“We ain’t goin’ out to south’ard,” answered Sam.
“The Slew?” Isaac clapped his hands and gave out a hoot. “If you’re game, me too.”
Blackfish Bay, which people now called Wellfleet Harbor, was like a long seine of sand with the cod end at the north. Once you started north there was no escape, except for the hole between Jeremy Point and Billingsgate Island known as the Slew.
The passageway was no more than thirty feet wide, maybe fifty long, a shallow and shifting little channel where even the best fishermen might take the tide going out and ground on a new bar coming back. Bluefish and striped bass loved to feed in the rips around it, but captains cursed it.
Sam was taking it under the best conditions, an easterly wind and a tide just ebbing. He stationed Isaac in the bow to watch for green water, warned the others to stand by the sails and listen for the first rush of sand against the hull. Then he threw over the helm.
He knew the
Hannah
could never follow him through, but she might be fast enough to catch him before he made it, so he pointed for the rip and prayed for some luck.
Suddenly the sand rose on the port side. Isaac shouted. Sam spun the wheel. He felt the current clutch at the hull like a living creature. For a moment, the little sloop was broadside to the tide, and no more than ten feet from plugging up the Slew like a cork. But the ebb was steady and so was Sam’s hand, and he lifted the
Nancy
out of the current at the last instant.
Now she would have to wear around and come at it once more, and by then the
Hannah
might be upon them.
Sam bellowed at Isaac, “Sharpen your eyes, you bloody squint. Sing out afore the sand kisses the keel!”
“Just point ’er east and keep ’er east, old man.”
“
Hannah’s
comin’ fast!” cried Nancy.
Jacob turned the axe twice in his hand. “I ain’t a-goin’ back. My baby be born a free man.”
Suddenly, with a great luffing of her sails, the
Hannah
swung away from them, and into the wind!
“What’s she doin’?” asked Jacob.
And Sam let out a wild old laugh.
The
Hannah
was turning after the catboat now bucking its way across Wellfleet Harbor. The faint sound of “Old Dan Tucker,” sung by a father and his stuttering daughter, could be heard on the wind.
“Get out the way, all you sand shoals!” cried Isaac.
And old Methuselah, Hard Sam Hilyard, Huoyan Jinqang, steered the
Nancy
into Cape Cod Bay.
The clean air struck first. The stench of dead whales was gone. Sam Hilyard breathed deep and told his black passengers to breathe free.
vi.
By evening, they were cruising north, just off Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The wind had backed into the southwest, promising warm blue days and starry nights. The sea rolled in long, gentle swells, and the
Nancy
became as a cradle in a bower, rocking its two black children to their rest in the forecastle.
In his berth at the stern, Sam Hilyard could have slept through a storm. As it was, he slept more peacefully than he had in thirty-five years.
The little sloop was silent but for the hiss of the waves along the hull. Isaac stood the helm. Nancy Drake Rains hunkered against the bulkhead, keeping her distance from him and keeping her thoughts to herself.
It was good that this had happened so quickly, she thought. Courage came more easily when there was little time for reflection and a staunch grandmother giving the orders. Even with the
Hannah
pounding after them and her knees shaking uncontrollably, Nancy had not questioned the rightness of what she had done. Her sons, eating their supper that night in Hannah’s dining room, would be proud. Her husband would have been.
She had acted upon a simple truth, and it had clarified her life. There would be time for Jane Austen later. She felt the coolness of the night and the comforting scratch of a woolen pea coat against her neck, and she knew that she would be able to help other runaways, even if it meant acting in concert with a man such as Isaac Hilyard.
Isaac looked at her, then at the stars. “Niggers call it the Drinkin’ Gourd.”
“Nigger
is a crude word, Mr. Hilyard.”
“The Drinkin’ Gourd… we call it the Big Dipper. Find it and follow it to the North Star.”
“Go north and be free.” Nancy pulled the pea coat more tightly around her neck.
“There’s no place free, ’cept in here.” He tapped his skull.
“Do you stay free in here”—she tapped her skull—“with rum?”
“Rum, women, and never fear death. Fear death, the sea smells it and comes to take you. Beyond that, you brook the bad tongue of no man and stick your neck out for none.”
