Rough Passage to London(94)

“Pull yourself together,” Morgan said in an urgent tone. “What’s done is done. You can’t undo it. Now for Lord’s sakes, tell me what you want. Do you have information about my brother?”

It was then that Morgan noticed Taylor was carrying a satchel. The man remained silent, but he now transferred his stare from the street to Morgan’s face, extending his arms, his trembling hands holding out a package as if it were some priceless treasure.

“Captain Morgan, take this. I cannot have it near me anymore.”

“What is it?” asked Morgan in a somber voice.

“Take it and leave me be, Captain. Your brother gave it to me after they locked him up. You and your family should have this.”

“What is it, damn ye! Stop talking in riddles!”

“I am unable to tell the story about Abraham, Captain, even though it lives with me every waking hour. I have much to atone for. I am trying to forget all those scenes of violence.”

Morgan took the satchel even as he sensed the man’s desperation and loneliness. He looked straight into Taylor’s haunted eyes and enlarged pupils that seemed to stare into nowhere.

Morgan thought Taylor was about to tell him more when a noisy group of drunken sailors came around the street corner, surrounding them. They wanted the captain to buy them a drink. Two of them draped their arms around Morgan. By the time he threw them off and looked around, Taylor was gone. He ran to the street corner, but there was no sign of anyone. He called out his name frantically even though he recognized the futility of finding this man in the alleyways off South Street.

He walked back toward Wall Street and dropped into a small quiet tavern a few blocks from Broadway. There in a dark corner surrounded by white walls smudged with dirt and covered with chalk marks, Morgan sat alone, a decanter filled with rum on the table. He slowly opened the satchel. He wasn’t sure he wanted to. He pulled out a well-worn book with yellowing pages and began leafing through its water-stained contents. Most of the writing was smudged, the ink splotched, but much of the first section was readable.

We bin left here in Bridge Town with no ship for days now. Taylor and I bin swilling rum, I spied a man eyeing us pretty close today. He come up and fell into discourse with us.

Morgan was almost certain it was his brother’s handwriting because of the way he curled his capital letters. He quickly read on.

The man sounded us out, he did. Said he belonged to a beautiful topsail clipper named the Charon just come into Bridge Town harbor. He wanted to know if we were lookin’ for a berth.

Just the mention of the Charon made Morgan’s heart beat faster. He thumbed through the journal, gingerly turning the crumpled and wrinkled pages so as not to damage them. He read on.

We woke up from a stupor as the ship sailed out of the harbor, the wind blowing from eastward. Our heads hurt something fierce. They started on us again. They beat Taylor and I fairly regul’r these past few days.

Then more writing smudged from the water stains. It was clear Abraham did not know what cargo his ship was carrying or their final destination. The ship picked up some passengers in Havana who only spoke Spanish. Abraham called them the Dons.

The Dons stay back in the quarterdeck. No one speaks much to Taylor and me up in the foredeck, no one except that Bucko mate they call Big Red, and he just wants an excuse to pummel us. Am still in pain from the beating I gut. The men on board are as ill tempered and as foul a set of rascals as I’ve ever come across.

They stopped in Cape Verde, where the ship’s name was changed to something in Portuguese. Morgan slowly turned page after page of the small book, trying to decipher the smudged writing on the yellowed pages. It was hard to believe his brother had written these words some twenty years ago. He would have been just sixteen years old. In the middle of the book, he described landing in a remote place with rivers and lagoons filled with palm trees. There was a vivid description of going up some river in the ship’s gig. They had been told to search for coconuts and hunt for wild pig. They grounded on a dark, sandy beach. The bush was swampy and impenetrable and filled with crocodiles. They came upon a creek and had spotted a schooner run ashore alongside a bank. There was nothing to identify her, no number, no name. Inside they found the dried-up bones and skulls of the crew, picked over by wild animals who had been there before them.

The pages after this passage were mostly unreadable. Morgan touched the creased and worn paper carefully, almost reverently. Most certainly, these were his brother’s last words written in his hand. He could tell from the poor handwriting and the bad spelling. He held the open book tightly and felt like Abraham was sitting there next to him. It was not until the very end that he found a section that had somehow managed to remain dry. The writing was different, almost a child’s scrawl, and it soon became apparent why. Abraham described himself as a prisoner in a dimly lit hold with only one porthole that let in light.