The Widow's Walk (2 page)

Some moments later, Constance caught her breath when she saw a tall ship nearing, her great bulk being cast up and down at the waves' behest as if she were some child's bath toy. Nevertheless, as Constance searched further she saw no bright red pennant flying at the mainmast, and her heart sank. Deciding to search another area of the harbor, she leaned against the railing while still holding the spyglass in place.

What Constance did not know was that over the years, this particular section of her widow's walk railing had grown rotten and weak from the constant assaults by the salty sea air. As she leaned against it, the railing suddenly gave way, giving her no chance to catch herself. Screaming, she tumbled end over end as she fell, first striking the roof of the porch she had just left and then crashing headlong onto the jagged shoreline rocks.

As the light left her eyes, her final thoughts were of Adam.

H
IS NAME WAS
A
DAM
J
AMES
C
ANFIELD
, and for as long as he could remember, he had always loved being on the ocean.

Half a world away, Adam rubbed his weary eyes and leaned back against his desk chair. He had been writing a letter to Constance and because he could not be sure about when they might next put in, he knew that there was a good chance he would arrive home before the letter did. After staring down at the written page for a few moments more, he decided to finish it later. He never wrote well when he was tired, and he always wanted to properly convey not only his great love for his wife, but also his reassurances that he was remaining true.

This had been a long voyage and he was tired right down to his bones. His fatigue was not entirely the sort that one earned from honest labor. Rather, it was an insidious anxiety that had plagued him for nearly two years now; a strange ennui that even he could not properly describe. It would end only when he at last walked back down the gangplank in New Bedford and took Constance into his arms. He desperately needed to be home, as did every other man aboard this whaler.

Adam was captain of the American whale ship
Intrepid,
a 299-ton vessel out of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Owned by the Simon Pettigrew & Sons Whaling Company, she had set sail in June of 1838 and headed straight for the South Atlantic, where the hunting had been poor. With the
Intrepid'
s hold still empty and her crew grumbling about their lack of success, Adam had decided to round Cape Horn and then sail on into the Pacific Ocean. Navigating the Cape was always a treacherous business, and it had taken the
Intrepid
a full ten days to cross as she braced the infamous winds. And the return leg, Adam knew, was even more dangerous.

From there they had gone on to ply the waters off Australia, where the hunting had been much better. Now some two years later, and with her hold filled with barrels of sperm oil and whalebone, the
Intrepid
was at last on her way home. By Adam's reckoning, the dreaded Cape was less than one day's sail from their current position.

On replacing the quill into its inkpot, he walked across his small stateroom where he lay down upon the narrow bed, thinking. It was late evening and he watched the glowing whale oil lanterns hanging from the ceiling as they swayed in time with the rocking ship.

Despite its profitability, this expedition had not been an easy one. Given the initially poor hunting in the Atlantic, some of the crew had grown dangerously restless, forcing Adam and his first mate to take up arms and return order to the ship. Mutinies were rare on whaling ships, but not unheard of. Even so, Adam had known that had they not successfully rounded the Cape and soon found good hunting, the situation would have worsened. But now each man would fare well in the take. Adam was glad for that, because he knew how hard they had worked, and the kind of joyous pride he would see in their eyes when the
Intrepid
finally reentered New Bedford Harbor.

On some of his previous voyages the crew members had not been so lucky. Because they often bought their clothing, tools, and sundries on credit, many of the poor devils were already in debt even before their ship set sail. If the voyage was unsuccessful, it was conceivable that some might return home without enough share of the take to set accounts right. Because of that, most of those same men were forced to immediately sign onto yet another risky voyage, leaving them barely enough time to kiss their wives and sweethearts “hello” and then “good-bye.”

Given the terrible living conditions on board a whaling vessel, Adam had always thought it a wonder that so many men remained willing to risk their lives chasing and killing the great beasts. He ate well, but the crew's rations ranged from unpleasant to outright revolting. Worse, life aboard a whaling ship was largely repulsive. Rats, cockroaches, bedbugs, and fleas were facts of life, their continual presences owing to the residual whale offal and blood. Injuries and illnesses were commonplace, and it was usually the captain who tended to the men, using his limited knowledge and whatever supplies were available at the time. He did his best, but the results were often far from favorable.

There was also the terrible nature of the job at hand—the chasing and killing of the whales, the stripping of their flesh, the boiling of it to create whale oil, and the grisly harvesting of their bones for the making of such seeming trivialities as women's corsets and children's toys. And although as captain he did not participate directly, the overseeing of it was horrible enough. Accidents abounded, as was evidenced by the jagged scar on Adam's left arm.

As if those hardships were not torture enough, there was yet another deprivation that many of the men considered the worst of all. For two long years they had been without the comforts of their wives, mistresses, and lovers. There were always whores in the ports, but their lurid services were expensive, short-lived, and often dangerous. Adam had indulged during earlier days, but since their wedding day he had been ever faithful to Constance.

Constance,
he thought, . . .
my beloved Constance . . .

Reaching under his shirt, he produced the scrimshaw locket that was the exact duplicate of the one Constance wore, and he opened it to admire her likeness. She was a beautiful woman, with long blond hair and a lush body that caused a deep hunger within him every time he thought of her. After staring at her portrait for a time, he at last slipped the precious locket back under his shirt.

He then left his bed and walked across the cabin, where he produced a ring of keys from his trousers. After unlocking his sea chest, he removed the great red pennant that Constance had fashioned for him just before he left on this voyage. Holding the pennant against his face, Adam tried to smell the last traces of the perfume with which Constance had laden it the night before his departure. He could barely sense it now. But even this faintest of scents helped make it seem as if she were really there; her firm body pressed against his, her soft cheek lying gently on his shoulder. With great reluctance he finally refolded the precious pennant and locked it back in the chest.

