DEADLY PASSAGE

by Donald Moffitt

* * * *

Hank Blaustein

* * * *

“We damn near had a mutiny on our hands, captain.”

* * * *

Lucinda Hale lowered the sextant that Eban had given her on their first voyage together and, squinting against a blinding tropical sun, jotted down the angle of elevation on her slate.

She turned from the rail in time to see Eban emerging from the after-cabin with his precious Earnshaw Pocket Chronometer in his hand. She could only hope that he had noted the exact moment of observation.

“Well, Lucy my love,” he said. “Did you get your sighting?”

“Don’t I always?” she said, trying not to show her annoyance. She knew Eban trusted her navigational skills implicitly, but he was a fusspot, like all men. Especially sea captains.

“What would I do without you?” he said by way of apology, an unrepentant grin on his face. “Well, my dear, let’s look it up in the Bowditch. We could have waited till noon, you know. It would have been simpler.”

“I know,” she said, relenting. “But I couldn’t wait to see how much progress we’ve made since last night. After the awful time we had trying to round Cape Horn. Ninety-four dreadful, dreadful days of constant tacking, bending, and unbending sail in howling storms with the rigging covered with ice! Being driven backward more miles than we covered!”

Eban frowned at the memory. “The homeward passage will be easier, Lucy.”

“I thought we’d have to give up. Turn around and go around the world in the opposite direction to get to China, like Captain Pendleton did on his last voyage.”

“We made it. Pendleton didn’t. Nor did a lot of other fine captains.”

“I know, Eban. I’m sorry.”

He brightened. “Well it’s clear sailing now. We’ve got the trade winds and the equatorial current with us. We’ll anchor in Whampoa in a month. Look at those sails! Full of wind, all the wind they can hold, from the courses to the skysails.”

He gestured proudly upward. From where they stood, just aft of the mizzenmast, Lucy’s field of vision was a crowded universe of billowing canvas. Perched on the main topgallant yard was a tiny figure, the lookout. The boy was pointing wildly at the horizon, and seemed so agitated that Lucy was afraid he’d lose his grip on his holdfast.

“Sail oh!” he was shouting. “Sail oh!”

There was a rush of the men on deck to the starboard rail. The first mate, Mr. Dawson, made no effort to call them back to work. He cupped his hands and shouted upward, “What see you, lad?”

The answer came from above, “It’s still hull down, sir, but it’s a bark. A four master. I can see down to the royals and topgallants. They’re taken aback—plastered right against the masts, they are. But they’re bracing the yards now. They’re trying to get on the starboard tack.”

Eban turned to Lucy, a troubled expression on his face. “The damn fool thinks he can intercept us. Beat his way windward, sailing close hauled. But even on the best starboard tack possible, he’ll pass us far wide of hailing distance.”

Lucy chose her words carefully. To a captain making good headway in a fair wind after being thwarted for ninety-four days by Cape Horn, what she was about to hint at verged on heresy, even from the captain’s wife.

“They may not have seen another ship for weeks or months. What if they’re in some sort of distress?”

Seeing him hesitate, she pushed a little further. “It may be our only chance to send our mail home for a while.”

Eban gave a sigh. “I’ll take pity on the poor lubber. Mr. Dawson, prepare to shorten sail. Put the helm down and bring her into the wind.”

* * * *

Mr. Dawson had calculated nicely. The two ships lay side by side, well within speaking distance. He had dropped the mainsail, braced the cross-jack yards sharp aback, and put the helm aweather, so that they matched the westward drift of the big bark. Lucy could make out the bark’s captain at the rail of the quarterdeck, a miniature dandy in a stovepipe hat, the speaking trumpet obscuring his face.

“Ahoy there!” he bellowed. “What ship is that?”

Beside her, Mr. Dawson grumbled, “By God, his manners could stand improvement, begging your pardon, ma’am.”

Eban, imperturbable as always, overlooked the Salem captain’s breach of etiquette. “The Mary Small, out of Searsport, bound for Whampoa!” he shouted back.

There was a pause as the other captain digested the information. “The Everett Parsons out of Salem, back from Shanghai and the South China Sea, bound for San Francisco,” he finally offered.

“You must have been fighting the trades for some time, Captain,” Eban said tactfully. “You’d do better on a more northerly course.”

The other captain didn’t seem to understand the implied criticism. “Yes, it’s been a lonely voyage,” he said. “Yours is the first ship we’ve seen since Samoa. The wife will be glad of the company. She’s already arranged with the steward for two guests for dinner.”

Eban looked perplexed. “Is he inviting us aboard for a gam?” he said to Lucy.

“Yes,” she said. “But not, it seems, Mr. Dawson.” She had participated in enough gams to know that the first mate usually accompanied the captain and his wife, while the second mate took charge of the ship.

“That doesn’t bother me, ma’am,” Mr. Dawson said. “But he didn’t say anything about allowing an exchange of visits by the men in the forecastle. That cannot be a happy ship.”

Eban shook his head. “I suppose we’ll have to do it. That top-hatted booby may not mind losing a day’s sailing, but he seems to take it for granted that we won’t either.”

Lucy’s hands flew to her hair. “I must be a sight. My hair’s a bird’s nest. And I’ve been wearing this old gingham wash dress since the Horn.”

“Don’t despair, my sweet,” Eban said. “There’s time for you to change.”

Mr. Dawson nodded toward the men still laboring to clew up the topsails. “I’ll get up a boat crew to row you over, Captain.” He grinned wolfishly. “We’ll need at least four hands. No, six! And a coxswain. By God—excusing my language, ma’am—we’ll give at least a few of our boys the chance of a gam!”

* * * *

The other captain’s name was Phineas Potts, a roundish man with a sun-blotched face adorned with a fine crop of muttonchop whiskers. He was dressed a little too formally, even for the kind of master who left the quarter-deck mostly to the mate. It occurred to Lucy that he wore the stovepipe hat in imitation of the Everett Parsons whose dominating figurehead graced the bark’s bow. That was another thing. The shipowners of Searsport had dispensed with the frippery of figureheads for a couple of generations. The bow of the Mary Small was decorated with a simple carved billet-head.

Now they were in the ship’s saloon, and Captain Potts was introducing them to his wife. Lucy had time for no more than a hasty glance at her surroundings before Mrs. Potts was rising from an elaborate Chinese chair, a pudgy hand extended. There was a fleeting impression of mahogany paneling, velvet upholstery, a luxurious Belgian rug—no doubt a Hong Kong forgery—and a stained-glass skylight that cast long splotches of rainbow light around the interior. In the center of the saloon a rosewood dining table had already been set with fine china and crystalware that should have been packed safely away for the calmer waters of a port anchorage. Some of the dishes had already slid to the edges of the table and fetched up against the fenders.

“So good of you to come,” the woman said in a mannered voice, just as if she were in a Boston drawing room and not in the middle of the ocean sharing an impromptu encounter between two passing ships.

“Delighted,” Lucy replied in the same artificial tone.

The woman went on obliviously, “And this is our passenger, Mr. McKay. Mr. McKay joined us in Shanghai and stayed with us while we completed a charter party to Canton. I believe he has business in San Francisco.”

“Charmed, I’m sure,” McKay said, straight-facedly mimicking Mrs. Potts while giving Lucy a twinkle of complicity. Mrs. Potts did not appear to have noticed that she was being made fun of.

“I don’t know what we would have done without Mr. McKay to entertain us,” Mrs. Potts went on. “He’s such a marvelous storyteller. And he plays the harmonium so well. He knows all the latest music hall songs from England.” She smiled archly at McKay. “I’m afraid some of them are quite naughty.”

Eban broke in with a question directed at Captain Potts. “You mentioned a charter party in Canton, Captain,” he said. “I take it you were able to find sufficient coasting business to keep your ship busy whilst you were plying the China seas.”

His voice was casual, but Lucy knew that he was pumping Captain Potts for information about the current state of coastal commerce at their destination. She knew very well that he had substituted the word “busy” for the less tactful “profitable.” And that he had slyly flattered Potts by calling the four-masted bark a ship. Some of the older captains insisted that no vessel, no matter its size, could legitimately be called a ship unless it had three masts, all fully square rigged—a matter of considerable annoyance to the captains of the larger vessels like Potts.

Potts visibly preened. “Yes, indeed, Captain Hale. I unloaded a cargo of Yankee cuckoo clocks at Canton for a good profit, then sailed to Peking to discharge my consignment of case oil, in the meantime filling the empty portion of my hold with rice. At Peking, or I should say Tienstin, I picked up a passenger—a wealthy Chinese merchant named Woo Lin, who chartered me for Shanghai and then Canton. He had business with Mr. McKay in Shanghai, and Mr. McKay joined us there.”

Mrs. Potts was pouting at being left out of the conversation. She interrupted: “The Chinese are mad for cuckoo clocks. Phineas picked up a deal of them from a clock maker in Connecticut on our way south from Salem and sold them at an absolutely exorbitant price to the co-hong at Canton. And got paid in gold, not silver, to boot.”

