Jump Ship to Freedom Read online

  5

  The storm had been on us now for two days. It seemed like it had gone on forever. I hardly could remember how it had been before, when it was calm and we’d sailed along so easy. It felt like the storm had always been there.

  It didn’t show signs of dying down, either. In fact, when it began to get lighter on the morning of the third day, it seemed to me like the waves was even higher than before, high as the mainmast almost, I reckoned, although it was hard to judge with everything moving every which way all the time.

  But I knew they were higher than they were before, because now just about every wave would crash across the deck of the ship, so for a moment we’d be standing in a foot or two of water, all swirling around us, gray-green and foaming, and if we weren’t hanging on to something, we’d maybe get washed right over the side. It was awful hard on the oxen. They’d try to struggle up out of the water washing over the deck, staggering and falling all over the place. It was worse for the chickens, though, for the ones in the crates at the bottom couldn’t go anyplace but just had to stay underwater for a minute or two until the decks cleared. I could see that more and more of them were drowning all the time.

  We stayed on deck most of the time. There wasn’t any use in going below to sleep, because it was about as wet down there as it was topside, and we couldn’t sleep anyway. So we’d go down only when we was on duty at the bilge pumps, and then we’d try to eat some biscuit and sneak a little rest.

  By the middle of the day we knew we were in real trouble. The waves were breaking across the ship regular now. The railing was splintered in a half-dozen places where the oxen had banged into it. Most of the chickens was drowned now, just lying in their cages soggy and dead. One of the oxen had drowned, too, and lay there on deck, his eyes open and his tongue hanging out, sliding back and forth as the ship rolled.

  At noontime Birdsey and I went off duty and climbed into the hold to get something to eat and lie down a little. With all the hatches closed but one, it was pretty dark down there. We didn’t dare light a lantern, so we sat in the dark eating cold biscuit, feeling wet and miserable and scared.

  We was sitting there like that when there came down through the hatchway the voice of the first mate. “Captain,” he said. He was standing and he was shouting, otherwise we couldn’t have heard him for the wind. “Captain, we’re sure to go over if we don’t reduce the load. Better cut loose the deck cargo.”

  We didn’t hear anything for a minute except the wind and the waves crashing around, and the creaking of the hull. Then the mate said, “I know it’s pounds and shillings, Captain, but it ain’t worth drowning for.”

  Nothing but the storm for a minute; and the mate said, “I’d just as lief let my share go as risk foundering the ship. A share ain’t much use when you’re at the bottom of the sea feeding the fish.”

  Then the storm again; and the mate said, “I’m willing to take my risks, sir, but there’s risks and risks. Better safe than sorry. I’d just as soon see that cargo cut loose right now.”

  More storm: “I know you’re the captain, sir. I just hope you don’t wait too long.”

  There wasn’t anything further after that. Me and Birdsey sat in the dark.

  “Birdsey, what’s the use of cutting the cargo loose?”

  “It lightens the ship, so we’d ride higher in the water. There’s less chance of getting swamped.”

  “I wished he’d do it, then.” I wasn’t looking forward to being sold off to the West Indies, but drowning in that boiling sea struck me as worse.

  “He won’t be in no hurry about it. That deck cargo is worth two hundred pounds.”

  “It ain’t worth much if it’s at the bottom,” I said.

  “It’ll hurt business to cut it loose.”

  It crossed my mind that the crew could throw the captain overboard and say he got washed away in the storm. It would be a great thing for me, because there wouldn’t be anybody to sell me off if we ever got to Stacia. And I was about to say so when something stopped me. It was the way Birdsey was talking. It was coming to me that Birdsey was on Captain Ivers’s side all the way. He wasn’t on my side, he wasn’t even on the crew’s side: he was on the captain’s side.

