Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Sailing Away Without Him
William Carey stared at the pile of wooden crates and leather trunks that had been dumped onto the Portsmouth dock beside the Earl of Oxford. He recalled the excitement he had felt as his belongings were loaded onto the ship in London a month earlier. An adventure had laid ahead for him and his oldest son, Felix. Now the dream was shattered. The two of them stood side by side on the dock, watching the ship being made ready to sail, only this time it was going to sail without them.
As sailors scurried up and down the rigging, William begged Captain White to reconsider. The captain would not. It simply wasn’t worth his career to take unlicensed passengers to India.
An hour later, the Earl of Oxford cast off and drifted away from the dock. As she did so, the crew hoisted her sails into position. William squeezed Felix tightly beside him, knowing that his son wouldn’t understand what was happening. How could he? William could hardly make sense of it himself. The Earl of Oxford had set sail for India without them.
William watched as the vessel joined the other six ships that would form the convoy. Despite his disappointment, William was captivated by the magnificent sight of white sails flapping in the afternoon’s soft, spring sunlight. The ships headed down Portsmouth Harbor toward the English Channel. A tear slid down his cheek as William watched them go.
A thousand questions and doubts flooded William’s mind as the ships sailed toward the horizon. Had the British and French not been at war, William and his son wouldn’t have had to stop in Portsmouth in the first place. Instead, they would be halfway to India by now. Or if they had sailed a day earlier from London, they would have been able to sail with the earlier convoy and not wait for a month while a new one was assembled. And what was going to happen now? William had been commissioned and sent out as a missionary to India, but instead he was stuck in Portsmouth. What would he tell the missionary society now? Would he ever get to India?
As the ships slid over the horizon, William turned his back on the sea. He hired a small cart to take their belongings to the boardinghouse where he and Felix were staying. As he walked alongside the cart, he thought about how far he’d come from the small boy growing up in Paulerspury. But he still had a long way to go. He had to get to India, and he had to get there soon. He knew there was much work for him to do in that far-off place.