Soon, now, my love,
he thought.
Soon the
Intrepid
will enter the harbor, and from our widow's walk you will at last see your bright red pennant flying proudly from my mainmast. Even so, there is something that you do not know. When I return home I will tell you that this is my last whaling voyage, for I can bear this life no longer. It is not just my terrible loneliness for you that fostered this decision, but also my ever-increasing loathing for the awful things we do aboard these ships. I remain unsure about how we will live, but I will find a way. All I know for now is that I will never again leave your side.

In truth, Adam's disgust for his occupation had been growing for years. So much so that the grisly realities of whaling now seemed nothing more to him than a grotesque tragedy designed to slaughter God's greatest of beasts with an arrogance that only mankind could muster. His mind made up, he would do no more of this. He believed that Constance would be overjoyed to hear of his decision, however that was small comfort, because his worries about their financial future haunted him day and night.
But first,
he thought glumly,
we must again survive the rounding of Cape Horn
. Just then Adam knew that something was amiss. Like any sea captain worth his salt, he sensed the impending danger well before being told about it.

Perhaps it had been the oil lamps in his cabin swaying excessively, or the extraordinarily loud and sudden moaning of the mast timbers. Or it could have been the unusually swift rise and fall of the ship's bow. In the end the reasons mattered not, because just as he realized the arrival of the impending gale, he heard the first mate shout out: “All hands on deck! Batten down the hatches!”

After frantically donning his rain gear, Adam tore from the cabin and hurried topsides. The sky was pitch-black, and his crew was already scurrying about the deck and up the masts. His helmsman, a man he had known for some twenty years, was doing his best to hold the ship's wheel steady against the growing storm. The sea was quickly turning into a black maw of ferocious power, its rising waves rivaled only by the terrible wind and stinging rain that now mercilessly pounded the ship. Without warning the masts shuddered horrifically again, and the
Intrepid,
her sails straining to their utmost, heeled dangerously to port as a huge sidelong wave nearly engulfed her. With her heavily laden hull groaning torturously against the pressure, she finally righted again.

Mere moments later, the storm unleashed her full intensity and the
Intrepid
became totally ensnared in her power. Adam went to help the helmsman hold fast the wheel, but even then it was all the two of them could do to keep it from spinning out of their hands. Adam knew that there was but one prudent course of action during a storm of such ferocious strength. He immediately lashed down the rain-soaked wheel amidships with heavy rope. The only way to survive such a maelstrom was to keep the rudder neutral then haul in the sails and let her go where she will, hoping that she could ride out the storm.

“Reef the sails, lads!” he screamed, trying his best to be heard above the raging storm. “And restrain all the booms, if you wish to survive!”

Suddenly terrified that his navigation had been imperfect, Adam now feared that they were uncontrollably nearing the dreaded Cape. Holding fast to the gunwale as he made his way along, he struggled inch by torturous inch toward the bow so that he might survey the churning ocean lying ahead. Once there he grasped a line in each hand and then spread wide his legs, trying to peer through the gale-force winds and rain. The bow was now rising and falling so violently that it was all Adam could do to keep from being swept overboard. The Cape was known for spawning terrible storms, but this fatherless nightmare had seemingly sprung out of nowhere, and he had been totally unprepared for it.

“Goddamn you!”
he shouted defiantly into the violent darkness.
“From which corner of Satan's Hell were you spawned?”

As Adam had hoped, with her sails reefed and her wheel tied off, the
Intrepid
nosed directly into the wind. However even this tactic was not without its dangers, as the now directly oncoming waves made the ship rise and fall with even greater ferocity, literally dumping wave after wave of seawater onto the bow deck. His position becoming ever more perilous, Adam nonetheless stayed his post, doing all he could to hold on while peering dead ahead. Without warning a halyard suddenly gave way, its block and tackle swinging dangerously past his head and nearly killing him outright. Then he heard a man scream.

As he turned around to look, he saw that his bosun mate had slipped down onto the rain-soaked deck. Mere moments later, a rushing wave clambered its way up the starboard hull and burst aboard, the angry seawater exploding everywhere. The ferocious wall of water slammed into the poor man and suddenly propelled him overboard, his plaintive screaming fading away as he tumbled into the dark sea. Then the terrible ocean assaulted the decks yet again, this time also from starboard and taking another precious man with it.

The rain was lashing Adam's face so hard that he had to squint through the pain, and he could barely see ahead. The only respites from the blackness were the abrupt lightning flashes that came crackling out of the night sky like fiery bolts hurled by angry gods. As he stood holding on to the lines for dear life, Adam quickly realized that he had never before experienced a storm of such ferocity, and that only a miracle could save them from this ruthless tempest. While the lightning flashed and the thunder roared, he did his best to stand his ground atop the pitching deck and peer out into the fathomless blackness, hoping to see nothing lying before them but the open sea.

And then, incredibly, he thought he heard a woman's voice. It was as if someone, he knew not who, was screaming at him, trying to warn him of his ship's impending doom. Then the woman's voice was again lost to the raging storm, its tremolo fading as quickly as were the
Intrepid'
s chances for survival.

But such a thing cannot be!
Adam realized as he again focused his gaze upon the churning sea ahead.
I have heard tales of the sea winds blowing through a ship's rigging and sounding like a woman's plaintive voice, and now I have heard it for myself!

After a time the woman's voice came to his ears yet again, her warnings now even more strident, and for a split second he could have sworn he was hearing his beloved Constance, warning him of the rocks that lay dead ahead.

Like brave Ulysses, I too am being seduced! But unlike Ulysses's temptresses, mine is not real, nor am I tied to the ship's mainmast to keep me from joining with her! Ignore what you are hearing, for she does not exist!