Rough Passage to London(7)

Free of a steadying hand at the tiller, the schooner swung into the wind, sails flapping wildly, thrashing about, the masts and rigging shaking and trembling. Ely was too far gone to even care, and with no one to tend it, the tiller now swung wildly back and forth, causing the boat to lose momentum. The captain rushed back to take the helm even as the schooner now swung through the wind onto a different tack and headed for the dangerous Long Island shoals. As he passed the prostrate form of the boy he’d left in command of his ship, he landed a kick in Ely’s backside and cursed him loudly.

“Hoist up the centerboard!” yelled the captain to one of the other men, panicked that his heavily loaded ship would run aground with a small fortune of cargo lost. One of the sailors down below in the cabin frantically pulled on the tackle to lift the centerboard. The captain looked over the side and cursed some more as he realized how shallow the water was. The boat scraped bottom, the bow leaping upward and then crashing down again. The next instant waves lifted up the stern, propelling the boat forward, and then with a fearful thud she struck bottom again. The bow was lifted up by waves, once again falling and scraping the bottom. By this time, the storm had struck with high winds and pelting rain. Waves hit the boat broadside and water started filling the cabin. The flashes of lightning and the roaring of the wind only made Morgan feel more like he was facing the end of the world.

Fortunately, the schooner soon plowed and scraped through the narrow Long Island shoals, making its way safely into deep water. The crew immediately set about to pump and bail, and by the early afternoon, the water was out of the hold. That night they threw the anchor down just off Throgs Neck at a pretty little anchorage in full view of an old farmhouse. After a pannikin of rum and the assurance that his cargo was safe, the captain soon regained his composure, and turned his attention to his quiet, sickly passenger.

“Have you ever been to sea before?” he asked with a knowing smile on his face as he gave each member of the crew a stiff glass of rum.

Morgan didn’t say anything. The captain handed him a plate of hard sea bread and salty codfish. Morgan’s face turned green as he felt he would have to vomit again. He turned away and looked down at his feet.

“Guess I know the answer to that,” the captain said. “We already guessed that you were a runaway. Might as well tell us your true story.”

Captain Foster looked over at the leering faces of the two sailors and the cook, then filled Morgan’s glass with a generous shot of rum. He’d come across many runaway boys in his thirty years at sea. “Rackety youngsters sowing a considerable crop of wild oats” was what he called them. He thought most of them were no better than chicken thieves and liars.

“Tell us all about yourself, lad. That story your brother told about you going to visit your widowed aunt is nothing but a bunch of palaver. Don’t bother telling us that.”

The only light came from a hanging lantern overhead. It shone directly in Ely’s eyes and made him feel weak and vulnerable. To try to appear like one of the crew, he took a sip of the rum and immediately regretted it. He made a face but swallowed it anyway. There was no point in trying to keep a secret. First he told them about his two older brothers, the dream they shared of going to sea, the special bond he’d had with Abraham, and how the letter they’d received had devastated his family.

Ely took another sip of rum and felt the alcohol burn the insides of his throat. He told the captain and his crew how he had given up his dream of shipping out to sea. How he’d resigned himself to a life on the farm, but then he’d run into an old sailor down at the docks in Essex who had surprising news about his brother Abraham. When he heard this man’s story it changed everything.

Morgan took another sip and began his story.

“His name was William Marshall. I thought he was just a drunken sailor looking for a free tot of rum. He introduced himself, and explained he was in a boarding house now waiting for a new Griswold ship to come off the yards. He was one of them Maine boys from the Penobscot, a little place called Camden where there’s not much of anything, just a few houses scattered about where the mountains meet the sea.”

“Get to the point, boy,” shouted Captain Foster, picking up the rum bottle and pouring out another generous glassful for himself. “There’s hundreds of no-good sailors like that. What did he tell you about your brother?”

“He caught me by surprise when he said, ‘Are ye Ely Morgan? Brother of Abraham Morgan?’”

“Go on,” said the Captain abruptly.

“He said he sailed with my brother and his friend John Taylor. They were two young pups, he said, as green as the first shoots of grass in April. They were sailing from Montevideo with a cargo of jerked beef when one of them hurricanes struck about four hundred miles south of Cuba. He told me it’s a wonder that the ship wasn’t dashed to pieces on some shore. Anyway, they put into Barbados, the crew all the time pumping and bailing. He said the ship was so badly damaged the captain dry-docked her, and after looking at the worm-eaten planking in the hull, sold her directly. The captain thought she was a cursed ship. Then he told me that the last he saw of Abraham and Taylor was the sight of them disappearing on a fast British ship. It looked as if they didn’t have much choice. A couple of the mates on board were beating on them with belaying pins and ropes.”