Chapter 1
Ship Shares
The few cents Kevin Gilmore earned picking up chips and throwing them into the bin at the end of the ferry dock wouldn’t buy him a sweet cake. He had to take the money home to help his mother pay their rent.
He removed his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead. If only he could get a real job hauling firewood for the paddlewheel steamer, he could make a difference. But the older boys got those jobs.
Two of them swaggered toward him. “Hey, Gilmore, pick up those scraps before I trip over ’em.” The larger boy pretended to stumble and staggered toward Kevin. Kevin tried to dodge out of his way, but the older boy bumped him with his shoulder and pushed him off the dock and into the water.
Kevin panicked as he fell. He couldn’t swim! Then, splash! The water closed over him, and everything seemed to happen in slow motion. Thousands of glimmering silver bubbles rose toward the bright green above while he sank into the dark. He was going to die. He was certain of it. He had always been afraid of drowning, and now it was happening to him.
He slashed at the water with his hands, clawing, grabbing, trying to climb back up to the surface. How did people swim? If he’d only learned. Then suddenly, without knowing how he’d managed it, he burst from the water, sputtering and yelling for help. He reached toward the dock, but his head went under again, filling his mouth and lungs with saltwater.
He bobbed up again, choking and gasping for breath. He was drowning. He knew it. He couldn’t get his breath.
His hand struck something sharp as he swung his arms around. It stung, but it had been solid. Kevin turned his body and grabbed. It was the piling for the dock, covered with sharp barnacles. He pulled himself to the wooden post, clinging so tightly that blood oozed from both hands where the sharp shells cut his fingers.
From above came a roar of laughter.
Kevin looked up into the faces of the boys who had pushed him off the dock. “You want a rope?” one of them called.
Still coughing out seawater, he nodded.
Moments later a thick rope dangled by his side. Then he heard the boys running up the dock. Kevin grasped the rope and painfully pulled himself hand over hand as he “walked” up the piling. He clambered onto the dock and lay there like a pile of seaweed.
When he caught his breath and opened his eyes, a pair of rough boots were before his face. He looked up and saw the dock boss.
“Whatcha think you’re doin’? I didn’t hire you to go swimming. Look at this dock. It’s still covered with chips. You’re fired!”
“But, sir, I didn’t go swimming. I can’t swim. I was pu— I fell in by accident.” As much as he hated the bullies who had given him the dunking, it wouldn’t do to tell on them. They’d just get back at him some other way.
“If you’re that clumsy, you don’t belong on the docks. Now get out of here!”
Kevin walked up the pier, squishing with each step and draining water from his clothes like a leaky bucket. At the end, he climbed onto some large rocks and sat there with his head in his hands.
He didn’t know how long he had been there letting the bright Australian sunshine warm him, when he looked out into Sydney Cove and saw a sleek new ship slowly creeping into the harbor. It was a two-masted, sharp-bowed brigantine about a hundred feet long. Kevin watched in admiration as its white sails, flapping in the light breeze, were lowered and furled to the booms and yards.
He feared the water, but he sure loved watching ships when his feet were solidly anchored on land. And this was a particularly graceful ship. He strained to see its name—Dayspring. Dayspring? He and his mother had once bought shares to help build a ship by that name. Buying shares made them part owners of the ship. At least that’s what the missionary had promised.
That was two years ago, when missionary John G. Paton came to their church just after escaping the dangerous cannibals of the South Sea Islands. But he wanted to go back and needed a ship. Kevin had almost forgotten. The missionary had come soon after Kevin’s father had been killed in a logging accident. It had been a rough time for Kevin and his mother, but the special mission services had lifted their spirits.
“What we need,” said the missionary, “is a missionary ship that can go from island to island bringing supplies to the missionaries, encouraging them . . . and rescuing them if necessary.” He held up some beautiful certificates. “I have here in my hand genuine shares in the new ship we will name the Dayspring. You can purchase these shares today and be part owner in this great work of God. Who wants to be first, just six cents each?”
Many of the children went forward to buy three or four, even ten certificates. But Kevin’s mother had handed him enough money to buy a hundred shares. Being as poor as they were, he was shocked, but his mother reassured him. “Don’t worry. God will care for us.” So Kevin took the money forward and proudly returned with a stack of shares as thick as a small book. They looked almost like money with a beautifully engraved picture of a sailing ship printed on them and the words, This certificate entitles you to one share ownership in the Missionary Ship Dayspring. Across the bottom of the certificate Kevin read, You are helping bring the Gospel to those who have never heard.
Since then Kevin had nearly forgotten about the shares. Where had his mother stored them? He’d have to ask her when he got home. He stood up as the new ship’s anchor splashed into the bay. Could this be the same Dayspring in which he and his mother held part ownership?
* * * *
An hour later when the Dayspring’s longboat nosed into the pier, Kevin was there to take the rope and tie it up. But his hopes that this was “his” Dayspring were already fading. The six sailors rowing the boat were arguing loudly with the seventh man—obviously the captain—sitting in the back at the tiller.