Eban smiled politely at Mrs. Potts, but turned his attention to McKay. “So you know Woo Lin, do you, McKay?”

McKay gave a laugh of amusement. He was a tall, spare man, dressed like a dandy, and Lucy decided that she didn’t like him. He was a little too affable, and his eyes kept straying to her bosom.

“Who doesn’t know the old reprobate?” he said dismissively. “If you want to do business on the coast of China, that is. He’s rich as Croesus, and he runs the co-hong like an autocrat. And he isn’t above doing a little underhanded business if there’s a few dollars in it for him.”

“Why Mr. McKay,” Lucy said with an innocent flutter of her eyelashes, “your business with him wasn’t underhanded, was it?”

He laughed again. “I’m afraid so, Mrs. Hale,” he said. “He sold me some antiquities that must have come from the Forbidden City. That’s what he was doing in Peking. If he’d been discovered, he would have been beaten to death in the Hall of Supreme Harmony.”

“Phineas had nothing to do with it!” Mrs. Potts said hastily. “He bought a perfectly legal cargo of Chinese export porcelain from him, made in one of the Whampoa factories!”

“The beggar insisted on being paid in gold instead of the usual silver specie,” Captain Potts grumbled. “He got half of my profit from the cuckoo clocks. He knew I had it in gold pieces, y’see.”

“Of course he did,” McKay said. “There’s nothing Woo Lin doesn’t know. I had to pay him in gold too. He wouldn’t deal otherwise. My theory is that he’s at the bottom of the East China Sea, weighed down by all the gold he was carrying.”

“Bottom of the sea?” Eban said, raising an eyebrow.

“Just a thought. He vanished somewhere between Shanghai and Canton. No one saw him leave the ship except the Chinese cook, who swears he saw him disembark before daylight, when we anchored overnight at Foochow.”

“Disembark? But not on the captain’s gig, though?”

“No. On one of those pesky sampans that swarm about a ship as soon as we make port, trying to get aboard to sell things.”

“To steal things, you mean,” Mrs. Potts said.

“Of course, there are always scoundrels among them,” McKay agreed, “but mostly they’re just competing with one another for our custom.”

“Be that as it may,” Captain Potts said, “but we’d had a job of it fending them off when we arrived. Our mate, Mr. Willis, frightened them off with a few shots from his pistol. They backed off to a safe distance, but they wouldn’t go away. I suspect they were competing for the chance to take Woo Lin ashore. They’d spotted him on the quarterdeck, and some of them jabbered up at him in their heathen gabble, but Woo Lin paid them no more mind than the dirt under his feet.”

“We don’t know that, Phineas,” Mrs. Potts said. “He might have signaled one of them somehow. You never can trust these heathens.”

“I suppose a sampan might have sneaked up alongside during the night,” Captain Potts allowed. “The cook says that’s what happened. But there’s something peculiar about it. As persistent as those beggars are, by first light they’d all fled.”

“And what do you make of it, Mr. McKay?” Lucy asked.

McKay appeared to be thinking it over, but Lucy had the impression that he was faking his hesitation.

“Well, the cook says he saw Woo Lin leave,” he said. “But it’s deuced strange that no one else saw him. Mr. Willis and the larboard watch were below, of course, but Gilkins, the second mate, should have been on deck.”

“I wouldn’t set much store by what Gilkins said,” Captain Potts grunted. “He probably was spinning yarns with his old friends in the foc’sle when Woo Lin parted company with the ship. Our first mate, Mr. Willis, doesn’t have much confidence in him.”

Lucy kept her expression neutral, but she knew what she thought of a captain who would disparage his own officers in front of visitors. “Gilkins,” she said thoughtfully. “That’s a Searsport name. I wonder if I know his family.”

Captain Potts had missed the iciness in her tone, but McKay had not. He spoke quickly to smooth things over. “And then there’s the matter of the sampan fleet taking off. That’s not like them. You’re right, Captain. They didn’t want to be anywhere near us.”

Potts nodded. “Some cheeky character among them sneaked Woo Lin off the ship, and there was no reason for the others to hang around.”

“No, that’s not it,” McKay mused. “They still had their vegetables and other goods to sell. They would still have been hovering nearby, hoping for the best.”

“You’re suggesting they were afraid to be near us,” Eban said.

“Exactly right, Captain Hale. It bears out what I said earlier. Either Woo Lin missed his footing when he attempted to transfer to the sampan and sank like a stone with all his gold or, more likely, was knocked on the head by the cutthroat he’d hired and then dumped overboard after his gold was taken. Either way, the other sampan rabble fled. Woo Lin was a mandarin, after all, and the Chinese authorities are merciless. The beggars would have been afraid of being implicated. A public beheading would have been the usual thing.”

“Please, gentlemen, let’s not talk about such dreadful things!” Mrs. Potts said.

“I do beg your pardon, Mrs. Potts,” McKay said. “I didn’t intend to upset you.”

She favored him with a forgiving smile and said gaily, “Let’s all sit down to a lovely dinner.” She turned and raised her voice. “Briggs!” she called. “Where is that rascally steward?”

A withered old sailor in a patched smock came hurrying into the saloon, a towel draped over his arm. “Yes, mum,” he said in what Lucy took to be a pronounced Welsh or Shropshire accent.

“Is the roast done, and is the gravy ready?” Mrs. Potts said.

“Yes, mum,” he replied.

“Did you have any trouble from the cook?”

“Oh, he didn’t like my taking over the oven, as usual, mum. He’d killed a chicken special for the men, seeing as there was company in the forecastle.” His eyes went to Lucy and he gave her a nod to indicate that the Mary Small’s sailors were being taken care of. “He waved a knife at me, but he calmed down all right when I showed him my pistol.”

“He had no right to kill a chicken without permission,” Mrs. Potts said indignantly. “Salt beef and biscuit are quite sufficient for the forecastle.” She turned to Lucy. “I’m sure that your men are used to it.”

“We all are,” Lucy said dryly.

Mrs. Potts went on without skipping a beat. “Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding are Captain Potts’s favorite, but of course we consumed our fresh beef on our outward bound voyage. But I had Briggs slaughter a pig for a nice pork roast, and we took on plenty of fresh vegetables and provisions at Samoa. Briggs makes a quite acceptable Yorkshire pudding, and I made a prune whip and a special cake myself. Briggs put it in the oven with my instructions, and it came out very well.”

She dismissed Lucy and turned her attention to Eban. “And I’m sure the fine claret you brought will go perfectly with my little repast, Captain Hale.”

At this point a small boy came running breathlessly into the saloon and went to Mrs. Potts with hardly a glance at the Hales. He was dressed in a little blue sailor suit with short pants and an imitation straw sailor’s hat.

“Ma, Ma!” he blurted. “Can I eat forward with the men? They’re telling such fine stories and Pulver is playing his fiddle and Cookie made a plum duff!”

“Where are your manners, Nathaniel? Say hello to our guests.” To her husband she said, “He’s been climbing up the rigging, Phineas. And he’s got tar on his suit again. I don’t like him associating with common sailors.”

“Nonsense,” Captain Potts said. “It’s perfectly natural for him to want to climb the rigging. I did when I was a boy on my father’s ship, and I’ll wager you did, too, Captain Hale. Why the boy climbs like a monkey, and it’s good for him. And there’s nothing wrong with him hanging about with the crew if they’ll put up with him and he doesn’t interfere with their work. Run along, lad.”

He gave little Nathaniel a pat on the rump and the boy ran eagerly off.

Mrs. Potts grumbled, “They’re so lenient with the boys. When I was a girl I wasn’t allowed forward of the mainmast. Unseemly, my mother said. And then when I was ten they sent me home to stay with relatives and go to finishing school. I didn’t go to sea again till I married Phineas.”

Lucy saw her chance to make amends with Mrs. Potts. “Yes, I know exactly what you mean. I was so jealous of my little brother having the run of the ship and climbing to the highest spar, while I was stuck aft with Mother, learning to sew. I had to stay with relatives, too, and finish my education at Searsport High School while Josh stayed at sea and was tutored by Mother.”

Sweet, loyal Eban added, “And that’s why she’s a better navigator than I am, Mrs. Potts. Searsport being the seagoing town that it is, the high school takes you all the way to the trigonometric formula given in Bowditch. The girls learn it, the boys are at sea. I picked up navigation as best I could from my father, who picked it up from his father.”

“It’s not seemly for a woman to have anything to do with the running of a ship,” Mrs. Potts sniffed. “She should confine herself to womanly occupations in the cabin.”

“You Searsporters are an insufferable lot, all right,” Captain Potts interjected with a heavy-handed attempt at humor. “Sail into any port in the Orient and the harbor’s already full of ships from Searsport. I’ve heard that in the early days of the China trade, the Chinese thought Searsport was a country becuse the ships from your little flyspeck on the Maine coast outnumbered the ships from some of the European nations.”

Eban laughed. “We’re hardly a flyspeck, Captain Potts. We’re a healthy town of two thousand people. Of course, about two hundred of them are sea captains.”

