Timothy of the Cay

  But the first words that the bo'sun said to Timothy were harsh: "Yuh jump when I tell yuh, nigra boy. Yuh green as soursop, an' watch yuh step on deck less yuh die out dere..." He was a slim, thin-nosed Bajan from Barbados Island, in the Windwards above Trinidad and Tobago. With a few cups of bukra blood in him, his skin was more brown than black. He wore a sheathed knife at his right hip.

  "Yes, sirrah," Timothy replied, standing stiffly, already frightened of Luther Oisten.

  "Now, turn to," Luther ordered. "Go to work, loadin' stores."

  Timothy had always heard that second mates and bo'suns, often one and the same on sailing ships, were naturally mean. Too well he remembered Nyborg, of the Amager. Maybe they had to be mean to survive. The white chief mate, Tanner, had seemed pleasant enough, as had the captain. They left the bully talk to the Bajan.

  When the Bajan moved off, Horace Simpson, the oldest of the four Negro sailors, suggested, "Do as he tell yuh." White-haired Horace Simpson, from Alabama, reminded Timothy of Charlie Bottle. He was short and stocky.

  Timothy said, "Yes, sirrah," though ordinary sailors were never sirs.

  The only white man in the fo'c'sle was Phelps. Bewhiskered, face like an ax, he dipped snuff. He'd hurt his foot and wasn't able to go aloft. Horace said of him, "Worthless."

  Thomas Sanders was the cook-steward. He not only cooked but took care of the captain's and mate's cabins. The final crewman was ship's carpenter Deets, another white man, in charge of the steam-deck engine, which hauled up the sails, ran the pumps, and occasionally heaved in the anchors. He slept in the carpentry shop.

  Those were the bukras and the blacks aboard the Theismann. Eleven of them, including the master.

  She'd loaded coal in Virginia, twenty-five hundred tons of it, and had off-loaded six hundred in St. Thomas. She'd also off-loaded general cargo boxes. In Rio, she'd pick up bagged coffee after cleaning her holds of anthracite dust. Deliver to a Philadelphia warehouse.

  Now it was time to sail south.

  Timothy had been unable to sleep during the night and heard the cook stirring next door even before cockcrow. A smell of wood smoke soon crept into the fo'c'sle, then a stronger whiff of burning coal; and finally, Luther, a dim figure in the open doorway, shouted, "Turn to!" and the snoring in the fo'c'sle stopped abruptly.

  Timothy washed his face in a bucket of lukewarm water on deck and helped ready the ship for sea until breakfast was called. A pot of oatmeal was passed through the pie hole, followed by a slice of ham and one egg each, boiled potatoes, bread, and a pot of coffee. Timothy had never eaten so well.

  As dawn came up, feathery golden clouds to the east, there was a head of steam in the donkey engine boiler; the halyards were laid out and coiled, ready to pull sails up; the Glory came alongside, and the captain gave orders to depart.

  ***

  Timothy saw Tante Hannah standing on the wharf in the thin new light and waved to her, proud that she'd seen him at work singling up the mooring lines. He fought back tears, knowing it might be months before he'd see her again.

  The towing hawser was passed to the Glory and the bark separated from land.

  Within minutes, halyards were bent around the gypsyheads on either end of the winch, powered by the donkey engine, the Bajan yelling, "Heave away!" The upper tops'ls were soon set; then the lower tops'ls were sheeted home. After that the headsails went up.

  Timothy was too busy taking orders to do more than glance back at the figure of Tante Hannah. She was still on the wharf.

  Abeam of Water Island, the Glory said good-bye and soon the topgallants and royals and all the fore-and-aft canvases were bellying out in the light easterly breeze.

  The Gertrude Theismann was underway for Rio.

  ***

  Her master, Captain Donald Roberts, of Maine, wrote in his journal, which was kept separate from the terse official log:

  JUNE 8,1886, 7:30 A.M.—Departed St. Thomas without incident. I'm always quite ready to leave port though Mr. Tanner reported only one fight here amongst the crew. The usual reason, Demon Rum.

  While in port I added a West Indian apprentice seaman to replace the boy who fell out of the mizzen crosstrees, 160 feet above deck. (He landed like a bag of beans, and I buried him sewed in canvas off Florida, as noted in the log.)

