there is only one righteous God and He is Lord over the earth.”

Was Caleb saying that at last, after many long years, by the gift of the ring to the little chief he had settled a carking score with his brother Jeremy? I am not certain. For only a moment later, glancing at me, he said:

“The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;

And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,

When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.”

I slept little that night, going over in my mind the story Chief Bonsig had acted out for us. There was only a small chance that Jeremy's body had survived in the unfriendly waters of Magdalena Bay, waters that teemed with all forms of ravenous life. But small as the chance was, I decided to take it.

Before sunrise the old man and I left the ship and rowed off toward Isla Ballena. We were not even sure that the Indians lived on the island, although each morning they paddled in from that direction.

The rising sun shone in our eyes and we were close upon Ballena before I could see it clearly. At first glance, like all the islands of the bay, it seemed barren, little more than a nesting place for birds. But as we approached a spit near its eastern shore, a crescent-shaped beach came into view. A few palms fringed the beach, a narrow, wooded valley lay beyond, and a winding path that ended against a cliff. There were no canoes on the beach or other signs of life, yet it was a likely spot for a village. We rowed toward it.

Without warning, as we came abreast of the spit, our boat was seized by a churning tide that lifted the bow and drove us instantly astern, like a cork blown from the neck of a bottle. We bumped and twisted, scarcely touching the water, for a quarter of a mile or so, until the channel widened into the bay and the raging current lost its force.

“We'll have to wait for the tide to turn,” I said.

“It may be a long wait,” Judd replied.

“We could go ashore and walk along the shore. We might be able to reach the valley that way.”

“We would have to climb the cliff,” the old man said, pointing to a headland that rose steeply out of the bay. “Let's wait. The longer we're here the less time we'll have to work over there at the wreck. And maybe the Indians will come along. It's about time.”

We waited more than two hours for slack tide, and when the Indians did not appear, entered the channel and without further trouble made in toward the beach. Wisps of smoke rose from a grove of trees and I heard the sound of voices and the laughter of children at play.

“It's not a good idea to land before we're invited,” the old man said, resting on his oars. “Chief Bonsig was happy when he left us yesterday, but the fact that he hasn't gone back this morning is sort of suspicious.”

“He may remember that Troll wanted to shoot him,” I said.

While we were talking, dogs began to bark and a moment later a swarm of Indians burst from the trees as if we had upset a hive. Behind them trotted Chief Bonsig, who motioned us to land and even waded out to help slide the boat up the beach.

He beamed, smiling his toothless smile, and made a sweeping gesture that took in the channel, the shore, and the wooded valley. He then pointed admiringly at himself. I understood why he felt proud of his island kingdom, for it seemed to possess wood for fire, water to drink, and a plentiful supply of food near at hand. Above all, the fierce tide that ran between the island and the coast, through an opening no more than a hundred yards in width, would make his village very difficult to attack.

Judd and I let him know how much we liked his island. By signs I then told him why we had come. He either didn't understand me or chose not to. Jabbering away in his harsh dialect, which sounded like rocks rattling around inside a barrel, he waved his warriors aside and led us into a grove.

We soon came to a cleared space, in front of a deep, wide-mouthed cave. A fire was burning under a big pot and we gathered around it, while the warriors went off among the trees to watch us. Chief Bonsig laid out three bowls of stew, which Judd said was made of dog meat. We both ate little.

As my eyes became used to the darkness of the grove, I saw that the cave I was facing was lined with crude statues cut deeply into the stone. They were fashioned in the shape of men with arms folded upon their chests, shell beads around their necks, and bits of gold, which shone in the firelight, for eyes.

I pointed to the figures and then watched while the little chief made a sign that I took to mean a time long ago, and more signs that could have meant that all the stone men were his ancestors. When he had finished, peering deeper into the cave, I saw that against the walls were three or four different figures. The light was poor, but they looked like the forms of Spanish soldiers, standing upright, clothed in doublets, breastplates, and steel helmets.

As I continued to stare into the dim recesses of the cave, scarcely believing my eyes, the little chief jumped to his feet, called to his warriors, and led us quickly out of the grove to the beach. There I again asked him for the body of my brother. Once more he went through his motions of the previous day, lying on the sand and pointing to the tide that rushed through the channel.

Judd, while the little chief was doing this, spoke to me twice. The second time I glanced at him, struck more by the tone of his voice than by what he had said. His eyes were fixed on a stony shelf not more than a dozen paces from where we stood. A lone tree grew there on the shelf, its thin branches weirdly warped by the wind. Beneath the tree, on a platform of carved wood inlaid with triangles and squares of abalone shell, half hidden among the scanty leaves, lay the body of my brother Jeremy. So real was his appearance, so lifelike, I could not believe that he was dead. He could have climbed to the ledge on a summer day and there fallen asleep.

I had read of Indian tribes who, instead of burying their dead, in some secret manner embalmed them and set them away in trees or caves or upon stone cairns. I also had read of Indians who worshiped as gods men with blond hair, which must have been the custom with this tribe. For when I approached the ledge and grasped one of the handholds cut into its face, Chief Bonsig, flanked by his men, held me back.

I pulled away and confronted him, but a warning from Judd brought me to my senses.

“Act as though you think it's proper for Jeremy to be lying up there,” he said quietly. “Don't forget, we're outnumbered.”

Taking Judd's advice, I made signs that I was pleased and walked off. We both got in the boat and waited for the tide to slacken. It was a long wait. Chief Bonsig left six of his men to stand guard beside the ledge and with the rest disappeared into the grove. Now and again, as we sat waiting, I saw faces peering out at us from the trees.

What fears we had proved groundless. For when the tide changed, the little chief came bouncing down to the shore and stood waving until we were out of sight. We rowed hard, however, long after we were out of the channel.

“I believe the chief's story,” Judd said, speaking for the first time since we left the island. “I think he did find Jeremy's body floating around in the channel.”

“But how did it get there?” I asked.

“On the tide, most likely. He must have gone to the island for some reason.”

“He must have used a boat then. On the morning he disappeared, none of our boats was missing. All of them were moored at the ship's stern.”

Judd lit his pipe and sucked away at it for a while. “That's true, I saw them myself. But what if Jeremy went off to the island with Blanton or Troll or one of the other men?”

“For what reason?”

“I don't know, but let's say that he did. Say there were two of them in the boat and they got caught in the tide like we did. Say that your brother got thrown out and drowned and the other man, whoever it was, rowed back to the ship. Wouldn't that explain why none of the boats was missing?”

“Yes it would. But who was the other man? Why didn't he tell us what happened? It wasn't his fault if the boat got caught in the tide and Jeremy was drowned. He couldn't be blamed for an accident.”

Judd picked up his oar and we set
on
toward the wreck of the
Amy Foster
.

“Well, whoever it was,” Judd said, “he felt real guilty about something.”