Medusa

PROLOGUE

THE PACIFIC OCEAN, 1848

IN ALL HIS YEARS SAILING THE WORLD’S OCEANS, CAPTAIN Horatio Dobbs had never known the sea to be so barren. The captain paced the quarterdeck of the New Bedford whaling ship Princess, gray eyes darting like twin lighthouse beams to every point of the compass. The Pacific was a disk-shaped blue desert. No spouts feathered the horizon. No grinning porpoises danced off the bow. No flying fish skittered above the wave tops. It was as if life in the sea had ceased to exist.

Dobbs was considered a prince in the New Bedford whaling hierarchy. In the waterfront bars where hard-eyed harpooners gathered, or in the parlors of the rich Quaker shipowners on Johnny Cake Hill, it was said that Dobbs could sniff out a sperm whale at fifty miles. But only the rank smell of a simmering mutiny had filled the captain’s nostrils of late.

Dobbs had come to dread having to record each day of failure in the ship’s logbook. The entry he had penned in his log the night before summed up the troubles he faced. He had written:

March 27, 1848. Fresh breeze, SW. Not a whale in sight. Hard luck hangs over voyage like a stinking fog. No oil in all of Pacific Ocean for poor ship Princess. Trouble brewing in the fo’c’sle.

Dobbs had a clear view of the length of the ship from the elevated quarterdeck, and he would have had to be blind not to see the averted gazes and the furtive glances from his crewmen. The ship’s officers had reported with alarm that the usual grumbling among the forecastle crew had become more frequent and vehement. The captain had instructed his mates to keep pistols ready and never to leave the deck unattended. No hand had yet been lifted in mutiny, but in the dark and dingy forecastle, the cramped living quarters located where the bow narrowed, men were heard to whisper that the ship’s luck might change if the captain were to meet with an accident.

Dobbs was six foot four and had a profile like a cliff. He was confident he could put down a mutiny, but that was the least of his worries. A captain who returned to port without a profitable cargo of oil had committed the unpardonable sin of costing the ship’s owners their investment. No crew worth its salt would ever ship out with him. Reputation, career, and fortune could rise or fall on a single voyage.

The longer a ship spent at sea, the greater the chance of failure. Supplies ran short. Scurvy and disease became more likely. The ship’s physical condition deteriorated and the crew lost its edge. Putting into port for repairs and supplies was risky. Men might jump ship to sign on to a more successful vessel.

The whaling expedition had gone downhill since the crisp autumn day when the gleaming new ship had pulled away from the bustling wharf to a roaring send-off. Dobbs was bewildered by the change in the ship’s fortunes. No ship could have been better prepared for its maiden voyage. The Princess carried an experienced captain, a handpicked crew, and newly forged, razor-sharp harpoons.

The three-hundred-ton Princess was built by one of the most reputable shipyards in New Bedford. Just over a hundred feet long, the ship had a beam of nearly thirty feet that gave her room to store three thousand casks that could hold ninety thousand gallons of oil in her hold. She was built of sturdy live oak that could withstand the toughest seas. Four whaleboats rested in wooden davits that overhung the deck rails. Other mariners scorned the wide-bodied and square-ended New England whaling ships, but the rugged craft could sail for years through nasty conditions that would have had their sleeker counterparts leaking at the seams.

As the Princess left the dock, a spanking breeze had filled the great square sails that hung from the three masts, and the helmsman steered a course east out of the Acushnet River and into the Atlantic Ocean. Pushed by steady winds, the Princess had made a fast ocean crossing to the Azores. After a brief stop in Fayal to load up on fruit that would ward off scurvy, the vessel had pointed its bow toward the southern tip of Africa, rounding the Cape of Good Hope with no mishaps.

But in the weeks that followed, the Princess had zigzagged across the Pacific without seeing a single whale. Dobbs knew that finding whales had more to do with a solid knowledge of weather and migratory patterns than luck, but as he scanned the distant skyline in desperation, he began to wonder if his ship was cursed. He pushed the dangerous thought from his mind, strode over to the ship’s cook, who was cleaning his stove, and said, “Play us a song with your fiddle.”

Hoping to lift morale, the captain had urged the cook to play his fiddle at sunset every day, but the jolly music only seemed to highlight the sour mood aboard ship.

“I usually wait ’til sundown,” the cook said glumly.

“Not today, cook. See if you can fiddle up a whale.”

