Now as he sat in the forecastle listening to Jeremiah speak about strange superstitions and ominous signs of misfortune on the sea, he felt a cold sensation crawl up the back of his neck, giving him goose bumps. He started to shiver. It was almost as if they had fallen under a sorcerer’s spell. A large wave slammed into the midsection and thundered over the bow. He could hear loud cracks. The hull’s crossbeams shook and trembled in protest. The seas crashing on the deck and the waves on either side of the ship mingled together in a frightening roar.
Morgan could hear the wailing and moaning of the emigrants over the howl of the wind. They had about thirty people in the adjacent steerage compartment. He had been told that most of them were simple cottagers from the Salisbury Plains area of southern England. A few others were tenant farmers from Ireland. None of them had ever been on a ship before, and so not surprisingly they were terrified by stormy weather. The ship’s carpenter had hammered shut their hatchway to keep the compartment watertight. There was no way for any of them to reach the open air, no escape if the ship went down. He imagined them piled together: men, women, and children, clutching the wooden bunk beds in desperation in the total darkness of the upper hold, their boxes and chests hurtling from one end of the ship to the other.
Morgan put aside for the moment his empathy for the steerage passengers and looked around the forecastle, slowly retreating behind most of the other men. Not a smile offered, and not a word spoken. He had learned to keep his mouth shut in these cramped quarters. Some of these tough men did things to one another that were best not talked about. They were quick to anger, and once angered hard to control. Resentments among sailors on board became permanent shackles. He knew the dangers of drawing attention to himself.
Old Jeremiah was looking for someone to blame for the bad weather. Several new sailors had come aboard in London. The suspicious eyes darting around eventually landed on these newcomers. Morgan looked at the turned heads, the reluctant glances, and the downcast eyes. Even the old hands had something to hide, he thought to himself. They all had something they didn’t want the others to know. After moments of silence where only the howling wind could be heard outside, Jeremiah lifted his bearded chin as he raised his voice to a higher pitch.
“Men, I fear that no-account Irishman who we cast off in Ouessant is not our sole source of misfortune. There is another problem,” he declared with solemn authority.
“What might that be?” Curly Jim asked as he stroked his bald head. “Is there someone else who we should cast off the ship?”
Morgan thought of the man they’d left behind on the French island of Ouessant, an Irish emigrant by the name of Peter Corrigan. The sailors had forced the captain to run him ashore. He had kicked the ship’s cat overboard, a sure sign of bad luck. Sure enough, shortly afterward the wind had died. Some had muttered that the ship was cursed on account of that black cat being drowned. Someone was to blame for this strange weather, they said. It’s the emigrant’s fault, they had whispered to one another. He needs to go. Corrigan had cried, begging them to let him stay on board because his entire savings had been spent to purchase the fare to America. Morgan remembered as the Hudson set sail, seeing the man standing on the treeless, rocky bluffs of Ouessant looking out at the ship, his red hair waving in the wind. The small, forlorn figure on the cliffs had been as still as a statue, his arms hanging at his sides.
Now Jeremiah told the men that the curse was still with them. The dead bird was a bad omen, he warned as he stood up, and began walking around the cramped forecastle, pulling and stroking his beard. A haunting silence hung in the air. No one spoke. Morgan noticed one of the new sailors who seemed to be frozen in fear. The man moved to the back of the room further into the shadows as Jeremiah raised his voice again, his pale blue eyes, now big and staring, bulging out of their red-rimmed sockets.
“We have a Jonah in our midst, men. I am loath to tell you this, but tell you I will. I am as certain of this as I am about the Scripture. Unless we find him, misfortune is going to find us. So it is written in the Book of Jonah.”
The forecastle was filled with a flurry of urgent angry cries to find the Jonah and remove the curse. The noise increased. There was a sense of frenzy in the air.
“A life for a life,” Jeremiah shouted. “So says the Bible.”
Morgan kept his eyes on that one sailor. In the light from the hanging lantern, he could see him clearly. He was a tall man, hollow cheeked with a weak jaw that fell inward toward his long thin neck. His dark eyes had an inward gaze of someone lost in thought. The dark shadows under his eyes gave him a haunted, gaunt appearance. He looked to be just a few years older than he was. His name was John Dobbs. He had shipped on board at the last minute. He told the mates that his normal vessel had left port without him and he needed to get to New York. The officers had welcomed him aboard as they always needed an extra hand. He was an odd sort. He mostly kept to himself, but in the sailors’ lonely world that was not that strange. People just left him alone.