Bound for Gold--A Peter Fallon Novel of the California Gold Rush

by William Martin

  “If I may ask, then, why have you decided to join us?”

  “Every man has his moment. Every man has to take his chance when it comes, or he’ll spend the rest of his life wonderin’. That’s what I told my wife and kids.”

  And a line from Shakespeare popped from my mouth: “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which if taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.”

  “Didn’t tell ’em that, exactly. Just told ’em, if I sold the blacksmith shop, I could pay the bond and get a berth on one of the first ships leavin’ for California. So here I am, aimin’ to work hard and send every nugget home.”

  In the face of such simple sincerity, I was embarrassed at showing off my book-learning. So I said, “It will be a pleasure to sail with you, sir.”

  Then we were distracted by raised voices at the head of the gangplank.

  “I’ll have your name,” Willis’s wife was saying. “My husband is on the board of this company.”

  “Name’s Kearns, ma’am, Sean Kearns. And these is your own rules. No sea chests allowed.” Kearns spoke with one of the brogues that Willis had alluded to.

  “But an extensive library,” said Willis, “will benefit everyone on a six-month voyage. An exception can be made.”

  “I ain’t the man to say.”

  Samuel Hodges was standing by the mainmast, in much the same authoritative attitude as the captain on the quarterdeck. Now he came to the side. “Trouble?”

  Willis said, “Samuel, this fellow won’t allow me to bring a few books.”

  “No sea chests allowed,” said Hodges. “It’s in the articles.”

  Mrs. Willis said, “But, Samuel, surely a few more books will—”

  “Madame,” said Hodges, “in California, we will need only what we can carry.”

  “This is ridiculous,” said Willis.

  “Ridiculous?” And Hodges revealed how quickly his calm might blow up a tempest. “I’ll show you ridiculous.” He grabbed one of the handles of the chest on the servant’s shoulder, gave a sharp tug, and flung it into the water.

  Both Willises gasped as if their child were in that trunk.

  “Now, come aboard with your sea bag,” said Hodges, “but not your wife, or the two of you can stay here and fish your Fenimore Cooper out of the harbor.”

  The wife tugged on her husband’s arm, and a red-faced Jason Willis turned and pushed back down the gangway.

  Hodges called after him, “Don’t delay if you plan to sail, Willis.” Then he turned to me and his mood changed in an instant. “Good morning, James.”

  “Good morning, Samuel.” I glanced at the chest sinking into the harbor, then spelled my name for the mate and handed over my bag for weighing.

  “Give him a good billet,” said Hodges. “He’s the most important man on the ship.”

  “I’m hardly that,” I said.

  “Nonsense.” Hodges turned for the quarterdeck. “We’re making history, Spencer. You can’t make history without a historian.”

  “First cabin, berth four, larboard.” Kearns waved me aboard and turned to Dooling, who had fit his tool bag into his sea bag. “Bag on the scale and state your name.”

  “Matt Dooling’s my name, and my bag’s fifteen pounds over.”

  Hodges spun around and approached again.

  I interceded. “This man’s a blacksmith, Samuel. He’s brought tools. That’s why his bag’s over the limit.”

  “Is that true?” said Hodges.

  Dooling nodded. “I brung hammers, tongs, hand bellows—”

  “A blacksmith may be valuable in California,” I added.

  Hodges thought that over, then told Dooling, “You should have filled out a request. But Spencer’s right. We can use your tools. Come aboard.”

  As we descended the companionway, the blacksmith said to me, “Matt Dooling never forgets a favor.”

  * * *

  SOON, A HUNDRED MEMBERS of the Sagamore Mining Company assembled on the deck in a swirling snow flurry. And what a grand mix of men we were—merchants, mechanics, shopkeeps, schoolteachers, lawyers, six butchers, a new-minted doctor, and one ambitious writer, all bundled against the cold and warmed by the mix of emotions that boiled in every breast. Most of us were in our twenties, prime age for adventuring. But some, like Dooling, appeared to be in their thirties, the decade when men must either accept their place in life or take a final chance to change it. And a few, like Hodges, had reached their forties, already successful yet hungry for more.

