by Avi
Breakfast was set out in steerage, at the mates’ mess. Served by Zachariah, it consisted of badly watered coffee and hard bread with a dab of molasses, though as days passed, the molasses grew foul. Dinner at midday was the same. Supper was boiled salted meats, rice, beans, and again bad coffee. Twice a week we might have duff, the seaman’s delight: boiled flour and raisins.
In the evenings I retired to my room to write the particulars of the day in my journal, after which I walked out to gaze at the stars. So many, many stars! And then to bed.
Sundays were remarkable only in that religious observances were briefly held. The captain kindly allowed me to read a biblical passage to the men before he offered reminders of their duty to ship and God. Sundays were also the one day of the week on which the men shaved—if at all—and washed their clothes, sometimes.
With no chores to perform I spent the bulk of my day in idleness. I could wander at will from galley to forecastle deck, mates’ mess to wheel, but, try as I might not to show it, I was sorely bored.
It should be no surprise that the high point of my day was tea with the captain. It was a cherished reminder of the world as I knew it. He always showed interest in what I had to say, in particular my observations of the crew. So flattered was I by his attentions that I took pains to search for things to tell him and then prattled away. Unfortunately tea lasted only from one bell to the next, a mere half an hour. Too soon I had to return to the less congenial world of the crew.
I did take care—at first—to keep my distance from them, believing it not proper for me to mingle. My one friendly gesture was to read uplifting selections to them from my books. As the days wore on, however, it was increasingly difficult to refrain from some degree of intimacy. I could not help it. I’ve always been social by nature. In any case I concluded that I was simply doing what the captain had suggested, in fact, kept urging—that is, keeping a lookout for any act or word that hinted of criticism or hostility.
Though I desired to make it clear that the crew and I were on different levels, I found myself spending more and more time in their company. In truth, I had endless questions to ask as to what this was and what was that. They in turn found in me a naive but eager recipient for their answers.
Then there were their yarns. I hardly knew nor cared which were true and which were not. Tales of castaways on Pacific atolls never failed to move me. Solemn accounts of angels and ghosts appearing miraculously in the rigging were, by turns, thrilling and terrifying. I learned the men’s language, their ways, their dreams. Above all, I cherished the notion that my contact with the crew improved them. As to what it did to me—I hardly guessed.
At first standoffish and suspicious, the crew began to accept me. I actually became something of a “ship’s boy,” increasingly willing—and able—to run their minor errands.
Of course there were places on the Seahawk where I did not venture. Though I returned several times to my trunk, and was not frightened again, I forebore exploring the hold. Barlow’s words—and my experience—were sufficient to scare me off.
The other place I shunned was the crew’s quarters, the forecastle area before the mast. That I understood to be off-limits.
But as I grew more comfortable, as the crew grew more comfortable with me, I mingled more often with them on deck. In time I even tried my hand and climbed—granted neither very high nor very far—into the rigging.
As might be expected I fastened particular attentions upon Zachariah. He had the most time to spend with me and had sought to be kind, of course, from the beginning. Being black, he was the butt of much cruel humor, which aroused my sympathy. At the same time, despite the crew’s verbal abuse, he was a great favorite, reputed to be a fine cook. Indeed his good opinion of me gained me—in the crew’s world—the license to be liked.
Zachariah was the eldest of the crew, and his life had been naught but sailing. When young, he had shipped as a common sailor, and he swore he’d been able to climb from deck to truck—top of the mainmast—in twenty seconds!
But all in all, as he himself freely told me, he was much the worse for his labor, and therefore grateful for his cook’s position, which paid better than a common tar. For he was aging rapidly, and though he claimed no more than fifty years of age I thought him much older.
He had saved nothing of his wages. His knowledge—as far as I could tell—was limited to ship and sea. He knew not how to read, nor to write more than his mark. He knew little of true Christian religion. Indeed, as he confessed, he was much distressed as to the state of his soul and took comfort (as did others) in my reading aloud from the Bible, which they believed had the power to compel truth. In particular, it was the story of Jonah that had a hold on them.
