Jump Ship to Freedom Read online

I slipped back through the door into the crew’s quarters. The big black sailor, Tom, was sitting at the table, eating biscuit. He gave me a heavy look, “Where you been?” He sat there staring at me and chewing his biscuit, that red scar sort of flaming at me.

  “Nowheres,” I said. “I heard a noise and I thought maybe one of the oxen fell.”

  He took another bite of biscuit, but he didn’t leave off staring. “You ain’t been messing with the cargo?”

  “No, I ain’t,” I said.

  “Let me tell you something, Arabus. There’s sailors who sometimes take it into their heads to set a little bit of the cargo aside for themselves. I’ve known fellers to hide a little cask of rum under the hay. They figure they’ll slip it off in port and sell it themselves. Know what happens to them fellers?”

  “No.” He wanted to scare me, and he did.

  He took another bite of biscuit underneath his stare. “They gets tied to the mainmast and lashed until their backs is red as a slice of beef.”

  “I wasn’t stealing nothing. I told you, I was checking the oxen.”

  Suddenly he was on his feet and had my shirt front in his hand. He took a quick look to see if the other sailors was asleep. Then he glowered down over me and hissed, “I warned you before, Arabus, I don’t want no trouble between white folks and black on this ship. If you step out of line one inch, I’ll bust you in half myself.”

  He was big enough to do it, too. I was mighty scared, and my knees began to tremble.

  “I ain’t done nothing,” I whispered.

  He gave me a light slap on my face, so as to sting but not hurt. “That’s just a warning.” Then he let go and sat down at the table again, eating his biscuit calm as you please.

  It just made me feel worse, like the whole world was against me. What had I done, except steal our notes back? It wasn’t even stealing. They was our notes. I climbed up into my bunk and lay there staring up at the ceiling. After a while tears began to trickle out and run down my face. I put my hand over my eyes and squeezed them a little, to stop the water leaking out. I didn’t want Big Tom to hear me snuffling up there in my bunk. Then I turned on my side and went to sleep.

  I didn’t see Birdsey again until nearly noon the next day. I was working with the lines, and he was doing one thing and another. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to stay away from me or not. At first I thought he might be, but then at lunchtime he came and sat down next to me on the quarterdeck where I was eating and set up a conversation, so I knew he still wanted to be friends. But I knew he wouldn’t be able to go against his uncle altogether; he’d have to at least make it look like he was staying away from me.

  So we sat eating, and I waited to see whether he would say anything about me being sold off to the West Indies. But he didn’t. I figured maybe he was worried somebody might hear.

  Then that afternoon the mate sent; us down into the hold to work the oxen. It was a good chance for him to tell me; but he didn’t, and after a while I realized that he wasn’t going to. I didn’t know if I blamed him or not. If I ran away, he was bound for a peck of trouble, that was sure. Still, he was supposed to be my friend. He could have told me, and maybe we could have figured out a way for me to escape so’s he wouldn’t get blamed for it.

  But he never said nothing. He was going to let me be sold off to the West Indies to work in the cane fields the rest of my life. I remembered what my daddy told me about it: “A man who’s used to better couldn’t stand working like that day after day. He’d die of the boredom.”

  It made me pretty confused about Birdsey. He was my oldest friend and my best friend, but I couldn’t trust him anymore. I wanted to trust him: I wanted to have him for a friend. But I couldn’t.

  So I didn’t have anybody left on my side. It made me feel all cold and lonely. I didn’t feel like working, or eating, either.

  That afternoon, when I was up in the rigging, it came to me that I could just let go and crash down onto the deck and kill myself. Or take a good jump when the mast rocked over to one side and land in the water and drown.

  But then the picture of my daddy came into my head. He sure wouldn’t have taken no pride in me if I just up and quit on the whole thing. It wasn’t just me; it was Mum, too: it was my job to buy her free, too. My daddy, he got himself drowned trying to buy our freedom. He’d never forgive me if I let the whole thing go without even trying to get loose. Oh, I knew that he was dead and couldn’t forgive me one way or another. But it seemed like he could. I wanted him to be proud of me, that was for sure.

