Dear Penelope, 

I, your honorable husband, one Dr. William Bradley, am writing to you on this fine June eve in the year of our Lord 1892 with great trepidation in my heart yet great freedom in my mind. For though I have been out at sea a while and I am sure that you pine for me, it must be quieting to have the house all to oneself with the boys gone. Apologies in advance for not having written you in a while. Perhaps it is because I missed the Rebellion draft all those years ago in favor of my medical studies that I have not yet had my fill of expedition. I do indeed regret not informing you prior that my half year sabbatical at the Minneapolis University of Medicine had turned into a two year journey along the Mississippi- but such is the life out here- wild, free, and only as temperate as the waves. 

    My adventure began, as all such things do, with a heart sore of the confines of the same land. Yet it was no less surprising when, as nearly a retiree at sixty-two, my heart began to flutter at the sight of the gently lapping shore of the waterfront. I would take walks in between my lectures and take in the marvels of our changing times. It was astounding to me. A city that had barely existed at the time of my birth is on present course to become among the biggest in the nation. And there are over half a dozen such cities dotting this marvelous Mississippi- could you believe that? Forgive my ramblings, but what is two minutes to describe two whole years?

    Regardless, it was about two months in when I first heard the wind speaking to me. At least, I imagined that it was just the wind at first. No more than a whisper, really, in the howl-prone autumn air. But as the weeks progressed and the lectures I had to give grew staler in subject and lamer in theme, I could start to make out words. It was places at first. Alexandria, Tunis, Marseille- merely proper nouns of the old world hissed to me by the frosted clouds of my own breath. But as the whispers grew more clear and the words became embedded into my mind, I started to see images of these exotic vistas from my childhood stories.

    When the first full sentence was ever uttered, I turned my shoulder to see the misty, slipshod silhouette of a man in ruffled getup.

    “Heed the call of the sea,” came the words, if I recall correctly.

    At once, I thought I had gone mad. A chill seized me and I dashed the whole way back to the room that was provided for me by the university. It was perhaps due to that exhaustive effort that I fell ill the next morning, though to be sure I was glad that I had an excuse from the day’s debate on feline vivisection. In my stubbornness, I locked myself up in the quarters to fight the fever on my own terms. As the sickness progressed, though, I soon realized that I had made the wrong choice. For I was now bedridden, unable to avoid the apparition that now stood watch on the other side of my windows. 

Somehow in my beleaguered state, I managed to close the blinds on the damned thing, and I finally managed to fall asleep. When I awoke, the fever was significantly lessened, and I had the strength to get myself to the bathroom sink. It was after I quenched my furious thirst and gazed into the mirror that I realized that something was wrong. Gone were the sunken eyes, thin-nose, and thinning white head that greeted me every morning- in its place a ruggedly handsome looking devil with missing teeth and bronze skin. I blinked in disbelief and ran my face under the cold tap until my head started to hurt, and when I rose from the basin for the second time, I was myself again.

But peering alongside me into the scratched-up, tinny mirror was the very same figure I had just seen there alone. He introduced himself as “Captain Bill”, of the very same name and fame as the stories I had grown up with.

Won’t you let a man introduce himself? 

I suppose I must.

I’m the notorious Captain Bill, and I speak for myself. It was a cold fall when we first set off for our voyage, though it wasn’t much of a voyage without a vessel or a crew at first. And the first of either was the latter, a thin-necked man known only as “The Jew.” He was a dentist of some renown back in Moscow-

To tell you the truth, he is actually from New York City, and he has a name. In fact, he is a colleague lecturer, doctor-

That is, until he had a change of heart. For it seems that something stirred within his wicked soul that made it impossible to continue his practice. Perhaps it was a heretical equivalent to the call of the sea that caused him to turn his dentist’s tools to the art of the lock, but the fact was that he was quite good at it. It was he that first introduced me to the underworld of this vile Ottoman port of Konak after a game of cards.

I recall, he said, “trust me, if you can win against me, you can win for real against them.”

Aye, and the “them” in question happened to be a couple of rummed-up Turks that gambled away an old cargo steamer of theirs. I was surprised as anyone that The Jew was right about my chances. And after the success of that little venture, it was only natural to crave more.

By that point, I realized that this “Captain Bill” apparition was here to stay. He no longer disappeared after a good night’s rest nor faded back into the wind. Somehow, though, I stopped being convinced I was insane.

It would take a lunatic to pass up the opportunities this city offered. Only took a few more games for us to win our first booty.

If I recall correctly, it was a load of cheese and molasses- a three year’s supply of each.

I figured that if we have a ship and a cargo, what’s stopping us from taking it somewhere? The Jew told us of a Molasses shortage downriver, and I quickly agreed to the venture.

