The End of the World and Beyond Read online

  The end of the world and beyond

  Continues

  The Unexpected Life of Oliver Cromwell Pitts: Being an Absolutely Accurate Autobiographical Account of My Follies, Fortunes & Fate

  Written by Himself

  Avi

  Algonquin Young Readers 2019

  For my sister, Emily

  Contents

  The Year 1725

  Chapter One: In Which I Experience a Terrible Mid-Atlantic Storm.

  Chapter Two: Which Reveals How I, a Freeborn English Boy, Was Exiled from My Home, Put in Chains, and Placed Aboard a Convict Ship.

  Chapter Three: Contains a Tiny Chapter about an Enormous Subject.

  Chapter Four: In Which I Board a Convict Ship.

  Chapter Five: In Which, for Those Desirous of Embarking on an Ocean Cruise, I Provide a Brief Description of Its Many Delights.

  Chapter Six: In Which I Reveal My Life as a Convict.

  Chapter Seven: The Affrightful Storm.

  Chapter Eight: In the Bottommost Part of the Ship.

  Chapter Nine: In Which Something Startling Happens.

  Chapter Ten: A Small Chapter in Which a Huge Question Is Asked.

  Chapter Eleven: In Which a Momentous Change Takes Place.

  Chapter Twelve: My Arrival in the New World.

  America

  Chapter Thirteen: In Which I Reach America.

  Chapter Fourteen: In Which I Have a Dangerous Desire.

  Chapter Fifteen: The Escape and What Came of It.

  Chapter Sixteen: In Which We Are Given Advice How to Sell Ourselves.

  Chapter Seventeen: In Which I Am Offered for Sale and What Came of It.

  Chapter Eighteen: In Which My Hope Darkens and the Reader Is Offered a Warning.

  Chapter Nineteen: In Which I Pass Through Annapolis at the End of a Leash.

  Chapter Twenty: The Joys of Being in America.

  Chapter Twenty-One: In Which I Greet an Astonishing Visitor.

  Chapter Twenty-Two: In Which I Seek (Once Again) to Escape.

  Chapter Twenty-Three: In Which Mr. Sandys Does Me a Questionable Favor.

  Chapter Twenty-Four: My New Master Takes Possession of Me.

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Which Contains Alarming Information about My Master.

  Chapter Twenty-Six: What the Servant Girl Told Me.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: In Which I Spend My First Night in the New World.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: In Which I Put My Reading Skills to Use.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: In Which I Journey to My New Home.

  Chapter Thirty: In Which I View My New Home and Learn What It Was.

  Chapter Thirty-One: In Which I Meet Bara.

  Chapter Thirty-Two: My First Time with Bara.

  Chapter Thirty-Three: A Brief Digression about Tobacco.

  Chapter Thirty-Four: How I Survived My First Day of Labor.

  Chapter Thirty-Five: In Which I Portray a Singular Kind of Life.

  Chapter Thirty-Six: In Which I Look upon the Strangest World.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: In Which I Run Away.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: In Which I Receive a Spark of Hope.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine: In Which I Tell You What My Days Were Like.

  Chapter Forty: In Which I Share What I Learned about Bara.

  Chapter Forty-One: Excursion upon the Bay, Wherein a Fish Is Caught and a Runaway Plan Is Prepared.

  Chapter Forty-Two: A Mysterious Occurrence in the Night.

  Chapter Forty-Three: What Befell Us in Annapolis.

  Chapter Forty-Four: My Search for Philadelphia.

  Chapter Forty-Five: In Which I Pass through Annapolis and What I Discover.

  Chapter Forty-Six: Which Contains More Unexpected Things.

  Chapter Forty-Seven: In Which I Am Lost.

  Chapter Forty-Eight: The Ever-shifting Dark.

  Chapter Forty-Nine: In the River.

  Chapter Fifty: In Which We Travel Deeper into Darkness.

  Chapter Fifty-One: The Knife.

  Chapter Fifty-Two: The Hog Pen.

  Chapter Fifty-Three: In Which We Flee for Our Lives.

