The captain, in careful pursuit, now slowly mounted the steps to the forecastle. I retreated into the bow, past the capstan, on a line with the cathead. He kept coming. Against the moon, he seemed to be a faceless shadow, a shadow broken only by the daggerlike glitter of the pistol that caught the light of the moon. My heart hammered so I could hardly breathe. I looked for a way to escape but found none.
The bow seemed to dance under my feet. Frantically I looked behind me; there was little space now between me and the sea.
Still the captain closed in. I scrambled back high into the fore-peak. He stopped, braced his legs wide, extended his arm and pistol. I could see his hand tighten.
The bow plunged. The deck bucked. He fired all the same. The shot went wide and in a rage he flung the pistol at me.
I stumbled backward, tripped. He made a lunge at me, but I, reacting with more panic than reason, scrambled down onto the bowsprit itself, grabbing at the back rope to keep from falling.
Clinging desperately to the rope—for the ship plunged madly again—I kept edging further out on the bowsprit, all the while looking back at Captain Jaggery. In the next moment he scrambled after me.
I pushed past the trembling sails. Below, the sea rose and fell.
Vaguely, I sensed that the crew had rushed forward to watch what was happening.
There was no more back rope to hold to. And the captain continued to inch forward, intent on pushing me off. There were only a few feet between us. With a snarl he lunged at me with both hands.
Even as he did the Seahawk plunged. In that instant Captain Jaggery lost his footing. His arms flew wide. But he was teetering off balance and began to fall. One hand reached desperately out to me. With an instinctive gesture I jumped toward him. For a brief moment our fingers linked and held. Then the ship plunged again and he tumbled into the waves. The ship seemed to rear up. For one brief interval Captain Jaggery rose from the sea, his arm gripped in the foaming beak of the figurehead. Then, as if tossing him off, the Seahawk leaped, and Captain Jaggery dropped into the roaring foam and passed beneath the ship, not to be seen again.
Weak, trembling, soaking wet, I made my way back along the bowsprit until I could climb into the forepeak.
The crew parted before me, no one saying a word. I stopped and turned, “Give me a knife,” I said.
Grimes took one from his pocket.
I hurried across the deck to where Zachariah still stood. Keetch had fled his side. I cut the rope that bound Zachariah and then embraced him as he did me. Finally he walked to the quarterdeck rail. As if summoned, the crew gathered below.
“Shipmates,” Zachariah cried. “It’s needful that we have a captain. Not Keetch, for he was an informer and should be in the brig. But Miss Doyle here has done what we could not do. Let her be captain now.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Captain in name perhaps, but not in practice. I was too aware of all I had yet to learn for that. Besides, as Zachariah would acknowledge later, the fact that I was the daughter of an officer in the company that owned the Seahawk was no small factor in my formal elevation. It would preserve the niceties. But, though I was entered into the log as captain—I wrote it there myself—it was Zachariah who took true command. I insisted, and no one objected. The crew chose their mates—Fisk and Barlow—and assembled themselves into two watches, and managed well enough. Johnson was more than happy to return to the forecastle.
Regarding Captain Jaggery, the log read simply. At the crew’s urging I wrote that our noble captain had kept his post at the wheel during the hurricane, only to be swept away in the storm’s final hour. Mr. Hollybrass was afforded the same heroic death. I have been skeptical of accounts of deceased heroes ever since.
Though Fisk and Barlow insisted I move into the captain’s quarters, I continued to work watch and watch as before. In between I wrote furiously in my journal, wishing to set down everything. It was as if only by reliving the events in my own words could I believe what had happened.
Within twenty-four hours of Captain Jaggery’s death, Morgan threw the line, pulled up a plug of black sand, tasted of it, and announced, “Block Island.” We would reach Providence—assuming the wind held—in no more than forty-eight hours. Indeed, twelve hours later, the mainland was sighted, a thin undulating ribbon of green-gray between sea and sky.
There was much rejoicing among the crew about this and their grand expectations once they were ashore. As for me, I found myself suddenly plunged into instant, and to me, inexplicable melancholia.
“What ails our Captain Doyle?” Zachariah asked, using the term he had taken to teasing me with. He’d discovered me up at the fore-peak, morosely watching the sea and the coast toward which we were drawing ever closer.
I shook my head.
“It’s not many a lass,” he reminded me, “who boards a ship as passenger and eases into port as captain.”
“Zachariah,” I said, “what shall become of me?”
“Why, now, I shouldn’t worry. You’ve told me your family is wealthy. A good life awaits you. And Charlotte, you’ve gained the firm friendship of many a jack here, not to speak of memories the young rarely have. It has been a voyage to remember.”
“Where is your home?” I asked suddenly.
“The east coast of Africa.”
“Were you ever a slave?”
“Not I,” he said proudly.
“And did you want to become a sailor?”
That question he didn’t answer right away. But when he did, he spoke in a less jovial tone. “I ran away from home,” he said.
“Why?”
“I was young. The world was big. My home was small.”
“Did you ever go back?”
He shook his head.
“Never longed to?”
“Oh yes, often. But I didn’t know if I would be welcome. Or what I would find. Do you remember, Charlotte, what I first told you when you came aboard? That you, a girl, and I, an old black man, were unique to the sea?”
“Yes.”
“The greater fact is,” he said, “I am unique everywhere.”
“And I?”
“Who can say now?” he answered. “I can only tell you this, Charlotte. A sailor chooses the wind that takes the ship from a safe port. Ah, yes, but once you’re abroad, as you have seen, winds have a mind of their own. Be careful, Charlotte, careful of the wind you choose.”
“Zachariah,” I asked, “won’t anyone—in Providence—ask what happened?”
“The thing we’ll do,” he replied, “is remind the owners that we managed to bring the Seahawk into port with their cargo intact. True, we lost captain and first mate, but they died, don’t you see, doing their duty.”
“Won’t Keetch talk?”
“Too grateful that we spared his life. Beside, Jaggery had some hold on him. Blackmail. So Keetch is free of that too.”
“Cranick?”
“Never on board. I promise you Charlotte,” he concluded, “the owners will be sorrowful for all the loss, but their tears won’t be water enough to float a hat.”
Almost two months after we left Liverpool, we entered Narraganset Bay and slowly beat our way up to Providence. And on the morning of August 17, 1832, we warped into the India docks.
When I realized that we were going to dock I went to my cabin and excitedly dressed myself in the clothes I had kept for the occasion: bonnet over my mangled hair. Full if somewhat ragged skirts. Shoes rather less than intact. Gloves more gray than white. To my surprise I felt so much pinched and confined I found it difficult to breathe. I glanced at my trunk where I had secreted my sailor’s garb as a tattered memento. For a moment I considered changing back to that, but quickly reminded myself that it must—from then on—remain a memento.