Rough Passage to London(107)

Hiram’s gaze seemed disconnected. He scratched his head and pulled at his side-whiskers before he responded.

“When the fighting started, Ely, all I remember is the sharp pain in my head and then everything went dark. They must have drugged me. When I woke up I was in a cold, dark fo’c’sle on a British Indiaman headed for Canton.”

“What about Blackwood? Did you meet him?” asked Morgan incredulously.

Hiram shook his head.

“Never saw who it was that crimped me.”

There was an awkward silence as Morgan studied his old friend, observing how his eyes wandered around the cabin as if he was purposely trying to avoid looking at him closely. Morgan felt a pang of guilt as he thought about Hiram’s life of roaming. He imagined the hardships he had suffered, and he held himself responsible. Hiram would probably still be with the Black X Line if it weren’t for him. He felt sympathetic as he looked at his changed old friend.

Finally Hiram stopped his nervous pacing around the cabin and looked out the porthole. He rolled a cigar in his fingers and lit it.

“Did you ever find out what happened to your brother, Ely?” he asked dispassionately. “Or have you given up that search?”

Morgan explained about the journal that Taylor had given him, and how he now knew that Abraham had been shanghaied onto a slaving ship. He described the accounts of the storm in the diary, saying he assumed this was probably the last he would hear about his brother.

Hiram listened restlessly but didn’t seem overly curious.

“You got any rum, Ely?” he asked bluntly, while smiling in a gratuitous way. “I have a sudden hankering for some grog.”

Morgan poured him a generous drink and watched his friend grab the glass.

“A man’s not a sailor without his rum.”

In one thirsty motion he gulped it down, wiping his chin with his trembling hands.

“Of course, you being a shipmaster now you might have changed?”

“I reckon we all have changed, Hiram.”

“Not me, Ely. I’m a foredeck sailor, always been one. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

He held out his mug. “Just a bit more, what do you say?”

Morgan poured him another drink.

“Why don’t you tell me how you come to be sailing British in the Royal Navy of all places.”

Hiram now seemed more relaxed after the rum began to numb his brain.

“It’s a long story, Ely. I ended up staying with that British merchantman. Wasn’t too bad. Then did the opium smuggling trade for many years. Wandered around the West Indies on trading schooners. I been with the Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron now for a spell, currently on a ship called the H.M.S. Resolve, one of them fast Bermuda-built sloops of war they call ballyhoos. We’ve been chasing down blackbirders these last few years from the Gulf of Guinea down to the south of the West African coast toward Benguela.”

“I know that ship,” Morgan exclaimed excitedly.

“How so?”

Morgan volunteered his own story about his encounter with the H.M.S. Resolve so many years ago. He told Hiram how Captain James Stryker had run down the old Philadelphia with the rescued African slaves on the deck.

“He fired cannon at us to make us square our yards. He thought our ship was a blackbirder.”

Hiram didn’t comment. An awkward silence filled the cabin.

“How is it that you are here in Portsmouth now?” Morgan asked.

“We are on maneuvers,” Hiram replied, “part of the Royal Navy’s Experimental Squadron.” He puffed on his cigar and then smiled suddenly, his voice becoming more energetic.

“Man alive, it is sure good to see you, Ely! I was looking for you once a few years back when I came to New York. You wasn’t there, but that’s when they told me you’d gone and made shipmaster. I also heard you’ve gotten hitched and now have a fine comely missus.”

They both laughed, and after congratulating him on “getting hitched,” Hiram continued his story. Morgan thought he saw a glimpse of the old friend he had known and trusted. He looked expectantly at him. Hiram paused and started to say something. His face turned more somber, but when he took another drink he seemed to retreat back into some other private place. Morgan again tried to encourage him to talk. He thought about the group waiting for him in the saloon. Some of the Sketching Club artists and their friends had accompanied him on the two-day passage from London to Portsmouth. Leslie, Stanfield, Landseer, the Chalon brothers, Stumps, and Uwins were on board. So were Thackeray and Lord Nanvers. Dickens, who had just returned from Italy, had been too busy “trodding the boards” with his amateur theater group.