The cook put his cleaning rag aside and reluctantly unwrapped the cloth protecting his weather-beaten violin. Tucking the fiddle under his jowls, he took up the frayed bow and sawed away without tuning the instrument. He knew from their sullen looks that the crew thought his fiddling scared the whales away, and each time the cook played he feared, with good reason, that someone might toss him overboard. On top of that, he was down to two strings and his repertoire was limited, so he played the same songs the crew had heard a dozen times before.

As the cook sawed away, the captain ordered the first mate to take charge of the quarterdeck. He climbed down the narrow companionway to his cabin, tossed his weathered top hat onto his bunk, and sat down at his desk. He scanned his charts, but he had tried all the usual whaling grounds with nothing to show for his efforts. He sat back in his chair, closed his eyes, and let his chin drop to his chest. He had only dozed off for a few minutes before the wonderful words he hadn’t heard in months penetrated his veil of sleep.

“She blows!” a voice repeated. “Thar she blows.”

The captain’s eyes snapped wide open, and he came out of his chair like a catapulted projectile, grabbed his hat, and vaulted up the ladder to the deck. He squinted against the bright sunlight at the main masthead a hundred feet above the deck. Three mast-heads were manned in two-hour shifts, with the lookouts standing inside iron hoops on small platforms.

“Where away?” the captain shouted to the mainmast lookout.

“Starboard quarter, sir.” The lookout pointed off the bow. “There. She breaches.”

A huge hammer-shaped head rose from the sea a quarter of a mile away and splashed down in an explosion of spray. Sperm whale. Dobbs barked at the helmsman to steer for the breaching whale. Deckhands scrambled into the rigging with the agility of monkeys and unfurled every square inch of canvas.

As the ship came slowly around, a second lookout shouted down from his perch.

“Another, Captain!” The lookout’s voice was hoarse with excitement. “By God, another.”

Dobbs peered through his spyglass at a shiny gray back mounding from the sea. The spout was low and bushy, angled forward forty-five degrees. He moved the telescope to the right and then to the left. More spouts. A whole pod of whales. He let forth with a deep whooping laugh. He was looking at a potential fortune in oil.

The cook had stopped playing at the first sighting. He stood on the deck dumbfounded, his fiddle hanging limply at his side.

“You did it, cook!” the captain shouted. “You fiddled up enough spermaceti to fill our hold to the decks. Keep on playing, damnit.”

The cook gave the captain a gap-toothed grin and drew his bow across the violin strings, playing a jaunty sea chantey, as the helmsman brought the ship up into the wind. The sails were trimmed. The ship plowed to a stop.

“Clear away the larboard boats!” the captain roared with a gusto that had been pent up during the long whale drought. “Move smartly, men, if you like money.”

Dobbs ordered three boats launched. Each thirty-foot-long whaleboat was under the command of a mate who acted as boat officer and steersman. A skeleton crew stayed on board the Princess to sail the ship, if necessary. The captain held the fourth whaleboat in reserve.

The entire launch took slightly longer than a minute. The slender boats splashed into the sea almost simultaneously. The boat crews clambered down the side of the ship, took their places on the benches, and dug their oars in. As soon as each whaleboat cleared the ship, its crew quickly hoisted a sail to gain another few knots of speed.

Dobbs watched the boats fly like a flight of arrows toward their targets.

“Easy does it, boys,” he murmured. “Give ’er another pull, steady as she goes.”

“How many, Captain?” the cook called out.

“More than enough for you to burn a ten-pound steak for every man on board. You can heave the salt pork over the side,” Dobbs yelled.

The captain’s laughter roared across the deck like a full gale.

CALEB NYE ROWED FOR all he was worth in the lead boat. His palms were raw and bleeding and his shoulders ached. Sweat poured down his forehead, but he didn’t dare lift his hand off his oar to wipe his eyes.

Caleb was eighteen, a wiry, good-natured farm youth from Concord, Massachusetts, on his first sea voyage. His 1/210 share, or “lay,” put him at the bottom of the pay scale. He knew he’d be lucky to break even, but he had signed on anyhow, drawn by the prospect of adventure and the lure of exotic lands.

The eager lad reminded the captain of his own first whaling voyage. Dobbs had told the young farmer that he would do well if he jumped to orders, worked hard, and kept his nose clean. His willingness to bend to every task and to shrug off jibes had gained him the respect of the tough whalemen who treated him as a mascot.

