When the glaring sun finally arrived in the river’s sky, its uncompromising light shone on five small vessels rafted together in a jungle river far from the sea, their men strewn about their decks in attitudes of exhaustion or death. Three of the men sat barely awake with muskets across their knees, staring, without seeing, around the perimeter of their small part of the world. And a lone figure sat, head in his hands, on the stern of the Rosalie, overlooking the cruelly misnamed waters where he had finally known the ultimate burden of command in war.
In a place known as the Peace River. . . .
6
The Island of Refuge
Naval Master Peter Wake stood at attention. His body was as still as he could make it, but his mind was moving so fast that he had the impression that Admiral Barkley, seated before him at his cluttered desk in the hot room, could hear it whirring. The admiral looked up from his reading and unemotionally told Wake to sit. Barkley gave the impression that he was talking to a dog, a trusted dog, perhaps, whose obedience he assumed, but definitely a being of little consequence. Commander Johnson was already seated in a comfortable pose in the chair by the open window that overlooked the harbor. His feigned relaxation did not calm Wake a bit. Sitting at attention, or as best as the ex-merchant marine mate could imagine that position to be, Wake locked his eyes on the wall over the left shoulder of the admiral and waited.
Barkley finished reading the paper in his hand, looked up with a face of almost surprise to see Wake sitting in front of him, and glanced to Johnson on his left. Their eyes met and communicated, or rather confirmed some previous communication. Barkley turned his attention back to the obviously nervous young man before him.
“Well, Mr. Wake, it appears that you have demonstrated your tenacity in going up that river and bringing out those two Reb vessels. Three days up an uncharted, river, a victorious battle, and prizes brought back. Well done, sir.”
“It further appears, Master Wake, that the papers found on one of those vessels have provided some very good intelligence about some of the activities of Reb sympathizers here at Key West. You just never know what you will find when you start digging, do you?” added Commander Johnson smoothly, his eyes surveying the junior officer.
Wake suddenly realized that he should respond to this apparently rhetorical question and stammered out, “Sir, I was just carrying out my orders. The men of the Gem of the Sea’s boats and my crew did their duty well. And I am glad that the papers were found helpful.”
“And how are you, sir? Has your wound progressed well?” asked Barkley, with what certainly sounded like sincerity.
“Yes, sir, I am well. It has been a month, sir. The surgeon has released me. I would like to go back to my ship.”
“Well, I am sure that you would. Let’s see, your bosun has had her while you have been recuperating, right?” Johnson phrased carefully.
“Yes, sir. John Hardin. He is a very competent man.” Wake said flatly, looking right at Johnson. The commander then interposed. “Your report was very interesting. Hardin has been very much involved in the exploits of the Rosalie. Must be pretty good. And evidently someone in Washington has connections with the Thorton family. They appreciated your narration of his gallantry.”
“I wrote it as I saw it, sir.”
The admiral watched the polite intercourse with a concerned look on his face. He regained control of the conversation. “Well, Wake, however it went, it ended well. Now we must discuss your next assignment.”
Commander Johnson then rose, as if on cue, and walked around the room to the chart on the opposite wall. He turned to the admiral and the master and began. “It is time to take the pro-Union men of the coast and go beyond transporting them to various islands for safety. Their use as guides and conduits for information,” he was studiously avoiding the use of the word spies, “has been valuable. But General Woodbury believes that they are ready to rise up against the Rebels on the mainland. It appears that the time is right. From your activities along the coast, do you agree?”
Wake felt both of them staring at him, as he in turn stared at the chart on the wall and said, “Sir, there are some who could be trusted, I believe. But there are many I don’t trust. The selection must be done with care.”
“Well said, Wake.” Admiral Barkley nodded. “Nevertheless, you will be our man on the scene. It’s an army show, but the navy will transport them and support them if it comes to a battle near the water. By the navy, I mean the Rosalie and the Gem of the Sea.”
“We need a man we can trust when the operations of these units go in among the islands and up the rivers. A man who can make decisions. Do you understand what we mean, Mr. Wake?” Johnson questioned with his words and his facial expression.
“Sir, I believe you want me to be able to make the decision that the goal is realistic, and stop the operation if it appears wasteful or suicidal?” Wake ventured forth, not at all sure that is what they meant but trying to sound decisive.
“Precisely, Mr. Wake. But we want you to be tactful when dealing with the army.” The admiral smiled. “Cooperation is essential in this area of the war.”
“So, sir, I am to be tactful but firm when deciding that the army is getting us in deep trouble ashore.”
“I believe that Master Wake has grasped the idea, Admiral. He will do well. The army will not get into too much trouble with him along,” Johnson said as he gazed at Wake. “Master Wake, here are your orders, along with those for Lt. Baxter on the Gem of the Sea. I want you to set sail tomorrow morning on the tide. The army units should be meeting you in a week or so. The Honduras will bring them up.”
Wake knew that he should wait until onboard the Rosalie to open his orders, but he couldn’t help himself and asked, “Sir, where am I to meet the army?”
