The Dark Canoe (8 page)

After supper Judd collected materials for Caleb's thirty knots and I persuaded Tom Waite to help with the tying. The three of us took ourselves to the far stern of the ship, where we would not have to listen to the jibes of the crew, and set to work by the glow of a small lantern and a waning moon. Tom and the old man wove the intricate knots, while I cut the line to the length Caleb had demanded and bound the loose ends with stout linen thread.

We were still working away when the ship's three clocks struck midnight. From time to time during the past hour, I had caught glimpses of Captain Troll pacing the foredeck, pausing to look over the side at the star-flecked water, or from the shadows to cast an eye in our direction.

At the sound of the bells he came sauntering aft.

The night was hot and he stopped for a drink at the water cask. He climbed the ladder and took up a place outside the circle of our lantern.

“I suppose,” he said, glancing down at the row of finished lines I had laid out on deck, “I suppose all this knot-tying has to do with that thing you fished out of the bay. You're wasting good hemp, that's what you're doing.”

His voice rose as he spoke. My brother's cabin was just below us and the door was open. I wondered if Troll wasn't speaking to him instead of to us.

“You're wasting good time, too,” he went on, “holding up the ship that's all ready to sail.” He walked over to the binnacle, glanced at the compass as if he were steering the ship at sea, then stood for a moment at the head of the ladder, staring at us. “If you ask me,” he said, “you're a pack of fools.”

The three of us said nothing and he went down the ladder, softly whistling to himself.

“I don't know how you feel,” Tom said when Troll was out of earshot, “but I think we
are
a pack of fools. Who else but a fool would sit here on his haunches for five hours and tie knots. Turk's heads at that. Why not something simple like a Granny.”

“A Granny wouldn't look proper,” said Judd, sounding a little like Caleb.

Tom stood up and walked around the binnacle to stretch his legs and sat down again.

“This whole thing puzzles me,” he said. “Why thirty knots. What's the idea, anyway?”

“That's how it is in the book,” I explained.

“What book?” Tom asked.

“
Moby
-Dick: or, The Whale
,
”
I said.

“What's
Moby-Dick
got to do with it?”

“Everything,” I said.

Before I could say more, Tom rose without a word and went down the ladderway. For a time I heard him talking to Captain Troll.

“Thirty nails stuck up about half an inch all around the lid,” Judd mused.

“As if something had been fastened to them once,” I said.

“And then rotted away in the sea.”

“Strips of wood could have been nailed to the lid.”

“All the wood wouldn't have rotted. Some would be left,” the old man said. “The nails must have been fastened down with thirty lengths of Manila line. Manila doesn't last long in the water.”

The gray fog quietly swept past us, leaving the sky clear and aswarm with stars. In the dim light of our lantern we looked long at each other.

“Does the book say anything more?” the old man asked me at last.

I thought for a while, going back over all that I had read about the dark canoe. “Yes, there was something else,” I said. “After Queequeg decided not to die, he used his coffin for a sea chest and emptied into it his canvas bag of clothes. In his spare time he then carved the lid with all kinds of odd figures. They were copied from the tattoos on his body, which had been put there by a prophet who lived on the island where Queequeg was born. These odd figures gave the complete story of the heavens and the earth and also told how to find the truth about all things. Queequeg made the carvings before Ahab ordered the coffin made into a life buoy, but the carpenter probably left them there when he worked on the lid.”

The old man pulled at his lower lip. “I remember, I remember,” he said in a voice so low I could scarcely hear him. “Strange looking, they were. I took them for the borings of sea worms and planed them out, every one of them. Carvings, you say, made by a prophet?”

“Likely, you're right, thinking they were made by sea worms.”

The old man slowly shook his head. “No, too regular for worms, now that I think about it. Sort of geometrical. More like drawings, drawings on an Egypt tomb. Hieroglyphical, so to speak.”

The old man got to his feet and bundled up the lines we had made that night. For a time we stood by the binnacle, looking off toward the cove where small waves left trails of phosphorescence and the dark canoe lay.

“All this is against nature, unnatural, if you ask me,” the old man said. “But strange things go on. Once—it was before you were born—I was sailing through Sundra Strait. A night just like this, with more stars in the sky than fish in the sea. I was at the wheel, thinking we might do with a mite more sail. Of a sudden, right there, right in the middle of the mainsail, I saw a face. It was my mother's face, but all out of shape as though she was crying and calling out to me. That night was the fourth of August and I recall the hour because I had just gone on watch. Three months later to the day, back in Nantucket, the first news I heard when I stepped ashore was the word that my mother had died. Died on the fourth of August, at the very time of night I stood there at the wheel and saw her face, as plain, Nathan, as I see yours. Yes, strange things do go on about us.”

Listening to the old man's words, while an unseen tide tugged at the ship and set its timbers to creaking softly, as the great constellations silently wheeled over our heads, I more than half believed him.