The boat was under the command of the first mate, a scarred veteran of many whaling voyages. Rowers were constantly reminded to stay focused on the mate, but, as the ship’s green hand, Caleb bore the brunt of the officer’s nonstop patter.

“Come be lively, Caleb me boy,” the mate cajoled. “Put your back into it, lad, you’re not pulling a cow’s teat. And keep your eyes on my pretty face-I’ll look out for mermaids.”

The mate, who was the only one allowed to face forward, was watching a big bull whale swimming on a collision course with the boat. Sunlight glinted off the shiny black skin. The mate issued a quiet order to the harpooner.

“Stand and face.”

Two seven-foot-long harpoons rested in bow cradles. Their razor-sharp barbs were made to swivel at right angles to the shank. The deadly feature made it almost impossible for a harpoon to come free once it had been embedded in the whale’s flesh.

The bowman stood and shipped his oar, then grabbed a harpoon from its cradle. He removed the sheath that covered the barb. He unsheathed the second harpoon as well.

Eighteen hundred feet of line ran from each harpoon through a V-shaped groove in the bow to a box where the rope had been coiled with exquisite care. From there the line ran down the length of the boat to the stern, where it was given a turn or two around a short post called a loggerhead, then was run forward to a tub.

The mate swung the tiller and pointed the bow at the whale’s left side, placing the right-handed harpooner in position to make the throw. When the whale was about twenty feet away from the boat, the mate yelled an order at the harpooner.

“Give it to him!”

Bracing his knee against the inside of the boat, the harpooner pitched the spear like a javelin and the barb sunk into the whale’s side several inches behind its eye. Then he snatched up the second harpoon and planted it a foot behind the first.

“Stern away!” the mate shouted.

The oars dug into the water, and the boat shot back several yards.

The whale huffed steam through its blowhole, raised its great flukes high in the air, and brought them down with a thunderous clap, slapping the water where the boat had been seconds before. The whale lifted its tail in the air a second time, buried its head in the sea, and dove. A diving sperm whale can descend to a thousand feet at a speed of twenty-five knots. The line flew out of its tub in a blur. The tubman splashed seawater on the rope to cool it down, but the harpoon line smoked from friction as it rounded the loggerhead despite his best efforts.

The boat skimmed over the wave tops in a mad dash that whalers called a Nantucket sleigh ride. A cheer burst from the oarsmen, but they tensed when the boat stopped moving; the whale was on its way back up. Then the huge mammal surfaced in a tremendous explosion of foam and thrashed around like a trout caught on a lure, only to plunge once more to the depths, surfacing again after twenty minutes. The routine was repeated over and over. With each cycle, more line was hauled in and the distance shortened, until only a hundred feet or so separated the whale and boat.

The whale’s great blunt head swung around toward its tormenter. The mate saw the aggressive behavior and knew it was the prelude to an attack. He yelled at the harpooner to move aft.

The two men exchanged places in the rocking boat, tripping over oars, oarsmen, and lines in a scramble that would have been comical if not for the potentially fatal consequences.

The mate grabbed the lance, a long wooden shaft tipped with a sharp-edged, spoon-shaped point, and stood in the bow like a matador ready to dispatch a fighting bull. The mate expected the creature to roll on its side, a maneuver that would allow the whale to use the sharp teeth lining its tubular lower jaw to their best advantage.

The harpooner swung the tiller over. Whale and boat passed each other only yards apart. The whale began its roll, exposing its vulnerable side. The mate plunged the lance into the whale with all his strength. He churned the shaft until the point was six feet into the animal’s flesh, penetrating its heart. He yelled at the crew to reverse direction. Too late. In its death throes, the whale clamped the midsection of the slow-moving boat between its jaws.

The panicked rowers fell over each other trying to escape the sharp teeth. The whale shook the boat like a dog with a bone, then the jaws opened, the mammal pulled away, and the great tail thrashed the water. A geyser of blood-tinged steam issued from the spout.

“Fire in the hole!” an oarsman shouted.

The lance had done its deadly work. The whale thrashed for another minute before it disappeared below the surface, leaving behind a scarlet pool of blood.

The rowers lashed their oars across the gunwales to stabilize the sinking craft and plugged the holes with their shirts. Despite their efforts, the boat was barely afloat by the time the dead whale surfaced and rolled onto its side with a fin in the air.

