By The Sea, Book Three: Laura Read Free

beaches, planting shrubs. The less lucky
and the overly proud were turned out of their tenements and homes.
Millworkers turned ugly, rioting in nearby textile towns.
Newporters became afraid.
    The Virginia was not immune to the
economic crisis. Contracts to haul fell off steadily. The second
mate was laid off, and then the first. Sam's brother, young and
inexperienced, came down from Maine to replace them; he was all Sam
could afford. The Virginia whiled away her days at anchor in
various New England harbors, while Sam scoured the waterfront for
loads to haul. Still, Sam and Laura were reasonably
self-sufficient. They paid no taxes, and the wind was free.
    Sails, however, were not free, and neither
was paint. The Virginia had not been hauled out in two
years. Her bottom was foul; she lumbered like a bathtub through the
water, despite repeated scrubbings by Sam and his brother Billy.
Her rusted iron fastenings bled freely through her peeling
dark-green topsides. The patches on her sails had patches. When
Billy managed to blow up the Scotch fire-tube boiler on the yawl
boat through sloppy maintenance, Sam very nearly keelhauled him.
They were living on the edge, and the strain was beginning to
show.
    Eventually Roosevelt and the federal
government began to put together a new deal for the downtrodden,
and all eyes turned to Washington. But Sam refused to look. "I'll
not go on the dole and abase myself before my son," he stoutly
maintained. "Besides, I'd rather starve at sea than stand in a soup
line ashore. But we ain't about to starve, girl: tomorrow we pick
up a load of quahog shells in Bristol; we're bound for New
York."
    "Just the shells? What for?"
    "Pills, jewelry, ground cover. Who
cares?"
    It was a foul and smelly business; Laura
wrinkled her nose at the prospect. Sam pulled a ferocious face in
mockery of hers, whereupon Laura stuck out her tongue at her
husband and he grinned.
    Despair was widespread, but it was not yet
universal.

Chapter 2
     
    The Virginia was returning from New
York—empty of cargo, unfortunately—and bound for Newport harbor. As
she rounded Fort Adams, the wind that howls off that flat spit of
land caught her sails and laid her over on her ear. She hesitated,
gathering energy, then went charging forward, pushing a white,
curling wave ahead of her, a lively dog with a bone in her teeth.
No one would have guessed that she was sixty-two years old.
    She was a show-stopper, all right, and one
of the reasons was that her captain was wrapped around her fore
topmast, eight and a half stories above the water, working madly to
free up the fore topsail halyard which was jammed in its block.
Someone might have asked why Captain Powers hadn't dropped his
topsails before now, but that would've been unkind. The fact was,
Captain Powers—despite his Downeast caution—liked to put his vessel
through her paces now and then, and this was one of those times. It
was just bad luck that the halyard jammed.
    From her position behind the wheel, Laura
understood perfectly well that they were running out of time,
running out of room. Sam had to get the topsail down soon or she'd
have to take the Virginia back out into the Bay, where
they'd have the room he needed to clear the block and drop sail.
She squinted up at her husband, then scanned the anchorage area.
There wasn't room to swing a cat. The America's Cup Races were in
town (for the second time), and so were a lot of important yachts.
An Astor or a Vanderbilt entering the harbor just then would have
been looking around for a peer; Laura was looking around for a
hole.
    From eighty feet above her she heard the
cry, "Round up!"
    She found a narrow slot, put the helm over,
and headed into the wind. To her relief she saw Sam take in the
topsail, bundle it, and lash it. Quick as a flash Billy, part
monkey, scrambled up the ratlines of the foremast, swung himself up
onto the crosstrees, and did the same to the main topsail while
young Neil gazed aloft longingly from deck