Jack Book 2: Murder on the High Seas

Chapter 1 Corruption

Chapter 2 Alone

Chapter 3 The Infinite Sea

Chapter 4 The Captain

Chapter 5 War Plans

Chapter 6 The Chief Mate

Chapter 7 The Bribe

Chapter 8 Voice in the Wilderness

Chapter 9 The Plot

Chapter 10 Man Overboard

Chapter 11 Eulogy

Chapter 12 Hurricane

Chapter 13 Kingston, Jamaica

Chapter 14 Jamaican Nights

Chapter 15 Love and Rebellion

Chapter 16 Spying Aboard Ship

Chapter 17 No Show

Chapter 18 ‘Darkies in The Hold’

Chapter 19 Treachery

Chapter 20 Interrogation

Chapter 21 Unexpected Slaves Aboard

Chapter 22 The Innkeeper

Chapter 23 Sailing to Cuba

Chapter 24 Jenkins

Chapter 25 Jenkins’ Spy Network

Chapter 26 Muddying the Waters

Chapter 27 Spies

Chapter 28 Captain Addresses the Crew

Chapter 29 The Trial

Chapter 30 Port-au-Prince, Hispaniola

Chapter 31 Time to Move

Chapter 32 The Plan

Chapter 33 The Midnight Raider

Chapter 34 Freedom

Chapter 35 Midnight

Chapter 36 Change of Plans

Chapter 37 Blessed Night

Chapter 38 Daybreak on the Sea

Chapter 39 The Storm

Author Note

About Me

Sample Chapter Book 3

Teachers: Free Lesson Plans

"The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much."

- Marlow, The Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

Chapter 1 Corruption

Master Jerome Whittemore was in good spirits. At last, he was on his way again to the deep and open expanse of the sea after what seemed an eternity on land. He hated being confined on land too long. Men become locked up there, cultivated, pruned like an English rose garden, circumscribed, attending religiously, monotonously, to the social niceties and conventions, moralities, ethics and laws which spring from daily integration and social intercourse, he reflected. The sea brings a certain forgetfulness, freedom.

At sea for any length of time and a man will become an island unto himself - formidable, impenetrable - a rock jutting out from the water but anchored in the deep and surrounded below with exotic life and above by limitless sky. Men go to sea to touch the infinite, the face of God, to remember who they are and from whence they came. It was hard to imagine man’s inhumanity in the face of such beauty. But that is the human condition for you, thought Whittemore.

Men find brief moments away from the ordinary, touching the divine before corrupting it, he thought. Like the pursuit of the whales, truly one of the great wonders of the deep, and yet men mercilessly hunt them down for oil and profit. Why not leave them be? No, they cannot or will not. Men are driven by greed for more – always more – they seem to never be satisfied right up until the day when life starts to subtract its gifts and the man’s health withers like a dying vine in the forest.

Chapter 2 Alone

After Jack and Jeremy went below deck, the former schoolmaster sat on a roll of hemp rope at the bow beneath a lit hurricane lamp whose dim flame at least allowed him to write in his diary. He felt the ocean spray on his face. He loved the feel of the ship rolling up and then down. The air here is so clean and salty-smelling, he thought. "Jeremy, Jack and I stood moments ago in awe of the expanse of starry sky and water, and of the gulf that separated each of us from one another and from the land, remaking us in that moment into lonely, remote islands in the turbulent ocean of eternity.

How is it that Jack scored his great victory over me – his enemy - and now it’s like we’re friends? Two days ago, we hated one another as mortal enemies might. Now he’s part of my plan. We found something in common. Soon - maybe just a few weeks - there’ll be a living hell in the airless, cramped hold for the darkies that the ship would carry. I have to try to stop it. But not now. Tonight, though, is a moment for breaking the chains of ordinary being. Like being in virgin territory, untouched. I’ve instructed them to remember what they see and hear on this devil ship.

Chapter 3 The Infinite Sea

On Sunday Master Whittemore gave the most troubling sermon I had ever heard. I think he made enemies, telling them exactly what they didn’t want to hear. Later, I found the only copy. I will say here what it said. But first let me note that the men had massed on the open deck beneath a drizzling, ominous sky that hinted of a hurricane as the ship sailed off the coast of Cuba heading south to Jamaica.

The crew and even Captain Pendleton were anticipating what this sea preacher - who rode a half dozen other slave ships in times past - had to say. The captain watched from his lofty position at the forecastle with his chief mate, Robert Hawkins, a smirk on his face, drinking his coffee from a tin, comfortable in the assumption that Master Whittemore’s views of slavery still comported with his own. The captain was in for a rude awakening.

