No matter how hard Perk tried to focus on the harbor in front of him, he found his gaze drawn back to the white steeple, thrust into the mackerel sky like an accusing finger. Walking along the sand, he waited for the bells.
Three times this morning he’d started up that hill. To remind them of his refusal, explain his reasons, or bend to their scheme? Even he didn’t know. Three times his feet had refused to carry him further.
The congregation would be assembled by now, their Sunday best pressed and proper, waiting for him—hope wearing thin with each empty minute. Mother. Euphemia.
Ellen.
What must she be thinking? Surely she knew him better than to think he’d ever stoop so low as to court such a—oh, but who cared what Ellen thought. Her opinion meant nothing to him now.
Finally, the church bells began their somber count, each bronze note falling like a hammer blow. Seven. Eight. Nine. The sound reached down the hill, echoed across the water, vibrated in his chest.
The final toll marked the turn of the tide. There’d be no going back. Father would consider Perk dead to him. The town would call him gutless as a jellyfish. Ellen would think—whatever Ellen would think. To whatever extent Marblehead had been his home, it was no longer.
Monday’s ferry couldn’t come soon enough. He hoped he could merely slip away like the morning mist, leaving no trace behind.
Until then, he paced the shoreline, practically wearing holes into his boots, trying to figure out how to make three years’ salary in a single voyage—before Mother lost her house.
There was only one way he knew to make such easy money. But Grinnell & Minturn were both Quakers and—as far as Perk was aware—ran the only tea trading firm in all of New York that strictly forbid dealing in opium.
The Protestant Astors and Delanos were not so discerning. Nor were the Aspinwalls or the Lows. Hell, the Brits practically turned it into a national sport.
While the East India Company took on chests full of the sticky black balls in Bengal, the Americans traded first with Turkish Smyrna. After that, the process was identical. When the opium-stuffed ships reached the Pearl River delta outside Canton, they unloaded their smuggled goods in the dead of night onto moored hong merchant vessels—in abject defiance of Chinese Law.
Perk had always been grateful to avoid such seedy activities. But given his mother’s desperate finances, he couldn’t argue with one essential fact. By the time they’d reached the official anchorage in Whampoa, the ships—and their captains—had already taken on five times the silver they’d make on the tea itself.
Was it time to reconsider his reluctance?
If Captain Forbes could line his pockets in the process, why not Perk? Captain Dumaresque didn’t mind the extra income. Nor did Captains Low or Hingham. Even jolly old Captain Nat had a hand in it.
Captain Waterman had even been as flagrant in his dealings as the Brits last summer—so much so that exasperated Chinese officials had threatened to shut down the entire Western trading complex. It would never happen, of course. There was too much money to be made from trade on both sides, and no one in their right minds would scuttle a lifeboat to drown a rat.
But Chinese indignation with the sordid business had grown vehement. And it led Perk to realize there was someone else unscrupulous enough to argue that blood money from a poisonous trade was a righteous path to a noble family legacy.
His father.
That thought was enough to make Perk seasick that he’d even considered it.
But what to do for Mother? She’d refused to take his fifty dollars. He’d tried time and again. For that matter, what to do about his own precarious situation?
“I’m still hoping you’ll pull this off, Creesy,” Grinnell had warned him, “But I can’t afford another disastrously late arrival in New York. So you’ll have to prove your abilities on the way out to Canton this time if you want to be the one to bring the ship home. I’ll give you a reasonable 130 days to make it from Sandy Hook to Whampoa. Do so and you’ll keep your post at least for the return. But fail that and Mr. Austin carries letters that empower him—on condition of 131 or more days to complete the outbound voyage—to take over command of the Oneida. You’d be left to make your own way home.”
Perk couldn’t argue he’d had a run of bad luck because he knew two things without a doubt. First, that he could drive a ship harder and faster than any man alive in equal conditions. Second, that something was very wrong with the conditions.
