Mean Sun (6 page)

I lowered the instrument as the gruesome faces of nameless, dead crew presented themselves to my imagination. I regarded Grimmel.

“How can you be sure of your position?”

“Ye take your shots at twilight, in the morning and in the evening, as the sky and horizon are clearest. Four shots, better six. Tonight we use Saturn and Antares, there, Vega and Regulus. Stars are hardest to fix, but they be the most accurate.”

“What if there are no stars or planets to be seen?”

“In fog or cloudy weather, take your first shot at the sun by day. He’ll break through any cover. Six shots as it passes over noon. But ye must be swift, for it races across the heavens like no other planet. This is why a pilot keeps the mean sun in his head. When we ‘ave our shots, true and clean, some clever deductions will fix our position. You will learn those, too.”

“Have you ever been lost at sea, Mr. Grimmel?”

“Lost and lost again,” replied the old salt. “In fair weather and in foul. Aye, there’s always a moment when the serpent comes.”

“The serpent?”

“Fear, Mr. Wren,” said he, dropping his voice to a foreboding whisper. “She sleeps in the darkest corner of the hold, inside the last barrel to be counted, and comes out when she has a mind to. Every sailor has felt her bite. Her poison can make the world a senseless place.”

That evening I took perhaps two dozen more shots as Grimmel solemnly looked on. Not a one was accurate, but in the months ahead the octant and I became more agreeable companions. At the watch’s end, Grimmel returned the octant to its home. For hours on end I would practice my shots and learn to reduce each to a single line sketched on paper with the degrees of the Earth. The points at which the lines converged would be where my position was plotted and fixed. To measure the ship’s speed, Grimmel introduced the log line, which was little more than a bit of wood
tethered to a rope that would be tossed in our wake. With the aid of an hourglass, I was taught to count off the knots that slipped through my fingertips. The ship’s compass, oddly enough, was the least important to Grimmel’s thinking of true seamanship.

As quartermaster, Grimmel had four quartermaster mates, who steered the ship, attended the binnacle, assisted with the log lines and all the management of piloting. Two were passed-midshipmen in training to be officers. My position was hardly above a servant, the lowest onboard the ship. Except for a contemptuous glance they took no heed of me.

Chapter 5

On the Scent

By midday the fifth-rater had put two to three leagues between us. It was only ourselves and the wolf alone in the vast sea. At mess I found Mr. Stempel dining at his cannon.

“Won’t we lose her, sir, by nightfall?” I asked, with a nod indicating the fleeing frigate.

“I found gossamers across the barrel this morning and saw them up in the mizzen royals,” answered Stempel, carefully inspecting a biscuit he held gingerly between his fingers. “That means a storm tonight. She’ll ‘ave to clew up, maybe heave-to.

“That means we clew up, too.”

“The Captain will make his move before then,” observed Stempel. “He’s a wizard, this one.”

As if he’d heard Mr. Stempel’s remark, the Captain’s order came to shift the sails and wear three points to starboard. With some relief I watched the fifth-rater vanish over the horizon. No sooner had she done so, however, than we were promptly ordered to furl our sails. We sat bobbing on the water like a pelican. Mystified by this maneuver, I turned to Stempel once again.

“Why do we halt, Mr. Stempel?”

“He waits ‘till dark,” answered Stempel. “They think we give up the chase. ‘Destruction cometh; and they shall seek peace, and there shall be none.’”

Darkness swooped down early, on spreading storm clouds as iridescent as hummingbird wings. Pink and mauve slashes peeked through at the horizon. Their colors reflected on the rippling, blue-green sea ‘till the ship seemed engulfed within the belly of a great beast. The captain had given the order to resume the hunt; we glided stealthily along with clouds racing beneath our keel.

Myself and fifty other men were put on lookout. The wolf had left little trail behind. Shards and pieces of wood began to appear
in the water, but barely enough to pick up her scent. Blasted barrels, beams and planks, some still smoking were mixed in with the flotsam. We sailed on in placid sea into the dark of night until the storm clouds above settled over us like a lid and not a star could be seen.

