David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

A year later he was recaptured, but Moriori slaves were now too scarce to be indiscriminately slaughtered. The lower Maori were obliged to labor alongside the serfs, much to their disgust. (“We forsook our ancestors’ land in Aotearoa for this miserable rock?” they complained.) Autua escaped again & during his second spell of freedom he was granted secret asylum by Mr. D’Arnoq for some months, at no little risk to the latter. During this sojourn Autua was baptized & turned to the Lord.

Kupaka’s men caught up with the fugitive after a year & six-month, but this time the mercurial chieftain evinced a respect for Autua’s spirit. After a retributive lashing, Kupaka appointed his slave as fisherman for his own table. Thus employed, the Moriori let another year go by until, one afternoon, he found a rare moeeka fish flapping in his net. He told Kupaka’s wife this king of fish could be eaten only by a king of men & showed her how to prepare it for her husband. (“Bad bad poison this moeeka fish, Missa Ewing, one bite, aye, you sleep, you never wake no mo’.”) During that night’s feasting, Autua snuck from the encampment, stole his master’s canoe & rowed across the current-prone, choppy, moonless sea to deserted Pitt Island, two leagues to the south of Chatham Isle (known as Rangiauria in Moriori & revered as mankind’s birthplace).

Luck favored the stowaway, for he arrived safe at dawn as a squall blew up & no canoes made the crossing after him. Autua subsisted in his Polynesian Eden on wild celery, watercress, eggs, berries, an occasional young boar (he risked fires only under cover of darkness or mist) & the knowledge that Kupaka, at least, had met a condign punishment. Was his solitude not unbearable? “Nights, ancestors visited. Days, I yarned tales of Maui to birds & birds yarned sea tales to I.”

The fugitive lived thus for many a season until last September, when a winter gale wrecked the whaler Eliza from Nantucket on Pitt Island Reef. All hands drowned, but our Mr. Walker, zealous in his pursuit of easy guineas, crossed the straits seeking salvage. When he found signs of habitation & saw Kupaka’s old canoe (each is storiated with unique carvings), he knew he had found treasure of interest to his Maori neighbors. Two days later a large hunting party rowed to Pitt Island from the mainland. Autua sat on the beach & watched them arrive, surprized only to see his old enemy, Kupaka, grizzled but very much alive & shouting war chants.

My uninvited cabinmate concluded his tale. “That b——’s greedy dog stole moeeka from kitchen & died, not the Maori. Aye, Kupaka flogged me, but he’s old & far from home & his mana is hollow & starved. Maori thrive on wars & revenge & feudin’, but peace kills ’em off. Many go back to Zealand. Kupaka cannot, his land is no mo’. Then last week, Missa Ewing, I see you & I know, you save I, I know it.”

The morning watch smote four bells & my porthole betrayed a rainy dawn. I had slept a little, but my prayers that the dawn would dissolve the Moriori were unheeded. I bade him to playact he had only just revealed himself & make no mention of our night’s conversation. He signaled comprehension, but I feared the worst: an Indian’s wit was no match for a Boerhaave.

Along the gangway I stepped (the Prophetess was bucking like a young bronco) to the officers’ mess, knocked & entered. Mr. Roderick & Mr. Boerhaave were listening to Cpt. Molyneux. I cleared my throat & bade all good morning, at which our amicable captain swore, “You can better my morning, by b——ing off, instanter!”

Coolly, I asked when the captain might find time to hear news of an Indian stowaway who had just emerged from the coils of hawser taking up “my so-called cabin.” During the ensuing silence Cpt. Molyneux’s pale, horny-toad complexion turned roast beef pink. Ere his blast was launched, I added the stowaway claimed to be an able seaman & begged to work his passage.

Mr. Boerhaave forestalled his captain with the predicted accusations & exclaimed, “On Dutch merchantmen those who abet stowaways share their fate!” I reminded the Hollander we sailed under an English flag & put it to him why, if I had hid the stowaway under the coils of hawser, had I asked & asked again since Thursday night for the unwonted hawser to be removed, thereby begging for my putative “conspiracy” to be uncovered? Hitting that bull’s-eye fired my mettle & I assured Cpt. Molyneux that the baptized stowaway had resorted to this extreme measure lest his Maori master, who had vowed to eat his slave’s warm liver (I sprinkled a little “seasoning” on my version of events), directed his ungodly wrath towards his rescuer.

Mr. Boerhaave swore, “So this d——d Blackamoor wants us to be grateful to him?” No, I replied, the Moriori asks for a chance to prove his value to the Prophetess . Mr. Boerhaave spat out, “A stowaway is a stowaway even if he sh——s silver nuggets! What’s his name?” I did not know, I replied, for I had not conducted an interview with the man but come to the captain expeditiously.

Cpt. Molyneux spoke at last. “Able seaman first class, you say?” His wrath had cooled at the prospect of earning a valuable pair of hands he would not have to pay. “An Indian? Where did he salt his burns?” I repeated, two minutes was insufficient to learn his history, but my instinct considered the Indian an honest fellow.

The captain wiped his beard. “Mr. Roderick, accompany our passenger & his instinct & fetch their pet savage afoot the mizzen.” He tossed a key to his first mate. “Mr. Boerhaave, my fowling piece, if you please.”

The second mate & I did as bid. “A risky business,” Mr. Roderick warned me. “The only statute book on the Prophetess is the Old Man’s Whim.” Another statute book named Conscience is observed lex loci wherever God sees, I responded. Autua was awaiting his trial in the cotton trowzers I purchased in Port Jackson (he had climbed aboard from Mr. D’Arnoq’s boat in naught but his savage’s loincloth & a shark-tooth necklace). His back was exposed. His lacerations, I hoped, would pay testimony to his resilience & bestir sympathy in the observers’ breasts.

Rats behind the arras spread tidings of the sport & most hands were gathered on deck. (My ally, Henry, was still abed, unaware of my jeopardy.) Cpt. Molyneux sized the Moriori up as if inspecting a mule & addressed him thus: “Mr. Ewing, who knows nothing about how you boarded my vessel, says you regard yourself a seaman.”

Autua replied with courage & dignity. “Aye, Cap’n, sir, two years on whaler Mississippi of Le Havre under Captain Maspero & four years on Cornucopia of Philadelphia under Captain Caton, three years on an Indiaman—”

Cpt. Molyneux interrupted & indicated Autua’s trowzers. “Did you pilfer this garment from below?” Autua was sensible that I, too, was on trial. “That Christian gent’man gave, sir.” The crew followed the stowaway’s finger to myself & Mr. Boerhaave thrust at the chink in my armor. “He did? When was this gift awarded?” (I recalled my father-in-law’s aphorism “To fool a judge, feign fascination, but to bamboozle the whole court, feign boredom” & I pretended to extract a speck from my eye.) Autua answered with primed percipience. “Ten minutes past, sir, I, no clothes, that gent’man say, naked no good, dress this.”

“If you are a seaman”—our captain jerked his thumb aloft—”let’s see you lower this midmast’s royal.” At this, the stowaway grew hesitant & confused & I felt the lunatick’s wager I had placed on this Indian’s word swing against me, but Autua had merely spotted a trap. “Sir, this mast ain’t midmast, this mast the mizzen, aye?” Impassive Cpt. Molyneux nodded. “Then kindly lower the mizzen royal.”