Lucy added wickedly, “And we’ve got eleven shipyards. One of them was started by Eban’s great-grandfather.”

Captain Potts opened his mouth to retort, but before he could say anything the companionway door was flung open and a burly man in rough clothes and a knit cap came stomping in. With no more than a glance toward Eban and Lucy, he made for Captain Potts and said, “I’ve left Gilkins in charge, Cap’n. Both watches are having their dinner. I hope he doesn’t let the men get out of hand.”

With a warning glance that indicated the Hales, Potts said brusquely, “We’ll allow the men to have a gam with their visitors, Mr. Willis.” He turned to face Lucy and Eban with a forced smile. “This is my first mate, Jack Willis,” he said. “He’ll have dinner with us.”

“And Mr. Gilkins?” Lucy said, though she knew the answer.

“He’ll eat at second table,” Willis growled.

“Mr. Willis...” Mrs. Potts began, and trailed off. Lucy didn’t know what she intended to say, but she could tell that Willis made her uncomfortable.

Willis remembered whatever passed for manners with him. “Ma’am,” he said grudgingly, “Captain.”

“Let’s all be seated, shall we?” Mrs. Potts said brightly. Willis took a spot at the far end of the table. He did not remove his cap. Mrs. Potts rang a bell for the steward, and he brought in the first course, some sort of clear soup served in little cups that Lucy recognized to be Chinese export ware in the ubiquitous Mandarin pattern—probably from Potts’s cargo. Nobody seemed inclined to talk; Mrs. Potts appeared flustered and distracted, Willis sat like a sullen lump, and even McKay, whom she would have expected to have a ready supply of small talk, sat silent, with a faint, unreadable smile on his lips. Lucy cast about desperately for a topic of conversation, and her eyes lit on the central serving platter—a huge reticulated dish that was decorated with a garden scene of peacocks and blossoming trees.

“That’s a spectacular centerpiece, Mrs. Potts,” she said. “Wherever did you find it?”

Mrs. Potts came to life again. “Isn’t it impressive?” she responded with sudden animation. “Mr. McKay loaned it to me for the dinner party. It’s from his collection. Wasn’t that good of him?”

Lucy looked inquiringly at McKay. “Collection?”

“More like booty, Mrs. Hale,” he said with a veiled hint of boastfulness in his tone. “It’s part of the lot of antiquities I got from Woo Lin. Private cargo.”

“Mr. McKay didn’t trust me to stow it away in the hold with my cargo of export china,” Captain Potts said jovially. “You should see his cabin. Tiny as it is, it’s jammed to the eaves with his bric-a-brac.”

“Oh, I trust you all right, Captain,” McKay said. “But I didn’t want my little treasure trove to get lost amongst your reproductions. I doubt your sailors would know the difference.”

Briggs came in with the roast then, and further talk about the stolen platter broke off as everyone turned their attention to the meal. Lucy paid the necessary compliments to the wonders Mrs. Potts had accomplished with the cook’s selfishly guarded oven in the galley and the little parlor stove in the afterhouse, and dutifully admired Briggs’s gravy and Yorkshire pudding. McKay ate efficiently in the English manner, the fork never leaving his left hand. Willis was a study in contrasts, tearing into his meal with primitive voracity and helping himself to a second portion when the others had barely started. Lucy saw that Mrs. Potts was trying not to look at him. Conversation picked up somewhat when the next course was served, and she seemed to relax. By the time Briggs brought out the special cake and the prune whip that were supposed to be the captain’s favorites, she was urging McKay to entertain them with some of his amusing stories. He obliged with a couple of tall tales about his supposed adventures along the China coast. Lucy didn’t believe them for a moment. And, she could see, neither did Willis.

McKay was finally prevailed upon to play the parlor organ that dominated the saloon. It was a stately piece of Gothic furniture, all polished mahogany with an elaborately carved backboard complete with a tall mirror. It put the Mary Small’s unpretentious ship’s piano to shame.

McKay obliged with a Stephen Foster song that was still popular and followed with “The Last Rose of Summer” in a clear, pleasing tenor voice. Willis was drumming his fingers impatiently, obviously anxious to be out of the saloon. He got up while McKay was still drawing out the last high note.

“It sounds like the men are skylarking on deck,” he said. “It was a mistake promoting Gilkins to second mate, Captain, if you’ll excuse me for saying so. He’s got the men thinking it’s dogwatches all the time. No discipline.” He glowered accusingly at Eban and Lucy. “It’s having strange sailors aboard for a gam that makes them think they can get away with being rowdy.”

Eban gave the man a hard stare, but since Captain Potts hadn’t reprimanded him, Eban held his tongue too.

Lucy cocked her head and could make out the sounds from the forward deck. She heard a fiddle and men’s voices singing in rough unison. She recognized the tune—a familiar halyard shanty that she had always enjoyed. The words of the chorus came drifting faintly aft:

The cap’n was drunk and he went below,
for to take a pull at his bottle, O!
So early in the morning.

A glance at Mrs. Potts showed that she had heard it too. Her face had turned chalky white. “Nathaniel!” she said with trembling lips. “I won’t have him exposed to such indecency!”

“I’ll take care of it, ma’am,” Willis said. He strode purposefully from the room, one hand straying toward a leather case at his belt.

“Now, now, Henrietta,” Captain Potts said soothingly. “Don’t take on so. The boy is fine. He’s used to sailors’ talk. I’m sure Willis will soon have the situation in hand.”

Eban said in a deliberately casual tone, “What’s all this about Gilkins? Your Mr. Willis doesn’t seem to care for him at all.”

“Willis can be a bit harsh with the men, but he runs a tight ship,” Potts said defensively. “He doesn’t trust Gilkins because Gilkins signed on as an ordinary seaman. When we moved him out of the forecastle, Willis thought he’d be too sympathetic to his fellow tars. You know as well as I do, Captain Hale, that every time you take on a new crew, you’re going to have a fine crop of scoundrels. Foreigners, heathens, cannibals from the South Seas, murderers, mutineers. And every man jack of them armed with a knife at the least, and maybe with brass knuckles or a gun as well.”

“You’re too hard on the poor fellows,” Eban said. “I take on a crew of mostly Searsport lads at the start of voyage. Local lads who I know and who know me, maybe getting a start up the ladder to becoming a captain or first officer themselves. Or at least on their way to an able seaman rating. When I have to fill berths, I don’t use crimps. The men know they’ve been robbed and cheated, and maybe shanghaied—a sure recipe for a resentful ship. By and large, they don’t jump ship. On the return voyage, I’ve got at least half the men I started out with.”

“What made you elevate this Mr. Gilkins to second mate when your first mate was so set against him?” Lucy ventured.

“I had no choice,” Captain Potts scowled. “My second mate deserted in the Pacific Islands while we were taking on water. Went native, he did, at some godforsaken little ring of atolls. Lured by some native woman, I’ve no doubt. No time to hunt him down. No way to sign on a replacement. Nothing to do but recruit from my own foc’sle. Gilkins was the best choice. He could read and write. He even understood the rudiments of navigation. Not that Willis would trust him with a sextant. As for keeping the log book, Willis wouldn’t let him anywhere near it. The boy made his entries on the log slate, and at the end of his watch, Willis copied out his observations. Never without disputing his calculations. But he never caught Gilkins in an error.”

“What about you, Captain? Didn’t you ever examine the slate?”

Potts flushed. “That’s the mate’s business,” he said. “I don’t interfere with Mr. Willis, and the ship runs smoothly.”

Eban was about to open his mouth, but Lucy interrupted sweetly, “Does that mean that when you interfere with him, the ship doesn’t run smoothly, Captain?”

Potts’s face became even redder at the outrage of having a woman question him. But before he could explode, the companionway door opened, and a young sailor came in, holding little Nathaniel by the hand.

The boy broke free and ran straight to his mother. “Ma, ma, Mr. Willis knocked Pulver down and broke his fiddle. He’s awful mad!”

She buried his face in her bosom. “There, there, you’re safe with mama now, and no one can hurt you.” She looked up fiercely and glared at the young sailor.

He avoided her glance. He stepped forward, hat in hand, and said to Captain Potts, “Mr. Willis sent me back with the boy, Captain. He said he’d be along shortly.”

“What’s going on forward, Mr. Gilkins?” Potts asked.

“Mr. Willis said to tell you that he has matters in hand,” Gilkins replied vaguely.

“What matters?” Potts said, his patience evaporating.

Gilkins shuffled his feet. “The men weren’t too happy about being ordered back inside. They’d had their dinner on deck, and they were spinning yarns and singing shanties and generally having a lark.”

“You let them have the run of the deck, both watches together?”

“I didn’t see the harm in it, sir,” Gilkin said miserably. “It was a fine day for eating outside, and the ship was lying-to, without the deck watch having to work the rigging, and there were the sailors from the Mary Small, aboard for a gam.”

“That’s enough, Mr. Gilkins, you may go,” Potts said. He turned to Eban and Lucy and spread his hands, as if to say what did I tell you.

Gilkins turned to leave, but Lucy stopped him by saying coolly, “Are you a Searsporter by any chance, Mr. Gilkins? It’s a common name there. Did you know any of our men?”

