Boon Island: including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley (52 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 365
two men to translate
my
writing." He narrowed his eyes at Neal. "Where'd you learn to write?"
Neal stood up. "In Greenwich, sir."
"He's to work for my father," I said, "in law and insurance."
"Law!" Colonel Pepperrell cried. "Quibble, quibble, quibble! That's no life for you, my boy! Here, sit down! Sit down! Dr. Packer said he had to trim off half your foot."
"I don't know how much he took off, sir. It feels no worse than it did before he trimmed it."
"Yes," Colonel Pepperrell said. "I see!" He looked carelessly at Neal, glanced at Captain Dean and me: then seemed to come to a decision.
He spoke thoughtfully and jerkily, almost as if meditating aloud. "I talked to John Wentworth about you. Twice. Slow man, I am, like folks in Devonshire. Think slowly but make up my mind quick. Always wanted to go to America, but couldn't make up my mind to go till I was sixteen. Then I went quick."
"My brother Jasper speaks of you often, Colonel," Captain Dean said. "He heard all about you from David Waterhouse."
Colonel Pepperrell looked mellow. "Yes. Handles my accounts in England." His eyes strayed back to Neal.
"Mustn't wander from subject," he grumbled. "My boy William Junior! He's fourteen. I can write, but what I write I can't read. William Junior can't write at all, and of course he can't read my writing either. He's got to learn to write, because my other son Andrew's at sea, learning the things a shipowner needs to know. Andrew's delicate. He couldn't have come through Boon Island the way you people did."
 
Page 366
He tilted back in his chair and ran his eyes over us, a shrewd, farseeing old man, wondering, I suspected, whether he could have endured Boon Island.
"I know a little about England," he said. "I ought to. I was born in Revelstoke, near Plymouth. I didn't like it. It's no place for a man without money. Upper classes everywhere protecting themselves from lower classes, and with good reason!" He snorted. "Been thinking some of going back to Revelstoke: buying a few hundred acres in the country: being upper classes myself."
He glanced at us sharply, as if to get our reactions. I, for one, had none.
"The thing that stops me is William Junior. I've built a big business. William Junior's got to write letters to me about the business, so I can buy books and learn to chase foxes at Revelstoke! Chase foxes! Those fools that chase foxes never kept hens. If they ever had, they'd kill all the foxes before they had a chance to grow up!"
He clucked disparagingly at himself. "Wander, wander from the subject! Now here: we got no schools. Imagine that! John Wentworth says he's going to build a school with his own money, but he hasn't done it, and William Junior still can't write. Time's getting short! Nine vessels I've gotone of 'em picked you upthe pink
Joanna
." He named them, ticking them off on thick fisherman's fingers: "Ship
Frenchie,
brigantine
William and Andrew,
brigantine
Dolphin,
sloop
Miriam,
sloop
Fellowship,
sloop
Nonesuch,
sloop
Olive,
sloop
Merrimac
."
He looked proud, and he had reason. The poor boy from Revelstoke had truly prospered.
"You know what that means," Colonel Pepperrell went on. "It means having our accounts handled in half a dozen
 
Page 367
portsinvoicesletters of instruction to captains, enough letters to drive anyone crazy." He pounded the table. "William Junior has
got
to learn to write, and you, young Butler, have got to learn him."
Neal quickly wrote the word "teach" on a scrap of paper, and showed it to the colonel.
"Yes, yes!" the colonel said. "That's what I meant, but don't start me wandering! The point is, William Junior is a problem. He gets into bad habits. He goes over to Bray's and gets into the pigpens and rides the pigs. Then he comes home and hides his boots where his mother can smell 'em but not find 'em. Now then!"
He leaned forward and fixed Neal with a steely eye.
"Well," Neal said, "I half promised"
"I know what you half promised!" Colonel Pepperrell said. "You half promised Richard Nason you'd go with him to see where your father was lost! Well, I've had a talk with Richard Nason. He lost his sloop coming back from Boon Island-no fault of his. I've made him captain of one of mine. We'll both of us take you to where we think your father was lost."
At the look on Neal's face he turned suddenly toward Captain Dean and me. "Well, what about it?"
"If I had such an offer," Captain Dean said, "I'd say Boon Island was worth it."
"What about you, Whitworth?" the colonel demanded.
"His father would have beenprobably ismighty grateful," I said.
"Then that's all right," Colonel Pepperrell said comfortably. "We'll see a lot of each other before the two of you are healed up and ready to take one of my ships to Barbados."
 
Page 368
Captain Dean drew a deep breath. ''I'd feared something like this," he said.
"Feared!" Colonel Pepperrell protested.
"Yes, feared," Captain Dean said. "Feared that I might not be able to take advantage of such an offer. There's something you don't know"
"You probably mean Langman," the colonel said. "Well, John Wentworth and I know all about Langman. He's jealous because you're getting all the attentionbecause everybody's stopped going to see him and his two cronies. As soon as he began telling everyone that you purposely ran the
Nottingham
ashore on Boon Island, Portsmouth had a bellyful of Langman. My God, Dean, this is a sea-faring town! Do you think
anybody
over the age of three and a half would believe that anyoneanyone at allwould, for the sake of
any
amount of insurance, run a vessel on Boon Island in a northeaster? And in the dead of winter? Pish! Portsmouth doesn't want people like Langman and his fellow conspirators around. They've been in the Motley house, but the Motleys have ordered them out."
"Colonel," I said, "we know people like yourselves and these wonderful friends we've made in Portsmouth wouldn't believe Langman; but people in England aren't like that. Those around the docks believe anything they hear about people of property or position. They're too ignorant to investigateto find out the truth. They have no judgment. From the first Langman has hated Captain Dean, and we've never known why. Perhaps it's because bad men always hate good men, and rejoice in their downfall.
"At all events, if Langman has started telling his lies
 