  The first thing I had to do was hide the notes. I waited for my chance, and in the afternoon, when I was off watch, there came a moment when nobody was in the crew’s quarters but me. Quickly I unwrapped the notes from my spare clothes and slipped into the hold with them. Nobody was in there, either, and in a minute I had the notes in the cherrywood chest, tucked down amongst the linen.

  Then I set about thinking of ways to escape. I had one advantage: I could swim. It was sort of funny, because most sailors couldn’t swim. They took pride in it. They figured if your ship went down in a storm, it was best to drown right away and not linger around for a while trying to stay afloat. Swimming was for landlubbers, not for sailors. But me and Birdsey had swum together right as far back as I could remember. There were lots of rivers and creeks around Stratford—the Pequonnock, the Yellow Mill right near the house, and the Housatonic, which was near a mile wide where it came down between Stratford and Milford and out into Long Island Sound. Me and Birdsey used to fish in them and dig oysters in them where they came out into the Sound, and sometimes when it was hot we’d strip down and paddle around, and by and by we just naturally learned how to swim.

  So there was that: once we got near to land of some kind, I figured I could slip over the side and swim for shore. It was a pretty scary idea, though: I didn’t know how far I could swim. Suppose we anchored a mile out: would I be able to swim that far?

  Oh, there were all sorts of complications in it. I mean Captain Ivers was smart; he’d keep a good eye on me when we got close to land, just in case. But I reckoned he couldn’t watch me every minute of the day. I was bound to have some sort of chance.

  Of course escaping wouldn’t put an end to my problems, not by a long shot. There I’d be all by myself out in the middle of some wilderness and no friends to help me out. Oh, I was sorry we weren’t going to New York. Mr. Johnson was there, and he knew me from my Aunt Willy working for him. Black Sam Fraunces was there, and he knew me, or leastwise he knew my father. But if I jumped off in the Carolinas or some island in the West Indies, I wouldn’t have any friends at all. But I didn’t have much choice.

  So we went along that day and into the next. According to the mate, we’d got about six hundred miles out. I didn’t know how far from land we were, and I didn’t want to ask, for fear somebody would get suspicious, but it sure was too far to swim. Besides, the sailors kept saying that these waters was full of sharks. I reckoned they were teasing me, but still, I wasn’t much interested in taking a chance.

  The next morning the wind began to rise. The sails filled out solid and hard, and the ship began to pick up speed. It was kind of exciting tearing along like that, with the seas charging past the hull and boiling out behind in a long, white wake. But after a while I noticed the captain and the mate standing on the quarterdeck staring off to the south. “Is a storm coming?” I asked Birdsey.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “You’re more likely to see hurricanes later in the season, especially when we get closer to the tropics, but they come up this early sometimes.”

  By noontime the sky was clouded over, and the sea was running higher. The ship was pitching a good deal, first headlong down into the waves, and then rocking back with the bow up in the air. I was getting nervous, and I wasn’t the only one. The men kept looking up at the sky, like an enemy was drifting around up there. We put out the fire in the galley so in case the stove leaned too far, the ship wouldn’t catch fire. We nailed
the hatch covers down tight, and we put extra lashings on the cargo stowed on deck. If that lumber broke loose and slid across the deck, it could take out lines, the railing, even a mast.

  By the afternoon the wind was making a whistling sound in the rigging, and the sky was black as tar. At times sharp gusts of rain would splatter down on us. The oxen tethered to the rail were bellowing and sliding around, and the chickens were flapping in the cages. We took in some sail, but even so the ship raced along, rocking in the high seas. “Why don’t we take in more sail?” I asked Birdsey.

  “It’s a chance to make some time. Uncle likes to push it hard when he can.”

