The Odyssey of Ben O'Neal (8 page)

The Bravaman was outside the galley, looking on, having coffee, and I inquired as to how I might best be of help. "Stay out of the way," he advised, which is not what I had in mind.

Then Cap'n Reddy shouted deep-voiced to a shabby handler ashore, "Let 'er go," and we were free of land at last, already slowly headed for the channel.

Try as I might, I cannot adequately describe how I felt that Friday morning as the
Conyers
put to sea behind the puffing
Mary Clark.
As I stood near the bow, I would have given anything to wave aloofly to Kilbie Oden and Frank Scarborough, two boys surely convicted to the land. It would also have been nice to see Tee standing on the dock, misty-eyed yet proud of me. Wool cap at a jaunty angle, I'd put on my seaboots for the occasion despite the fact that not a drop of water was falling anywhere. I did not care. Caught in the rapture of these thoughts, I was almost bowled over again when the boston, howling with rage, came up to the bow to shift the towing hawser forward. The tug was moving out ahead of us as we rippled down the river.

"
Ola,
" yelled the Bravaman, and crooked a finger my way. "Come into the galley so the bosun will not stomp you."

Right then, I died a little.

As the
Conyers
went regally downstream toward Hampton Roads, past Lambert's Point and Craney Island light, I was fretting and scrubbing pans. Just about opposite the nub of land on which was later to rest the world-famous Jamestown Exposition of 1907, the captain's yell of "Set upper tops'ls," which were about midway up the masts, echoed throughout the ship like a cry from Chris Columbus. Tears were near as I banged those pans around.

A few minutes later, Cap'n Reddy shouted again: "Sheet home the lower tops'ls; clap on the heads'ils."

I felt unmerciful agony.

A departure so stirring and thrilling that it deserved to be painted and framed forever, and I was awash in soapsuds. Then I heard the legendary chanteys begin and pleaded, "Eddie..."

He finally wiped his hands on the towel and nodded. "Now you can help," he said, limping out himself to boss some greenhorn sailors on the foresail.

There were men on the capstan—the round deck windlass—bending at the oak spars; others hauled on lines, and the chanteyman, old Frank, ship's carpenter, was singsonging "Away to Rio," each "yup" sending sail higher. Canvas was spreading; chief mate forward, second mate aft, captain by the helmsman, bosun moving all over the ship.

I glanced back at Josiah Reddy. He did not seem to be an earthly creature. In full uniform, gold stripes on his sleeves, he stood by the big double wheel, hands tucked in his double-breasted coat pockets, watching ahead and aloft. On the pug face was a special look: We were all about to ascend to Neptune's paradise. A moderate breeze was crooning down from the north, freshening, and I had, at long last, gone to mariner's heaven.

Setting topgallants and royals, I soon found myself hauling on lines with eight sailors, yelling "yup" just right with them as the chanteyman hit the "Up she rises."

Reuben, liking more to taste farm dirt in his mouth on his visits home, not talking too much about the sea, had never told me there were short-haul chanteys and long-haul chanteys, the pull changing from hefty, short drags to long, steady pulling, the chantyman changing his song and rhythm at the same time. "Haul on the Bowline" when sheeting home, "What to Do with a Drunken Sailor" and "Paddy Doyle" when the sail was stiff.

I can hear it now, out of the brilliant past. "Up she rises!" O, glory.

Soon the tug was cast off, and the magnificent
Christine Conyers,
under full sail, stood out to sea and took final departure on Cape Henry.

Never will I forget that glorious morning and never will I forget what happened that early afternoon as the crew was
sweating up
(tightening the halyards, you see) and making everything secure for sea. About two-thirty, with the
Conyers
scudding southeast at six knots, lifting on the swells; the ring of the chanteyman still in my ears, fresh perfume of salt in my nose, rigging singing, I came up out of the forward hatch with a bag of coal and happened to look aft.

I froze. Sand ghosties had risen by the afterhouse. I almost dropped the coal bag.
It wouldn't happen; it couldn't happen.
But it had, as predictable as the sunrise.

The British castaway girl saw me, then smiled widely and waved gaily. By her was a big, gold dog.

We were already fifteen miles out, fully rigged and bound for the Caribbean. The tugboat was long gone. So was my career.