On the last trip, he’d sailed right out of the trades and into dead-still air. The time before that, he’d fought against the westerlies around Good Hope for a month without an inch of progress to show for it. And the time before that, he still didn’t know what exactly had gone wrong, but he’d come in almost dead last.
Meanwhile, the other captains faced the same oceans, the same weather systems, and beat him by a mile. He knew it was due to his weakness in strategy. There was something they all did far better than him, and it was something related to navigation.
He’d hoped to be assigned a crack navigator for his first mate. Instead, he was given Thomas Austin, who—for all his family connections—couldn’t find north with both hands.
Perk knew he may not be a captain much longer.
Now, as he walked the sand, Perk watched a dory head into the harbor with its spritsail flying—too far away for him to see who was brave enough to skip church on a Sunday. But as he remembered the feel of holding a tiller and sheet, a deep burn spread through his forearms. He hadn’t realized how much he missed the purity of sailing itself. Being able to put his whole self into the kind of task that he was made for.
Becoming one with the vessel, the wind, and the water. Making the most of every moment of the race. Knowing the Oneida wanted her main royal sheet trimmed a fraction here, that she’d gladly carry her mizzen topsail in a higher gust there, despite the strain on wood and canvas. He knew how to turn a barnacle-encrusted old packet into a racehorse, and she stepped up to his touch.
But for all of that love, he hated the captain’s confounded job of deciding which course to steer.
He found his fingers locked into fists and shook them loose, slapping his palms against his thighs until the blood flowed again. Flogging the booby. He almost laughed. Father thought he knew every fiber of the maritime world, but Perk would bet his last dollar he didn’t know that.
Then the thought of Father made his chest coil tight again. Coming all this way, finally ready to forgive the past, only to have the man try to bind him in a spider’s web. As if he was still the sixteen-year-old boy whose skin remembered his fists, his belt, that dark attic—
No. He was a man now. More than that, he was bigger than Father. A head taller. Far more experienced.
Had Father ever felt the cool shadow of a pagoda? Let bird’s nest soup slide across his tongue? Filled his belly with Osmanthus wine and lungs with incense? Had his ears ever felt the vibrations of a zither as a woman in a silk qipao moved like flowing water before him?
But even that memory—sweet as summer rain in the moment—brought both pain and consequences far beyond any hangover. Perk had crossed a line he’d sworn never to breach. That Father would have clapped him on the back in approval only made the bile rise faster in his throat.
Fei Yen, she’d called herself—Flying Swallow. He remembered her at the window, yearning for a bird’s freedom. He’d laid the silver in her palm, acted as gently as he knew how, but it was just a minor slip of her smile when she thought he was sleeping, that revealed the truth. By touching her, he’d trapped her further. Lashed himself to her pain forever. The shame clung to his skin like spray, an obligation he could never fully discharge.
The thought turned even the clean ocean breeze to ashes. No, Father had never known a flower boat, but he would have frequented one without regrets. Perk had—that single time—and the weight of it still pressed against his conscience.
He drew the brackish air deep into his chest, forcing out the leaden weight of shame and letting fiery anger flood his veins instead.
Father had wanted to cage him into binding rope, to waste away at a desk in that stifling factory, choking on manila dust, while the eternal grinding of the jack wheel and its wooden teeth wore grooves into his brain. Twisting and twisting and twisting until Perk’s muscles forgot the feel of open water.
But the fury moved through him, unbidden as the tides, and he came back to shame. He should have at least had the courage to face the consequences of his decision today.
Perk glanced at the pale disc of sun through the gauzy clouds, high enough that whatever Bartlett had improvised as a service would finish soon.
If there was a God, Perk felt sure He wasn’t trapped in that old coffin of a church or its musty doctrines. He lived in every fair wind, in the scattered diamonds of stars, in the endless pulse of the sea. When Perk searched for God, he didn’t lift his eyes skyward, but found the seam between sea and sky.
For him, God lived in the horizon line.
