Bound for Gold--A Peter Fallon Novel of the California Gold Rush

by William Martin

  Trask studied Hodges, as if deciding whether this answer was sufficiently subservient. Perhaps he recognized that Hodges had to project leadership, too. Men in power usually understood one another, and so long as one man’s power did not challenge the other’s, all would be well.

  But if any aboard doubted Trask’s supremacy, he was about to disabuse them. “You veteran seamen, you know what’s expected. The rest of you, pay attention. Seaman Flynn, step forward.”

  We had not yet crossed the forty-second parallel, and Michael Flynn had already crossed an imaginary line. He hesitated a moment, then obeyed. I could not see his face, so I watched as Hodges glanced at him, then looked more closely, then stared as if he were seeing an Irish apparition. Then he turned and said something into the captain’s ear.

  The captain ignored Hodges and proclaimed, “Seaman Flynn, while at the capstan, you showed disrespect to Reverend Stone. In so doing, you showed disrespect to the ship’s company, to the Sagamores, and to me. After obedience, I demand respect, because disrespect is the forerunner of disobedience. A dozen lashes.”

  “A dozen lashes?” cried Flynn.

  “Make that fifteen. And another for every word out of your mouth.”

  “But—”

  “Sixteen. Ship’s company to witness punishment. Mr. Hawkins, seize him up.”

  “Aye, sir.” The first mate signaled to a pair of sailors who grabbed Flynn and wrestled him to the starboard side, where they raised a hatch grate and trussed him to it. Then they stripped his shirt. The white skin of his back against the grate looked like fine Irish linen set down on a black frying pan.

  “Mr. Kearns, fetch the cat,” ordered Hawkins.

  We all knew of the cat-o’-nine-tails, nine knotted strands of rope attached to a handle, a simple yet diabolical instrument of discipline. And we had all heard of floggings. We had expected to see a few before the voyage was done but not on the very first day.

  And I could rightly say that the next few minutes chastened any man who might ever have considered back-talking Captain Nathan Trask.

  “One!” cried First Mate Hawkins.

  Flynn grit his teeth and clenched his jaws.

  Whistle, snap, and “Two!”

  Flynn straightened up as if he would shake off the pain.

  Whistle, snap, and “Three!”

  Blood appeared on Flynn’s skin.

  Four more lashes, and Flynn’s back began to resemble rare beef, purpling, bruised, blood-blistered. But still he kept silent.

  Deering Sloate joined Christopher Harding at the rail, and others followed, because this was a sight to sicken any man.

  Two more lashes and a line of blood droplets splattered across the deck, as if to describe the arcs that the whip strands were taking with every swing.

  “This is getting inhuman,” I muttered and turned my eyes toward the sky that was itself blood red.

  “They been doin’ it since the Romans,” whispered Matt Dooling from behind me. “And you was ordered to witness punishment. You can’t turn away.”

  So I watched and tried to concentrate on the motion of the ship, but the maternal rhythm seemed now to be keeping pace with the infernal swinging of the whip and the snapping of the ropes against that white Irish flesh.

  Up, whistle, down, snap. Up, whistle, down, snap.

  After a dozen strokes, the captain made a small motion of his hand, and the second mate stopped swinging. The captain announced, “We will forego further punishment. Cut him down and salt his wounds.”

  Released from the grate, Flynn wobbled, trembled, but instead of collapsing, pulled himself up straight and defiant, like a man who had taken a beating before.

  The captain said, “Have you learned your lesson, seaman?”

  Flynn glared toward the quarterdeck.

  “Belay that cross look, mister,” said the captain, “or I’ll seize you up for another dozen. Have you learned your lesson?”

  “I have the utmost respect, sir, for you.” Then Flynn turned his eyes to Hodges.

  Hodges moved closer to the captain and said something else in his ear. The captain did not even shift his eyes in Hodges’s direction.

  A man pushed forward, George Beal by name, Sagamore physician. He had recently completed studies at the Harvard Medical Annex and, like so many of us, saw this voyage as a chance to test his mettle in a world not made by his parents. He would test it first on lacerations made by a knotted rope. He asked permission to tend to the sailor’s back.

