Captain Adam (3 page)

"And as for that story that I ever had any dealings with Thomas Hart two years ago, whoever says that is a liar."

"Captain Hart himself wouldn't tell," Zeph Evans pointed out, "but somebody in this town was certainly his agent."

"Somebody certainly was," Adam agreed, "but it wasn't me."

"Do you know who it was?"

"No."

Zeph moved his hands as if seeking papers to shuffle.

"Well anyway, as I say, one of our members has asked for another vote on whether the captain should be you or Seth Selden, and that's what we're going to do now. Even though Seth himself's not here."

"You can't do that! You appointed me, two weeks ago!"

"It's our boat," Zeph Evans said coldly.

"Who was it suggested this?"

Zeph did not answer. He didn't have to.

Adam objected to the taking of the vote. He said that it was illegal. He said that it would destroy the confidence of possible future investors, not to mention that of sailors who might be signed on, if the owners got to juggling masters on the very eve of sailing.

He raised his voice, and they looked reproachfully at him.

He declared that while he did not have a written contract he did have what amounted to an unassailable verbal contract, each and every one of them having formally agreed to abide by the wishes of the majority in the matter of choosing a captain. That contract would stand up in any court of law, he averred; and unless he was permitted to sail tomorrow at dawn in full command of the schooner, without any further qualifications or modifications or interference, by God, sir, he'd sue.

This gave them some pause. But in a moment they came to realize, without even having conferred, that in fact he had no contract at all, and what the whole thing came to was his wishes against theirs.

They prepared to take a vote.

"You can't do this!" he cried. He told them how he loved that schooner. How he knew her every block and plank, every trunnel even. How he had helped to design and build her, arguing about her, fitting her, fashioning her. He reminded them that after her launch he had sailed with her before the mast, and then, on her second voyage, at the nomination of her original master, the late Captain Welsh, as mate. He pointed out that he had made all his local arrangements for the sailing as skipper, cutting off his connections, leaving himself not even a cot ashore to sleep on. He told them that less than an hour ago, right here in this room, he had made a final check with his mate. "Why, even my chest's aboard!"

"It can be taken off," said Obadiah Selden.

They would have listened longer. They would have listened all night, if Adam could think of enough things to say. He couldn't.

They took the vote.

It was done in a dignified manner. Each sixteenth was one vote. There were no ballots. There was no raising of hands, or even of voices.

With Seth Selden absent, the tally was: 13 for Seth, i (his own) for Adam.

After that, one by one, they went out. Excepting Obadiah, each stopped by the stool where Adam sat long enough to bid him good night. He never answered. He sat there, slumped, staring at a tankard half full of ale that had gone flat.

Others, too, left the ordinary. The tobacco smoke swirled, thinning. Ben Blake began to collect flagons and to snuff out candles.

Soon even the murmurous sound of talk from the street died.

There was only one candle left, and it guttered low:

Ben Blake came over to him.

"Sorry, Long." Not Captain Long or Mister Long, just Long now. "Sorry, but I'm closing up."

Adam rose. The left side of his head hurt, where Obadiah had hit him. He went out.

5 The moon was down. A land breeze had sprung up, setting

the maples ashiver, slatching the surface of the bay: Adam Long's sailorman's cheek told him this the instant he stepped outside the tavern.

The door was closed behind him, and the last candle was put out. He had the town to himself.

There was no sense going to Mr. Sedgewick's. Mr. Sedgewick hadn't been conscious for two days, had not even recognized folks for more than a year. Adam had pulled out of there three days ago. All the same, his dragging feet led him in that direction—until, realizing where he was, he brought himself up short.

Was he quitting? Was he going to let them do this to him?

He stood, pondering. He had to do something. If he bowed to this decision, here is right where he'd stay—here in Newport—for the rest of his life. He knew that.

But—what fight could he make?

On his left, as now he noticed in the starshine, stood the town pillory.

