At the Edge of Honor (The Honor Series)

by Robert N. Macomber

  Wake returned everyone to his duty. “Hardin, stand by to go over with two men to inspect that vessel.”

  “Durlon, that was a fine shot, man.”

  “Thankee, sir. It was a bit of a piece of timing, sir,” Durlon responded with a grin, to the accompaniment of guffaws from his shipmates.

  As they came close by the strange boat, Durlon and his men manned the gun again and trained it upon the potential enemies, while Hardin and his detail went aboard her. Wake could hardly wait for information. He watched the interactions on the other deck intently. Finally Hardin came back and climbed up on the deck. His face told Wake that this was not like the other boardings that they had done so far.

  “Don’t like the looks a this, Captain. Sloop is the Betty of Estero Bay. Twenty-five feet with only one ton of cargo space. No papers and no cargo aboard. Only a skipper and three men. Two of the men are crew and one is a cattle trader from up the Caloosahatchee River. They’re tellin’ me that they hates the Rebs and are refugees from middle Florida. Say they’re sailin’ down to Key West to do a deal with the navy for some beef cattle they got hidden inland. Say they will sell ’em to the navy to feed our ships here.”

  “Do you know them, Hardin?”

  “No, sir. But I thinks they’re up to no good. Got no papers and look like scoundrels, sir. There is cattle up that river, sir. But the stories are that they are driven north to the Reb armies, or sometimes sold to the Cuban Spanish for contraband war supplies. I think we should seize ’em all and take ’em to Key West.”

  Wake thought over the situation. A vessel with no papers. A crew with no papers. Bound from the place where blockade running had been rampant. She was heading south, which could mean Key West . . . or it could mean Havana or Nassau. Plus, Rosalie was due to return to Key West soon anyway to resupply. He made his decision. This one would be different from the others.

  “Very well, Hardin. Inform them that they are to come to this vessel and that we all are going to Key West for adjudication on their sloop and themselves. They and their boat will be released shortly if the admiralty court believes their story. Hardin, you are appointed prize master of their sloop.”

  “Aye aye, sir. I’ll take Wilson and the boy Sommer with me. We’ll leave directly and meet you at Key West.”

  “Very well, Hardin. Transfer the prisoners to this vessel. As soon as that is done, set sail for the south.”

  Seizing the prize vessel, transferring the prisoners, and setting sail took little more than half an hour. Hardin drove everyone to get it accomplished as soon as possible. Wake noticed that Hardin appeared to want to be away from him as fast as he could be. It struck Wake also that it was odd that Hardin would want to take Sommer and Wilson with him. Neither of them would be much help to him. Sommer was just a boy learning the ropes, and Wilson was a bit dim-witted, did everything by rote and could not be trusted to make a competent seamanlike decision on his own initiative. Still, Hardin could obviously handle the task, as simple as it was.

  The prize sloop got under way first and sailed off to the south on a broad reach. Rosalie followed as soon as the prisoners were secured on the foredeck. With a shorthanded crew, Wake was taking no chances and had the prisoners tied to a line at the mast. They could move about, but not too far away from their tether. The prisoners’ demeanor was anything but polite and they repeatedly reminded Wake and his crew that when they got to Key West the crew of the Rosalie could expect retribution from the authorities in charge. Wake urged his men to carry as much sail as she could take, as much to get the carping prisoners off his ship as soon as possible as to keep up with the Betty.

  As the day darkened into night, the prize sloop was lost in the darkness. One of the crew was armed and detailed to keep watch over the suspect men at all times, for Wake had heard of prisoners taking over a ship and he wanted none of that here. The sailing was fast and wet for crew and prisoners alike through the night and early morning hours. A moon lit the way for them and under other circumstances it might have been pleasant for Wake. But the nagging doubt of the correctness of his decision, the security of the prisoners, and an odd feeling about Hardin and the prize vessel kept Wake from enjoying the sail or getting much sleep.