Page 369
though he gave the captain his word of honor that he wouldn'tthen he'll keep right on. He'll tell them in England, unless he's bought off. He might even have them printed. Then there's no escaping the fact that the captain will have to tell his own story, with two witnesses. Even then there'll be so many to believe Langman's lies that Jasper Dean's home and even his life may be in danger from mobs. In all likelihood Langman will drag my father into it, for my father handled Captain Dean's insurance. We're mighty grateful to you, Colonel, but I'm afraid this means that Captain Dean and Henry Dean and I must go back to England."
Colonel Pepperrell glowered at us, his eyes belying the thin line of his lips. "I never go back on my word," he said. "There'll always be room for the Deans and Miles Whit-worth in the Pepperrell fleetand when your feet are healed, we want all of you at Kittery Point, so you can see Neal Butler in the surroundings I hope he'll always call his home."
Our worst fears were justified when, a month later, Colonel Pepperrell notified us that Langman, Mellen and White were to appear before his friend Samuel Penhallow, a justice of the peace, to take oath that Captain Dean had deliberately run the
Nottingham
ashore and that Captain Dean had in addition treated Langman in a barbarous and inhumane manner.
The colonel went with us to Justice Penhallow's residence on the following day to hear Langman, Mellen and White swear to the truth of a tale that put anything in the fairy tales of Edmund Spenser to shame. Justice Penhallow looked up at Langman before writing his signature. He
 
Page 370
didn't say a word: he didn't need to. He just looked. Then he raised his eyebrows at Colonel Pepperrell. "Any comments, Colonel Pepperrell?"
The colonel asked politely, "Would I make any comments if you swore that the moon was a netful of sardines?"
Justice Penhallow signed the paper, pushed it across his desk, and without a word stood up and opened the door for Langman, White and Mellen to go out.
He came back and shook hands with all of us. "There's nothing to be done in a case like that," he said. "If you could spare the time and the money, you might prosecute him for perjury, but you'd do yourself more harm than good. That man would feel honored to be noticed, but he'd never be noticed by anyone worthy of the name of mariner."
We took our departure from Pepperrell's Cove on a soft April morning, with the southeast breeze bringing us the sweet Maine odors of young willows, damp beaches and newly turned earth. A shipowner couldn't want a pleasanter cove than Pepperrell's. It was shielded from the sea by the spruces of Odiorne's Point and Champernowne's Island, and from the north by the hills behind Braveboat Harbor. It was a safe anchorage, always, and I hated to leave it; but our testy good friend Colonel Pepperrell had arranged for Captain Dean, Henry Dean and myself to sail from it on one of his brigantines. Langman he avoided as he would the pestilence.
"If it hadn't been for Langman and his lies," the colonel told me disgustedly, "you and Captain Dean would be working for me today, instead of wasting the best time of
 
Page 371
year doing nothing! John Wentworth wanted me to provide Langman and his cronies with passage on this same brigantine, and at government expense. I'd see 'em in hell first! Let the British Navy take charge of Langman and his two dogfish, I told John. All three of 'em need a taste of the cat every day or two, just to remind 'em to be human! Drat such dod-ratted truth-twisters, and drat the fools who always believe 'em!"
The colonel eyed his son William, the problem child, with disfavor. He and Neal Butler stood beside me on the colonel's wharf. I'd always thought of Neal as a younger brother, but he suddenly seemed grown up, and to me his new friend William didn't look like a problem: he looked like a young man who'd be handy in an emergency.
On the shore behind the colonel and Neal and William stood half the population of Kittery Point, studiously scanning the cloudless sky, as if they had found themselves near the wharf purely by accident. By now I had come to know these Maine people a little, and I suspected why they were there. They wanted us to know they were resentful of any person who expected them to believe that Captain Dean would have wrecked a ship on Boon Island in a December northeaster. Under most conditions they were patient; but when aroused, they took steps.
"Seems to me," the colonel said severely to his son, "you'd be better off up at the house, learning to write."
"Yes, sir," Neal said, "but we figured you wouldn't mind if we said a final word to Miles about coming back. Also I wanted to tell him something."
"Well, go ahead and tell him," the colonel said.
"I wanted to tell him that someday I'd try to be worthy of what's been done for mefor ushere."
 
Page 372
The colonel looked from Neal and William to Captain Dean and me. He cleared his throat. "Why," he said, "that's all right. Under the circumstances, both of you can have the day off."
"Yes, sir," William said, "and I'd like to say that if Miles will come back, there's quite a few things we'd like to show him when summer's here. It's pretty countrya lot different from Boon Island."
The colonel blew his nose loudly. "Oh my, yes," he said. "I talk about going back to Revelstoke, but I'll never do it!"
I tried to speak, but couldn't. They had us by the arms, urging and helping us into the long boat. There was a fluttering of hands and a babel of cries. The oars rattled in the thole pins; the gulls squalled and squealed overhead; the shore seemed misty and the Braveboat hills wavered a little.
Well, who could tell? God, if we're fortunate, is good to us. How many of us have our Boon Islands? And how many have our Langmans? But doesn't each one of us have an inner America on which in youth his heart is set; and ifbecause of age, or greed, or weakness of will, or circumstances beyond his poor controlit escapes him, his life, to my way of thinking, has been wasted.
THE END

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