Matthew Roving sat becalmed and bedeviled in a bathtub--or, at least, in a fiberglass sailboat about the size of one--called an Optimist Pram. With no wind, Matthew and the other members of the sailing school had been drifting aimlessly in Narragansett Bay for almost an hour, until Matthew felt he was about to go crazy with boredom.
"Hey, Abby," he shouted to his sister, who was lying back in her own Optimist Pram, half-asleep, her long coppery hair almost touching the surface of the flat, calm, mirror-bright sea. "I think I see a shark!"
Abby was 2 years older, 14 to Matthew's 12, a goalie on her soccer team, and afraid of nothing. But she'd seen Jaws and all its sequels on late-night TV, and did have a slight thing about sharks.
But she wasn't fooled. "Yes, Matthew," she said, without opening her eyes. "Let me know if it eats you."
"Boy, what a pair of geniuses!" laughed a tall lanky boy named Nicky Blunt, whose Pram was drifting nearby. Unlike Matthew and Abby, who were visiting the town of Newport, he lived here--and acted like he was doing them a favor by letting them hang around the docks of the sailing school. He was also the favorite of the instructor, "probably because he's rich," another kid had muttered during yesterday's end-of-the-day cleanup, which Nicky had been allowed to skip when his mother had pulled up in a black BMW and honked repeatedly.
Matthew glanced across the Bay, dotted with becalmed boats as far as the eye could see, all the way to the distant arch of a tall bridge. He decided he didn't much like sailing, or sailing school. Like everything else in Newport so far, it was boring.
It wasn't supposed to be that way. He and Abby had come to Newport with their mother to greet their father when his ship arrived. Dad was an officer in the United States Navy, a captain, which always sounded exciting when Matthew told his friends and teachers about it. But in real life it was more complicated. Being a naval officer meant being away a lot, sometimes for weeks, even months. It meant Mom being tired, sometimes cranky, and Abby bossing him around, and no one to come watch him when his soccer team played on Saturday mornings. It meant being embarrassed about going to sailing school at the advanced age of 12 years because his own father, a ship's captain, didn't have time to teach him.
Anyway, they'd come to meet Dad, not wait for him. But his ship had been delayed. The USS Vineland was a brand-new meteorological vessel--"a hurricane hunter," Dad called her--doing tests of its electronics gear down at the southern end of the Caribbean, near South America. When it didn't show up in Newport the day they arrived, as planned, Mom had apologized: "I'm sorry, kids--but we'll move into a really fun old bed-and-breakfast place and turn this into an adventure."
Yeah, right, thought Matthew. The adventure part was sailing school, which so far was a great big dud. The "really fun" bed-and-breakfast place had been this spooky narrow house on a weedy alley called The Quaint Misbehaving Home for Wayward Salts. "Totally bogus," Abby had said the moment she laid eyes on it. And that was before they discovered it had only a tiny television in the tiny lounge, with a remote control that only adults were allowed to use. And no cable, either.
Even more alarming was the Quaint Misbehaving's owner, a tall, teetering-to-one-side lady who introduced herself while staring at them with great suspicion: "I am Missus Wydontia Gaway," she said, with a curiously unladylike growl. She pointed to a scroll of tattered paper, a scroll so long that it fell in loops off the dining table and made a pile on the floor. "Put yer marks here."
"Get real," said Abby. "How many names are on this?"
"That's me business," snapped Wydontia Gaway. "Obey me Articles and you'll have no call for complaint." In the end, Matthew had followed Abby's lead and signed his name below a list of rules entitled "Ship's Articles":
No gum.
No grog, except on Captain's orders.
No running.
No punning.
No singing hymns.
No singing hers.
Breakfast from 7:15 to 7:45, when the galley fire is doused.
Wydontia Gaway squinted at Matthew. "As for you, young pup, I want no sneaking up to the attic," she rasped. "Or you can expect to be marooned."
It was actually a relief to escape the Quaint Misbehaving for the sailing school--a relief that only lasted, however, until the actual sailing began, and along with it the incessant teasing and bullying of Nicky Blunt.