He glanced nervously toward Captain Potts and said, “N-no, ma’am. That is, I know who Alvah Goodspeed is. The Goodspeeds have a farm on the south side of the bay. My family lives near Sandypoint.”

“Then your father must be the Jeremiah Gilkins who works in Captain Merithew’s bank,” she said in her best social voice. “I can place him now.”

Captain Potts had reached his limit. “I said that’ll do, Mr. Gilkins,” he exploded.

“Yessir,” Gilkins said gratefully, and made his escape.

“You see what I mean,” Captain Potts said, directing his words pointedly to Eban alone. “He may sleep in the steerage with the carpenter, but his sentiments are with the men in the forecastle. And now we see he has a connection with your crew as well. It’s no wonder he can’t keep the men under control.”

Eban ignored the slur. “Steerage? Not a mate’s berth in the afterhouse opposite the first mate’s quarters?”

“Willis wouldn’t hear of it. He told Gilkins to his face that a donkey’s breakfast was good enough for him.”

Lucy was appalled, but she held her tongue. A donkey’s breakfast was what the sailors called an improvised straw-filled mattress that they supplied themselves when nothing better was provided.

Captain Potts wasn’t through with his complaint. “And he kept his sea chest in the forecastle and slept there like any common sailor for over a week after we made him second mate. He’s just not made for any sort of command.”

“He doesn’t get much chance to try it, does he,” Lucy murmured under her breath. Fortunately for her, Willis chose that moment to return. There was a cut on his forehead and a bruise below one cheek, and he was breathing hard. Lucy saw with a shudder that his knuckles were bloody.

“There’ll be no more trouble on Mr. Gilkins’s watch,” he announced. He stood there, rocking on his heels and glowering until Captain Potts cleared his throat and spoke.

“Very good, Mr. Willis.” He made it a question.

“We damn near had a mutiny on our hands, Captain,” Willis said. He did not apologize to the two women for his language. “I saw Jenkins’s hand feeling in his pocket for his brass knuckles, and I took a pistol away from that skulking cannibal chief, Wiremu. I always knew he had one.”

“I’m going to faint!” Mrs. Potts announced. She was fanning herself frantically with a napkin. “We might have been murdered in our sleep!”

Captain Potts spoke soothingly. “Now, now, my dear, calm yourself. We’re in no danger.”

He turned to Willis. “Well done, Mr. Willis. How did you subdue them?”

Willis gave a sharklike grin. “I showed them Mr. Peavey. Had to use him a couple of times.”

Lucy was getting Mrs. Potts quieted down with a glass of water from the pitcher on the table, and pretending not to pay attention, so Eban saved her the trouble of asking the question.

“Who is Mr. Peavey?”

Willis, still grinning, dug into the leather case at his belt and brought out a bizarre contraption that seemed to be a combination double-barreled derringer, knife, and brass knuckles.

“Invented by the same Mr. Peavey who thought up the hinged canting hook that loggers use. Sold so many of them that he had to open a manufacturing company, and he started inventing things. This was one of them. I was first in line to buy one. Does the work of three.”

“I should think it would be awkward to use,” Eban said mildly.

“I’ve had a lot of practice,” Willis said.

And then, to Lucy’s disgust, Willis started holding forth on his methods of enforcing disclipine. “Things haven’t been the same since the Dana Act did away with flogging. But the law only prohibits lashing a man to the mast and using the cat-o-nine-tails. It says nothing about an officer using his fists or a belaying pin to quell willful disobedience. Or to use a gun in case of mutiny.”

“The law allows quite a bit of leeway in what constitutes mutiny,” Eban protested.

“And a good thing it does,” Captain Potts expostulated. “Otherwise you’d have men refusing to go aloft in a storm.”

“You’ve got to nip it in the bud,” Willis said. “Now when a man comes aboard, I have a sheath knife muster. I break off the point of his knife and give it back to him. No exceptions.”

Eban frowned. “A sailor can’t do without a sheath knife. He needs it for splicing, cutting a stopper rope, even eating his dinner.”

“Aye,” Willis said. “A sailor needs a knife to do his proper work, but he doesn’t need a point on it to stab his messmates in a drunken brawl. On any ship where I’m first officer, having a knife with a point is evidence of mutiny.”

“Except for your own sheath knife, of course,” Eban said.

Willis looked at him suspiciously but said, “Aye. That and Mr. Peavey.”

Lucy, still tending Mrs. Potts, broke in. “Mrs. Potts is fatigued,” she said. “She needs to rest. Captain, will you see her back to your quarters?”

“Yes, perhaps that’s best,” Mrs. Potts said as Lucy helped her to her feet. Captain Potts rushed to her side and took her arm.

“Thank you for a marvelous dinner, Mrs. Potts,” Lucy said in her best formal voice. “It was a feast one might expect in port, but not at sea. I hope you’ll allow me to reciprocate tomorrow.”

Mrs. Potts accepted the compliment as her due. But she evaded the invitation coyly. “I should love to come, Mrs. Hale. I don’t know if my...” She hesitated meaningfully. “...delicate condition will allow me to risk a bosun’s chair.”

Lucy was having none of it. “I shall hope for the best, Mrs. Potts,” she said.

Captain Potts became brisk and businesslike. “Mr. Willis, will you see to getting Captain Hale’s sailors rounded up? And have a bosun’s chair rigged up for Mrs. Hale.”

Lucy could not resist a last chance to scandalize the Pottses. “I won’t need a bosun’s chair. I climb like a monkey.”

As she turned to go, McKay was at her side to say his farewells. He took her hand with languid gallantry and said, “It’s been a thoroughly engaging encounter, Mrs. Hale. I’m sure I’ve never seen such a lovely monkey.”

* * * *

“What was that all about?” Eban asked.

They were seated in the stern sheets of the longboat, facing the six sweating sailors at the oars. The wind and the spray were in Lucy’s face, and the hem of her good dress was soaked from the last dip the rope ladder had taken during the descent, when the bark had rolled in an unexpected wave. She hoped fervently that Captain Potts had not seen the mishap, but she doubted it; the crew had been banished from the rail to protect them from the sight of a woman in skirts climbing down a rope ladder.

Lucy replied, “She was letting me know, woman to woman, that she was expecting a little brother or sister for Nathaniel. That’s why he humors her so. Like stopping in mid-Pacific for a gam when he can’t afford it. Or indulging her delicate condition.”

“That’s a relief. I don’t think I could put up with another dinner party with them.”

“Oh, they’ll row over to the Mary Small tomorrow. She won’t miss the chance to lord it over me. McKay will come, too, invited or not.”

“My poor martyred Lucy! We can’t match that roast beef.”

“We’ll have roast chicken. And dumplings. And we have all those fresh vegetables and fruits we onloaded at the Marquesas.”

“What about a special dessert?” he teased her. “Your captain’s favorite?”

She pretended to think. “Perhaps a plum duff.”

He roared with laughter. The sailors facing them stole sidelong glances at them.

Lucy had never thought it was beneath her to speak to the sailors, and they had never taken advantage. Or if one did, he was soon set right by the others. She smiled at the one she had caught looking at her. “Yes, you heard me correctly, Goodspeed. There’ll be chicken for the men too. And I’ll bake enough gingerbread for the forecastle as well.”

He returned a suitable smile. “We’ll all appreciate it, ma’am. The grub ‘board the bark was salt horse and weevils, and not much of it. The cook was a decent old Chinese who tried to do a little something extra for the men, seeing we was having a gam, but that bucko mate, Willis, came by and blew up a storm. We could hear him slamming the old man around in the galley and yelling like a banshee. The old man was yelling back, but Willis said something in Chinese that shut him right up.”

Lucy had picked up a smattering of trade Chinese, and she supposed that was all Willis knew as well. “Were you able to pick up any words?” she asked. “Think hard.”

Goodspeed wrinkled his forehead. “I don’t know, ma’am. Maybe wo or something.”

“Could it have been something like Woo Lin?”

“That’s it, ma’am. What does it mean? It scared the stuffing out of the old man.”

Eban scratched his head. “Why would a lowly Chinese cook be frightened by something involving a mandarin like Woo Lin?”

“What happened then?” Lucy asked.

Goodspeed had lost his rowing rhythm. There was a delay while he straightened the boat out with a couple of powerful strokes, then he said, “Well, Willis came out with the cook’s tub and dumped the men’s dinner into the sea. It was some special stew he’d made, with chicken. The men were looking forward to it. The old man stood by and didn’t say nothing. You couldn’t read his face, but he had a black eye and a cut lip. Then the mate went aft, and a little while later the cook brought out a sorry mess of burgoo made of salt horse and biscuit crumbs.”

“Wasn’t it Mr. Gilkins’s watch? Didn’t he have anything to say about it?”

“He tried, but Willis was in a fury. Later—”

“I know what happened later.”

