Boon Island: including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley (23 page)

Read Boon Island: including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley Online

Authors: Kenneth Roberts,Jack Bales,Richard Warner

Tags: #Survival After Airplane Accidents; Shipwrecks; Etc., #Nottingham (Galley) - Fiction, #Transportation, #Historical, #Boon Island (Me.) - Fiction, #Boon Island, #18th Century, #Survival After Airplane Accidents; Shipwrecks; Etc - Fiction, #Survival After Airplane Accidents; Shipwrecks; Etc, #Shipwrecks, #Fiction, #Literary, #Sea Stories, #Historical Fiction, #Shipwrecks - Maine - Boon Island - History - 18th Century - Fiction, #test, #Boon Island (Me.), #General, #Maine, #History

 
Page 122
Chapter 3
John Dean was an old friend of my family, a sea captain from Twickenham, a little upriver from London, but he loaded and unloaded his cargoes at Greenwich, and always came to our house, before starting on a cruise, to have vessel and cargo insured. I know my father thought highly of him, and frequently ventured a moderate sum, which Dean would invest in coffee or tea or spices, thus providing education-money to be used by me at Oxford.
Behind our house on Church Lane was a walled arbor from which we caught glimpses of the river; and my father and Captain Dean were sitting there when I brought Neal and Swede Butler to the garden.
When Captain Dean saw us, he folded a paper and got up to go, but my father stopped him. "Unless I'm mistaken," my father said, "Miles has found us some whitebait, and we'll have it for supper, with pickle sauce. You'll get no dish to touch it on your
Nottingham
Galley nor in any tavern, for that matter. Maybe, after you've let out your belt a fathom or two, you'll stretch that insurance by a hundred pounds or so."
 
Page 123
Dean, a large calm man, smiled at us, and settled back comfortably in his chair. ''Whitebait!" he exclaimed. "I'd run a mile a day for a platterful, but I've got a mate who cheats fisher-boys out of nearly all they can netmakes a small fortune selling it to taverns for ten times what he pays for itso there's never any left over for me. Yes, I'll stay with pleasure, Charles, and you ought to put your chopped pickle in sour cream if you want a proper sauce."
I shook hands with Captain Dean, and my father got up to look at Neal Butler, who made him the politest of bows and held out his poke of whitebait-filled sacking.
When my father fumbled in his pocket, Swede Butler stepped forward and touched his hat. "Sir," he said, "my boy and I ask you to accept it in place of a fee."
"This is Swede, Neal's father," I explained. "He asked me whether you'd trade him some advice in return for Neal's catch. He wants the advice for Neal. Neal's a good boy, and I told Swede you would."
"You did, did you?" my father asked. "That's the value you put on my advice, is it? A sack of minnows?"
"No," I said. "I thought you might earn two people's affection, and some entertainment as wellif Neal recites his Italian epilogue for you. That's fairly good pay, isn't it?"
My father put his hand on Neal's shoulder. "I'm mighty pleased with your whitebait," he said. "I'll ask you to take it to the kitchen and give it to Mrs. Buddage. She's our cook. She'll rinse your piece of sacking, so you can have it to use again. Oh, and could you remember to tell her that Captain Dean says to make the sauce out of chopped pickle and sour cream?"
 
Page 124
"And just a little chopped onion," Captain Dean said.
"Sour cream, chopped pickle, chopped onion," Neal repeated, and somehow he enunciated the words in such a way as to make my mouth water.
He marched obediently toward the kitchen, and even his manner of walking, though unaffected, was a pleasure to the eye.
"Quite a boy," my father said to Swede.
"Yes, sir," Swede said. "I don't know where he gets it. Maybe from his mother. She'd have been a player herself, and a good one, too, if a gallery hadn't fallen on her when we were playing the Angel InnDuke of Norfolk's servants, sir. I couldn't bring up a baby, Mr. Whit-worth, so I left Neal with his grampa and granma outside of Norwich and took to the Army. Then I tried the Navy and got to be captain of the foretop on the
Minerva
till a French musket ball caught me in the shoulder and put me in the hospital yonder." He nodded in the general direction of the palaces on the water-front.
"What's your problem, Mr. Butler?" my father asked.
"Well, sir, here it is," Swede said. "This boy has something I've never put to proper use. I've taught him to read and write: he's the quickest study I ever saw, and I've seen some good ones. If I could be in the theatre with him, I wouldn't mind so much; but I'm too banged up to be any good to a young man like Penkethman. So Neal's going it alone in the theatre, paid about half the time if he's lucky, and nothing much ahead of him but getting to be a beggar, depending on benefit performances, which is charity, no matter how you look at it. I know the end of itwork a fifth of the year, and never save a penny: get
 
