Fire!

“On fire?” Maisie shouted.

She thought about the nice, orderly fire drills at school: the special exit they used, the buddy they walked out with, how they waited—bored—until the principal announced they could return to their classrooms. But this was a real fire. And they were not able to exit at sea. Her heart pounded. Not with fear, though. With excitement. They had survived the storm, and Maisie knew they would survive the fire, too.

“Follow me,” Alexander ordered. “All passengers need to be on deck in case—”

“We sink?” Felix squeaked.

“Yes,” Alexander said firmly. “In case we sink.”

Maisie left the cabin quickly, wondering what she would see out there. But Felix stayed put as if he were frozen in place.

“Come now, Felix,” Alexander said in a no-nonsense voice. “No time for tears or fears.”

Felix nodded and forced his legs to move forward. They felt like they were made of lead. His whole body felt that way. Sometimes Felix dreamed he was being chased, and his legs seemed unable to cooperate, heavy and stiff. Like now. But this was no dream. It was really happening. As he made his slow way to the door, he heard frightened screams from above and men shouting orders and saw women clutching their children’s hands and running down the hall right in front of him, asking, “What’s happening? What’s happening?”

Alexander pushed his way through the crowd to go and help on deck. By the time Felix and Maisie reached the stairs, they had become part of a large group, huddled close together and moving as if all the bodies were one being. The air hung close and reeked of smoke.

Someone at the top of the stairs shouted down to them, “Cover your nose and mouth!”

A wave of panic shuddered through the crowd as people brought their hands to their mouths, still pushing forward.

Finally Felix felt the stairs beneath his feet. From behind he was lifted up, the crowd now almost in a frenzy.

It seemed as if the stairs went straight to heaven, disappearing into what seemed like billowing clouds. But moving upward, Felix realized that the clouds were actually thickening smoke. His eyes started to sting as he moved up the smoky staircase. At the top, the smell of things burning and the flames and smoke scorched his nose and throat. A hand grabbed hold of his arm and tugged him through the smoke and into a clearer area across the deck.

“Stay here,” Alexander said to him, letting go of his grasp on Felix’s arm and joining the men at the rail.

Maisie stood wide-eyed beside Felix.

“I know I said that there was nothing to be afraid of,” she said. “That obviously Alexander Hamilton would survive anything. But now I’m not so sure.”

Felix and Maisie stared at the hot flames leaping from the ship. They could feel the heat from the fire on their faces, and the air around them had taken on a hazy, gray quality.

Then Maisie saw something she couldn’t believe. “Alexander’s going overboard!” Maisie shouted.

She took off in the direction of the fire and the men at the railing, where Felix saw that Alexander was indeed climbing over.

“Stay back here!” he called after his sister. But with a sinking feeling, he knew she wouldn’t listen.

He took a few tentative steps toward her, but the smoke and fire frightened him too much, and he returned to the end of the deck where most of the other women and children huddled.

As she neared, Maisie saw that Alexander wasn’t the only one going overboard. Many men climbed over the railing and lowered themselves on ropes toward the sea. And, she realized, they were all holding wooden buckets.

At the railing, she peered below. A dozen or more men were swinging from ropes, just above the gray sea, filling the buckets with seawater, then handing them up the rope to the next man, who handed it to the next man, until it reached the top. Waiting men took the buckets of water and ran to douse the flames with it. She thought about fire hoses and fire hydrants and fire extinguishers and all the things that worked to put out fires in her world. These buckets of seawater seemed small and ineffective in comparison.

Maisie swallowed hard, the taste of smoke burning her tongue and throat. Would these men with their buckets be able to save the Thunderbolt and her passengers?

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Hours passed.

The frantic voices of the men struggling to put out the fire mixed with the cries of babies and the sounds of the crackling flames and wood splitting. The smoke grew darker and thicker. Maisie watched, mesmerized, as the men worked, continuously filling the buckets with water and passing them up, up the large ship’s ropes to the deck. Alexander stayed in his position about midway on the rope, hanging on until a bucket reached him, then somehow taking the bucket and passing it to the man above him while still clutching the rope. Soot and cinders covered his face and hair and hands and clothes. But the men seemed not to notice. They just kept working to get the fire under control.

Eventually Felix sat down, pressed close against the others across the deck. Beside him, a woman prayed softly. He leaned against her slightly, letting her words wash over him and comfort him as he drifted into a fitful sleep. He woke with a start, looking around confused.

Then he saw that the fire still raged. The men still struggled to put it out. And his sister still stood watching them. Dawn streaked beautiful colors across the sky. Lavenders and pinks that looked blurry in the smoky air around him, but somehow pretty just the same. He could still see the crescent moon and Venus twinkling beside it. Alexander had shown him that just the other night when they sat up here looking at the stars. Felix had thought the bright light twinkling next to the moon was a star, too. No, no, Alexander had told him. She’s a planet. Venus.

The woman who had prayed during the night now handed Felix a bowl.

“Sip some broth,” she told him in an accent he couldn’t recognize.

The bowl, brought from below by one of the sailors, was being passed from person to person. Usually Felix refused to share cups or spoons or anything with strangers. But cold and hungry, he took the bowl gratefully and sipped. The broth tasted delicious, like chicken soup without any of the veggies or noodles. He wanted to drink it down but knew it was meant for everyone.

Felix passed it to the next person. Then, like everybody else, he waited.