  Chapter Fifty-Four: The Swamp.

  Chapter Fifty-Five: In Which We Move through the Swamp, Where a Frightful Thing Happens.

  Chapter Fifty-Six: In Which We Continue Our Flight through the Wretchedness That Was the Swamp.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven: In Which, Within the Swamp, We Make a Huge Discovery.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight: The Swamp Man.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine: The Secret People.

  Chapter Sixty : In Which My Life Turns a Different Way.

  Chapter Sixty-One: In Which I, Quite Alone, Travel into the Swamp.

  Chapter Sixty-Two: My Return to Fitzhugh’s House and What I Discovered.

  Chapter Sixty-Three: My Voyage up the Chesapeake Bay.

  Chapter Sixty-Four: Ever Closer to Philadelphia.

  Chapter Sixty-Five: In Which I Finally Come to Philadelphia Only to Experience Yet Another Unexpected Change.

  Chapter Sixty-Six: In Which I Am Required to Go Before Another Judge and What Happened.

  Chapter Sixty-Seven: In Which My Life Has Even More Unexpected Events.

  A Note from the Author

  The Year 1725

  Chapter One

  In Which I Experience a Terrible Mid-Atlantic Storm.

  The Owners Goodwill—a two-masted ship—was in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean when it shuddered and heeled hard over as if attacked by a huge sea monster. It was, in fact, a powerful storm that had swept down upon us. Its abrupt and tremendous ferocity spun our vessel and us convict passengers all topsy-turvy. Since iron chains had been clamped round our necks and then bolted to the lower deck planking, this wild whirling of the ship caused us great pain, as if we were being hanged by iron rather than rope.

  In the hurly-burly, the excrement buckets broke loose and our entire area, as well as we convicts, began to stink like the filthiest of muck-pits. To add to our woefulness, some of the overhead planking sprang apart so that we were drenched by numb-cold seawater. The darkness on our deck also meant we didn’t know the hour.

  You may be sure my fellow felons and I would have much preferred the freedom to stand on the main deck to confront the danger and our God. Terror (and misery) was further enlarged because the hatchway leading up had been fastened shut in fear that we prisoners might mutiny.

  “Unchain us,” someone shouted.

  “Let us go free,” called another.

  “Don’t let me perish,” I cried.

  Though the tumbling of the ship continued to increase even as our yells and screams of desperation grew louder, there was no response, much less rescue. Indeed, as the clamors of the tempest became ever more riotous, and the ship’s movements still wilder, it appeared for a certainty that our ship would founder. To express our circumstance in blunter words: the Owners Goodwill was about to sink to the bottom of the sea with every one of us—including me—trapped within.

  In awful anguish, my thoughts went to my home on the southern coast of England, where I was born and lived my contented youth. I thought of my beloved sister, Charity. I recalled those times I spent with my frustrating father, who liked to spurt worldly sayings. One of those expressions, “He who is born to be drowned will never be hanged,” now filled my head. For the truth is, just prior to my voyage, I had been sentenced to be hanged for thievery from the Tyburn gallows in London, England. Though I am pleased to inform you that I avoided that dread unfortunacy, it seemed as if there, in the middle of the Atlantic, I was destined to drown.

  How did I—a boy of twelve years of age—ever come to be in such a desperate situation?

 
; Chapter Two

  Which Reveals How I, a Freeborn English Boy, Was Exiled from My Home, Put in Chains, and Placed Aboard a Convict Ship.

  No one knows his or her life better than the person who has lived it. Yet, having previously related the true events of my young life in the first volume of this autobiography, * I have been called “bedlam-brained.” Some have gone so far as to claim I invented it all, as if I were some scribbling book-breeder so desperate for money I tumbled into fiction. Yet, by my faith, be assured that all of what I set down on these pages—my books of misadventure, if you will—is as heart-whole as I can recall it. Yes, it was all unexpected, but I have written it down as I truly lived it.