Not far from Mr. Sedgewick's house, it hadn't been used in years. Adam

could remember a few times when somebody had been stood there, his

neck held fast by the oaken beam; but even on those occasions the boys

had never been given a chance to throw things at the head the man couldn't move, for there was always a bailiff stationed to guard the prisoner. Only once, in Adam's memory, had anyone been kept there for more than a few hours. This was a blasphemer and thief, a thoroughgoing reprobate named Sharpy Boardman, and not only had he been stood at the pillory all one day and all one night, but his ears, by order of the magistrate, had been nailed into place. Yes, a nail had been driven through the fleshy top of each ear and into the beam. It probably hadn't hurt Boardman much, he hadn't made a sound when they did it —Adam was there—but it meant that he could not even wriggle and roll his head as the others had done, which after a few hours must have been torture. Folks had felt bad about it, Adam knew. They had passed with averted heads, not wishing to seem to jeer. It had not been necessary to keep the boys from throwing things.

Nevertheless there Sharpy Boardman had stayed, all that day and all that night. In the night Adam Long could hear his groans. They were low groans, as if he didn't know he was making them; but they went on and on. Others must have heard them, but nobody else did anything. Adam, nine or ten at the time, couldn't sleep. At last he had sneaked down from the loft and filled a jack with water and carried it out to the man. He had held the jack up to the man's mouth. Adam was mighty scared! He'd have got whaled proper if he'd been caught! The man had drunk every bit of the water, Adam tipping the jack up for him: Adam had had to stand on his toes to do this.

"God bless ye, lad!"

"I couldn't get at the rum," Adam had said. "They put it where I can't reach it."

Next morning, early, they had worked the nails out and hoisted the beam. By the sentence Sharpy Boardman should have remained there all that day, but the feeling was that he'd had enough—and maybe too much. Folks were a mite ashamed of the whole business, and the magistrate had signed a special commutation order. The pillory was never used after that, though it was left here, just as Adam Long faced it now, in order to serve as a warning to those who might be planning wickedness.

They'd had cool milk and some spirits, too, and even some bread, when they loosed Sharpy Boardman; but he had paid no attention to these. He had not lingered to lave in his humiliation, but had run, staggered rather, down the hill to the harbor, where without hesitation he had taken the first berth that offered. They were needing men bad in those days, any kind of able-bodied man, and within three hours of the time he quit the pillory Sharpy Boardman was bound south for the islands. He had never been seen in Newport since.

Well, dad-blame it, that was right! The ruffian's instinct was sound! Get out! Go to some place where your scars won't show, and where, even if they are seen, you can invent a story to account for them.

Down the hill, then, to the edge of the bay.

Adam Long, too, ran it.

And presently he felt under his feet the blobby cobbles of the waterfront, and he stared across at Goodwill to Men.

To any but a lover's eye this vessel might have seemed a monstrosity. It was longish and most astoundingly thin: it must have been four or five times as long as it was broad, this schooner. It scobberlotched in other respects. That there was no forward castle was not extraordinary —many vessels were built that way nowadays—but there was no after castle either! A man on the poop—or where the poop would have been if there had been a poop—was but little higher above the water than one in the waist, which wasn't, properly speaking, a waist at all. The bowsprit was scarcely steeved but extended out at much the same angle as the deck itself, nearly parallel to the water. The tall sticks weren't sparred. The bows were not apple-cheeked, as bows should be, to push the water away, but sucked-in, giving the whole forward part of the hull a knifelike appearance. Come a good high sea, the old-timers around the yard used to predict while Goodwill was building, and that crazy craft would dive right plumb into it and never come up again.

Nineteen out of twenty saw the schooner this way, as a freak.

The twentieth saw it as an interesting if disconcerting experiment.

Adam Long saw her as a bride.

A bride for somebody else?

He wheeled around, hands clenched, scowling, as though at a shouted challenge from the town, which, however, slumbered on. He glared at it, as at a rival for the affections of his beloved.

He must get out of here! He had his fortune to make, and they weren't going to hold him up—not any longer!

The white Moses boat, the schooner's gig, was not paintered to the stringpiece, as it should have been, and to find another boat at this hour might be difficult or noisy—or both. Well, he didn't need a boat.

He took his shoes off and stuck them into the pockets of his coat.

The water was cold, and he swam swiftly, lungingly, weighted by his clothes, but dogged, making scarcely a ripple.