“We’ve lost her,” whispered Jimmy Lockwood, who had the position beside me.

It began to rain. A few fat drops, a bubbling timpani, then the sound grew steady, coalescing into a rhapsody, sweeping across the deck, rails and sails. The wind rose and the sound became monstrous. It was the first time I had the chance to speak to Jimmy since we both boarded. The officers were all about, exhorting us to keep an eye out.

“The scuttlebutt is that Mr. Brooks lost his water during the gunfire,” whispered Jimmy with a chuckle then regarded me with sympathy. “The crew thinks you didn’t warrant your checkered shirt.”

“Do not speak to Mr. Beal,” I said into Jimmy’s ear. “He’s a spy.”

Jimmy looked at me with surprise, but then nodded sagely.

“I miss my freedom, Mr. Wren. And I have been most desperate.”

“I, too.”

“I have a dreadful sense about this voyage,” said Jimmy. “Are ye not fearful?”

“I am, Jimmy.”

“These dull old jackies ’ave no more mind left to ‘em than this black sea,” Jimmy continued. “I’ll not settle for this, Daniel.”

“Keep such thoughts to yourself, Jimmy,” I replied sharply.

Jimmy suddenly caught the scent of something in the air.

“Do ye smell that?” he asked.

“Smoke.”

“The wolf is hard by,” he declared. He called out for an officer. Mr. Brooks came on the run, slipping and sliding, and smacking into the rail.

“What is it?”

“Warm smoke, sir,” said Jimmy. “She’s on fire still.”

Mr. Brooks angled his nose into the wind and sniffed; he exhaled, then inexplicably removed his hat as if to gain a finer purchase, and took another sniff.

“Aye,” said he. “She must be under our very nose. Watch for lights, any light, even the flicker of a candle. Pass the word.”

We watched and waited. Then it came; a twinkling halo, no bigger than a weevil’s eye, perhaps a half a league away. I told what I saw to one of the boatswains, but others were already reporting the sighting.

A flurry of orders was given, and the gun crews sent to their stations. I scrambled to gun number six, where I found Stempel, Hines and the others already positioning the gun. With a nod from Stempel, I retrieved our charge from the orlop and returned to find the barrel wedged up to its highest point.

“Won’t we discharge into the water, Mr. Stempel?” I asked.

“Captain’s order is all guns are to rip the water line, and sink her,” said he. “We’ll be firing point blank.”

Our ship changed course and was cutting directly for the light, which I could make out with growing clarity from our gunport. Other, smaller lamps now revealed themselves. This thoughtless captain had plainly decided to risk his repairs by night, hoping to be prepared for full sail by morning.

As we came within two hundred yards of the craft, I knew there would no reprieve for her. I could espy the shapes of men on ropes below the ship’s stern near the rudder.

“Keep a hand over your candle wicks,” cautioned Mr. Brooks in a subdued voice, “lest they see the light. Prepare to fire.”

At fifty yards we were discovered, but the stunned men aboard her had had only time enough to pause in their occupations before we were upon them. With a scant twenty yards between us, all sixty of our starboard guns sounded in unison.

I do not know how we appeared to those poor devils—perhaps as a malevolent inky cloud, or the face of Satan himself. Nor can I measure the shock the blast of our guns induced in their breasts. What I did see, after the smoke was swept away, were the
faces of a dozen men with lost, vacant stares, as they saw this world slip away.

There were a score of explosions in the wolf’s belly, which sent magnificent showers of smoke and flames into the air. Then down she went, first rolling over onto her side. Men and cargo spilled into the water. The fireworks from the ship suffused our deck with a cardinal light—our faces, cannons, even the dripping raindrops. We clewed our sails, and slowly, patiently as a shark, stood aside and watched her blood flow.

Two boats were lowered into the water, armed with marines, with orders to search for officers among the wreckage. I would hear the voices of swimmers shouting out to the boats as they picked their way through. A bare handful of men were plucked from the stew while the others were left to drown.

Cannon number six was secured. Our sails were hoisted, and we sailed off into the storm, leaving the corpse behind. Our business was complete.

