Rough Passage to London(34)

Hiram wanted to confront Brown and report him to the captain, but Morgan convinced him that he wouldn’t get justice that way. “The captain would never believe you,” he told Hiram, “and besides, Brown would just deny it.” They decided to confide in a few other sailors. The Spaniard, once he was given a translation of what Morgan had seen, wanted to slit the mate’s throat, “Cortarle el cuello come el cochino, hijo de puta que es.” Icelander wanted to keelhaul him or string him up in the yardarms. It was Whipple, the ship’s carpenter, who gave Morgan the idea of what to do.

Henry Whipple was a Connecticut River man, an old sea dog who had been on many deepwater voyages and was full of just as many stories as the days he’d spent at sea. He had a simple face overloaded with a wild, unkempt growth of graying whiskers, a dull, gauzy shade of blue in his eyes, and a wide sloping forehead, cracked and uneven like a New England stone wall. His hair was thinning at the top of his head, so he’d drawn it back in a Chinaman’s pigtail. After the suddenness of the river attack, Captain Champlin had told Whipple he wanted a way to hear what was happening on deck in the privacy of his cabin. Whipple mentioned this casually by way of making conversation. A group of sailors were drinking water at the ship’s scuttlebutt when Whipple volunteered the latest task he was doing for the captain.

“He’s got me building a speaking tube contraption with one end in his cabin and the other end coming out by the cabin house at the stern of the ship,” Whipple said dolefully as if he were making a confession.

“That so,” one of the sailors replied. “What’s that for?”

Whipple explained that his hollow tube would allow the captain to hear everything going on at the helm area, and if necessary, make his voice heard from his cabin if the sails were shaking or luffing. It was also a good protection against a mutiny or a surprise attack by river pirates.

Whipple’s uneven brow furrowed as he realized that he was talking too much.

“The cap’n didn’t want me to tell a soul, so don’t let on you know anything about it,” he said anxiously, his voice noticeably distressed.

When Morgan heard what Whipple was doing, the outlines of a scheme to get rid of the second mate slowly began to take shape in his mind. The plan was set in motion days later when the captain returned and Mr. Toothacher left the ship. Whipple had finished installing the new speaking tube. That night Champlin retired to his cabin after dinner as was his custom, and Morgan and his cohorts gathered on the quarterdeck. Morgan and Hiram weren’t the only ones who wanted to get rid of the second mate.

At eleven o’clock, Morgan began his preparations. He picked a spot right next to the helm where he could speak into one end of the hollow tube, the other end of which was right next to the captain’s berth, just several feet away from his head. Morgan and Hiram then began speaking in a hoarse whisper, knowing that their voices would be sufficiently loud enough for the captain’s benefit.

In a dramatic hushed tone, Hiram described the unspeakable horrors he’d seen down in the rum barrels, sparing no details, adding a few revealing sounds he hadn’t actually heard. Morgan played along as if he’d never heard this salacious story before. He also piped in with his own story of foul dealing about Brown. He told how the mate had contacted the scuffle hunters in Portsmouth, striking a deal with them, and then, once they’d boarded the ship, directed them toward Hiram, their intended victim. This was part fact, part guesswork, and pure theatrics.

Soon other sailors joined in on the discussion. A mock fight ensued as the sailors pretended to argue about what they should do to Brown. At that point, down in his cabin, the captain would have heard muffled shouts, the stomping of feet on deck and a plethora of cursing. All this was being done for his benefit. In actual fact, there were now about six or seven sailors who were pretending to have a fight, all in the interest of luring the volatile mate back to the helm area. Right on cue, Mr. Brown showed up wielding his favorite weapon, a belaying pin, and began hitting and striking any and all of the sailors involved in the fighting.

“Mr. Brown!” Morgan shouted directly into the hollow tube above the din of the shipboard brawl. “Why is it that you didn’t fight like this when the scuffle hunters came over the side of the ship? One of them told me it was you who invited them on board.”

An irate Brown lunged at Morgan with his long, powerful arms raining him with blows of the belaying pin. As Morgan raised up his elbows to fend off the blows, Hiram started shouting into the hollow tube again.

“What is it that you did down in the darkness of the hold, Mr. Brown? Did I hear what I thought I heard amongst them rum barrels?”