The recently laid cobblestones echoed beneath the horse’s shoes and the clatter of the dray stirred through the slightly open window. A pair of black eyes darted open and stared at the shadowed corners of the high ceiling. He hadn’t been able to sleep anyway, so the noise had not disturbed him. Lifting off the covers, a pair of bare feet swung out over the edge of the high bed. Warm toes searching in the dark for the scatter rug. Its soft warmth an island in a sea of cold, polished timber. Sitting on the edge the bed he stared out through the open curtains. It was still a few cold hours before the dawn. A crescent moon hung high in the night, its weak light falling quietly on the sill. The curtains had not been drawn allowing the soft sounds of the sleeping town to seep into the room. Outside the smell of a heavy dew fell.

Leaving the sanctuary of the rug was his only way to reach the gas lamp high on the wall. Stepping back in its soft, orange hiss, his reflection catches his eye. The young boy in the long, oval mirror is familiar to him. A short, slight youth stands holding only fifteen years under his belt. He had always been disappointed in his appearance and lack of height. Yet he is unaware of how much more growing he has yet to accomplish. His eyes only see the image that stares back at him from the glass. The mop of curly, black hair that had been his pride, was cropped short only yesterday. All in preparation for the rest of his life, which was from today, to change forever.

Through the manipulation of his uncle he had been accepted to the position of a junior navy midshipman. His first commission was on the naval sailing barque the ‘Osprey’. His uncle was well pleased, having been thanked many times for his influence. This was the chance to escape that the boy had always wanted.

While changing into his stiff, starched naval uniform, the boy smiles at the thought of being at sea. A life-long fantasy fulfilled; life of fresh salt air and wondrous adventures. No more for him the dusty, dark rooms of his uncle’s shipping office. He would no longer have to sit behind a desk totting up figures that meant nothing to him. How he had hated that job. He also wouldn’t miss the taunts from the other junior clerks. The tall ships of the harbour would now become his neighbourhood, the open sea his home.

Not that life with his uncle and the housekeeper Mrs Whittaker, had been unpleasant, even if she tended to be cloying. He could never be part of it, his true home was with his own company. He preferred to spend his rare, free hours wandering the dockyards. His father had been a merchant ship’s officer but had disappeared at sea. This however did not diminish the lad’s love affair with ships. He watched with envy the burly men who kept alive their affair with the sea. He marvelled at the white sails that flew on the harbour, and with them flew his imagination. He wanted to part of it all. Philadelphia had grown too constricting for his open heart. The tall buildings of the noisy city loomed like prison walls. Why there was even talk of a new building twice the height of the main church’s spire. No, give him a forest of masts and white canvas stretching against the blue.

Stepping through the doorway with a firm tread out into the chill of the early morning air. A smile breaks his face as he hefts his duffel. Today is to be the beginning of his greatest adventure. The start of the life he had always wanted, dreamed of and craved for. Longer than he could remember, he had an intense fascination for the sea and for every tale of her great oceans. Even though as a child it had taken from him forever his father, mother and the rest of his siblings. Now, as he strode away from Mrs Whittaker, for what he knew to be the last time, his mind told him not to look back. As he did, he could see her in a starched white apron waving a tea towel, with a vigour unmatched by any flag in a stiff breeze. His chest still ached from her almost suffocating farewell, trapped against that massive, starched-white apron. His arm raised in a return gesture. He turned the corner and looked back no more.

The city had not yet begun to stir. The cool morning air still clung to the dark, stone houses. Walking with measured stride out over the roads, his footsteps echoed the beat of his high spirits. This was a familiar path, it was the way to the shipping office. That tomb he had quit only yesterday, but which already seemed to belong to another lifetime. He smiled a tight smile at having left amid false back slapping, and the continual taunts of his colleagues. He was well glad to bid farewell to everything those musty halls evoked.

Passing over the river, on the stone arched spans of the bridge, he crossed from the city proper into the dock area. The sky was now lightening and beside his path the river swirled black and green. In the dockyards, the tang of salt wafted in the air, mixing with the bite of tar and a smell like that of rotting cabbage. The dark lanes of the dock area began to weave a path closer to the naval dock. With a faltering tread he passed the never-hallowed halls of the shipping office. He imagined the brick building with its featureless windows peering down condemning him from the past and him expelling to the future. Edging around the next corner he halted, and stared at his future.

There before him she lay, tied mercilessly to the dock. In the growing, gentle light she waited like a bridled horse, hungry to be given reigns. The luminous sky held her masts in an eerie glow. His eyes followed the line down her sleek decks, to the upsweep of her bow. From her gilded bowsprit a figurehead, captured forever in timber, flew on golden wings. Her destiny to lead the ship across the seven seas. The ship’s crew were busy scurrying over her and the dock, unaware that from the shadows they were being watched. The watcher stood motionless, his dark, fresh uniform blending into the shadowy gloom, his dark eyes taking in all the action. The strong crewmen grunted under the weight of their various labours. Even in the early morning’s cool the burly dock-workers glinted in a lather of sweat from their toil.