The next morning, our six new passengers were arrayed on deck under blue skies. Bound and on their knees, they were a ragged, scurvy lot. Clearly they had been months at sea, for all of them had sunken eyes and jaundiced skin. They were a mix of French, Portuguese and Dutch sea rabble. The leader of their group was in the worst repair. Many of his teeth were missing, his fingernails were as coarse as bark, and his neck plagued by running sores.

Hearne stood before the officer, casting a cooling shadow over the kneeling man. He squinted and spoke first.

“’Name’s Simon Wouk, sir,” said he, mildly, in a faint Dutch accent. “Captain aboard the
Trident
.”

“Well, Captain Wouk,” replied Hearne, “You didn’t have stomach for the fight.”

“No, sir,” the man replied. “We had enough. My men wanted dry land, sir.”

“But you wanted to snatch one more chicken before you docked.”

“Aye, sir. That’s the truth, sir. I won’t deny it.”

Here a soggy trunk was dragged on deck, with markings in another language. It was opened beneath a bath of salt water. Inside it, I could make out packets.

“Captain Wouk,” said the Captain, tapping the top of the chest. “I have fourteen injured men below and not a thimble of laudanum to blunt their pain. There’s not an apothecary in London with so much as a drop of the remedy. And here you fine fellows have a stomach full of opium.”

“Not a stomach full, sir, begging your pardon,” replied Mr. Wouk. “Six chests, nigh one thousand pounds, an’ the price of ‘em come to us dear, sir. All at the bottom now.”

“Poor honest merchants?”

“We liberated it from an Indian trader outside Bombay, Captain,” Wouk explained. “We meant to buy at auction, but none could be had. All the chiefs from Calcutta to Bombay had none to sell, so they said.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t know, sir,” Wouk returned. “Some say the Mughals’ tax on farmers bled the crop out, and now the farmers won’t plant. Others say fields are diseased. Rumors are there are a thousand chests waiting in a Dutch harbor. So we come home with a hatful of spices and dye. Then we saw the convoy.”

“The others?”

“One we started with,” answered Wouk. “Our investors were French gentlemen. Four others came along to beat away the Dutch patrols. We haven’t touched port since before the Cape of Good Hope.”

Mr. Greyson appeared and addressed the man in a harsh voice.

“You say you come from the Indies?” The man Wouk nodded. “Then you know Captain Belfry.”

“I have heard the name, sir.”

“And what can you tell us?” demanded Greyson.

“He has made some fame there,” answered Mr. Wouk, wiping his face with the sleeve of his jacket. “The whole of the gulf of Benegala, they say, has felt his sword. He’s left a bloody mark on
many a Dutch plantation. Half of the Dutch navy is on his heels. The Mughals have a high price on his head.”

“Why can’t they subdue him?” inquired Greyson sternly.

Mr. Wouk shrugged then smiled with some admiration.

“He knows the rivers and the inlets,” answered he, “and they say he’s something of a hero to the Chinese rebel chiefs, who hate the Dutch and trade with him.”

Simon Wouk was the first living pirate I had ever laid eyes on. He was brown as a coffee bean and showed the gleam of intelligence in his eye. I looked upon him eagerly, taking in every detail about his person. There were rude tattoos across his neck and arms in a language I didn’t know. Captain Hearne gestured to one of our boatswains.

Hearne cut the man’s bonds with his sword and helped the gentleman to his feet, tossing a friendly hand on his shoulder.

“A thousand chests you say, Captain Wouk?” said Hearne.

“Maybe more,” said Wouk.

“‘Maybe more’?” repeated Hearne, now smiling broadly. “And what port did you say that might be?”

“Elmina, Captain. So I heard.”

“Well, you are presently all jolly members of our cannon crews,” Hearne said pleasantly. “Any trouble and we’ll give you all a quick christening.”

“Understood, sir,” responded Wouk.

“We must share a nice ripe port, captain to captain,” said Hearne, guiding Wouk in the direction of the gallery. “And you can retail more about your enterprising endeavors. I am most interested.”