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Monk could imagine it. A ship at sea, probably quite a small one, off course. No land in sight. Wind rising and sea getting choppy, captain sure they were on course, first mate sure they were not, emotions high. “Where were you?” he asked.
Hooper’s eyes were fixed on something only he could see. “I said we were off the Azores. Atlantic coast, west of Africa. Ledburn was sure we were north of that.”
“Who was right?”
Hooper moved uncomfortably in his chair. “That doesn’t matter…”
Monk took a breath to argue and realized at that moment it didn’t. It was Hooper’s story, and the pain was very deep. Monk waited in silence.
Finally, Hooper began again. “The wind was rising and it was getting cloudy. Hard to get a position from the stars. I wanted to go further out to sea, until we could be sure. Ledburn said he was sure.
“The ship was beginning to pitch,” Hooper went on. “Climbing the peaks and hitting the troughs hard, sails bellied out, too much canvas up. Racing before the wind. If she went over that, broke a mast, there’d be nothing and no one to help us. Nothing on God’s earth as lonely as a ship out of sight of land. And Ledburn was the sort of man who couldn’t admit a mistake. There was still time then to put it right, but he insisted he was right in the first place.”
“Was it such a big error that it mattered, in the face of a storm?” Monk asked, when Hooper remained silent.
“It wasn’t the original mistake,” Hooper said slowly. “We would have found her back on course when the weather cleared. It isn’t the latitude that’s difficult; it’s the longitude, how far we were from the coast. He altered other figures to make them tally with the error.”
Monk began to see a glimpse of something much uglier.
“When the storm blew out,” Hooper said, “he corrected for the error. But we were at least fifty miles further east, and after running before the wind for a day and a half, we were well to the south, too.”
“What happened?” Monk asked.
“One lie to cover another,” Hooper said. “I could see he was afraid. The original error wasn’t so bad, but he compounded it. No one dared tell him. He made it a question of obedience and loyalty. He couldn’t admit he had ever been wrong. One man questioned him in front of others, and he had the man put in the brig for a night. That was it for the crew. They couldn’t take it anymore. It…it frightened him, and he became belligerent. I tried to reason with him. Fisk tried. He was an ordinary seaman, but he knew his job. The crew started to divide between being for the captain and…and for me.” He stopped again, still not looking at Monk, as if to do so would require a response he was not yet ready to face.
“Which side was Fisk on?” Monk said quietly.
“He knew the captain was wrong,” Hooper replied. “But there was one man, the second mate, Chester, who was in Ledburn’s father’s pocket, and he backed the captain all the way. I spoke to him, quietly, aside on deck at night. Told him how far off course we were, and that if we went on this way, we’d be too close to the coast of Africa. He said that to go against the captain was mutiny. And that’s a hanging offense. I told him that if we drowned, it would hardly matter.”
Monk’s fingernails were digging into the palms of his hands, but this time he did not interrupt. He saw Hooper sitting forward, his shoulders hunched so tight his muscles must ache.
“I don’t know if he thought it would all sort out, or if he wanted a fight,” Hooper said. “He told Ledburn, and like a fool, Ledburn didn’t look at it again and recalculate our position. We would all have been relieved and let him pretend what he wanted, just to get back on course now. But he accused us of trying to start a mutiny. Said I should apologize, admit he was correct, and take orders accordingly.” Hooper closed his eyes. “I stood there on deck. It was dawn, sun coming up, light on the waves, bright and sharp. I could see the coast of Africa on the eastern skyline. My sight was something special then, although some of the other men could, too. Fisk could, I knew. They were all waiting to see what I would do—see if I had the guts to speak the truth or not. I had to. Ledburn put his telescope to his eye. ‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘Cloud bank, man. Nothing more. There’s no land there.’ ‘Yes, there is, sir,’ I said. ‘We’re off course about a hundred miles too far east. Get any further and the current will carry us in.’ That was the truth.”
Monk held his breath.
“He ordered me flogged,” Hooper said in just above a whisper, “in front of all the men.”
“And…?” Monk prompted in the silence. He knew that a naval flogging was brutal, even fatal at times.
“They hesitated to take up the lash. It was Fisk who stepped up and refused. Then another, and another…and…”
Monk could feel the sweat break out on his skin. Hooper was here; he had survived. So had Fisk. But who had not? He was terrified Hooper was going to say they had killed the captain somehow. “Go on!” he said sharply.
It was hard; the memory of it still had the ability to scour deep with pain. This was visible in Hooper’s eyes, the pallor of his face, the tension in his whole body. Monk was making him relive the worst memory of his life. Like Monk’s own memory, always just out of sight, beyond all but nightmare’s reach, there was something terrible lying there, waiting to come back when you least expected it.
“Hooper…” he said more gently.
“There was a fight,” Hooper resumed the story. “First it was the captain and Fisk, then others joined in. I tried to stop them before someone got killed or we were so busy fighting we lost control of the ship. The wind was rising, not a lot, but there was a storm on the horizon and closing on us fast.
“The captain was driven backward by the men, up onto the poop deck. I went after him, facing back to the men, trying to stop them from attacking again, but they were frightened. They had started a mutiny, and there’s only one way that could end: hanging from the yardarm, kicking the air as the noose tightened around your neck. The captain was terrified, lashing out at the men closest to him. Some of them hung back, undecided still. He had tried to cover his lies, and nobody knew what to believe. It was all so…stupid! If he had just admitted his first mistake, the rest would never have happened…” Hooper’s voice broke and he had to struggle to control himself.
Monk waited. He wanted to reach out and touch him, express his understanding, because no words would do. But it was too intimate a gesture.
“He didn’t trust me either,” Hooper went on suddenly. “He lunged at me and we struggled together for several moments. I was shouting at him. But I don’t think
he could hear me above the other men or the wind in the ropes. He wouldn’t let go of me, punching me. I had to hit him back or he’d have decked me. He was strong. Then the other men would have swarmed up onto the poop deck, and God knows what would have happened. They would have killed him, and we’d all have been hanged.”
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “He slipped and went down over the rail. His own weight behind the blow carried him over. I went to grab him. I caught one of his arms and managed to lean over and catch the other. He was flailing around, terrified. He thought I was going to drop him deliberately. I wasn’t.” Suddenly Hooper opened his eyes and stared straight at Monk. “I did everything I could! But he slipped out of my grasp and went into the sea. There was nothing I could do…any of us could do. We were running before the wind and it would have taken us fifteen minutes, with most of the men up the masts, to shorten sail and come about. We tried, but it was too late, far too late. There was no sign of him. We waited as long as we could, but the storm was coming in, and we had to reef in and run before it. We reported him lost at sea in the storm.”