  It kind of bowled me over to realize that. But when I thought about it for a little bit, I could see plainly that I shouldn’t have expected anything else. If Birdsey went along with Captain Ivers he stood to do right well for himself. The Iverses didn’t have children of their own. Birdsey was the only boy they got. Once he learned his navigation and got a little bigger, he’d get to be mate, and then maybe Captain Ivers would get another ship and make Birdsey captain of it, and after a while Birdsey would end up being a partner in the business and get to be rich, like Mr. Johnson. I’d heard it wouldn’t take so long, either: there was men who was captains when they was eighteen years old.

  If you looked at it that way, the deck cargo belonged to Birdsey, too, sort of. It made me see why Birdsey didn’t tell me that the captain was going to sell me off. He was on the Iverses’ side now, not mine. Oh, I didn’t think he wanted me to be sold off; we’d been friends too long for that. But he wasn’t going to get himself in trouble with Captain Ivers about it, neither.

  It made me feel just so bitter that he’d switched away from me over to the Iverses. But down inside I knew that if it had been me, I’d have done the same. I decided to shut my mouth about throwing Captain Ivers overboard. That was mutiny, and I knew from my daddy that for mutiny a captain could up and hang you from one of the spars on his own say-so. According to the law, on a ship the captain was boss; he could do anything he wanted. Of course no captain was about to hang a person worth eighty pounds, mutiny or no mutiny. But he’d sure lash me down to the bone. I was too tired to think about it, though. We climbed into our bunks and tried to get a little sleep.

  I woke up suddenly and found myself sitting in a pool of water. The sea was cascading down through the hatch. “Wake up, Birdsey, we’re sinking,” I shouted.

  But he was already awake and struggling up out of his bunk. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  We staggered through the water sloshing around in the hold and worked our way up the ladder to the deck. The wind was higher than ever, whistling through the rigging like the shriek of somebody being murdered. Rain was driving along almost horizontal, and the spume from the waves was blowing along with it, too. There was so much water in the air it was hard to know if we was under the sea or on top of it. It was near as dark as night, too, but every couple of minutes there’d be a flash of lightning that turned everything into bright day, and right afterward a clap of thunder, like a cannon shot. When that lightning hit, all of a sudden we’d see the most tremendous cliff of water standing straight up over our heads. We’d ride up the side of it, with the men on the tiller heaving until their eyes like to bulge out of their heads, and then as we rode up near the top, the wave would break over us and a foot of water would wash across the deck. We was riding too low. Sooner or later one of those waves was going to break before we’d rode up it very far, and we’d be swamped.

  The crew were all on deck now and beginning to lash themselves to the railing or the masts or whatever they could. They were all looking back at the quarterdeck, where the mate was standing in front of Captain Ivers, waving his arms and shouting. I couldn’t hear what he was saying over the wind and the waves, but Captain Ivers kept shaking his head.

  “Tie yourself in,” Birdsey shouted. It didn’t seem like there was much point in it. We was all going to drown shortly, like enough. Hanging on to the rail, I began to look around for a piece of line. Then two things happened at once. First there was a flash of blinding light, as bright as I’d ever seen, and right on its heels the most tremendous crash that near deafened me. And in the flash of light I saw the pile of lumber lashed to the deck sort of rise up, looking about as big as a house, and come flying across the deck. The next thing I knew the mainmast was falling down on me, with the mainsail flopping an
d the rigging trailing along behind it like vines. I leapt across the ship and flung myself down on the decking. There was a great smashing, ripping sound. The ship shuddered and began to heel to port. I jumped to my feet and grabbed on to the railing.

  The mast was lying at an angle across the ship, with the broken butt end lying just below the quarterdeck and the other end floating way out in the sea. Lying like that, it was pulling the ship over to port; but the broken lines attached to it were all tangled around everything so the mast couldn’t slide off. One good wave from the port side would swamp us.

  The mate had got hold of an ax and was working his way to the butt of the mast through the mess of lines and splintered wood. A couple of other sailors were coming slowly along behind him. Birdsey and I moved up, too. The mate reached the butt end of the mast and gave it a couple of hits with the ax to free it. Then he began moving up the mast, hacking away at the tangled lines like a man trimming a fallen log. Me and Birdsey and the others grabbed on to the broken end and gave it a heave. We raised it up a foot, but it was still so tangled in the lines we couldn’t heave it free. The mate went on hacking.