“If we don’t get paid, we’re not hoisting another sail on that ship!”
“Don’t tell us what your problems are, Cap’n! This is 1865—maritime laws require you to pay us!”
“Sell the ship if need be, but pay us our money. We want it now!”
The sailors climbed out of the boat and walked up the pier without so much as giving Kevin a glance.
The fourteen-year-old
boy headed home. His mother had been very sick lately—too sick to work, was
his opinion. But she forced herself to continue doing the heavy laundry of
As Kevin pushed open
the door, he saw his mother lying on her bed, shivering in the heat of January,
which was summer in
“I . . . I’ll be all right. Just got dizzy standing over those hot tubs. But I’ve got to get up and finish. If I don’t have those sheets back to the hotel by morning, I’m liable to lose my job.” She tried to sit up.
“No, no,” Kevin said. “You rest. I’ll finish the sheets.”
She fell back onto the bed. “You can’t lift those big heavy things.”
But Kevin was out of the house before she could stop him. They rented a one-room apartment at the back of McPherson’s Emporium. In the small yard off their porch Mrs. Gilmore set up her laundry tubs, built a fire to heat the water, and hung up the clean laundry on lines strung between the porch and the back fence.
Kevin went to work stoking the fires and stirring the tubs with a wooden paddle, but when it came to lifting out the heavy, wet sheets, he had to admit that his mother had been almost right. The sheets were heavy, but he managed to get them rinsed and hung on the lines before dark. He went back inside and tried to make some soup while his mother slept. He found a few carrots and turnips and onions, but they were almost out of food.
He set the hot soup beside her bed and helped her sit up. “Don’t we have any more food?”
Mrs. Gilmore sighed. “Only what you found in the box. I was hoping to get paid for the laundry tomorrow and buy more, but Mr. McPherson came asking for the rent this morning. It’s late, so I guess we have to pay him first.”
Kevin’s eyes darkened. “We never should have bought those shares.”
“Shares? What shares? What are you talking about, son?”
“You know, for that ship.”
His mother shook her head and took another spoon of soup.
“You know. The missionary who came to church a couple years ago wanting us to buy shares to build a missionary ship.”
“Oh yes. Rev. John Paton.” Mrs. Gilmore leaned her head back and with a smile gazed up as though she were seeing a vision of the ship. “We bought a hundred, didn’t we?”
“Yeah. Where are they, Mama?”
“I don’t know. I put them in that waterproof pouch of your father’s, but I have no idea where it is now.”
The next day Kevin delivered the hotel laundry and paid Mr. McPherson. He stayed home the next day, too, to help his mother, but she didn’t seem to be getting better. She needed rest, and she needed more food. Kevin felt desperate.
On the third day, his mother claimed that she was strong enough to do the laundry by herself. “Go on down to the docks and see if you can get some work. I’ll be all right.” But she didn’t look any better to Kevin. Still, they needed more money—fast.
At the docks along Sydney Cove, the boss spotted Kevin and yelled, “Where have you been? Look at that ferry dock. It’s covered with scraps. You think I’m going to break my back picking all that up? I’ve a good mind to fire you for not showing up for work.”
“Uh, you did fire me, sir.”
“What?”
“I said, you fired me the other day after those . . . after I fell in the water.”
“Why would I do that? Get to work, and be quick about it. We haven’t got all day.”
Kevin set to work as fast as he could, all the time watching the boss out of the corner of his eye. A man that unpredictable might do anything. Kevin stood up to catch his breath and looked at the boss telling some workmen where to stack some barrels. If he was in a good mood, maybe Kevin could ask him for the pay he’d earned the other day before he was “fired.” On the other hand, bringing it up might get him fired again.
Kevin went back to picking up the wood chips and pieces of bark.
Shortly after
Kevin dropped his armload of chips and headed up the pier toward the two men. He rubbed his hands together. He’d tell ’em he helped build their ship. . . . The missionary said buying shares made them part owners. He hurried his pace to catch up with the men.
“Hey, where do you think you are going?”
Kevin turned back to see the dock boss with his hands on his hips.
“You better get back here right now, or you’ll forfeit all your pay.”
Kevin looked at the men walking away, then back at the boss. He thought of his mother and wiped his arm across his forehead. He had to get paid. Reluctantly he turned around and went back to picking up chips. But all the rest of that afternoon he kept glancing at the Dayspring and thinking about his shares in the ship.
Ship owners were rich men. So how could shareholders in a ship that beautiful be in danger of starving like he and his mom were? It didn’t make sense. Maybe they shouldn’t have given their money. His mother had said God would take care of them, but now look at them.
Slowly an idea began to form in Kevin’s mind. Maybe he had a solution. Maybe those shares would help him and his mom now that they were in such great need. He worked faster. He wanted to get finished and go check out his idea before the Dayspring sailed, before he was too late.
© 2001 Dave and Neta Jackson