You see, ever since our wins at the gambling table, my heart felt freer than ever before. It was exhilarating, a thrill that I had never felt before and to which I had no compare. When I heard that a molasses plant down in Davenport had exploded- a nasty and brutish death to over twenty men- I saw an opportunity- no, an excuse for even the smallest of adventures. We called in sick to our posts the very next day and set out to test our vessel.

It was a pitiable little caravel, lean at the stern and mean at the steer. A savagely-treated little thing. No wonder the Turks let it go without much of a fight. But one man’s salvage is another man’s treasure, and we christened it “The Turkish Delight” in honor of our port of origin. And so, on a crisp morn with clear skies, we set a course for Athens to ply our goods.

The journey to Davenport, Iowa was surprisingly calm. My colleague had enough rudimentary navigation skills and I enough sailing experience from the summers I helped my uncle go crabbing in New England to keep the ship on course- though the fact that experience was well over forty years ago did narrowly result in us running aground on a beaver dam. Thankfully, though, both us and the creatures were spared such a tragedy, and we arrived at the eponymous Davenport by noon.

The cheese turned out to be just as popular a product as the molasses. Turns out that the Athenians were preparing to host some sort of display of culture and athletic prowess, and they needed all the provisions they could afford for all the visitors.

Yes, I remember now, there was a caravan of construction starting at the Mississippi river and leading all the way to Chicago in anticipation of the 1893 World’s Fair. The city had won the bid for it the year before, but preparations were already in full swing for miles around. There were dozens of marvelous marble facades and an uncountable amount of replica statues, furnitures, and fixtures under construction to be shipped out. For a brief moment when we set foot on the main avenue, it felt less like an imitation revival and more like I was transported to the very glory days of the Parthenon itself.

Neither me nor The Jew were satisfied with merely selling off our wares, though. If we’d already come that far there’s no reason we couldn’t take advantage of circumstances a bit further. So we plotted to make away with a trove of the finest Attic crafts, knowing full well that if we struck the right balance, no one would mind the vanishing of a couple of statues or divans. It was midway through a deliberation on where we could sell Greek wares when a vagrant youth interrupted our conversation.

He was a young man by the name of Tom with a faintly gypsy face. Possibly in his early 20’s and as healthy as he was filthy, he wore a scruffy affliction upon his chin that would no doubt be a respectable beard in a few years’ time. Apparently, he was a wandering worker that found himself doing manual labor for the fair preparations. To put it in polite terms, he was sick of the work and even sicker of his bosses- and so he wanted in on our plan.

After a few days of observing the place’s patterns of activity, we would seize the day on a silent, work-worn night. With The Youth’s run of the place and The Jew’s skills with the pick, we gained access to a portside warehouse and lifted half its stock before the moon started to wane. Upon seeing our ship, though, The Youth had a fit at its condition and assumed our incompetence.

Upon convincing a begrudging Tom that it was the previous owners, he relented- but only on the condition that we’d let him pilot the ship instead. As he argued, “I mighta run away from my paw and maw, but I ain’t never been further than 50 paces from old auntie Mississip’.” So who was I to question the eagerness of youth? We christened the young man with the moniker “Sawyer”- of whom he reminded us very much, and went to bed amid riches enough to make a jealous fool out of Justinian himself.

By dawn, we were long since back in that accursed Konak, just in time to try our hand at the morning markets. But to our rotten luck in this rotten city, not a filthy soul had the taste nor gold for such fine goods. The only thing that people knew here was grain and how to mill it.

After nothing but leftover cheese and molasses for three days of unsuccessful peddling, we were approached by a strange man at the docks. He had golden hair and a smile as blindingly sunny as his disposition. Apparently, our failed efforts had not gone unnoticed, and he knew just how and where we could relieve ourselves of several tons of repossessed imitation goods. “But, I’m not telling you a thing unless you agree I get a fourth of the profits.”

The entire time he was talking, I was trying to puzzle out where he was from. He certainly wasn’t an Afric. No, his skin was too light. But he couldn’t also be a European, at least not fully. He was too bronze otherwise, but what about the blond hair? Suffice it to say, I was already a bit steamed when he dropped that cannonball of his ‘cut’ into my laps.

We hadn’t even discussed a lick of cuts or profits prior. My colleague and I- and Tom, I suppose- had all assumed an equal partnership where all the proceeds went to subsistence. It wasn’t until “Blondie”, as he told us to call him, convinced us that we could not only make a living but a life of it that my hopes genuinely took off. We agreed to a four-way split of all the riches from this venture, and Blondie spilled the beans.

