Heather Vogel Frederick - The Voyage of Patience Goodspeed

HEATHER VOGEL FREDERICK

Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2002 by Heather Vogel Frederick

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS is a trademark of Simon & Schuster.
www.SimonandSchuster.com

Book design by Russell Gordon

The text for this book is set in Minister.

Printed in the United States of America

4 6 8 10 9 7 5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Frederick, Heather Vogel.

The voyage of Patience Goodspeed / by Heather Vogel Frederick.

p. cm.

Summary: Following their mothers death in Nantucket, Captain Goodspeed brings twelve-year-old Patience and six-year-old Tad aboard his whaling ship, where a new crew member incites a mutiny and Patience puts her mathematical ability to good use.

ISBN 0-689-84851-X

eISBN-13: 978-1-439-10816-1

ISBN-13: 978-0-689-84851-3

[1. Seafaring lifeFiction. 2. WhalingFiction. 3. MutinyFiction. 4. Fathers and daughtersFiction. 5. Fathers and sonsFiction. 6. NavigationFiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.F87217 Vo 2002

[Fic]dc21

2001049039

EDITORS NOTE: Please refer to the authors note, Patiences delicious recipes, and a glossary of nautical terms on pages 214-222.

For my mother

If ever I return again
A solemn vow Ill take
That Ill never go a-whaling,
My liberty to stake.
I will stay at home
And I will roam no more,
For the pleasures are but few my boys,
Far from our native shore.

The Whalemans Lament

Absolutely, positively not! roared my father in a voice meant to be heard through the teeth of a Cape Horn gale.

I glanced across the breakfast table at my little brother. His face was puckered, and I could tell he was on the brink of tears. Papa had been ashore less than a month, and Thaddeus, who was only just six, was still unaccustomed to his blustering.

But Papa, I said meekly, it was Mamas particular wish that I should study with Miss Mitchell.

My father reached over and harpooned a sausage from the serving platter.

Thunder and lightning, Patience! he cried, shaking his fork at me for emphasis. Ive said no and I mean no. You and Thaddeus will accompany me aboard the Morning Star when she sails again.

Martha Russell, our housekeeper, appeared in the doorway bearing a basket of blueberry muffins.

A whaling ship is no place for children, she muttered under her breath, scowling, as she trundled toward us. As round as a whale oil barrel and wreathed with gray curls, Martha had been with us since I was born and considered herself one of the family.

Papa fixed her with a steely gaze.

I dont recall asking for your opinion, Martha, he said severely.

She merely sniffed and, poking a finger into my brothers side to make him sit up straight in his chair, quit the room again.

I slipped a piece of sausage under the table to my cat, Patches. The three of us had been going back and forth on this tack for days. Obviously it was time to try another.

Before I could do so, however, Papa continued in a milder tone, I received a letter from your Aunt Anne yesterday. At my request she is coming to Nantucket to join us for a few weeks. Shell be arriving on the packet from Boston this Friday.

Thaddeus and I exchanged a glance. Aunt Anne! Though we had never met Papas elder sister, we had heard much about her. Headmistress of Miss Good-speeds School for Young Ladies, she was a frightful bluestocking, according to Papathough Mama had quite admired her independent sister-in-laws scholarly ways.

I suspected that Aunt Annes visit was more than just a social call. From the smug expression on his face, Papa clearly had something up his sleeve.

I hoped he wasnt going to announce that he was planning to marry again. There was certainly no shortage of widows on our island. Martha was correct in her assertion that whaling was a dangerous business, and many a ship that sailed from our little harbor was never heard from again, or returned bearing news of some tragedy, from fearsome storms off Cape Horn and stove whaleboats to deadly tropical fevers. No, widows we had aplenty, and since Papas return I had watched more than a few preen in his presence. He was not yet forty, his black hair and beard only lightly salted with gray, and although the light in his eyes, as blue as the sea off Sconset in June, had dimmed since my mothers death, still, he was a well-looking man.

Marketable, Martha had described him to old Mrs. Starbuck next door, as if Papa were a turnip bound for the greengrocers.

I did not think I would like a new mother. My heart still ached so with missing Mama that there were times I feared it would burst from my chest and fly away. No, my wounds were still too raw, and so, I believed, were Papas. Grief had settled over him like one of the creeping gray fogs for which our island is so famous.

Papa was away when Mama died, still three months from home on the last leg of his return voyage. The captain of a whaling ship, he had to leave us for years at a time to hunt the great leviathans whose prized oil fired lamps and lighthouses the world around and furnished our livelihood. The profits from his whaling cruises built our tidy, gray-shingled house, planted our apple tree, purchased our cow, our chickens, the seeds for our vegetable gardenin fact, everything in our happy home, or a home that was happy until Mama died, and Papa returned, a somber stranger given to outbursts of temper.

I understood why Martha and others in our circle of acquaintances were eager to see Papa married again. Grief made people uncomfortable. They didnt know how to behave in its presence, and expected it to be a temporary affliction, like a head cold or the chicken pox, especially if you were a child.

I heard the things they said about Thaddeus and me when they thought I wasnt listening. Poor little motherless things no sooner out of their mouths than they would nod sagely and add, but theyre young, and will soon get over it. How could they see inside my heart and know how I felt?

And how could they see inside Papa? Like me, he kept his face shuttered, and his grief only leaked out in the silences.

Meanwhile, he seemed oblivious to the admiring glances cast his way by Nantuckets eligible young widows. He accepted their pies, their chowders, their homemade jams and jellies with an absentminded politeness they must have found infuriating. How he, a fisherman by trade, managed not to notice the bait that was continually dangled before him was truly remarkable. Why, just yesterday I had happened to glance from my bedroom window to see Fanny Starbuck, Mrs. Starbucks pretty but deeply stupid daughter-in-law, widowed last year when her husband was swept overboard in a gale, standing on our doorstep bold as brass. In one hand she held a loaf of freshly baked bread while with the other she fiddled with her dress, patting and plumping and arranging herself like a flounder on a platter. My father answered her knock, took the bread, thanked her courteously, and then shut the door in her face. I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing out loud.

No, marriage was not on his mind, of that I was sure. What scheme, then, could he be hatching, and why had he summoned Aunt Anne from Boston?