Rough Passage to London(39)

Morgan’s eyebrows now arched upward in surprised astonishment.

Champlin paused and took his top hat off, running his hands through his thick, silvery hair.

“I never would have believed it about Brown if you had just come to me with that story. I would have just kicked the sorry lot of you off my ship. As it was, I was so startled by what I learned, I came close to putting you in manacles. But later I got to thinking how I underestimated you. Brown was a wicked storm coming in your direction, and like a sailor choosing to ride out the waves with no more than a double-reefed topsail, you found a way to stay clear of him. You showed me what I didn’t want to see about Brown, and you let him reveal his dark side. That’s what I told Mr. Griswold. I told him you had the quick thinking and resourcefulness needed to be a ship’s officer. And he agreed.”

Champlin then looked at him with a skeptical frown, and then a sort of curiosity in his probing eyes, like he was trying to figure out something that puzzled him.

“But I don’t mind telling you, Morgan, you’ve got your fair share of flaws as well.”

Morgan didn’t reply as he shuffled his feet and cast his eyes down.

“From what I’ve heard about your wanderings in those dark alleyways around the London Docks, you’re more foolhardy than I would have expected. I would be careful where you put your feet, Morgan. Like a chance meeting with a snake that crosses your path, you have to know where to step. The world is like a snake, Morgan, whether you’re shipboard or on land. Make no mistake, it will bite you if you give it the opportunity.”





With that parting remark, Captain Henry Champlin had walked out of his life. Those were words he would always remember. Mr. Toothacher and some of the more experienced sailors had left with Champlin. Morgan had watched the old sea dog walk down the gangway and slowly saunter off to the offices of the Black X Line at 68 South Street. He thought to himself how much their relationship had changed since he had first come aboard ship as a cabin boy. That seemed like a couple of lifetimes ago. Champlin had been so stern at first, and then become almost like a distant father, but one who seemed to understand him. He would miss sailing with him.

Ochoa interrupted his thoughts.

“Ya llegamos. Allí está Irlanda.”

There in the distance off to the port side, Morgan could see the faint outline of the Cape Clear lighthouse on the bleak, barren southern tip of Ireland. They steered the ship so as to pass some three miles from the lighthouse and then headed toward the Cornwall coast at the southwestern tip of England. The long vigil of being on watch afforded him plenty of time to think about things, not just his life aboard ship and his time in London, but also his family. The first ray of sunlight had now peeked above the horizon, and the darkness began lifting like a slow-moving curtain revealing a rolling seascape with frothy whitecaps.

Normally the London-bound packet ships traveled well to the south of Ireland so they could clear the western edge of the Scilly Islands. But the favorable northwesterly winds had convinced Morgan to hug the Irish coastline before bearing off and running before the wind.

“Plenty of sheep in the meadow today, Ochoa. We should make good time to the Scillies.”

Ochoa nodded. Frozen drops of rain and hail began to pelt the ship’s decks, and the sound made him think of falling chestnuts dropping onto the barn roof back home. He wondered if he would ever get home again. He had been at sea for seven long years now. The last letter from his brother had made it sound like his father no longer wanted to see him ever again. It seemed that he and Icelander had something in common. They were outcasts who had left the unrest of the land to embrace the risks of the sea. Maybe all sailors were that way, with no place to call home.

“Home,” he murmured softly to himself under his breath. “Home.” He wondered if his long journey to find Abraham was no different than chasing a mirage. He thought of reading Don Quixote and smiled as he remembered his tutoring sessions with Margaret Carpenter so long ago. A wave of melancholy overwhelmed him. “Home,” he whispered again.

Ochoa, who was just six feet away from him, turned in his direction.

“¿Que cosa? ¿Me dijo algo?”

Suddenly embarrassed that he had been talking to himself, he responded with the little bit of broken Spanish that he knew.

“No, no es nada, Ochoa. Pensando. Just thinking, that’s all.”

He smiled at the Spaniard and then began walking toward the bow on the leeward side, holding onto the bulwarks, looking down at the green, blue color of the sea. The changing colors of the water never ceased to amaze him, from the clear, welcoming turquoise of the Gulf Stream to the dark, somber blue of the mid-Atlantic. The cresting whitecaps with their splashes of foam and froth made the ocean seem to him like a painter’s canvas. He fell back into his reverie. Where is home? he asked himself. Maybe it was the sea and the ship. Maybe home is internal, ever changing, rooted to the past and memories, but connected at the same time to the people in the present who surround him. He didn’t know. All he knew was that at that moment he missed his family. He missed the apple orchards, the smell of summer by the river, the laughter of his sisters, the jokes with Josiah, the quiet presence of his mother, . . . but at the thought of his father’s scowling face his mind jolted back to the duties at hand. He shook his head and whispered to himself that he would stay true to his goal. He would find Abraham.