  The captain eyed him and nodded.

  As the doctor led him to the companionway, Flynn glared at me. “I ain’t like you or your friend up there. When I fight a man, I fight him and we’re done with it. I never had a man flogged for beatin’ me fair.”

  I was shocked but reminded myself that a man who had endured such punishment might lack clear-headedness. I watched him stagger to the companionway, with Doc Beal close behind, then I asked Willis, “May I borrow your flask?”

  * * *

  BELOWDECKS, A POT OF stew bubbled on the cast-iron caboose, the ship’s stove. The heat and hefty aromas made this dark, low-ceilinged space feel like the sailor’s home it would be for six months. The forecastle, or “fo’c’sle” in seafaring jargon, occupied the space forward of the mast, snug in the bow. Eighteen wooden berths, in stacks of three, lined the bulkheads. Lanterns swung over the table and the benches affixed to the deck. Here the crew ate, slept, sang, and kept warm.

  Flynn was sitting on a bench, his shoulders hunched, his head down.

  Doc Beal was mixing something with a mortar and pestle.

  The cook, a burly Negro in a white apron, was examining Flynn’s back, saying, “Ain’t so bad. More bruise than blood. Second Mate go easy on you.”

  Flynn said, “It ain’t the pain botherin’ me, Pompey. It’s the singlin’ out.”

  “The what?”

  “Hodges and his nancy-boy friend singled me out, told the captain I’m a troublemaker, which I ain’t.”

  “Nah.” Pompey shook his head. “First day, the cap always pick on somebody. But I ship with him for three years and he never yet listen to no passenger ’bout nothin’. He’s a hard man but fair. If he say you done somethin’, you done it.”

  Flynn seemed too pained to argue. He just bowed his head.

  And from the shadows, I said, “I can’t speak for Hodges, but I had nothing to do with this.”

  Flynn looked up with anger in his eyes.

  I preferred to look into them than at his back. I asked him how he was feeling.

  He laughed, though he could not be amused at anything but the stupidity of the question. “I feel like a peeled potato.”

  I offered the flask. “A little painkiller.”

  “I never touch the stuff.”

  Now it was I who laughed. But he turned away and stared into the shadows. So I offered the flask to the Negro, who took it eagerly and poured a shot down his throat. With his apron he wiped off the mouth before handing it back to me.

  Doc Beal told Flynn, “If you’ve never touched it, you might want to start, because this is going to hurt.”

  Flynn looked into the mortar. “What’s that?”

  “Salt mixed with vinegar.”

  Pompey peered over the doctor’s shoulder. “I use plain salt.”

  “Salt dries the wound,” said the doctor, “and that’s good. But vinegar cleans it. The mix stings just as bad but works better.”

  Flynn snatched the flask, took a long drink, and said, “Lay on.”

  And for the next few minutes, Doc Beal dipped his fingers into the concoction and spread it delicately across the lacerations. Flynn kept silent, though the pain was surely excruciating. I watched with such awe that I did not take a swallow from the flask until the salting was done.

  Then Flynn growled at me. “You got somethin’ else to say?”

  “Only this.” I paraphrased his own words: “When I fight a man, I fight with my fists. I never had a man flogged for fighting
me fair.”

  “A fine speech.” Flynn slipped a clean shirt over his skinned back. “When I’m up to it, you can take a swing at me to prove you ain’t a nancy-boy. Now get out.”

  I shoved the flask into my pocket and returned to the main deck. If I had nothing else to say to that Irishman on the voyage, I had said my piece.

  January 14, 1849

  Our First Sunday

  The ship makes a steady eight knots that will bring us in two months to S 8′03″ W 34′52″, just off the Brazilian coast, where we can finally make a turn west. As the great belly of South America bulges far into the Atlantic, some thousand miles east of Boston, we must sail away from our goal before sailing toward it, but that seems always to be the nature of travel by sea … and through life, too.