“You stuck your neck out for Jacob and Dorothea. You may be more principled than you let on.”
“Heman made me mad.” Isaac adjusted the heading a bit, with nothing more than a small, skillful movement of his thumbs. “I did it to make Heman mad.”
“I suppose we could call
that
a principle.”
Isaac grunted. “There’s many a principled man on the sea. But the sea takes principled men just like it takes the rest of us.”
Scores of running lights dotted the sea around them; scores of vessels carried the commerce of New England on the endless black highway of night. A great going and coming of lights, a north and south passage of lumber and fish, cotton and rum, tanning arsenic and hemp, gingham and steel gears, a silent waltz of lights, a dance to the richness of America. Some of the lights coasted close, but most remained no more than distant stars, and no more interested than the stars in the cargo of this little sloop.
Yet none of them, thought Nancy, carried the future as surely as they did, and it cried out an hour later, in the voice of Dorothea, daughter of slaves who would be mother to a free man.
Nancy thought the first muffled noise was merely a sleep sound, the dreaming whimper of one whose mind still lived under the lash. Then she heard it again and hurried into the forecastle.
“Miz Nancy? Is that you Miz Nancy? I’m a-scared.”
Nancy took her hand, said the appropriate words, and asked the appropriate questions. Then Jacob rolled from the deepest slumber he had known in months.
Nancy heard the whistling of his axe a moment before it struck. She ducked, and it sliced off the top of her bun.
Axe in hand yet still asleep, Jacob jumped up to protect his wife, struck his head on the bulkhead and collapsed.
The night passed quickly, especially for Jacob.
The ocean, lead gray in the hour before dawn, came pink with life. The sun appeared on a horizon as sharp and cloudless as honesty itself. The sea rose and fell with the rhythm of the ages. And the birth pains drew closer together.
Nancy stayed with Dorothea, held her hand, mopped her brow, and timed the pains. When they came, she put the leather strap between Dorothea’s teeth and told her what a beautiful day was rising to greet her baby.
Dorothea said, strangely, that she prayed the night would be as kind.
On deck, Jacob studied the lettering on the axe, balanced it in his hands, polished it with his sleeve, spun it on the deck and watched it fall, polished it again.
“You’re like to wear that thing out,” said Sam.
“I so jumpy, I nearly kill Miz Nancy with it.”
Isaac laughed. “Don’t worry ’bout that. Ruthie’ll use the hair you cut off to make a wreath, a freedom wreath.”
From the forecastle came another scream.
“Easy, lad.” Sam pressed a hand on Jacob’s shoulder.
“Yes, yes,” said Isaac, “nothin’ for us men to do but keep the
Nancy
on course.”
“Mebbe they is.” Jacob looked Sam in the eye. “If’n you a real sea cap’n, I mean.”
“I got you through the Slew, didn’t I?”
Jacob slipped the axe into the length of rope that held up his pants, planted both feet on deck, and announced, “We wants to be married.”
“I don’t think Sam’s that kind of cap’n,” said Isaac.
“I damn right well am. If this boy—”
“Man!” said Jacob.
“If this man wants me to hitch him, then I’m proud to be asked.”
From the sea bag in his cabin, Sam took the ancient silk vest, which he had put away thirty-five years ago. He smoothed it over his bony chest and patted each determined, furious, passionate dragon in turn. Then he took the Bible and led the men to the forecastle. He was now closer to forgiveness than ever he had been.
First, he read: “ ‘If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become a soundin’ brass or a clangin’ cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and have all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothin’.’ ”
After another pain had passed, he told Jacob to kneel and take Dorothea’s hand. He promised to speak quickly, as the pains were not more than three minutes apart. He had never performed a marriage ceremony and had seldom heard one, in that his glowering presence was rarely welcomed at Cape Cod weddings. But he smoothed his vest and administered as fine an oath as any of them had ever heard.
He asked Jacob and Dorothea if they loved each other. They said yes. He asked if they loved each other enough to live through the good days and the gales, the doldrums and the freshening breezes. They said yes.
Then he asked, “Does each of you promise to help the other find the Drinkin’ Gourd when he’s thirsty or lost?”
