My father nodded to us as we approached.
“Good morning, John,” Mr. Colden said, far too lively for the hour.
“It isn’t morning yet,” Phineas said. “I’m going to bed.” And he trudged away, down the hatch.
“And I think I shall follow suit.” My father rubbed his red-tinged eyes. “Good night. Or morning. Or whatever you call this evil hour.” Then he, too, went below deck.
Another yawn stretched my ribs.
“You’ll grow accustomed to the schedule,” Mr. Colden said.
It felt as though my voice were still back in my hammock, so I simply nodded.
“I’m used to rising this early,” he said. “If I don’t beat the first cock to his crow, I feel as though I’ve missed half the day. My daughter is the same way. She rises with me and prepares my breakfast. She’ll be up now, I should think.”
I looked behind us to the east. My mother would be rising soon as well, and I could picture her going about her morning routine. She and the rest of my family suddenly felt very far away.
“We have some hours to pass,” Mr. Colden said. “Let me show you around the deck.”
We worked our way up the port side, and he showed me the different lines and how they worked to trim the sails, the way to tie and coil them, and how to avoid and secure the booms. He took me up to the bow and showed me instruments for measuring wind speed and air pressure and moisture and many other natural qualities of the air.
Soon after that, as the sky lightened and the first smudge of red appeared on the horizon, the sails began to flap in the changing wind.
“We need to adjust,” he said. “You remember how I showed you?”
I didn’t, but I nodded.
“We’ll do it together,” he said. And he guided me through the steps of loosening and hauling the ropes. We soon had both sails taut and full of wind.
We returned to the helm, and Mr. Colden checked the compass mounted on Mr. Faries’s control podium to make sure we were still on course.
“What is the whirling speculum for?” I asked.
“It measures our degree of tilt. It’s not as easy to tell if you aren’t on the ground.” He rechecked the compass and nodded. “You’re curious. I admire that. It is well for you to take an interest in the world around you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“My Jane is a curious one. She —” He stopped. “I hope you don’t mind my talking about her.”
“Not at all.”
“She’s a skilled artist, like you. Your drawings are nearly as good as hers.”
I hesitated but decided that was a compliment. “Thank you.”
He checked the compass for the third time. “She’s my youngest. Dutiful and modest. Her mother would tell you she takes after me. We’re cut from the same cloth, as they say.”
After that, we sat watching the sunrise in silence. A true silence marked by what was absent, and which made me realize I didn’t know what silence was. No cock’s crow could reach us up here. No bird song. No lowing cows or bleating sheep. No insect chirp or buzz or thrum. Only the wind whispering and sighing and buffeting the sails.
The dawn was unlike any other I had seen. From our vantage, I was able to observe the sun’s reach expanding across the earth from the east, a tide of light coming in. And before long, Mr. Kinnersley and Mr. Godfrey emerged from the hatch. Mr. Kinnersley winced as he walked, shaking and stretching his limbs.
“If all my sleep shall be as misshapen as last night’s,” he said, “I think I shall fall to pieces before the end of our expedition. Perhaps I am too old for this.”
But Mr. Godfrey strode with a vigor that belied his age. “Come now, Ebenezer. Age is a state of mind as well as body. And of the two, one’s mind holds preeminence.”
“Then you, sir, may tell my joints to bend, for they refuse to listen to me.”
“Have you gentlemen eaten?” Mr. Colden asked.
“We have,” Mr. Godfrey said.
“Good. You have the helm. Are you hungry, Billy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let’s go have some breakfast.”
We left the aged philosophers quibbling on the deck and went below to the galley. We sat at the narrow table and ate slices of dark rye bread with butter and some peaches. I tried to enjoy it, knowing we would have such fresh foods for only another week or so. Afterward, our meals would be confined to what had been dried, smoked, salted, or pickled.
As we ate, I looked at the door to Mr. Kinnersley’s cabin. “What do you suppose he has in there?” I asked.
Mr. Colden wiped some peach juice from his chin. “It would take an electrician to recognize much of it. However, I did see some Leyden jars among his cargo.”
I remembered the name, the thing Mr. Kinnersley wanted to show me.
“We all have our passions,” Mr. Colden said. “Mr. Kinnersley. Phineas. Your father.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, what is your passion, sir?”
“As I mentioned, astronomy. The movement of celestial bodies and the cause of gravitation, on which I wrote a treatise some years ago. Perhaps one night you and I will observe the heavens together.”
“I would enjoy that, sir.”
My father woke a short time later and joined us for breakfast. Afterward, he and I went to our stations on the Science Deck, while Mr. Colden went above. At his station, my father sorted through a few last items and set up his microscope. My paper lay unused on my desk, waiting for subjects to fill them up with purpose.
“You should practice your drawing,” my father said, pointing to where I was looking.
“We haven’t collected any specimens yet.”
“We will. For now, draw something else to keep your skill honed.”
“I don’t know what to draw.”
“Anything at all. Find something of interest to you about the ship.”
I didn’t move fast enough.
“Do as I say, Billy.”
“Yes, Father.”
