Pike managed to get his dubious cargo to the ship without Robbie, though when Robbie arrived back, after another hour or two of wandering, and pitched in to help with the loading, the skipper was uncharacteristically silent.
The Sea Tiger then made good passage down through the Indian Ocean and through the Sunda Straits. They put in at Anjer for orders, which remained unchanged, and to take on some additional cargo—this time perfectly ethical goods. A throng of Malays swarmed aboard, and, dressed as they were in their bright native costume, combined with a bizarre assortment of western garb, the place for an hour or so resembled more a carnival than a ship. When the loading was done, the men bought various trinkets from the natives, and flirted with scantily dressed women along dockside, and were not altogether pleased with having to set sail early the following morning without shore leave. Several grumbled and talked about jumping, but nothing came of it.
It was mid-May when they sailed into the China seas, met by the southeast monsoon. With winds often contrary, they made slow passage through the South China Sea, which in itself was hazardous enough. Dotted with treacherous reefs and many islands with confusing channels, it was often the most difficult stretch of an ocean voyage to the East.
But Pike had been this way many times in his fifty years at sea, and was perhaps as good as any pilot. He often boasted, “I can make me way through here blindfolded!” Yet since leaving Calcutta he had resumed his habit of remaining below, and Robbie suspected he usually had a bottle for company.
Robbie was almost glad Pike had been keeping to himself. Since Calcutta it had been difficult to face him. It was as though his eyes had been opened, and now he perceived in all its stark reality the chilling bitterness in the man. Whether it had been there all along and he was only now noticing it, or if the skipper had been overtaken by some new mood swing, Robbie couldn’t tell. But whatever the case, Robbie sensed that Pike’s sour disposition was aimed directly at him. There were still occasionally friendly moments, but they were so exaggerated as to be obviously hollow. Had they always been thus? Had Robbie only imagined a friendship that was not really there?
When Robbie had all but decided his imagination was making more of the problems with Pike than really existed, another argument flared up that only cemented its reality more firmly in Robbie’s mind.
A few days beyond the Karimata Straits south of Borneo, Robbie was supervising cleanup after a minor leak had been discovered and pitched in the forward cargo hold. Several crates had had to be moved to avoid water damage, and Robbie had his shoulder squarely against one when Pike burst through the hatch. He saw the activity about the unmarked crates that had been the object of the midnight delivery before their departure from England.
“What’s going on here?” he bellowed.
Robbie looked up, brushing a sleeve across his sweaty brow. “We just ran down a small leak,” Robbie replied, panting with the weight of the crate.
“Why wasn’t I notified?”
Robbie shoved the crate into place, straightened up his sore back and faced Pike. The skipper looked a wreck, worse than Robbie had yet seen him. His hair was tangled and matted with perspiration, his eyes a sick mixture of yellow and red, and his clothing had been neither washed nor changed for days. A surge of pity rushed through Robbie at the sight of the wasted, one-legged man.
“You were—” Robbie began gently, “—that is, I didn’t think it was necessary to disturb you. Your cargo from Calcutta is safe and dry in the rear. I checked it earlier. And there was nothing here but these crates. I didn’t think you’d—”
“I bet you didn’t!” Pike growled, seething. He poked his crutch at the crate Robbie had been trying to shift to a better position. “What’re ye doin’ with that?” he spat.
The question hardly seemed necessary, with the floor wet from the leak. “We’ve got to shift things around as best we can to prevent water damage,” said Robbie.
Even as they spoke two of the other men were approaching with a like crate hoisted on their shoulders. Anxious to finish and have done with the job in the stifling hold as soon as possible, they were hurrying more than was advisable, and lost their balance as they tried to place their load on top of the other crate. They stumbled forward, the crate slipping from their grasp.
Robbie jumped immediately to their assistance, while Pike struggled to get out of the way, but even Robbie could not prevent the crate from crashing to the deck. The wooden box split open and the contents spilled out onto the floor.
Robbie gasped. Three carbine rifles slid from the opening in the box. After a moment he pulled his eyes away from the weapons to meet Pike’s gaze.
“Ye done yer work here!” Pike shouted to the other men. “Get back up on deck!” He waved his crutch to emphasize his order, which was obeyed without question.
Robbie did not budge.
“These aren’t on the manifest,” he said calmly. Still his strong sense of loyalty would not let him think the worst.
“Don’t you start moralizin’ with me!” warned Pike, pushing past Robbie and attempting to shove the guns back into their carton with his crutch. “You think anyone makes money these days haulin’ sheet iron and cloth!”
“Is money that important to you, Pike?” asked Robbie. “You’re jeopardizing the whole crew by dealing in this contraband. Or am I the only one in the dark about this?”
“No one’s in jeopardy! Ain’t nothin’ dangerous about it!”
“At least opium’s legal. This is—”
“So what’re ye plannin’ to do about it?” Pike stepped close to Robbie, forcing his back up against the wooden crates.