Since Zachariah never mentioned the dirk, nor again spoke discourteously of the captain, I took it as an indication that he knew I would not condone such talk. This meant that our conversations were increasingly free and easy. It was he, more than anyone else, who encouraged me to engage with the crew.
“Miss Doyle has been kind to me,” he said to me one morning, “but if she’s to go scampering about she’ll need, for modesty and safety’s sake, something better than skirts.” So saying he presented me with a pair of canvas trousers and blouse, a kind of miniature of what the crew wore—garments he himself had made.
While I thanked him kindly, in fact I took the gift as a warning that I had been forgetting my station. I told him—rather stiffly, I fear—that I thought it not proper for me, a girl—a lady—to wear such apparel. But, so as not to offend too deeply, I took the blouse and trousers to my cabin.
Later on, I admit—I tried the garments on, finding them surprisingly comfortable until, shocked, I remembered myself. Hurriedly, I took them off, resolving not to stoop so low again.
I resolved more. I determined to keep to my quarters and then and there spent two hours composing an essay in my blank book on the subject of proper behavior for young women.
When I emerged for tea with Captain Jaggery, I begged permission to read him some of what I had written. So unstinting was he in his praise, that I gained a double pleasure. For in his commendation I was certain I had won my father’s approval too—so much were their characters alike.
The captain spent his days in punctilious attention to the ship, pacing off the quarterdeck from wheel to rail, from rail to wheel, ever alert to some disorder to correct. If his eyes were not upon the sails, they were upon the ropes and spars. If not upon those, they rested on the decking.
It was just as he had warned me: the crew was prone to laxness. But—since he had the responsibility of the ship, not they—he was forced, with constant surveillance and commands, to bring discipline to their work.
Things I never would have thought important he could find at grievous fault. From tarnish upon a rail to limp sails and ragged spars, whether it was rigging to be overhauled or new tar to be applied, blocks, tackle, shrouds, each and all were forever in want of repair. Decks had to be holystoned, caulked, and scrubbed anew, the bow scraped and scraped again, the figurehead repainted. In short, under his keen eye everything was kept in perfect order. For this all hands would be called sometimes more than twice a watch. I heard the calls even at night.
Indeed, so mindful was the captain’s sense of responsibility toward the ship (“my father’s firm,” as he was wont to remind me) that no man on watch was ever allowed to do nothing, but was kept at work.
“You are not paid to be idle,” the captain often declared, and he, setting an example, was never slack in his duty. Even at our teas, he was vigilant—again, so like my father—and patiently examined me as to what I had seen, heard, or even thought—always ready with quick and wise correction.
He was not so patient with the first and second mates, to whom he gave all his orders, depending upon whose watch it was. These men, Mr. Hollybrass and Mr. Keetch, were as different from the captain as from each other.
Mr. Keetch when summoned would scuttle quickly to his s
ide, nervous, agitated, that look of fear forever about him, and absorb the captain’s barked orders with a cringing servility.
Mr. Hollybrass, the first mate, would approach slowly, seeming to take his own silent soundings about the captain’s demands. He might lift his shaggy eyebrows as if to object, but I never heard him actually contradict the captain in words. Indeed the captain would only repeat his commands, and then Mr. Hollybrass would obey.
“Have Mr. Dillingham redo the futtock shrouds,” he’d say. Or, “Get Mr. Foley to set the fore gaff topsail proper.” Or again, “Have Mr. Morgan set that main clewgarnet to rights.”
The men of the crew, hardly finished with one task, would have to set about another, though they did so with dark looks and not-so-silent oaths.