To the young man, the shadows of the warehouse arch held the safety from which he could watch the scene with awe and trepidation. Standing there he saw the strong muscles of the crew flex under the orders of a proud officer. A man who surveyed the domain of the ship from its quarterdeck, and with an iron resolve charged his men to their tasks.

Suddenly the youth’s memories came flooding back in waves. Here on the brink of a life change and his past was bent on interfering. Memories of the taunts of his school fellows, where he had always been teased over his lack of height and about his parent-less upbringing. Consequently he had moved further into the safer, more reliable world of his own imagination. Now, those self doubts that he had thought so long forgotten returned doubly strengthened. Hesitation clouded the face of his confidence. Would he ever be able to order a crew whose physical power was so much more than his? Waves of uncertainty rolled over his mind in ever increasing strength, building. His palms became clammy. He clasped and unclasped them in a vain effort to dry them. Beads of sweat formed across his brow and his eyes begin to weep. Salty tears now rolled down over his cheeks. Soon he was crying, his chest heaving, sobbing, frightened at doing something of which he was once so certain. His legs begin to shake unable to hold their own weight, in the cloud of fear that accompanies unreasonable panic, he turned from the ship and fled into the street.

His tear soaked eyes blurred his path, running, stumbling and falling on the uneven cobbles. His flight not even halted when he tumbled over an unseen wooden crate. Each time he fell, he would rise and continue as fast as his legs would take him. His eyes were momentarily blinded by the first rays of the morning sun. His legs began to cramp, seizing in agony. Running till he can run no more, he collapsed to the ground. His lungs gasping for air.

Laying face down on the ground, his belly heaving, each breath filled with the smell of ploughed earth. Slowly, as his breathing relaxed the pain in his chest subsided and his struggle for air slows. His heartbeat returns to a more normal beat and with it his fears fade. Invoking all his strength he rolls his body onto his back. Far above hangs the clear, blue expanse of a morning sky. The sun is creeping over the earth’s edge destroying the shadows of the night and highlighting the wonder of the world. In the sun’s growing warmth life is brought back to a boy lying on the side of a hill. Here is his long, anticipated new day. As he lay, staring into the depths above, the realisation of what he has thrown away sinks home. His dreams of going to sea, of travelling to exotic places, dreams that had filled his youth, now all because of an irrational panic have disappeared from his grasp.

Sitting up, his mind begins to clear, he rests on his back-stretched arms and views the scene below. The ploughed field falls away down the slope to the city from which he has just run. The uniform that had given him such pride is now torn and dirty. His face is scratched, his palms gazed and bleeding. His blind flight has caused him to quit even before he had begun to make his life his own. In the adrenaline charged panic the only course had been to escape, but his strength had only taken him as far as the city limits.

The world was beginning to stir with the rising sun. In the distant dockyards the flapping of white canvas moves in the morning breeze. He had run from a life within that arena of bare masts, sails and salt tang. Everything had been prepared to that end. Now, here he sits in a barren field.

He realises that it is necessary to return to his ship, with all the courage he can muster and his tail between his legs. Standing up to begin the long walk back to town a image of horror strikes deep into his heart. For no more than a league away sailing in the stiffening breeze glides the ‘Osprey’. Her unmistakable lines and once bare masts are now draped in sun-gilded sails. Her dark hull sliding through easily parting water leaving in its wake a rolling, glowing foam. All being lead by her winged figurehead.

There before his disbelieving eyes is sailing all his hopes. Left behind, stranded by his own making. The only thought which now begins to grip his mind is to try and make whole all that his panic has shattered. Bounding like a frightened animal he leaps down the slope, a scattered but determined plan coalescing. If, he can reach the nearest stable and gain a swift horse, and if he can make the pilot station at Cape May, before the ship clears the harbour he may be able to catch her. If he can go out with the pilot-boat, which he knows always heads out to take off the pilots before all ships make the open sea, he may be able to salvage his life. A lot of ifs and a desperate bid he knows but it is the only way he can think of to make his ship. There is no hope in returning to Philadelphia, he has burnt all those bridges.

His task of finding a fast saddle is not as easy as he first thought. He encounters many rebukes, confronting far too many questions before finally, at the cost of having to leave all he has of value, including his grandfather’s watch, he obtains a horse. Even then the sale would not have gone through if not for the intervention of the farmer’s wife who took pity on him. Once astride the horse and even without the aid of his watch, the displaced naval recruit knows the minutes are quickly slipping away.

