The Odyssey of Ben O'Neal (4 page)

Almost on the hour, both the iron hulls of the steamers and the bellying canvas of the windjammers passed out Hampton Roads, put Willoughby Spit off to port, and then took departure on Cape Henry, dipping into ocean swell.

I had no thoughts of going to sea on a coal burner. Men of the Banks had always started before the mast and I would be no different.

But that's how it was that Wednesday.

A
T ABOUT EIGHT O'CLOCK
I found myself nervously standing by a brick building near the waterfront, looking at a brass-lettered sign:

J. M. JORDAN'S. SHIP CHANDLERS
ESTABLISHED 1865

It was no will-o'-the-wisp business, by any means. Already the wheels of commerce were grinding in the widening light. Dray wagons were being loaded with ship supplies, and I paused by one wagon as meal, flour, meat; paint, tar, wire, and coils of rope came off pushcarts and out of barrows. A ship would soon sail.

Finally, bracing myself once more, trying to look as tall as possible, hoping my voice wouldn't betray me, I went inside J. M. Jordan's and was immediately awed. Laden shelves climbed right up to the high tin ceiling. Ladders on wheels could reach the very top cans and cartons. There didn't seem to be a thing on earth that wasn't stacked, piled, or barreled somewhere on the premises. If Mr. Burrus thought he had a thriving store in Chicky, he should have taken a gander at Jordan's. There was a selling section, with a long counter; then a wide door and ramp that opened into a bustling warehouse. Toward the back, near an office, was that big coal Heatrola Mrs. Crowe had mentioned. Circled around it, though it wasn't fired this fine spring morning, were the shipmasters, as predicted, talking and smoking and drinking chicory-root coffee from white mugs.

I stood uncertainly looking from face to face, wondering if any of them knew Reuben. In the blue-coated flesh, they were a sight to see. Weathered and muttonchopped and full-white-bearded and clean-shaven, they were nothing less than bedazzling. Kings of the ocean. If any of them were coasting captains, masters who made short hauls along the coast, they couldn't help but know the
Elnora Langhans,
because she'd sailed the Atlantic shores and down in the Caribbean for many years.

Listening to them a moment, I decided to approach a counter clerk and ask forthrightly for Mr. Jordan. Meanwhile, my eyes caught several large blackboards on the back wall,
SHIPS IN PORT,
well more than a hundred of them, were chalked in;
SHIPS OVERDUE & UNREPORTED
, three of them. Closer to the boards, I recognized a few names I'd seen before through the long glass from the cupola at Heron Head Station, ships that had passed close inshore. Date of arrival and scheduled date of departure were by each in-port ship, along with the lying-to wharf or anchorage.

Still delaying, I read the name of each vessel and then forced myself to the counter. "Could I please see Mr. Jordan?"

The clerk was gray-haired, aproned, and not friendly. "About what, boy?"

"A job."

"Mr. Robert Keen does the hiring. He's in the warehouse."

"I mean a job on a ship. Mrs. Crowe sent me and I think Mr. Jordan knows my brother, mate on the
Elnora Langhans.
"

"Wait here." The clerk seemed harried for so early in the morning.

In a moment, a portly, kindly faced man filled the office doorway, heavy gold watch chain taut across his sloping vest. "Mrs. Crowe sent you? Why, I thought she hated anything to do with ships."

The captains laughed.

I began walking toward the chandler.

"For what did she send you?"

"I'm trying to find a cabin boy's job. On a sailing ship bound for the Caribbean. Any ship. Reubens down there somewhere and I—" The words were escaping all too fast, I knew.

"Slow down. For one thing, very few sailing vessels take on boys nowadays, more trouble than they're worth. For another thing, who are you? Who's Reuben?"

"I'm Ben O'Neal. Reuben's my brother. We're from Heron Head, on the Hatteras Banks. Mama died last month and I've got to find—"

"Slow down, Ben."

"Yessir."

I licked my lips and started off again. "Reuben's on the
Elnora Langhans,
on a run to the Barbadoes and Trinidad from Port Fernandino and I want to see him. Very badly. I must see him."

Mr. Jordan nodded understandingly. "I know Reuben. Fine man. But you don't look much like him."

"No, sir." (Reuben resembled Mama, with a big nose and reddish-brown hair. I looked like John O'Neal, with dark hair and a smaller nose.)