* * * *

Later, aboard the Mary Small, they told Dawson what Goodspeed had said. Dawson didn’t raise an eyebrow at the spectacle of the captain’s wife chatting with a sailor. He was used to Lucy Hale and her ways, respected her brains, and unlike what would have been the reaction of many first officers, was not at all put off by her participation in the navigation of the ship.

“Goodspeed’s a bright young lad,” he said. “He’s gone from boy to ordinary seaman to able seaman in only two voyages, and he’s taught himself navigation. By the time we get back to Searsport, he’ll qualify for a second mate’s berth. He’ll be a captain like his father and grandfather before he’s twenty-five.”

“He doesn’t have much use for this Willis fellow,” Eban said. “Talk about your bucko mates. This one takes the cake.”

“I know a little about Willis. He’s notorious from Liverpool to Zanzibar. The sailors call him Kicking Jack Willis. They’ve even made up a shanty about him: ‘‘Tis larboard and starboard on deck you will sprawl, for Kicking Jack Willis is lord of us all.’ I’m surprised this Captain Potts was able to scrape up a crew.”

“Well, a stranded sailor doesn’t have much choice. The crimps get hold of him and he wakes up aboard a hell ship.”

“He sounds like a real villain,” Lucy said.

“He is. He was once first mate to Bully Hayes.”

“The pirate?”

“Yes ma’am. The same one. He claims to be a missionary now, but in the bad old days of the Queensland Labor Act, he was the worst of the South Sea blackbirders who sold natives to the less principled planters. He could have been hanged for piracy if the planters hadn’t been so politically powerful.”

Lucy dipped into her memory and quoted the statute she had learned in her maritime law class. “It is also piracy and punishable with death to be engaged in kidnapping or decoying any Negro or mulatto with the intention of making them slaves.”

“Well, I don’t know what skulduggery he might be up to now, but he’s safe with Captain Potts,” Dawson said.

“What is wrong with this man?” Lucy said angrily.

“Captains like Potts find it makes it easier for them to have a mate like Willis. As long as they look the other way.”

Lucy shook her head in disgust. “Goodspeed told me that a sailor with a religious bent had painted the maxim ‘Keep Hoping, Ye Who Enter’ over the transom to the forecastle. When Willis discovered it, he got a paintbrush and added another p to hoping.”

“Speaking of hopping, my dear,” Eban said mirthlessly, “if the captain and his lady condescend to come visiting tomorrow, you have a lot to do.”

“I may poison the chicken,” Lucy said.

* * * *

Lucy was up at the crack of dawn to take a sighting. The sea was flat and calm, and a gentle breeze blew in from the east. A blazing tropical sun was just perched on the eastern horizon as she raised her sextant and adjusted the vernier. She had already seen the dead reckoning estimate that Dawson had entered in the log, and she was anxious to see how closely her reading matched it. Though the sails were all reefed, the steady pressure of the southeast trade winds against the bare poles, and the assistance of the South Equatorial current, had brought the Mary Small, she was sure, at least twenty miles closer to China during the night. Potts, of course, had lost another twenty miles of headway. Eban, poking his head out the companionway door, nodded to let her know that he had jotted down the chronometer reading at the appropriate moment.

She was about to join Eban when a flutter of movement across the way caught her eye. The two ships had drifted farther apart during the night. They were beyond speaking distance now, but Lucy could see that the bark was hoisting a signal flag aloft, a red X on a white field. “I need assistance.” And a single-letter signal meant it was urgent. Could Mrs. Potts’s time have come prematurely? No. A medical emergency was a blue and white bordered red rectangle.

Eban came hurrying to her side. Dawson dropped what he was doing and began scanning the bark’s deck with a telescope.

“A lot of activity on deck, Captain. I can see Potts in his top hat, waving his arms about. I don’t see any evidence of a fire, or any working of the pumps that would indicate a leak!”

“What the devil kind of emergency can it be?” Eban said. “Try to find out, Mr. Dawson. Get a line on what kind of gear we need to bring over to them.”

Dawson sent a sailor scurrying to the flag locker. A minute or two later, a yellow and blue flag was climbing to the main truck, the letter K used as a single-letter signal.

They waited several minutes. There was no response.

Dawson squinted through the telescope again. “He isn’t even bothering to look toward us. Wait a minute. Somebody in a pea jacket is dragging a sailor to him by the scruff of the neck. He just gave him a backhanded swipe that knocked him flat. The fellow’s triced up. Now he’s hauled him to his feet again and he’s frog marching him ‘midships. They’re out of sight. The captain’s yelling at the other sailors. It looks like the whole crew’s on deck. They’re milling about like cattle.”

“No more flags?”

“No.”

Eban sighed. “Get a boat crew together, Mr. Dawson. We’ll have to go over and see.”

Lucy spoke up. “I’m going with you.”

Eban shook his head stubbornly. “Not a chance. We don’t know what’s going on. There may be danger.”

“I’m going with you, Eban. That’s settled. Whatever’s going on, Mrs. Potts may need a woman.”

“I’ll have my Smith and Wesson,” Dawson said. “You better stick a gun in your belt too, Captain.”

The boat crew was composed of the same six men who had rowed them across yesterday. Alvah Goodspeed couldn’t conceal a lively curiosity, but Dawson’s presence kept him quiet. “You men stay in the boat,” Dawson told them. “But be prepared to swarm up the rope ladder if I call you.”

Yesterday’s ladder was still in place, which was a good thing, since nobody aboard the Everett Parsons seemed to be aware of their arrival. Dawson swung himself up easily, followed by Eban. When it was Lucy’s turn, Goodspeed and the others averted their eyes without having been told to do so by Dawson. There was nobody at the top to give Lucy a hand, Eban and Dawson already being out of reach as they forced their way through the chaos on deck to get to Captain Potts, so she hoisted herself to a sitting position on the bulwarks, gathered her skirts together, and swung her legs over the side. She pushed her way through the mob of sailors and joined Eban.

Eban was doing his best to get a coherent story out of a distracted Potts, who didn’t look any too happy to see him and Dawson, and even less happy to see Lucy.

“...and we searched all the sea chests in the forecastle to find the murder weapon, and then Mr. Willis remembered that Gilkins had moved his chest to the steerage only a few days ago, and sure enough, there was the evidence in plain sight on top of his belongings. So he searched Gilkins and confiscated his knife, and I’ve got it locked up with the rest of the evidence until we can get Gilkins to the nearest U.S. Consul...”

Eban turned to Lucy and explained, “Mr. McKay has been murdered.”

“Mr. McKay, murdered?” Lucy exclaimed. “And the Gilkins boy suspected of it? How horrible!”

“You needn’t concern yourself, Mrs. Hale,” Potts said. “We have everything under control now. We’ll hand Gilkins over to the American Consul at the Marquesas, and he’ll be shipped home for hanging.”

“We’re familiar with the American Consul at the Marquesas,” Lucy said. “His facilities are limited, and so is his hospitality.”

But Potts was not paying any attention to her. He was talking to Eban and Dawson, and saying, “When we discovered McKay’s body, our first thought was that a mutiny was in progress. In these latitudes I naturally suspected the Malays in the crew of plotting to cut a few throats and, when the men were terrorized, steal the longboat and desert. So I immediately ran up the signal flags requesting your help.” His eyes ran over the pistol at Eban’s belt. “I see that you and your mate are armed.”

“It seemed a wise precaution. We didn’t know what the trouble was.”

“But Mr. Willis very bravely waded into the forecastle, and after knocking a few heads, concluded that there was no conspiracy. So that left us with the job of ferreting out the murderer.”

“And you lit on Mr. Gilkins?”

Captain Potts’s eyes narrowed in a way that Lucy didn’t care for. “So you see, Captain Hale, that your assistance is no longer required,” he said.

Before Eban could respond, Willis appeared from the direction of the after hatch. “I’ve got Gilkins locked up in the sail locker, Cap’n,” he said. “Double manacled, just to be safe.”

“Very good, Mr. Willis,” Potts said. He turned back to Eban, and Lucy could see that he was about to suggest strongly that Eban and Dawson and the interfering woman they had brought with them were free to leave the ship.

She spoke quickly, with her sweetest smile. “Poor Mrs. Potts must be terrified. She’ll need the comfort of another woman’s company.”

Before Potts could object, she turned on her heel and marched sternward toward the afterhouse, lifting her skirts daintily to keep them from dragging on the wet deck. When she reached the companionway, she turned briefly to verify that no one was coming after her. No one was. Eban, bless him, was keeping Potts and Willis busy.

She was in the forward section of the afterhouse now, and the doors lining both sides of the cabin were shut. She didn’t want to risk blundering into the steward’s quarters. After a moment’s thought, she decided that would be the door adjacent to the pantry. The first mate’s berth would be the first door on the starboard side. The next two cubbyholes would be for storage, or passengers if they had them, and one of the doors was ajar.

She pushed the door open and poked her head inside. The tiny room had clearly been McKay’s domain. One wall of makeshift shelves was cluttered floor to ceiling with the bric-a-brac that Captain Potts had described. Some kind of struggle had gone on. Shards of broken porcelain—fragments of priceless antiquities, if McKay could be believed—littered the floor, and there was a small scattering of silver trade dollars that the murderer had not bothered to pick up.

