‘I shall run directly alongside,’ Kite called out, motioning Jacob to put the helm over again and warning the men at the sheets to tend them as the schooner gybed. But he got no further, for there was a shout from forward and out of the smoke blowing to leeward came the bows of two boats which thumped alongside and then men were swarming over the side yelling like banshees.
‘We’ve run into their bloody boats!’ Lamont yelled, as he grabbed a boarding pike from the rack. Kite suddenly realised that he bore no arms, but then Bandy Ben yelled, ‘Captain!’ and threw him his sword. He was aware of Sarah beside him, a pistol in one hand, a sword in the other and he lunged forward as the guns’ crews rose from their pieces and thrust rammers and sponges at their assailants.
‘Jacob!’ he roared, ‘ease the sheets and get her before the wind!’ Then he plunged into the fray, slashing and thrusting as the Spitfires prevented the boarders from forcing their way further aft. To his left he caught sight of Harper hacking right and left with a tomahawk, and beyond him the masts and hull of the Rattlesnake as they glided past. By an irony, the presence of the rebels on the deck of the Spitfire forced the gunners left aboard from firing into the schooner as she swept by, and then he felt a man cannon into him as Sarah withdrew her sword and an American voice yelled that the boats had gone and that they were being carried away. In a moment the fight ended with the attackers diving over the side and swimming back to their ship or to the two boats bobbing in the wake of the Spitfire.
As they drew clear, Kite took stock. One man lay dead, a pair of his own crew sat between the guns nursing broken heads, while another had a cut arm. At the foot of the foremast, Harper had pinned a single rebel, a youth of about sixteen whose feet barely touched the deck.
‘Who is your commander?’ Harper demanded.
Half choking the young man gasped out the name ‘Rathburne’ and Harper let him go. Slumping onto the deck, the boy strove to regain his breath before getting unsteadily to his feet. ‘You can swim back to your ship, or stay a prisoner,’ Harper said as the boy stared astern at the growing distance between the Spitfire and the Rattlesnake.
‘I surrender, sir,’ the youth gasped and Harper conducted his prisoner aft to where order was re-establishing itself as Spitfire stood out to sea.
Kite crossed the deck to the dead man. It was the rebel who had fallen heavily against Kite and whom Sarah had thrust through the shoulder. He had a head wound from which the blood still oozed, and a pistol ball had smashed in one eye to penetrate the brain. Kite nodded to two seamen.
‘Throw him overboard,’ he said, then turned to the Mate. ‘Secure the guns, Hamish.’ Kite smiled at Sarah who appeared undaunted by her encounter with the enemy. ‘You have despatched one of them,’ he said, ‘though they drove us off, I fear,’ he added ruefully as Sarah, Lamont and Harper gathered round the pitiful boy who represented their sole trophy.
‘Brother Jonathan is a tough nut to crack, Captain,’ said Harper and Kite looked at him sharply, momentarily forgetful of where he had heard the phrase before and disproportionately fascinated by the long shadows cast by the setting sun.
‘What’s your name, son?’ the Second Mate asked his prisoner.
‘Joe Paston, sir.’
Harper looked at Kite. ‘His commander’s name is Rathburne, sir.’
‘I see,’ said Kite, recalling himself at this news. ‘We had better lock him up in the gunner’s cabin.’
‘I’ll see to it,’ Harper said, pushing the lad towards the companionway.
‘Wait,’ said Kite. Turning his full attention to Paston, he asked, ‘where was your Captain during the fight, Joe?’
‘He was ashore, sir, a-burning the lighthouse.’
‘He wasn’t in the boats, then?’
‘No sir.’
Turning aft, Kite pulled his glass from his pocket and levelled it astern. Against a flaming sunset he could see the hummocks of the islands and the tall stone lighthouse tower from which a column of smoke still rose into the air. To the north, in silhouette against the brilliant sky, the sails of the Rattlesnake showed her heading north, towards Marblehead.
‘Brother Jonathan is a damned tough nut to crack,’ he muttered and then he felt Sarah by his side.
‘I failed to retake my ship,’ he said, taking her hand and turning towards her.
‘You are not a natural killer, William, but you shall succeed at the next encounter.’
