Another group gathered around the barnlike, pine board structure on deck where the animals were kept, singing and dancing a jig. Some young children were playing hide-and-seek around their parents’ legs, the girls shrieking with delight as one of the boys discovered their hiding place. A few young men wearing woolen caps and flat-rimmed hats were playfully gut-punching and shadowboxing one another by the leeward bulwarks. Morgan leaned his elbows on the cabin hatch and, as often happened when he looked at his steerage passengers, felt empathy for these people. Their accommodations below decks consisted of stacked wooden bunk beds and little else. There were no walls for privacy. Men, women, and children were crowded together with only four feet of space to move around. He knew from years of observation that the lucky ones might escape New York’s scalawags and scoundrels, but most would be dealing with a hard life in the new country.
Looking over the side at the waves pushing them westward, he was reminded of the distant fields and pastures that sloped down to the Connecticut River. He turned back to the steerage section of the ship, his gaze pausing at an older man seated by the base of the foremast smoking a pipe. He reminded him of his father. He had the same nose and bushy eyebrows, but a gentler expression, rounder face, and flatter cheeks flecked with silver stubbly whiskers. Thoughts of home made him melancholy, and he wondered if he would ever see his parents again. His father would be in his late seventies now. It was hard to believe. He knew he should go home and make amends, no matter how difficult, but he also was aware that he said this every year and never did. He stepped forward to where the old man was seated. The man turned in his direction expectantly, his smoky eyes looking beyond Morgan.
“That you, Sally?” he asked with a hopeful tone in his voice.
Morgan suddenly realized that the man was almost completely blind. He introduced himself, and learned that the old man was traveling with his daughter. His name was James Cleaver, and he was from Kent. He had worked all his life on a farm not far from the village of Plucks Gutter, he said, until his eyesight completely left him about a year ago.
“I am a widderer,” he told Morgan. “My wife died some years ago. That was her dream to go to America to start a new life theer’. I am going out with my gal Sally. She’s over yonder, gettin’ me some soup. She’s my oldest. Now that I am stone blind, I depend on her fairly regular.”
“How did you manage to save the money?” Morgan asked.
“It took ever so many years,” he replied wearily. “With a few shillings put aside each week from our wages. It took ever so long to get enough money. Finally it was done at last.”
“Where will you go?”
“Not sure ’bout that,” he replied. “Sally says the Lord will direct us. America is the promised land, am I right, Cap’n? Maybe we’ll head west.”
Morgan remained silent as he looked into the man’s milky, unseeing eyes.
“Will we be theer’ soon, Cap’n? Some say America only be a short distance from Ireland.”
Before Morgan could answer, he heard some shouting and his instincts told him something was wrong.
“Ballenas! Ballenas!”
It was Ochoa high atop the main mast who spotted them first. Soon that cry echoed around the ship.
“Whales! Close alongside! Thar she blows!”
One of the sailors hanging out on the jib boom spotted them directly underneath him.
“Whales, whales, swimming off the starboard bow!”
Morgan rushed back to the quarterdeck area, shouting out orders along the way.
“Sheet in the fore and main courses!” he yelled.
“Aye, aye, sir,” said Mr. Nyles.
“Veer off to port to keep well clear!” he shouted to the helmsman. Normally he was not that concerned about encountering whales in the open ocean, but this pod had come extremely close to the ship.
“Tighten up the inner and outer jibs!”
The ship’s sails fluttered as the crew pulled on the clewlines and bunt-lines. The cabin passengers, eager for a diversion, rushed toward the starboard side of the boat, followed by a stampede of steerage passengers doing the same. The whales were breaking the surface just off the starboard bow, fifty-foot giants, effortlessly diving and resurfacing minutes later. The deck was filled with excited exclamations from the passengers as one of the whales surfaced, letting out a geyserlike spout of water. Soon they were close enough to see the encrusted barnacles growing on the gray heads of the larger whales. Cautiously, Morgan ordered the helmsman to head further to port.
It was then he noticed a cluster of men in dark coats and dark cravats gathered around the young woman with the amber eyes. It was apparent that Miss Robinson had found several suitors who were avidly seeking her attention. One was a young American from Philadelphia, Buckley Norris, who had studied medicine in Europe and was returning home. Another was a middle-aged French nobleman, Count Michel d’Aubusson. And the third was Sir Charles Molesworth, an older English businessman known as a successful cotton manufacturer from Liverpool. Morgan’s eyes scanned the decks and noticed the girl’s mother with her full, long-sleeved day dress surveying the scene like a proud symphony orchestra conductor. From the way Miss Robinson handled this field of suitors, with a magnetic smile and sparkling eyes, he could see she was well acquainted with the whirl of high society dances and the protocol of formal luncheons and teas.