“Good work, boys!” the mate roared. “Settled his hash. One more fish like this and we’ll be heading for New Bedford to buy candy for our sweethearts.” He pointed to the approaching Princess. “See, boys, the old man’s coming to pick us up and tuck you into bed. Everyone’s all right, I see.”

“Not everyone,” the harpooner called out in a hoarse voice. “Caleb’s gone.”

THE SHIP DROPPED ANCHOR a short distance away and launched the reserve boat. After the rescue crew conducted a fruitless search for Caleb in the bloodstained water, the damaged whaleboat was towed back to the ship.

“Where’s the green hand?” the captain asked as the bedraggled crew climbed back on board the Princess.

The first mate shook his head. “The poor lad went over when the whale struck.”

The captain’s eyes were shadowed in sadness, but death and whaling were no strangers. He turned his attention to the task at hand. He ordered his men to maneuver the whale’s body until it was under a staging on the ship’s starboard side. Using hooks, they rolled the carcass over and hoisted it to a vertical position. They cut the head off, and, before starting to strip off the blubber, used an iron hook to extract the whale’s innards and haul them onto the deck to examine them for ambergris, the valuable perfume base that can form in the stomach of a sick whale.

Something was moving inside the big stomach pouch. A deckhand assumed it was a giant squid, a favorite meal of sperm whales. He used his sharp spade to cut into the pouch, but, instead of tentacles, a human leg flopped out through the opening. He peeled back the stomach walls to reveal a man curled up in a fetal position. The cutter and another deckhand grabbed the man’s ankles and pulled the limp form out onto the deck. An opaque, slimy substance enveloped the man’s head. The first mate came over and washed away the slime with a bucket of water.

“It’s Caleb!” the mate shouted. “It’s the green hand.”

Caleb’s lips moved, but they made no sound.

Dobbs had been supervising the removal of blubber from the whale. He strode over and stared at Caleb for a moment before he ordered the mates to carry the green hand to his cabin. They stretched the youth out on the captain’s bunk, stripped off his slime-coated clothes, and wrapped him in blankets.

“Lord, I’ve never seen anything like it,” the first mate muttered.

The handsome farm boy of eighteen had been transformed into a wizened old man of eighty. His skin was bleached ghostly white. A lacework of wrinkles puckered the skin of his hands and face as if they had been soaked in water for days. His hair was like strands on a cottonweed.

Dobbs laid a hand on Caleb’s arm, expecting him to be as icy cold as the corpse he resembled.

“He’s on fire,” he murmured.

Assuming his role as the ship’s doctor, Dobbs placed wet towels over Caleb’s body to bring down the fever. From a black leather medicine case he produced a vial of patent medicine containing a heavy dose of opium and got a few drops down Caleb’s throat. The youth rambled for a few minutes before slipping into a deep sleep. He slept for more than twenty-four hours. When Caleb’s eyelids finally fluttered open, he saw the captain sitting at his desk writing in the log.

“Where am I?” he mumbled through dry, crusted lips.

“In my bunk,” Dobbs growled. “And I’m getting damned sick of it.”

“Sorry, sir.” Caleb furrowed his brow. “I dreamed I died and went to hell.”

“No such luck, lad. Seems the spermaceti had a taste for farm boys. We pulled you out of his belly.”

Caleb remembered the whale’s round eye, then being tossed into the air, arms and legs spinning like a pinwheel, and the shock of hitting the water. He recalled moving along a dark, yielding passage, gagging for breath in the heavy, moist air. The heat had been almost unbearable. He had quickly passed out.

A horrified look came to his pale, wrinkled face. “The whale et me!”

The captain nodded. “I’ll get cook to fetch you some soup. Then it’s back to the fo’c’sle with you.”

The captain relented and let Caleb stay in his cabin until all the blubber had been rendered into oil and stored in barrels, then he summoned the forecastle hands on deck. He praised them for their hard work, and said:

“You all know that a whale ate the green hand like Jonah in the Bible. I’m happy to say that young Caleb will soon be back at his work. I’m cutting his pay for time lost. The only one on this ship who’s allowed to shirk his job is a dead man.”

The comment brought a few ayes and grins from the assembled hands.

Dobbs continued. “Now, men, I must tell you that young Caleb looks different than you remember him. The foul juices of the whale’s innards have bleached him whiter than a boiled turnip.” He cast a stern eye on the crew. “I’ll allow no one on this ship to make light of another man’s misfortune. That’s all.”

The ship’s officers helped Caleb climb onto the deck. The captain asked Caleb to remove a square of cloth that covered his head, shadowing his face like a monk’s cowl. A collective gasp came from the crew.

