Safety and Responsibility Theme Analysis

He told her about the shilling he had found, and the good-luck spell. “It’s the best good-luck spell in the world. But I’ll have to do it tonight, sure, while there’s still a new moon.”

“What if you can’t see the new moon through your window?”

Nat shook his head. “That’s bad luck. I’ll have to wait till Hab is asleep, and then get downstairs in the dark, without knocking over anything, and come out here in the yard.”

Lizza’s eyes got big. “By yourself? Won’t you be afraid?”

“Not very much,” Nat said. “Anyway, I got to do it. Our luck’s just got to change. I heard Granny talking to Mother. She’s worried. She said if things don’t go better now, she didn’t know what we’d do.” Lizza shivered. Nat added quickly, “They will go better, Lizza! Honest they will! Soon as I work my good-luck spell!”

The big man took off his flat black hat and fished a paper from the crown. “Just got one left. For ten per cent of my expectations. What’ll you give me for it?”

“All my money!” Nat laid his shilling in the big man’s hand.

The big man stared at the shilling. “Well, I’ll be a copper-bottomed, bevel-edged…Most money you ever had, eh?”

“Yes, sir!”

“And you come from a long line of sea captains? Who are you?”

“Nat Bowditch.”

“Captain Bowditch’s boy, eh? I remember when the Polly went aground. Same day the war started. April 19, 1775.”

“Granny said it ‘took the tuck’ out of Father.” Nat told the big man about his good-luck spell that he was going to work, only the nor’easter came, and hid the moon.

The big man rubbed his bristling chin. He looked at the shilling. “It’s a bargain, Mate. But keep it a secret!

Back in his own room, Nat stared at the Latin books. Could he do it? Well, he could try! One thing, he thought, if he ever got a chance to go to Harvard, he’d need to know Latin. Just now a chance to go to Harvard seemed farther away than ever. But, he told himself, you never could tell what might happen. If the chance came, he’d be ready.

By the next summer, he had learned enough Latin to begin to translate the Principia. It seemed to him that he lived in two worlds now. One was the world of the chandlery, where he kept books and sold marlinespikes, belaying pins, and hemp rope. The other was the world of the universe, where he translated Newton’s Principia—a word at a time, until he had read another sentence. Sometimes he spent a whole evening working on two or three sentences.

Elizabeth studied Nat gravely. “Funny to think you were young once, isn’t it? I suppose you seem older because of your brains. People say figures just run out of your ears. But I don’t see any.” Then, in a swift change of mood, she said, “Mary will be awfully happy here, won’t she? I mean—she knows how to be happy. Being happy takes a lot of practice, don’t you think?”

Lizza said, “Go tell David that, Elizabeth. He’ll love it.”

When Elizabeth had gone, Nat whistled softly. “How do you keep up with her?”

Lizza smiled. “She’s a dear child. But she does say the oddest things. Sometimes I think she must have been born knowing them. I tell her she has eyes in the back of her heart.”

Nat smiled. “And she says odd things? I think you’re quite a pair.”

“Do you suppose Father has them already?”

[…] “Of course! […].” Then he apologized quickly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bark at you.”

“I know. I’m just like a chair you stumble over in the dark,” Elizabeth said. “It isn’t the chair’s fault, but you kick it anyhow.”

Nat blinked. “What are you talking about?”

“Your brain. It’s too fast. So you stumble on other people’s dumbness. And—you want to kick something.”

Nat felt his face get hot. “But I shouldn’t.”

Elizabeth agreed. “No, you shouldn’t, because even if people are dumb, they aren’t chairs, are they? They do have feelings.”

“Lizza was right,” Nat said, “You do have eyes in the back of your heart. Come on over here and I'll show you how your father uses parallel rulers.” He smiled. “And you may ask all the questions you want to, and I promise not to bark.”

“When you’re off soundings, you’re on your own. I’ve given you suggestions for trading when you reach Bourbon. But when you get there, you may find my suggestions aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. You’ll use your own judgment. There are only two things I expressly forbid. You’ll never break a law in any port you enter. And you’ll never—never enter into slave trade.” He leaned forward, gripping the arms of his chair. “I’d rather lose any ship I own than to have it become a slaver! There is no excuse I’d accept. Even if a slaver attacked you, overpowered you, and forced you to carry a cargo of slaves—even that would be no excuse! You’d go down fighting—but you wouldn’t turn a Derby ship into a slaver!”

Before Nat realized what he was doing, he clapped his hands […].

Why, [Nat] wondered, had he ever wanted to come to sea? Why did any man choose this life?

It was all right maybe for a man who became a captain—but what about men like Keeler and Jensen—who spent their lives before the fo’c’sle? Why would they live like this for salt beef, hardtack, and twelve dollars a month?

The sixth night, just before midnight, Nat went on deck for his watch. The storm had ended; the sky was glittered with stars.

Nat was silent for a moment. “Maybe, sir, it’s because I want to pay a debt I owe to the men who helped me; men like Sam Smith and Dr. Bentley and Dr. Prince and Nathan Read. Maybe that’s why. Or maybe it’s just because of the men. We have good men before the mast, Captain Prince. Every man of them could be a first mate—if he knew navigation.”