The dunes on the other side of the harbor blocked that sacred line now, but it waited for him, just beyond the fleet at anchor. Past the restless seabirds and the stone fingers of the jetty. Past that dory, spinning like a compass gone mad.
A grunt of amusement escaped him at the sight. Someone clearly couldn’t handle their canvas. It was an open twelve-footer, just like the one he and Ellen—but he forced that thought away. Some things were better left buried.
The boat wheeled in circles, shipping water each time the waves caught it beam-to. He tracked the flogging canvas, the lines whipping violently against the thwarts, and his laugh caught in his throat. The vessel lurched like a punch-drunk boxer, each wave threatening to capsize her. It wouldn’t be but a half-bell before it sank at this rate.
Then a tiny figure rose above the gunwale and his gut clenched like he’d been struck.
A child. A girl-child. Barely big enough to reach the tiller, much less muscle it against the chop.
The warmth drained from his body, every nerve screaming danger as he measured the distance to the nearest rowboat left on shore—a quarter cable down the beach.
His legs were moving before his mind caught up.
“Stay down!” The words tore from his throat, but the wind snatched them away. The mast could come down on top of her. The flailing sheets could snap her arm or crush her skull. If she leaned the wrong way, the boat could turtle in an instant.
He reached the rowboat, his lungs burning, and found the oars shipped tidily under the thwarts. The skiff had been left well high of the tide, moored to a rock, and after freeing the painter he threw his shoulder against the stern, muscles straining to push it toward the harbor. The weight fought him, yielding only an arm’s span at a time.
Two fathoms from the water, he tried signaling the girl again, his arm sweeping low to urge her down.
His stomach clenched—he couldn’t tell if she understood. The mast carved another circle through the air, the sheets whistling past where her head had been.
Perk heaved against the skiff’s stern once more, then staggered as it suddenly lurched forward into the water. He felt another body next to his. Someone else had seen her peril. Spray stung his face as they both leapt in. Without looking, he knew he’d be the stronger rower. Many had tried to beat him in Pearl River races. Most had failed.
He shifted to the forward thwart, tracking the dory while his companion wrestled the oars into place with a fluid efficiency that struck deep chords of memory. No wasted motion, no fumbling with the locks—just the clean snap of wood meeting brass that matched the rhythm in Perk’s head.
When he glanced at the harbor behind him to fix the heading, the handles were pressed into his waiting palms, as if his helper knew exactly how he’d want them positioned.
Perk threw his weight into each pull until his shoulders screamed. Twelve strokes in, he lifted his chin to thank the stranger who moved like his shadow and saw a black bonnet. His arms kept their rhythm from pure habit while his mind stumbled, trying to grasp why a man would wear—
Then Ellen looked up from beneath the brim, and his world tilted sideways. He dropped the oars. At speed, both blades flew back and nailed him in the chest with a thud.
“What’s the matter with you? Row, blast it!” Ellen shouted.
Perk rowed. He rowed and rowed because it was all he could do. Ellen sat as she always had—slightly to starboard to balance his stronger pull to larboard.
Questions crowded Perk’s throat like bitter water, but he swallowed them back. There was only the burn in his shoulders, the bite of wood against his calloused palms, and the ghost of a hundred summer evenings when they’d moved through the water just like this, reading each other’s rhythms as naturally as breathing.
He looked past his shoulder at the girl, his arms burning with each stroke. They’d covered half the distance, maybe twelve boat-lengths. “Stay down!” He bellowed, the words tearing from deep in his chest. This time, the girl disappeared below the gunwales.
He shifted his gaze to Ellen. She was single-minded and efficient as always, but a quiet terror flickered in the hazel eyes he knew so well.
“Keep rowing!” Strain etched lines around her mouth. “That’s my sister!”
“Aye,” Perk grunted.
Sister? Since when? His jaw clenched, muscles bunching as he dug deeper, feeling the water’s resistance through the oars. The chop rose higher now, each wave sending cold spray through his sodden jacket.
