as he now liked to be called, down the Mississippi by steamer to New Orleans and then to Biloxi by train. We slipped out in the dark of night by longboat and met the Clover, anchored in the Gulf about a mile out. We set sail for points south by southeast, headed for Key West, Nassau, and ports unknown.
The Clover was one of the last of its kind, nearly ninety yards long with miles of rigging and a well-drilled crew. Steamships were beginning to vie for trade with the clippers and the days of the great merchant sailing ships were numbered. Captain Woodget didn’t agree with this fact and never backed down from a challenge to race with one of the “tin crates,” as he called them.
He made sure that everyone on board understood I was his apprentice and not a cabin boy. No one ever doubted him and I was given free rein on the ship. He was a good captain, hard but fair, and he was an expert in sail-making, rigging, and navigation. He had the respect of every seaman on board and each one knew that things would be done one way—Captain Woodget’s—no matter how trivial it might seem.
I got my sea legs early and never got seasick, even crossing the Gulf Stream, which was rough. I made friends with many of the crew and most called me Z, but I also got a nickname from our Portuguese cook, who called me “Pequeño Basque,” or “Little Basque.”
Captain Woodget became a friend and helped me search for Sailor in every port, as long as I remembered my primary task, “watching his back.”
I loved the life at sea; the wind and the smell of the constant spray and the stars at night, ten million more than I’d seen when I woke up to the Milky Way in Colorado. I was kept busy most of the time, but I also had endless hours to think about Mama and Papa, Solomon, Ray, Georgia, and Carolina; people I had loved and somehow lost, much too quickly.
Time has a different pace at sea. Days turn into weeks and weeks into months so easily. It rolls under you and you sail through it as you would the sea itself. It is vast and broken only by the light, the weather, the next harbor, a memory of lost things. Sailor, if he existed, must have felt this way a thousand times, I thought.
I hadn’t found a trace of him. After Captain Woodget had taught me how and where to look, I talked to seamen of all colors and nations. I stopped and hounded dockworkers, barmaids, whores, kitchen cooks, anyone and everyone. Months went by, then a year, then two. My Meq blood and sensibilities concerning Time didn’t seem to notice; only my obsession with finding Sailor mattered. We took on cargoes of tea, wool, coal, jute, redwood, brown sugar, dyes; hundreds of different goods from hundreds of different ports. We anchored off West Africa, Brazil, Madagascar, Nova Scotia, Bermuda, the whole rim of the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Most of our cargoes were legal, but the Clover always had one hold, or at least part of one, filled with contraband, and a cabin was always available to the occasional revolutionary or murderer at a price. Holidays and birthdays were never celebrated; smuggling is mainly business and the demands on the men who do it are relentless and never romantic. Two years became four and four became eight. I saw Captain Woodget and most of his crew through two separate cholera outbreaks, where dozens died. I learned to speak bits of French, Spanish, and Portuguese, enough to ask, “Do you know a boy named Sailor?” But no one did. Twelve years passed and I was as lost as I’d been when I first went to sea; twelve years of searching I felt were wasted. I still wore the Stones, though I hadn’t had to use them, not once. Captain Woodget and the crew never mentioned how I looked the same. I was just “Little Basque,” another unexplained mystery of the sea.
Then we anchored in a cove on the coast of Bermuda, not in the main harbor, but near it. It was New Year’s Day 1896, and twelve years were about to feel like twelve seconds.
Captain
The Clover was one of the last of its kind, nearly ninety yards long with miles of rigging and a well-drilled crew. Steamships were beginning to vie for trade with the clippers and the days of the great merchant sailing ships were numbered. Captain Woodget didn’t agree with this fact and never backed down from a challenge to race with one of the “tin crates,” as he called them.
He made sure that everyone on board understood I was his apprentice and not a cabin boy. No one ever doubted him and I was given free rein on the ship. He was a good captain, hard but fair, and he was an expert in sail-making, rigging, and navigation. He had the respect of every seaman on board and each one knew that things would be done one way—Captain Woodget’s—no matter how trivial it might seem.
I got my sea legs early and never got seasick, even crossing the Gulf Stream, which was rough. I made friends with many of the crew and most called me Z, but I also got a nickname from our Portuguese cook, who called me “Pequeño Basque,” or “Little Basque.”
Captain Woodget became a friend and helped me search for Sailor in every port, as long as I remembered my primary task, “watching his back.”
I loved the life at sea; the wind and the smell of the constant spray and the stars at night, ten million more than I’d seen when I woke up to the Milky Way in Colorado. I was kept busy most of the time, but I also had endless hours to think about Mama and Papa, Solomon, Ray, Georgia, and Carolina; people I had loved and somehow lost, much too quickly.
Time has a different pace at sea. Days turn into weeks and weeks into months so easily. It rolls under you and you sail through it as you would the sea itself. It is vast and broken only by the light, the weather, the next harbor, a memory of lost things. Sailor, if he existed, must have felt this way a thousand times, I thought.
I hadn’t found a trace of him. After Captain Woodget had taught me how and where to look, I talked to seamen of all colors and nations. I stopped and hounded dockworkers, barmaids, whores, kitchen cooks, anyone and everyone. Months went by, then a year, then two. My Meq blood and sensibilities concerning Time didn’t seem to notice; only my obsession with finding Sailor mattered. We took on cargoes of tea, wool, coal, jute, redwood, brown sugar, dyes; hundreds of different goods from hundreds of different ports. We anchored off West Africa, Brazil, Madagascar, Nova Scotia, Bermuda, the whole rim of the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Most of our cargoes were legal, but the Clover always had one hold, or at least part of one, filled with contraband, and a cabin was always available to the occasional revolutionary or murderer at a price. Holidays and birthdays were never celebrated; smuggling is mainly business and the demands on the men who do it are relentless and never romantic. Two years became four and four became eight. I saw Captain Woodget and most of his crew through two separate cholera outbreaks, where dozens died. I learned to speak bits of French, Spanish, and Portuguese, enough to ask, “Do you know a boy named Sailor?” But no one did. Twelve years passed and I was as lost as I’d been when I first went to sea; twelve years of searching I felt were wasted. I still wore the Stones, though I hadn’t had to use them, not once. Captain Woodget and the crew never mentioned how I looked the same. I was just “Little Basque,” another unexplained mystery of the sea.
Then we anchored in a cove on the coast of Bermuda, not in the main harbor, but near it. It was New Year’s Day 1896, and twelve years were about to feel like twelve seconds.
Captain
Similar Books