Caleb finished his share of the Turk's head knots, toiling at them all night, and around noon the three of us started off for the cove. Captain Troll and the crew watched us leave. Standing at the rail they sent us off with a shower of catcalls and jeers. Tom Waite, who was the only man at work, paused high in the rigging and with his tar brush made a circle in the air, then pointed at his head to let us know that, like Troll, he thought us a pack of fools.

In the light of day with the sun bearing down upon us, Caleb sitting in the stern with his hair wildly blowing in the hot wind, his arms full of Turk's head knots, I could not blame him much.

Nor did I feel differently when we reached the life buoy.

“Keep thy wits about thee,” he cautioned us. “She is to be fair to the eye, as on that fateful day when the White Whales set her adrift in southern seas.”

After about two hours of work, the lid was ready to fasten down. But then, as Judd set it in place and started to drive the first nail, Caleb remembered that his dark canoe lacked a new packet of biscuits and a flask of fresh water. I was sent back to the ship, therefore, to fetch them.

Tom Waite was still in the rigging, along with the rest of the crew. As I climbed over the rail, he paused and again made a circle in the air and pointed to his head. There were also some scattered calls from the crew.

I went to the galley posthaste, filled the flask, wrapped a dozen biscuits in a piece of oil cloth, and was at the bottom of the ladderway when I saw Captain Troll standing above me. I stepped aside and he came slowly down.

“How long is your brother going to putter around out there?” he said. “All day?”

“Perhaps longer,” I replied. “They're just beginning to nail on the lid. There are lines to fasten and seams to caulk. I don't know what else.”

“Looks like another day of it,” said Troll. He turned, glanced up the ladderway, and listened for a moment. “When you were over on the island, the time you found Jeremy's body, did you by any chance see gold lying around? A chest or anything like that?”

“No.”

“Did you look?”

“I didn't think to.”

“The chief had a whole bag of gold coins when he came to the ship. Remember? There must be more where they came from.”

Steps sounded above us and two of the men stopped for a drink at the water cask. Troll waited until they had finished and walked on.

“You know the way to the island,” he said. “Besides, the chief and you are friends since Caleb gave him the ring. I was thinking we could row over and have a look around. Pay them a friendly visit. Just the two of us. If we find gold there's no sense in dividing it up, is there?”

Suddenly, as I listened to Troll, I had a strong suspicion that it was he who had gone to the island with my brother on the day Jeremy drowned.

“You'll be helping over at the cove the rest of the afternoon,” he said. “But that don't matter. The tide won't be changing for three hours yet.”

“The tide?” I said. “What has the tide to do with it?”

Troll stood in the dim light that came down the ladderway. I watched his eyes shift away from me and back again.

“I hear there's a bad one between the island and the coast,” he said. “Strong enough to capsize a good-sized boat.”

“And it did capsize a boat,” I replied, “the boat Jeremy was in.”

Troll was surprised by my words. At least he was silent for a while, thinking about them. But at that moment I doubt that he cared whether or not I knew that he had been with Jeremy on that morning. His mind had fastened upon the Indian gold.

“When we're over there,” he said, in a further effort to interest me in the plan, “we'll bring Jeremy back.”

“It would take every man in the crew and every gun we own. They worship him. They think more of him than their gold.”

“You may be right,” Troll said. “We'll go over first and look around.”

He slipped past me, quietly climbed the ladder, glanced fore and aft along the deck, and came quickly back.

“There's a lot of big ears around,” he explained, lowering his voice. “You said that the Indians think more of Jeremy than they do their gold. I take it that you saw some of it sitting around.”

“I saw a little,” I said, angry at myself for having mentioned gold at all.

“How much?”

I said nothing and Troll stood for a moment staring at me, not waiting for me to answer, but lost in some wild dream that made his thin mouth quiver.

“The tide turns in about three hours,” he said. “Take the stuff back to Caleb and then leave. Tell him I need you here. An important matter. That will give us time to reach Isla Ballena when the tide's right.”

“I can't get away.”

Troll ran his tongue over his lips. “You can't get away?” he said. “Why? Because you blame me for your brother's death? Well, get it through your head that it was his idea from the first. Not mine. I never thought of going over there for the Indians' gold until he brought it up.”

“No, I don't blame you for Jeremy's death. But I do blame you for not telling us what happened to him. Why didn't you? Was it because you planned to go back to the island again? By yourself this time, so you wouldn't have to share what you stole with someone else?”

Troll blinked. He started to speak and stopped after mumbling one word. I waited for him to go on, but there was no need to, for I could see by the confused look on his face that I had already answered for him. Turning away, I went up the ladder.

“Be back in an hour,” he shouted, suddenly regaining his voice. “If you're not, I'll give the order to sail. I'll leave you over there in the cove. You and your brother and Old Man Judd, too. Maybe you and your crazy brother would like that. Since you've got a good life buoy with thirty handholds hanging on it, and an armful of provisions, you can all sail to Nantucket or somewhere.”