Resolved Forbes popped his eyes with an almost audible click when his captain pulled himself over the larboard gunwale.

"This'll hold through morning. Let's have the hook up."

"Aye, aye, sir."

Afraid of fresh air, as sailors so often are, the hands had closed the 24

forecastle hatch. Resolved Forbes flung it open, shouted an order. He returned to Adam.

"Reason why the Moses wasn't there—"

"I was about to ask you that, Mister."

"Man named Seth Selden came aboard with her, little while ago. Said he's an owner. Said he'd decided to go along, as a passenger."

Adam nodded amiably.

"Drunk?"

"He was getting that way."

"Where is he now?"

"Asleep in your bunk, sir. Should I put him ashore?"

With a minimum of grumbling, all things considered, sleepy men walked the capstan. Jethro Gardner, the hard-bitten bosun, made for the halyards. Adam himself took the tiller. He shook his head.

"No." He doubted that there was anything in this part of the world could catch Goodwill, but he wasn't going to take any chances of Seth's raising the town. Wait till they'd left Brenton's Reef well astern. "We could use an extra hand. Let him asleep. I'll take care of him later."

You had to pay some way for all that speed. Goodwill to Men in any kind of sea was a roller. She was a pitcher, too, and would take over all sorts of green water, which fact, together with the sucked-in bows and quarters even more cramped than was customary, made the forecastle in dirty weather a miserable place. The officers' cabin, a tiny one reached by ladder through a slide-hatch on the after deck near the tiller, was scarcely more commodious, though it was less likely to be wet.

When Adam Long went below, dawn was graying the deck and the vessel was truly outside, standing about in a lively manner, but booming.

In the middle of the cabin was his own sea chest and on top of that Seth Selden's. Resolved Forbes' effects were neatly stowed away in the larboard locker and his chest was under the larboard bunk. On the starboard bunk, asleep, indeed snoring, was Seth Selden.

This was the captain's berth, to which Seth had not lingered to hear himself elected. Here was, in fact, though he didn't know it, the real skipper, the legal one.

In his two hands, upright, though the cork was out, was a bottle of rum, half empty. It was good rum, too, as Adam knew, who'd bought it —no dunder, nine pence a bottle. Adam corked it and put it away. He stood a moment, staring at the mean-faced man. He began to grin.

He drew back his right foot.

A portion of Seth Selden's backside hung over the edge of the bunk. It was not a large target; and Adam might have done better, too, with more room to swing in—nevertheless the kick was a hearty one and it slammed Seth against the bulkhead, so that he woke screeching.

Adam grabbed him by the front of his fearnought and yanked him off the bunk and to the foot of the ladder, not far. He drew back a fist as red and almost as large as a Westphalian ham.

"Stowaway, eh? Well, we'll keep you busy! You want to get along on this vessel, Mr. Stowaway, you'd better learn to listen to the captain!"

Seth looked at the fist. He wet his lips.

"Do I make myself clear?" asked Adam Long.

Seth nodded.

Then Adam seized him fore and aft—collar of fearnought, seat of breeches.

"You, up there! Stow these things in the forecastle!"

He heaved Seth to the deck. He heaved Seth's chest after him.

Adam took off and hung up his freedom suit. It was not a very good suit, the sort of thing Mr. Sedgewick would give him, having been legally obliged to. Adam would get better suits soon, much better ones; but he thought that he might always save this one.

It swung back and forth with the movement of the schooner.

Naked then as the day he was born, Adam Long knelt and said his prayers. Afterward he got into the starboard bunk and turned his face to the wall. There were tears in his eyes, he didn't know why. He must have been mighty wrought-up. It was some time before he fell asleep.

PART TWO

Won't Anybody Buy My Eels

6 There is not much that's noble about a bowsprit, at least to

a sailing man, who thinks of it primarily as a thing you sit over when you want to relieve yourself—the head of the vessel, dedicated to a practice not good for neatness when she's climbing into weather-but the Goodwill bowsprit was something special. To Adam Long it was a humbling post, an article to be gazed on as another might gaze on a skull, an hourglass, or some similar memento mori.