Chapter One – Dreams of Adventure
“Man your stations! The pirates are boarding!” The stalwart Captain of
the East Indiaman knew the dangers of the Malacca Strait, and he had trained
his crew for just this sort of encounter. For some time the sailors were able
to hold off the assault with their modern flintlocks, manufactured in the
famous works at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Each firearm could be shot only once
because reloading took too long in the heat of battle. The sailors dropped
their spent guns to draw their swords and daggers of fine Toledo steel, also
supplied by the forward-thinking captain, and slashed at the lines holding the
grappling hooks to the rails of his merchant ship.
Seeing a pirate strike his first mate, the brave
captain rushed to the rescue of the downed man, brandishing his own sword. The
pirate fell back, but a sudden blow from behind knocked the captain’s weapon to
the deck. Drawing his dagger, the captain spun to face this new threat and saw
the grinning pirate leader holding his blood-drenched sword aloft.
“Now I have you!” snarled the pirate. “Now you die,
Mr. Bates! –“
“Mr. Bates!” the schoolmaster’s voice yanked Joseph
from his daydream. The 14-year-old lad sprang to his feet.
“Well?” the schoolmaster asked impatiently. “Do you
have the answer for us?” Joseph stared, his mouth open, unable to think of
anything to say.
“You were
attending, were you not?” asked the teacher sarcastically. “You did hear the question?”
“Er – uh – n-no, Sir” Joseph stammered. The teacher’s
face darkened into a scowl.
“Very well, come to my desk and hold out your hands.”
Joseph walked to the teacher’s desk, a distance that
suddenly seemed miles long. There were a few snickers form the other boys in
the room. Joseph was just happy that the girls’ class met in the other room. Not
everyone believed in education for girls in 1806, but the people of New Bedford,
Massachusetts, were proud of their academy, sponsored by Joseph’s father and
other community leaders, which educated both sexes. They did not go so far, however, as to imagine that boys and girls should be taught together. Joseph knew Prudy’s face would wear an expression of
intense sympathy, and that would be harder to bear than the boys’ snickers.
He clenched his jaw as the teacher’s sturdy wooden ruler
smacked down across the back of his fingers once, twice, three times,
inflicting agonizing pain. He managed to not cry out, but only just. It hurt so
badly he wondered if he would ever be able to use his hands again, but he gave
no sign of his suffering. There were no snickers as he made his way back to his
seat.
“Perhaps that
will teach you not to daydream in class,” snarled the teacher, sounding an
awful lot like the pirate leader in Joseph’s daydream.
As soon as school let out, Joseph hurried from the classroom
and out the boys’ door. Sure enough, here came Prudy from the girls’ door. They
met in the middle.
“I heard what happened, Joseph,” she said in her
no-nonsense way. “Come home with me, and I’ll put some witch hazel on your
fingers.”
“Oh, I’m all right, Pru- er, Miss Nye,” he said.
Joseph and Prudence Nye, a year younger, had been best friends since they were
preschoolers, but just recently he had begun to see her as a girl. He found himself flushing and
stammering whenever he was around her. Prudy carefully took his hands and
turned them over.
“Not all right at all,” she said. “Come along. And
don’t ‘Miss Nye’ me. We’ve been friends too long to go all formal now.” She led
him to her house, where he greeted her mother and sister and received a liberal
dabbing of witch hazel over his knuckles. Then he hurried home to do his chores
before supper. He ate slowly, and then reluctantly opened his math book on the
kitchen table. It was hard to keep his mind on the Rule of Three when visions
of sailing ships kept intruding.
“Mother,” he said, turning to where she bustled about.
“Would you speak to father about letting me go to sea?”
“Oh, Joseph, surely you don’t want to do that,” said
Mother. “Sailors lead low, immoral lives. They suffer terrible diseases from
exposure to all kinds of weather. You would ruin your constitution and destroy
your soul.”
“No, I wouldn’t. I promise. My schooling will be
finished in a few months, and I have to do something.” His eyes, like his
voice, were pleading. Mother sighed.
“Why don’t you go into business with your father?” she
suggested. “Or become a doctor like your brother Aaron?”
“I don’t want either of those. I want to be a sea
captain. I want to explore the world. I want to see for myself what it looks
like on the other side!” Joseph’s voice rose n excitement.
“You realize that nobody starts out as a sea captain.
You would have to work for years and years as a common seaman, in the worst
conditions.”
“Of course, I know that. I can handle it, I know I
can. If you and Father would only let me go!” Joseph was almost hopping around,
he was so desperate to carry his point.
“Well, right now, you just do your homework. I don’t
want you to get punished by the schoolmaster again.” Joseph subsided into his
chair.
“Yes, Mother,” he mumbled, his head hanging.
Finally, his parents accepted that he was not going to
be happy until he went to sea, but they worked out a scheme with Uncle Barnabas
that they thought would cure him.
“A few days of seasickness, and he’ll change his mind
quick enough,” Uncle Barnabas assured them. Joseph was called into the parlor.
“Joseph,” said Father, “we have arranged for you to
take a short voyage to Boston and along the coast, with your Uncle Barnabas
here.”
“If you’re
sure you want to go,” teased Mother.
“Yes!” exclaimed Joseph. “I mean – Aye, aye” He
smartly saluted his uncle, who laughed to see his eagerness.
The voyage had the opposite effect of the one his
parents had hoped for. It confirmed for Joseph that the sea was the life for
him. With sighs of reluctance, his parents capitulated.
“Your father has arranged for you to ship as a cabin boy
on the Fanny,” Mother told him.
“It’s a new ship, commanded by Captain Terry,” Father
said. “It will sail from New Bedford to London very soon. You don’t have much
time to get ready.”
Time! Joseph needed no time. He was ready to go right
now. Well, of course, he had to say goodbye to Prudy first, and pack his trunk,
but those things wouldn’t take long. He hurried to Prudy’s house.
“Are you annoyed with me because I’m going to sea?” Joseph
asked her. “After all, you thought I was going to be a minister.”
“Oh, I’ve known for some time that you were over that
idea,” said Prudy. “And my father was a sea captain, remember, so I know what
it’s like to wait for—“ she broke off with a blush. Joseph’s voice was very
soft as he responded.
“You will
wait for me?” he asked, almost timidly. Prudy raised her head and looked him in
the eyes.
“Yes, I will wait, as long and as often as I need to,”
she declared.
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