In a thunderous voice, Master Whittemore, looking skyward with his arms stretched out from his shoulders perpendicular to the deck, palms turned toward the grey skies, roared, "Slavery is the blackest of all evils because, not only do the enslavers rob others of their freedom, their spirit, their families and even their lives, but they first rob and enslave themselves, bowing down on their own diseased bellies to the false god of greed.

Three years I preached to dirty slavers like yourselves on the open waters of the great oceans about what I deceitfully claimed were the great benefits of slavery to civilization. Know now what it, unfortunately, took a lifetime for me to learn - that slavery is a curse and participation in it will leave you hollow and cold as death. Awake from this ignorance as I finally did, and cease the worship of the god of greed. Find yourselves work ye can be proud of men! the preacher said.

About half of the stunned crew at that point walked away. One sailor said with a scowl, This here be the wrong place and the wrong message mister. You ain’t no preacher. You’re just some crazy abolitionist. Com’on men! Let’s get away from this fool!

But Master Whittemore’s voice thundered even louder so that as they were skulking away they turned around, realizing there was no place topside they could escape the sound of master’s booming voice. Wind gusts drove the drizzle sideways.

In the name of money men will commit any abomination! the preacher shouted, now on an unstoppable course like a ship pulled into the gale. Mates, I used to preach for slavery on vessels like this one. I even spent some time on this bucket as some of you may remember. Three years. After that, I became a teacher. I came back because I found out what I really knew all along – that slavery is a curse upon the human race and destroys men’s spirit.

The crew became uneasy and several looked up to the forecastle to see how the captain would respond. But he just looked on, smoking his pipe, and you wondered what he was thinking.

Master continued, The sea itself is part of a divinity that is infinite, yet we enslave men in the midst of such an awesome presence? It’s a crime against nature, it is! At one point in your lives as merchant sailors, I know you all felt this divinity. It is not too late to feel it again. It’s in you and it’s out there! he said pointing to the sea.

"The sea lanes are vital to the slave trade as you know. No one knows that more than us. It is not too late to reject the high wages you receive, the thirty pieces of silver paid to betray your fellow man. It is not too late to refuse to become a part of the evil trade in human beings. Slave ships must cease to run - they are illegal in the United States of America and in other countries. Men save yourselves and your souls and abide by the law. Slavery is as much a disease of modern life as it was in antiquity and it runs dead against the idea of a free America. No man of courage would permit another to be enslaved. Land bound men seek out social intercourse and ceaseless activity to stave off the feeling of remoteness and isolation and, unlike you all, are afraid to plumb the infinite depths and heights that confront one eventually at sea. You love your freedom and to you, it is life itself, so why do you chain your fellow men and deny them any freedom at all? Slavery is driven by greed, profit and a contempt for others because they seem different. A man enslaves others partly to make himself important. He fears to see his own un-importance. He is afraid to see his own unimportant part in the great drama. Slavery is a crutch in our southern society. Many don’t own slaves, but still say, ‘My life might be bad, but I’m much better off than the Negro slaves’

It gives them a false importance. It’s a false god because someone is forced to be lower than us, and we’re somehow better because of it? We foolishly believe we’re elevating ourselves in that way. It’s the reverse. We destroy ourselves because we attack our own dignity. Slavery isn’t any healthier for white people than for black. It’s a disease for humanity, the preacher said.

To be truly free you must value freedom for all men. If you support enslaving others, you are more the slave than the Negro slaves because you chose your form of slavery, which is moral enslavement, Whittemore said. "Men come to their deaths not out of choice usually but greatly fearing for the loss of their freedom and self-importance ‘tis better to blend into the infinite hoping to expand one’s awareness in a final noble act. Live nobly, I say to you. Listen to the soft wind blowing in the infinite sky and be not afraid to touch that which has no beginning nor end and into which we will all merge one day. And dare to allow all others to do the same. The currents will continue their infinite journey around the world washing up onto the continents and back again toward some other shore in some distant land. See the wonder of the infinite sea and forget thyself for a moment - gaze upon eternity and be grateful as to your existence.

The waves will continue to wash the shores and cleanse the earth no matter how much man wars against himself and his predicament, he said. "Each starfish, each eel, and every urchin should be grateful for their existence. They may never be again. But they exist now. They share the magical gift of life. Rejoice then and be glad of your abundance rather than harping upon your insufficiency which is sheer ingratitude. To rejoice not is to be almost dead and therefore dangerous and ignorant. No truly happy man, steeped in the gladness of his being alive, would think of enslaving a man or animal. Such a man is a grateful one. What would happen to a most exotic tropical flower such as the delicate orchid, arrayed in its peak splendor, if suddenly it resolved to be ungrateful? It would lose its mystery and much of its life