The magnificent reticulated serving dish that Mrs. Potts had borrowed for the dinner party was nowhere in sight on the shelves, and Lucy could see no fragments in the floor debris that could have come from it.

She turned her attention to the narrow bunk opposite. A sheet draped form had been left there, presumably by Potts and Willis, who wouldn’t have wanted any help from talkative sailors.

After a quick glance over her shoulder, Lucy edged over to the bunk and pulled back the sheet. It was McKay all right, as dead as a mackerel. His face was badly battered; the marks looked as if they had been made by brass knuckles. That proved nothing. Brass knuckles were as common in the forecastle as knives and homemade blackjacks.

She pulled the sheet down farther and saw the wound that had killed him. The shirt had been torn apart to expose the wound. She could tell from the direction of the cut that it had been a downward thrust. She had doctored enough bungled wounds to know this would be unusual if the attacker were sober and had murderous intent. But the knife had slipped in cleanly anyway, without being deflected by the rib cage, and penetrated the liver or spleen, with the fatal result she was looking at. It suggested that the killer had stabbed McKay in a rage while he was lying on the floor, felled by the savage beating he had received from the assailant’s brass knuckles. A determined killer indeed. It did not fit her picture of Gilkins.

There were footsteps and loud voices outside the companionway door. She replaced the sheet and slipped out of the little bunkroom. A few swift steps took her to the door leading to the saloon, and the door closed behind her just as the companionway door opened.

She did not know if she had been seen. She hurried across an empty saloon and let herself into the captain’s stateroom at the rear.

Mrs. Potts was sprawled across an overstuffed settee at the far end, surrounded by Chinese knicknacks on a profusion of little tables. A birdcage hung swaying from a stained-glass skylight overhead.

Lucy hurried to her side. “My dear Mrs. Potts,” she said, “are you all right?”

She raised Mrs. Potts to a sitting position and propped a pillow behind her back. Mrs. Potts was gulping air and clutching at her chest. “I’m having palpitations,” she quavered. “And I want Phineas. I’m sure my heart’s about to stop.”

“I’m sure your husband will come as soon as he can. Would you like the steward to bring you a cup of tea?”

“I don’t know where the steward can have gone to,” Mrs. Potts said, and burst into tears. “Oh, what shall I do?”

“Calm yourself, Mrs. Potts. Stay there and don’t try to get up. I’ll be back in a minute.”

She crossed to the captain’s desk on the other side of the stateroom and found the medicine chest that all ships of this size were required to carry. There, among the rows of numbered bottles and basic surgical tools, she found a stoppered smelling bottle containing some sort of camphor compound. She brought it back to the settee and held it under Mrs. Potts’s nose. Mrs. Potts tossed her head back and forth and tried to push the bottle away, but after a minute her color improved and she seemed less agitated.

“There,” Lucy said. “Now you just rest, and I’ll go make you a cup of tea.”

She needed another look at McKay’s cabin. Why had the platter disappeared, and what else might have been taken? If robbery had been the motive, why had all those silver trade dollars—the favored currency in the China trade—been left behind? The galley was only a few steps from McKay’s cabin. She only needed a minute or two.

The door swung open and Captain Potts entered, followed by Willis. Eban and Dawson came crowding in after them.

Potts gave Lucy a hard look, and went to his wife. “Phineas, how could you be so thoughtless?” she admonished him, the vapors abandoned and replaced by a practiced sulk. “To leave me alone at such a time!”

“Now, now, Henrietta,” he said with forced patience. “Mr. Willis and I have much to do if we’re to keep you safe. We’ve made a thorough search of the crew’s belongings, and ferreted out the culprit. That dissembling wretch, Gilkins, as we thought! We have him safely locked up now. You have nothing to fear. And now we have to see to poor McKay. We’ll give him a decent burial at sea, with all proper ceremony. I shall have to borrow your Bible and find an appropriate text.”

That was Eban’s cue, and after an exchange of glances with Lucy, he took it. “You don’t want to do things too hastily, Captain. There are legal forms to be observed, and if you want to stay out of trouble you’ll follow maritime law. Fortunately, you have myself, Mr. Dawson, and Mrs. Hale aboard as disinterested parties to sign the necessary depositions. And Mrs. Hale has a grounding in maritime law, thanks to her class at Searsport High School, so she can make out the properly worded forms for the American Consul and any local authorities he has to answer to. Of course we will have to view the body and the evidence.”

“If I’m not mistaken, Mrs. Hale has already viewed the body,” Potts growled.

“The hell with all that!” Willis shouted in a fury. “I say we just hang Gilkins from a yardarm and have done with it. We’re three thousand miles from the States. I say he’s guilty and so does the captain, and that’s enough!”

“Those days are gone, Mr. Willis, along with abuses like flogging,” Lucy said.

She turned to Captain Potts and aimed her next words at him. “When a captain takes shortcuts, he’s liable for five years imprisonment and a thousand dollar fine. I’m sure you’ve heard about what happened to Captain Slocum, the skipper of the Aquidneck. He shot two sailors who tried to rob and kill him, and they put him on parole even though evidence was presented that one of the dead men was still clutching a knife when they found him. He’d had the good sense not to touch the dead bodies till he had witnesses.”

That got to Potts. Lucy could see that further argument at that point would only cause resistance. She patted Mrs. Potts on the shoulder and said, “I’ll get your cup of tea now, dear.”

As she left the stateroom, she could hear Mrs. Potts getting querulous again: “I won’t feel safe until that man is off the ship. I don’t care if he is locked up!” A sob. “Mrs. Hale is the only one who cares about my feelings!” followed by a rumble of male voices reassuring her.

There was still a fire in the steward’s stove. Lucy poked it up and added a couple of sticks of wood. She put a tea kettle on to boil, then listened at the corridor. The stateroom door remained closed. She waited another moment to be safe, and let herself into McKay’s cabin again.

The scene was as before: a dead body on the bunk and broken crockery on the floor. She peered more closely at the silver coins. Mostly American Seated Liberties, with a few Mexican and British trade dollars. What they had in common was that the silver content exceeded the face value, so that they were not circulated in their countries of origin. That was fine with the Chinese, who went by the weight of the silver anyway.

Where had the coins come from? Lucy’s eyes found McKay’s steamer trunk. It had been ransacked. The latches were bent and twisted and the lock smashed. The trunk had been pried apart, and the sliding drawers on either side hung halfway out, spilling their contents—shirts, undergarments, toilet articles, and more silver coins. The leather bag that had held the coins had been slashed, but the murderer had left the scattered dollars behind.

But the big bottom drawer had been pulled all the way out, and it was empty.

She was taking a step forward for a closer look, when there was movement behind her and a rough voice said, “Well, captain’s lady, did you get a good look at the corpse? And maybe tamper with the evidence?”

It was Willis, and she hadn’t heard him come in. He was too close, but she stood her ground. “Yes, Mr. Willis, I’ve seen what I had to see,” she said.

She could tell that he had expected her to be intimidated, and was puzzled by his failure to frighten her. “A dead body’s no sight for a lady,” he tried. “If you are a lady.”

“I’ve seen my share of dead bodies, Mr. Willis,” she said in a steady voice. “And I’m not a shrinking violet.”

He took a step toward her, and she said coldly, “You wouldn’t dare.” He stepped aside as she brushed past him. The walk back to the captain’s stateroom seemed long, but she refrained from looking back over her shoulder. It had taken all her resolve to go back to the galley for Mrs. Potts’s tea.

But when she re-entered the captain’s stateroom she was relieved to find that Willis had not followed on her heels. He had gone off to God knows where to do his mischief elsewhere.

She poured Mrs. Potts a cup of tea and coped patiently with her threats to faint. The men were clustered together in a little masculine group that excluded her. That was fine with her. She caught Dawson’s eye, and he gave a little nod. He excused himself to Captain Potts, saying that he had better check on his men, who had been waiting in the longboat for some time now. Potts gave absent-minded assent and went on talking to Eban.

She waited until there was a break in their conversation and got to her feet. When Potts’s eyes turned in her direction, she said offhandedly, “I had better talk to Gilkins. When we get back to Searsport, I shall have to see his family and give them any last messages from him.”

Potts turned instantly apoplectic. “I cannot permit you to see him!” he sputtered. “It’s out of the question!”

Eban gave a tolerable imitation of male solidarity. “Captain Potts is right, my dear. You can’t be alone with a dangerous killer.”

“Nonsense!” she said. “I’m in no danger. I believe Mr. Willis said that he’s manacled as well as confined. And in any case, I can’t believe that he would harm me.”

She was on the right tack. Her quarrel was now with Eban, not Potts, and it softened the challenge to his authority. “It still isn’t proper,” he said halfheartedly.

“He’s amidships in the sail locker,” she said in a reasonable tone, “so I won’t be venturing alone into the crew’s territory.”

“When you put it that way...” Eban said with a convincing show of reluctance.

