For the Freedom of the Seas
9781465679307
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The three-masted schooner Jonas Clinton was loafing along in a six-knot breeze some five hundred miles off the coast of France. For the time of year, the middle of October, the Atlantic in those latitudes was unusually docile and there was scarcely enough swell to slant the schooner’s deck. Overhead, a moon in its first quarter was playing hide-and-seek in a bank of purple-black clouds. The night—the ship’s clock in the cabin had just struck five bells—was so mild that the helmsman had not yet troubled to button his heavy reefer. Light winds, or no wind at all, had been the Jonas Clinton’s fortune for a month. The eastward voyage had been made in twenty-two days, Boston to Havre, but once rid of her cargo of lubricating oil for the armies in France, she had been forced to swing at anchor for two weeks. At last, despairing of a fair wind, Captain Troy had had the schooner towed across to Falmouth, England. Another wait had followed, a delay especially regrettable when ships were scarce and freight rates high. But at last a brisk breeze had started the Jonas Clinton on her homeward voyage only to peter out at the end of the second day, leaving the skipper, who, as half owner in the ship, was deeply concerned in her fortunes, decidedly glum. The skipper’s frame of mind was reflected by everyone else aboard, from Mr. Cupples, the mate, down to the latest addition to the crew of eight, the tall, raw-boned Nova Scotian lad who, whatever his real name might be, was known as “Bean Pole”; though the gloom extended in a lesser degree to two inhabitants of the four hundred ton craft, Nelson Troy and Pickles. These two were at the moment seated side by side on the forward hatch, as though awaiting this introduction. Nelson, Captain Troy’s son, was seventeen, a well-built, nice-looking lad who was making his second voyage in his father’s ship. He was down on the ship’s papers as apprentice, since a merchant vessel may not carry passengers, but his position as a member of the crew was nominal rather than actual. Not, however, that he didn’t take a hand when there was something to be done, for he had picked up a fair amount of sailoring, and, perhaps, had inherited a taste for it. He was a broad-shouldered, healthy boy, full of fun and very fond of Pickles. Pickles was—well, Pickles was just Pickles. First of all, he was a dog. Beyond that I hesitate to go. Leo, the big, two-fisted Swede who had sailed with Captain Troy for seven years, declared that “he ban part wolf-dog an’ part big fool.” But that was scarcely fair to Pickles, because, no matter how mixed he was in the matter of breed, he was certainly no fool. Even Terry, the cook, acknowledged that. No dog capable of stealing a piece of mutton as big as his head from right under the cook’s nose can rightly be called a fool. And Terry didn’t call him a fool, although he applied several other names to him! Visibly, Pickles was yellow as to color, shaggy as to coat, loving and faithful as to disposition. For the rest, he was long-legged and big in the shoulders, and just too much for a lapful.