  While California beckoned, we would first hear from Reverend Stone, pastor of the Park Street Church. He took to the quarterdeck, raised his hand, and the band stopped playing. This caused the buzz of conversation to cease on both the ship and the wharf.

  The first mate brought the speaking trumpet to his lips: “Seamen, stand by!” And twenty sailors stopped in their tasks, wherever they stood.

  As the wind puffed from the west and pushed the snow sideways, the austere young minister looked up into the flurry and said, “Almighty God, you who made the sweeping seas and the craggy mountains, look with favor upon this company of Christian men. Guide them through the dangers they will face and the temptations they will encounter.”

  And from somewhere forward came whispering. I could not see the whisperer’s face as his hat was pulled low, but I recognized his brogue … and the hat.

  Reverend Stone continued, “When the great winds blow on your ocean sea or the dark impulses course through your human creations, keep these men in your grace.” Then he lowered his gaze to us. “As for all of you, I charge you to bring your values, your culture, and your Christian faith to California. Implant them there to grow and flourish.”

  I was listening to the reverend, but I could still hear that Irish waiter whispering to one of his mates by the anchor capstan, “When these Yanks get to the diggin’s, they’ll be no different from the rest of us. They’ll knock down any who get in their way.”

  Just then a carriage came clattering onto the wharf and caused me to forget both the whispering Irishman and the droning minister. Seeing the Toler footman at the reins, I knew that Janiva had come after all! For a moment, I considered leaping over the side to embrace her and surrender straight away to the life of domesticity I was fleeing.

  But just as suddenly as she appeared, our leaving-taking accelerated.

  It started with a slight motion beneath our feet and a gentle whoosh of water along our hull. Slack tide had ended. The ebb was begun. And neither time, tide, nor Captain Nathan Trask would wait for any man, not even the pastor of the Park Street Church. The reverend was reaching his conclusion, “In the name of Almighty God—” when Trask cried, “Amen! Amen, Reverend. Amen.”

  The crowd answered, “Amen.”

  The captain shook Reverend Stone’s hand and directed him to the gangway while dockhands scrambled and the first mate called through his megaphone, “Drop anchor!”

  Yes. Drop was the order. Our longboat had hauled a light kedging anchor into the channel. Once it dug into the mud, the men at the capstan would crank the ship onto it, repeating the process until the William Winter was well away from Long Wharf. The captain did not seem to favor the newfangled steam-driven tugs puffing about Boston Harbor, perhaps because no tugboat would be waiting in California. Our crew would know how to warp ship and leave a dock the old-fashioned way.

  The anchor splashed, and the first mate cried, “Away all lines!”

  Now rose another cry, almost a wail, from the families on the wharf, as if they were at last accepting the truth that we would be gone for years and might return as different men, if we returned at all.

  Somewhere in the crowd, a little girl cried, “Daddy!”

  Samuel Hodges took off his hat and waved it at her. “Be good to your sister, and mind your Aunt Nell!” I thought that I saw him wipe away a tear. I could not be certain.

  The reverend stepped off the gangway and nodded to the band, which began to play “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks.”

&
nbsp; But I was watching Janiva push through the crowd, her eyes searching. I squeezed between Christopher Harding and Jason Willis and called to her.

  “James! James!” She waved. “Godspeed, James Spencer. Godspeed!”

  “I’ll write. Every week. I promise.”

  People in the crowd and in the company were now taking up the old hymn.

  “On Jordan’s stony banks I stand and cast a wishful eye…”

  The mate cried, “Lay on the capstan.”

  “To Canaan’s far and happy land, where my possessions lie…”

  Eight men held bars fitted into the capstan-head like spokes in the hub of a wheel. As they pushed clockwise, seven hundred and fifty tons of William Winter almost miraculously began to move.

  “All o’er those wide extended plains shines one eternal day…”

  As the Irish waiter cranked past, he said to me, “Are you sure you don’t want to take her along?”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to sail on a different ship?” I answered.