"I also knew your papa," Mr. Jordan went on. "But I doubt either one of them would want me to send you helter-skelter down to the Caribbean. No guarantee you'll get within two hundred miles of the
Langhans.
She may be coming north when you're going south. And I don't know offhand of any ship that needs a boy." He looked over to the collection of masters around his cold stove.

A captain with a heavy, round, crimson face and white muttonchops answered. "I don't need one. I'm headed for Boston, anyway."

"Sorry," replied another, and it was echoed by a third.

A fourth said, "Last boy I had stumbled all over himself and was seasick the whole voyage."

I turned my head. "I won't be seasick."

There was skeptical laughter.

Feeling everything slipping away from me, I looked back at Mr. Jordan. "But I came up here to go to sea..."

"I think you should go back home."

Desperation fell over me and I said frantically, "There's no one at home. I have to find Reuben." It was imperative after last night's long think.

Mr. Jordan sighed and looked over the in-port board, studying it at length. The captains examined it, too. "There's only one vessel leaving for the Caribbean the rest of the week," Mr. Jordan finally said. "Sails to Barbados day after tomorrow. But I wouldn't recommend it to a dock rat."

The master with, the muttonchops added, "I would just as soon sail with a combination of dodo bird and hangman as I would with Josiah Reddy."

Josiah Reddy.
The name meant nothing to me.

"Aw, Sam," said another captain. "You're just jealous. Joe Reddy's a bit odd, but he's got the finest, fastest bark on this coast. He beats us all in and out of port."

"Dodo bird," repeated Mr. Jordan, as though he had a bitter memory.

Cap'n Sam laughed hollowly. "Odd? He still uses sea chanteys when he gets under way. Won't hoist sail with the donkey engine. Makes his men pull every inch up. He's been known to sit out on his jibboom and sing to the ocean. He sprinkles sugar on the water to rise a breeze."

"First-class lunatic," said Mr. Jordan.

Everyone laughed again.

"And something else. That bosun of his..." added Mr. Jordan, leaving the description dangling ominously.

"Gebbert? He's mean and rough and slave-drivin', but he gets the work done. I'd like to have him in my ship."

I didn't flinch through all this. There wasn't a more difficult man anywhere than Hardie Miller, of Kinnakeet, and I had survived him on more than one occasion.

Mr. Jordan continued. "Ben, tell you what, since you seem so bound and determined, in about a month, young Cap'n Ted Hubbard will put in with the
Omar Hubbard,
of the Columbus Line. I'll make sure you get passage. He goes to Kingston, Barbados, Trinidad, and other places. You'll likely have to work your way, but you'll be in good, sane hands. Reuben knows him, I'm sure."

I shook my head. "I can't wait a month, sir. I haven't got that much money."

Mr. Jordan rubbed his jaw. "Well, I guess we can find something for you to do around here. Shine brass or empty spittoons. Sweep up. Two dollars and lunch a week. Now, you go back to Mrs. Crowe's and then report here tomorrow morning at seven-thirty."

"Isn't there any other sailing ship leaving this week or next?" I asked, feeling low.

"I'm afraid not," he answered. "You got here too late for the
Lois Solomon,
and the
Cashamara
sails Monday but she's a British steamer."

As he turned back into the office and the captains began chatting again, I lingered on to look at the in-port board. The masters weren't listed. Only the names of the vessels. Which one did Cap'n Reddy command?

Just as I was leaving, very depressed, Mr. Jordan came back out of the office and called to me. "Ben, I almost forgot. There's a message here for you."

I could not believe it. No one but Mrs. Crowe and the railroaders knew that I'd come to Jordan's. I took it anyway and glanced at the handwriting on the envelope. My disbelief turned to astonishment. Unless I was very mistaken, the penmanship, neat and orderly, was done by none other than a thistle-waisted four-foot-ten-inch girl I knew as Teetoncey. Built like a healthy broomstraw and sharp-nosed, at this moment she was supposed to be in, or nearing, London, her home. At least those were the intentions of not two weeks before.

I thanked the ship chandler and stuffed the envelope into my hip pocket, refusing to open it; fearful of opening it. Though I was alternately smitten and peeved with her, every time I'd been involved with that girl disaster seemed to lurk.