As the sun rises higher in the sky, the goal of meeting his ship becomes an all-consuming passion. His intention is to ride overland. A path that will take him to where the Delaware River empties into the sea. While he rides straight across fields the ship will have to negotiate a circuitous route down the many bends of the river. With the wind beginning to rise from the south the riders heart begins to fill further with hope. He knows that with a wind from this quarter the ship will have to tack heavily, and be delayed.

The rider and the wind are now locked in battle, each trying to fulfil their destiny, each seeking to gain victory. Passing over fields, jumping fences, fording streams he rides. Often quizzical townsfolk and farmers look up from their toils unaware of the ensuing battle racing past them. As the rider draws closer to the bay the wind retaliates by increasing in strength and swinging to the west. Though the wind cools the horse’s sides, so great is the rider’s all-consuming passion that the horse and rider are as one. The gulf between the rider and his goal slowly narrows. When he reaches a hill crest and is able to see the Cape his heart rises. There in the middle of Delaware Bay leaning hard to the task of sailing against the strengthening south-westerly is the unmistakable lines of the ‘Osprey’. Cape May is only a few miles off and once more the ship begins to tack in an effort to gain ground. Echoing to the chase the horses hooves bite harder into the ground.

A feeling that he will succeed begins to feed the tiring rider. The pilot station is now close at hand. Resting on the shores edge, a wooden jetty protrudes into the bay, at which the pilot lugger is still tied. The wooden decking echoes the triumphant, hollow sound of the galloping horses’ hooves. Without waiting for the horse to stop the rider rolls from its back. His feet taking him to the small pilot station at the end of the windswept jetty.

A question of, “Hey lad what’s the great rush for?”, turns the rider on his heels. Standing with hands in his pockets and in the lee of the building, the questioner stares at him through the wind. Between breathless gasps the rider asks for the pilot. After a painfully slow response that he has already found in the questioner the man he seeks. The rapidly rising wind whips away half the conversation. Through staccato breaths the rider tells the story of how he is a crewman of the naval ship the ‘Osprey’. The ship now working its way down the bay. How he has missed his ship and now begs to be taken out when the pilot is taken off, thereby regaining his commission. A strong gust of wind whips off the bay as the last card in the game is played.

The pilot, winding his coat tighter and speaks, sounding a death knell. The pilot gazes into the wind and tells the lad that naval ships never need pilots. That they are only ever wanted on merchant vessels. Then pointing to the cape said, “If that was your ship lad you’re too late to catch her”. The rider who had hung on every fateful word turns. The shock of the sight that greets his eyes crushes any hopes. He looks across the bay and his soul is taken by the vision of the ‘Osprey’. Full, crisp, white sails straining, in the wind taking the ship around the cape and out into the open sea. After the sails have long disappeared from sight the lad wanders back to the now cooled and grazing horse. Every hope he had built up lies wrecked and sunk.

At the height of a warm summer’s day the waters of Barnegat Bay would have echoed to laughter. Heavy bathers in equally heavy costumes would be splashing on its edges. The surface would ring to the sculling of cheery fishing boats. But now that winter approaches those warm days have faded. Only memories remain of the many happy hours as a boy he had spent with his family lazing in the reflection of those golden waters. The family’s summer house has been boarded up for some time. It has been neglected these past years. It was to here in a daze that he has somehow found his way. Possibly in search of a happier past, yet nothing remains of those days. The sea has shaken loose the grasp of the summer sun on grey water. It has fallen into a sombre mood beneath a unhappy, days-end sky. Far out past the rolling surf bobs a lone swimmer.

No expression fills his eyes. He had struck out from the shore convinced the sail that he saw was the ship coming back to find him. At first he had swum strongly away from the receding land. The sail he imagined coming ever closer. Then rising to the top of a wave he realises that the false ‘Osprey’ was sailing past.

Cold though the wind is the spray blown off the sea strikes softly against his face. All traces of land fall away and the wind’s gloating has long since ended. The sea now beckons him further from land’s grasp. The shoreline disappears into the sea-spray. The tide had been turning rapidly taking with it all the water which had been hemmed inside the bowl of the bay. Now with the water level dropping out over the bar it carries out all manner of gathered treasures, taking them all swiftly back to the ocean. Tugged along with the flotsam slowly strokes the swimmer. The cold, green water envelopes his body, soaking his torn and tattered clothes. He sheds his heavy, once proudly starched, now waterlogged jacket. The jacket sinks in an ever-decreasing spiral, downward into the darkness. The sea beneath the swimmers feet quickly fades to black. No sound penetrates into the silent, eerie light beneath the waves. The air above is fading with the approaching night. The clouds are deepening into heavier shades while the last, weak, rays of the sun burnishes their edges.

Seeming so clear, the light beneath the waves glows. Darkness is seeping in between the cracks in the clouds. Having turned his eyes from the shore he faces once more the noisy wind. Then face down, into the heart of the sea he sinks. Following the same spiral path as his jacket.

He had always wanted to go to sea, now she welcomes him home with open arms.