‘I wish you were not so certain,’ he said miserably, bowing under the weight of obligation.
Chapter Sixteen
The Gun
Having withdrawn offshore, Kite hove the Spitfire to again and the schooner lay that night upon a placid sea. Kite went forward to tend the men wounded in the action and found them merrily bragging over their scratches and bruises. The mood among the hands was one of elation, because they did not share their commander’s sense of failure. For most of them it was their first taste of action and while firing the guns and enduring an enemy’s return of fire blooded them, the short but physical encounter with the American boarders was a more satisfactory affair. In this their little victory was incontrovertible and their pathetic prisoner, evidence of their triumph.
Kite came aft again. Lamont and his watch had the deck and Kite paused beside the binnacle. He stared round the horizon. The night was moonless and the almost cloudless sky was dotted with stars; Arcturus blazed above them while the steady light of Saturn lay close to their southern meridian. Lamont coughed and Kite looked up as the Mate approached until the dim light from the binnacle lamp showed the features of his face.
‘What d’you propose doing now, sir?’ Lamont asked.
Kite shrugged and shot a glance at the man at the tiller. Whatever he said would be carried below and it would be churlish to withdraw and whisper in secret to the Mate.
‘Well, Hamish,’ he said with a confidence he was far from feeling, ‘we roughed them up a little, but we have lost the initiative and they will know our identity now. If they rumble that we are neither a naval schooner nor a revenue cruiser, which is not very difficult, they will make enquiries. One way or another, bearing in mind the situation regarding Carse and Johnstone, our friend Captain Rathburne will soon know that the Spitfire is involved in some personal crusade. With half the enemy ashore burning the lighthouse, we didn’t effect much…’
‘Oh, come on, sir, that’s a gloomy view, we did a wee bit more than rough-up that schooner!’ Lamont protested, ‘we knocked the tar out of his deck seams.’
The helmsman grunted his agreement. ‘I see I am out-voted,’ Kite said wryly.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Lamont went on, ‘if we had a few more men and one heavy long gun…’ The Mate left his sentence unfinished and watched his commander’s face. But Kite was unpersuaded. Where could they come by either a long gun or more men willing to join in a forlorn and private revenge?
‘Well, if you can think of where we can come by a gun, I’ll consider the matter,’ he said. He could smell something like a stew filtering up from the cabin below and he felt suddenly famished. He smiled at Lamont, ‘but for tonight I shall wish you a good night. Keep a good look-out and call me if you are at all concerned.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
In the cabin Ben served dinner and, after he had cleared away and Kite had written up the log, Sarah came and stood beside her husband. Pushing her hands through his hair she ruffled it playfully.
‘You are too serious a man, William.’
He looked up at her and put his arm about her. ‘Who would not be, with a wife as lovely as you?’
She pulled a face at him then she bent and kissed him. He rose and they embraced, then Kite tore off his coat and blew out the candles. The cabin was not in total darkness, for not only did the starlight throw up a pale reflection from the dark water, but the easy motion of the schooner, in troubling the surface of the sea, stirred up a phosphorescence that illuminated it with a numinous light. Lit by this cold glow, they both unrobed
and stood naked before each other before coming together in a sudden and overpowering passion. Afterwards they lay together on the deck in a tangle of limbs and a disarray of clothes and blankets.
‘You must have made love to Puella in this place,’ Sarah whispered.
‘I did,’ Kite replied, ‘but you should not…’
She placed a finger on his lips. ‘I am not jealous… She was a sweet person, whom I wronged and sometimes I fancy she still sits in the shadows, keeping me company when you are on deck.’
‘I have never thought of her as a ghost,’ Kite said.
‘If she is, she is a friendly one,’ Sarah said contentedly, ‘and she believed in the spirits.’
‘Yes, she did, and I am certain that her spirits linger here.’
‘And she bore you a child…’
‘Sarah, it is not important…’
‘But I am with child, William, and I think Puella’s shade is not displeased.’
He was incredulous, then delighted and, in the quiet of the night he reckoned the matter out. Sarah must have conceived the night before Bunker Hill, the night he had felt so optimistic about the future.
At ten o’clock the next morning the senior of the two lighthouse keepers on Beacon Island off Nantasket Point took the spy-glass from his junior colleague and levelled it at the schooner just then dropping her sails and hoisting out her boat after having come to an anchor.