  By now there were cut ends of lines everywhere standing out straight in the air. I snatched at one and wrapped it around my fist, and just then there was another great flash of lightning and I saw standing over us the tallest wave I’d ever seen, like a giant wall. The top started to crumble and cascade down its own side. I squeezed both hands around the line and closed my eyes. The water hit, and I felt myself flung out straight like I’d been belted by a great hand.

  I opened my eyes. I was underwater. I gave a couple of heaves with my arms and came up on top. The ship was half underwater, and I couldn’t tell if I was on it or out of it. Then I realized that I still had line wrapped around my fist. Just then I felt something bump me. I turned. It was Birdsey, his eyes wide open, his arms waving as he tried to swim against the current washing across the ship. “Help,” he cried.

  I reached out for him, but he was gone past me, and then I could only make out the shape of his head in the dark. I felt the ship rise and water race past me as it drained off the deck. At that moment there was another flash of lightning. In the instant of light I saw a confusion of water and railing and loose lines, and that great mast plunging over the side into the swirling sea. And alongside of it went Birdsey, the mate, and two other sailors.

  “Birdsey,” I cried as the light went out. The ship, freed of the weight of the mast, righted itself. I found myself up against the rail, the line still wrapped around my fist. There came another flash of light. There was two heads in the water staring up at the ship. One of them was Birdsey’s. He was looking straight up at me, and his lips was moving. I couldn’t hear him over the wind, but I reckoned I knew what he was trying to tell me about. Then the light flicked out, and I stood at the rail all cold and numb, wondering what Birdsey was feeling like out there in the water by himself, drowning. But even while I was thinking that, the thought came to me that with the mast gone and the hull leaking and at least two men missing, there was no way the Junius Brutus could make it to the West Indies. Oh, I was ashamed of myself for thinking that with Birdsey out there somewhere trying to keep himself afloat on those terrible waves; so ashamed I came near to jumping in and trying to save him. But I wouldn’t do that, I knew. Just then Captain Ivers gave the order to cut loose the deck cargo. But it came too late for Birdsey.

  6

  We pushed the loose planks overboard, untethered the oxen, and drove them through the place where the fallen mast had tore up the railing, and then we heaved the chickens overboard in their crates. Most of them was already drowned, anyway. Riding higher in the water, we lasted out the night, although we had only the one sail on the foremast to work with. By the time the dawn began to turn the sky from black to gray, the storm had begun to ease off. The seas were still running high, great heaving swells rising and falling as far as you could see, but the wind had gone down a good deal and the rain had let up. The hold was two feet deep in water, and a lot more was coming in.

  The pumps were being manned full-time. We’d ridden her out.

  But Birdsey was gone, and so was one of the sailors, washed over the side. The queer thing was that the mate and one of the other sailors who’d been struggling with the mast had got washed over, too; but somehow the water had swirled them back on board again before the ship had risen up, and they managed to grab on to something and save themselves.

  We never really knew how it happened. Some said that lightning had hit the mast, busted it off, and that was what jarred the lumber loose. Others said that the lightning didn’t have anything to do with it, the lumber had got loose on its own and had cracked the mast when it flew across the deck, so it didn’t need but a touch of wind to split it. They said that if the captain had cut loose the lumber, it would never have happened. But there was no way to know for sure.

  Captain Ivers never said anything about Birdsey. A day later, when the sky had cleared off and we was dried out a little, he held a funeral service for Birdsey and the other man on the quarterdeck. He just read a little piece out of the Bible and said a prayer. When he got to the part where it said, “Oh Lord, take Birdsey Ivers into Thy care,” I busted out crying. I was ashamed to cry in front of the other men, but I felt so bad about Birdsey I couldn’t help myself. I just had to cry.