  The opposite emotion was prevailing among the crew, however. They merrily added up their portion of the prize money from the anticipated sale of the Betty and spent hours debating aloud how they would spend their share. Since he couldn’t sleep anyway, Wake listened to his men and learned about many places in Key West with which he was not acquainted. He put them all in the back of his mind for future reference in case he should ever have to find his happy warriors and return them to the Rosalie the morning after a night of liberty.

  As the sun rose out of the sea later that morning, the prize vessel was nowhere in sight. Durlon woke up Wake, who had finally gotten to sleep out of exhaustion an hour before, and told him the news. It did not unduly alarm the captain since frequently vessels separated at sea and later met at rendezvous. The possibly counterfeit cattlemen decided to offer unhelpful comments about it though, until Wake explained to them that he would have them gagged if he heard any more sounds from them.

  The tone of his voice and the look in his eye were enough to silence the prisoners and make his own crew wary of him. Even though the Rosalie was but a ship of forty-five feet in length, the discipline of the navy was such that no one doubted that Wake, as her captain, had absolute power over their lives.

  By mid-afternoon that day the lookout spotted the rooftop observatories of the Tift and O’Hara buildings along the waterfront of Key West. Half an hour later he spotted the brown walls of Fort Taylor rising out of the harbor waters with the trees of the island behind them. Sails were seen moving every which way, and the wharves at the northwest corner of the island came to life as they got closer.

  Wake sailed the sloop through the anchorage looking for the prize with no luck. Finally, he anchored his ship off the wharves and went ashore in the dinghy to make his report, leaving the prisoners in the care of Durlon. Wake was not feeling very good about his situation when he entered the offices of the admiral and reported into the staff yeoman’s desk.

  The staff yeoman passed him along to Commander Johnson, the chief of staff for the admiral and the man who usually kept track of ship movements and reports in the squadron. Since the squadron’s area of responsibility covered almost a thousand miles of coast and islands in Florida alone, with the Bahamas and Cuba in addition, Commander Johnson was a busy man with little time for a junior officer with the grade of master who was captain of a mere forty-five-foot armed sloop. The commander looked Wake in the eye and waited silently. Wake got to the point immediately and told the story of the preceding day’s boarding and seizure.

  Johnson was one of those men who made decisions quickly. Within ten minutes of Wake’s entering his office, Johnson had told him to put the prisoners in the brig at Fort Taylor, wait one day for the prize sloop, and tomorrow set sail to find the Betty if she did not come in. He added that the crew of the Rosalie had to be back in five days’ time since that was when the next admiralty court would sit and they would have to testify against the crew of the seized vessel. Johnson’s demeanor indicated that he was not impressed by Wake or his report.

  When the guard detail from the Forty-seventh Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Regiment, which was garrisoning Fort Taylor, arrived at the landing two hours later and took the prisoners away, Wake was relieved to at least have the obnoxious carpers gone from his responsibility. Throughout their captivity, the men from the suspect sloop had complained that they were not Rebel sympathizers. However, Wake had noticed that they had gotten much quieter once they had arrived at Key West. He felt in his gut that he was right in seizing the vessel and crew, a feeling that grew as time went by. But where was Hardin and the Betty? His feeling about that was growi
ng worse.

  The Rosalie lay at anchor with lookouts scanning for the Betty throughout the remainder of the day and during the night, with no success. Early the next morning, Wake went ashore to the squadron offices to check for any sightings or new information on the missing vessel. Finding no new intelligence on her, he returned to the Rosalie by the harbor duty boat. Even from a distance he could see that things were amiss aboard his ship by the movements of the crew. When he climbed aboard he instantly knew what had happened. No interrogation was necessary. In his short absence ashore they had gotten rum, probably purchased from one of the many bumboats in the harbor.

