Rough Passage to London(22)

“Ain’t no way about it, Mister Toothacher. Sir, from the looks of Dobbs, he’ll have to bunk here in the sick bay. If we put him back in the forecastle, he’ll either die on his own or they’ll do it for him.”

Above decks, the ship was rolling and pitching, the winds gusting over thirty knots. Morgan was met in the foredeck by the ugly, threatening stares of Old Jeremiah and Curly Jim. They seemed to be the ringleaders, but there was a motley group who stood right behind them. Morgan had been around these sailors long enough to know that the mood of the crew was in a dangerous state.

“You the Devil, ain’t ye,” cried out Curly Jim with an ominous tone in his voice. “You saved Jonah, the sinner. He should have drowned in the sea.”

Morgan didn’t answer. He jumped down into the dark forecastle and walked toward the area where Dobbs kept his clothes. The same group of six sailors who’d met him at the foredeck followed closely behind. They stood there holding two lanterns as he collected the small bundles of clothes and personal effects around Dobbs’s bunk. He saw a letter that he had been writing and decided to put it in his pocket. He could feel the men’s cold, hostile stares, and knew that trouble was ahead.

It was Old Jeremiah who spoke first.

“The man needs to be thrown into the sea.”

“If you won’t do it, we will,” another cried out.

Old Jeremiah then continued, his voice sounding like a prophet. “Jonah fled from the Lord. He must pay the price. Those are the Bible’s teachings. It is the Lord’s will.”

A low murmur reverberated in the gloom.

“Aye, aye, ’tis the Lord’s will.”

Morgan looked at the weathered faces of these older men who were his shipmates, the scruffy beards and the sagging, haggard cheeks. Despite oil skins and boots, they were soaked, their faces and beards streaked with water. The anger and fear in their bloodshot eyes told the story. Morgan had no weapon. For a brief moment, he thought of trying to run through this gauntlet of men. Instead he spoke up in a stronger, more authoritative voice than he thought possible.

“Maybe this man is a Jonah,” Morgan said, looking Curly Jim squarely in the eye. “That’s not for me to say. It’s the first mate who wants Dobbs’s possessions and I’m here to collect ’em. Now I mean to do what I was ordered to do. If you have a quarrel with that I reckon you will want to take that up with Mr. Toothacher.”

Morgan put his shoulders down and stepped into the press of men, who now seemed intent on seizing him. They moved forward, arms outstretched like a lynching mob. It was the huge form of Icelander who emerged to pry him away from the clawing clutches of this small mob. At six foot four, he towered over most of the other sailors. They all knew that his calm, cool demeanor masked a powerful anger that they were all afraid of.

At that moment, a trumpet sounded and a cry went out from above deck. “Icebergs ahead! All men on deck!” The sailors sprang from their berths, buttoned their pants, grabbed their caps, struggled into their jackets, and bolted up the stairs of the forecastle companionway. As suddenly as that, Morgan and the Jonah were forgotten. He scrambled up on deck with the rest of the men, only instead of going aloft he dropped off Dobbs’s possessions below decks in the galley area and made his way back to the chaos on the foredeck.

The crew had been battling heavy winds for days now, but no one had bargained on anything like this. On its northwesterly course, the ship had sailed into a field of icebergs. They were now north of 40 degrees latitude but still far enough away from the Grand Banks off Newfoundland and the Labrador current so as not to expect to encounter the southerly drift of ice fields. All around them they could see these large mountains of ice, some two hundred to three hundred feet high, rising out of the water like white cathedrals. Most were still half a mile away. The danger was clear, but eager to make up lost time, Champlin pressed ahead, ordering Mr. Brown to station lookouts aloft as well as on deck.

That night Morgan was placed on the foredeck watch. The Pleiades were still visible on the eastern horizon and the Dipper beckoned to the north. He looked back at Icelander, who was on the opposite side of the ship, a thin speck of light from the lantern highlighting his face. Watchful and mute, he stood there in the dark, his jacket flapping and fluttering in the wind. Over the years he’d gotten to know more about this mysterious man of so few words. Icelander, or Olaf, had grown up as a fisherman’s son. His father had drowned in a storm, leaving only him and his mother. When she eventually remarried, her new husband constantly beat her. One evening when his stepfather raised his fist, young Olaf came to his mother’s defense. The fight ended with his stepfather falling backward, hitting his head on a ship’s anchor with a fatal thud. That was not only the end of his stepfather but also the end of Olaf’s life in Iceland. His mother told him to leave home and never come back. He never understood why she didn’t want him to intervene. He eventually found his way to Denmark and finally to London, where he’d shipped on board one of the Griswold ships.