I untied the launch and rowed off to the cove. I told Caleb about Captain Troll's threat as soon as I waded ashore. He was driving one of the big square nails. He did not even look up.

The sea biscuits and the flask of water were stowed away in the life buoy and carefully roped so they would not roll around. The lid was nailed, the seams caulked tight with oakum and pitch, the thirty Turk's head knots, beautiful to behold in their intricate weaving, fastened to the six sides of the lid with long, square nails, new as the day they came from the foundry.

Throughout the blazing afternoon, I kept a close eye upon the ship. But so far as I could tell, Caleb never glanced at her once. He knew Captain Troll better than I did.

The last nail was driven at sundown and on a neap tide we pushed the life buoy, which Caleb called the dark canoe, down the sloping shore. It floated high in the water, now that all the barnacles had been scraped off save those that covered the bottom, on an even keel like the best of the little Nantucket boats. And like a boat we towed it back to the ship and moored it at the stern.

We would have sailed that hour on the turning tide, with a good breeze at our backs, except that Captain Troll was not on board. He had rowed off soon after I had left the ship, Tom Waite told us, in the direction of Isla Ballena, saying that he would return around midnight.

At midnight, as I went on watch, he had not returned, nor did he appear at dawn. When noon came and he still was missing, Caleb sent three of us—Judd, Tom Waite, and me—to search for him on Ballena and in the waters nearby.

We were unable to reach the island because of the heavy current, but close to nightfall, as we were about to give up the search, Tom Waite spotted Troll's wrecked boat, wedged in a crevice of the rocky headland. Troll we never found, though we went back the next morning, searched once more, and asked Chief Bonsig about him.

With a thumb and four fingers, the little chief made the sign of a jaw, a shark's jaw I presumed, then rapidly opened and closed his hand to describe Troll's fate. My brother's body I saw again, lying there on the headland. Tom Waite wanted to risk his life to carry it away, but Judd and I persuaded him not to.

When we reached the ship I found Caleb at once and gave him the news of Troll's death. He was in his cabin, standing at the high table, the lantern burning overhead and a chart of the coast he made on his previous trip spread out before him.

Beside the chart lay his ebony protractor, which apparently he had been using to plot the ship's course southward. I was surprised to see it there for during the whole of the voyage, from Nantucket to Magdalena Bay, it had been hidden from sight. With an embarrassed look, as if I had caught him in the act of pilfering the ship's funds, he opened a drawer and put it away.

“Troll's left us,” he said. “'Twas somehow fated. Dost think the Indians will make him a god shouldst they find him floating about? No, unlike our Jeremy, he hath not the shape nor physiognomy for such a lofty role.”

“We have a problem,” I said. “The ship lacks a captain. Jim Blanton is next in line…”

“Blanton!” Caleb broke in, giving me the impression that he had never heard of the first mate before.

“The tall, hungry-looking one or the round one of well-fed mien?”

“Neither,” I replied. “Blanton's bald and wears a beard.”

“I've glimpsed him. What thinkest thou, Nathan, wouldst make us a proper captain? Doth he know the ship's pointed end from the blunt end? Canst scan a sail and read the wind and limn the lurking shoal?”

I hesitated with my answer, overcome because never before had he asked me a question of importance.

“Speak up,” Caleb said. “Thou hast seen a goodly part of the watery world. Thou hast seen men stand before their God and lie. Thou hast seen men die ignobly. Thou hast found a wondrous treasure in the sea. Unloose thy tongue, therefore. Thoughts unsaid clutter the mind and do in time make it bilious. What dost think of Blanton? Doth his manly beard conceal a coward?”

Emboldened, I said, “From what I've seen of him Blanton would be a bad choice. He knows the ship but little about navigation. When there was talk of mutiny he and Troll were always the ringleaders. Also, the only man in the crew who likes him is the cook.”

“How doth Tom Waite strike thee? He seemeth a lively fellow. Perchance too lively, since the good captains I've known are more the sober-sided kind, those given to long thoughts.”

“Tom's all right,” I said.

“Wouldst trust thy life to him and the life of the crew and the ship's life?”

As I thought about his question, my eyes fell upon the chart spread out on the table. The straight line of the course he was plotting when I entered the cabin showed clear.

“What say, Nathan? Dost thou wish to summon Tom Waite?”

We looked at each other across the width of the cabin.

There was no doubt at all that his question was sincere. If I had agreed upon Tom Waite as our new captain, he would have summoned him that instant, of this I am certain. But it was not the right choice and I did not make it. I took from the drawer the protractor, which Caleb had hidden, and placed it on the table beside the chart he had been working with only a few minutes before.

“Captain Clegg,” I said, “what are your orders?”

My words sounded dramatic, overly so I suppose, for I felt embarrassed as I spoke them, and Caleb, tugging at his beard, looked away. He picked up the big white cat and put it down, walked slowly to the porthole, and gazed out.

“Have the men on deck at once,” he said, in a voice that now had a different sound to me. “And stir thy stumps about it. We waste precious time whilst thou stand there gawking.”