‘No colours,’ the junior keeper observed nervously to his principal.
‘Another damned rebel then,’ the other replied.
‘I thought perhaps she looked a little like that man-o’-war schooner that intervened yesterday,’ the junior offered, reigniting a stale argument.
‘That weren’t no government schooner, Jim,’ the senior keeper said firmly, ‘she was more like a privateer with some private pendant flying, I noticed… Hullo, there’s a boat pulling ashore.’
The two men watched the boat’s oars catch the sunlight as her crew plied them, propelling the schooner’s long-boat in towards the landing place. In the stern sat a man in a cocked hat; beside him was what appeared to be a woman.
‘Well, I have no idea what this is all about, Jim, but get them scatter guns. After yesterday, I don’t trust no-one.’ The principal keeper remained on the wrecked parapet of the tower as his colleague scrambled below. The previous day had been a terrible shock and he feared worse was to come. He stared again through the glass. Was the ‘woman’ a ruse? A seaman dressed in a gown? The fact that the lighthouse had escaped total destruction the previous day had been entirely due to the timely arrival of a strange and unidentified schooner, but the rig was common and, in the outrage of the rebels looting of the lighthouse, neither of the keepers had taken in any details of the intervention on their behalf taking place a mile away. As it was the rebels had burnt the wooden parts of the lighthouse, removed all the lamp-oil, the gun-powder for the fog signal gun, stolen the hay and a thousand bushels of barley from the island’s barn and terrorised the little community. They had departed swearing to come back and complete the job after they had dealt with the intruding schooner. When they had made off, they had taken the two pulling boats which belonged to the island, leaving the keepers and their familes isolated and fearful. Was the arrival of this schooner the promised threat of further destruction, or the return of the friendly vessel?
There seemed to be a great deal of activity in the waist of the schooner, which seemed to suggest some intention which could only be hostile. The older keeper watched the boat approach the landing then turned for the ladder leading below. The rebels had burned the wooden staircase and he swore volubly. He was no longer a young man and the staircase had been bad enough, but negotiating the temporary ladder his colleague had rigged up made his rheumaticky limbs creak with effort.
At the open door at the base of the tower the junior keeper, handed him a blunderbuss.
‘Thank you Jim,’ the principal keeper said as they waited for the party to come up from the landing place. They could already see the boat pulling back to the schooner having landed its passengers. The principal keeper felt his stomach twisting with apprehension: there was something unnaturally threatening about all this and he was too old for more excitement. A moment or two later the two keepers were approached by a middle-aged man in a dark blue coat, white breeches and boots. He appeared to point something out to his companion, though what this was neither man could decide, but the stranger wore no sword and appeared relaxed and smiling, while at his side, her hand resting upon his arm, walked a woman in a bottle-green riding habit. Beneath the hem of her skirt, polished boots gleamed intermittently in the sunshine and as they came closer the two keepers could see that, far from being a seaman in disguise, her feathered tricorne shadowed an uncommonly beautiful face.
‘Good morning,’ the blue clad gentleman said, doffing his hat and smiling. The two keepers kept silent, their blunderbusses held across their chests. ‘You suffered no casualties in yesterday’s attack, I hope?’ the gentleman enquired.
‘Would it have mattered to you, if we had?’ the principal keeper asked truculently.
‘I am Captain William Kite,’ the gentleman said, ignoring the affront and replacing his hat. ‘I am commander and owner of the privateer-schooner Spitfire…’
‘We don’t wish to treat with any damned rebels, Captain, nor do we want any trouble. We are here for the benefit of mariners…’
‘My dear fellow, we are not rebels,’ Kite expostulated. ‘I was hoping that our intervention yesterday afternoon prevented the rebels inflicting much damage upon your station.’ Kite looked up at the smoke-marred tower, ‘but I see that has not proved to be the case.’
The two keepers exchanged glances, seemingly mollified. ‘They did enough,’ the older man said, ‘and threatened to do more. If you were willing, would you take word of the attack into Boston? The rebels stole all our stores, oil and powder, not to mention our boats. Perhaps General Gage will send us a garrison.’
