"Homer Whitman, the loneliest night I pray ye'll ever spend lies before ye, but I'd not want ye to feel that ye are all alone, because you're not. Of heaven's ministers I can say naught. 'Tis not my place or within my knowledge. But ye'll be thought upon in a hundred prayers, more like a thousand, that will rise up from the town tonight, and ye'll have a place in many a kind heart. And not only from those who know ye and your loved 'nes will feel for ye. Good folk everywhere who hear of your loss wall be mindful of ye, and especially they that follow the sea. For mark ye, Homer Whitman, they are, in some way I cannot tell ye, your brethren. Aft or 'fore the mast, there's a bond amongst us all."
He paused, and I spoke.
"I thank you, Cap'n Phillips."
"Now I've a question to ask ye, the answer to which I must have before I can say more."
"Aye, aye, sir."
"Will this make ye hate the sea?"
"Nay, sir. How could it, when Pa followed it, and his pa before him, and my mother's father and brother?"
"I thought not. Love of it, for all its cruel ways, is in your blood and bone. Still, there's a question of fit time to say what I've in mind, whether now, or later. Most folk would have me wait till ye've watched and prayed over your dead and heard the reading from Holy Writ, and seen 'em returned to the ground. I reckon 'tis more fitting, for 'tis in the way of business, and yet more than business, if I judge aright."
"Cap'n, I'll ask you to speak now, whatever it is, if you'll oblige me."
"Then I will. I think it will be some comfort to ye, when ye need it sore. Ye've no home now, Homer Whitman, for an empty house is not a home, and ye have no kinfolk by blood closer than second cousins, now that your ma's brother was lost a-whaling. But I offer ye a home aboard my ship."
I could not speak, but Captain Phillips saw me nod my head. Instead of looking at my twisted face, he took his silver watch from his pocket and glanced at the dial.
"Ye can go aboard for biscuits and coffee as soon as ye come up to the town. There'll be plenty of neighbors to stay with your dead that little while, and they'd want ye to if they knew; for ye've gone all day without a bite in your stomach, and ye need strength of body to uphold the faith of your soul. Tomorrow night ye can sleep in the fo'c'sle. James Porter—ye know him as 'Giny Jim, the cook—will keep ye company, and the men of the shore watch too. There ye can live till we're ladened and set sail."
"But you mean, don't you, Cap'n, I can sail with you?"
"Blast my thick tongue! It was what I was trying to tell ye. Homer Whitman! Ye can make the Vindictive your home, at sea and in port, as long as ye serve her well and 'tis your desire. There'll be no business ye need stay for. My partner, Eli Morton, will look after it as faithful as his own. I'll sign ye as man 'fore the mast. Ye'll not be favored, for this is America, and we sail 'neath the Stars and Stripes, and every man has right to get ahead if he can make it, but ye'll receive your due in pay and promotion. And 'tis a snug ship as well as a tidy one, as ye know yourself. And I've got a friendship crew."
He fixed his eyes on mine.
"What say you. Homer Whitman?" he asked.
By that compulsion, my eyes cleared and the choke went out of my throat.
"I'll serve you and the ship as well as I'm able, Cap'n Phillips, and I thank you kindly."
"Then 'tis done. Now the dusk grows, and I'll leave ye. And may ye be of strong heart for the dark night ahead."
His hand lay briefly on my shoulder before he turned away. I wished that Pa and Mama and my older brother Silas—and Jesse too, whose manly form the sea had not yet given up—could see the fatherly gesture. If they could, wherever they were gone, they would be a little less bereaved over leaving me, having more reason to believe I would get along well.
CHAPTER 2
School of the Sea
With the passing months, the returning seasons, that hope showed well founded. The outward signs of it were plain to see. An unusual strength of body, apparent during my boyhood, did not fail as I became a man, and was admired, and in no case resented, by my shipmates. Perhaps the right word for it was fortitude, as used by our well-schooled master, although my mates lumped me off as hardy.
At heavy heaving and other short bursts of exertion, I was little more than equal to Farmer Blood, who had come from Poultney in Vermont and had never seen salt water until past twenty-one. Rather, it was at long duty, especially under conditions which sailors called "miserable," that I showed up best. I was the safest man to be sent aloft in a howling gale. Although it dipped and swung me blind to make me giddy, battered and bludgeoned me to break my will, and wrenched and jerked me to exhaust my strength, still I clung there, watching my chance between blows to do the trick ordered, until I got it done. More than once the captain durst not send some other and turned white in the face at his burden, and I turned blue with dread; but pride-helped lift me up. At last it seemed the winds knew me as I knew them.
There was no man aboard who could stand as much pounding by deck-sweeping seas. Sailors do most of their swimming in the scuppers, but when we lay in tropic harbors and wanted to cool off, I proved the swiftest swimmer and the deepest diver, although little brown boys going down for coppers made me look a booby. One off-watch sleep of four hours did me all day. Captain Phillips kept no starvation ship, but when, after being long becalmed or blown off our course, we went on half-rations, I kept weight and strength better than any officer or man except small, wiry Enoch Sutler, whom we called "Sparrow" because he looked and ate like one.
I grew to one inch under six feet, slightly taller than Pa and my brothers, although outspanned by Will and George Greenough, both an even fathom long, and dwarfed by Storky Wilmot, as tall as George Washington and as lean and tough as a hickory sapling. Naked as a newborn jay, I tipped the beam at one hundred and sixty pounds, one pound over the average weight of our whole company—the thinly peopled District of Maine being famed for her full-sized men, having plenty of room to grow in. Sometimes I had backaches and legaches from heavy strain, but never a headache, a toothache, or a bellyache.
This up-growth would have been the same if my parents and brothers and the Eagle of Maine had lived and I had gone to sea aboard her in due course. I counted it good, but not wonderful, and it hardly crossed my mind from dawn till dark. But there were other consequences of my loss and my finding a home aboard the Vindictive that I could dimly sense, but could not put in words even if they had not seemed a sacred secret. One was my love of the ship. I knew then, and I know now, no other word than love. I could not really doubt that I loved her as much as her master did. Another upshot was my feeling of brotherhood with my shipmates. When I worked on the deck with them, I gave it no thought and the same when we frolicked in port, but sometimes when I wakened in the night watches and made out their forms and faces by the dimly burning lantern, I felt a swelling of my heart that seemed a sending from beyond, an augury of things to come, the inkling of some great predestination.
Captain Phillips had spoken of the Vindictive as a "friendship" ship. He meant that the men liked one another and got along together in a friendly fashion, whereby they signed on year after year. Such conditions cannot exist except under a wise, high-minded master, not found in every cabin. When the lash is law, when shipowners hire slave-driving captains and brutal mates, when the crew is recruited by crimps from boarding houses, the ships become jails of hate and fear. I came to see many vessels of this ilk. Most returned handsome profits to their owners, who dwelt in fine houses and sat in prominent pews on shore. Some were trig-looking, but had an evil smell. Beholding these and the filthy slavers we passed on every sea lane, I was all the more thankful.