The Hearth and Eagle (6 page)

Around Master Wenn a group still listened, their heads bowed. Phebe looked down at her wedding ring, and into the confusion of fear there came the thought of the Lady Arbella.
She
would not give way like this, possessed of inner panic, resentful that her husband did not somehow divine a need and fly from man’s work to comfort her. The Lady Arbella was strong and invincible.

Phebe moistened her dry lips, got off the bench, and went to the fire. No one had thought to replenish it, and the logs had fallen apart to smoldering ash. Yet food must be cooked for the children.

Her head throbbed as she bent over, but she shoveled the ashes into a heap, careful not to disturb the thick coating of dirt and brick dust which protected the wooden planking under the fire. She studied to lay each stick of pitchy kindling fair and square. As she finished and the flames aided by wind from the bellows crackled upward to the oak logs, a new sound came from the small cabin which had long been quiet. The acrid cry of the new-born.

Master Wenn closed his Bible. They all pressed through the door. Mrs. Bagby met them triumphantly. Her falling band was stained with blood, her fat face haggard, her hair in wisps. She held a swaddled bundle. “A girl. Never have I so needed my skill.”

“But the mother—” cried Phebe, staring at the still mound.

“She’ll do.” Mrs. Bagby shrugged, put the baby at the foot of the bunk. “Fair lot o’ trouble she gave me. Has the strongwater been broached?”

A sigh ran over them all. The moment of unity passed; they fell apart into their separate groups. Master Wenn and the two old men went to find the brandy. The children fell to quarreling beneath the ladder.

Most of the women gathered around, asking the midwife eager questions, while she cleansed herself a little in a cask of sea water.

Phebe had no taste for spirits, but when the brandy came she helped the others to mix it with the river water they had taken on at Yarmouth, and like them drank thirstily from the dipper.

Later when Mark appeared at last, bringing with him the freshness of damp sea air, she had hidden all trace of her fears.

Mark was in high spirits and full of the day’s happenings on deck. The skiff from the
Arbella
had nearly foundered on her perilous trips between the two ships, but the wind nad turned in the nick of time. They kept fairly well on board there, though many were dying on the
Ambrose.

“And the Lady Arbella herself?” asked Phebe, braving Mark’s displeasure. But he was in an indulgent mood. “I daresay she bears up like the rest—” he said carelessly. “I heard nothing contrary. Is that woman and her brat to have our bunk?” he looked toward their cabin.

Phebe nodded. “We can’t turn them out tonight.”

“Well. Then I must have me another noggin, and you too; ’twill soften our couch.”

Phebe was grateful for the brandy haze as they lay down on the planking wedged into a space between a hogshead of dried pease and the forward bulkhead. The stink of the bilges was stronger here, and a rat scuttled about their feet. Mark put his arm close around her, and she lay with her head on his shoulder, trying to doze. But she could not.

The brandy and the stench brought back the seasickness she had thought conquered.

“Why must the ship forever roll so—” she whispered plaintively, trying to control her twitching stomach, and thinking Mark asleep.

“Why, it’s your thrice damned fire-dogs, poppet—” he answered, chuckling. “No doubt they overbalance the ship; didn’t you know that?”

She forgot her stomach, happy that he should tease her, glad that she had forborne to trouble him with the panic and forebodings she had suffered.

Ah we will endure, she thought, and all be well. It can’t be for much longer. And she closed her eyes.

But the journey went on. Another week of cold and sudden gales and calms passed by. There was more sickness; not only the frequent purging and gripes in the belly from which all suffered at times, but an epidemic of feverish colds that left its victims with a strangling cough and a purulent discharge from the nose. The daily food rations shrank, but few cared, for the pork had spoiled, the stringy hunks of beef induced a thirst which there was no beer to quench, and the hard biscuits were coated with blue mold. They lived on pease porridge and water gruel.

Goody Carson, the new mother, was up from childbed but her wits seemed befuddled; she neither spoke nor smiled, and she had scanty milk for her nurseling whose wails were incessant. The baby had been named “Travail,” and as the passengers’ tempers grew ever shorter there was many an acid jest as to the appropriateness of its naming.