Captain Prince muttered something under his breath. “An odd business!” he said. “But I’ve never had less trouble with a crew. Carry on, Mr. Bowditch!”

[…] Someone tapped on the door, and Monsieur Bonnefoy entered, smiling. “I have a confession to make […]. I was eavesdropping through the skylight […]. Monsieur Bowditch—he has the magnificent spirit! It is worthy of the French Revolution! Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!”

Prince looked at the paper covered with Nat’s tiny figures. “All that—to find one error? And there are probably two hundred thousand figures in those tables. Maybe that’s why he didn’t check every figure, Mr. Bowditch.”

“But he should have! Mathematics is nothing if it isn’t accurate! Men’s lives depend on the accuracy of those tables! It’s—it’s—criminal to have a mistake in a book like this! Do you hear me! It’s criminal! Men’s lives depend on these figures!” Nat hadn’t realized how he was shouting until he stopped. In the heavy silence he heard the bong-bong of the ship’s bell.

Captain Prince said, “Eight bells. Your watch, Mr. Bowditch. Men’s lives depend on that, too.”

From Salem, eh? Three cheers! You’re the first Salem ship ever to enter Manila Harbor. How was it around the Horn?”

Prince said, “We came by the Cape and Sunda Strait. The Cape’s not so bad—but I can’t recommend Sunda Strait. We’ve spent ten days getting through it—from the eight to the seventeenth of September.”

“You came from Sunda Strait since the seventeenth? In fifteen days?” Riddle asked. “Man alive, that’s navigation!”

Captain Prince shrugged. “Not when you’re sure of your longitude. Just a simple matter of mathematics. You…” He stopped, and glared at Nat.

Zack Selby sneered. “You’d think he was running a whole fleet of ships, single-handed, to hear her take on.”

Sour grapes, Nat thought. Zack’s still before the mast, and he’s ten years older than Lem. He said, “I’m glad for Lem, Amanda, but I didn’t do it for him. He did it for himself. He worked and studied harder than any man in the crew.”

“That’s just it, sir!” Amanda said. “Nobody else ever got him to stick his nose in a book!”

Zack sneered again. “Books! Salem men have come to a pretty pass when they have to sail by books! Time was they could double the Horn with nothing but log, lead, and lookout.”

“That’s right, Nat agreed. “They doubled the Horn. And sometimes they got home again. But what about all the ships that don’t come home? If ‘sailing by book’ makes men a little safer, what’s wrong with it?”

Now the meaning of the strange sailing time dawned on the crew. Nat looked at Mr. Cheevers and saw anger, amusement, and respect in his eyes. But the faces of the men before the mast were frightening to watch. Not two of the lot, Nat figured, had had the slightest intention of sailing on the Astrea. They had doubtless heard of the clever desertion of the other crew. They’d planned the same stunt, signed on for a square meal and a month’s pay. Now they faced months at sea—the terrors of the Cape—the grilling passage through the Sunda Strait—a layover in Batavia—where men died like flies.

Their baffled rage was naked on their faces.

“It seems Moore had figured 1800 was a Leap Year. So he had the calculations for the moon off. Seems like an awful little mistake in a book makes a big mistake in miles. That’s what I heard the mate say when we was trying to get off the reef. I don’t understand much about it. Don’t want to, I guess. You see, Mr. Bowditch, if he hadn’t been depending on the book, he’d have been sounding. Log, lead, and lookout. That’s the way to sail […;] we tried to run the boats in [… but] couldn’t see the rocks. When I come aground, I was the only one there.”

Nat said, “You’d have been safer heading straight out from shore.”

“Yeah,” Tim agreed. “I guess that ought to be in a book, too.” Then he flushed. “I didn’t mean it like it sounded […]. But—but—a book ain’t no good.”

Polly stopped smiling. “Aunt Mary, think of it this way; if a ship was aground off Salem Harbor—say on Rising States Ledge—or the Haste—every able-bodied man in Salem would be out there trying to save the crew, wouldn’t he?”

“Of course!”

“And the women wouldn’t try to stop them, would they? No matter how long and hard they worked? No matter if they were risking their lives?”

“No-o-o-o,” Mrs. Boardman admitted, “when a ship is in danger, men do everything they can.”

“Well, every ship is in danger, every time it sails,” Polly said. “But the more men know about navigation, the safer our ships will be, won’t they? Nat isn’t working to save just one ship. He’s working to make every ship safer every time it goes to sea. Every ship in America!” Polly was really warming to her idea. “Every ship in the world!”

Lem growled. “When did you last shoot the sun?”

“About three days ago.”

Lem gulped. “Three days? Seventy-two hours? And since then?”

“It’s simple mathematics, Lem. At such a speed, in so many hours, you log so many miles in a given direction. It’s—”

“Yeah,” Lem growled. “Seventy-two hours through the Roaring Forties. Seventy-two hours by dead reckoning, and then you enter Salem Harbor. Why, you…[…]” He slumped in a chair and stared at Nat.

Nat winked at Polly. “Have you any idea what’s the matter with him?”

Polly’s eyes danced. “He just doesn’t understand about you and mathematics, dear. Two plus two is four. It comes out right, doesn’t it?”