I ran into the galley, dumped the coal bag, then streaked down the deck to confront her. My voice understandably cracked from pure emotion as I asked, "Why, Tee? Why did you do it?" Nothing like this had ever happened to me; I doubt to any other boy on his first professional voyage.

"Aren't you glad to see us?" she asked, mouth remaining open as if she'd never considered otherwise.

I said, "No! I'd rather see the devil. Why did you do it, Teetoncey?"

She then said, quite seriously, one of those things of which she was becoming very capable: "I couldn't stand to think of you going to Barbados alone on a hellship. You know nothing about Bridgetown."

All too true, but not much of a reason to follow me to sea.

I gathered myself together and made a wise decision. I said, "You two are nothing but common stowaways and I want nothing to do with you. I'll deny I ever saw you in my life."

I could see the change coming over her, like frost gathering on a moonless night. She replied, very coldly, "We aren't common stowaways. I paid the captain twelve dollars for my passage; four for Boos. I thought you'd be glad to see us."

"I am not."

"You should be," she said, eyes smarting.

Now shaking with rage, I asked, "How did you talk the cap'n into it?"

"I told him I was going to visit my uncle Salisbury in Bridgetown."

What a rotten lie! She hated her uncle and he wasn't in Bridgetown.

"I'm a British subject, Ben. I have all my papers. I can visit any British possession in the world without your help." Calm and calculating as a swamp lynx she was, and just as sneaky. That girl had changed completely in ten days, or else she had hidden her true nature from us all.

I looked at the dog. How I ever came to love him and tend him as a puppy, I don't know. He had turned into the most unfaithful, troublesome ingrate on earth; cause of everything.

She spoke again. "I'm sorry you don't appreciate what we've done."

"Hah," I said, in no way sympathetic to her feelings at this point. Making effort not to yell, I got up close to her sharp nose and said, "I warn you, Tee, you don't know me. Neither does that dog. You're both on your own."

With that, I turned heels-about and headed back for the galley. She would be the complete ruin of me yet, and had made an awfully good start. I remember pausing outside the galley door and looking over toward the coast. Though easting, we were sailing along about opposite the Virginia border. During the night, we would pass Oregon Inlet, Bodie Island Lighthouse, and Heron Head Shoal, where this had all begun. It entered my mind to launch the yawl, which was chocked down aft, and return to the peace and comfort of the Hatteras shore.

Later in the day, when the sun was in its fourth quadrant to the west, I was sitting outside the galley peeling potatoes, feeling very low, when Tee strolled up with Boo. She had him on a length of rope.

"Good afternoon," she said as if shopping at the greengrocer's and definitely with some sort of female vengeance on her tricky mind. "You're the galley boy, aren't you?"

Oh, ho, she was going to play her evil game to the hilt. I looked all about me, seeing no one near, and then asked, in a plainly hostile voice, "What are you doing up here?"

"I'm on my promenade, with my dog."

I glared at her. "What's a promenade?"

"A walk, a stroll about deck. Passengers do that often."

I could only think this was going to be a wearing voyage beyond compare. I said, "Tee, how could you tell the cap'n so many lies at one standing?"

Her smile was chalky. "Would you like me to tell him
one
truth?"

"No," I said, immediately realizing what she meant. That one could destroy me. No matter how much I protested, Cap'n Reddy would be sure to believe I'd been responsible for them coming aboard; certain to think I'd done it for romance or worse. "No," I repeated.

For more than an hour over the potato tub, I'd been trying to figure out when she'd come aboard; how she'd worked her conspiracy on the captain. I asked about that.

"I did it properly. I went to Hudgins & Hurst and waited for the captain. When he came in to pay for his supplies, I discussed the matter with him. It was all done in a few minutes."

"When did you come aboard?" I asked.

"Last night, of course. But I certainly didn't want to disturb you." She was always thoughtful.

"And you stayed in your cabin until we were well offshore?"

"Yes, we were both very tired, Ben. It had been a long day." That was true. She'd been up at five to sneak away from Mrs. Crowe's.

I shook my head in frustration. For the sake of everyone, that girl should have remained in her catatonic state, which was her frame of mind when Boo found her sprawled out on the November beach. It was only March, and I felt fifty years older.

"Did you tell the cap'n you were a fugitive from justice?" I asked, thinking that might bust her bubble.

"The subject didn't arise," Tee answered, not at all shaken.

