Edison Marshall
AMERICAN CAPTAIN
Author: Marshall, Edison, 1894-1967
Title: American Captain
First edition: Farrar, Straus & Young, 1954
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BOOK ONE
THE INNOCENT
CHAPTER 1
Death of the Eagle
My name is Homer Whitman. I am a native of Bath, an ancient port near the mouth of the Kennebec River in the District of Maine, of the State of Massachusetts. My father, Captain Elija Whitman, came of a family dwelling on and about the North New England Coast for a hundred years and busied with ships. On the distaff side, my blood was full as salty, for my mother was Ruth Luce of the whaling Luces of Marthas Vineyard. A few of my ancestors and kinsmen sailed their own vessels. Most, like my father, hired out to bottom-owning merchants. Some were fisherfolk or coasters, but the main were blue-water men, whether aft or before the mast.
I shall begin my chronicle on an April day in the year 1796, with my sixteenth birthday well behind me. Although I had not yet come to my full pounds and inches, I was unusually strong for my size. There was nothing to mark my appearance from other down-East boys of my age, except that some, whom I deemed the luckiest, had already gone to sea and bore the bronze of wind and sun on their faces. Like them all, I was blue-eyed. Indeed, I took it that blue was the standard color of American eyes, having seen no other kind except on French Canadians and Dons. I had the big nose with which so many down-Easters sniff the wind, but perhaps there was more laughter in my mouth than was common hereabouts, not that down-Easters are glum by nature, but to make up for their wet lives, their humor is dry. My hair was rough, hard to curry, and the shade which our elders called dun, a kind of reddish brown. It was written in the stars that my body would bear several marks before my course was run, but so far I had none whereby a sheriff could nab me in a crowd.
Although the log begins on a day mentioned, I would lead you back to a June day of the preceding year, the saddest of my life so far. On a calm sea, under the mild early-summer sky, all of those most close to my heart sailed away—Pa on his quarter-deck, Mama by the rail, my two brothers, Silas and Jesse, before the mast. I could look for them back perhaps within six months, at least within a year.
"Pa, let Homer go," I heard Mama whisper to my father, just before I must go overside to an empty house, a desert town.
My heart stood still, and I would have heard a tear drop on the deck if any one of us five would let one fall.
"Ye know our plans and dreams for our last-born, him with the best gifts of us all," he answered. "How may they work out, unless he can read books as well as weather? He's learned all the master at Bath can teach him, and now he must study triangulation to help him with his charts."
She was still a long time. Then she said what I could never forget, speaking in little gasps.
"Besides—when I was young they taught me—when I was a little girl at Holmes Hole they told me true—not to put all my eggs. . . ."
The whisper faded out. I talked with them awhile, made my farewells, then went to shore. The Eagle of Maine made for the open sea. She was well named, I thought—one of the proudest and most seaworthy vessels ever to go down a New England ways. While she was gone, I would study hard. In six months, within a year at least, she would return.
That was in June, 1795. In mid-April of the following year a fishing smack, making in before the northeast wind, crossed her bows as she labored up from the south'ard, wearily tacking to gain a windward position off the river mouth. She had signaled all was well, meaning no door need be hung with black in all the town, and she would gain port soon the following morning. And it so happened, having finished my term at Dartmouth a fortnight previously, that I was in Bath, staying with a neighbor boy, when the news was brought.
That night I slept fitfully and dreamed strangely. The wind wailed about the house, shouting at times, still in the northeast, but it was only half a gale—my roommate, a knowing boy, reckoned it at thirty miles, and I, at thirty-five. It was a fair wind for following a south'ard or westward course on the open sea—no sailor could ask for better. On our narrow coasts masters had best take care, and their ships should be good sailers, but there was no cause for alarm.
I went to the window at least five times. The interval between seemed each as long as a December night; still I looked in vain for a glimmer in the east and listened sharply but, I swore, not anxiously, to the wind. The stars shone in vast array, jewel-bright and true. At last the tall clock in the hall donged four times. I rose and dressed; and why I did not keep my promise of wakening my friend, I could not have told. He had wanted to go with me to see the Eagle of Maine make her run. I needed to go alone.
The way was hardly ten miles by footpath. Since the tide was starting to make and the wind adverse, I left my little sailing dinghy at the Bath wharf and legged it. The morning broke fair as the night, the sky clear except for very high, swift-sailing wisps of cloud and the sun bright as in midsummer, but there was no warmth in the flat rays, for the wind blew it away. Still, I could not believe it as high as last night, in spite of waving boughs and threshing leaves. Admitting some anxiety unfit for a captain's son, my heart was fight.
Not until coming in sight of Casco Bay did I get shed of wish-thinking. For all the bright sky and the dazzling water, this was a real northeaster. The land broke its full blast, but the whitecaps ran as far as I could see, a pretty sight for a picture painter, but not so fine for sailormen on a north'ard tack, yearning for the land. The waves that rolled toward Black Rock did not seem high, but they appeared to gather pace as they neared the barrier, then break in fury. The reefs beyond looked innocent in calm weather, but now had snowy crests.
AU this I saw and counted over before stopping to gaze at a port-bound ship. Not that I need ever question who she was. Twin babes will sometimes be indistinguishable from each other, but never two ships since the first keel was laid. Although a good league distant, close under Seguin Island, I knew this vessel as well as my father's face.
She was a brig of one hundred and eighty tons and in the high respect of all who knew her, my mother's and brothers' pride, and my father's love and charge. She was the fullest expression of his being and manhood. He himself was her master in all that the word means; a firm, steady man, level-headed, no fancy sailor but sound, who played safe when he might and ran risks when he must to get his business done. He knew these treacherous waters, and also his ship and her powers. He had reckoned the strength of the wind and the power of the Labrador Current which, flowing southwest, abetted the northeaster. With all that in his mind, he had decided to press on home.