The captain, gentleman that he was, appeared to take no notice. But more than once I watched him call upon Mr. Hollybrass—or less often Mr. Keetch—to punish a man for some slackness or slowness I could not detect. If provoked sufficiently, the captain might resort to a push or a slap with his own open hand. And, much to my surprise, I saw him strike Morgan—a short, stocky, squinty-eyed monkey of a man—with a belaying pin, one of the heavy wood dowels used to secure a rigging rope to the pin rail. In dismay, I averted my eyes. The fellow was tardy about reefing a sail, the captain said, and went on to catalog further likely threats: Confinement in the brig. Salary docking. No meals. Lashings. Duckings in the cold sea or even keelhauling, which, as I learned, meant pulling a man from one side of the ship to the other—under water.
“Miss Doyle,” he might say when we took our daily tea, “you see them for yourself. Are they not the dirtiest, laziest dogs?”
“Yes, sir,” I’d reply softly, though I felt increasingly uncomfortable because I could sense resentment growing among the crew.
“And was ever a Christian more provoked than I?”
“No, sir.”
“Now,” he would always ask, “what have you observed?”
Dutifully, I would report everything I’d seen and heard, the dodges from work, the clenched fists, the muttered oaths of defiance that I had tried hard not to hear.
When I’d done he always said the same. “Before we hove home, Miss Doyle, I shall break them to my will. Each and every one.”
One afternoon the wind ceased. And for days after the Seahawk was becalmed. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced. Not only did the breeze vanish and the heat rise, but the sea lay like something dead. Air became thick, positively wringing wet, searing to the lungs. Fleas and roaches seemed to crawl out from every timber. The ship, festering in her own malodorous breath, moaned and groaned.
Five times during those days Captain Jaggery ordered the jolly boats lowered. With Mr. Hollybrass in command of one, Mr. Keetch the other, they towed the Seahawk in search of wind. It was useless. No wind was to be found.
Then the captain, abruptly accepting the ship’s windless fate, set the men to work harder than ever, as though the doldrums had been prearranged in order that he might refit and burnish the Seahawk as though new-made. “Sweet are the uses of adversity,” he instructed me.
The complaints of the crew grew louder. The oaths became, by perceptible degrees, darker yet.
When I reported all this to the captain he frowned and shook his head. “No one ranks for creative genius like a sailor shirking work.”
“The crew is tired,” I murmured, trying to suggest in a hesitant, vague way that even I could see that the men were fatigued and in need of rest.
“Miss Doyle,” he said with a sudden hard laugh, even while urging a second sweet biscuit upon me, “you have my word. They shall wake up when we run into a storm.”
How right he was. But the storm was—at first—man-made.
FOR THREE MORE DAYS WE DRIFTED UPON THE GLASSY SEA. THE HELPLESSNESS OF IT, I COULD tell, drove Captain Jaggery nearly to distraction. Though the sun grew fiercer, he kept sending the men out in jolly boats to tow the Seahawk for two hours at a time in search of wind. He found only more to complain about.
And then it happened.
It was late afternoon, eighteen days into our voyage. The first dog watch. I was on the forecastle deck with Ewing. Ewing was a young, blond Scot—handsome, I thought—with a shocking tattoo of a mermaid upon his arm. That and his Aberdeen sweetheart, about whom he loved to talk, fascinated me. I rather fancied sweetheart and mermaid were one.
At the time he was sitting cross-legged, quite exhausted. That morning the captain had ordered him to spend the day in the highest reaches of the yards, putting new tar on the stays. The sun was brutal. The tar was sticky. Now an old canvas jacket lay in his lap, and with trembling fingers he was attempting to patch it, using needle and awl.
While he labored I read to him from one of my favorite books, Blind Barbara Ann: A Tale of Loving Poverty. He was listening intently when his needle snapped in two.
He swore, hastily apologized for cursing in my presence, then cast about for a new needle. When he couldn’t find one, he murmured something about having to get another from his box in the forecastle and made to heave himself up.
Knowing how tired he was, I asked, “Can I get it for you?”
“It would be a particular kindness, Miss Doyle,” he answered, “my legs being terrible stiff today.”
“Where should I look?” I asked.
“Beneath my hammock, in the topmost part of my chest,” he said. “In the forecastle.”
“Will someone be able to point it out?”
“I should think so,” he said.