  This new apprentice is named Timothy. He said he would work from St. Thomas to Rio and back for the price of a pair of shoes, a bargain I could not pass up. Though polite, he is a bold black boy. When I called him "Tim," he said, "Sirrah Coptin, I 'ave but one name, 'tis Timothy." I almost bashed his mouth but then laughed inwardly. After watching him on deck the past three days I believe he may turn out to be a good seaman. He knows what happened to the last boy and will likely be careful aloft.

  For obvious reasons I did not tell him we won't be returning to Philadelphia via St. Thomas. I will take on additional stores and make the run from Rio to the Delaware capes in one long voyage, God willing. Unless my schedule is changed, this vessel will proceed to Le Havre, France, after we reload in Philadelphia. The boy will have to make his own way back to the Caribbean unless he wants to cross the Atlantic with me, and I with him. I've ordered Luther to train him well.

  Four o'clock in the afternoon: all gear had been stowed away long ago, the decks hosed to wash down shore dust, and countless other ship-keeping chores performed.

  Not until that time—work done for the day and night, unless there was a shift of sails—could Timothy fully take it all in, the sights and sounds. Then he realized he was indeed at sea; that the life he'd always wanted had finally begun. He would not awaken in Back o' All tomorrow.

  The sea had turned deep blue as the hours passed, and the white thunderheads had reached higher in the western sky. There was a rhythmic creaking and wearing as the Theismann gently rose and fell, a hiss of water under her bow.

  He went forward and straddled the bowsprit for a long while, looking ahead, almost hypnotized. Then he turned and looked up at the bellied sails—the skysails, the royals, the topgallants.

  He walked along the tar-seamed warm deck aft to stand at the starboard rail near the big steering wheel, watching Horace Simpson move the spokes, wondering how long it would be before the captain and mate trusted him at the helm. Mr. Tanner had the watch.

  The captain was still in the whites he'd worn on departure—white shirt, white pants, white shoes—and a blue cap, from which peeked curls of white hair. He was smoking a pipe and had a faraway look on his face.

  Timothy knew, for many reasons, that he'd never look so fancy as this captain. When he got his own schooner, whenever that would be, he'd have bare feet and his pants might be tattered, his shirt worn and stained. But how he dressed would not matter. What would matter was being master of the Hannah Gumbs.

  For three days he'd thought about the bukra boy he'd replaced, the one who'd fallen off the mizzen crosstrees. They were so high up the mast his breath squeezed just thinking about them. The crosstrees were a pair of horizontal timbers that supported the tiny highest platform on the mizzenmast. From the deck they looked like they might scrape the clouds.

  Sooner or later Timothy knew he'd have to climb all the masts to furl sail against the yards, going up in fair weather or raging storms. Hang on when the ship plunged or rolled. He wondered, this first day out, when the seas were calm and the breeze light, if he had the courage to make the climb. Do it now!

  For about twenty minutes he stared up at the succession of rope ladders that led to the yard of the mizzen royal, then took a deep breath and swung up on the first hard rope rung of the shrouds, eyes glued to the top of the mast. It was moving slowly back and forth, a dizzying two hundred feet above. Heart pounding, he saw the spread of sails, then the sky over the slender "pole," the highest section of the mast. He continued to climb.

  Horace Simpson saw him high above the deck and shouted, "Don't look down!"

  Captain Roberts turned his head slightly to watch.

  Pausing a moment, mounting fear b
inding his chest, Timothy thought of backing down, one foot at a time. But he knew that Horace and probably the chief mate and the captain were looking up at him. Maybe others by now. Then suddenly, thinking about where he was, clinging to the ratlines, he looked down and froze.

  Unable to go up, unable to go down, he was like a fly caught in glue. Though the late afternoon was warm, cold sweat popped out on his forehead.

  There was dead silence from below. He guessed they all knew what had happened. They'd sailed a long time and had seen it happen before.

  Would someone come up and get him down? Would they tie a rope around him and lower away? He'd be disgraced his first day at sea. Luther would say, "Nigra boy, yuh lie; yuh a chil', yuh not sixteen...," then laugh at him.

  Tante Hannah had been right, "Don' nevah lie..."