  Little intercourse between sailors and passengers. Much settling in. Many routines established, including my writing. I conclude that some days will require long passages rewritten into the past tense. Others will make little impression but for their monotony.…

  January 18–20

  Seasickness and Storms

  Overnight, the northwesterly that had driven us began to shift. By six bells, we were banging hard against a headwind that sent cold sleet into our sails and slammed relentless waves over our bow. This “hulling,” as the sailors call it, produced a motion that I could neither ignore nor tolerate. Soon I had joined a dozen or more Sagamores at the rail to “cast and scour,” as ye olde Pilgrims put it, much to the amusement of the seamen who warned us yet again not to puke into the wind.

  But after two days, good sailing returned, about the time that I stopped vomiting. Pompey told me I was now “cleaned out good,” so I might tolerate a bit of salt pork and biscuit. It eased me, and now I can truly say that I have got my sea legs.

  January 24, 1849

  A Dispatch for the Transcript

  We hove-to when a northbound ship appeared on the horizon, the brig Pemberton, carrying a cargo of molasses and hemp after trading lumber and codfish in Barbados.

  It is a cordiality of the sea that passing vessels often reach out to one another. The exchange may be simple, as when we sighted our first sail: “Ship Ahoy!” “Halloo!” “What ship is that, pray?” “The bark Virginia, from Le Havre, bound for New York. Where are you from?” “The ship William Winter from Boston, bound for California, five days out.” Unless there is leisure or something special to say, this is seldom varied from. But if there is time or need, men who might never have call to communicate on land become, in the great blue void, as brothers. And if one asks another to enact the role of Winged Mercury, to convey a message that will calm a worried wife or assuage an uncertain family, it will be done.

  So, we exchanged news with the Pemberton and delivered a satchel of mail, including my first dispatch for the Transcript:

  We have been cruising a dozen days and neither the temperature nor the angle of the sun give promise of the warmth that lies ahead. It is as cold as if we were wandering the White Mountains of New Hampshire rather than the white caps of the Atlantic.

  Captain Trask issues no order without certainty and maintains strict discipline. He punished a sailor the first day and has found no further need to let the “cat out of the bag.” The sailor in question now goes about his duties gingerly, avoiding any eye contact, thereby avoiding any further difficulty.

  In truth, every sailor is kept busy through every watch. There is always work to be done—replacing lines, holystoning the deck, drawing out yarns from bundles of rags and junk (of which the owners buy up great quantities) to be used for chafing gear and caulking, and a thousand other daily chores, all in addition to steering, reefing, furling, and pumping. Our wooden mother demands constant attention, assuring that her children are too tired to cause mischief.

  As for the Sagamores, we have organized into “watches,” like the crew, so there are no more than thirty-five of us on deck at a time. We eat at appointed hours. We hold formal meetings to discuss company business. In the evenings, some engage in Bible study while others enjoy lively debate on political or literary subjects, with topics such as, “Is the Death of Slavery Imminent?” and “The Novel v. the Epic Poem: Wherein Lies Greater Truth?”

  The British wit Samuel Johnson may once have said, “Going to sea is like going to jail, with the added danger of drowning,” but as this vessel formerly plied the Atlantic passenger trade, we enjoy certain comforts. My own billet, in the first cabin, contains a berth separated from the main saloon by a door fitted with shutter blinds for ventilation. Once I am settled, I am as comfortable as if I were in my own bed on Beacon Hill.

  The saloon, between mizzen and mainmast, features a table and benches fixed to the deck. We enjoy natural light from the skylight and gratings, which we may open for ventilation but may batten down when the weather—in sailor’s parlance—“turns dirty.”

  On the deck below are members who chose “second cabin,” thereby saving forty dollars. Below them is the hold, containing the supplies that will stand us in good stead in California. And therein lies our only controversy.

  A contingent of Sagamores, led by Jason Willis, has raised the possibility of operating as merchants rather than miners. He comes from a mercantile family—his father is one of the owners of the William Winter—and he theorizes that goods will be scarce in San Francisco, so inflation may turn a well-stocked hold into a gold mine of its own. Board President Samuel Hodges opposes this idea.

  I shall elaborate upon the dispute in the weeks ahead. But for now, the way is clear and the winter sea has calmed.