Everywhere on the ship small feuds had risen. Master Wenn led a clique of Separatists who joined in disapproval of those whose reasons for emigrating were not primarily religious.

Mrs. Bagby, from malice and boredom, headed another faction held together by resentment towards Phebe, because she kept herself apart, because she was young and more gently bred than they, because she wore a small lace ruff around her neck on Sundays, because she and her wild young gawk of a husband—naught but a tradesman either—seemed set far from the rest by a wanton show of passion for each other.

Phebe heard the whispers and knew herself shunned, but she was too weary and indifferent to care. She silently took her turn at the communal duties, the cooking of whatever food the cabin boy flung in the trenchers, the emptying of chamber pots and slop pails, the care of the sick, and otherwise lived for the moments of dubious privacy in the bunk with Mark. She had not told him of her fear, shamed that she should think it a fear. Besides, as long as it remained unvoiced it remained unreal. And there might yet be a mistake. Time enough to face it when they reached land.
If
they reached land. That was the thought in all their hearts. Day after day the soundings touched no bottom. Day after day the endless ocean stretched on ahead. And then one day they could no longer see the water, for an icy gray fog, colder and thicker than any they had met before, swathed the
Jewell
in a sinister quiet. The incessant blare of the horn sounded muffled and impotent, and no sound came back except the purling of sea at the barely moving bow.

The passengers, at first relieved to find steady decks beneath their feet, soon caught the contagion of renewed and sharper anxiety. The sailors had turned surly and would not speak. Captain Hurlston, briefly glimpsed on the poop deck, kept thereafter to his quarters in the roundhouse, and returned no answer to anxious messages.

Even Mark lost his optimism, and from his few glum words Phebe learned their peril. They must be near the Grand Banks; there were dangerous shoals to the south. They had lost the other boats four days ago, and in the fog the Captain was unsure of his bearings.

No, Mark answered impatiently, to her frightened question, of course there was nothing further to be done, except wait—“And I dare say you women and Master Wenn might pray on’t.” He escaped soon to the fo’c’sle, where at least there were no foolish questions, and where he had become proficient at knots and splices and learned the knack of the marlin spike.

The fog continued that night and on into the next day which was the sixth of June, and colder than any January day in Dorset. After a basin of porridge Phebe lay down in her bunk, shivering. The matted straw pallet beneath her was damp as a dishcloth and seemed to have vanquished even the lice which were less troublesome. She lay wrapped in her cloak and with their two bed rugs piled on top. She shut her eyes tight, trying to escape for a while into sleep, when she heard the thumps of running feet on the deck and men’s voices raised in a resounding cheer. “Land Ho! Huzzah! Huzzah!”

She jumped from the berth and went out on deck.

The fog had suddenly lifted beneath a pale watery sun, and far off to the north rose a black line of cliff. Her heart swelled with wild relief. “Oh, thank God it’s Naumkeag!” she cried crowding with the other excited passengers to the starboard rail.

“No, sweetheart”—she turned to see Mark laughing at her—“you push us too fast. It’s Cape Sable, and many days yet ahead of us. But it is the New World at last!” He bent down and kissed her exuberantly, unnoticed for once by Mrs. Bagby and Master Wenn, who were united in the general elation.

They were indeed off the Grand Banks, the famous fishing banks to which European boats had been sailing for centuries. And the sea being most providentially quiet, they lay to while the sailors and most of the male passengers commenced to fish. They were abundantly rewarded; in less than two hours they had taken near fifty giant codfish. The women retreated to the poop deck, as the main deck became a mass of silvery flopping bodies. Phebe watched Mark, and ignorant as she was of the art, saw that he seemed more apt than the other landsmen. His movements in casting out the hand-line were quicker, he seemed to know by instinct the instant for the sharp jerk, he caught more fish than they did, and he caught the biggest of all—a yard long and near to that around the middle.

She thought of the Lady Arbella’s remark, “I cannot see you as a fishwife,” and smiled. Far across the water to the southwest the
Arbella
lay ahead of them, also hove-to, and doubtless also fishing. Later when they had glutted themselves with the sweet fresh fish, so delicious a change in their fare, she thought of Arbella again, and said to her—“You do not despise the occupation so now, do you, milady?”