Commander Johnson made another communicative glance to the admiral, and then said cryptically to Wake, “You find out when you open your orders upon leaving the harbor, Wake. Too many Rebel sympathizers about, here on the island, for that information to be bandied around now. Not even the soldiers know where they are going.”
“Aye, sir,” replied Wake as he felt his face turn red and warm under the not-so-subtle reminder that he was just an underling and not part of the strategy planning by the commander and the admiral. As he saluted the senior officers and turned smartly to go, he was stopped on his course by Admiral Barkley, who uttered in an almost fatherly way, “Mr. Wake, your mission will have great consequence on the progress of the war for this squadron. You will understand that when you read your orders. Good luck, and God go with you.”
Wake was surprised by this last statement and the manner in which it was delivered. Coupled with Johnson’s eerie staring at him throughout the entire interview, Wake felt very uneasy when he thanked the admiral for his kind remark and walked out through the chief yeoman’s office and into the waiting room. He felt even more uneasy exiting through the usual parasitic gathering of citizens, merchant captains, and army and navy officers in that room waiting for an audience with the admiral. They all scrutinized Wake with the demeanor of a jury deciding the fate of a defendant in the dock.
When he finally emerged from the squadron office building into the glaring sun and heat of midday, Wake’s now-churning gut was convincing him that there was something very wrong with this whole thing. He walked along the harborside, then sat down on a shaded bench beneath one of the many coconut palms that dotted the grounds of the government buildings.
His mind went over the preceding conversation in detail and concentrated not only on what was said, but how it was said. He remembered the commander’s constant survey of him, gauging him, testing him. But why? Why did Johnson stare at him so strangely when he talked of the papers they found on the captured ships with information on Reb sympathizers in Key West? The uneasiness turned into a
sickening feeling as Linda’s father came to mind. Could he be linked in some way to the Rebs up on the southwest coast of Florida? He gripped the bench and prayed that it not be so.
Wake’s mind then methodically assessed the chances that the Key West authorities had linked him and Linda. It wouldn’t have been too hard, Wake thought as his whole body seemed to deflate. Another complication of love, another reason why it was illogical, dangerous, and wrong for him to be in love with the most beautiful person he had ever known. All this time he had feared her father the most. Now he had to be concerned with his own side.
He felt an itch on his right ear and involuntarily reached up to scratch it. The wound was healed, but a mirror had already showed him that the scar was plain to see. His ear had been mangled and there was a straight line fore and aft of it that had healed as an angry red welt. He had never been a vain man, had never thought of himself as good-looking. But he saw the looks people gave that scar, and he felt somehow ashamed. He remembered the hospital and how he had hoped that the scars would heal into something less noticeable. But he was lucky he was not dead, and he knew it.
The big fear regarding his wound had been infection, and for the first week the nurses—male, sweaty, and unkempt—had tried to keep it washed each day. The pain of this procedure had been as bad as the initial wound. He finally had stopped them and done it himself. The hospital wasn’t a very healthy place anyway. Even though it was located on the western side of the island by Fort Taylor, where sea breezes were supposed to keep it disease-free, the breezes sometimes did not make themselves felt. It stank of urine and medicines and echoed with the constant moan of wounded and sick men, occasionally punctuated by the scream of a man undergoing a “procedure.”
When he had felt better, he was allowed to leave the hospital during the day, and sometimes at night, and walk into the town of Key West. Several of these times he had met with Linda. These were always short, hurried affairs, with one eye on his watch and the other on the lookout for those who might see them. They were desperate moments that he frantically needed, that he lived for. She never mentioned his scar after the first time, when she held his head and so gently traced the line of the bullet, rocking him in her arms, softly telling him how much she loved him and quietly crying at the closeness of having lost him to the co-patriots of her father.
As he got up from the bench to walk to the officers’ landing, he glanced back at the building housing the squadron’s offices. The sun was now in the western sky, and as he looked against its glare he thought he saw a man, or men, in the window of the admiral’s office on the second floor. He couldn’t be sure. Were they surveying the ships at anchor or looking at him? Or was he perhaps becoming overly sensitive from his increasingly more complicated life? Wake shook his head clear of that unpleasant thought and looked to the northeast, away from the sun, where Rosalie swung on her anchor across the harbor. He would send word to her to be ready to sail at dawn. But now he had to be with Linda one last time, in the late afternoon hours of the day while her house was empty of her father and her uncle. He had to hold her one last time and memorize those eyes, and the smell of her perfume, and the touch of her softness, which had become the only normal part of his abnormal life. He made his way through the streets of the town to his lover, like a moth to the flame. . . .