“You won’t get this past Chinese customs.”
“Ah, ’tis perfect for ye, ain’t it, laddie!” Pike’s tone was filled both with ire and irony. “Ye’d like nothin’ better than to sing like a bird to them.”
“Ben, how can you say that? I’ve been loyal to you.”
“Oh, ye’ve been wantin’ to get at me for years . . .” Suddenly the old man’s hand shot up, grasping the dagger he had once used against Robbie. He tore it from its scabbard at his side and before Robbie realized what was happening had its deadly tip pressed against Robbie’s throat. “It ain’t enough you took my leg—”
He broke off suddenly, his voice shaking with passion.
Even with the knife so dangerously close, Robbie could easily have overpowered him. But he stood as one stunned, and could not move. He felt a small trickle of blood running down his throat where the razor-sharp dagger had sliced the skin. Yet there was no pain, and still he made no move.
The sight of the blood seemed to sober Pike back to reality. He stared horrified, and stepped back.
“Ye’re just like him,” he muttered. “What am I supposed to do?” But the skipper’s words were not addressed to Robbie but rather to himself, or to some unseen demon hovering at his shoulder. He jerked around, still mumbling unintelligibly, and stumbled away, climbing awkwardly from the hold.
Robbie made no move to help him, still too benumbed to move from where he stood. He hardly noticed that for the first time Pike was not his agile self. He looked like a decrepit old man hobbling on a crutch and wooden leg, hardly a threatening adversary. Yet the madman had come within an inch of killing Robbie.
Mechanically he brought his trembling hand to his throat. It was bleeding more than he had realized. Still he stood, until his practical nature came suddenly awake and realized it must tend to the damage the dagger had done.
As he made his way above deck, Pike was nowhere in sight. Robbie descended again and headed toward the galley, hoping he would encounter no one en route. But rounding a blind corridor, his instincts too dulled to react quickly, he almost ran into the Vicar.
“Good Lord!” Drew exclaimed. “What happened to you?”
“Nothing,” Robbie replied in a dry, taut voice. “Just a little accident.”
“It’s the skipper, isn’t it?”
Without answering, Robbie brushed past him and into the galley. Drew followed close on his heels. Johnnie was not there, and for that, at least, Robbie was thankful. He was in no mood for the cook’s constant chatter, and was relieved not to have one more source of rumors to head off. He opened a cupboard and fumbled about unsuccessfully through boxes and containers.
“Let me help you,” said Drew, his voice stronger than Robbie had ever heard it. The words sounded like an order. He nudged Robbie aside, then quickly found the proper supplies. Soaking a piece of cotton in some pungent liquid, he reached up and began to clean Robbie’s wound.
Robbie winced, but offered no further objection, passively accepting Drew’s ministration.
“He’s going to kill you someday, Robbie,” said the Vicar, applying a bandage once the wound had been cleansed.
Robbie made no reply.
“And you’ll continue to take it, because of your inane sense of loyalty, until suddenly it goes too far,” Drew went on. “My advice to you is—”
“I didn’t ask for your advice,” cut in Robbie sharply.
“Well, you’re getting it anyway! You’d better desert at the next port and just pray you make it that far.”
“That would be your advice,” replied Robbie sarcastically.
“I’ve never denied my cowardice. And you can think of me what you will. I deserve your scorn. But your situation has nothing to do with courage or cowardliness. It would simply be downright foolhardy to stay aboard a ship where the master has made two attempts on your life, not to mention the boatswain.”
“It wasn’t like that with Pike.”
“Then what was it like?”
Drew expected no answer to his probing question. And Robbie was not willing to form one. There could be only one answer, and that was to be found in Benjamin Pike’s face. Robbie shuddered still when he thought of his look. And he knew, though he might not be willing to admit it, that there was indeed murder in Pike’s wild eyes.
For the next several days he avoided both Pike and Drew. When he did run into the skipper, Pike seemed to have forgotten the entire sordid incident. But he had not been able to erase the Vicar’s words from his mind: You’d better desert at the next port and just pray you make it that far.
It would not be long before they would be making port. In Shanghai he’d have no problem signing aboard another vessel, a foreign one, perhaps—German or American. It didn’t matter which or where it was bound, as long as it was far from Pike and, if he was lucky, away from some of the mental confusion of late. He wouldn’t be the first sailor to jump ship, and many with far less cause.
Late one evening Robbie went on deck to try to clear his thoughts. He stood for several moments on the forecastle, then walked across to the rail. It was the midnight watch, and all was quiet except for a brisk breeze playing along their starboard quarter. The Tiger made her way with a bone in her teeth, as they said, the white water at her bow shimmering fluorescent in the light from the half-moon. There wouldn’t be many more days like this with the prevalent southeast monsoon. He had not even noticed the mournful tones of Torger’s harmonica. But now the soft sounds began to filter across the night into his ear.