Matthew blinked. Wisps of his daydream blew away. He was watching a faraway boat suddenly heel steeply to one side, its sail filling out. A wind! Coming up fast behind them! And nobody had seen it yet, not even Nicky Blunt, who was admittedly a very sharp sailor, placing first in every race so far this week. Stealthily, Matthew reached for the mainsheet to trim his sail, then, as if by accident, swung the tiller so that his Pram was poised for the gust when it hit.
And hit it did. With a sharp crack! the invisible blast rattled sails and popped rigging all through the becalmed school. Prams spun and rocked. Matthew saw Abby slide down into the bottom of hers, feet in the air, yelling.
An airhorn sounded a deep bass note--the instructor's signal that the race was on. And Matthew was in front. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Nicky Blunt frantically trimming his Pram--too late to catch up. At that exact moment Nicky turned, favored Matthew with a superior knowing smile, leaned out across the gap of water separating their boats, and looped a section of line over Matthew's tiller post. With a strong pull of his arms he swung his Pram in behind.
"Hey!" shouted Matthew. "Foul!" But by then Nicky had unlooped the line with a flick of his wrist, and the damage was done. Nicky's sail now blocked the breeze from reaching Matthew's, which fluttered weakly. Twitching his tiller, Matthew jibbed right--to starboard, he reminded himself--to find the free wind that Nicky had stolen from him. No dice: Nicky turned to starboard and covered easily.
His strategy was infuriating, but efficient, Matthew had to admit. Although Nicky couldn't pull ahead of Matthew, he could keep up the loose cover, blanket his sails, and hold a superior position for as long as he liked. Matthew looked ahead a quarter mile, to a long sandy point, which they would have to round before heading for home. Unless he could somehow beat Nicky around it, he was trapped.
Five minutes passed; nothing changed. Despite Matthew's attempts to turn and twist, Nicky stayed right on his hip pocket; meanwhile, the sandy point and its thumping waves were getting dangerously close.
The tide was falling, and sandbars were slowly appearing out of the fringe of foamy waves, extending the point like a bony finger pointing to the other shore. Soon Matthew would have to bear away left--port, he corrected himself--in the opposite direction of home, at which time Nicky could let him go and streak on ahead, with an insurmountable lead. If Matthew continued straight on into the shallows of the point, he'd soon lose headway in the currents and risk going aground.
"Matthew! Better come about!" warned the instructor through his bullhorn, monitoring the pack of boats in his motorized inflatable dinghy. Resigned, Matthew began to swing the tiller over--and then felt a hot tight pain in his chest. He was, he realized dimly, more than just mad; he was. . . was. . . Words came into his head like none he'd ever used: he was mortally provoked. As he repeated them wonderingly, his hands yanked the tiller in the other direction.
His Pram obeyed, turning sharply upwind in a circle, until it was heading toward Nicky's boat. "Look out!" shouted Nicky, surprised. Matthew locked his eyes on Nicky's, holding to a collision course.
"Matthew! Yield the right of way!" shouted the instructor.
Putting on a dull stubborn expression, when actually he felt a cool and crisp detachment, Matthew bore down. Finally, when only a couple of feet separated the boats, Nicky threw his tiller over hard, at last forced to surrender his superior position.
"Foul!" he shouted, his voice cracking in indignation. The instructor's face turned bright red as he shouted through the bullhorn: "Matt, bear away right now! You're disqualified!"
As their boats slid past each other, no more than a few inches apart, Matthew looked Nicky in the eye and grinned. Maybe sailing school wasn't so boring after all.
He was still feeling pleased with himself a couple of hours later, even though his punishment was having to organize the Prams for the afternoon session. He stood catching his breath on the dock, when Nicky Blunt walked up, a not-unfriendly expression on his haughty face.
"Here, Roving, let's empty the water out of this one," he said, nodding at the next Pram. Matthew was surprised: perhaps his show of resistance had won Nicky's respect?
They kneeled and took hold of its sides. "One, two, pull!" chanted Nicky. Matthew lifted his side. Suddenly, Nicky cried "Careful, you idiot!" Dropping his end he kicked the boat away from the dock, so that Matthew fell awkwardly forward.
