The Privateersman

by The Privateersman (retail) (epub)

  Kite looked at his old ship. The main mast rose like a flaming tree and deep red flames flared within the roiling column of smoke that poured up out of her burning hold. ‘She has not exploded,’ he remarked to no-one in particular.

  ‘She was bilged,’ a voice said, and Kite looked down to where Rathburne had propped himself against the binnacle and stared astern. ‘The water,’ Rathburne gasped with an effort, ‘must have flooded the magazine.’ The sweat stood out on Rathburne’s forehead as, gritting his teeth, he concluded his explanation: ‘before the fire reached it.’ The two men looked at each other. ‘You… you are a lucky man, Captain Kite.’

  ‘No sir,’ Sarah breathed venomously, ‘you are a lucky man, Captain Rathburne, for you deserve to be as dead as my late husband!’

  Rathburne merely looked at her with contempt and then, with an effort replied, ‘perhaps, Mistress Tyrell, if you had been a good shot, I would be.’

  Sarah drew in her breath smartly, but Kite put up his hand between them and then beckoned Paston over and ordered him to make his commander comfortable on deck by bringing some blankets and a pillow up from below.

  ‘What, have they got you too Joe?’ remarked Rathburne with a brave smile at the frightened lad. ‘Well, well. I thought I had broken my promise to your mother.’

  And Kite, staring at the two of them, wondered why he felt so little except an immense and wearying sense of loss.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Rathburne

  Kite straightened up. ‘There,’ he said, holding the pistol ball up in the forceps, ‘is what did the damage.’

  On the cabin table Rathburne relaxed and Jacob let go of him with a sigh of relief. It had been a long probing and the American was soaked in sweat, but he lay quiet at last, the extraction complete. Rathburne opened his eyes and looked at the lead ball.

  ‘Give it back to your wife,’ he whispered.

  Sarah lent over and wiped his face, ignoring the remark.

  ‘Now Rathburne, I have to suture you,’ Kite said. ‘You have lost a deal of blood, but the wound is clean. Infection and dirt are close companions, so I think you have little to fear…’

  ‘I fear nothing, Kite…’ the wounded man hissed, trying to sit up, but Jacob seized his shoulders and forced him back on the table.

  ‘We know you for a brave fellow,’ said Kite abstractedly, holding a needle up to the light coming in through the stern windows and drawing thread through it.

  ‘So very brave,’ added Sarah, ‘especially with flint and tinder…’

  ‘Damn you…’ But Rathburne carried his diatribe no further as Kite bent over him again.

  The American commander remained silent for the next quarter of an hour as Kite, having cleaned and closed the wound, bandaged Rathburne’s arm, then stretched and splinted it. When he had finished, they laid him on the cabin deck, where a seaman’s palliasse had been laid as a temporary bed.

  ‘Well,’ said Kite washing his hands in the basin Ben brought in for him. ‘That is the last of the wounded. How many of them were there?’

  ‘Two rebels, Captain Kite, four slightly wounded of our own, three severely wounded and one mortally,’ Ben answered without hesitation.

  ‘Mortally? Ah, yes, Dodd, the stomach wound…’

  ‘And six dead, sir,’ Ben added, completing his computation.

  ‘Thank you, Ben.’

  ‘I will wash down the cabin,’ Ben said, indicating the blood soaked table top, the stained deck beneath it and the bucket full of bloody rags.

  ‘Let us have five minutes peace, Ben.’ The rickety-legged man nodded and, picking up the bucket, left the cabin.

  ‘He is a treasure,’ Sarah remarked as Kite turned and drew the decanter from its fiddles, pouring three pegs of rum and handing one each to Sarah and Jacob. ‘And thank you both for your assistance.’

  Sarah had sunk into a chair and the tall negro stood and leaned against the forward bulkhead. Both drooped with fatigue as Kite too eased himself into a chair. ‘Come Jacob, sit down.’ Kite indicated a vacant chair, but Jacob shook his head and merely buckled his legs, his back sliding down the bulkhead so that he sat upon the floor. Before any of them had finished their rum, they were asleep, unaware of Ben slopping out the cabin round them.

  On deck Hamish Lamont and his watch slumped at their stations as, battle-scarred and exhausted, the ill-tended Spitfire sailed into the night, her head to the south.

  Kite woke to find himself in his bed with Sarah alongside him. He could not recall how he got there, nor what the strange noise was that had woken him. Raising his head he peered about him in the darkness. He could see nothing, but then thought that perhaps he should have been on deck, on watch. Had they been below to call him? Had he drifted off to sleep again? He threw his legs from the cot and then, as he stood unsteadily on shaking legs and felt the strain of yesterday’s exertions, the events of the preceding hours came back to him in a rush. In the next instant he had almost stumbled over Rathburne’s groaning form as the wounded American turned uneasily in fevered sleep. So that was the source of the strange noise!

  Kite stooped and placed his hand on Rathburne’s forehead. It was hot, but that was to be expected and Kite eased the blankets into which the unconscious man had twisted himself. Then he rose, quietly dressed and went on deck.

  Harper had the watch and straightened up from the binnacle as Kite appeared. ‘Good morning, sir,’ he said formally, testing Kite’s mood.

  Kite grunted acknowledgement and Harper, after a moment’s hesitation, slumped back over the binnacle.

  ‘What o’clock is it?’

  ‘Six bells has just been struck, sir, about ten minutes ago.’

