Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier Read Free Book Online

escaping wouldn’t put an end to my problems, not by a long shot. There I’d be all by myself out in the middle of some wilderness and no friends to help me out. Oh, I was sorry we weren’t going to New York. Mr. Johnson was there, and he knew me from my Aunt Willy working for him. Black Sam Fraunces was there, and he knew me, or leastwise he knew my father. But if I jumped off in the Carolinas or some island in the West Indies, I wouldn’t have any friends at all. But I didn’t have much choice.
    So we went along that day and into the next. According to the mate, we’d got about six hundred miles out. I didn’t know how far from land we were, and I didn’t want to ask, for fear somebody would get suspicious, but it sure was too far to swim. Besides, the sailors kept saying that these waters was full of sharks. I reckoned they were teasing me, but still, I wasn’t much interested in taking a chance.
    The next morning the wind began to rise. The sails filled out solid and hard, and the ship began to pick up speed. It was kind of exciting tearing along like that, with the seas charging past the hull and boiling out behind in a long, white wake. But after a while I noticed the captain and the mate standing on the quarterdeck staring off to the south. “Is a storm coming?” I asked Birdsey.
    â€œI don’t know,” he said. “You’re more likely to see hurricanes later in the season, especially when we get closer to the tropics, but they come up this early sometimes.”
    By noontime the sky was clouded over, and the sea was running higher. The ship was pitching a good deal, first headlong down into the waves, and then rocking back with the bow up in the air. I was getting nervous, and I wasn’t the only one. The men kept looking up at the sky, like an enemy was drifting around up there. We put out the fire in the galley so in case the stove leaned too far, the ship wouldn’t catch fire. We nailed the hatch covers down tight, and we put extra lashings on the cargo stowed on deck. If that lumber broke loose and slid across the deck, it could take out lines, the railing, even a mast.
    By the afternoon the wind was making a whistling sound in the rigging, and the sky was black as tar. At times sharp gusts of rain would splatter down on us. The oxen tethered to the rail were bellowing and sliding around, and the chickens were flapping in the cages. We took in some sail, but even so the ship raced along, rocking in the high seas. “Why don’t we take in more sail?” I asked Birdsey.
    â€œIt’s a chance to make some time. Uncle likes to push it hard when he can.”
    We stood double watches that night. It hadn’t let up any by morning, and the seas were now rolling and roaring on all sides of us. The ship rocked and pitched, rolling sideways at the same time it rocked forward and backward. About every seventh wave there’d come one that was out of step with the others. It’d hit us by surprise, sort of. For a moment the ship would sort of stop dead and kind of shudder, as if it was trying to shake itself loose. Then it would seem to fall forward, pick up speed, and start the regular rolling and pitching again. You had to hang on to things most of the time to keep your footing at all. The whistling in the rigging was pitched up to a shriek that never stopped. It got on our nerves, just going on and on and on like that. Every once in a while there’d come a great crash of thunder, and a jagged line of lightning would dance down the black sky.
    By this time we must have been in the center of the storm, because the wind was coming in gusts sometimes from one side and sometimes from the other. You never knew which way the ship might suddenly lurch or heel. So in the middle of the morning, the mate ordered us to take in most of the sail. I was mighty scared. The way those masts were rocking back and forth, you could easy get shook off into