It was a simply brilliant plan. In fact, it was so simple that I kick myself to this day over the fact that I didn’t think of it first. All we had to do was sail right back down to Athens and pretend to be neighboring Thebans doing our part to support the games. It was on the short trip there that we learned that The Mulatto never shut his mouth.

Blondie kept us occupied by telling us all about his journeys up and down the Mississippi. But before he won and lost a thousand fortunes in everything from timber to teepees, he had been among the last generation born to slave mothers and plantation owner fathers. Even after that barbaric practice was abolished, it wasn’t a world that looked kindly to neither bastards nor half-breeds, so his mother ran him to the riverside and sent him out amid the reeds, “like Mosies”. His mother may have saved him from a harsh existence, but the only thing his father ever gave him was hair like straw and eyes like an ocean.

Sure did come in handy though when his basket washed up in the back garden of a good Christian family. 

That it did. He may have grown up doubting who he was every time yard work darkened his skin, but to everyone else, “there wasn’t a chance in hell that one of them could have hair like that”. Even though it certainly didn’t win him any points among the fine protestant folk around here, being “Italian” wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t until he moved to a bigger town, though, that a shopkeeper first spit in his face. At that moment, he discovered the drastic effects of a tan around those who were unacquainted with him. 

But like any man worth even a pinch of salt, he realized the advantages he was born with. One month, he could play pretend among the Africs, and the next he could consort with the civilized Christians. In such a manner, he could swindle both communities with impunity- and he learned to get quite good at playing pretend. So good, in fact, that even I stared in disbelief as he sold the Athenian’s wares right back to them.

“Often, all you need to do is add a smile,” he said as he returned with all four parts of our respective cuts. Uneager to turn down a miracle worker, we took him onto our crew with hungry pockets. It soon dawned upon us that though we had made a tidy sum, we’d each need to set aside most of it to invest in fixing up our vessel. Even with that initial sum, though, it took a few months of cargo runs and “repossession bargaining” to crawl our way out of debt. 

But in that bitter work, the investment proved to pay dividends. The renovated Turkish Delight withstood half a dozen storms and about that many misnavigations into turbid or rocky waters. And after all that time spent in the accursed Aegean, we were more than eager to strike it out further south the moment our debts were paid. Yet when we arrived in Egypt, the Ottoman domain appeared to be in shambles. Insurrection and violence seized every street like a plague.

Yes, I believe we arrived in Memphis, Tennessee in March. In the midst of what later came to be known as the People’s Grocery lynchings. A fight between a white boy and a black boy over a game of marbles turned into a street melee between two communities. A white deputy was killed in an armed confrontation in the ensuing investigation with a black store owner and it only escalated from there.

We arrived to see a city burning, witnessing firsthand the punishments of those who dared oppose the state’s Pashah. They shot a man’s fingers off, then shot fistholes into his face. As for the other men-

Any more than that might be a bit too much for your delicate ears, my dear. Suffice it to say, we did not err to stay there long with our colorful crew. Instead, we chose to take our business to St. Louis, and the wondrous Eads bridge greeted us overhead as we entered the largest city on the Mississippi.

We weren’t short of things to do in Rome. It was, after all, still an important city even if what is now Istanbul had long since surpassed its prestige in the Mediterranean. The eagle may yet rise from the ashes if it keeps so busy, as it appears that all bridges lead to Rome. 

Here we were. The lynchpin of the American Empire, the meeting point of East and West in every sense of the word and the biggest city I had seen since I first left the East Coast. My colleague and blondie both kept busy with their respective trades while Tom Sawyer ferried cargo for those that didn’t want to risk taking the bridge. As for myself, I went out to get acquainted with the local entrepreneurs.

They were very impressed- for I was a captain with his very own ship. And amused, for I had accomplished that at such a young age. But I didn’t idle talk with those whose matters could’ve been dealt with by some dock worker. Indeed, I charmed my way right into the circle of magnates and sensible folk that may require the more specialized services that my group could provide. 

One such man was a young engineer by the name of Ford. Here for a business meeting with a supplier of specialized machine parts on behalf of the Edison Illuminating Company, the fiery lad was certain that there was a future to this thing called the “horseless carriage”. As a man of science myself, I could almost believe his ramblings- but that didn’t stop me from telling him to put his money where his mouth is. Consequently, our little crew took on a task that was just as much a bet as a job.

    With The Mulatto’s ability to talk his way into any office, we secured a meeting with the head of the machinery company. 

    We were to pretend to be potential investors, looking to place a competing bid on the stock that Ford was sent here to acquire. That way, we would distract both companies at play while we did what we did best and pilfered the warehouse for all it was worth.