  To remind you of my situation:

  As an ordinary boy of twelve years, living in the small town of Melcombe Regis in southwest England where I had been born, I woke on November 12, 1724, to find my family home all but destroyed by a fierce, fast-moving storm. To add to this catastrophe, my father had vanished, I knew not where. As for my sister, Charity, she was in London. (My mother, alas, died when I was born, so I have no memory of her at all.)

  Being deserted, and desperate to feed myself, I took some twenty-three shillings from what I truly believed was an abandoned shipwreck—which it was not. Nonetheless I was put into the children’s poorhouse where I was much abused. But I escaped and headed for London in search of my older and beloved sister, Charity, that she might—as she always had done—take care of me.

  I had barely fled Melcombe Regis when I was caught by a Mr. Sandys, a lawless, fierce rogue, who in turn eased me into the hands of the masked highwayman Captain Hawkes. Hawkes, an underling of England’s most notorious criminal, Jonathan Wild, enrolled me as one of his shoulder shams, which is to say, a thief.

  In London, I found my sister, but, to my great distress, she had become a common pickpocket. We escaped Mr. Wild and the law, searched and found our unsatisfactory father, in hopes he would solve our momentous difficulties. Instead, the three of us were arrested and brought to trial at the Old Bailey Courthouse. At that time we were all found guilty and sentenced to hang upon the gallows.

  We surely would have danced at the end of that dismal rope if Father—a lawyer, whose knowledge of law was deep—had not bribed his Lordship, the honorable judge. That bribe freed my father and changed my punishment and Charity’s: Instead of being hanged, she and I were to be transported to the American plantations thousands of miles from home where we would be enslaved for seven long years. Our sole comfort was that we would remain together.

  On the day we were to board the oceangoing ships, Charity and I were bound together, and midst a great parade of prisoners, were marched through London streets. Though we were to become slaves for the duration of our sentences, Londoners exhibited their famous sense of humor by calling us convicts “His Majesty’s seven-year passengers.”

  None of us felons enjoyed the jest.

  Being linked by iron, and love, Charity and I walked hand in hand. Insofar as Father came freely by our side, I asked him where he would go.

  To my surprise he said, “Once I have raised enough funds I intend to go to America and join you so we can be reunited.”

  We were led down to the Thames River embankment. At the last moment, Charity and I were parted and put on separate ships, presumably bound to different ports in America. Desperate, I reached for her, but all I could hold on to was a bit of lace from her sleeve cuff. My last cry to her was, “I will find you, Charity! I promise!” And I waved that bit of lace like a tiny flag.

  I do not think anyone saw it.

  * The Unexpected Life of Oliver Cromwell Pitts: Being an Absolutely Accurate Autobiographical Account of My Follies, Fortunes & Fate

  Chapter Three

  Contains a Tiny Chapter about an Enormous Subject.

  It was my sister, Charity, some six years older than me, who, in the absence of my mother, had raised me by hand. Truly, Charity was the light that illuminated my young life and in return I loved her beyond any other mortal. Ever patient, ever loving, she taught me to be cheerful, optimistic, and kindly, come what may. People may mock what they choose to call these gentle virtues, but I have endeavored to live my life with these qualities.

  Thus, when my sister and I were separated, she to one unknown destination, I to another, it was the most unbearable moment of my life. That bit of lace was all I had of her. Oh, how I clung to it. Oh, how I wept over it.

  It should come as no surprise, therefore, that my desire, my longing to find Charity, became the primary motivation of my new life. That incentive, that need, may be considered a footnote to every sentence, page, and action in this book.

  As to whether I achieved my goal of reuniting with my beloved sister, you shall have to read my book to find out.

  Chapter Four

  In Which I Board a Convict Ship.

  In London, despite a torrent of tears over my separation from my sister, I was obliged to board the Owners Goodwill—a name, I assure you, I did not invent. A brig of some eighty tons, the ship had two masts, was square-sterned, deep-waisted, and steered by wheel. Her captain was Elijah Krets, a spite-tempered, hufty-tufty man, well suited for the ship’s previous satanic service, that of a chattel slave ship. Now he and the Owners Goodwill were in the lucrative if lamentable business of transporting British convicts to North America. His principal cargo was ninety felons, one of which was me.

