Deadly Shoals Read Free Page B

just lately, but only six years ago the Penguin sailed into Stonington with fourteen hundred pelts from round these parts, and since then there’s been a lot of interest in the coast. Just one month ago, I heard that the New York brig Athenian did very well indeed over the past coupla seasons, and so I thought I might as well try a venture of my own. The season don’t finish till March, you know! But I need a tender to do it. Adams had a schooner for sale, so I agreed to buy her, even if she were a bit pricey.”
    â€œBut that’s a devil of a lot of money to hand over to a Río Negro trader, American or not!”
    â€œAdams has never cheated me before,” the whaling master protested. “And I’ve been buying his stores for the past three years. All the whalers use him when they recruit for salt beef on this part of the coast—he’s built up a good little business.”
    â€œAnd he just happened to have a schooner for sale?”
    â€œIt wasn’t his vessel,” Stackpole said defensively. “He told me he was acting as the agent for the captain of the Athenian. The brig’s holds are full, so they are heading home. Naturally, they wanted to sell their tender first—a solid little schooner, ideal for me. I gave Adams the wherewithal to buy her, and then told him to provision her, load her with salt for curing the skins, and hire a gang of Indians for sealing hands. I’d be back before long, I said, to take over the craft and settle up accounts. But when I arrived up the river with three spare hands to collect the schooner and sail her downriver, it was to find he’d vanished, along with my cash!”
    Wiki asked curiously, “Did you really pay him in cash?”
    Stackpole turned and looked him up and down, from wild black ringlets to bare brown feet. Then he turned away again, saying contemptuously, “Say sir when you speak to me, boy.”
    George flushed. “I’m sorry, sir, I should have introduced you before,” he snapped. “This is Mr. Coffin, the expedition linguister.”
    â€œHe’s— what ?”
    â€œWiki Coffin is a member of the scientific corps.”
    The whaling master looked at Wiki again, eyebrows high as he surveyed his muscular, dungaree-clad frame again. “But how can a Pacific Islander—a kernacker! —be a scientist, for God’s sake?”
    â€œNot only is Wiki Coffin a scientist, but he could be exactly the man you need,” Rochester loftily informed him. “He’s the representative of U.S. law and order with the expedition, authorized by the sheriff’s department of Portsmouth, Virginia.”
    â€œWhat the hell are you talking about?”
    George said to Wiki in tones of sorely tried patience, “Could I trouble you to fetch your warrant, old chap? It seems we have to prove our point.”
    Wiki paused, interested enough by the contradictions of this strangely blatant theft to repeat his question to Stackpole. “Did you really give him the thousand dollars in cash?” he asked.
    The whaling master frowned, but admitted, “I gave him a draft on my Connecticut bank, payable to bearer.”
    Wiki’s lips pursed up in a silent whistle as he contemplated the interesting implications of this. “And the schooner has disappeared, too?”
    â€œOf course,” said Stackpole sourly.

Two
    January 25, 1839
    At eight bells—four the next morning—the Trojan whaleboat arrived at the starboard rail of the Swallow. Wiki, who was ready and waiting as arranged, jumped into it. The six men of the boat’s crew looked at him, and he nodded in return. Two of them, he noticed with interest, were Pacific Islanders— kanaka, a word that Stackpole pronounced “kernacker,” Yankee fashion. Remembering how the whaling master had disdainfully addressed him as “boy,” he wondered how they were treated on board the Trojan .