Page 125
spoiled by the women and the men, too, and wind up in rags or drudging for some rat like Langman."
Captain Dean leaned forward. "What's that? What about Langman."
"Oh," Swede said, "he's a mate on one of these merchant vessels. She's laid up for repairs. He weaves nets for boys to catch whitebait with: then he collects 'em and sells 'em and makes a good thing out of it."
"Why, that's my mate," Captain Dean said. "That's Christopher Langman!" To my father he explained, "He beats anything I ever saw! Every minute of the day he's figuring how to make money, and he doesn't care how he does it."
"Sounds caddish to me," my father said carelessly. "Why don't you get rid of him?"
"The truth is," Captain Dean said hesitantly, "I can't."
"Since when," my father asked, "has a captain been unable to get rid of a mate when his vessel's in port? I can see how it might be a little difficult if you're halfway across the Atlantic, but you aren't. You're seizing spars, or fishing ropes or sheetswhatever it is you nautical people fish and seizeand you'll be lucky to get to sea inside of another two months."
"I know," Captain Dean said, "but it's a long story."
"Well, give me a hint," my father said. "I'm interested in this Langman and his whitebait ventures. First thing we know, he'll be making it into one of these stock companiesselling shares on 'Change Alley and ruining thousands just like the stock jobbers. How does it happen you can't get rid of Langman, John?"
"Well," Dean said, "he sailed on one of Woodes Rogers' ships two years ago."
 
Page 126
"Woodes Rogers! Why, he's a buccaneer," my father said quickly.
"No, no," Dean said. "Not a buccaneer, Charles! He's a privateer. Privateers carry government commissions, and a tenth of their takings go to the state."
"Oh, don't try to tell me the law," my father said. "I know what the law is, and most of these privateers are nothing but buccaneers, no matter what the law says."
"Well, I don't know about that," Captain Dean said, "but I do know that Langman says he sailed with Woodes Rogers; and around the Gulf of Guayaquil, when Rogers was busy capturing some footling town or other, Langman went off in a small boat with a few of his seamen, came across a smart-looking galley and captured her. Then somehow he was separated from Rogers, couldn't find him again, and decided the safest thing he could do was sail home. He had no money, and his men hadn't been paid, so he hunted up my brother Jasper and offered to sell him the galley at a bargain, provided he was retained as first mate."
He stirred uneasily beneath my father's scrutiny.
"Sounds fishy to me," my father said. "What happened to the crew that was in the galley when she was taken?"
Captain Dean looked more uncomfortable. "I asked him that, and he said they just went ashore, all but two men that he persuaded Jasper to hire."
Neal Butler came back from the kitchen to stand beside his father.
My father snorted, raised incredulous eyes to the sky; then spoke to Neal. "What did Mrs. Buddage say, young man?"
"She said Captain Dean came here just in the nick of time," Neal said. "She said she'd just been thinking of
 
