Medusa

The captain shook his head. “Never mind. We’d best get back to the ship while we can still walk.”

Not long after dusk, the mates fell sick, and Dobbs, too, succumbed to the disease. With Caleb’s help, the captain dragged his mattress onto the quarterdeck. He told the green hand to carry on as best he could.

Caleb somehow remained untouched by the plague. He carried buckets of water to the foredeck to cure the terrible thirst of his crewmates and kept an eye on Dobbs and the officers. Dobbs alternated between shivers and sweats. He lost consciousness, and, when he awakened, he saw torches moving about the deck. One torch came closer, and its flickering flame illuminated the garishly tattooed face of a man, one of a dozen or so natives armed with spears and cutting tools used to strip blubber.

“Hello?” said the islander, who had high cheekbones and long black hair.

“You speak English?” Dobbs managed.

The man lifted his spear. “Good harpoon man.”

Dobbs saw a ray of hope. In spite of his savage appearance, the native was a fellow whaler. “My men are sick. Can you help?”

“Sure,” the native said. “We got good medicine. Fix you up. You from New Bedford?”

Dobbs nodded.

“Too bad,” the native said. “New Bedford men take me. I jump ship. Come home.” He smiled, showing pointed teeth. “No medicine. We watch you burn up from fire sickness.”

A quiet voice said, “Are you all right, Captain?”

Caleb had emerged from the shadows and now stood on the deck in the glare of torchlight.

The native leader’s eyes widened and he spat out a single word.

“’Atua!”

The captain had picked up a smattering of Oceanic and knew that ’atua was the islanders’ word for “a bad ghost.” Rising onto his elbows, Dobbs said, “Yes. This is my ’atua. Do what he says or he will curse you and everyone on your island.”

Caleb had sized up the situation and went along with the captain’s bluff.

Lifting his arms wide above his head for dramatic effect, he said, “Put your weapons down or I will use my power.”

The native leader said something in his language and the other men dropped their killing tools to the deck.

“You said you could do something about the fire sickness,” the captain said. “You have medicine. Help my men or the ’atua will be angry.”

The islander seemed unsure of what to do, but his doubts vanished when Caleb removed his hat and the silky white hair caught the tropical breeze. The islander issued a curt order to the others.

The captain blacked out again. His slumber was filled with weird dreams, including one in which he felt a cold, wet sensation and a sting on his chest. When he blinked his eyes open, it was daytime, and crewmen were moving around the deck. The ship was rigged with full sail against a clear blue sky, and waves slapped the hull. White- plumed birds wheeled overhead.

The first mate saw Dobbs struggling to sit up and came over with a jug of water. “Feeling better, Captain?”

“Aye,” the captain croaked between sips of water. The fever had gone, and his stomach felt normal except for a gnawing hunger. “Help me to my feet.”

The captain stood on wobbly legs, with the mate holding an arm to steady him. The ship was on the open sea with no island in view.

“How long have we been under way?”

“Five hours,” the mate said. “It’s a miracle. The men came out of their fever. Rashes disappeared. Cook made soup, and they got the ship moving.”

The captain felt an itch on his chest and lifted his shirt. The rash was gone, replaced by a small red spot and a circle of irritation a few inches above his navel.

“What about the natives?” Dobbs said.

“Natives? We saw no natives.”

Dobbs shook his head. Did he dream it all in his delirium? He told the mate to fetch Caleb. The green hand made his way to the quarterdeck. He wore a straw hat to protect his bleached skin from the sunlight. A smile crossed his pale, wrinkled face when he saw the captain had recovered.

“What happened last night?” Dobbs said.

Caleb told the captain that after Dobbs had passed out, the natives had left the ship and returned carrying wooden buckets that emitted a pale blue luminescence. The natives went from man to man. He couldn’t see what they were doing. Then the natives left. Soon after, the crew started waking up. The captain asked Caleb to help him down to his cabin. He eased into his chair and opened the ship’s log.

“A strange business,” the captain started. Although his hands were still shaking, he wrote down every detail as he remembered it. Then he gazed with longing at a miniature portrait of his pretty young wife, and he finished his entry with a single declaration: “Going home!”

FAIRHAVEN, MASSACHUSETTS, 1878

The French mansard-roofed mansion known to the townspeople as the Ghost House stood back from a secluded street behind a screen of dark-leafed beech trees. Guarding the long driveway were the bleached jawbones of a sperm whale, placed upright in the ground so their tapering tips met in a Gothic arch.

On a golden October day, two boys stood under the whalebone arch, daring each other to sneak up the driveway and look in the windows. Neither youngster would take the first step; they were still trading taunts when a shiny black horse-drawn carriage clattered up to the gate.

The driver was a heavyset man whose expensive russet suit and matching derby hat failed to cloak his villainous looks. His rough-hewn features had been sculpted by the hard knuckles of the opponents he had faced back in his prizefighting days. Age had not been kind to the misshapen nose, the cauliflower ears, and the eyes squeezed to nailheads by scar tissue.

The man leaned over the reins and glared down at the boys. “What’re you lads doing here?” he growled like the old pit bull he resembled. “Up to no good, I suppose.”

“Nothin’,” one boy said with averted eyes.

“Is that a fact?” the man sneered. “Well, I wouldn’t be hanging around here if I was you. There’s a mean ghost lives in that house.”

“See,” said the other boy. “Told you so.”

“Listen to your friend. Ghost is seven feet tall. Hands like pitchforks,” the man said, injecting a tremor into his voice. “Got fangs that could rip boys like you in half just so he could suck out your guts.” He pointed his whip toward the house and his mouth dropped open in horror. “He’s coming! By God, he’s coming. Run! Run for your lives!”

The man roared with laughter as the boys raced off like startled rabbits. He gave the reins a flick and urged the horse through the whalebone gate. He tied up in front of the big house, which resembled an octagonal wedding cake layered with red and yellow frosting. He was still chuckling to himself as he climbed the porch steps and announced his arrival using the brass door knocker shaped like a whale’s tail.

Footsteps approached. A man opened the door, and a smile crossed his pallid face.

“Strater, what a pleasant surprise,” Caleb Nye said.

“Good to see you too, Caleb. Been meaning to stop by, but you know how it is.”

“Of course,” Caleb said. He stepped aside. “Come in, come in.”

Caleb’s skin had grown even whiter over the years. Age had added wrinkles to skin that looked like parchment to begin with, but, despite his premature aging, he still retained the boyish smile and puppy-dog eagerness that had endeared him to his whaling colleagues.

He led the way to a spacious library lined with floor-to-ceiling bookcases. The wall sections not devoted to books on the subject of whaling were decorated with large, colorful posters that had the same motif: a man caught in the jaws of a sperm whale.

Strater went up to one particularly lurid poster. The artist had made liberal use of crimson paint to depict blood flowing from the harpoon shafts into the water. “We made a bundle of money out of that Philadelphia show.”