And they said yes, as though they understood exactly what he meant.
“All right, then, by the power vested in me by the sea god Neptune, the real god Christ, and the dragons on this here vest, I now say you’re man and wife.”
Dorothea let out the loudest scream yet.
But there was one more matter. A couple needed a last name. Jacob and Dorothea had tried Hilyard, Rains, and Bigelow, and decided those names were already worn proudly by others. So they said they were going to take a first name as their last name: Nancy.
“Boats get named for people.” Isaac laughed. “Not the other way ’round.”
“They’re takin’ the name of a lady, not a boat,” said Sam. “Seems to me a man ought to be able to call himself whatever he wants so long as there’s honor in it, and there’s honor in Miz Nancy, for all she’s done.”
Nancy was touched and yet a touch embarrassed. “My mother always had a little name for me, and it might sound better. She called me Nance.”
Jacob and Dorothea tried on the name and declared it the best they had heard. Then Dorothea screamed again, and Nancy ordered the men outside. “This is a female time. Just stand by and wait.”
A half hour later, the forecastle door swung open, Nancy cried out that it was a boy with all his fingers and toes, and the forecastle door slammed shut.
“A free citizen of the open sea,” exulted Sam Hilyard, pulling a bottle of brandy from a sea chest. “To the father.”
Jacob drank, and looked into the eyes of each of them, as though he understood the significance of a simple fact—if a man drank with you, he took you as an equal. He swallowed, then passed the brandy to Isaac, who honored him further by not wiping the neck of the bottle before drinking.
In the cabin, Nancy took the child and bathed it in warm water. Her hands were shaking and she felt giddy from the excitement. But she willed herself to be calm, a force of confident experience.
“You can’t let a man see a baby all covered with cheese and afterbirth. He’d never understand.”
“Is he beautiful?”
“The most beautiful baby that ever was.” She wrapped the child up tight in several layers of blanket and gave him to his mother.
“He sure cryin’ a lot.”
“He wants your breast, dear. Give him your breast.”
“Can I see his eyes?”
“Give him your breast first,” Nancy urged gently, and she guided the tiny face toward the nipple. “Let his mouth find it, and he’ll do the rest.”
Dorothea made a soft, almost passionate sound. “It feel strange… nice.”
“It’s supposed to,” said Nancy. “It’s what God wanted.”
Dorothea watched for a time, her face a mask of calm. Then the little sloop struck a wave and rolled, first to starboard, then to port. When she righted herself, the look of calm had left Dorothea’s face. She seemed again filled with the fright that a good birth was meant to relieve.
“What’s wrong?” asked Nancy.
“His eyes. What color his eyes?”
“Why, they’ve been mostly closed, but brown, I imagine. That’s if they have any color at all.”
Dorothea looked down at the tiny coffee-colored face. “I gots to know.” She pushed him from her breast, ignoring his hungry squawk, and pulled back one of his eyelids.
On the deck, Jacob nervously plucked the brandy bottle from Isaac and took another long drink. “I gots to see him.”
Sam had heard about niggers and drink, and he wanted nothing to spoil this day. So he took the axe from Jacob’s belt and held it up as though it were the sword of an Arthurian knight. “Jake, where you’re goin’, there’ll be tall trees, whales to flense, and maybe—if you’re as good a carpenter as your wife says—things to build. Receive this from me as the first tool in a new life.”
Jacob studied it as if for the first time. “ ’Tain’t as good as a hammer or a saw, but it’s somethin’, and no white man never give me nothin’ afore.”
Soon Nancy let him in to see the child, and if anything could equal the expansiveness of the sea around them, it was the pride of a new father about to see his son.
Nancy closed the door and came to the helm.
“Samuel Isaac Nance,” said Sam. “It’s a grand day.”
“I smell brandy,” said Nancy. “I’d appreciate a taste.”
Isaac took a sip for himself and handed the bottle to Nancy. “There somethin’ wrong?”
The forecastle door smashed open and Jacob lurched out, as if trying to escape. He came toward them, then turned and hurried forward, shaking his head, looking at the sky in an attitude of unendurable pain.
Finally he cried out one word: “Blue.”
“What?” said Sam.
“They blue.”
“What’s blue?”