“Take a good look at our Jonah and you’ll have something to tell your grandchildren,” the captain said. “He’s no different from the rest of us under that white skin. Now, let’s get us some whales.”

The captain had purposely called Caleb a Jonah, a seaman’s name for a sailor who attracted bad luck. Maybe if he made light of it he’d suck the wind out of the sails of unfavorable comparisons to the biblical character who’d been swallowed by a great fish. A few hands quietly suggested heaving Caleb over the side. Fortunately, everyone was too busy for mischief. The sea that had been so barren now teemed with whales. There was no doubt that the ship’s fortunes had changed for the better. It was as if the Princess had become a magnet for every whale in the ocean.

Every day, the boats were launched after cries from the lookout. The cast-iron try-pots bubbled like witches’ cauldrons. An oily pall of black smoke hid the stars and sun and turned the sails a dark gray. The cook sawed away on his fiddle. Within months of Caleb’s encounter with the whale, the ship’s hold was filled to capacity.

Before the long voyage home, the ship had to be resupplied and the weary crew given shore leave. Dobbs put into Pohnpei, a lush island known for its handsome men, beautiful women, and their willingness to provide services and goods to visiting whalemen. Whaling vessels from every part of the world crowded the harbor.

Dobbs was Quaker by upbringing and didn’t indulge in spirits or native women, but his religious beliefs took second place to his sailing orders: maintain harmony among his men and bring home a shipload of oil. How he accomplished these tasks was left up to him. He laughed heartily as boatloads of drunken and raucous crewmen stumbled back on board or were fished out of the water into which they’d fallen.

Caleb stayed on board and watched the comings and goings of his fellow hands with a benign smile. The captain was relieved that Caleb showed no interest in shore leave. The natives were friendly enough, but Caleb’s bleached hair and skin might cause problems with the superstitious islanders.

Dobbs paid a courtesy call to the American consul, a fellow New Englander. During the visit the consul was notified that a tropical sickness had struck the island. Dobbs cut his men’s shore leave short. In his log he wrote:

Last day of shore leave. Captain visits U.S. Consul A. Markham, who conducted tour of ancient city named Nan Madol. Upon return, Consul advised of sickness on island. Ended liberty and left island in a hurry.

The remnants of the crew stumbled back onto the ship and promptly fell into a rum-soaked snooze. The captain ordered the sobered-up hands to raise the anchor and set sail. By the time the cherry-eyed men were roused from their bunks and ordered back to work, the ship was well at sea. With a steady breeze, Dobbs and his men would be sleeping in their own beds in a few months time.

The sickness struck the Princess less than twenty-four hours after it left the port.

A forecastle hand named Stokes awakened around two in the morning and raced to the rail to purge his stomach. Several hours later, he developed a fever and a vivid rash over much of his body. Brownish red spots appeared on his face and grew in size until his features looked as if they were carved in mahogany.

The captain treated Stokes with wet towels and sips of bottled medicine. Dobbs had him moved to the foredeck and placed under a makeshift tent. The forecastle was a pesthole in the best of circumstances. Fresh air and sunlight might help the man, and isolation could possibly prevent the spread of his illness.

But the disease spread through the foremast hands like a windblown brush fire. Men crumpled to the deck. A rigger fell from a yardarm onto a pile of sails, which fortunately broke his fall. An impromptu infirmary was set up on the foredeck. The captain emptied his medicine kit. He feared that it would only be a matter of hours before he and the officers fell ill. The Princess would become a phantom ship, drifting at the mercy of wind and currents until it rotted.

The captain checked his chart. The nearest landfall was called Trouble Island. Whalers normally shunned the place. A whaling crew had burned a village and killed some natives there after an argument over a stolen cask of nails, and the inhabitants had attacked several whalers since the incident. There was no choice. Dobbs took the helm and put the ship on a straight course for the island.

The Princess soon limped into a cove lined with white sand beaches, and the ship’s anchor splashed into the clear green water with a rattle of chain. The island was dominated by a volcanic peak. Wisps of smoke could be seen playing around its summit. Dobbs and the first mate took a small boat ashore to replenish freshwater while they could. They found a spring a short distance inland and were on their way back to the ship when they came across a ruined temple. The captain gazed at the temple’s walls, overgrown with vines, and said, “This place reminds me of Nan Madol.”

“Pardon me, sir?” the first mate said.