  We stood double watches that night. It hadn’t let up any by morning, and the seas were now rolling and roaring on all sides of us. The ship rocked and pitched, rolling sideways at the same time it rocked forward and backward. About every seventh wave there’d come one that was out of step with the others. It’d hit us by surprise, sort of. For a moment the ship would sort of stop dead and kind of shudder, as if it was trying to shake itself loose. Then it would seem to fall forward, pick up speed, and start the regular rolling and pitching again. You had to hang on to things most of the time to keep your footing at all. The whistling in the rigging was pitched up to a shriek that never stopped. It got on our nerves, just going on and on and on like that. Every once in a while there’d come a great crash of thunder, and a jagged line of lightning would dance down the black sky.

  By this time we must have been in the center of the storm, because the wind was coming in gusts sometimes from one side and sometimes from the other. You never knew which way the ship might suddenly lurch or heel. So in the middle of the morning, the mate ordered us to take in most of the sail. I was mighty scared. The way those masts were rocking back and forth, you could easy get shook off into the water. There was no way anybody could save you in those waves: you wouldn’t last more than a couple of minutes.

  Being smallest, me and Birdsey was up first, headed right to the top of the foremast to take in the top gallant. We started up the rigging side by side, one on each side of the mast, the way we always done it. It was like trying to mount a bucking horse. First the ship would roll to starboard. The mast would tip way over to that side, till it was laying way out over the ocean, with us hanging in the rigging underneath it. Then the ship would rock back. We’d swing up and over, getting slammed around a good bit when it came over the top. Then it would swing all the way down to port, leaving us to hang under the rigging on the other side. Just holding on was hard enough, saying nothing of furling the sail. And all the while down on the deck Captain Ivers was hollering through the wind, “Get moving, get moving,” and cursing us out generally. We climbed up and up until we reached the top gallant.

  We was now more than fifty feet off the deck, almost at the top of the mast. All around us, as far as I could see out through the dark clouds and the rain, the sea was heaving itself up and down in great hunks, with spray blowing off the tops of the waves in long streamers. Up there, when the ship rocked we seemed to be racing straight down at the boiling water. We wasn’t over the ship then: we was hanging way out over the sea, which slashed about below us like it was trying to snatch us out of the rigging and carry us off.

  But we wasn’t up there just to hang on. Down below, the men were heaving on the lines to pull the top gallant up. Me and Birdsey was on each side of the mast, our bare feet in the rope slung underneath the yard. The rough canvas sail was wet through and heavy as a sheet of lead, except that it was flapping in the wind. We grabbed at it, me and Birdsey, each with one hand, while we hung on to the spar with the other. Slowly we pulled it up against the yard and began tying it up.

  Then suddenly the wind gusted. The sail busted out from our grip with a great slap and began to flap wildly like the wings of a huge bird. Me and Birdsey looked at each other. Down on the deck the captain was hollering, but we couldn’t make out a bit of what he was saying. We grabbed for the sail, but flapping that way, it was like trying to grab hold of a kicking mule. It kept belting us in the arms and faces, the rough canvas scratching like sandpaper on our skin. My hands were tired and cramped, and my legs getting weak from the strain. It wasn’t going to take much for that flapping sail to knock me off my perch.

  Then came one of them out-of-step waves. The ship stopped and shuddered. The sail kicked out with a tremendous bang and split across the middle parallel to the yard. The loose ends whipped against my face and chest, and I felt a sting across my cheek sharper than any lash I’d ever got from Captain Ivers. Blood began to drip onto my shirt. We grabbed at the flapping sail and caught enough of it to tie the top half to the yard. My legs and arms were shaking and my face was bleeding and my hands was scraped from the rough canvas. I was soaking wet from the saltwater spray blowing over us. The salt stung in the cuts and scrapes, too. But we wasn’t finished, not by a long shot. We had to drop down fifteen feet and do the same thing all over again with the fore topsail.

  Oh, it was terrible. But we got the job done. In good weather you ought to be able to furl a sail in two or three minutes, and take in all the canvas on the ship in fifteen. But in the storm it took us most of an hour to do it. We left up the main staysail and main topsail. You can’t just let a ship drift in a storm; it’s liable to get caught the wrong way to a wave and capsize. You’ve got to be able to steer it up and over the waves. You can’t steer a ship if it isn’t moving, and it won’t move if you don’t have some sail up.