The fish were good omen, not only for the bodies which they strengthened, but for the voyage. The winds at last grew fair and the weather warm. Off to starboard high land and mountains streamed by. All might spend the day on deck in the sunshine, and pleasant sweet air drifted to them from the land like the smell of a garden.

The strain relaxed from Mr. Hurlston, the ship’s master, and he, who had been grimly aloof during those endless weeks at sea, grew affable and pointed out to them the landmarks they passed. Mount Desert, Agamenticus, The Isle of Shoals. Off Cape Ann a stiff southwest gale delayed them but now, so near to land and having weathered so many worse gales, the passengers scarcely minded.

On June 13, the Lord’s Day, the
Jewell
slid gingerly through the passage between Baker’s Isle and Little Isle, and at two o’clock the whole ship’s company again let forth a mighty cheer, for there to the north of them rocking at anchor rested the
Arbella,
seeming as placid and at home as she had seemed so many weeks ago in Southampton Harbor.

“And
THAT
is
Naumkeag—” cried Phebe staring with all her eyes at the wooded shore behind the
Arbella.

“Nay, Phebe,” said Mark laughing as he had laughed a week earlier when she miscalled Cape Sable. He took her by the shoulders and swung her around toward the southwest. “Down there is Naumkeag. Here is Cape Ann shore, we are still a league away. You must have patience.”

“I can’t wait to land,” she said, smiling that their characters should be thus reversed, she chafing at delay and he counseling patience.

“See—” he said, pointing to the
Arbella,
“they’re manning their skiff. They mean to waft us in, though being so much larger they must wait themselves for high water and a fair wind.”

At five o’clock of the soft June afternoon the
]ewell
reached Naumkeag at last, and dropped anchor in the South Harbor. The low wooded shore was dotted with people waving, and the Huzzahs came now from their throats, not from those on the ship. These pressed together silently gazing at journey’s end. Master Wenn raised his voice in a prayer of Thanksgiving, and Phebe, caught like the rest of them by the solemnity of the moment, bowed her head while the tears started to her eyes.

Mark was busy helping to lower the long boat, and she was in the first load to leave the
Jewell.
As he lifted her down from the ladder, she was astonished to feel a sharp nostalgia. The battered little ship which she had so much detested was now friend and home. She looked back at it with misted eyes, and the faces of those still on board, even that of Mrs. Bagby, seemed transfigured and lovable.

But it was good to set foot on the land though it seemed to sway and heave beneath her like the ship’s deck. Delicious to refresh the eyes with the brown of earth and the brilliant green of the trees, loftier than any at home.

A score of men and three or four women had gathered at the landing place to greet them, but they held back in respect for the two ministers. Mr. Higginson and Mr. Skelton, tall and solemn in their flowing black prunella robes, bowed to each arrival saying “Welcome to Salem.” It seemed that the Indian name “Naumkeag” had been replaced by the Hebrew word for “Peace.”

Phebe held back a little, shy of these strange faces and waiting for Mark to discover what was expected of them, and as she watched, her joyous excitement dwindled. They looked haggard and ill, these people who had already been settled for a year in the land of promise. Mr. Higginson, though only forty-six, seemed like an old man. She noted the trembling of his hands, the eyes sunk back into the sockets, the unwholesome red on his cheekbones. Nor did his fellow minister, Mr. Skelton, look much stronger. They were all thin, ill-clothed, and hollow-eyed, these men and women of Salem, and after the first cheer they fell silent, drawing together on the bank and watching withsomber looks while boatloads of passengers disembarked from the
Jewell.

“Come—” said Mark, returning to Phebe. “We go to Governor Endicott’s.” They and the others moved along behind the ministers up a trampled path.

Phebe stared around her curiously, noting some rough earth dugouts roofed with bark, and tiny log huts beneath the trees, and thought with a thrill that these must be Indian dwellings. “I wonder how far it is to town?” she said to Mark. But Mr. Higginson overheard her, and to her mortification stopped and turned looking down at her. "
This
is the town, mistress—” he said; his burning eyes showed reproof and a faint amusement. “This the highway—” He pointed down the path, “and these our houses—” His long thin hand pointed to the bark dugouts.