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.”

Caleb nodded. “Standing room only, night after night, thanks to your skills as a showman.”

“I’d be nothing without my star attraction,” Strater said, turning.

“And I have you to thank for this house and everything I own,” Caleb said.

Strater flashed a gap-toothed grin. “If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s putting on a show. The minute I laid eyes on you, I saw the potential for fame and fortune.”

Their partnership had begun a few nights after the Princess docked in New Bedford. The oil barrels had been off-loaded, and the owners tallied the take and calculated the lays. Crewmen who didn’t have wives or sweethearts to go home to went off in a raucous mob to celebrate in the waterfront bars that were more than willing to relieve the whalers of their hard-won earnings.

Caleb had stayed on the ship. He was there when the captain came back onto the Princess with Caleb’s pay and asked if he was going home to his family farm.

“Not like this,” Caleb had replied with a sad smile.

The captain handed the young man the pitifully small amount of money he had earned for his years at sea. “You have my permission to stay on board until the ship sails again.”

As he walked down the ramp, the captain felt a heavy sorrow for the young man’s misfortune, but he soon put it out of his mind as his thoughts shifted to his own promising future.

About the same time, Strater had been contemplating a much bleaker outlook as he sat in a seedy bar a few blocks from the ship. The former carnival pitchman was down on his luck and almost broke. He was nursing a mug of ale when the crewmen from the Princess burst into the bar and proceeded to get drunk with all the energy they had devoted to killing whales. Strater perked up his ears and listened with interest to the story of Caleb Nye, the green hand who was swallowed by a whale. The bar patrons greeted the tale with loud skepticism.

“Where’s your Jonah now?” a barfly shouted above the din.

“Back at the ship, sittin’ in the dark,” he was told. “See for yourself.”

“The only thing I want to see is another ale,” the barfly said.

Strater slipped out of the noisy bar into the quiet night and made his way along a narrow street to the waterfront. He climbed the ramp to the lantern-lit deck of the Princess. Caleb had been standing by the rail, staring at the sparkling lights of New Bedford. The young man’s features were indistinct, but they seemed to glow with a pale luminosity. Strater’s showman juices started flowing.

“I have a proposition for you,” Strater told the young man. “If you accept it, I can make you a rich man.”

Caleb listened to Strater’s proposal and saw the possibilities. Within weeks, flyers and posters were plastered around New Bedford with a blaring headline in circus typeface:

SWALLOWED BY A WHALE.

A Living Jonah Tells His Tale.

Strater hired a hall for the first show and had to turn away hundreds. For two hours, Caleb told his thrilling story, standing with harpoon in hand in front of a moving diorama.

With Caleb’s whaling earnings, Strater had hired an artist who had painted reasonably accurate pictures on a long strip of canvas several feet high. The backlit canvas was slowly unrolled to reveal pictures of Caleb in the whaleboat, the attack by the whale, and a fanciful depiction of his legs sticking out from between the mammal’s jaws. There were images of exotic, palm-studded locales, and their inhabitants as well.

The show played to enthralled audiences, especially in churches and halls in cities and towns along the eastern seaboard. Strater sold story booklets, adding pictures of half-nude dancing native girls to spice up the narrative. After a few years, Strater and Caleb retired from public life as rich as the wealthiest whaling captains.

Strater bought a mansion in New Bedford, and Caleb built his wedding-cake house in the village of Fairhaven across the harbor from the whaling city. From the roof turret, he watched the whaling ships come and go. He rarely went out in daylight.

When he did leave his mansion, he covered his head and shaded his face with a hood.

He became known to his neighbors as the Ghost, and he became a generous benefactor who used his fortune to build schools and libraries for the community. In return, the townspeople protected the privacy of their homegrown Jonah.

Caleb guided Strater into a large chamber that was empty except for a comfortable revolving chair in the center. The diorama from Caleb’s show wrapped around the walls. Anyone sitting in the chair could pivot and see the “Living Jonah” story from beginning to end.

“Well, what do you think?” Caleb asked his friend.

Strater shook his head. “It almost makes me want to go on the road with the show again.”

“Let’s talk about it over a glass of wine,” Caleb said.

“I’m afraid we don’t have time,” Strater said. “I carry a message to you from Nathan Dobbs.”

“The captain’s oldest son?”

“That’s right. His father is dying and would like to see you.”

“Dying! That’s not possible! You have told me yourself that the captain looks as hale and hearty as a young bull.”