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That afternoon, word spread across the deck that the bucket brigade had almost completely put out the fire. The passengers, all of them stinking of smoke and trembling with fear, let out a whoop of thanks. Still, the men had to continue with their bucket brigade for several more hours before the captain appeared before the crowd. His cheeks had turned bright red from the heat of the fire, and his face was smeared black with soot. He looked exhausted but joyful.

“All of you can return to your cabins and thank the lord for rescuing the Thunderbolt.”

“Amen!” the crowd said in unison.

“I think, sir,” a young, pretty woman said, “we should thank the men who saved us as well.”

This time the crowd’s “Amen” was even louder.

The passengers began to disperse, moving slowly below. But Felix waited for his sister.

She finally appeared with Alexander. His shirt had ripped, and he was filthy with soot. But he grinned when he saw Felix.

“We didn’t sink,” he said.

“Thanks to you,” Maisie told Alexander.

“Not just me,” he said, even though his tone was boastful.

“What if there’s another fire?” Felix asked. “How did this one even start?”

“Probably in the kitchen,” Alexander said. “But there’s no way to know for sure.”

“All I want to do is sleep until we get to Boston,” Maisie said.

Alexander’s smile faded.

“Let’s hope that the Thunderbolt can complete the journey with this much damage,” he said.

Felix looked past his sister and Alexander. The Thunderbolt was a charred mess. Water poured onto the deck from holes left by the fire. Beyond, the Atlantic Ocean stretched, seemingly forever. After all this time at sea, Boston still seemed as far away as it had the day he and Maisie sneaked onto the ship.

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On October 25, three weeks after it left Saint Croix, the Thunderbolt finally limped into Long Wharf in Boston Harbor.

Once Alexander got his trunk off the ship and he and Maisie and Felix were walking down the gangway, Maisie asked him, “Now where do we get the stagecoach to New York?”

Alexander laughed. “The next one isn’t for five days,” he said without slowing down.

“Five days!” Felix moaned. Ahead of him he saw crowds and hills, gorgeous fall foliage, and dozens of soldiers dressed in scarlet-red coats carrying muskets and bayonets and looking fierce. “What are we going to do here for five whole days?”

“I don’t know what you’re going to do,” Alexander said. “But I need to find the Boston Gazette. Reverend Knox had me write a plea for help for hurricane recovery on Saint Croix, and I need to convince them to publish it.”

They stood in the port city now, and for the first time, Alexander paused to take in his surroundings. He blinked once. Then again as if he couldn’t believe what he saw.

“The leaves,” he managed to say. “They’re . . . they’re red! And yellow! And . . . orange!”

Maisie laughed. “It’s autumn,” she explained. “The leaves turn from green to all of these colors.”

“Every autumn?” he said.

“Yup.”

“Why?” he asked, stunned.

“Photosynthesis,” Maisie said proudly. She didn’t know how to write poetry. She didn’t like to read. But she loved math and science. Last year, she’d won first place in her school’s science fair. She’d made a volcano that erupted and written a report on magma and Mount Saint Helens.

“Putting together with light,” Alexander said. “Photosynthesis.”

“Kind of,” Maisie said, nodding. “It’s the way plants turn water and carbon dioxide into oxygen and sugar. During winter, there’s not enough light or water for photosynthesis, so the trees live off the food they stored during the summer and the green chlorophyll disappears from the leaves, showing us yellow and orange color.” She could go on forever about photosynthesis, but Felix looked so bored she stopped.

Alexander, however, had put down his trunk while Maisie talked and looked at her, impressed.

“How did you figure that out?” he asked.

“She always gets an A in science,” Felix said.

“Well,” Alexander said, returning his gaze to the trees in the distance, “this photosynthesis is remarkable.”

From out of nowhere came the sound of angry voices. In no time, a huge crowd of men marched past them, fists in the air, shouting.

“There must be a thousand men marching,” Alexander said in wonderment.

He stopped a young boy running after the crowd.

“What are they doing?” he asked.

“They’re on their way to Faneuil Hall,” the boy said, excited. “Haven’t you seen the letters in the Gazette?”

“We’ve just arrived,” Alexander explained.

“There’s been trouble these past weeks,” the boy said.

He was eager to keep moving toward Faneuil Hall, and seeing this, Alexander began to follow the mob, Maisie and Alexander at his side.

“With the British?” Alexander asked.

“Yes, sir,” the boy said. “Even after they repealed the stamp tax, they keep adding new ones. On glass and paper and tea. The merchants are boycotting everything that comes from Britain. So now they’re saying we can’t choose our own governors or judges, and they’ve sent them over here to make sure we don’t cause any more trouble.”

He pointed to the harbor they were passing, where enormous British warships stood watch.

From all of the side streets, more and more people joined the angry protestors.

“They’ve even opened a custom’s house here,” the boy said. “If I were that inspector, I’d run as fast as I could. This crowd intends to catch him and tar and feather him.”

Alexander Hamilton stood straighter as if it could increase his small stature.

“Well, Maisie and Felix,” he said, “it appears we’ve arrived in Boston at just the right time.”

Maisie nodded, keeping up with Alexander step for step, pulling herself up straight and tall.

But Felix gladly stayed in their shadows. He did not want to see someone tarred and feathered, that was for sure. He thought of those Redcoats and their angry faces. The revolution was coming, he knew that for certain. He just hoped it didn’t start today.