How could Overlie have so accurately probed his present mood, thought Robbie. And how did he always manage to know the perfect Scottish or English tune?
The minor-key melody was familiar to Scotsmen the world over, carrying the melancholy lament of their own favorite poet throughout the ends of the earth. Ah, Mr. Burns, thought Robbie of his famous namesake, how could you know so well the heart’s call of a roving Scotsman?
The harmonica’s tone was louder now. Did Torger know what he was thinking, wondered Robbie? Had he sensed his homesickness? Or was he merely an unknowing instrument in some divine plan of which he knew nothing? A lump rose in Robbie’s throat as he turned his gaze back out to the sea, the words to the sad pibroch stinging his brain out of memory for his beloved homeland:
My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart’s in the Highlands a-chasing the deer,
A-chasing the wild deer and following the roe—
My heart’s in the Highlands wherever I go!
Yes, it would be easy to desert right now. Eventually he’d find his way home . . . to Scotland . . . to the Highlands. Oddly, he had never realized how much home had meant to him. Scott had been right when he had penned the words about a man’s soul burning within him upon seeing his native land after “wandering on a foreign soil.” Though Jamie had taught him a deeper appreciation for many things, and for the land of his birth through her own veneration for her beloved mountain of Donachie, somehow tonight it seemed more real than ever. Now that his world—the world he loved, a world of travel and adventure and excitement—appeared to be crumbling around him, Scotland seemed a refuge.
Oh, how he longed for those grand Highland hills at this moment—always solid and barren and unchanging!
Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,
The birth-place of valour, the country of worth!
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.
How many times had he, unthinking, unfeeling, bid farewell to that dear land, that place of his birth? In all his youthful years he had not quieted his restless heart long enough to feel the security of his roots. He was, after all, a world traveler, a seeker of adventure, a roamer his mother had called him. Robbie Taggart, Highland sailor, soldier of fortune! But where had his lust for adventure brought him now? Standing on the deck of the Sea Tiger, Robbie Taggart was more lonely of heart than he had ever thought possible to one such as himself.
Oh, what he wouldn’t give at this moment to be able to stoop down and grasp a handful of black Highland peat, to twist off a tiny branch of blooming heather from its wiry root to give to a passing child, to look upon the homey face of a country woman tending her small garden of “tatties” and kail outside her cottage of gray granite blocks and black slate roof. What wouldn’t he give for just one pass through the streets of Aberdeen! Or one glass of ale from the hand of Sadie Malone!
There he had known no confusion, no loneliness, no deception. There everything had been simple.
Farewell to the mountains high cover’d with snow,
Farewell to the straths and green valleys below,
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods,
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods!
Robbie closed his eyes and sighed deeply, still fighting that strange sensation in his throat. He could picture the very stream old Robert Burns must have been writing about! There was just such a one near his mother’s house. In the spring, the amber, peat-stained water rushed down from the rain-soaked mountains with a vengeance, boiling and frothing white, as if to impress the very life of the rugged Highlands into every inch of land below. He had foolishly tried to swim the raging torrent the last time he was there, and had been nearly frozen as well as dashed to bits against the rocks in the swirling tide. What a frightening and glorious memory it was! Oh, for a splash of that crisp, icy water against his face! Could it be possible that it was even more delightful than sea spray?
Robbie sighed again. The memory only deepened his sickness for home. But he knew, as certainly as his feet were perched on that gently heaving deck, that he would not soon lay eyes on his Highland home. Whether it was for loyalty, misplaced perhaps as the Vicar implied, or whether it stemmed from his own insatiable desire to roam, he would not desert the Sea Tiger, nor her perilous master. He did not know what he should do, if anything, about Pike’s larcenous business dealings. Nor did he know what to make of Pike’s bizarre treatment of him. Whether he was actually capable of murder, Robbie could only guess. It seemed Pike hated him one moment, loved him as a son the next. He had asked himself a hundred times what was the root of Pike’s seemingly possessed behavior. But still no logical answer presented itself. Perhaps, too, it was because he had to find the answer to that question that he was compelled to remain aboard, and loyal to the very man who might one day kill him.
My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart’s in the Highlands a-chasing the deer,
A-chasing the wild deer and following the roe—
My heart’s in the Highlands, wherever I go!
As Torger’s harmonica drew out the final strain and then faded into silence on breezes of the night, Robbie’s heart was pierced through with the pain only a wanderer could know—the longing for something he knew he would never have, for something he was not even certain he’d be happy with once it was obtained.
Robbie was being borne on the winds of the sea toward a land he did not yet know, toward a future he could not foresee, toward a place which would satisfy the longing of his heart. His new homeland would little resemble the rugged land of his birth. It was a Kingdom not made with the hands of men toward which he was bound. And thus it was Homeland for all the people of the earth, of which the roots of one’s earthly fathers and mothers are but a faint and nostalgic echo.