St. Elmo's Fire: An Adventure Story & Allegory

By Nora Sojourner Chalfont

St. Elmo's Fire is a maritime phenomenon where natural electrical discharge, primarily from lightning, causes a ship's mast to glow. Its aura can be seen for miles, and it has been believed to be either an evil omen or a sign of protection and good luck at sea.

Beginning in the Port of New York in fall, 1834, St. Elmo's Fire is a fast-paced story of adventure and misadventure. Twenty-year-old Donecha (DONecka) Van Fossen, bookish son of Irish-Dutch immigrant parents, manages to escape their dreary life and follow his dream of becoming a seaman. After his family's tenement is burned to the ground, Donecha is taken aboard the sailing ship Il Paradiso as tutor to the captain's son, eleven-year-old Lyle, who has been held captive at sea for most of his young life. Finding out why and by whom is the central mystery.

As the bond between Donecha and Lyle grows, they discover that the true mission of Il Paradiso is twofold: to rescue Liana, Lyle's hidden sister, from the clutches of Mediterranean relatives who would seize both children and appropriate their rightful inheritance, and also to find their mysterious mother, who appears to Lyle as the "glow in the sky". Moving from the Port of New York across the Atlantic to various Mediterranean ports, and back, the travelers return shortly before the Great Fire of New York leveled most of lower Manhattan in December, 1835.

Well into the nineteenth century, the stormy Atlantic was still open range for privateers, latter day pirates. Dramatic encounters and narrow escapes throughout the journey build suspense. The rescue effort involves intrigues, pursuits, betrayals, as well as merriment, humor and a touch of romance. In the end Il Paradiso succeeds where Il Purgatorio and Il Inferno have failed.

In addition to Donecha and Lyle, other major characters include Mr. Crawdon, landlord, shipowner and father to Lyle; Slogo, the ship's galley cook; Lyle's sister, Liana; and Lyle's pet monkey, the Little Marqus. Characters are merry and scary, wry and sly. Linked into plot and character development are recurrent motifs of fires, secret passages, lively turnabouts of streotypes and the escapades of Lyle's clever little monkey. In the end, the wily Mr. Crawdon and the unlikely Slogo turn out to be the saviors of them all. Numerous character and plot shifts draw the reader to a surprising conclusion.

St. Elmo's Fire is a family-oriented story, between 35,000 and 36,000 words, divided into 26 short chapters, It is suitable for family reading and late elementary or middle school readers, both boys and girls, or as a chapter book. The characters and situations are credible in context and historical and geographical detail is generally accurate. The story would be well illustrated with lively drawings, say pen and gouache. Cinematic potential.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483649191

Nora Sojourner Chalfont

Nora Sojourner Chalfont is a lover of language living in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Book preview

ST. ELMO’S FIRE

AN ADVENTURE STORY & ALLEGORY

NORA SOJOURNER CHALFONT

Copyright © 2013 by Nora Sojourner Chalfont.

ISBN: Softcover 978-1-4836-4918-4

Ebook 978-1-4836-4919-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 08/08/2013

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

For Cory and For Grace.

Chapter One

Donecha, Donecha, Donecha! (pronounced DONecka)

The old washerwoman’s call was loud and raucous and familiar to the whole waterfront district, as she stood on the tenement rooftop to summon her idle son. Her loud voice carried even to the wharf two blocks away, where stevedores were loading and unloading the various sorts of cargo that passed into and out of the busy port of New York. Since the opening of the Erie Canal nine years ago in 1825, a few steamships were beginning to puff their way into and out through the Narrows. But most of the ships were still sailing vessels, clippers well armed against the privateers and pirate attackers that still pillaged the waters just beyond the Atlantic coast.

Ach! Ach! Thar she blows again. I say she has a rough time, she does, with her lot, but I pity him more than I do her.

Him? You mean the son or the father?

Why both, but it’s the younger Donecha she’s screamin’ for isn’t it?

Like she always is nowadays.

From behind one of the dock shanties a lean young man emerged. He straightened his shoulders and came forward reluctantly, as if against his will, while stuffing what looked like a small book inside his shirt.

Hey, eh Donecha! Yer ma’s callin’ for ya.

Yah. She’s been blowin’ her sails clear over the roof.

I know, I know, oh don’t I know. Well, she’ll be satisfied soon enough.

And is it you’re going to satisfy her now, is it? And how are you going to do that, Donecha, come join us here loadin’ in the shipyard?

It was a good-natured jibe, and more than half a kindly invitation. They knew it wasn’t laziness that kept him off the dock. He probably didn’t have the strength, he was so slightly built, but it wasn’t that either; muscles build fast when you’re shoving bales and lifting crates. Young Mr. Donecha Van Fossen had something the rest of them didn’t. He knew how to read and write good, and in a couple of languages besides English. You could tell from the way he talked that he loved reading and languages. And he’d always be carrying one or another book with him.

