Still silence. The two men stood shaking in the gentle wash of the lagoon.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, can’t ya see the joke to it? Right, well we took the pinnace and the foodstuffs and we broke the boat and ruined the food so what are you going to do about it?”
Nothing.
“You don’t own this damn island! I say we deserve another chance!” Cheatum took a couple of tentative steps toward shore. Smithers lagged behind, unsure. “Let’s take a vote. What say, Jack?” Cheatum asked. “Are you the big man now?”
“We took our vote already, remember?” Jack smiled.
“Oh, you’re a hard one, you are. Give us a smile, a drink of water, a biscuit, and all’s forgiven. What say?”
“I say this, you toad: if you and your friend want to stay on this island, you’ll sleep in the trees away from the rest of us and do a full day’s work, including standing watch like the rest of us—but you’ll not get a ration of rum until we take a vote on whether you deserve it. And you’ll apologize to every man who stands here before you. And you’ll do it now.”
Cheatum sputtered for a moment while Smithers spun around to look at the disappearing canoes. “You don’t give a man much—”
“That doesn’t sound like the beginning of an apology to me,” Jack interrupted.
“What could be the consequence if I was to say we’re going to start to walkin’ to shore and get some of that water in the cask, have a bite of that fish cookin’ on that spit, and say to hell with you? What would you say to that, Master Jack?” Cheatum’s voice was strong, his defiance resolute.
“I’d say the first one to take a step toward shore will get a musket ball in the back of his head. And it really doesn’t matter to me which one it is.”
Jack brought the rifle up to his shoulder and pulled the hammer back on the flintlock. The sound seemed like a thunderclap in the still lagoon. Jack knew they both did not doubt they were a short pace away from death.
Then the apologies came quickly, Cheatum practically begging forgiveness. Smithers was less animated, but forthcoming nevertheless. The two men dropped their heads and waded toward shore.
Quince observed the exchange from across the quarterdeck and winked at Jack. “You’ve not made any friends there, lad. I guess you know that sooner or later one or both of those blaggards will come for you.”
“I’ll welcome it.”
The work dragged on for months. Jack seemed to grow stronger both physically and mentally as the two ships slowly mated. The crew melded together well, each man’s skills used to the fullest.
Coop took charge of the actual rebuilding of the Stuyvesant, dismantling board by board the quarterdeck, wheel housing, cabin under the quarterdeck, all the many frames and as many hold stanchions as could be salvaged. He stored these on shore or in the forward deck of the ship. The most difficult job had been dismantling the mizzenmast on the Star and restepping it into the hold of the Dutch ship. Cheatum adjusted the number of lines that ran from the chain wales up into the rigging. He was making an effort to fit in under Jack’s jaundiced eye.
Quince spent much of his waking hours wandering about the Stuyvesant, coordinating the work on materials that needed attending. Jack worked alongside him, learning about command and the everyday chores of running a ship.
“You’ll need to start thinking in terms of the rudder,” Quince told him.
“The rudder? What do you mean?” Jack’s head was buried in a ledger.
“We do need one—or hadn’t you thought it necessary?”
“Well, yes, of course. But I just thought that when the rest of the work was done, Coop would build one from the timbers that were left.”
“Not quite that easy, lad. It’s a complicated task to fashion one that works well. Also, the hardware. The pintles snapped on the Stuyvesant’s rudder, and we’d be hard put to replace them here. We’ll need to retrieve the rudder from the Star.”
“But the Star’s rudder was torn off when we were swept into the lagoon,” Jack said. “God knows how deep the water is where she lay.”
“Nevertheless, we’ll need that rudder. See to it, would you, lad?”
Here we go again, thought Jack. They would need to move the Stuyvesant out fifty yards closer to the entrance of the lagoon, to use it as a platform over the dive site, and then they’d need a lot of help. It would be a deep dive. Very deep.
Jack figured it would take one set of lines to set the hawser around the pintles, a set of heavy brass pins that fit through the holes in the gudgeon, a bronze fitting secured to the ship’s sternpost, something like the hinge on a door. The rudder, controlled by the wheel, was the most critical moving part of a sailing ship—even minor variations in the angle of the water rushing by it could affect the direction of the vessel. Assuming he could get the heavy hawser attached to the rudder, they’d need all the men heaving on a capstan to pull it to the surface.
Jack, feeling strangely euphoric, studied Klett in the glow of the candle. The big man, breathing deeply in the confines of the bell, returned his stare, the flame reflecting dully from his eyes. They were both catching their breath after the long swim down. The descent was uneventful—an inverted wine cask rigged by the natives about halfway down allowed them to grab an extra breath or two, and they had no problems this time clearing their ears. In fact, the deeper they went, the less they had to deal with the ear pain.
Maybe it was because Klett was such an imposing figure, a bare chested Scandinavian Thor, that it struck Jack as funny when the man finally started to speak. Klett sounded as if he were quacking his words, like a duck. Jack was momentarily incapacitated, reduced to tears—he was risking his life almost twenty-five fathoms below the surface in the company of a man who quacked.
The minor voice changes they had observed in the bell at shallower depths were now greatly exaggerated. When Jack tried to comment on the matter, he found he could do little better. Klett, hearing Jack, first started to smile then took on a very solemn expression as if he were a schoolboy working on a difficult math problem. Jack felt himself immediately propelled into another round of hysterics. “Crissake, Klett, don’t start trying to think, we’ll be dead men for sure.”
Enough. He had to gather his wits. Jack forced himself to stare at the side of the bell and slow his breathing. Okay, he thought. What we essentially are is drunk. He realized that the light-headedness they had experienced when working at shallower depths was present here without any exertion at all. And the swim down had worsened it, although his head was now clearing some. Physical activity at these depths greatly aggravated the problem they were having with giddiness; the air seemed to be richer—and sustained them longer—but also made them feel like they had chugged several cups of grog.
Jack felt a surge of confidence. This was remarkable, given where they were. Maybe too remarkable. Somewhere in the back of his mind a warning was sounding. This was a hell of a bad place to start getting cocky. Hey friend, you are one small mistake from eternity. Don’t get careless. Luckily, the task they had to accomplish was simple; only the environment challenged them. Klett would leave the barrel and carry a light guideline from the bell to the rudder, which they knew was nearby. The rudder had disengaged at a place easily recognizable from surface features, and Matoo, one of the native divers, had seen it far below him only minutes after the surface divers had started looking for it. Once the guideline was in place, Jack was to take the bitter end of a heavier line that extended all the way to the surface, follow the guideline to the rudder, and tie the heavy line to one of the brass pintles with a “wrap and bowline,” Quince had said. Simple enough.