Rough Passage to London(84)

The storm began to subside after another twelve hours of heavy seas. Amazingly, they had lost no one overboard, but there were several men who had injuries, including Icelander, who cut his leg. Whipple bandaged him up and then tended to some of the other injuries. Morgan ordered two men to begin replacing the jib boom and the missing yard on the foremast. Down below in the cabin, he found more serious problems. When he walked down the stairs to the wreckage, he was met by a profound silence, punctuated by groaning and sobbing coming from one of the staterooms. Accusatory eyes and pinched cheeks turned slowly to stare at him. He could hear mutterings of displeasure. He felt terrible and tried to reassure the passengers that the worst was now over. Most of the fatigued and weary cabin passengers were blaming him for endangering their lives. In his own cabin he found a teary eyed and stony-faced Eliza. “This was our honeymoon, Captain Morgan. This was our first voyage as husband and wife. It was supposed to be special. Instead, we almost died.”

He moved toward her with his hand outstretched, but she turned her back on him. He had never seen her so emotionally upset. He tried to comfort her again as he reached for her hands, but she recoiled from his conciliatory gesture.

“You threw out the piano! My one pleasure on this hateful ship!” she cried out passionately, her morose and reproachful eyes glaring at him. “I heard you give the order. Why? Why did you do that?”

“Rest and quiet is what you need now,” he said in an effort to reassure her, even as he covered up his uneasiness. “We all need that. We can talk later,” he added with fatigue in his voice. Again he reached out to touch her, but she jerked away and walked to the other end of the cabin.

“You know what they are saying in the saloon, don’t you?” she said with a note of disapproval in her voice. “They are saying you took unnecessary risks. You should have turned back to New York.”

Morgan was shaken to the core. He understood why she was so upset, but all he could think of saying was how much worse it could have been. They had been lucky. He wanted to say it was amazing that the ship had withstood the force of the storm. He wanted to hug her and comfort her. Instead he said nothing, fearing he would only make her more distraught. He cursed himself for not preparing her for the worst. He should have warned her about the dangers, but he hadn’t wanted to scare her away. He thought how young and inexperienced she was. He thought back to the high-spirited young woman who had climbed the ratlines to the top platform. She had seemed to love the ship and relish risk and danger. Now she seemed changed. He slumped into a chair, his body beaten and exhausted, his face in his hands. He blamed himself. He had allowed her to think that each passage would be as smooth and fine as their first together. He had deceived her.

Eliza seemed unaware of his distress as she continued to voice her own anxieties.

“And now we are headed for the desolate shores of Africa, where I have no doubt we will be shipwrecked. If this is to be the life of a shipmaster’s wife, Captain Morgan, I want no part of it.”





19





When the sun finally came out four days later, Morgan was able to shoot the solar meridian and make his calculations. He had carefully synchronized his watch to the ship’s chronometer down to the second, a habit he had developed since that first voyage as shipmaster when he had almost wrecked the ship. The sky was clearing, but the seas were still producing rolling ocean swells. Eliza helped him do the calculations in the cabin with the ship swaying back and forth. He hadn’t dared ask her if she still meant what she said.

He had inquired about how she was feeling after her ordeal of being tossed around the cabin. Was she stiff? Did she have any bruises? She had shook her head.

“I am fine. I am really a very strong woman, you know. Whatever happens you must know that.”

They looked at the charts of the mid-Atlantic together, drawing latitude and longitude lines, discussing their likely location. From the calculations it looked as if the ship was several hundred miles off the African coast to the north of the Cape Verde Islands. Even without much canvas, they’d clocked close to eighteen hundred miles in less than seven days. That was when the lookout at the top of the mainmast called out that there was a ship off the starboard bow.

Morgan grabbed his spyglass and put it up to his eye. Sure enough he could see a vessel wallowing in the waves less than a mile away. She was extremely low in the water. They hadn’t seen her because the waves were still high. Each time the ship’s bow rose, Morgan looked for a sign of the ship. It was hard to see and keep the spyglass steady, but it looked like a ship in distress. The boat was partly dismasted. He could see the remnants of the stump of the main mast. The decks appeared to be covered with people, madly waving their hands.