With a husband’s tacit permission providing the necessary balm to his dignity, Potts dropped his objections. Lucy was halfway to the door before he could offer to escort her.

The after-hatch was just aft of the mainmast, and fortunately for Lucy, Willis had not replaced the hatch cover after locking Gilkins up. She descended the ladder into a dank darkness, and looked around at shadowy stacks of stowed cargo. The bulk cargo such as tea would be farther forward to make it more accessible to the main hatch. She located the sail locker behind a pile of crated export ware, and tapped on the door.

“Mr. Gilkins, are you in there?” she said.

“Mrs. Hale, is that you?” came the muffled reply from within.

The latch was a simple wooden bar that swiveled on a peg. The door swung open when she rotated it to the vertical. Gilkins was sitting on the floor with his back resting against the stiff folds of the spare sails, his hands fastened behind him, and his ankles tethered by a chain. He tried to get to his feet, but constrained as he was by the manacles, he failed.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Hale,” he said.

“Don’t worry about it, Mr. Gilkins. With luck, we’ll have you out of those chains by eight bells.”

“I don’t see how,” he said miserably. “The captain says he has all the evidence he needs to hang me.”

“We don’t have much time. Tell me what happened.”

“Mr. McKay’s body was discovered at the start of the morning watch. He didn’t come out for breakfast, and the steward knocked on his door in case he’d overslept. When there was no answer he looked inside and saw the body. He got the captain, and the captain went wild. He ordered Mr. Willis to search the forecastle, and Mr. Willis tore the place apart. He wouldn’t let me help. He told the captain I was just another sailor as far as he was concerned. He’s had the captain against me from the start.”

“So I’ve gathered. What happened then?”

“Well, of course he didn’t find anything. During the dogwatch yesterday, seeing that there was a gam with Alva Goodspeed and the others, they decided everyone would overhaul his chest—you know, move the shirts to the left, tobacco to the right, diaries and letters to the top, and so forth. Then rotate them back again. You may think it’s foolishness, but—”

“I understand, Mr. Gilkins. It’s called a comfort turn. There’s little diversion on a long voyage, and sailors devise their own forms of entertainment.”

“That’s it exactly, Mrs. Hale. So if a man were to hide evidence of murder, he wouldn’t hide it in his sea chest, when the whole forecastle had been watching him rearrange his belongings.”

“So having followed the captain’s orders and found nothing, Mr. Willis turned his attention to you?”

“Yes. He asked me where my sea chest was. I told him that when I was made second mate, I moved it to the space in the steerage that I shared with the carpenter. He took me by the elbow and hustled me there, and I showed him my chest.”

“And surprise of surprises, when he opened the lid, there was evidence of your guilt lying in plain view on top.”

Gilkins’s cry of anguish was unfeigned. “I swear to you that I don’t know how that stuff got in my chest, Mrs. Hale! When I last looked inside, just before the second dogwatch, everything was neat as a pin, just as it should be. Nothing could have been hidden there.”

“Calm yourself, Mr. Gilkins. What exactly was there that shouldn’t have been?”

“There was a big Chinese plate, broken in three pieces. And one gold coin—a Double Eagle. Worth more than my pay for an entire voyage. At a mate’s wages. I’ve never seen a Double Eagle before, except once or twice.”

“Supposedly stolen from Mr. McKay?”

“That’s what Mr. Willis said.”

“But Mr. McKay traded all his gold to Woo Lin for the stolen Chinese antiquities. And Captain Potts paid Woo Lin in gold as well. Presumably Woo Lin had all the gold. McKay would have been left with the unspent portion of the usual silver specie. If you were robbing Mr. McKay, why didn’t you take the silver Liberties as well? They would have been easier to dispose of. For that matter, why just one Double Eagle? It doesn’t make sense.”

“I didn’t ... I didn’t...”

“I know, I know. You didn’t steal anything. I believe you. But why the one solitary coin?”

A sob escaped Gilkins. “Mrs. Hale...”

“I’ll tell you why. It was solely to throw suspicion on you. It was worth sacrificing one Double Eagle to point the finger of blame in your direction. But stupid and greedy. It would have been convincing to plant two or three of the gold pieces if it had been any captain but Potts. He was already primed to think the worst of you.”

She paused, thinking of the big empty bottom drawer in McKay’s sea chest, and what it must have held. A surmise began to grow in her brain.

“And the broken china plate,” she went on. “What was that supposed to prove? The same thing. That you were the one who killed McKay. Everybody knew the plate belonged to him. But it’s another example of a stupid person not thinking it through. What were you supposed to do with a white elephant like that? Even unbroken, it would take a confidence man like McKay, with shady confederates in the States, to know how to dispose of that kind of illicit treasure.”

He was not following her, but he looked at her hopefully anyway. “I don’t know about the platter, Mrs. Hale. But what about my knife?”

“Ah yes, the knife.”

“After he found the platter and the gold piece, he confiscated my knife. He told the captain that there was blood on it, and that it clinched the case against me. But, Mrs. Hale, I swear there was no blood on the blade when I gave it to him. I’d just been using it to splice a line.”

She straightened up to leave. “What did the captain do with all this so-called evidence?”

“I suppose it’s still in the steerage.”

“Don’t despair, Mr. Gilkins. Your case is not hopeless.”

She left him locked up as she had found him. She threaded her way through mountains of cargo and found the warren where Gilkins and the carpenter slept. There were two sea charts at opposite ends of the space, and the donkey’s breakfast that served as Gilkins’s bed was next to one of them.

The lid of the chest had been left open and the three pieces of the broken platter were displayed on top of Gilkins’s clothing. Displayed was the only word that Lucy could think of; the pieces were arranged too carefully to be the product of accidental breakage. Gilkins’s ditty box had been emptied of its contents and used as a receptacle for the gold Double Eagle and Gilkins’s clasp knife.

She picked up the knife and examined it. The point of the knife was broken off, as she had known it would be. The blunted end could not have been the cause of the wound that had killed McKay. It would have left a ragged tear instead of the clean puncture she had seen. She turned the knife over in her hand. The bloodstain that was supposed to hang Gilkins was there—a dried oval smear that had been carelessly applied at the center of the blade, nowhere near any possible cutting edge.

“A lubberly job,” she muttered contemptuously under her breath.

She replaced the knife and found her way back to the ladder leading to the after hatch. When she emerged on deck, she saw Dawson coming out of the forecastle. He was followed by Alvah Goodspeed, who wasn’t supposed to be aboard the ship. Willis was close behind him. He and Dawson were having some kind of altercation, to judge by all the angry arm-waving.

Goodspeed broke away and escaped over the side and down the rope ladder to the Mary Small’s longboat. Willis leaned out to watch him go. Lucy could hear him shouting from where she stood.

Dawson saw her, and hurried across the deck to her side. “What was all that about, Mr. Dawson?” she asked.

“Goodspeed got tired of waiting, and climbed aboard to be with his friends in the forecastle. I found him there and had a little talk with him. Willis came by, and was some mad to find that Goodspeed had been talking to the crew. He was going to beat him up. I told him that if anyone was going to beat up my men, it would be me. He didn’t like that.”

Lucy laughed. “Good for Goodspeed. The boy has initiative.”

“He found out some interesting things. For one thing, Willis and McKay had a shouting match a few days ago. They could hear it all the way from the forward house. For another, though Willis had the crew generally terrorized, he left the cook pretty much alone, since the cook isn’t part of either watch. That is, until the ship stopped at Foochow and there was all that pother about that Chinese passenger. About then he started picking on the cook, and the crew had the idea that the old man was frightened out of his wits about something. That Willis was somehow threatening him.”

“Very interesting, Mr. Dawson.”

“But Goodspeed being a clever sort of lad, he somehow got the old man to talk. Maybe the old man thought that since Goodspeed was not a member of the crew, and would soon be off the ship, he could risk talking to him.”

“It must have been an interesting conversation. Goodspeed doesn’t speak Chinese, and I gather that the cook’s fund of pidgin English was limited.”

“Just so. But Goodspeed wormed out of the old man the fact that he had not seen Woo Lin leave the ship the night he disappeared. In fact, Willis had coerced him to say so. What he said to Goodspeed as near as Goodspeed could reproduce it was something like ‘Suppose my tellee cap’n Woo Lin go way on sampan chop-chop, suppose no makee my killee.’”

“A death threat?”

“Looks like it.”

“Thank you, Mr. Dawson. Now I know exactly what happened and how. Let’s go see Captain Potts.”

Dawson kept pace with her as she hurried back to the afterhouse. They found Potts still deep in conversation with Eban. Mrs. Potts was sipping tea, listening but not trying to join them.

Potts was doing his best to ignore her. Lucy said sharply, “Captain, there’s a killer aboard, and it isn’t Gilkins. You must be ready to move quickly.”

“What are you talking about, Mrs. Hale?”

“Do you have a gun?”

That got his attention. “I keep one in my quarters. Why are we talking about guns?”

“You had better get it. And you had better put Mrs. Potts in a safe place.”

That threatened to send Mrs. Potts off into another attack of the vapors, so Lucy took her by the hand and said, “There’s going to be some unpleasantness, my dear. It’s for your own safety.”

