Besides Captain Phillips, the mainstay of us all, our company consisted of Mr. Hedric, our first mate, Mr. Tyler, our second mate and gunner's mate as well, twelve hands, every one of whom could fire a piece, and 'Giny Jim, our cook. I could say with pride that every man was a picked man. We had very few replacements and no deserters. If a new man proved a troublemaker or a shirker, he did not stay long. We did not think our master's judgment was infallible, but every man knew its honesty, and that healed his heart of bitterness and set his mind at rest.
In my first two years of following the sea, we touched home port four times. At our first returning, Mr. EH Morton, half-owner of the Vindictive, paid me $500, the remainder of my father's estate after the payment of his debts and some I had contracted in due care of my lost loved ones. I thought at first to buy a share in a ship new-building in the yard at Bath, truly a step upward in the world, but in the end I divided it equally among eight needy families who had lost sons or fathers or husbands on the Eagle of Maine. I had aimed to follow my father's wishes in this matter and to make a thank-offering for having found a new haven and home.
The heaviest gale we had ever weathered struck us off Cape Finisterre near the close of my second year aboard; and again I was shown the fatal power of the sea. Although we had heaved to, dragging a sea anchor, a green billow running atop the waves broke over our bow and came nigh to sinking us with one blow. We lurched up at last, but of six strong men nigh the mainmast, we counted only five. Our bosun, Thomas Childers, from our own neighborhood in Bath, once the boon-fellow of my brother Silas, had vanished without trace.
We had not even heard him cry out as the great sea swept him down—making fight of him as of a loose spar. And forty hours more must pass before the captain could assemble us for prayers for Thomas Childers's soul. Fifty-four hours in all we fought or fled the storm, and no man of our company, master or mates or cook or common seaman, had dry clothes on his back, hot food in his belly, or sleep upon his eyelids. At the end, only one man had the strength to climb that mainmast and cut loose some fouled gear—and I was he.
When Captain Phillips had read from the Book and we had said our belated prayers, he paused a moment, then spoke in his usual voice.
"Thomas Childers was a good bosun, but he's gone, and now I'm under the necessity of choosing one of ye to take his place. I've pondered which of ye would fill it the best. I can't know for certain, but in my judgment, it is one who came late amongst us, of less years and experience than many, yet fitted by natural gifts and assiduousness to duty to the highest position 'fore the mast.
"Homer Whitman, I appoint ye."
Thus that ill wind blew me good. I hated to think of it, for all that it was the way of life. Maybe the ancient saying was the wrong end to. It's a fair wind that does not blow ill to some one.
If I beheld the sea in his awful fury, I saw him also in his infinite majesty and glorious beauty. I was given glimpses of his mysteries, such as Saint Elmo's fire, leaping from mastheads and along our spars; waterspouts that tower like monstrous sea serpents, causing instant dissolution to any ship whose path they cross; house-high waves running without warning from the far horizon across calm, sunlit waters; mists haunted by the sounds of distant church bells, often with a pale, heavenly body, a duplicate of the sun, hanging near it with a glimmering train like a comet's.
But there was no greater wonder than the stars after a rain had washed the air and the wind had changed it. Besides the countless hosts that I could see, there were many millions so distant and dim that I could not distinguish them even as grains of silver dust, yet which somehow made their presence known unto my mind.
Once the fog held something more fearful than sundogs and ghostly voices and bells.
Early in the year 1800 we came once more by Finisterre, making for the Strait of Gibraltar. It was to be my first sight of the famous rock, for our captain had avoided Mediterranean waters during our hit-and-miss war with France. But although Napoleon had declared peace with United States, we must still tack from French sloops of war, our cargo being consigned to the military depot in the city of Syracuse, now under British rule.
We knew a better reason why we must pass the straits under convoy of British frigates—the Barbary pirates. A flock of them nested at Tangier, just across the passage, using these narrow waters for an ancient hunting ground. Beyond, the corsair fleets of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Tripoli raked the seas.
You would think that the great maritime nations of Christendom —England, France, and our own America, not least—would not put up with open piracy on one of the busiest and most important of the seven seas. You would suppose that Napoleon and Nelson would declare a truce while they razed the murderers' strongholds and sunk their blood-stained ships. Instead, all three of those nations sent annual tribute to the pirate kings, begging their promise not to kill us, buying their haughty consent that we might pass in peace.
My shipmates were outraged by it, and there was some wild talk in the fo'c'sle; but this quieted as we neared Tarifa; and we battened down our Yankee pride when a tall frigate, flying the Union Jack and bristling with guns, sailed up the Strait to meet us.
The officer who came aboard with a squad of bayoneteers treated us with surly suspicion. How did he know that our salt beef, pickled herring, and hides were not for smuggling into France? Could we prove that every man aboard was born on American soil? Our captain had a hard time keeping his temper with the high-handed dandy. We would have pitched into the whole passel at one wag of his beard.
As it turned out, he might as well have given him a blast or two of plain Yankee talk, of which our usually courteous captain had a firm grasp. We had hardly started through the Strait in the frigate's wake when a dense fog settled in, concealing us from friend or foe alike. It had come out of the Atlantic on a light breeze, blinding our eyes, chilling our bones, and darkening our spirits. The captain had us take in sail until we could barely keep steerage-way, then we crept along by chart.
Then Andrew Folger, sharp-eared as a school of weakfish, cocked his head as I had seen him do before.
"What is it?" I asked, instinctively low-voiced.
"I think it's a ship to windward."
"Then the frigate must have fallen behind us. I'd better tell captain to sing out. I wouldn't want her bearing down on us in this cursed smother." For we had been warned against ringing our bell in these pirate-rank waters.
"Wait a minute." Andrew climbed the shrouds of the foremast, Listened a moment, then swung down. "I could hear voices—and they weren't speaking English."
"What did it sound like?"
"Like nothing I ever heard. Some fellow was cursing and he kept saying, 'Allah—
"Report to the captain that there's a Moslem vessel close on our stern."
I gave him the duty to free my hands for duty elsewhere. It was only to secure some stays that occasionally slapped against the block.
The captain's orders came forward to me, passed from mouth to mouth.
"No man make a sound."
Meanwhile he had put the helm to larboard, to take us off the pirate's course. All of us could hear her now—her reis bawling orders in what I surmised was Arabic, her rigging making far more noise in this light breeze than any Christian ship except a Dago. She came up no more than two cables' length on our starboard stern. Carrying a little more sail, she would pass us in a matter of minutes, in point-blank range. We knew her ilk—the same that had captured and looted the Salem Queen only last year, killed some of her crew, and held the rest for ransom. Suddenly I must do something, hit or miss.