‘Yes, I will do that if you wish to draft a despatch, but I have first to ask a favour of you.’
‘Oh, what is that?’ The principal keeper narrowed his eyes suspiciously.
‘I wish to take on board your signal gun. I see the rebels did not take that. It is a twelve pounder, I believe.’
‘It is an eighteen-pounder,’ the younger of the two keepers said, but the older held up his hand.
‘I can’t let you do that. ’Tis a signal gun to be fired in case of fog.’
‘I have a need of it,’ said Kite, ‘and you said the rebels stole your powder. Besides, you could pretend that the rebels took it…’
‘They did try and spike it, ’tis true…’ said the junior keeper.
‘Hold your tongue!’ his senior snapped and then, screwing up his face and looking from Kite to his wife, he asked, ‘why would you be wanting an eighteen-pounder?’
‘Because I have a particular desire to engage that ship that landed her crew here yesterday.’
‘The Rattlesnake?’
‘The Rattlesnake,’ Kite agreed, ‘formerly the Wentworth, a vessel not long since owned by myself and seized as an act of piracy by a Captain Rathburne…’
‘John Peck Rathburne, eh? God, I know that bastard…oh, begging your ladyship’s pardon…’
Sarah graciously excused the principal keeper with an inclination of her head. ‘Do you know him?’ she asked sweetly.
The principal keeper nodded. ‘Aye, I am originally from Rhode Island. I should have recognised him! I recall him now,’ he turned to his colleague, ‘he was that bugger in the brown coat, d’you recall? He led the incendiaries…’
‘He is very good at burning things down,’ Sarah said her voice suddenly harsh.
‘Ah, well, I wish I’d a-known… Not that we could have done much, just the two of us with our wives and a few children, but still…’
‘Could you not say that he made off with your eighteen-pounder?’ Kite asked suggestively.
&n
bsp; ‘He stole off everything else!’ the younger keeper exclaimed. ‘He’d have taken the gun if he could have! But for your arrival he might have done just that!’
‘Without powder, you can’t use the thing to defend yourself or warn any ships of fog, can you?’ Kite persisted.
‘No,’ the principal keeper said ruminatively, ‘but what will you do for shot? We have none here.’
‘We shall manage,’ Kite said, ‘and I can offer you gentlemen a little money by way of smoothing matters with your superiors, whilst adding my evidence that we saw the rebels bearing your gun away… You may write all this in your despatch which I will send into Boston at the first opportunity.’
‘I am not much of a hand at the writing…’
‘I can write,’ said his younger companion.
‘Aye but you’d not know what to say…’
‘Perhaps,’ put in Sarah, smiling benignly, ‘while my husband and his men shift the gun, you and I can sit down and compose your despatch.’
The principal keeper rubbed the side of his nose with a grubby finger. ‘How much would you be thinking of, Captain?’
‘Would fifty pounds between you, be a sufficient…’
‘Sixty,’ interrupted the junior keeper.
‘I told you to hold your tongue…’
‘Don’t squabble, gentlemen,’ said Kite gently. ‘To be truthful fifty is as much as I can reasonably afford and sixty is out of the question, but shall we say for the ease of division, fifty-four gold sovereigns? Twenty-seven pounds each must surely exceed your individual annual emoluments.’
‘Fifty-four pounds is fine, sir,’ said the principal keeper hurriedly, watching as Kite, fishing in his coat-tail pocket, drew out a purse.
‘Shall we withdraw into the pharos,’ Kite asked amiably, ‘and conclude our business in private?’
The eighteen-pounder weighed two tons and although it proved possible to move it some way towards the landing on its carriage, it was clear that the path was too uneven to facilitate the matter properly. This eventuality had been foreseen, however, and Harper and most of the Spitfire’s crew arrived ashore with spare spars, some timbers and a quantity of cordage and blocks, permitting the rigging of two pairs of sheer-legs. By erecting one pair of sheers directly over the gun, it was lifted off its carriage and then lowered onto short billets of wood, made largely from dunnage and toms brought ashore from the schooner. By securing lines to the gun trunnions a combination of men and a pair of small horses hired for the day from the farm on the island, permitted the gun to be worked further towards the landing, the sheers being moved to assist over the roughest of the ground.
The Privateersman Page 24