  “Quiet at the capstan,” shouted Kearns.

  Yes, I thought, quiet at the capstan. There would be time enough for you later, Michael Flynn of Galway, time enough for Samuel Hodges to make your life miserable.

  “There, God the son forever reigns and scatters night away…”

  Janiva was standing now beside my mother and sister, and they were all singing:

  “I am bound for the Promised Land, I am bound for the Promised Land…”

  Then my mother turned away in tears. My sister brought her hand to her mouth to hide her quivering chin.

  “Oh, who will come and go with me?”

  But Janiva kept her eyes resolutely on mine, as if she would not allow me to see her weep. And through the falling snow, her lips formed the words, “I love you.”

  “Isn’t that sweet,” whispered Deering Sloate. “She loves you.”

  I ignored Sloate. There would be time enough for him later, too.

  “I am bound for the Promised Land.”

  I pulled off the red and yellow-paisley neckerchief that she had given me and waved it.

  I waved it until the William Winter had twice kedged the length of her cable and turned into the channel. I waved it until we had shaken out our t’gallants and made for President Roads. I waved it through three choruses of the old hymn and prayed that when we returned, I would find no irony in the lyrics, that I would come home to tell of a true promised land on the far side of our vast American continent.

  But I did not deceive myself. We were not bound for the promised land. We were bound for adventure, bound for danger, and bound for gold, however we could get it.

  * * *

  BY LATE AFTERNOON, THE William Winter was running before a brisk northwesterly that pushed the morning flurries far to the east and brought down a cold that was deep and bracing and filled a man with a sense of his own existence, even as it froze the tips of his ears.

  I reveled in the rhythm of wind, water, and wooden hull, and I understood yet again why men would leave all that was warm and domestic to sail the endless and unforgiving sea, for here was a domesticity all its own. Our ship was like a great birth mother, rocking us, rocking us, up and down, down and up, over and over, with a soft yet certain hand, holding us to her bosom like the living thing she was … never mind that a third of the company had taken seasick before we crossed Massachusetts Bay.

  I feared that belly-churning head-spinning spew, feared it like a broken bone, feared it for the misery of it, and feared it for on this ship, the sick ones would only give the needlers another reason to needle.

  But much to my satisfaction, the chief needler sickened before anyone else. We had barely passed Boston Light when Deering Sloate lurched to the rail so suddenly that he did not have the time, or perhaps the knowledge, to determine which was the better side for puking. So he did it straight into the wind, with the expected effect.

  By the time we cleared Cape Cod, two dozen men, green-faced and groaning, had stumbled like drunks to the side.

  * * *

  JUST AFTER FOUR O’CLOCK, eight bells and the beginning of the first “dog watch,” we made the turn south. By then I had found a spot on the weather side, away from the vomiteers, where I could watch the sun dip toward the horizon and hear the hiss of the water along our hull, all without their retching and wretched accompaniment.

  I calculated that we would pass near two hundred seaborne sunsets before reaching San Francisco. I resolved to observe each one and celebrate nature’s unending variety even as it unfolded within the proscenium of her comforting predictability.

  Then I sensed beside me a man who embodied the predictability of ancient hatreds within the discomforting proscenium of an explosive Irish temperament. I gave him the corner of my eye and said, “A fine hat.”

  “Best I could find in the cloakroom. I like the leather visor.” He tugged at it.

  “Did you know that the Sagamores were sailing on this ship?”

  “Didn’t know and don’t much care. I’ll steer clear of the big Hodges feller, but it ain’t him you need to be worryin’ about. It’s the captain. He’s the hard case on this ship.”

  “Where did you learn to sail?”

  “Never said I did. But I can haul a line and climb a rope. The rest I’ll learn.” He looked up at the canvas bellied round in the booming wind. “Better than ladlin’ chowder for Yankee swells in a club where everybody has a broomstick up his ass.”

  The bosun’s whistle sounded three notes that cut through the roar of wind and sea, and the first mate shouted into the speaking trumpet, “Ship’s company, all aft!”

