Jack: Book One in the Trilogy, the Battle Begins

Shipping Out Part 49

That night the ship pulled away from the wharf, out past Fort Sumter and finally out of the harbor and made its way out into the Atlantic toward the south. There was a good breeze as we made our way across the Gulf Stream. It was six o'clock in the evening and the sun was going down in the red and turquoise-streaked, August sky. The captain announced that the ship would not be stopping until Kingston, Jamaica, about a week away if the ship could keep its top speed of twenty knots. We would learn the second destination only after we left that Caribbean island where we would dock for three days.

We stayed below deck getting our quarters in order and securing the remaining provisions that were still being loaded down from the main deck. Everything had to be tied down. We had not seen Master Whittemore who had been made the night deck officer by Captain Pendleton. He was asleep in a hammock in the main deck at the bow and was assigned to the midnight to nine-in-the-morning shift. Whittemore had requested it.

We found him that night - about ten o'clock - staring serenely out to sea at the bow, the water slapping the sides of the ship as it sliced through the waves, the moonlight softly playing along the water for as far as the eye could see - roughly seven miles to the horizon depending on what height you were at. Seven miles in any direction - nothing but water, night sky, the moon and our ship unless you consider the vast array of ocean life beneath the surface. It was Jack's idea to surprise him. We wondered if he'd be glad to see us. After all, we would be together for at least four months – at least that's what we knew then. When Jack and I approached he was smoking his pipe and leaning over the gunwale on starboard side.