***
His watch said that it was three o’clock in the morning, but his head told him that it was the end of the world. Never a large drinker, he had gone to a place quite different from the Russell House Hotel on Duval Street, where officers and prominent townspeople usually met for a drink. He’d found a bar that was little more than a barn in the eastern part of town back away from the nice areas. The hanging board out front declared it to be the Rum and Randy, and he thought a few glasses of what was known as “sailors’ flips,” concocted of rum, sugar, and beer, might cheer him up. He needed a bit of cheer after leaving Linda in the early evening just before her father and uncle were expected home. But the flips had not been what he expected. It was cheap rotgut rum from Cuba, two days away to the south, and the beer was stale. Soon a few drinks had become a few more. The atmosphere was alternately jolly or melancholy, depending on whether the officer singing a song was just making port or just about to sail from it. Wake recognized a couple of the officers from the schooners and other small vessels that Rosalie sometimes encountered. They compared experiences and memories of up north and eventually found a table to sit together. The others spoke of women they knew, with sometimes enough detail that the listeners knew that the narrator was talking of his fantasy and not of fact. But like sailors everywhere, they liked a good story, whether totally true or not—it made the time go by more pleasantly. Wake listened to the others’ stories with a smile.
The unpainted, windowless room held tables for maybe twenty people but was now occupied by more than forty, not counting the girls who served and sat with the officers. Wake found himself feeling an odd, almost surreal appreciation of the people around him. He had the uncanny feeling that this was the last time that he would see this place and that he should have a good time here. It was not an unpleasant feeling, just an out-of-place feeling. So he joined in the songs and swilled down his flips and spoke lustfully with the others of the war and the way it should be fought, if only those in charge knew what they were doing.
And eventually he found himself at three o’clock in the dark of the morning with two ensigns, a lieutenant, and another master at the officers’ landing. The master and the lieutenant were small-vessel captains like himself. They were starting to sober up with the knowledge that they would soon be aboard their ships with their men watching them. Both the two young ensigns were still at the height of their rum-induced silliness. Thinking that everything was funny, they were not listening to the lieutenant as he told them to pipe down. Then they made their rather considerable mistake. They told the lieutenant that he was just a gunboat skipper and that they were salts from a real man-o-war and didn’t want to listen to a “small boat man.”
Wake knew what would come next. It was the same whether you were in the merchant marine or the navy. It was the same in any port, with any nationality. You never insulted a man’s ship. Seconds after the remark, both ensigns were crawling slowly away from the landing with blood pouring from their mouths and noses, and the lieutenant was peering out over the harbor for the duty boat, looking unconcerned, rubbing his knuckles where they had made quick contact with his targets.
The duty boat having arrived, the two masters and the lieutenant boarded and sat down in the stern sheets as the crew put their backs into it and made the rounds of the ships to drop off their passengers. Wake, his head starting to pound, concentrated on his mission, or at least what he knew of it. He looked over at the Honduras as they went by her at anchor. She appeared empty of troops and was quiet aboard, the duty watch on the foredeck talking in hushed voices as the launch rowed by.
Wake was the last to make his ship, and with barely concealed humor the boat crew made the signal to the anchor watch on deck that the captain was coming aboard. As he climbed up the side at the main chains, Wake glanced back at the boat crew, but the coxswain had already sheered off and was heading back to the landing. Probably to have a flip himself, thought Wake sarcastically as he made his way past an astonished Lamar on anchor watch. Wake looked once around the deck and then descended into his dark cave of a cabin, thinking of everything he had to do before making sail in three hours. Then he collapsed onto his crude bunk and mercifully lost conscious awareness of anything.
A minute later Wake woke up at six in the morning, three hours after he had fallen asleep. Young Sommer was shaking his shoulders and telling him that it was time to wake up. Wake very reluctantly rose up and adjusted his eyes to take in the starlight from the open hatchway. As he made his way up the ladder to the deck, he felt and heard the ship coming alive around hi
m. Hardin spoke as Wake arrived at the tiller. “Mornin’, sir. Anchor’s hove short and mains’l’s ready. Any orders, sir?”
Wake noted the neutral tone in the voice, then looked aloft to the wind and replied to weigh anchor and steer a course out the Northwest Channel. Moments later the sloop was moving away from the island on a broad reach as the eastern sky started to lighten. Wake breathed in the sea air and started to feel better.
With all sail set and a gentle easterly wind, Rosalie felt alive. Her easy motion and the sounds of the rigging whistling softly made Wake smile. Ol’ Rosey was sailing again and she liked it. Like most sailors, he knew in his head that she was just wood and canvas, but like most sailors he couldn’t help also feeling in his heart that she had a personality and a soul—sometimes forgiving, sometimes like a stubborn bitch, many times beautiful. She had been laid up at Key West for two weeks after the Peace River affair, having damage repaired and giving the crew liberty ashore. Hardin had taken her back to the coast only one time, and that for only a week’s supply run to the various gunboat steamers offshore. As Wake inspected her decks and felt her rigging and sails, he felt glad to be away from the shore and free from the politics of landsmen.
One by one, the crew came up and welcomed Wake back, each in his own way. Even Hardin could not dampen his growing enthusiasm. Hardin reported to him that they were short a replacement man for the dead Wilson and another for the still-recovering Smith. Burns, who had lain in the same hospital as his captain, was on deck and moving slowly, having returned only the day before.
At the Edge of Honor (The Honor Series) Page 10