A small port off the East Coast, 1767
Patrick Fairchild, citizen of England but resident of a small port in the Colonies of the Americas, stood reading a log from his merchant ship the Starfire. The log was penned as follows:
Captain’s Log: Jonathan Buford Longfellow
Date: January 20, 1765
Time:20:00 hrs.
We are having very fine weather today and through the guidance of Almighty God this portion of our journey came to a close, at last, from the Colonies of the Americas to the shores of New South Wales after nine months and two weeks. It was a mission never before attempted by any small merchant ship of the Colonies.
This was a journey that was almost unfathomable to contemplate or reflect without some apprehension as to its end. Although this completes only the journey here, it has put us all in an extraordinary sense of accomplishment as we had born together the forces of a tropical cyclone and heat of the Southern hemisphere.
Alas, we have confidence now that the first half of this adventure has come and gone without terrible incident, and indeed we are proud to have sailed a distance in the above space of time, some five thousand and eighty-five leagues.
We have arrived, at the South-western coast of New South Wales which is sparsely populated and unexplored at this time by anyone from the Colonies. There are sufficient provisions to sustain us until we can fetch food here. To that end I have assembled a crew to away to the mainland in order to scout the land for wildlife, fruits, and vegetables.
Just before our arrival here we witnessed a scene which gave us reason to believe that we were being visited by the inhabitants of Heaven itself, showing a glistening display of lights and varying shades of color in the Southern skies. Calmly the ship had previously sailed through approximately one and a half kilometers of luminous reflections akin to lights from many candle flames flickering upon the surface of the waters, followed by the Aurora Australis the next night.
It was a magnificent exhibition of constantly alternating colors of the rainbow against a snowy white fountain in the vast vault above the atmosphere. Each snake-like ribbon waggled its tail like hound pups across the immense expanse of space in a shivering dance that resembled a waterfall, cascading into oblivion while it virtually sidled toward the ship as though it were a seductive reptile on the sands of the desert.
The once dark sector of the Southern sky was completely illuminated with the glistening shimmering of lights stretching forth across the horizon for almost two kilometers. This wary performance of nature would side-wind toward the ship, enchanting us as a diamond to the eyes. It gave a tremendously spectacular show of lights while it turned into white snowy crystalline sands, unfolding across the Heavens for a period just short of three hours!
Every crew member stood observing as the phantom-like aurora rippled past, and we could observe that it was composed of thousands of appendages, all whipping ferociously as though they were blowing in a strong gale against the jet-black sky.
It is with some unrest, and to be sure, with great reluctance that I must also document one particular day aboard the Starfire that to some degree has changed my life, and with certainty the lives of my first and second officers. I have spoken with my shipmate, First Officer, MacDougal, and ship’s Medical Officer, Staversham, and we are all in agreement that this should be documented as how we perceived it all to have happened. We pray all will be deciphered later, when we are each in our elements and in our cups, to be our imaginations, but I fear not.
Two nights prior to the astonishing sightings of the spangled water wonders and the miracles of the Heavens, we had on board the ship two male Gypsies. I wanted to be kind with the man who looked very honest and forthright, as he had charge of a young boy of about age five or six, who appeared to be only Gypsy by half blood—if he was by any speculation, a Gypsy.
Nevertheless, I permitted them a passage on board with us to New South Wales. Being given to understand that even prisoners are allowed to roam the new continent, I considered it only fair that these Gypsies should also have the same chance to make a new life for themselves through traveling with us, inasmuch, as they had the fair to pay for the trip as any other, and granted them the privilege likewise. However, the young boy engaged in a struggle with one of our able-bodied seamen, albeit it is not clear to us what possessed the child.
As of yet, we have not successfully determined, nor have we obtained a statement that makes any good sense from the seaman concerning the confrontation. We did not consider flogging the seaman, for we saw no broken chain of command to justify the punishment. We did witness however, the outraged child striking out at one of them, and my suspicion was that he thought he was protecting the older Gypsy who moved in an indescribably peculiar way, exercising what appeared to us all to be a backward leap of sorts, and came to land to the rear of the child.
There seemed to have followed directly then, a bolt of light, more dazzling than the Aurora Australis that followed the Gypsy as he took hold of the urchin and did another bounding leap from the deck into something that can only be described as an opening in the sky. My fellow shipmates and I are indivisible in this account, asking discretion as to the content of this report, and earnestly regret that we cannot describe anything more for the investigation into this incident.
As a matter of courtesy, I humbly point out that our reputations are of the highest character in the merchant trade business, not withstanding that our service records have been impeccable. We each affix our signatures to this documentation with the sincere hope that it will be taken into consideration. We beg discretion, being commissioned by the Queen, who entrusted us directly under the authority of Sir Patrick Fairchild on this twenty-second day of February in the year of Our Lord seventeen hundred and sixty-five.
Patrick Fairchild folded the captain’s log, put it inside his greatcoat, and hailed his carriage driver to take him to his mansion up on the hills of a small, unnamed port in the providence of Massachusetts. It would be some years before the little providence severed itself from Massachusetts to form the state of Maine, but times were rapidly changing for the colonies. The war was still rampant, King George III was incompetent on the throne, leaving men murdered in the streets of the new world and women brutally raped. He ignored the pleas of the colonists to bring about justice to murderers, and called to order meetings that representatives of the colonies could not by any means possible attend, just to name a few misgivings.
Yet, all of this was insignificant to what Fairchild had just read. Buford Longfellow appeared to be daft...and he was controlling Fairchild’s merchant ship. To whom did he owe the gratitude for this insanity?
He was soon about to find out. For there are those who would come into his port, win the family with guile, and a relationship would begin that was to forever change the life of Patrick and Margaret Fairchild. He would soon know the answers to the treacherous reign of King George III, to his Captain Longfellow’s insanity, and to the loss of one of his sons as well as the mysteries of the universe. Indeed, he would find out to whom he owed the pleasure of it all...in due time.
