“Why does he want you dead?”
“I know too much about them and their foul dealings.”
“What foul dealings? Where do I find this Blackwood?”
The bedridden man paused for some time before he answered, and then he mumbled, “The East End of London.” He said something else, which Morgan couldn’t hear well. He shook him again, but the shivering sailor didn’t respond. His eyelids flickered and closed, his body starting to shake as he slipped back into unconsciousness.
PART III
And the muddy tide of the Thames, reflecting nothing, and hiding a million of unclean secrets within its breast, — a sort of guilty conscience, as it were, unwholesome with the rivulets of sin that constantly flow into it, — is just the dismal stream to glide by such a city.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, Our Old Home
7
1826
An early summer wind was blowing hard from the direction of Staten Island that June morning, pulling the Hudson’s anchor chains taut like the strings on a fiddle. Morgan stood by the windlass on the ship’s foredeck, ready for the order to weigh anchor. He was chewing a quid of tobacco, enjoying the bitter taste and the way it sharpened his mind. A couple of steam tugboats were puffing around the harbor. The jib sheets were pulled tight and the crew at the stern of the ship was busy raising the spanker. He could hear some of the sailors singing the “Sally Racket” chantey.
“Oh Sally Racket, pawned my peak jacket, hi-oh!”
Just then, the big, square-shouldered first mate strode forward from the quarterdeck with his rigid, military-like posture.
“Heave up the anchor, let’s get it aweigh,” yelled Mr. Toothacher gruffly.
Morgan and Hiram joined in the singing as they took their places along with the rest of the crew heaving on the windlass, their bodies’ movements matching the rhythm of the chantey song. They were now considered full-fledged seamen, or “jacks of all trades” as the sailors liked to say. After four years at sea, the tasks on ship strangely soothed Morgan like the monotony of the ocean on a calm day. He could toss the lead from the forechains, tie a cuckold’s knot around a spar, or take the helm during the night. All were as familiar to him as combing his hair or trimming his thickening reddish whiskers. He was twenty years old, but he felt much older.
Morgan looked over at Hiram, whose bearded face was now aglow in the morning sun. His teeth flashed. His eyes sparkled. He was stripped to the waist, revealing a sinewy white torso that gleamed and shimmered as he strained and heaved away. He now looked like a Yankee tar, a true foredeck sailor. His muscular arms and shoulders, tattooed with his busty mermaids and a trident-holding Neptune, flexed and tightened as he sang the chantey with the rest of the sailors. Icelander and the Spaniard, along with several of the Connecticut River men, were still visibly feeling the effects of taking too big of a “swig at the halyards” the last few nights of shore leave. Morgan noticed that they were having a hard time keeping up with the rhythm of the song as they heaved against the wooden capstan bars.
There were many new men in the crew. Old Jeremiah had left after the Jonah voyage, vowing that “he wouldn’t sail no more on no cursed ship.” Many of the other old-timers like Curly Jim had gone as well. Morgan had been glad to see most of those troublesome sailors leave. In their place, the captain had hired on some Cape Horn veterans from Salem and Newburyport, a couple of river men from Connecticut, and a colored man from New Orleans who’d been working on coastal packets.
Sailors were now on the yards bracing around the topsails of the foremast and the mainmast. The anchor was up, and the foredeck sailors were securing it to the cat head, ready for the next order. One of the men started singing “New York Girls,” and soon the yards and the foredeck were filled with song. All around were other transatlantic packets getting ready to weigh anchor, some already leaving New York harbor under full sail.
“Ely, look over there.”
Morgan’s head snapped up from the cat head. He watched as a small transatlantic packet fought its way toward the East River.
“Look Ely, it’s the old Cadmus. Remember two years ago when that Havre packet brought in General Lafayette?”
Morgan nodded. Hiram was right. It indeed was the Cadmus, a smallish snub-nosed packet on the Havre–New York run flying the tricolor. She must have just arrived from France. The sailors were high up on the yards furling the topsails. The sight of the old Cadmus brought back poignant memories for Morgan. He began thinking of Old Jeremiah, black cats, and that fateful voyage two years ago that had seemed cursed from beginning to end. He thought of his traumatic encounter with John Taylor. Immediately after that voyage he had written his brother to tell him the good news that he had found Taylor, but then four months later when he had returned from London he found that the man had vanished from the boarding house where he had been delivered.