  With alacrity, the men responded, and in minutes, the midships was crowded with Sagamores, while nineteen sailors, all save the helmsman, stood before the rail separating us from the quarterdeck and the captain, who studied us with a kind of interested detachment, as if examining a tray of oysters and deciding which one to pop into his mouth first. Then he nodded to the mate, who began:

  “I’m Hawkins, first officer and last man between you and the captain. Before you speak to him, you speak to me. I will determine if your words are worth his time.”

  The captain turned toward the setting sun. His face became all angles and edges, sharpened by reddening rays skimming low across the sea.

  “Now, you Sagamores,” Mr. Hawkins went on, “if you’re seasick, don’t vomit belowdecks. It’ll stink for months. And don’t vomit on the weather side. Get to the lee. If you don’t know the lee, look to the sails. If the sails belly to larboard, puke to larboard.”

  And as if it had been planned, Christopher Harding, who had been swaying by the mainmast, suddenly brought his hand to his mouth and turned toward the setting sun. The mate shouted, “The other side! Leeward, I said! Puke to leeward!”

  Christopher made it just in time, generating loud amusement from the Sagamores. The crew, however, knew to stand stock-still and silent when assembled.

  “The captain don’t usually speak so soon in the voyage, but all this pukin’ means we’re full up to the scuppers with landlubbers. So you need a talkin’ to right now. So…” The mate stepped back, leaving the stage to his superior.

  With one sweep of his eye, the captain fixed his gaze on every man. “I am Nathan Trask.” His voice was high and harsh, sharpened by a lifetime of cutting through storms and stiff Atlantic gales. “I have sailed the Boston to Liverpool run for nine years without incident. But the owners of this vessel see greater profit in ferrying fortune-seekers to California.”

  He paused, as if to let the contempt in his voice settle upon us like a mist. “It will not be an easy journey. We will cover seventeen thousand miles. There will be storms and cold and heat to cook your nuts if you sit too long on the deck.”

  No one cracked a smile now. It was plain that nothing this man said was meant for laughter.

  “At Cape Horn the wind’ll blow so hard, you won’t be able to breath it before it jams down your throat. And the waves�
�ll run as high as the mainmast. Every man’ll get wet and stay wet for as long as it takes to clear the danglin’ prick of South America.”

  I was glad that I had brought my sea cape.

  “In the Pacific, we’ll run the Roarin’ Forties, ride the Southeast Trades, and fall into the doldrums. When we are becalmed, it’ll be boredom and heat that do you in. I tell you this because I tell you the truth, which you may not have heard until now. But I tell you this because we are New Englanders, and no race has rounded the Horn as regular as we. That’s why you’re running for riches on my ship instead of on the back of a mule pulling a wagon.”

  He strode right, then left, looking into every eye like a minister before a sinful congregation. “It don’t matter a fiddler’s fart to me whether you find gold or not. I will get you where you’re going in six months, more or less, so long as you follow the rules. Mr. Hawkins, tell them the rules.”

  “Aye, sir.” Hawkins affected similar chin whiskers and gaunt appearance, a captain in waiting. “There’s only one: obey the captain in all things.”

  Trask nodded. “Let any man violate, deviate, or hesitate when an order is given, and I will have that man spread-eagled before the next sail change. I’ll waste no breath on you Sagamores. Obey your leaders. You elected them. But you did not elect me, any more than you elected He who rules above. And on this ship, He is my only superior.”

  I was beginning to doubt that Captain Trask believed even that.

  He said, “I can condemn you to hell or take you to the Promised Land in that song. It’s up to you. Is that clear?”

  The Sagamores mumbled and nodded, though a few scowled and shot angry glances about, as if insulted at such a talking-to.

  Captain Trask looked at Hodges, who had put himself on the quarterdeck, though respectfully to windward of the captain. “Speak for your people, sir. I want to hear it. I want to know that I am making myself clear.”

  “As clear as the sunset, Captain. We hired you to take us to California. We will obey your orders and trust your experience. Once there”—Hodges looked out at the assembled company—“the president and board of directors will determine our course.”