Somersaulting over the dirty inshore water, Matthew understood more than felt his head clipping the side of the Pram: stunned, he opened his eyes in green watery space, upsidedown, before floating almost dreamily to the surface and the light and the yelling voices--where he was rescued by none other than Nicky Blunt.
Sent home to change clothes and, as the instructor snidely put it, "consider changing your attitude toward safe boating practices," Matthew let himself into the silent and gloomy Quaint Misbehaving, feeling rather like the Wayward Salt illustrated on the bed and breakfast's carved wooden sign. Anxious not to face Mrs. Gaway in his wet clothes, he tiptoed, feeling the boredom gather around him, like a kind of invisible gas, with each narrow turning of the staircase.
He stood before the door to his room. But his feet took him right past, up another flight of stairs, past his mother's room, and on up, up to the place he'd never seen but knew existed, the one place he'd been told never to visit--to the attic. He came to the end of the stairs, to a door, which he opened without thinking, as if even a second's hesitation might stop him for good.
The door opened on a dusty cobwebbed chamber under a very narrow peaked roof. There were stacks of old bed-springs, a row of squat wooden barrels, and an umbrella stand filled with rusty iron things that weren't umbrellas, including a long-handled hatchet. He knew he shouldn't be here, but he also knew he would never be able to sleep tonight if he didn't look around. In particular, if he didn't inspect the wooden chest in the far corner, a chest with a series of paintings on its carved sides.
The chest was piled about by old books, as if somebody had been interrupted in the act of loading or unloading. Matthew pried up the lid, feeling dust tickle his throat. There, lying at the bottom on a faded newspaper, was a lone book. An ancient-looking book. A book with only a single word burned into its leather cover: "LOG."
A ship's log, Matthew thought, although it was very different than the one his father had showed him on the bridge of the Vineland. He reached out and cautiously opened it to the first page. There, handwritten in thick black letters, was a date: June 10, 1772, Anno. Dom. Funny, he thought, June 10th is tomorrow. He ran his fingernail between the next two pages, which were stuck together, and water-stained.
This next page fell open to a marvelously colored illustration, lit as if from within. It showed a group on the deck of a sailing ship: a girl punching a fist in the air, a dandy in a ruffled shirt and bright uniform, a scowling grizzled man, a black teenager holding a sword, a respectable-looking businessman in silly white stockings and a feathered Indian war bonnet. . . .
"What?" Matthew stared in shock. One of the characters in the background looked like him. Matthew bent over steeply to pick up the Log, disturbing the reddish dust lying about. He sneezed, then broke into a coughing fit so strong that he jerked his head sharply up. Ouch! He'd banged it on the lid of the chest, on the same spot he'd bruised falling off the dock.
Black dots wiggled before his eyes. Dizzy, he felt himself sliding over, falling, right where he stood--into the chest, cast into sudden darkness as the lid slammed down after him. He lay curled up until the pain subsided, before he dared to move a muscle. Then he fumbled for a latch. But there was none.
And yet, when he heard footsteps pounding up the stairs, he did not call out, because of the thought of what Mrs. Wydontia Gaway would say. She'd told him to steer clear of the attic, or else--what was the word she used? Or else risk being marooned. Whatever that meant, he was already in enough trouble to want to avoid it.
The footsteps entered the room, hesitated. "Matty!" his sister whispered, loudly. "Where art thou?"
"In here! Get me out!" In a moment the lid groaned up, and he was squinting through the reddish motes of dust at blessed sunlight--and at the costume Abby was wearing: a plain faded blue dress and long-sleeve butternut shirt stitched over in a dozen places. She looked like a jigsaw puzzle from the waist up.
"Whew," he breathed. "Thanks. What's with the get-up?"
"Get up yourself," she said, snappy as ever. "We've got to take the boat over to Namquid Point and meet the packet."
"I don't think so, Abby. I think I'm done sailing, unless Nicky Blunt decides to take up stock car racing."
Abby stared at him. "What addles your brain, Matty? I am called Abigail, and thy familiarity does thee no credit--the worse for Nicholas Tarleton Blunt. Though he is no friend to free trade, his good family name deserves respect."
