An hour later, the three shivering and frightened sailors were down below in the cabin wrapped in blankets, sipping some of Scuttles’s warm pea soup. If it hadn’t been for the calm seas, these men would have drowned. Morgan had more questions than answers. The mutineers had escaped. They were probably already safe ashore in Ireland. He wondered who they were and why they had chosen the Philadelphia out of all the ships in London. He thought back to their leader. He remembered Laura’s description of Blackwood’s eyes, and the serpent tattoos. He suddenly thought of Laura’s warnings about how the man would try to kill him. Maybe she told Blackwood about their encounter in Change Alley? That throaty voice had seemed so strangely familiar. His mind went back to a distant memory, a hazy room in the Frying Pan Tavern, the naked girl and that distinctive voice of the man named Bill. “Never seen ’im before.” That’s what he’d said in that same guttural voice.
“Fastnet Rock ahead of us, Cap’n,” Mr. Nyles yelled out from the forward section of the ship. The winds had shifted and picked up sharply, coming out of the north. Morgan pulled up the collar of his coat. He could just barely make out in the gray predawn light the black rock pointing up from the sea like a breeching fin whale. This was Ireland’s most southerly point. The Irish called it the lonely rock and he could see why. Off to the starboard some four miles away, he could just make out the round stone lighthouse of Cape Clear. This would be their last sight of land until they sighted the sandy beaches of Long Island.
16
Days later, the Philadelphia was forging along under full sail with a fair, fresh breeze at twelve knots an hour. The attempted mutiny along with the last sight of Ireland was all but forgotten now by most of the cabin passengers, but not for Morgan. He blamed himself for not being more vigilant. If he had listened to the warnings from Ochoa and Whipple he might have prevented the mutiny. He consoled himself with the fact that no lives had been lost and his ship was still on schedule. Still, he’d let them get away. He could have fired his guns, but he’d hesitated. So many troubling questions lingered in his mind. Who was that devil sailor with the squinty eyes? He wondered again if he had finally met William Blackwood. Pratt had questioned the captured men and found that they were a couple of scrappy fishermen from the lower Thames. They said their plans were to capture and scuttle the ship off the Irish coast. All on board were supposed to die, but they didn’t say the ringleader’s name.
Turning away from the helmsman, he began walking toward the quarterdeck. The seas were calm and radiant, taking on a furrowed appearance like a recently plowed field, offering little resistance for the large packet ship. A noonday sun warmed the wooden deck. Morgan decided to leave the sailing to his two ship’s officers while he spent time being packet-polite to his passengers. Most of them had surfaced on deck to enjoy the weather. The wind was fair and balmy and everyone seemed to be in fine spirits.
He watched as some of the men, dressed in brightly colored coats, cream-colored pants, and flat-brimmed straw hats, tried to play shuffleboard on the slanting deck with their broom-shaped paddles. They laughed good-naturedly, trying to keep their balance as the waves sent their weighted biscuits sliding off to the leeward side. A group of older women in full-sleeved white cotton dresses, shawls, and calico bonnets sat on the windward side, safe from any ocean spray, crocheting and chatting. Lowery was passing sardine and cucumber sandwiches, his agile body leaning into the slanted deck like a gimbaled compass.
Morgan continued to walk toward the noisy center of the ship where the steerage passengers were kept, absorbing the sounds and sights of the small village ahead of him. A refreshing breeze came tumbling down from the enormous cavity of the mainsail and fanned his cheeks. The steerage area was a world away from the peaceful quarterdeck. He could hear whistling, whining, sobbing, laughing, and the scraping of fiddles ahead of him. As captain, he spent little time in the steerage area, preferring to let Whipple or Pratt see to the passengers’ needs and keep order. Due to the attempted mutiny, the number of sailors on board was now seriously depleted. They had been forced to continue sailing the ship shorthanded. All the sailors, including Pratt and Whipple, were needed aloft, leaving the steerage passengers mostly unattended except for the occasional visit by the first mate or Morgan himself. Mostly they wanted more water, bandages for cuts, and information about the weather and the length of the voyage.
Morgan now took stock of what the sailors referred to as their human cargo. All eighty of the steerage passengers were clustered on the deck into a fifty-by-twenty-foot area alongside the farm animals. It was a mixture of men and women. There were entire families as well. His eyes scanned the patchwork quilt of humanity that lay before him. Such a raw display of the human character, he thought to himself, their faces filled with hope and fear, cruelty and humility, ignorance and despair, deception and honesty. A group of them were lined up at the scuttlebutt, tin cans in hand, waiting for their daily allowance of water. Another small group was waiting by the deckside galley for pea soup and hot water from the kettle. They had all been checked for any signs of yellow fever or cholera, as an epidemic on board was Morgan’s greatest fear. As with the other packet ships, the Philadelphia had no doctor on board, and there was no effective way to stop the spread of an infectious disease. Fire was another great concern.