For a month now, Donecha had been hanging around the shipyards a lot, ever since the school where he taught burned down. And it didn’t look like there would be another built any time soon for him to put his teaching talents to any paying use. There was plenty of work here along the docks, just reading and translating shipping orders, cargo lists and the like. And Donecha was plenty willing to do it, but none of the shipping bosses or foremen would hire him unless he signed to work for them only. And that would mean being ready to go to sea whenever that company needed a translator on the voyage or the captain couldn’t read. Donecha himself was ready to go to sea, more than ready. But his Old-World parents forbade this, and so Donecha’s only income was an irregular trickle when one of the merchants needed some simple reading or translating.

His mother and father would hardly let Donecha, Jr. out of their sight, much less off land, though he was twenty years old. Against his own wishes, Donecha obeyed them, for he was their only son and they were alone and growing old. They had been sympathetic after the school burned down, but they were also poor of money and so they had put pressure on him to bring home a few pennies in some other way.

Donecha, Sr. was an immigrant from Holland, though his mother had given him an Irish name and he had married an Irish wife. He had been a shipyard cobbler, making leather boots and clogs for sailors’ use aboard the wooden ships.

For some reason, he had never taught his son the cobbler’s trade. He might have hoped that Donecha, Jr.’s quickness with languages and book learning might save him from a life of labor. But shortly after the school burned down, old Mr. Van Fossen had been paralyzed in his right arm and leg by a stroke. And now the aging couple struggled to keep food in the cupboard and pay the rent on their miserable living quarters. They got by only on what Mrs. Van Fossen could bring in by washing clothes for sailors and some local families.

Poverty stricken and forced to spend almost the entire time together in their two-room flat, and being evil-tempered anyway, Mr. And Mrs. Van Fossen kept the air alive with their harsh voices and foul words from early morning until late at night. Young Donecha would try to slip out early, as soon as he woke or was awakened from sleep by their bickering. Since his steady job at the school had ended when the school burned down, he had become the whipping boy for both parents.

Whenever they tired of raising the devil with each other, they would clamp down on him if they could. Mrs. Van Fossen would climb to the rooftop, stand there bare-armed in her apron, throw her head back and sing out shrilly: Donecha, Donecha, DONECHA! to summon her scapegoat. And her son would always come when called. He might be anywhere in the shipyard, halfheartedly and resentfully searching for another paying job to bring in some money and help his parents in their old age. But he would be dreaming of the time when he could take off on his own.

It wasn’t that Donecha was averse to dock work, and he had friends in the yard. Sometimes he would read to them—tales of the seas and sailing adventures. But reading and teaching stories of the adventures of master seamen had fired his soul with a longing for distant horizons and a wider world. He was grown now, and though he loved his parents and knew his obligations, he knew also that this did not mean he must live forever under their stern and jealous eyes. Somehow he knew that his own destiny lay far beyond what his life was now.

America was a young land, and Donecha was the first of his family to be born here—a man of his day, and somewhat of a dreamer too. It was not for him to toil only to feed the belly. His parents had been forced to do this because of hard circumstances and poverty; and perhaps also because they had never noticed the stars above the rooftops nor watched their reflections in the glittering sea at night. Still, he loved them dearly and knew their suffering. He wished he could find some way to ease their suffering without doubling his own.

Such were his thoughts as he walked along Coenties Slip toward Pearl Street. He passed the corner of Pearl and Broad and looked at the charred remains of his beloved school. Only two more years of teaching there and he could have moved up to teach at the high school at Hanover Square. And then, perhaps… who knew where. School teaching brought in more money than he was making now, but sailing the seas would bring in so much more. But, as it was now…

Hey—ya, ya,Teacha! Hey—ya,ya Teacha! Hey—ya, ya Teacha!

Donecha was shaken from his reverie. Not everyone was brooding over the school fire, especially not Dan Randy, the school bully. Though only eleven years old, Dan was bigger and stronger than his old schoolmaster. There were many times Dan had sat on the dunce stool or had his bottom burned by the paddle, but Master Van Fossen bore the boy no malice and he turned to greet Dan. Turned just in time to get a tomato in the face and to see Dan and several other boys running off and laughing. Wiping the tomato from his eyes, Donecha decided to let the matter lie—this time.

Donecha headed on home, not paying much attention to where he was going, as his feet knew the way. But his foot slipped into an unexpected hole by the front stoop steps and sharply twisted his ankle. Donecha quickly covered over the hole so that his mother would not stumble on her way to and fro work. He opened the door, expecting the usual tirade from his parents. Instead, he saw them over standing by the window that opened out toward the docks. They were staring, rapt, and didn’t even notice their son’s entrance. His mother’s mouth was hanging open and her eyes bulging. Donecha stood leaning on the table to ease the pain in his ankle, hesitant to interrupt. When his mother finally saw him, she came running over, flapping her arms up and down like chicken wings. She threw herself on Donecha, not noticing his injured ankle.

Oh, Donecha, ach! Oh, it’s come at last. The doom is comin’, an we’ll all be swallowed up by the devil! We’ve seen the signs this very night o’ the end o’ the world. Where can we hide? Oh, hide me, hide me. Ach, Donecha, you know the place!

Donecha stood aghast. He had never seen his