I gathered what I needed and took it up to the weather deck. The sun had fully risen, the sky was clear, and the vista of trees and hills below reached in every direction to a distant horizon. Even though I had seen the view many times since leaving Philadelphia, it still hunkered me down with an involuntary need to reassure my footing on the deck.
Mr. Colden stood at the helm with Mr. Godfrey. Mr. Kinnersley bent over the instruments at the prow, scratching in a small notebook, and Phineas stood beside him, the wind blowing his yellow hair.
I looked up at the sails and tried to rehearse the names of the lines Mr. Colden had taught me. The foremast halyard. The mainsail downhaul. The mainsail outhaul. Were those right? I couldn’t remember. But I did know the ratlines, the rope ladders climbing precariously up to the spheres from the gunwales. A fall from one of those on this ship meant death at the end of a long, windswept plunge.
I shuddered and turned my attention to the spheres. Now, they were of interest to me, so I sat down cross-legged on the deck to make a drawing of them. But it was more difficult than I thought it would be.
Their shape was easy enough. What proved difficult to capture was the way they reflected things around them. Fragments of sky and sail and deck, and even the elongated forms of our crew all twisted and mingled across their round surfaces.
At one point a shadow fell across my drawing. I looked up, holding my flat hand above my eyes.
“That is very good,” Mr. Godfrey said.
I wrinkled my nose. “Thank you, sir, but it could stand a great deal of improvement.”
“In what way?”
“They should look more like real spheres.”
“Real spheres? Plato would wonder if you’re drawing the sphere, or the shadow of the sphere.”
“Pardon me?”
“What you must do is draw how you see the sphere, which you have done, for therein lies the value of your art.”
I blinked, trying to grasp what he had just said, and gav
e up. “I’ll keep practicing.”
He nodded. “You do that, young man. You do that.” And he walked away.
I looked at my drawing. I wasn’t satisfied with it, and I thought about starting over on a blank sheet of paper but, instead, decided to just find another subject.
I looked up at the clouds. I looked down at the landscape. I looked at the masts in their straight and fearless leap from the deck. And I noticed a metal spear atop the mainmast very similar to the lightning attractor Mr. Franklin had installed on his roof. But Mr. Franklin had said the rod was supposed to conduct the electrical fire safely into the ground. Up here in the air, if lightning struck the de Terzi’s mainmast, where would the electrical fire go?
While the foremast’s foundation stood in the center of the Science Deck, I hadn’t seen the root of the mainmast. It would be somewhere aft, beyond the galley. Perhaps in Mr. Kinnersley’s cabin? Was that where the electrical fire would go?
I looked at the prow. Mr. Kinnersley still appeared involved in his instruments. In fact, I saw every member of the Society on deck. I rose to my feet, went below, and deposited my drawing tools at my station. I then slipped downship through the galley, until I stood alone before the cabin door.
What I was doing was wrong. I knew that. But Mr. Kinnersley had told me he would show me his cabin once we were in the air. So apparently he didn’t mind my knowing what he had in there.
I grasped the handle.
Locked.
I scowled in disappointment. Then I dropped to my knees to see if I could at least get a glimpse of the electrical equipment. Maybe those Leyden jars people had talked about. Something. I put my eye to the keyhole.
And I yelped and fell back.
There was an eye on the other side, staring back at me. Then it was gone.
“Hello?” I said.
Silence.
If everyone else was up on the weather deck, who was down here?
“I saw you,” I said. “I know you’re in there.”
“You mustn’t tell,” came a muffled voice through the door.
“I won’t,” I said, but in that moment I felt more curiosity than conviction.
“Do you promise?” It was a girl’s voice.
“I promise.”
There was only one girl it could be. A moment passed, and I heard the jangle and click of a key in the lock, and the door creaked open.
“Come in,” Jane said, peeking through. “Hurry.”
I slipped through, and Jane shut the door behind me. She leaned her back against it and let out a long, slow breath through pursed lips. I was shocked to see that she wore trousers and a boy’s coat, and her hair was all pulled back.
She looked at me “Your name is Billy, isn’t it?”
“Yes. And you’re Jane. You stowed away?”
“Talk quietly.”
I lowered my voice. “You stowed away?”
“Yes. Until he caught me.”
“Who?”
“Mr. Kinnersley. But he didn’t say anything to anyone, and he let me hide in here with his electrical equipment.”
I looked around the cabin I had wanted so badly to see. Bundles of wire, canisters, sheets of metal, and glassware thicketed the corners. The same materials covered a workbench against the hull, while an empty horse trough lined the wall on the other side. I wondered what such a thing had to do with electrical fire. Several large, narrow-neck jugs circled the mainmast in the middle of the room. A skin of foil covered the outside of each jar, and a tangle of wires connected all the jars to the mast.
“Are those Leyden jars?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I think so. Why?”
“No reason. So your father doesn’t know you’re here?”
“What do you think?” she said. “He told me I couldn’t come.” She chewed on one of her fingernails, and I saw by their length it was something she did often. “I was only supposed to hide in here until after we’d departed. But I started to worry that my father might turn the aeroship around and take me back if I came out right away.”
