Shark Island Read Online Free

the one that’s there, both Forsythe and Kingman could take it over.”
    â€œThat’s a point,” Wiki allowed.
    â€œYou wouldn’t mind moving?”
    â€œIt wouldn’t be the first time,” Wiki pointed out.
    He had lived in the forecastle of the Swallow for the first weeks of voyage, so that another scientific could take over his stateroom. There had been a bit of a problem at first: Knowing that Wiki was the captain’s particular comrade, the sailors had strongly suspected that he was the captain’s spy. After a few days of keeping a low profile he had been accepted, however, and on the whole had liked it there—because he didn’t like sleeping alone. At home in the Bay of Islands his mother’s people slept in a single sleeping whare, so that throughout his childhood the nights had been punctuated with snores, people turning restlessly on their sleeping mats, and the low voices of the wakeful. Indeed, one of the most foreign aspects of life in New England had been having a bedroom to himself.
    So he said quite placidly, “Into the fo’c’sle I go”—but George immediately exclaimed, “I wasn’t thinking of that!”
    â€œSo what, pray, did you have in mind?”
    To Wiki’s surprise, Rochester’s expression became remarkably furtive. Stroking his fluffy fair side whiskers in meditative style, his friend admitted, “I thought perhaps you would share the first mate’s cabin with Midshipman Keith.”
    Wiki burst into a roar of laughter. “So I can coach him in the duties of a first officer?”
    â€œI was actually hoping you would carry out the duties yourself—without young Keith guessing it, of course.”
    â€œYou have to be joking,” Wiki said dryly. “I’m with the expedition as a civilian, remember.”
    â€œThere’s no better seaman on the ocean than you.”
    â€œFiddlesticks.” Wiki might be a consummate seaman on whaleships and in whaleboats, but the ways of the navy were still largely a mystery. When George had originally suggested that he should sign up with the U.S. Navy to come on the exploring expedition, Wiki had flatly refused, which was why the job of civilian linguister had been suggested.
    â€œAnd you’ve been an officer on whalers,” Rochester persuaded.
    â€œWhaling captains don’t care if a man is brown, black, white, or brindle, just so long as he has sharp eyes and wields an unerring lance,” Wiki pointed out rather acidly. He’d seen Fayal Portuguese, black men from the Cape Verde Islands, and Gayhead Indians from Massachusetts walking the quarterdecks of whalers, but everyone knew that the sky would fall before a man of color—a half-caste Polynesian being a very good example—would be awarded rank in the navy.
    â€œIt would be for the good of the brig.”
    â€œNonsense. Midshipman Keith has the makings of a good officer.”
    â€œNot the way I remember it,” George said moodily. When George had been in charge of one of the cannon on the Vincennes, during his demotion there, Keith had proved a useful fount of knowledge about how the iron beast worked; but otherwise his closest acquaintance with the young man had been at a feast in Captain Wilkes’s wardroom where he had shared the bottom of the table with Keith and another noisy young midshipman.
    â€œHe cracks terrible jokes,” he complained. “And has a rotten weak head for Madeira.”
    Wiki’s own experience had been somewhat the same. He had first met Constant Keith and his fellow mids as their specially invited guest in the midshipmen’s mess, which was also where Keith and his crony, a plump lad by the name of Dicken, berthed. He remembered the room vividly, and thought that the young man was going to get quite a shock when he first clapped eyes on his new accommodations—and that he surely had a lot to learn.
    He shrugged, and