Donald Barr Chidsey
CAPTAIN ADAM
Producer's Note
Chidsey, Donald Barr, 1902-1981
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Contents
Part One. The Freedom Suit ...... 9
1
2
3
4
5
Part Two. Won't Anybody Buy My Eels? ... 27
6
7
8
9
10
Part Three. Dangerous Waters ...... 53
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
Part Four. Life Among the Cutthrows ... 94
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
Part Five. The Shortest Way Home .... 136
29
30
31
32
33
Part Six. Home Is the Sailor ...... 154
34
35
36
37
38
Part Seven. Nobody Lives in London ... 172
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
Part Eight. A Man in the Middle ...... 219
53
54
55
56
Part Nine. Said a Spider to a Fly ..... 233
57
58
59
Part Ten. God and How to Get Water ... 244
60
61
62
Part Eleven. Vengeance is Mine ...... 257
63
64
65
66
Part Twelve. He Kept His Course ... 274
67
68
69
CAPTAIN ADAM
To
a different Deborah,
daughter of Dean and Virginia Graves,
is dedicated this little lesson in
how-to-get-your-man
PART ONE. The Freedom Suit
He had a chip on his shoulder, a grudge against the world; yet as he dressed in the darkness, putting on his freedom suit again, Adam Long had to admit that here, this moment, he couldn't complain. He was right on the edge of glory. Nothing could stop him now.
The freedom suit was made of linsey-woolsey and he'd had it only a few weeks, though he was twenty-three. The added months of apprenticeship since his twenty-first birthday had been imposed as punishment for offenses that otherwise would have been long since forgotten—and Adam didn't give a hoot anyway, now. For he was free at last. What's more, he was master of a vessel. In a few hours he was going to get a chance to show the world, the big world outside of this town, what he could do.
But first he had to see Elnathan Evans. He knew Zeph would be away from home now. He was smiling as he strode over to the Evans house.
"I've come to say good-bye, Elnathan," he said as the woman opened the door, and drew him into the house.
"Oh, Adam, can't you stay awhile? He won't be back for a couple of hours. Our last time—"
"It's partly to see him I'm going. The owners. At Blake's."
"What time do you sail?"
It was hard to keep from singing. But with the woman it was different; and when after a while she spoke again the catch in her voice startled Adam. Elnathan Evans was not a demonstrative female by day. Folks just didn't associate emotion with her. Yet here she quavered.
"Adam?"
"Yes?"
"How long will you be gone?"
"Can't say. Two-three months, maybe four."
"You'll be careful? You won't get killed?"
"Well-"
"They tell it's mighty tricksy down in those waters, Adam."
He grinned, and found one of her hands. He could scarcely see her.
"I won't get killed," he promised. "And another thing I won't do—I won't forget who it was talked her husband into getting me the command. Seth Selden would've had it, wasn't for you."
He kissed her.
"And you'll be back, Adam."
"Oh, sure."
Chuckles clucked around inside his throat and chest. He reckoned he felt right sorry for Elnathan, in a way. She did seem cut up about his going, and he was touched by this, as any man might be. But he teemed with excitement; expectation yeasted within him; he could hardly wait for the time when he'd be ordering the hook up, to put out in the blithesomest boat ever built. Though he had made two voyages aboard of Goodwill to Men—the only ones the schooner had logged, one a coaster, the other to the sugar islands—and though his apprenticeship to Mr. Sedgewick had ended, formally, such a short time ago, Adam Long for some years now had not been taking many orders. On land as a carpenter, at sea first as a hand and then as mate, he had known his business, shining as one who was best left alone. But he had not been giving orders either, to speak of. And it seemed to him that he was born to give orders.
Wasn't he, in the opinion of some, if not of others, a son of the Earl of Tillinghast? He believed this anyway. The story hung about his life like a wispy fog, coiling away soundlessly whenever you tried to touch it, drifting back again in long languid ribbons; but he thought that it had been his mother—she died when he was five—who told him. There was no mention of it, of course, in the only paper she had left—a copy of her indenture contract. There was nothing here on this side of the Atlantic to prove the story or even point toward its proof. Some day he would prove it! He'd go right to England, to Tillinghast, the castle, and demand a settlement. But he wasn't going to do this hat-in-hand, wheedling, an unwanted bastard who sneaked in through the scullery. When Adam went to Tillinghast it would be with a sword at his side, gold in his purse.
He smiled as he touched lovingly the solid woodwork of the handsome house, and looked out the broad window facing the sea.
It was like being between two worlds. On his left was warmth, comfort, security, even luxury, he reckoned, though it could scarcely be thought luxurious in comparison with homes at Home, from what he had been told of them. On the other side was a prim garden, clipped grass, the street and trees all silent, a vague glow that was Blake's tavern, and the bay itself, bland, beautiful, silvered by the moon, peppered now with 10 sloops that scarcely rocked; while beyond, out on Goat Island, half awash, yet still seemingly reluctant to be submerged, still struggling to stay out of the muck, swung the triced remains of Thomas Hart. Adam himself, together with hundreds of colonists, had watched the turning-off of this pirate two years ago, since which time, as required by law, the body had dangled infra fluxum et refluxum maris, between high tide and low. On a quiet night like this, when the changing waters turned it, you could sometimes hear the links squeal. But the stink was gone. Everything was gone except the gallows, which had lurched out of kilter in the shifting mud, and the chain, and the trussed white bones that the sea refused to take.