"Then call me Matthew. And can you lose the Shakespeare in Love jive-talk already."
"If you want a man's name," she said, "why, then, you must do a man's work. And stop your ears to blasphemous riddles. Come, we have no time to lose." And she started for the door.
Matthew stumbled after her. The stairs were steep, and the lighting bad. Even so, he saw something that made him rub his eyes: his Mother's room, which he could have sworn had a brass bed and Turkish carpets on the floor, was now bare except for ropes of onions and heavy brown hams hanging from hooks in the beams.
Then they were through the living room--where a fire was smoking in the place where Mrs. Wydontia Gaway had installed her tiny TV set. Abby, or rather Abigail, reached into a sideboard and handed Matthew a heavy envelope case made of some kind of animal skin, bristly and tough. She shrugged on a black wool shawl and put her hand on the door-latch.
"We'll just make the tide--come, Matty, no long faces! The sooner this letter goes to Providence, the sooner Mother can sell Father's books, and we can satisfy our creditors for a good long while."
She put her shoulder to the door, which seemed not to want to open. With a creak and a groan, light poured in, blinding Matthew for so long--the interior of the house had been that gloomy--that his irritation and bewilderment transformed his next question into an angry accusation: "What do you mean, sell Father's books? He's going to be mad."
As his eyes adjusted, the bright sun that gilded everything in gold faded slowly into a duller glow. They started down a narrow lane. Silhouettes sprouted detail: the streets were cross-hatched with cobblestones, a cherry tree's blossoms darkened into an almost alarming red. Down at the end of the alley, which was where Abby seemed to be leading them, the tall masts of sailing ships and smaller vessels crowded together like trees in a forest. A horse clip-clopped toward Matthew, who stared slackjawed at its rider, a roly-poly man wearing white stockings, a silly blue coat, and a stiff, white, long-haired wig.
Abby reached for his arm and jerked him out of the horseman's path, turning on him a fierce, yet pained, glare. "Will you never be quiet? It's been a year now, and not a word, not a rumor has been heard. Our Father left on a two-day sail. The old Vineland probably opened her hull on a reef not ten miles from here. As is fitting after a year, Father's soul is to be commended to Heaven in church this very Sunday. And on Monday we can expect every man and woman who ever loaned him as much as a spark to light his pipe to beat on our door for repayment."
She paused for breath at the edge of a high stone quay, to which ropes stretched from a thick congregation of sailing vessels, many of them leaning on one side as the murky tide withdrew. With a nod she indicated a small sailing skiff of no more than 14 feet, floating directly below. "Now get in," she said, swinging herself down by a thick dirty rope. Matthew stared at this girl who was both his sister and not his sister, an Abigail rather than an Abby, who didn't seem to think it the least bit strange that men in wigs should ride horseback through the center of town, and who had announced with a stoic jut of her jaw that their Father was dead.
"What is today's date?" he asked suddenly. Abby glowered, and waved him forward. "No, I mean it--Abigail."
She stopped and thought; evidently, it wasn't something she knew right offhand. "It's the--no, wait--I think it's June 9th."
One day, twenty-four hours, until the date on the Log. "And the year?"
Abigail snorted. "Matty, you are a goose! It's '72, of course." He felt dizzy.
"1772?" The answer was so obvious she didn't bother to reply.
If his father was truly dead here, in 1772, what did that say about his father back in the world where Matthew came from? Was his boat really late, or was he missing, too? And what could Matthew do about it now that he was apparently stuck over two hundred years in the past?
There was only one way to find out, and Matthew took it. He clasped the rope and swung himself over the side of the quay, down into the battered and weathered wooden boat.
The Log of Matthew Roving Episode 1: A Wayward Salt
Matthew Roving thinks he has problems with his annoying older sister and a bully who won't leave him alone. Things get interesting when his father's Navy ship disappears, and he falls into a sea chest that transports him backward in time to the year 1772! Follow the nautical adventures of Matthew in each issue of Naval History as he attempts to uncover the mystery of what happened to his father, and somehow find a way to get back home.
By Don Wallace; Illustrated by Jan Adkins