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

it won’t move if you don’t have some sail up.
    By the end of the day, we was all dead tired. It was a whole lot of work just to get from portside to starboard. The oxen wasn’t even trying to stand up anymore but just lay there soaked with spray, panting and drooling, with their eyes bugged out.
    A couple of the chickens, I saw, was already dead in their cages.
    It was pretty near impossible to get any sleep with the ship thumping into the waves like that, for you’d hardly doze off when you’d be rolled straight out of your bunk. There wasn’t much of anything to eat, either, but cold biscuit. On top of it, we was wet most of the time. You could hardly walk on deck for a minute without getting soaked. Waves was tumbling over the deck, and it was all you could do to find a line to hold on to to keep from washing over the side.
    By morning the waves were high as houses. When the ship rode up on top of a crest, we could see out underneath them black skies the water ranged up in moving hills, all dark green and gray and black, with white running through it like marble. The next minute we’d cascade down the slope of the wave and we’d be in a valley with the waves standing way above us, and I’d be sure that they would come crashing down on us and capsize the ship and we’d all drown in a minute. But instead we’d ride up the other slope and come up on top of the mountains again.
    All the while two or three sailors were wrestling with the tiller, the long handle to the rudder, so as to keep the ship from turning broadside to the wind and the waves. Oh, that was hard work, for the waves had in mind how they wanted the ship to go, and they’d keep twisting it around, and then those sailors would have to heave on the tiller to get her headed back the right way again.
    Down below, the oxen were bellowing and staggering around. The mate sent me and Birdsey down there to double up their tethers. If the oxen broke loose they would shift around each time the ship rolled and unbalance it. Of course with all that bending and twisting, the water was coming in through the seams in streams. The bilge pumps had to be manned all the time.
    We got through the second day of the storm, and the night, too, standing double watches and trying to get a little sleep in between times, with the waves smashing around and the wind roaring and the ship creaking and crackling like it was about to bust in two.
    The next morning it was worse. When we slid down into the valleys, it seemed like the waves were near as high as the mainmast, just looming way above us like a great roaring wall. It didn’t seem possible that we could stay afloat. During my watch I clung to the rail near the stern, mostly just hanging on, ready to help with the tiller if they needed me. Forward, the oxen lay on the deck, sliding back and forth, too tired even to bellow anymore. They’d slide across the deck as far as their tether ropes would allow, and then slide back again, smacking up against the rail post. Suddenly there came a crack you could hear over the noise of the wind and the waves, and the tiller busted clean in two. The men who were handling it fell to the deck, and the rudder began to flap back and forth, banging on the stern with great heavy thuds. The ship shuddered and swung around into a trough between the waves. Now we had no control of it at all.
    Captain Ivers suddenly shot up out of the hatchway, struggled onto the deck, and began working his way toward the tiller, clinging to the railing. “An ax,” he shouted. “An ax.”
    I dropped down to my knees, crawled over to the hatchway, and dropped down. There were axes and other tools in a locker in the hold. I worked my way along the wall to the locker, fumbled inside for the ax, and worked my way back topside again. The ship was now broadside to the seas, just bumping and banging and heeling way over after each wave. One of the sailors had got