The Gods of Newport by John Jakes

Author:John Jakes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2006-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

The carriage collected them on schedule. Mozart politely handed Tessa into the closed interior, then joined the driver on the high front seat. The heavy black Percheron pulled them south through the clatter of lower Manhattan, to the half-oval where omnibuses and private vehicles discharged passengers at Battery Landing. It was a fine, crisp day, azure skies without a cloud, breeze from the northwest bracing rather than cold. Tessa shielded her eyes against the glitter of the harbor. “Good morning, sir, madam,” said a young man in seaman’s garb at the head of a gangway descending to a float.

Sam took Tessa’s elbow to guide her down the ramp. He indicated a small open boat. “Naphtha launch. She belongs to Invincible.”

Tessa followed Sam’s pointing hand. Amidst the panorama of steam freighters, tugs, fishing trawlers, catboats, a lumbering ferry, a sleek, blue-hulled steam yacht rode at anchor. Not one usually shaken by the large or the extraordinary, this time Tessa couldn’t help putting a gloved hand to her rounded mouth. “Good heavens, Sam, is that yours?”

“Indeed it is. A hundred and ninety feet, three hundred tons displacement. She’s all the way from the Laird yards in Liverpool. She can make seventeen knots.”

“Did you need something so big?”

“To cross the ocean safely and travel the Mediterranean or the Baltic, yes. Come on, Bully will be waiting.” He handed her into the launch whose small naphtha-fueled engine was put-puttering comfortably.

“Who’s Bully?” she asked.

Mozart said, “Our sailing master. Captain Jasper Jelks. He prefers the name Bully. You may have trouble understanding his English; he’s a Yorkshireman.”

They bobbed away from the landing in the launch that needed only an ordinary seaman, not a licensed engineer, to pilot her. Tessa held her hat and squinted against the breeze. A round-faced, splendidly mustached gentleman in nautical uniform waited at the rail of the enormous two-masted vessel. Steam yachts of this size were owned only by the richest men who didn’t mind spending thirty to fifty thousand a year for wages and upkeep. She’d read all about such floating palaces but never dreamed she’d visit one.

Over the rush of wind and water he said, “A steamer has a big advantage. You’re never at the mercy of weather. You don’t sit becalmed for hours or days. When you expect to arrive, you do. Isn’t she gorgeous?”

“Oh, she is,” Tessa agreed, thrilled by the sight of the anchored yacht, its fore and aft deckhouses silhouetted against the towering magnificence of Bartholdi’s statue of “Liberty Enlightening the World” on Bedloe’s Island.

The portly Captain Bully Jelks assisted Tessa on her precarious trip up the ladder to the main deck. His crew, mostly young men with bushy mustaches, lined up behind him. “We carry a complement of twenty-five,” he explained. “All are present but our engineer, our chef and our two stewards readying your breakfast. While you dine and get acquainted with the yacht we shall cruise up the East River into Long Island Sound—calm and sheltered water all the way to Block Island.”

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