Without much thought other than that I wished to do the man a kindness, I turned and hurried away.
I had scampered down the forecastle entryway before pausing to think. The forecastle was one of the few areas I had not been in before—the one place on the Seahawk that the sailors called their own. Not even Captain Jaggery ventured there. No one had ever said I was not to go. But I assumed I would not be welcome.
With this reservation in mind I hurried to the galley in hopes of finding Zachariah. I would ask him to fetch the needle. The galley, however, was deserted.
Since I did not wish to disappoint Ewing, I decided I must go and fetch the needle myself. Timidly, I approached the forecastle door. As I did I heard muted voices from within. Indeed, it was only because they were vague and indistinct that I found myself straining to listen. And what I heard was this:
“… I say I’ll be the one to give the word and none other.”
“It had better be soon. Jaggery’s pushing us hard.”
“How many names do we have?”
“There’s seven that’s put down their mark. But there’s others inclined.”
“What about Johnson?”
“It doesn’t look right. He’s not got the spirit.”
“It won’t do. He needs to be with us or not. No halfway. And I don’t like that girl always spying.”
“Her being here isn’t anyone’s fault. We tried. You remind yourself—we kept those other passengers off.”
I heard these words—spoken by at least four voices—but I did not at the moment fully grasp their meaning. Understanding would come later. Instead I was caught up in embarrassment that I should be eavesdropping where I hardly belonged. It was not a very ladylike thing to do. Yet I was—in part—the subject of their conversation.
And the errand was still to be done. Wanting to do what I’d promised, I knocked upon the door.
Sudden silence.
Then, “Who’s there!”
“Miss Doyle, please.”
Another pause. “What do you want?” came a demand.
“It’s for Mr. Ewing,” I returned. “He’s sent me for a needle.”
There was some muttering, swearing, then, “All right. A moment.”
I heard rustling, the sound of people moving. Then the door was pushed open. Fisk looked out. He was a very large man, lantern-jawed, his fists clenched more often than not as though perpetually prepared to brawl. “What do you say?” he
demanded.
“Mr. Ewing wants a needle from his chest,” I said meekly.
He glowered. “Come along then,” he said, waving me in.
I stepped forward and looked about. The only light came from the open door, just enough for me to see that the low ceiling was festooned with dirty garments. I was accosted by a heavy stench of sweat and filth. Scraps of cheap pictures—some of a scandalous nature—were nailed here and there to the walls in aimless fashion. Cups, shoes, belaying pins, all lay jumbled in heaps. In the center of the floor was a trunk on which sat a crude checkerboard, itself partly covered with a sheet of paper. Along the walls hammocks were slung, but so low I could not see the faces of those in them. What I did see were the arms and legs of three men. They seemed to be asleep, though I knew that could not be true. I had heard more than one voice.
“Mr. Ewing’s chest is there,” Fisk said, gesturing to a corner with a thumb. He lumbered back to his hammock, sat in it and, though he said no more, watched me suspiciously.
The small wooden chest was tucked under one of the empty hammocks.
Apprehensively, I knelt, briefly turning to Fisk to make sure that this chest was indeed Ewing’s.
He grunted an affirmation.
Then I turned back, drew the small trunk forward, and flipped open the top. The first thing that met my eyes was a pistol.
The sight of it was so startling that all I could do was stare. One thought filled my mind: Captain Jaggery had told me—bragged to me—that there were no firearms anywhere on board but in his cabinet.
My eyes shifted. I saw a piece of cork into which some needles were stuck. I pulled one out, and hastily shut the chest in hopes that no one else had seen what I had. Then I came to my feet, and turned to leave.
Fisk was looking hard at me. I forced myself to return his gaze, hoping I was not revealing anything of my feelings. Then I started out, but in my haste stumbled into the trunk in the center of the area. The sheet of paper fluttered to the floor. Apologetic, I stooped to gather it and in a glance saw that on the paper two circles had been drawn, one inside the other. And there appeared to be names and marks written between the lines.