“It’s not an ailment that brought him down, Caleb. There was an accident at one of his mills. A loom fell over and crushed his ribs.”

Caleb’s old man’s face lost its last faint traces of color. “When can I see him?” he asked.

“We must go now,” Strater replied. “His time is short.”

Caleb rose from his chair. “I’ll get my coat and hat.”

THE ROAD TO THE Dobbs mansion wound around New Bedford Harbor and climbed to County Street. Carriages lined the driveway and street in front of the Greek Revival mansion. Nathan Dobbs greeted Strater and Caleb at the door and thanked them profusely for coming. He was tall and lanky, the younger image of his father.

“I’m sorry to hear about your father,” Caleb said. “How is Captain Dobbs?”

“Not long for this world, I’m afraid. I’ll take you to him.”

The mansion’s spacious parlor and adjoining hallways overflowed with the captain’s ten children and countless grandchildren. There was a murmur as Nathan Dobbs entered the parlor with Strater and the strange hooded figure. Nathan asked Strater to make himself comfortable and escorted Caleb to the captain’s room.

Captain Dobbs lay in his bed, tended by his wife and family doctor. They had wanted to keep the sickroom dark, as was the medical practice then, but he insisted that the curtains be opened to let in sunlight.

A shaft of honeyed autumn sunlight fell on the captain’s craggy face. Although his leonine mane had gone silver-gray, his features were more youthful than would have been expected for a man in his sixties. But his eyes had a far-off look, as if he could see death creeping closer. The captain’s wife and doctor withdrew, and Nathan lingered by the door.

Dobbs saw Caleb and managed to crack a smile.

“Thank you for coming, Caleb,” the captain said. The voice that once boomed across a ship’s decks was a hoarse whisper.

Caleb pushed the hood back from his face. “You told me never to question the captain’s orders.”

“Aye,” Dobbs wheezed. “And I’ll give you more good advice, green hand. Don’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong. Tried to fix a balky loom. Didn’t move fast enough when it keeled over.”

“I’m sorry for your misfortune, Captain.”

“Don’t be. I have a faithful wife, handsome children, and grandchildren who will carry on my name.”

“I wish I could say the same,” Caleb said in a wounded voice.

“You’ve done well, Caleb. I know all about your generosity.”

“Generosity is easy when there’s no one to share your fortune with.”

“You have shared it with your neighbors. And I have heard of your wonderful library of books on the old trade.”

“I don’t smoke or drink. Books are my only vice. Whaling gave me the life I have. I collect every volume I can on the old trade.”

The captain closed his eyes and seemed to drift away, but after a moment his eyelids fluttered open. “I have something I want to share with you.”

The captain’s son stepped forward and presented Caleb with a mahogany box. Caleb opened the lid. Inside the box was a book. Caleb recognized the worn blue binding.

“The log of the Princess, Captain?”

“Aye, and it’s yours,” the captain said. “For your great library.”

Caleb drew back. “I can’t take this from you, sir.”

“You’ll do as your captain says,” Dobbs growled. “My family agrees that you should have it. Isn’t that right, Nathan?”

The captain’s son nodded. “It’s the family’s wish as well, Mr. Nye. We can think of no person more worthy.”

Unexpectedly, the captain raised his hand and placed it on the log. “A strange business,” he said. “Something happened on that island of wild men. To this day, I don’t know if it was God’s work or the Devil’s.”

The captain closed his eyes. His breathing became labored, and a rattling sound came from his throat. He called his wife’s name.

Nathan gently took Caleb’s arm and escorted him from the room. He thanked him again for coming, and then told his mother that the captain’s time had come. The loyal family streamed into the bedroom and adjacent hallway, leaving Strater and Caleb alone in the parlor.

“Gone?” Strater said.

“Not yet but soon.” Caleb showed Strater the logbook.

“I’d prefer some of the Dobbs fortune,” Strater snorted.

“This is a treasure to me,” Caleb said. “Besides, you have more money than you could spend in a lifetime, my friend.”

“Then I’ll have to live longer,” Strater said with a glance toward the bedroom.

They left the house and climbed into Strater’s carriage. Caleb clutched the logbook closer and his mind went back to the remote island and its savage inhabitants, his masquerade as an ’atua, the sickness, and the strange blue lights. He turned around for a last look at the mansion and recalled the captain’s dying words.

Dobbs was right. It had been a strange business indeed.