And though the Jew got as far as past the warehouse door, there was a factor that we hadn’t accounted for.

There was a lone mechanist there that night, hard at work on an experimental device. When he caught my colleague red-handed, our entire operation almost came tumbling down.

But the Jew was a quick thinker. He convinced the fellow to take our cause here.

The mechanist was torn. As an immigrant worker from Cathay, he had originally come to work on the Pacific Railroad. But soon after construction finished, work dried up, and complications from the Chinese Exclusion Act soon made it impossible for him to return home. After this, he had bounced Eastward from job to job, picking up a repertoire of mechanical skills before finally landing a steady wage in St. Louis. It took a fair bit of convincing, especially because he was wont to hand over his pet project, but promises of wealth and acknowledgement beyond an oil-slicked garage eventually won the chap over.

And so, I came back to my little group of entrepreneurs with a smirk as wide as the Mediterranean and as deep as its depths. I led the engineer outside to the docks, where sat upon the deck of my ship was the next great leap in mechanistry.

Ford was overjoyed. The man didn’t seem to have a qualm with betraying his or any other company, though that was unsurprising when it came to anyone that dealt with the Edison Lighting Company. He paid us the largest sum he could and slipped off towards Detroit with the experimental motor wagon and vague promises of stock in his future enterprises. Happy to drink with our ample pay and augmented crew, we set off from what seemed like the center of civilization.

But savagery knows no bounds nor no pause on the open sea. After a few weeks of uneventful stumbling from port to port, we happened upon a bustling settlement of Moors. Though I was uncertain at first, the courteousness displayed to us guests assured me that this was indeed Tunis, the civilized epicenter of the Barbary coast recently captured under nominal Ottoman rule.

The riverside town consisted primarily of free and freedmen living on land granted to them only by their de facto grasp on it. For almost thirty years since the end of the War, this community prospered without a name and without much interference from the neighboring plantations. As such, they were none to judge our hodgepodge crew and all the happier to trade for our various wares. But the longer we stayed at that idyllic port, the more we noticed that there was trouble brewing in the air, a fact that none of their kind smiles could hide. We weren’t here to deal with problems unpaid of course, but luckily that wasn’t to be the case.

We presented before the Moorish king with a gift of peace- a holdover replica of the statue of David preparing to match Goliath that we simply no longer had the space for no matter how much The Jew protested. In exchange for the statue, he threw a feast and told us of the woes of his kingdom- that the Ottomans would soon come to establish a firmer claim on this land, and that would no doubt spell the end of life as they knew it. We offered a solution- for the right price. 

    You see, we had collected quite the network of contacts during our year-long travel. If someone needed armaments, we now could procure it at the drop of a hat. But even for a group as experienced as ours, it would be no quick task. As such, we expected nothing short of a trove in return.

The Moorish King protested against the idea of employing violence against overlords as powerful as the Ottomans, but the Moorish princess, his daughter, was a pragmatic girl. She spoke out in court against destructive complacency. With a rousing speech, she whipped the rest of the Moors into a barbaric fervor. The King soon gave in, and promised us 20 acres of land each from whatever they reconquered and half the spoils thereof. Perhaps the hardest thing for him to part with, though, was the Princess herself.

    For unbeknownst- but no doubt fortunately for us- Tom Sawyer had fallen into a tryst with the girl, who now wished to taste for real the adventures that he had filled her head with. Though we objected to her presence at first- as I’m sure you’ll agree that a life on deck is no place for the fairer sex- she proved her worth with her mind. For since she had grown up the daughter of a mamie as part of a plantation household before fleeing to her father, she was well acquainted with all the classic tongues of the land- English, French, and Spanish- as well as a passable amount from the native tribes that traded with her community. 

 With the Princess’s skilled tongue and by The Mulatto’s personable nature, we appealed to all courts of the land that would have us. It was a monstrous effort that took well over a month and a step up to the knee in debt. But we are a bullish, fiery bunch, and at the end of it we had gathered enough implements for the entire Moor militia. We arrived successful and not a moment too soon, for it was evident that it was the eve of battle. In a matter of minutes we shall foment revolution.

Earlier that day, the plantation owners sent an armed courier to deliver a message to the nameless town. Either they would vacate or they would burn. When we heard marching and howling coming from the woods and saw the planter paddle steamers blockade our harbor, though, the lot of us were quite reluctant to burn. Even as my crew distributes the rifles, I end this letter off on the hope, though not guarantee that I shall see tomorrow. And most importantly, I write it with the hope that I shall yet see you. If I shall survive this, I will see fit to visit New Orleans next.

Ever so Faithfully Yours,

Bill.