Outside, another dray was being loaded, and I stepped up to one of the handlers. "Excuse me, could you please tell me which ship Cap'n Josiah Reddy commands?"

The burly man finished shoving a barrel of salted fish into the wagon bed, wiped sweat from his brow, rubbed his hands on his dirty apron, then laughed. "No trouble tellin' you that. He commands the bitch of the Atlantic."

The coarse language was startling. "Could I please have her name?"

"The
Christine Conyers,
prettiest four-masted backbreaker from Cape Race to the Horn, so they say."

Backbreaker? Nonetheless I asked, "Where is she?"

"Don't rightly know. But you can find out at Hudgins & Hurst, chandlers and sailmakers, No. 11 Roanoke Dock. They provision her. We don't. They're reservin' a place for Joe Reddy in the insane asylum up to Richmond."

Everyone thought that Mis' Mehaly Blodgett, of Buxton Woods, was loonier than a feeble-minded pelican, but she wasn't once you got to know her.

I thanked him.

"What's your interest in the
Conyers?
"

"I hope to hire on as cabin boy. To the Barbadoes." There was only one of those islands, but everybody on the Banks spelled it and pronounced it that way, as if it were two.

The handler laughed caustically. "You'd be better off swimmin' there." He went about his work.

On that note, I left the area of Jordan's and went around the corner. I stopped and put my back up against a brick wall and fished the envelope out of my pocket. It was addressed:
Ben O'Neal, of Heron Head, Hatteras Banks. Urgent.

I debated a moment, then ripped it open. It was from the girl, all right, and someone else.

It said:

Dearest Ben:
I am on Phillips's Barge No. 7, tied up south of the Clyde Line docks. Come quick. I need your help.

It was signed, "Love, T. & B. D." I read it twice.

Unmistakably, Teetoncey and that troublesome dog, Boo. They weren't anywhere near London.

It seemed to me that I had enough peril and difficulties ahead without further calamity arising. Why it was, I don't know, but I had the feeling that message was going to hang around my neck like an anchor chain.

I
FELT NEED
for a good stifFener, as Mr. Burrus would say before having a root beer. And some hard thought, additionally. Being near Robert Holmes, Druggist, I went on in there and sat down at that solid-onyx Tuff Revier double-stand soda-water fountain, one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen. I ordered a lemon drink. Then I began to think, first things first. No matter Teetoncey's plight, whatever it happened to be, I had to get to the
Christine Conyers
and apply for a job. Sailing day after tomorrow, there was no time to waste. That was all settled.

What I couldn't understand was why Tee wasn't on the
Vulcania,
or a similar steamship, about to make landfall in England. She had left the Banks eight days before and from my information was to be shipped immediately by Consul Calderham to New York, thence to London to resume living in her big and fancy house. Even though her parents were dead, courtesy of the sea, and she'd have to live with the servants now, bossing them around, there was not much to pity about that girl. She had pluck. We had gone through a whole big good-bye scene, professing admiration for each other; I had watched the
Neuse
sail away with her, accompanied by my former duck dog, a departure gift. They had taken to each other. Now she was still around. And with her, roughly a hundred pounds of yellow-gold Labrador, with soulful dark eyes and overlong ears, the most one-minded dog on earth. Worthless now that he had retired from retrieving ducks.

I could only imagine that she had foolishly run away from the uncaring British consul for one reason or another, not that I could blame her. Yet she was duty-bound to return to London and resume her wealthy life in Belgravia, one of the better sections of that city.

For a moment, I thought about going directly to Phillips's Barge No. 7 to determine what she had done, right or wrong, but then decided to visit Consul Calderham first. Tee was not above twisting the truth, as I had learned, and, perhaps, neither was Calderham. But it seemed sensible to get his story before confronting the girl.

Meanwhile, I finished the lemon drink, much refreshed, and went along to Hudgins & Hurst, at No. 11 Roanoke Dock.

On the way, I saw my first automobile, and not the steam variety, parked in front of a dry-goods store. A slew of people, at least fifty, were around it. A two-seated gasoline Winton, with a buggy roof and steering tiller, carbide lights, it made me hold my breath. A boy in a long gray coat, wearing goggles carelessly over his cap brim, was polishing it. One waspish man said, "I'd rather have a Haynes-Apperson." Why, I would have given anything just to sit in either one and would like to have stayed there all day. But after a half hour of watching, I forced myself onward.