  By the end of the day, we was all dead tired. It was a whole lot of work just to get from portside to starboard. The oxen wasn’t even trying to stand up anymore but just lay there soaked with spray, panting and drooling, with their eyes bugged out.

  A couple of the chickens, I saw, was already dead in their cages.

  It was pretty near impossible to get any sleep with the ship thumping into the waves like that, for you’d hardly doze off when you’d be rolled straight out of your bunk. There wasn’t much of anything to eat, either, but cold biscuit. On top of it, we was wet most of the time. You could hardly walk on deck for a minute without getting soaked. Waves was tumbling over the deck, and it was all you could do to find a line to hold on to to keep from washing over the side.

  By morning the waves were high as houses. When the ship rode up on top of a crest, we could see out underneath them black skies the water ranged up in moving hills, all dark green and gray and black, with white running through it like marble. The next minute we’d cascade down the slope of the wave and we’d be in a valley with the waves standing way above us, and I’d be sure that they would come crashing down on us and capsize the ship and we’d all drown in a minute. But instead we’d ride up the other slope and come up on top of the mountains again.

  All the while two or three sailors were wrestling with the tiller, the long handle to the rudder, so as to keep the ship from turning broadside to the wind and the waves. Oh, that was hard work, for the waves had in mind how they wanted the ship to go, and they’d keep twisting it around, and then those sailors would have to heave on the tiller to get her headed back the right way again.

  Down below, the oxen were bellowing and staggering around. The mate sent me and Birdsey down there to double up their tethers. If the oxen broke loose they would shift around each time the ship rolled and unbalance it. Of course with all that bending and twisting, the water was coming in through the seams in streams. The bilge pumps had to be manned all the time.

  We got through the second day of the storm, and the night, too, standing double watches and trying to get a little sleep in between times, with the waves smashing around and the wind roaring and the ship creaking and crackling like it was about to bust in two.

  The next morning it was worse. When we slid down into the valleys, it seemed like the waves were near as high as the mainmast, just looming way above us like a great roaring wall. It didn’t seem possible that we could stay afloat. During my watch I clung to the rail near the stern, mostly just hanging on,
ready to help with the tiller if they needed me. Forward, the oxen lay on the deck, sliding back and forth, too tired even to bellow anymore. They’d slide across the deck as far as their tether ropes would allow, and then slide back again, smacking up against the rail post. Suddenly there came a crack you could hear over the noise of the wind and the waves, and the tiller busted clean in two. The men who were handling it fell to the deck, and the rudder began to flap back and forth, banging on the stern with great heavy thuds. The ship shuddered and swung around into a trough between the waves. Now we had no control of it at all.

  Captain Ivers suddenly shot up out of the hatchway, struggled onto the deck, and began working his way toward the tiller, clinging to the railing. “An ax,” he shouted. “An ax.”

  I dropped down to my knees, crawled over to the hatchway, and dropped down. There were axes and other tools in a locker in the hold. I worked my way along the wall to the locker, fumbled inside for the ax, and worked my way back topside again. The ship was now broadside to the seas, just bumping and banging and heeling way over after each wave. One of the sailors had got the spare tiller and was clinging to the railing with it, waiting for the stub of the old tiller to be knocked out.

  I slid across the deck on my hands and knees with the ax and handed it to the captain. He took a big swing at the place where the broken end fitted into the rudder and knocked the piece out. The sailor slipped the new tiller in place, and the captain banged it to with the butt end of the ax. Then the four of us leaned on the tiller, two on each side, and swung it over. The ship hung there for a minute, and then it came around. Suddenly the sails filled with a slap that you could hear over the sounds of the storm, and we began to move forward again.

  Just as we did, I happened to look forward and noticed two of the oxen’s tether ropes with nothing attached to them, streaming out in the wind. The oxen had broke loose and slid over the side. I looked back behind us to the roaring sea. There wasn’t a trace of them to be seen.