Page 127
making some cheese out of her sour cream." He sounded exactly like Mrs. Buddage.
"Good," my father said, "good. Now, Neal, this Langman you're working for: did you undertake to work for him for a certain length of time?"
"Yes, sir," Neal said, "I promised, when he gave me the trap, to fish for him every day when I had nothing else to do. He pays me threepence a quart."
"You know that's not a fair price?" my father asked.
"Yes, sir," Neal said. "If I had time to peddle 'em around, I could get more; but if I took out time to peddle them, I wouldn't be able to catch enough."
"Yes," my father said, "there's something in what you say, but I'm a magistrate and I herewith declare your contract with Mr. Langman to be null and void. I have friends who'll be glad to pay a shilling a quart for them, and that's what I'll pay youa shilling a quart and guarantee to dispose of all you catch. Understand? As for Langman, I'll give him a talking-to. He sounds to me like a slippery customer."
My father turned to Swede. "Now, Swede," he said, "does it make you easier in your mind to know your boy's having no further dealings with Langman?"
"Yes, sir," Swede said, "that'll help, but I'd like to get him out of the theatre. When Penkethman finishes with Greenwich, he'll take his players back to London; and if Neal goes with themwell, Mr. Whitworth, he's too young to be around a theatre. I know what it means. He'll buy a periwig and become a foplearn to drawl and take snuff: strut and cock his cravat strings. Ten to one he'll go to the Groom Porter's and run into debt over the turn of a dirty deuce."
 
Page 128
"How do you feel about it, Neal?" my father asked. "Don't ask him," Swede said hastily. "He thinks these actors are angels right out of heaven. He can already walk like 'em and talk like 'em, and the only thing he doesn't yet do, thank God, is
think
like 'em. He thinks like a human being, and I don't want him spoiled."
"It's understandable," I told my father. "There's something about the theatre that's mighty exciting."
"It can be mighty destructive, too," my father said. "What are the plays all about? Whoring, drinking, gaming! What are the manners of the fine ladies you see represented? Those of the tavern and the brothel, without relation to life or art!"
He turned to Neal. "See here, my boy: Miles tells me you recited one of Mr. Cibber's epilogues. Will you do it for us now?"
Neal said quickly that he would, but that he'd like a costume. My father went into the house and I heard him calling to Mrs. Buddage to bring him a shawl and a soiled tablecloth. How Neal wrapped those two pieces of cloth so deftly about him, I couldn't see, but he turned in a moment from a young boy to a girl, wide-eyed, pleading, provocative, looking at us over his shoulder as he spoke, and smoothing the tablecloth over his narrow hips.
I can't remember Cibber's lines; but the verses told how, eventually, English actors would be forced to imitate Italians, and it's impossible to reproduce the strange quarter English, quarter Latin and half imitation Italian that followed the line, "I give you raptures while I squall despair." There was something overwhelmingly ludicrous about this meaningless twaddle, so earnestly delivered, and
 
Page 129
with such coy and fetching gestures. My father snorted and Captain Dean said, "Haw!" but Neal seemed not to hear them.
" 'If this won't do,' " he quoted, coquettishly touching his finger tips to his lips, " 'I'll try another touchhalf French, some English, and a spice of Dutch' " ... and immediately he broke into another utterly meaningless song that made no sense although it seemed constantly on the verge of doing so.
When it came to an end, all too soon, my father slapped his leg delightedly, Captain Dean's face was red from repressed laughter. Swede was the only one who didn't laugh.
"I think I see what you mean," my father said to Swede, as I helped Neal fold the shawl and the tablecloth. "I see what you mean. It isn't easy to divert a talent like that. It isn't even safe. If I were youif Neal were a few years olderI'd advise you not to try to do it, but as I say, I think I know exactly how you feel."
He seemed to think aloud. "It's London you're afraid of. Now suppose Neal had a profession to support him. We've had some good professional men in the theatre and they've done well. Take Sir John Vanbrugh. He was an architect. When Miles goes up to Oxford, I might be able to use Neal. He'd be a help to me writing briefswriting insurance. What would you say to that, Swede?"
"I'd be forever in your debt, Mr. Whitworth," Swede said.
"Yes," my father said. "Well, that's one way of looking at it, so if you've been uneasy in your mind, you'll probably feel better. All of us can keep an eye on Neal till

Other books

Until the End of Time by Nikki Winter
Pleasure Island by TG Haynes
Seaside Reunion by Irene Hannon
Mating Heat by Jenika Snow
Apex Predator by Glyn Gardner
Lesser Gods by Long, Duncan