Mrs. Potts surprised both her and the captain by rising to her feet without any fuss and saying, “I shall lock myself in the privacy. No, don’t come with me, Phineas. Do as Mrs. Hale says, and get your pistol.”

Potts shook his head in bewilderment, and retrieved a Colt revolver from his desk drawer. He put it in the pocket of his frock coat, the long barrel making it an awkward fit.

Eban and Dawson unobtrusively moved closer together, making a protective triangle around her with Potts. It would have to do. She had known it was going to be dangerous.

The timing was close. Willis returned just then from bullying the men in the forecastle or intimidating the cook or whatever else he thought might do him some good. His eyes darted from Lucy to Eban to Dawson to Potts, whose tense posture had alerted him to his position. “Captain—” he began.

“Don’t bother, Mr. Willis,” Lucy said firmly. “We’ve unraveled the details of Mr. McKay’s death, and they exonerate Mr. Gilkins.”

Willis attempted to dominate the situation in the way he always had. “Captain, we don’t have time for any foolishness. There’s a light breeze starting from the west. It won’t last long. I’ve got to get all hands aloft and hoist canvas. And we’ve got to get these people off the ship.”

He turned to leave, and found Eban standing in his way. “Stay where you are, Mr. Willis,” Captain Potts said. “We’ll listen to Mrs. Hale.”

“First of all,” Lucy said, “you and McKay were in collusion, weren’t you? He knew that Woo Lin had all that gold, and he wasn’t going to let it get away from him. He killed Woo Lin in his cabin and took the gold, after arranging with you to dispose of the body during the night. What did he promise you? A half share of the loot?”

“I don’t have to listen to this,” Willis said, and made another attempt to leave. He found Eban blocking his way again.

Lucy continued. “He needed you to get rid of the body for him because he had no business on deck at night. There was no helmsman because the ship was at anchor, but he couldn’t risk being seen by a member of the crew. You, on the other hand, could order the men about, forbid going on deck for a smoke, and so forth. It wasn’t far from the afterhouse companionway to the rail, and you could keep a mast or a corner of the galley deckhouse between you and the forecastle. Then splash!”

Willis showed the dangerous stillness of a trapped bull. Lucy regarded him thoughtfully before going on.

“But the galley deckhouse was the problem. The cook should have been asleep, but he wasn’t. And he saw you dump Woo Lin’s body overboard. No doubt weighed down by some heavy object not as precious as gold. Mr. McKay had all the gold by that time.”

An animal growl escaped Willis, and Eban and Dawson shifted position slightly to keep him boxed in. Lucy plunged on more confidently.

“The cook was easy to take care of. He was scared half to death. It was no trouble at all to get him to say that he had seen Woo Lin go ashore in one of the sampans surrounding the ship. The sampan inhabitants had seen Woo Lin’s body go over the rail too. But that was no problem. They were frightened also. They didn’t want to be found anywhere near this ship. And they were never going to say a word to the Chinese authorities. It didn’t matter. You were going to leave Foochow with the first land breeze anyway.”

Potts had decided on a show of indignation. “Is this true, Mr. Willis?” he said. Willis gave him a look of contempt, reserving a black scowl for Lucy.

“But McKay kept putting you off about the sharing of the gold, didn’t he?” Lucy went on, undeterred. “The ship continued its coastal stops down the South China Sea, and finally made its passage through the Sunda Straits and set an eastward course for home. And still no sharing of the loot. Very imprudent of McKay. Perhaps he thought he could keep putting you off until it was too late, and get you to settle for a pittance. In the meantime, you had the job of keeping the cook quiet. McKay had committed the murder but you were the one at risk. I can imagine the rage that must have been building up in you.”

Lucy kept one eye on Willis’s right hand. The fingers kept flexing minutely, though Willis himself seemed to be unconscious of it.

“When poor Mr. Gilkins became second mate somewhere past Samoa, you took out some of your rage on him, didn’t you? But your real anger was reserved for McKay. A few days ago it reached the boiling point, and you had a set-to with him. If he’d had any sense, he’d have settled with you then, but he didn’t. So last night, toward the morning watch, you let yourself into his cabin and started beating him up. I saw the marks of the brass knuckles. I don’t know what happened then. Perhaps he tried to fight back. Perhaps your rage spilled over. Perhaps you’d intended to kill him all along. So you finished him off by stabbing him.

“The gold was in the bottom drawer of McKay’s steamer trunk, wasn’t it? Once you had it, you had to move quickly. There was no time to bother about the petty cash in silver, or about McKay’s other valuables. You thought quickly but not intelligently. You grabbed the first thing that might link Mr. Gillis to McKay’s murder—the Chinese serving platter that everyone had seen. And since there was a lot of broken crockery on the floor from the struggle, you smashed the platter into three big pieces. The gold Double Eagle was an afterthought. It would have been smarter to scoop up a handful of the silver coins, but you weren’t thinking clearly. At that point no one but you knew about McKay’s cache of gold, so you were opening a door that it would have been safer to keep closed.”

She gave a weary sigh. Willis had controlled himself longer than she had expected, but he was near his breaking point. But she had done what she had set out to do. Captain Potts was thoroughly absorbed in her account and she could almost see a little window opening in his brain to let in the light.

“But you made a mistake,” she told Willis. “Gilkins’s knife could not possibly have killed McKay, not with the clean wound I saw, because you’d broken the point off. Just as you’d clipped the knives of the rest of the crew. You told us that yourself at dinner last night. And if the stabbing took place during the beating, how is it that you were able to switch from brass knuckles to a knife in the same hand without a pause? You gave us the answer to that too.”

“Damn you to hell!” Willis lunged at Lucy with the Peavey weapon in his hand, knife point forward.

She did not move. Dawson rapped Willis on the side of the head with the barrel of his revolver before he could reach her. Willis went down like a stone. Captain Potts was still struggling to free his pistol from the lining of his pocket.

Eban was kneeling beside Willis. “He’s out. Do you have a pair of manacles here? We’ll trice him up and carry him down to the sail locker. Mr. Gilkins will be glad to be set free.”

Potts was acting stunned. “I’ll...” And then he remembered that he had no mate to carry out his orders.

“Mr. Dawson and I will see to it,” Eban said. “He picked up the Peavey weapon and turned it over in his hands. “There’s still blood on the knife blade,” he said. “We’ll add that to our depositions.”

Mrs. Potts emerged from the convenience. She must have heard most of it from there. “I won’t have that man on the ship,” she quavered. “Not even for one night. I wouldn’t sleep a wink. Please, Phineas!” She was in fluttery mode again.

Poor Captain Potts was at a loss. “What am I do to do? It will be at least a week before we reach the Marquesas.” A new thought struck him. “And I don’t have a first mate to see to the working of the ship.”

Lucy glanced at Eban to see if he was thinking what she was thinking. He nodded at once. “Don’t worry about it, Captain,” she said to Potts. “There’s a solution to everything...”

* * * *

They were in the after-cabin of the Mary Small with Dawson. Eban had opened a bottle of port, and they sat companionably around the gimbled table with their glasses, Dawson only a little awkward at the invitation.

“Well, my dear,” Eban said, “I can only hope we won’t regret taking charge of Mr. Willis.”

“With a fair wind, we should be at Samoa in a week,” she said. “Then we can turn Willis over to the American Consul, General Churchill. Lord only knows how long it would take Captain Potts to reach the Marquesas against a head wind, with all the more opportunity for Willis to escape and do mischief. And then, could he be trusted to turn the depositions over to the U.S. Consul there and swear to them himself? By then, Willis could have him wrapped around his little finger again, and have Gilkins back in the sail locker. The business is far safer in our hands.”

“Perhaps,” he admitted. “You seem to have thought it all out.”

“Besides,” she laughed, “Mrs. Potts will be able to sleep nights.”

“You have a silver tongue, Mrs. Hale,” Dawson said. “I don’t know how you persuaded Potts to elevate Gilkins to first mate after the shabby way he’d been treating him.”

“He had no choice. Gilkins will make a good first mate if he has the opportunity to show his stuff. By the time they reach San Francisco, he’ll be able to get a berth aboard any of the Searsport ships there and ship home as first mate.”

“And then,” Dawson said admiringly, “persuading him to take young Goodspeed on as second mate. I’m sorry to lose him. I had my eye on him myself.”

“Goodspeed jumped at the chance, and I don’t blame him,” Eban said. “You know as well as I do that the Mary Small won’t need a new second mate for some time to come.”

“I hope not,” Dawson said, and they all laughed.

Lucy suppressed a yawn. It had been a long and trying morning. “It will be pleasant to visit Samoa again,” she said. “General Churchill is such a thoughtful host, and so is Mrs. Stevenson. I do hope Mr. Stevenson is well. He was looking so frail the last time we saw him.”

“I’m sure he has many a tale left in him,” Eban said. “Kicking Jack ought to make him a fine villain.”

Dawson raised his glass. “I’ll drink to that.”

Copyright © 2009 Donald Moffitt