The Dark Canoe (9 page)

In high spirits I ran forward along the deck to give Caleb's orders to our first mate, Mr. Blanton. He was not at the bow where I had seen him earlier or below, but I found him at last on the quarterdeck. He stood at the wheel, idly moving it back and forth, his feet squared and his cap set at a jaunty angle.

“Captain Clegg,” I said, “has given the order to sail.”

I spoke twice before he heard me, so lost was he in his own thoughts. For a moment his hands tightened on the wheel. Then they dropped to his sides and hung there, two great fists with which he had been known to drive a nail into a hard pine plank.

I was tempted to explain to him why he had not been chosen as our new captain, but watching the menacing, knotty fists that hung at his side, decided not to. “Caleb Clegg once was captain,” I said, “and is again.”

“He has no right,” Blanton said. “He's got no captain's papers.”

“He will have them when he reaches Nantucket,” I replied.

“He's crazy to boot,” Blanton said.

“About some things,” I answered, “but not about sailing a ship.”

Blanton thrust his fists behind him. I felt that he was weighing the possibilities of mutiny, going over them step by step in his slow mind, balancing the rewards against the consequences.

“We are more than a thousand leagues from home,” I said. “We need an experienced captain. Without one, none of us is safe—neither us nor the ambergris.”

It was the mention of the ambergris, the casks that were worth more than twenty thousand dollars, that I think brought him to his senses. As he thrust his fists into his pockets, I started for the ladderway.

“Ask your brother about the thing,” he said surlily, “the thing that's hanging to our stern. Shall I cut it loose or hoist it?”

I was minded to tell Blanton to put the life buoy on deck, but not being sure what my brother intended to do with it, I said nothing and departed.

Caleb was bent over the table with a chart spread out before him, the ebony protractor in his hand. He had taken the lantern down from its hook and it sat on a pile of books beside him, casting a strong light across the table. I saw at a glance that it was not the chart of the Pacific Coast which lay in front of him, which he had been working on before, but a new chart, one of the broad Pacific and the islands of the southern seas. Truthfully, I must say that at the moment, at the sight of it lying there, my blood ran cold.

“Hast given the order?” Caleb said, not looking up.

My answer must have come forth in a mumble, for he asked me again, “Hast given the order?”

“Blanton wants to know about the life buoy,” I said. “Do you wish it hoisted aboard or left tethered at the stern?”

Caleb straightened up and glanced at me as if I as well as Blanton had lost our wits. “Aboard! Aboard! 'Tis not a kedge to tow or yet a sea anchor in a storm. 'Tis a life buoy, the dark canoe which is tethered there. Have Mr. Blanton bring it aboard and seest thou that it's lashed down securely. Who knows when we shalt need it, in what great storm or dire confrontation?”

I stumbled out of the cabin and up the ladder to the quarterdeck, where I gave my brother's orders to the waiting Blanton. On my return, finding Caleb again bent over the chart table, I quietly approached and glanced over his shoulder. He had drawn a line from Magdalena Bay to the southernmost of the Hawaiian Islands and was about to draw a second line from this point southeastward to the Marquesas. It was not the course that would take the ship homeward to Nantucket.

I decided to wait no longer. I could already hear the winches at work, hoisting the life buoy on board. In less than a half an hour the anchor would be raised and the sails unfurled.

“What,” I blurted out, “what's the reason for plotting a course to the South Seas?”

Caleb slowly finished the line he was drawing and laid the protractor aside. “Dost think we shall not find him there?” he said.

“Find who?” I asked.

“Thou know him well from thy reading,” Caleb said. “The monstrous Moby Dick. Dost think him there or doth the devious-cruising Whale push his pleated brow through colder latitudes? Off Nippon's shores, mayhap? Where thinkest thou he now spends his crafty hours?”

Caleb's eyes were calm. And his question was spoken in a calm brotherly way, as if he meant to consider my answer whatever it might be.

“I think that Moby Dick is dead,” I answered. “Dead many years ago.”

“Thou knowest, Nathan, that ordinary whales have longer lives than mortal men. Twice as long, I've heard. And Moby Dick lives not by ordinary rules, either of beasts or man. We shall find him, I think, still in life's prime, though he may now prefer warmer, equatorial seas to those of northern climes.”

“He's dead,” I repeated. “If not from old age, then from a ship's harpoon.”

Caleb's eyes clouded for a moment at the thought of the White Whale's death, but he said, “No, 'tis our harpoons alone he waits for.”

On the deck I could hear the scurrying of feet, the preparations for departure. “Let's say that the White Whale is alive,” I said, taking another tack, “and we decide to hunt him down, who will go with us? Not the crew aboard this ship. There's not a man, except Judd, who wouldn't rise up against us. Everyone is anxious to get home. Don't forget their unspent wages—the casks of ambergris—that they talk about day and night. What will be their pay for hunting Moby Dick?”

It was a strong argument I gave him in this warning, since I spoke the hard truth, yet he passed it over with a shrug.

“They'll do what I command,” he said. “Did not Ahab's men follow him?”

“Yes, to their death, but you are not Ahab and this is not his crew,” I said. “Listen, Caleb. You've found the
Amy Foster
, after a search which few men would have the courage to make. You've brought up a fortune in ambergris. And most important of all, you now have the logbook. It lies there in front of you. We are taking it to Nantucket. The board of inquiry will see that you were right and Jeremy was wrong.”