“Don’t look back,” Ellen commanded, her focus beyond his shoulder. “It’s slowing you down. Head two more points to starboard.”
“One point,” Perk forced out between labored breaths, lungs heaving.
“Tide’s going out,” she said, eyes fixed on the dory. “There’s a three-knot current setting you north. Two points to starboard.”
Perk yielded, throwing more weight behind the left oar until he felt the boat’s heading shift.
The current explained how the girl had gotten into such trouble in the first place. The full moon meant a vicious ebb. If she’d merely slipped the painter, the tide would have yanked her into deep water like a fish on a line.
“Good. One more point. Two hundred yards out.” Ellen said.
Despite her worry, her voice steadied him. Having her call the direction let him focus his muscles on rowing, every sinew driving into the oars. The boat’s motion confirmed her read of the current—the same current Perk might have felt in his bones earlier if his lungs hadn’t been heaving like bellows.
“That’s it. Straight on. One fifty. You know how to do this, Perk.”
She knew who he was, then. He’d assumed but not known for sure. The thought slipped away under the white-hot weight in his shoulders.
He kept himself strong, worked alongside his crew daily, but this kind of rowing belonged to another life. His lower back screamed louder than his arms—those old racing victories had come from knowing the real power flowed up from the spine, not out from the shoulders.
A swell slammed the larboard bow, drenching him again and nearly wrenching the oar from his left hand. His fingers locked around the wood like iron bands.
“One point to starboard now. A hundred yards,” Ellen said. Her words fell steady as a pendulum, and the pain faded. The cold spray, the blistering handle—all of it vanished. There was only the pull.
Ellen stood now, her legs finding their balance in the pitching boat natural as an old salt, her hands cupped around her mouth.
“Stay down!” Ellen shouted to her sister. “We’re nearly there!”
Perk pulled harder, eyes shut against the spray, feeling the wooden oars flex with each stroke. The next moments would be the most dangerous—two boats colliding in rough seas could mean broken bones or worse. He’d seen enough rescue attempts end in disaster.
“Straight on. Fifty yards,” Ellen called, her voice steady despite the dread in her eyes. She’d already prepared a rope with a weighted knot at the end, sized perfectly for small hands to catch. “I’ll count down the last twenty strokes, then we’ll drift down on her from windward.”
Perk opened his mouth to argue—giving orders was his role now. Had been for years. But the simple rightness of her plan settled into his bones like a familiar weight. He nodded his assent.
“I’ll throw the line to Mathilda,” Ellen said. “If the waves push us too close, you row us away. Too far, I’ll pull us in.”
Perk leaned into the oars. Ellen drew a breath, then counted down the last strokes. “Nineteen. Eighteen.”
Perk was grateful he could focus on the efficiency of getting the most out of each one.
“Eleven. Ten.”
The rough wood bit into his palms with each pull. Cold water had soaked through to his bones, each breath visible in the wind. But a strange calm spread from his gut outward—a forgotten comfort he couldn’t name. He pushed the feeling aside, let his body do what it knew how to do.
“Four. Three.”
His last strokes turned them into the wind’s teeth. Ellen found her balance at the stern, called instructions to Mathilda, then threw the weighted line into the spinning boat. Her aim was perfect—those same sure hands that used to outthrow him clear across Miller’s Pond.
Perk held the boat steady against the wind, keeping them just upwind of the spinning dory. Ellen told Mathilda to hold fast as she secured a line around Mathilda’s oarlock since no one could safely reach the bow.
Smart thinking, Perk realized. He had been ready to leave the other dory to its fate. Towing her sideways was a novel idea. She’d fight him like a stubborn mule, but she’d follow.
Ellen leaned out over the stern, and Perk shifted his feet to take the riskier position. But before he could step forward, she’d already hauled the frightened, shivering little girl into the boat.
When Perk finally saw the young girl’s face, it was like staring at a ghost.
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