I thought back to all the things Mr. Colden had said, doting on his daughter. The Jane standing before me, the stowaway, did not seem quite like the Jane he had described. But I liked this Jane better.
“So how much longer are you going to stay in here?” I asked.
She rolled her eyes. “Just another day or two. Look, you’re not going to tell, are you? You promised.”
“I won’t tell,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed. “Good. Now leave.”
“What?”
“They’re going to miss you soon enough, and then they’ll come looking for you. And they’ll find you here, which means they’ll find me here. So you must leave.”
“But —”
She had already put her ear to the door. “All clear.” She opened the door and made a sharp gesture for me to exit. She mouthed the word go.
I didn’t want to.
But I did as she ordered. There didn’t seem to be anything else I could do. I stepped out into the galley where I’d eaten breakfast with Jane’s father just that morning, knowing now she’d been on the other side of the door, listening. But that thought brought another with it.
“Are you hungry?” I asked. “I can —”
But the door shut in my face, close enough to bump my nose.
I stared at the wood grain for a moment. And then I ambled up onto the deck, a little befuddled. The others were mostly as I’d left them. Except for Mr. Kinnersley, who had now become someone I viewed with a mixture of suspicion and secret camaraderie.
“Are you well, Billy?” my father asked. “You seem somewhat lost.”
“I’m fine,” I said. I wasn’t sure why, but Jane’s presence on the ship, the thought of her down in Mr. Kinnersley’s cabin, had changed the way I felt about the entire expedition. It felt as though I had a friend on board. Someone like me. I smiled to myself, glad that she had stowed away.
The rest of that morning it was hard to concentrate and make any more drawings, and it was hard to resist the urge to go back to Mr. Kinnersley’s cabin.
The de Terzi maintained an enthusiastic pace. We crossed rivers and low bald hills and dense forests. The occasional wisp of smoke clinging to the treetops marked the site of a frontier settlement or an Indian town. And nearby those, patchwork fields, some cleared, some prickly with bare trees notched to kill the leaves and let the sunlight down to the crops. Every time I looked over the side, the land below had changed — a new world by the moment.
“How far do you think we’ve traveled?” I asked Phineas.
“Close to one hundred miles, I’d say. We’re above the Cumberland Valley, now. That’s the Blue Ridge up ahead.” He pointed west at a long, high mountain wall. It girdled the whole of the horizon, jutting up as far to the southwest as I could see, crossed in front of us, then flanked us to the north.
He continued. “We’ll pass over several ridges and valleys of the Appalachians before arriving at Aughwick.”
The name reminded me of what Mr. Franklin had told my father. “We’re meeting someone at Aughwick?”
Phineas nodded. “George Croghan.”
“Who is he?”
“He is the Trader King, and an Irishman.” He frowned. “We’re hoping he’ll offer us his assistance.”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“In the last few years, he has grossly undermined his former Pennsylvanian partners and begun advancing the interests of Virginia. And at times, he takes the side of the Indian. Mr. Croghan, you see, does whatever will promote his business and keep his trade routes open, and if he sees no advantage in aiding us, I doubt we can expect much from him.” Phineas looked to the west. “But we’ll discover his intentions soon enough. And now, I must go below. I’ve been wanting to read a new treatise on the medical uses of seawater. Perhaps I’ll finally have the time to do so.”
I nodded, and he left.
I spent the rest of the afternoon watching
the Blue Ridge grow closer and rise higher. Before long, we sailed right over the long mountain at its peak, close enough, it seemed to me, to scrape clean our keel against the treetops. I was half tempted to reach out my hands to try to snatch a leaf or a branch. And then we were on the other side, and the slope fell away from us into a narrow valley choked with dense trees and thickets.
We crossed the vale quickly and crested another mountain ridge, followed by another valley and then another mountain ridge. They kept coming, ridge after valley after ridge, great waves of earth, and the de Terzi skimmed them like a gull at sea. I felt a little sorry for Jane, locked below deck in a cabin.
My father came up beside me, his eyes boring into the sky before us. He sighed. “There is something I would like to speak to you about, Billy.”
“Yes, Father?”
“Mr. Croghan’s outpost is near an Indian village. Till now, I have done my best to limit your familiarity with the Indian. But soon we must go among them. I would caution you to keep your guard up. On occasion you may find one among them blessed with wisdom and temperance, but as a race I have found them wanting. They are full of guile and jealousy, and though they are lazy, they are nevertheless quick to violence.”
I was shocked and didn’t know what to say to him. Neither he nor my mother had ever spoken this way before. There were many, many in Pennsylvania who despised the Indians, but I had always thought that my father was a tolerant and forward-thinking man. Like some of our fellow Quakers in the Darby Meeting, I’d assumed he was a friend of the Indians, one who promoted the cause of peace with them.
“Do you understand me, Billy?”
“I — I … think so, Father.”
“There is much you are too young to understand. Your mother and I do not see eye to eye on this, and till now I have respected her wishes in not speaking of it. But in time, you will learn that I am right.” He put his hand on my shoulder. We stood that way for a while, side by side. Then my father looked to the earth. “I wonder what plants and animals we might discover down there. What new species are under our feet at this very moment?”