  When I came upon the vessel, I was registered as being safe (“safe” surely being the most ironical of words) on board. That allowed the ship’s business investors to be paid five pounds by the Crown treasury to transport me to the new world.

  My father had managed to slip a few shillings into my pocket just before I was taken from the English shore. Nevertheless, the Owners Goodwill’s first mate, a bulbous bully by the name of Mr. Babington, searched all of us convicts—a thief stealing from thieves—and relieved me (among others) of my cash. “You’ll have no need to purchase anything,” he told me. “We shall fill all your needs.”

  I was so distraught by my leave-taking from Charity that it came into my head to free myself by leaping off the boat. No sooner did I have that thought than one of the other convicts did what I was considering. That is, having sufficiently starved in prison, his thin wrists allowed him to slip his chains and attempt a leap to liberty. But before he could achieve his vaulting ambition, he was blocked, and his ill-considered craving for freedom was brutally beaten out of him by Mr. Babington.

  After observing this valuable lesson in shipside custom, the rest of us convicts—including me—were easily forced to the tween deck. This was the level between the open main deck and the even deeper cargo space—the hold. The ceiling over our heads was no more than four and a half feet high, the deck twenty-eight feet wide and fifty-five feet long. It was as if we were being fitted into a group coffin.

  Because I was a boy, and somewhat small for my age, the low-slung ceiling of the deck was of no particular hindrance to me—assuming I could stand. But it was agonizing to those who were adults. Their souls were already stooped; now their bodies were too.

  My chains were linked to six adult convicts, a group called a “mess.” Our padlocked iron shackles were also affixed to the deck planks, so that our movements were much restricted.

  How did I ever come to this? I asked myself ten million times as I clutched that bit of Charity’s lace and used it to wipe away my tears. Where was my beloved sister being sent? All well to promise to find her, but how? And where? Would we be near each other, or far apart? Needless to say, I had no answers to these despairing questions. That said, I do believe my disquiet about her allowed me to think less of myself and thereby reduced my pain.

  Meanwhile, Captain Krets issued his commands: His crew merrily sang up the Owners Goodwill’s anchor, unfurled her sails, and caught a breeze. The ship dropped down the Thames River, paused at Plymouth, found
a southwesterly wind, and cruised out upon the open, swelling sea, and headed for America, which in my mind was but another word for the unknown.

  Once I was on the ship, I had no idea where I was going or what would happen to me when and if I reached my unnamed destination. My journey’s end could have been cold Newfoundland, or the hot West Indies, or anywhere in between. Upon reaching the colonies I would be sold to a local free citizen who would become my absolute master for at least seven years. What labor he might command me to do, I had no idea.

  The law said that if I returned to England before my time was out, I would, without further ado, be hanged. My only remedy was to be fully pardoned by a judge and I was quite sure no judge sailed with us.

  Further, it was shared knowledge among my fellow prisoners that one of ten convicts died on the voyage to America. My messmates informed me that just as many would perish of illness soon after landing in the colonies. The climate was that cruel. “Seasoning” was the gentle term for avoiding an early death.

  In other words, my life was at great hazard. If, at that moment—to return to an earlier metaphor—I thought of my future as a book and chanced to open these pages so as to skip to the ending—as some impatient readers do—I would have been unable to find so much as one word of comfort printed therein. I was required to turn the painful pages of my life one by one so as to experience my forbidding fate.

  I humbly beg you to do the same.

  Chapter Five

  In Which, for Those Desirous of Embarking on an Ocean Cruise, I Provide a Brief Description of Its Many Delights.

  Nothing assures us of the rightfulness of the world as our own good fortune. By equal measure, I have come to learn that those who do not suffer, judge those who do suffer do so because of their own faults. Therefore—so the belief goes—those who have been punished by life (or the English law, which is harsher) are deserving of their punishment. Indeed, the common policy is that more suffering will cure such persons of their misery. It would be as if you went to a surgeon with a broken leg, and he decided the best cure would be to break your other leg. Such is the enlightened way of the modern world.