  He knew that his fear would not let his body move, no matter what he said to it. His hands, grasping the rope rungs, were already aching. His legs felt like stones. Surely he was being punished for lying to the captain about being sixteen. If he got down alive he'd tell him what his real age was.

  Would they just let him stay up there until there was no strength left in his arms and legs? He'd fall from the sky like a shot bird, dying like the bukra boy.

  Would they let him stay up there when it turned night?

  The only sounds came from the wind's whisper on the sails and the song of it on the lines and stays, and the creaking of the blocks. He could not hear his heartbeat but felt the drumming in his chest. He ground his teeth and clung on.

  He had no way of telling time, but it seemed that almost an hour passed; he was still stuck like a weak, sick fly. The sun was lowering and the smell of fish frying from Thomas's galley began to rise up the mast. Yet Timothy could not bring himself to yell, "Come git me downg, pleese come git me downg..."

  After a while he heard Thomas summoning the crew to eat and knew that the captain and Mr. Tanner had gone below for their meals. Maybe Horace was no longer manning the helm.

  They were ignoring him as the sinking sun slanted along the mizzen skysail, brushing it with gold.

  He looked up at his goal, the crosstrees above the foot of the mizzen royal, and tried to unlock his fingers from the rung above and move a leg at the same time. He swallowed and set his teeth but his body parts still didn't work. They were paralyzed.

  He clung to the ratlines when the sun went down, turning the sea gray. The sails became shadowy. The breeze took on a chill edge. He glanced toward the stern of the Theismann and saw a wide path of white water that would soon turn light yellow as the sun set. He now knew the crew planned to let him stay on the shroud rungs all night if he chose to do that. Die if he might.

  Just before total darkness he felt a swaying of the ladder ropes beneath him and heard a voice say, "Move on up to de crosstrees, Timothy. One step at a time."

  Then Horace Simpson touched his ankle and said, "One step at a time an' go on up, boy."

  Timothy felt his hands unlock and strength came back to his knees, and he reached for the next rung.

  Horace talked the whole sixty feet up to the mizzen crosstrees, saying it wasn't any disgrace to freeze up there the first time you did it; saying Luther had bet him a quarter the boy'd either stay up there all night or fall out like the last one. Horace said they'd wait up there until moonshine. There was always a fine view on a moonlit night.

  Sitting on the narrow platform waiting for the moon, feet dangling, Timothy confessed to Horace that he was only fourteen.

  "Don' tell no one."

  "Not eben de coptin?"

  "Not no one. More man you are de longer yuh live out here," said Horace.

  Timothy realized Horace was right and decided to keep his mouth shut.

  Horace said he'd spent almost fifty years at sea, working a topsail schooner out of Mobile on his first voyage in 1838, at the age of fourteen. He'd spent his plantation boyhood on the banks of the muddy Tombigbee, which joined the Alabama River and emptied into the sea at Mobile.

  Timothy wondered why Horace hadn't become a captain or at least a mate in all his years at sea.

  "Not many black mates an' no black captains on big ships like this one," Horace said.

  "Luther's black."

  "Only part. Makes a difference."

  "Yuh were a slave boy?" Timothy asked. He could barely see Simpson's face in the early darkness.

  "Uh-huh. Then a slave man, till Mr. Lincoln's time. So I don't get no chance to be a mate. But bein' on ships was better'n workin' cotton."

  Perched high in the warm night, fear finally gone, Timothy told Horace about wanting to have his own schooner and run down the Windwards and Leewards with passengers and crew. That was his never-ending dream, he said.

  Horace laughed softly and said he thought Timothy ought to learn how to sail before thinking of being a captain on his own vessel.

  They descended from the mizzen crosstrees after moonrise, around ten o'clock. Luther Oisten had the watch and Phelps was on the helm.

  Oisten said to Horace, "I owe yuh nothin'. Yuh helped him downg."

  Horace said, "Nice night, bo'sun," as they headed for the fo'c'sle.

  In his bunk as the Theismann tacked back and forth going southward toward Rio, Timothy wondered if the father he'd never known was anything like Horace Simpson.

  Or was he like the cruel Bajan, Luther Oisten?

