The cold was a shock. Forcing his muscles to move, he swam to where he thought the shoe had sunk, and dove into what appeared to his burning eyes as a fathomless pit of greenish black. Ten feet below, he struck a barrier of very frigid water that was more than shocking; it bearhugged his chest and drove icy nails into his temples. He shot to the surface, got his wind, and stroked back to the dory. Kneeling for a lower center of gravity, his father grabbed the back of his collar with one hand and the seat of his pants with the other, and hauled him aboard. One question settled—a young man’s strength was still in those arms, in those wide shoulders.

He expected to be chastised, but the old man said nothing, nothing at all.

“Deedle deedle dumpling, my son John …” Eliot, capering on deck, sang in a nasal, mock-childish voice. “One shoe off and one shoe on …”

“Aw, shut your godda—”

“Nathaniel …”

“Yes, sir.” Cyrus tolerated and, on rare occasions used, most forms of bad language, but he forbade a certain four-letter word and the taking of the Lord’s name in vain.

For his sins, Nathaniel was not allowed to change into dry clothes until he had stowed food, coal, and kerosene in their proper places—and his brothers’ seabags in one of the berths forward. This last task, he thought, dragging the bags down the companionway into the main cabin and through the passage to the forward cabin, exceeded legitimate penance and was meant to humiliate him.

There were two berths in the forward cabin, one on each side and each with two bunks. The port berth was just aft the head and often caught the stench from there, so in the spirit of brotherly love, he chose it for Eliot and Drew. Stepping across the passageway, he entered his—an enclosure about six and a half feet long by six high by four wide, and half the four taken up by the bunks, bolted one over the other to the side of the ship. The cramped space reminded him of one of Dr. Johnson’s comments: Being aboard a ship was like being in jail, with the added possibility of drowning. Nathaniel didn’t agree with the jail part. To sail the broad ocean was purest freedom, and he liked the confined quarters of a vessel, the snug feeling they gave when you were battened down in safe harbor during a blow.