Caleb was listening to what I said, yet deep behind his gaze I saw the lurking image of Moby Dick. It was there; it had been there for all the years I remembered, this unloved man's hatred of a world that in its indifferent way had also hated him. But how in the passing of an hour do you slay the white-humped monster?

At this moment Mr. Blanton knocked at the door and said that the tide would be turning in a quarter hour and asked if we should wait.

“Wait!” I shouted and turned again to my brother. “More than likely the Whale is dead,” I told him. “The crew will not obey your orders. You have found all that you came to find.”

Caleb slowly turned away from me and again began to study the chart.

“Do you remember,” I said in desperation, “at the end of the book where Ahab has finally come upon Moby Dick, the whale boats are wrecked and the Parsee drowned and the ship itself is in danger from the White Whale's fury, at that time his good friend Starbuck spoke to him. He pled with Ahab, saying…”

Caleb looked up. “Aye, his words I recall. ‘Never, never wilt thou capture him, old man,' cried Starbuck. ‘In Jesus's name no more of this, that's worse than devil's madness. Two days chased. Twice stove to splinters. Thy very leg once more snatched from under thee. Thy evil shadow gone—all good angels mobbing thee with warnings—what more wouldst thou have? Shall we be dragged by him to the bottom of the sea? Shall we be towed by him to the infernal world? Oh, oh—Impiety and blasphemy to hunt him more!' Aye, 'tis…”

“And there's another thing that Starbuck said,” I broke in. “He said, near the end, before the ship went down with all hands, save Ishmael…”

“Aye, Ishmael was saved by the dark canoe.”

“Starbuck cried out to Ahab, whom he loved,” I went on. “‘Oh! Ahab, not too late is it, even now, the third day, to desist. See! Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly seekest him!'”

“Aye, 'twas his good, dear friend, Starbuck, who spoke to him thus, as thou now speak to me.”

Caleb left the chart table and made his way to the porthole. As he looked out toward Rehusa Strait, as the big white cat hopped to his shoulder and nestled there, he said:

“To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

All pray in their distress…

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

Is God, our father dear.”

I opened the cabin door and went on deck. There was nothing more that I could say.

Alert sailed promptly on a light wind and the turning tide.

Caleb was at the helm. Standing at his side, watching as he moved the big wheel and shouted a final command to the men aloft, I could not tell where we were bound, whether homeward or to the far waters of the Pacific. His eyes were shadowed beneath his heavy brows, fixed upon something that I could not see. His jaw was firmly set. There was no sign.

Under half-sail we moved down Magdalena Bay, past its stony promontories and through the shallows of Rehusa Strait.

A mile or more from the strait, as we met the first Pacific surge, Caleb asked me to call the crew to the quarterdeck. When the men were gathered around him, he ordered the life buoy lowered. Mr. Blanton gladly swung the davits, for the buoy was dripping water on his freshly swabbed deck. It met the sea and as the men who unloosed it scrambled back, the buoy trailed out astern, held by a stout line.

Caleb handed the wheel to me. He then drew a knife from his belt, limped to the rail, and with one swift stroke cut the line that held the buoy fast.

Twisting in the breeze, the freed line dropped away. The buoy rolled and righted itself and at last settled down upon the gentle sea. Caleb watched it fall astern, until it was but a speck to my straining eyes, before he looked around at us and spoke.

“The dark canoe,” he said, “moveth with the wind and the waves and the moon's constant tides. It moveth at its own pace, slower by far than this stout bark which bears us homeward. Yet in time it will outpace our many sails and make ports that we shall never see.”

The sun had reached the horizon and for a moment or two floated there, casting a bright glow across the deck, upon all our faces. Caleb glanced at each of us in turn.

“Dost thou doubt me, Mr. Blanton?” he said. “Dost think that thou canst hold the wind in thy hand and cup the surging wave and snare the speeding moon? Dost believe, Tom Waite, only that which thou canst put in thy mouth and chew upon, which thou canst touch with thy finger? There's more to things than that. Aye, more!”

Blanton coughed. Tom Waite turned his eyes from Caleb and winked at me. Falling silent, Caleb hobbled to the rail. In the descending dusk, the men drifted away one by one, except for Old Man Judd. When they were gone my brother came and looked down at the compass.

“Thy course,” he said to me, “ranges south by southeast. Hold steady and mind the sails. Watch the ship's white wake. It will tell thee where thou hast been and where thou goest.”

With a last glance astern, he left us. Thin light still lingered overhead. I turned to look for the dark canoe. It was gone.

Judd said, “This book you've been reading, I forget its name…”

“
Moby-Dick
.”

“Sometime I'd like to look at it.”

“You can have it now,” I said. “It's on my bunk.”

Rehusa Strait was black against the sky. Beyond it stood the peaks of Isla Ballena. I regretted that we could not take Jeremy back to Nantucket and bury him among the elms. But if one must die, I thought, what better place to be than on a windy headland where sea-birds nest and you are worshiped as a god.

Our sails held the wind. The light shining on the compass rose showed that the course was homeward, the course that Caleb and I, the two of us, had laid out together. The night wind freshened and fair Antares glowed in the west.

Scott O'Dell is the author of many timeless children's tales including the Newbery-award-winning
Island of the Blue Dolphins
,
Zia
,
The King's Fifth
, the Newbery Honor book
The Black Pearl,
and
Black Star
,
Bright Dawn
. He was the first American to ever be awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Children's Literature. The Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction was created in his honor.