Rough Passage to London(30)
8
By the twentieth day with all sails set, they spotted Bishop’s Rock, the southern outpost of the Isles of Scilly, which seamen call the graveyard of the North Atlantic due to the hidden underwater ledges. Morgan was relieved. He thought it unlikely that Brown would create an incident now. He had seen the mate’s eyes, glaring at Hiram, burning with hate, and he had warned his friend to keep his distance. They had just passed the Don Quixote, the Havre packet, which left New York just ahead of them on the same day three weeks ago. Three thousand miles of ocean, and amazingly the two ships had come together again. The ship labored against the wind and rising seas, battering her way eastward toward the French coast. Morgan was just climbing down the ratlines after furling and fastening the fore-royals and topgallants. The wind had picked up and the seas threw a flood of water onto the deck. To the north, he could see the looming rocky cliffs of Lands End, and the breakers in the distance. The Hudson veered northward past the dangerous rocks at the Lizard, then headed northeasterly, skirting the wild Cornish coast as it made its way up the English Channel.
A day later, Morgan was high up in the fore-royals, his feet balanced squarely on the footropes, when he noticed the rocky cliffs of St. Aldhelm’s Head jutting out into the Channel. To the north, he could just make out the tips of the one-hundred-foot jagged white rocks of the Needles. He shouted down to Hiram, who was freeing a snagged buntline, that they had arrived. For Morgan, the first sighting of St. Aldhelm’s Head and the Needles was a sign that the voyage was almost over. They would be at anchor within hours. With a fair tide, the Black X packet coasted through the five-mile-wide Solent without tacking. The Hudson ran in under clewed-up main and fore topsails, dropping anchor at Spithead within sight of the rooftops of Portsmouth, near the town of Ryde, as was customary. Most of the cabin passengers preferred to get off at Portsmouth and take a bumpy carriage ride into London than spend two more days on a slanted deck.
Morgan remembered thinking at the time how unusual it was that Mr. Brown escorted the cabin passengers into Portsmouth. Normally, the second mate stayed aboard ship with the crew. Brown had told the captain that he had a few personal matters to attend to, and Champlin had granted him a few hours of shore leave. Hours later, with Jack Brown once again aboard ship, the Hudson weighed anchor and headed up the Channel toward Dungeness and then into the chop and swell of the North Sea.
Two days later, as they rounded the point at Margate in the predawn darkness of early morning and coasted into the muddy swirl at the mouth of the Thames, the weather started to change. They had timed their arrival to the first rush of the flood tide. Morgan stared at the dark, gray sky, but he saw nothing. The fog came in from the North Sea, like floating mists, thinning and then inexplicably thickening so that they had little to no visibility. There was a sudden air of mystery sailing into the river. The lookouts blew on trumpets every few minutes as a warning to any incoming ship. There was only a boat length of visibility, if that.
Morgan was standing on the port forechains, throwing the lead forward of the slowly moving ship, calling out the depths methodically. The tallow on the bottom of the lead sinker was still pulling up some gravel, not all mud. They were feeling their way from one brightly colored buoy to the next. He caught glimpses of barges stuck in the thick mud along the shore. The low-lying riverbanks were disappearing and then reappearing, the blanket of cold fog occasionally revealing a lonely wooden jetty along the banks or, in the distance, the tip of a church spire.
Even before they reached Sheerness, Luis Ochoa was pulling at his moustache, a sign he was getting nervous. The pilot boat they normally would have encountered was nowhere to be seen. Some of the old hands also showed signs of uneasiness. The sailors aloft were frenetically signaling with their hands. Morgan looked where they were pointing but could see nothing through the fog. After speaking with Mr. Toothacher, the captain surfaced from his cabin with two pistols in either hand while the mates started handing out kitchen knives to the sailors. Morgan had no idea what was going on. He wondered if there was a mutiny brewing. He looked around the deck, but there was no sign of any commotion.
“Tómate este cuchillo,” Ochoa murmured to Morgan as he motioned for him to come inboard on deck. “Mejor para matar a estos hijos de puta.” Morgan didn’t understand exactly what he said, but he took the knife Ochoa handed to him. Something was about to happen as the first mate was ordering lookouts to the port and the starboard. He sent several more sailors up into the yards.
“What’s going on?” Morgan anxiously asked the Spaniard.