  Afterward I wondered what Captain Ivers thought about Birdsey dying. Did he feel sick inside? I reckoned he didn’t. I reckoned he figured that it was the lightning that done it, and it wouldn’t have mattered whether he’d cut loose the deck cargo or not. But he never said anything about it.

  The storm had been bad luck for Birdsey, but good luck for me. The Junius Brutus was in no shape to go anywheres but straight into the nearest port. We’d got blown a couple of hundred miles back northeast of where the storm hit. The nearest ports were Philadelphia and New York, and the crew figured Captain Ivers would aim for New York, because he traded in New York so much he had friends there, people he could sell the cargo to, and shipyards where he could get the Junius Brutus repaired. And maybe I’d get a chance to visit Black Sam Fraunces and find out about Aunt Willy after all.

  “He isn’t going to like it, though,” one of the sailors said. “He hates to pay that New York impost.”

  “He’ll get around it some way,” another sailor said. “He’ll anchor out in the harbor and go in himself in the longboat to see if he can talk them into letting him come in for repairs without paying no tax. Then he’ll unload on the sly.”

  I didn’t care how he did it. I had finally had some luck. Once we got into New York I’d have a chance to hunt up Mr. Johnson at the Congress and find out about selling our notes. Maybe I’d get a chance to meet Black Sam Fraunces, too. I didn’t know exactly how I’d get off ship, but I reckoned I’d find a way. Captain Ivers couldn’t keep a watch over me every minute. He’d be busy doing business part of the time, anyway.

  The trouble was, I couldn’t take pleasure in my good luck, because of Birdsey. Sometimes I’d catch myself thinking about what we would do when we got to New York; how we’d go around together and see the sights. And then I’d remember that he was drowned and I’d get this terrible cold feeling. I’d try to understand what it must have been like for him out there in the water, all alone; but I couldn’t. I missed him, that was the truth, even if he wasn’t on my side anymore. It helped a lot to realize that when he knew he was drowning he tried to tell me about Captain Ivers selling me off to the West Indies. Of course I couldn’t actually hear what he said. But I wanted to believe that he was trying to warn me and I decided I would. There wasn’t any good reason not to.

  Mainly I tried not to think about Birdsey. I had things of my own to worry about. One big question was what Captain Ivers would do once he had the Junius Brutus fitted out again. Would he try to head off for the West Indies again, or would he just give up, sell his cargo for whatever he could get in New York, and head home for Newfield? There wasn’t a
ny way of knowing; probably Captain Ivers didn’t know himself what he was going to do.

  Anyway, refitting the ship was going to take some time. She’d need a new mainmast and rigging, some new sails, the railing repaired, the hull caulked where it was leaking, and other things, too. Of course we did some of that work along the way. The way it always was on shipboard, one of the sailors was a carpenter, and he set to work making such repairs as he could with whatever spare planking he could find. But most of the repairs would have to be done in port, and that was bound to take a couple of weeks at least.

  But what if Captain Ivers decided to go off to the West Indies, and me with our freedom money hid in the linen chest? That was a problem, all right, for if I found out he was going to do that, I’d have to run away. And then how would I get back to Connecticut to buy Mum her freedom? Besides, running away was risky. You went wandering around on your own all the time, and having to explain to people who you was, and what you were doing. I wasn’t much good at making up lies like that. Mum always said things told on my face too much.

  So we limped along, going mighty slow with one mast. It took us near a week to reach the New Jersey coast. But finally we sighted the Neversink, a great long cliff on the horizon. Oh, I tell you, it cheered us all up a good deal to see dry land. The sun was shining, there was a nice brisk breeze, and as we got closer we could see trees and even seagulls swirling up and down over the coast.

  We pushed along up the coast aways until we came around Sandy Hook into what they call the Lower Bay. Up ahead about ten miles was New York Harbor. To either side, a good distance aways, we could see the green line of land—Staten Island to the west, Coney Island to the east.

  According to what one of the sailors said when we was trimming the sails, there was a long sandbar underneath the bay here. “We ought to take on a pilot,” he said, “but the old man’s too cheap.”