  The gunner’s mate and the crew left aboard were already under the effects of rum. Wake could smell it and see it in their faces. His curt orders to weigh anchor and get under way were met with apathetic labor as the men hauled away on the anchor rode and the halyards. It still amazed Wake how fast sailors could get rum, drink it, and get drunk. He had been gone no more than forty minutes. Conner, who had accompanied him, was every bit as upset as his captain, but only because he had missed out on the “sailor’s nectar” himself.

  The Rosalie sailed back out the Northwest Channel into the Gulf of Mexico. Course was set for the coast that lay by Cape Sable and the Shark River, at the southern end of the peninsula of Florida, in case the Betty had been driven down to a lee shore there. Lookouts were doubled and the men went watch on watch because of the shorthanded crew. They sailed through the night with all sail set in the gentle westerly wind, constantly looking, wondering, worrying.

  This was a very dangerous coast to shipwreck on. The Confederates were just one problem. The Third Seminole War had ended only three years before this war had begun. It was the Seminoles who controlled this part of the coast, and they had no love for the men in the uniforms of the Navy or Army of the United States. In addition to the Indians, the diseases of this area were legendary. The insects at this time of the year would swarm and crawl all over a man, looking for exposed flesh to attack. And there were other dangerous creatures of the jungle, such as poisonous snakes and alligators, lying in wait for an unwary victim. Wake found himself praying that he would find Hardin and the Betty at sea and not have to search the coastline.

  At the next dawn Durlon was on watch, with the impressive ability of the veteran sailor to be no worse for the wear after his fast drunk on bad rum. It was he who roused Wake with the news that a boat was sighted up on the beach several miles ahead. At that news all hands came on deck and stared at the dark object that Colman and Smith insisted was the Betty. Wake couldn’t tell, even with the glass, but went along with the crew’s enthusiasm.

  It took an hour to get up to the shipwreck. It was the prize sloop all right, half on the beach and half awash. Hardin, Sommer, and Wilson were on the beach jumping up and down to attract Rosalie’s attention. When Wake got ashore, Hardin told him the story.

  The bosun explained that the crew of the Betty had evidently surreptitiously holed the vessel in the bilge under the quarter when they went below to collect their belongings, just before they were transferred to the armed sloop. Hardin had noticed her getting sluggish after sunset that first day but had not found the source of the leak until later that night. They had bailed all night to keep her up and had run her ashore at the first land they saw the next morning.

  Hardin told Wake and the listening crew that the insects at their place of landing had been unbearable. None of them had been able to sleep in the night. Only during a breeze in the daytime could anyone relax and rest. At night, creatures walked and slithered through the mangrove jungle behind the beach and further frightened the shipwrecked sailors. Sommer and Wilson echoed the bosun throughout his story, and all exhibited mosquito and other insect bites everywhere on their bodies. They looked exhausted. For the first time that Wake could recall, Hardin looked pleased to see him.

  But Hardin had other news that he said was the best that could be hoped for. He went to the beached boat and returned carrying a small box. He related that while shipwrecked on the beach, they’d had time to thoroughly inspect the Betty. In the tiny bilge spaces he found a Confederate ten-dollar bank note from Virginia. The bank note had been tucked away in a box of Cuban cigars down in the bilge. The cigars were completely ruined by the bilge water, but an address had been carved into the wooden box:

  John A. Saunders

  Richmond, Virginia

  Confederate States Army

  Now Wake knew the reason for Hardin’s apparent change in attitude toward him. Hardin now had proof that the man Wake had let go on the Victoria was a Rebel. Wake looked at Hardin and said, “Well, Hardin, it is a pity that we didn’t know this when we had Saunders, for this is evidence and not supposition, which is all that we had at that time.”

  “Whatever, sir,” came the smiling reply as Hardin looked right into the eyes of his captain. Wake took possession of the box and told Hardin to refloat his prize vessel and follow them to Key West, which would be a slog to windward from this place.

