"Life in Brazil had come to an end. 'Richard told me he could not stand it any longer. It had given him that illness [hepatitis].' Burton applied for leave. The doctor told him not to return to England at once but to go down to Buenos Aires for a rest..."

-Edward Rice, Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton

Clay Evenstar could feel the sadness in his aching heart sinking into his belly as he looked around at the men covering her grave. He stood to Captain Evenstar’s right, holding his hand. Mister Murray Oswald, his peg-leg stretched out flat behind him as he kneeled above the lacquered black oak headstone he had carved and stained, sobbed audibly as he shed tears of deepest despair.

Poor Mister Murray, he doted on her so!

Captain Evenstar had been unable to speak since she passed, and stood stoically over her grave through the entire ceremony, which, including the construction of the casket, the digging of the grave, and the internment and prayers, had lasted from dawn until dusk.

Captain Josiah Evenstar had been a clipper ship captain of Chesapeake Virginia when the war had come about between the North and South. At the urging of his New York born wife, Martha, The Captain had sailed north with his family to start life anew and declare for the Union cause. His only two slaves, Scrawny Clay and Fat Sam, he freed and adopted. While The Captain was off fighting the war under Foote Miss Martha had passed of the consumption. Then, three years after the war, The Captain was stricken with another calamity. His daughter, Beth, his Blue Baby Beth he had always called her, came down with the consumption. This autumn past they had sailed first for Spain, then for the Spanish Sahara, and eventually for Buenos Aires, in search of some good fresh dry air for Blue Baby Beth to breathe.

A half day’s sail short of their destination, Buenos Aires Argentina, Baby Beth had passed, swinging gently in her hammock while Mister Murray tended her ‘humidity banishing’ fire he kept kindled in his iron fire box. It was hard to tell who was the more hurt by the passing of the angelic little blonde-headed girl, with her big blue eyes and teeny-tiny baby hands. She had been their entire purpose, the reason for their voyage.

Clay Himself was heartbroken. Particularly since he had not been able to speak his last considerations to the little girl he had tended to since he was a little boy himself. They had simply risen with the false dawn to find her gone.

Clay was not at all the selfish sort, and viewed the world of people according to the social scheme of things, from greatest to smallest, himself being the smallest in his small world, smaller even then the angel resting in her casket six feet below his bare feet.

He held hands with the mourning man who had been nigh a god to him and the rest. Captain Evenstar had earned the respect of Mister Murray Oswald when they had served together in the Navy. And the others, they had all heard his stern voice and been transfixed by his iron eyes—but not Clay. Clay had always been The Captain’s favorite boy, had not picked or cured tobacco as a hire-out once. Captain Evenstar had demurred before his wife, and his wife, good Miss Martha, had always loved ‘Scrawny’ Clay, ‘runt of the Chesapeake litter’ it had been said.

Every time Clay thought of The Captain, or looked up at his hawk-like face, he would recall the duel on the road. There had been a day when Clay had accompanied The Captain up the road toward Richmond way when he caught Tag Burly, Captain Sabian’s straw boss, whipping a woman. Captain Evenstar had whipped Burly in his turn and took him to Captain Sabian, who demanded satisfaction in a duel, and was shot through the arm for his trouble. Ever since that day, Clay had not been able to imagine Captain Josiah Evenstar falling before another man. To him, The Captain was the shield and sword of The Almighty on earth, and could do no wrong.

Mister Murray Oswald was a tough old gunnery Sergeant from the Navy who had followed The Captain into private life. He had cared for Beth as if she were the daughter he had never had, and was melting away with his tears before them.

Heaping earth dejectedly on the grave, with their one remaining shovel—who would have expected to need a shovel at sea—was Mister Eager, the helmsman, a harsh, hardworking man, doing this task as tirelessly as any other, which was his way.

Smoothing the loose earth over the grave were the other three deckhands with whom Scrawny Clay worked aboard ship: Slanty Hoover, the nasty Baltimore boy; Pea-brain Harvey, the stupid New York boy; and Fat Sam Evenstar, Clay’s adopted brother from the Chesapeake days. Sam was a good, hardworking man, but fat. No matter how much he worked and how little he ate he remained fat and soft looking, consequently sweating a lot at times like this.

Sam gave him a look as he smoothed over the grave, caressing it like it was Beth herself. The look was one of worry. Everyone feared The Captain except for Clay and Mister Murray, feared that he would go mad, maybe get involved with this fool war down here or even become some kind of Robin Hood pirate. No one who knew The Captain could imagine him sitting still on some porch, or in an easy chair with a pipe and a book, without a strong wife or blessed daughter to keep him there. He was a man of action, and they all feared action. Everyone here had either fought in the war or had avoided it gratefully and knew those who had fallen and/or had come home like Mister Murray with missing parts.

Clay stole a look over his shoulder out to sea, where the wind swept down off of the wild golden-grassed pastures over which they stood. A mile out to see was the Blue Baby Beth, a fine Chesapeake schooner named after the angel who was now under all of that ground.

You should have had a nice marble tomb, girl.

Out there on that ship waited Mickey Durst the wild rigging monkey, a man of almost supernatural talents as a seaman, and dour old Jonah Heel, the purser, and The Captain’s accountant and business manager.

Out of his left eye he caught movement over Mister Murray’s head, beyond the handsome little tree they had chosen for God’s own grave-marker, atop the gentle rise. Rounding the next gentle hump of grassy land was a tall gaunt figure running in a ragged manner, like a man spent, down the slope and into the narrow level bottom where those curious green-leafed plants grew, the leaves seeming to sprout directly from the ground, from some unseen bole beneath the earth.

A voice broke the silence with a crackle, almost the splintered voice of an old tobacco shed hand, “Captain Sir, a man comes—running like the Devil is on his heels!”

The voice of the frightened old man stunned them all, for it was Scrawny Clay’s voice, seemingly aged forty years in an afternoon.

Say, Skinny Boy, sounds like the Devil is on your own heels!

Of course they were all startled, all but The Captain, who calmly drew his war saber, from where it hung below the waist of his dress blue officer’s uniform. The rasp of the blade sent a chill up Clay’s spine that caused him to let go The Captain’s hand reflexively, with a shudder.

The Captain looked down into his eyes, and, when looking back up into those iron pits, Clay failed to find any of the kindness that once seemed to reside there.

The Captain’s ‘devil sense’ is up. He senses something rotten coming this way.

And it is bringing the devil out in him.