  15. The Devil's Mouth

  There was excitement in my father's voice as he said, "Guess where I've been most of the day?"

  "Sightseeing," I said. My parents had just entered the hospital room. It was late afternoon.

  "Nope, I've been at the Hydrographic Office branch downtown. Got some navigation charts and a sailing direction book for the Caribbean."

  He put them down on my lap.

  My mother asked how I was. Her tone was quiet and sad.

  "Okay," I said. "Fine."

  Dr. Pohl would operate in the morning, but I was trying not to think about it.

  I knew she was still hoping I'd change my mind; that my father would finally agree with her; that we could all tell the doctor, at the last moment, "No, thanks."

  My father said, "I found all those places you said Timothy talked about, and more. Here, let me read what the sailing directions say about Roncador..."

  I heard him thumbing pages.

  "'Roncador Bank—(13° 34' north latitude, longitude 80° 04' west)—lies seventy-five miles east-northeast of Isla Providencia. This very steep-to bank is about seven miles long and three and a half miles wide. Roncador Cay, composed of sand and blocks of coral, lies on the north part of the bank and is about thirteen feet high. The bank is fairly well covered with reefs, drying sand banks and coral heads...'"

  I tried to picture it. "Does the book talk about Serrana Bank?"

  "Yep, says it's a dangerous shoal area about forty-four miles north-northeast of Roncador..."

  "Quita Sueño?"

  "That one, too. 'Lies with its south end about thirty-nine miles north-northeast of Isla de Providencia and is very steep-to and dangerous. Great caution should be exercised by vessels passing east of Quita Sueño as the current sets strongly to the west...'"

  "How about Serranilla?" Timothy had mentioned that one, and so had Captain Murry.

  "'Lies seventy-eight miles north-northeast of Serrana Bank, twenty-four miles long, twenty miles wide, and very steep-to.'"

  "Steep-to means the coral rises sharply?"

  "Yep."

  Somewhere around those cays and banks and shoals was Timothy's cay, our cay.

  "I wish you could see this chart, Phillip. You will! Anyway, there are cays, banks, and shoals all over the place, and anyone who has sailed back in there will tell you not half are marked. It'll be like going through a minefield."

  That's what both Timothy and Captain Murry had said.

  Mother said, "I think I'll take a walk."

  My father paused, probably looking at her as she went out the door. He started again, slo
wly, "Anyway, I talked to a guy in the company shipping office who's taken small tankers into both Bluefields and Puerto Cabezas, in Nicaragua, navigating right through those waters. He said they're awful, full of wrecks..."

  "Captain Murry also said that..."

  "So what we'll do is charter a sloop, maybe twenty-four, twenty-five feet, not much draft, and sail it straight to Catalina Harbor in Providencia Island, which belongs to Colombia, and hire a turtle fisherman to guide us to the Devil's Mouth. Panama to Providencia looks to be about two-fifty, two-seventy-five miles. How does that sound?"

  "Sounds great," I said. Would I be alive?

  "The guy in Curaçao said the turtlemen know those waters like no one else. Better to play it safe."

  I nodded.

  "When we get there, we'll anchor as close as we can, then you'll dive overboard and swim in. And if it's the right cay, I'll come in and you can show me around. Show me the palm trees you climbed, show me the hut if it's still there, the reef where you fished, Timothy's grave..."

  "When can we do it?" I asked, fighting back tears.

  "Next spring. The rainy season begins in May and the sailing directions say the northeasters blow from mid-June until early November; seas get rougher..."

  I knew exactly why he was talking so much about going: to give me hope.

  "I'll borrow a sextant and brush up on my navigation this winter," he said.

  Would I be alive this winter? Would I be able to see this winter?

  "We have to plan ahead."

  He'd been an ocean sailor when he was younger. He sailed a twenty-two-foot cutter to Bermuda by himself when he was twenty-eight, before he married my mother.

  I tried to think only of seeking out the cay and of what fun that would be.

  "I'm looking at the chart now. Going to Providencia, until we get into the area of Cayos de Albuquerque, Cayo Bolivar, and San Andres Island, there shouldn't be any problems. Plenty of deep water all the way from the canal entrance."

  Dr. Pohl said he was going to cut a window in my skull.