I sat there looking at her for a while and then said, "One thing is certain, and it is this: You and I part company in the Barbadoes. Forever."

Tee replied tardy, "How can we part company if we've never been together?"

At every turn she was sticking her long pins into me, for no good reason, and I was just about to chase her away when the bosun came lunging up, screaming about coal dust on the deck outside the forward hatch. Grabbing me by the collar, jerking me up, letting loose a few German oaths first, he roared, "You swab de deck til dere iss not a speck in sight."

Gasping for breath, I nodded.

Just then, Tee addressed him, saying something like "
Sprechen Sie Deutsch?
"

I was slowly released to my feet as he turned toward her, very surprised. "
Ja,
" he said, and with new interest.

Then she began to rattle it out, and they talked for about ten minutes by my pile of potatoes. I just sat there and held my head. She'd won another heart.

The bosun finally said something like, "
Danke, Frdulein, auf baldiges Wiedersehen,
" and departed, smiling for the first time since I'd seen him. A smile on that porker face was the same as cracks in old concrete.

Feeling like a mudsucker's bottom fin, I asked, "What did he just say?"

"'Thank you, lady, see you later.'" Then she smiled sweetly down at me. "No one had spoken German to him for a long time. Such a nice man."

I had to know, and asked tiredly, "Tee, how did you learn to speak German?"

"From Muttie, our cook," she replied. "She's from Berlin and has been with us for ages. But I really don't speak German very well. My French is much better."

"Oh, I didn't know that," I said as cuttingly as I could.

"Heavens, it's teatime," she said, and did a little good-bye wave with her fingers, a toodle-oo, I suppose, and then continued on her promenade with that dog, nodding and smiling to everyone on deck.

A
BOUT SUNDOWN
, with the
Conyers
racing east and south in fine weather, every sail bellied out, the Bravaman began serving supper to the crew through the "pie hole," which is a small, sliding-door space in the bulkhead separating the galley from the crew's quarters. He pounded on the wood wall and yelled, "Come 'n' get it."

At the same time, I began making my trips to the afterhouse with warmers of food, balancing against the plunge and twist of the ship. To those who have never sailed as a galley boy on a four-master bark, you take the hot food aft, then dish it out on plates and platters in the pantry, then serve it. Then keep your mouth shut. And who was sitting at the table in the dining saloon with the captain, mates, and bosun? Tee. Who else?

And over at one side of that splendid cabin slept Boo Dog, contentedly alongside the cat. Anyone on the Outer Banks from Chicky village north to Pea Island, south to Hatteras Inlet, can testify that Boo chased cats in and out of wrecks, up and down lighthouse steps, all his life. Now he was two inches from that saffron-eyed, mangy old Siamese, and snoring.

What's more, I soon found out that he was using the cat's sandbox, which I had to empty daily, to the lee of the after cabin. On the Banks, Boo "went" everywhere, even on gravestones and the steps of the Hatteras meeting hall, and now, in less than a half day, she had trained him in nature's calling. I swear that girl was a witch.

As I placed the captain's plate down, he gave me a swift, upbringing look, and said, "Ladies first."

So I went around and put the plate down in front of Tee. She smiled at me and said, "Thank you, waiter; such good food," though she hadn't taken a bite.

As I was heading back to the pantry to get the captain's plate, she called after me, "Waiter, could I please have a pinch of mustard for this mutton."

I nodded, went inside the pantry, and shook.

After my own supper, which I ate alone, perched on a box in that narrow closet of shelves, I helped the Bravaman clean the galley up and finally went back out on deck about eight-thirty. Except the on-duty watch—lookout on the bow, helmsman, and the bosun—all the rest of the crew had bunked down.

There was a white slice of water at the bow, the sails were humming, and looking up through their ghostly sheeting, as the masts waved back and forth across the sky, were millions of stars. Far off to port was a faint, thin cut of light. Looming, crossing, and dying. I guessed it might be Hatteras Light. Time did pass. I'd climbed the lighthouse steps many a day. I let my eyes drift along the horizon, knowing that the Banks were there, hidden except for the light wand. I couldn't help but think of everyone. I even mustered a kind of wry laugh. If they only knew. Not only was Ben O'Neal, son of John and Rachel, abeam, but also the castaway girl and a well-known former duck dog. The directions of life could never be reckoned.