Quince stood and shook hands with his comrades. “I say three cheers for Black Jack O’Reilly and the devil take the hindmost.” The deck echoed with the men’s cheers.
Jack yelled back over his shoulder, “Douse the running lights till we clear the coast.” Then his voice cracking, unable to hide his tears, “Lower the black flag and raise the Stars and Stripes, first mate. Set a course for Salem.”
EPILOGUE
THE TWO FIGURES coming off Summer Street turned left onto North. A bell struck twelve, signaling that the service at First Church had finished, and they headed up the short block and stood in front of the church as the congregation proceeded down the steps.
“We’ve been at this almost a week,” Paul said. “When are you going to give it up?”
“Not until I find her. When you see her, you’ll understand.”
“God, man! You’re twenty years old. The owner and master of your own vessel, a rich man by anyone’s standards. You could have half the women in Salem with a smile and snap of the fingers. What’s this in lieu of?”
“Don’t disturb me while I’m concentrating.”
Jack peered at the dwindling number of people leaving the church. A few of them lingered on the sidewalk, conferring with the pastor. One last group came down the steep steps, the preacher among them. There she was.
Jack gasped when he saw her. His dream took on shape and substance. She was talking with her group and animatedly describing to the old preacher something that delighted all of them. As they said their goodbyes, Jack nudged Paul.
“Let’s go—we’ll follow back a ways.”
“If that is your long lost love, O naive one, she sure doesn’t seem to be pining for you.”
“Shut your grub locker. I’m trying to figure out what to do.”
At the corner of Front and Market the group split, four going one way, Colleen and another girl going up Market.
Jack watched her walk. She was different. Somehow fuller, more womanly. She seemed to glide down the street. Jack’s heart was tripping over itself. He remembered how the sun had caught her hair and burnished it. God help me, he thought, she seems to be shimmering now.
He took a deep breath and pulled Paul’s arm. “It’s now or never, Pauley.” Now or never. He followed her up Market Street. “Stay close. I may need your help.”
He drew within five feet of Colleen and her friend.
“Excuse, me, miss. Could you please give me directions to India Wharf?”
The two girls stopped and turned. The red-haired one in the green taffeta smiled brilliantly. “Pardon?” she said.
Jack, shaking, said, “India Wharf. We’re lost and need to find India.”
The girl’s smile vanished. She examined Jack for what seemed a minute. A full minute. “Yes, of course. From here it’s a bit of a trick.”
She never looked around or pointed the way one would normally do, but simply stared straight into Jack’s eyes.
“You’ll be looking for Fish—the street, that is. It swims around and becomes Wharf.” Her green skirt fluttered as she spoke. Jack could smell apple blossoms. He wanted desperately to reach out and touch her freckled skin. There was no sound, it was as if his ears were plugged, the world beating in his chest.
The longer she spoke, the slower her speech became. Jack’s face was expressionless.
“Norris Wharf,” she went on. “Hodge’s, and it becomes Derby—”
“Toward the end,” he said, “it becomes Becket’s shipyard, and that would be India.”
The girl finally just quit speaking, and paused for a long while.
“You’ve grown a bit of hair around your lip and chin, and you stand a bit straighter, but you still haven’t been able to find India after three years. Jack, is it?”
“Colleen, is it?”
“Yes, it’s Colleen, indeed. And it’s actually been three years, four months, and sixteen days. If you’re counting.”
Jack started to speak. Then he laughed hopelessly. “Counting is all I’ve done, and it seems nearer to ten years.”
THE BALLAD OF THE STAR
The preceding being a poetic account of the remarkable adventures during circumnavigation of the world by the men of the good ship Star. From the recollections of Hansumbob Burton, able-bodied seaman and official poet of the journey. This composed in the twilight of the year of our Lord 1810 and scribed for the author who hath not the gift of the pen, by his friend and shipmate, Lord Paul Le Maire, member of the Right Honourable Brotherhood of the Shipwrecked Men of the Star.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors were helped and encouraged by many through the three years it took for this book to take form and substance. In order to recognize some we will risk inadvertant omission of others.
We thank our agent Noah Lukeman for believing in our book in its earliest and roughest stage of development and for guiding us skillfully through the publishing process. Thanks also go to Esther Margolis for gambling on authors new to fiction and devoting her energies and that of her staff at Newmarket Press to bringing our creation to completion as the handsome volume now in your hands.
Our editors included Dick Marek, who convinced us that “point of view” was more than an opinion. He along with John Cook at Newmarket Press helped us bring discipline to our storytelling that makes a rousing good tale into a marketable novel.
In no particular order, we want to name a few individuals who supported us along the way: Larry Murphy, Patricia Lenihan, Kit Duane.
We thank our wives, Betsy and Barbara, for much advice, counsel, and guidance in the obsession with Jack, Quince, and the lads.
Finally, both authors would like to offer special thanks to Betsy for the pivotal role she played beyond that just mentioned above in the execution of this work. Betsy served as facilitator and chief of operations in our joint writing effort, spending countless hours organizing clean drafts from Gene’s scrawl and Dan’s PC disks that used software dating back to the Manhattan Project. She was truly essential in making it happen.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
GENE HACKMAN’s acting career has spanned forty years in theater and film. After a four-and-a-half-year stint in the Marines, he began his stage career in New York and on tour, then went on to star in such film hits as Bonnie and Clyde, The French Connection, The Conversation, Crimson Tide, and Unforgiven. He has received numerous honors for his work, including two Academy Awards®. His yearning to write started as a small boy, when he spent much of his free time in his grandfather’s small newspaper office in Danville, Illinois, and accompanied his uncle, a reporter, on assignments. An avid reader with a passion for the sea and diving, Hackman joined with neighbor Daniel Lenihan to write this first novel, published in 1999. They went on to write two more novels, published by St. Martin’s, Justice for None and Escapte from Andersonville: A Novel of the Civil War. Hackman’s solo novel, Payback at Morning Peak, was published by Pocket Books in 2011.