  Tar and a plug from Rosalie’s supplies made quick work of patching the hole in the Betty. They bailed out her insides and refloated the hull. Two men with muskets guarded against Indians or other threats, while the rest of the crew, Wake included, worked on the Betty to make her ready for sea.

  At last, the two vessels were able to take their departure from that forbidden coast and get out to sea. This time they stayed together, tacking every four hours and slowly gaining distance toward Key West. By the time Wake was able to lie down for three hours’ rest that night, he didn’t care what Commander Johnson would think about the Saunders affair. He was just glad that his men were alive and well and the prize sloop was back in his possession.

  The tropical dawn found them sailing leisurely down the Northwest Channel into the anchorage. The Betty went directly to the wharf and tied up, with Wake arriving by dinghy from the anchored Rosalie. He brought Hardin along to the admiral’s offices for his meeting with Commander Johnson. Aside from personal implications, the box and its contents had an intelligence value for the squadron and the chain of command.

  Commander Johnson was watching a steamer in the channel from the window of his office as they entered. He turned as they saluted and listened to Wake narrate the story of the beaching and refloating of the Betty. He listened even more intently as Hardin described with triumph finding the Rebel money and cigar box, and how it related to the boarding of the British schooner earlier. Then, after several minutes’ silent inspection of the evidence that was put into his hands, Johnson declared that this was indeed important information. The squadron had heard from the steamer assigned to patrol around the islands of the Bahamas that the ships from those ports were using the west coast of Florida because the ports of its east coast and those in Georgia and South Carolina were closed by the blockade. Several had been captured. But this evidence had now provided some proof of the connection—and of a Rebel named Saunders who was posing as a neutral.

  Johnson complimented Hardin on his insightful actions and told him that his name would be prominently mentioned in the report accompanying the evidence to Washington. After smiling for a fleeting moment at Hardin, Johnson dismissed him and bade him goodbye. Wake stood waiting as Hardin left the room.

  After the bosun’s departure Johnson looked at Wake and quietly said, “Mr. Wake, it appears that you have had fortune on your side in this affair with the Betty. One of them is a scoundrel cattle dealer who sold beef to the Reb army at Gainesville last year, according to our refugee partisans here, one of whom escaped from there a few months ago. There is no doubt in my mind that this scoundrel now wants to sell to us. Another is a renegade deserter from the Rebel Seventh Florida Infantry. The trial should be interesting.”

  “It would appear, sir, that the refugees provide good intelligence on who is who in this area.”

&
nbsp; “Only when it suits them, Mr. Wake. It also appears that Hardin has provided us with very valuable information concerning Saunders and the Bahamian connection.”

  “Yes, sir. Hardin has done a good job as bosun. He runs a sharp crew, sir.”

  “Yes indeed, Mr. Wake. He also looked like he was enjoying the moment while describing Saunders, the boarding, and your subsequent decision. Be careful of that man Hardin, Mr. Wake.

  “But now, Mr. Wake, you have to get ready to act as prosecution witness against the crew of the Betty. It looks like you have the evidence to show her as a runner. You are authorized to remain at this port, in the anchorage, until the end of the trial. Confer with the United States Attorney and make sure all is prepared for the trial. You may send those men you trust on liberty ashore.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” Wake saluted Commander Johnson and left the room. Upon his return to the sloop, he directed Hardin to secure the ship for at least three days’ anchorage and set up two-man liberty parties to go ashore in rotation. Hardin maintained his neutral tone and proceeded to implement Wake’s orders.

  The trial was held two days later. The admiralty judge was a U.S. district judge who did double duty, a man without patience or humor. A lawyer represented the accused and their vessel, but he looked like he was better suited for the bar at Sibbald’s Pub on Caroline Street than the bar of the court. His clients scowled as their attorney whined, and the judge fumed at his half-hearted delaying tactic of requesting time for additional information from witnesses who were in middle Florida. Finally the judge had heard enough and declared to the lawyer that the trial would be started and finished that very day.