  Yr. Ob’t Correspondent,

  The Argonaut

  January 28, 1849

  Another Sunday

  Psalms in the morning. Brisk sailing through the day, an invitation to dine at the captain’s table in the evening.

  Other captains, I had been told, entertained passengers every night. But Nathan Trask appeared to have taken the lonely responsibility of leadership into his very soul. When he came on deck, he held himself aloof. Some days, he spoke exclusively to the mate, who conveyed his orders to the rest of us. Some days, he appeared only to take sightings and return below. Some days, he appeared not at all.

  His cabin impressed me in the fashion of an orderly set of rooms at the College, with a tight berth to starboard, a privy seat and sink-stand to larboard, a mahogany table beneath the skylight that formed the roof of the aft deck house. Charts hung in a rack on one bulkhead, sextant and chronometer in cherry boxes on the shelf above his berth. Railed cases along the hull held books: novels by Dickens, Maury’s Wind and Current Charts, and other scientific works. A learned man, then, despite his manner.

  That evening, he welcomed myself, Samuel Hodges, Jason Willis, and our “quartermaster,” the corpulent Charles Collins, former food broker from Quincy Market.

  Hodges offered a toast, “To our illustrious captain and our first two weeks at sea.”

  The captain raised his glass. “Pray that your last version of that toast is as warm, for we’re likely to be another six months at sea.”

  “James here will run out of things to write about,” said Willis.

  As we talked, we were passing bowls and filling plates with a concoction of beef, potatoes, and carrots prepared by a cheerful Portagee steward who buzzed about, serving, topping glasses, and generally seeing to our comfort.

  Feeding a company of gentlemen—who expect something more than a bit of salt beef for supper—is a tall task on a long voyage. But Collins had done an estimable job. He had loaded a hundred barrels of beef and pork. He had taken aboard two dozen egg-laying hens, a pair of breeding pigs (the sow being pregnant), fifty barrels of peas, fifty of kidney beans, root vegetables, and apples to last four months, by which time we would have reached the bottom of the world and turned north again.

  “Rounding the Horn,” said Trask, “is a thing that no man forgets but that few have adequately described. It will give Mr. Spencer plenty to write about.”

  Hodge
s turned to me. He was growing whiskers like black adze blades on the sides of his face. “So, James, have you written about the efficacy of a good flogging?”

  “The incident on the first day was—” I searched for a word.

  Willis provided it: “Powerful.”

  “Powerful indeed,” said Samuel Hodges. “And may I say, Captain, that you made a good slam among the men by flogging an Irishman who surely deserved it.”

  “Deserved it?” said the captain. “Had that Irishman gone whispering a few days later, I might have ignored it, for by then I would have found someone else to punish.”

  Hodges cocked a brow, the first time I had seen him perplexed about anything.

  The captain leaned forward. “Punishing one man focuses every man. Do it early but do it mercifully. You’ll achieve many goals at the expense of one man’s back.”

  “One unlucky man,” I said.

  The captain turned to me. “Ever gone aloft in a heavy blow, Mr. Spencer?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You should. Then you might understand.”

  I felt my face redden. I had never climbed anything higher than the ladder leading to the second tier of bookshelves in my father’s library. I asked, “What, exactly, would I understand?”

  “The simple physics of fear. The motion of the deck is multiplied on the mast. Like so.” The captain held his knife at my chin and pivoted his wrist, so that the tip augured toward my nose. “The mast is the lever, the deck is the fulcrum. The higher you go, the wider swings the mast. Imagine climbing eighty feet of icy shroud, sidestepping along a thin footrope to the end of a spar, then reefing a tops’l while the deck pitches and the mast spins and the wind grabs at your collar like Satan’s own crimp, press-gangin’ you to hell. Imagine that, and you’ll know the physics of fear.”

  Hodges scoffed. “But, Captain, an ignorant Irishman knows nothing of physics.”

  “I do,” answered Trask. “I know that his fear of climbing those shrouds must needs be less than his fear of the stripes I’ll put on his back if he refuses.”