  Ten past three in the morning, Kite thought as he fell to pacing the deck. And what was he going to do with the day that would shortly dawn? For weeks, no months, he had set his mind to the problem of recovering the Wentworth and now that objective had been wrenched from him, he was at a loss. Instead he had Rathburne lying below, a liability and a burden to him. Why in God’s name had Sarah not shot him through the heart and put paid to the wretch?

  Kite seethed with fury at the notion of having to tend Rathburne. Yesterday, as he had looked after the wounded, he had not thought much of the matter. Rathburne was just one of those who required attention after the fight, and as such he had had his just share of Kite’s imperfect skills as a surgeon. Now, however, Kite’s mind was on a different tack and, as the first faint trace of daylight began to edge the horizon under a sheet of grey overcast, he realised something else. The utter loss of the Wentworth meant a severe reduction in Kite’s fortunes for, while he had a chance of recovering the ship, he had not let his mind dwell on the outcome of her irretrievable loss.

  He was not a poor man, it was true, but there had been considerable outlay in fitting the Spitfire and, since then, the costs of her running and manning had made severe inroads into his capital. Moreover, he now had Sarah to support and, God-willing her unborn child. He felt the prickle of sweat break out along his spine. The coast under his lee, perhaps by now all of it, was hostile while Sarah herself was no longer in the first flush of her youth. How was the child after the horrors of yesterday? He recalled the way she had looked, drained of all colour, like a bloodless corpse. What physiological changes wrought that effect and did not have an impact upon the foetus in her womb? Great God! But why was the world so full of unanswerable questions?

  He paced the deck in an agony of indecision and loneliness, his tousled hair, half escaped from its ribboned queue, swept by an impatient hand as he flew up and down the deck muttering to himself. After half an hour of this wild abstraction he went below again, leaving Harper and his watch to heave a collective sigh of relief.

  Two days later, still trailing her long-boat astern, but with no ensign at her peak, the schooner Spitfire stood in towards Newport Road between the Beaver Tail and Brenton’s Key. From her mainmasthead flew a large white flag, fashioned from one of the few bed-sheets on boa
rd. Standing well up amongst the anchored shipping the schooner was hove-to and her boat hauled alongside. A crowd of observers had congregated along the waterfront once the word went round, and the crews captive aboard the ships watched as the Spitfire’s boat was manned. Word went round that a body was being lowered into it and that this was followed by the figure of a blue-coated gentleman and a woman in a green riding habit and wearing a feathered tricorne. The boat shoved off and headed for the shore; in its bow a boat-hook was raised and from this a smaller white flag, made from a table napkin as it happened, hung limply as a sign of truce.

  As the boat approached the wharves and headed for a slip-way, a group of the more curious of the male onlookers moved towards its intended landing place, their voices querulous as to the purpose of this strange event. Fifty yards off the landing the strange oarsmen rested and the blue-coated gentleman stood up in the boat’s stern-sheets. Without removing his hat or giving any sign of courteous salutation, as the newspaper the following day reported sniffily, the sea-captain called out:

  ‘I am Captain William Kite of the British privateer Spitfire of Liverpool. I have here Captain John Peck Rathburne, a native of Rhode Island…’

  ‘At this intelligence,’ the newspaper afterwards stated, ‘a murmur of incredulity and anxiety ran through the assembled populace whose strong feelings were mitigated when they learned from the British commander that Captain Rathburne was not dead, but merely wounded in the arm, a wound which, we are pleased to be able to assure our readers, will soon mend and enable Captain Rathburne to further the noble cause to which he has espoused and for which he almost gave his life.

  ‘Captain Rathburne’s ship, a frigate of this Free Province of Rhode Island, the Rattlesnake, having run aground after an action with a ship of the Royal Navy, had been burned and Captain Rathburne, wounded in the action. Captain Kite, we are assured, was employed to provide safe passage for Captain Rathburne. Having landed its precious burden, the British boat withdrew. Captain Kite is rumoured to have had some interest in the Rattlesnake which, readers will recall, was most gallantly carried off this port some months ago by a boarding party under Captain Rathburne.

  ‘Reports have also been passed to the Editor that with him in the boat, Captain Kite had a lady not unknown in Newport which delicacy forbids us to dishonour, but who, having been but recently widowed, has cast aside her proper weeds to become the whore of a British seaman. To such low ends must all who cling to the Tory cause reduce themselves….’

  And thereafter the Editor relieved himself of a good deal of bile at the expense of truth, all of which was of inestimable value to the cause of ‘Continental Union’.

  Pulling back to the Spitfire, Kite managed a grim chuckle. ‘I wonder what they will make of that?’ he asked Sarah, adding, ‘not to mention your presence. Do you think you were recognised?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Sarah replied. ‘I was pointed out by several of the ladies on the wharf.’

  ‘An’ not a few gennelmen noticed you Ma’am,’ remarked the seaman pulling at stroke oar.

  ‘I am notorious then,’ Sarah said with a smile.

  ‘Undoubtedly.’ Kite smiled back.

  In the two days since the action, they had done much to restore the damage to the Spitfire’s upperworks, but she was leaking badly and the men had to spend an hour at the pumps every watch, for which labour Kite maintained the three-watch system and made for Halifax. Here he spent the remaining days of August 1775, emptying the schooner of her ballast, hauling her down and effecting permanent repairs to her two shot holes and the split strakes that admitted water in a dozen places. The stoutly built schooner had stood up well to the early gunnery of the Rattlesnakes, for this had proved the most deadly.

  During his brief period on board, Rathburne had recovered sufficiently to give them an account of his side of the affair. This had not been a matter of weakness, for he was fiercely anxious to know why so inferior a vessel as the Spitfire had taken his ‘frigate’.

  Having given them an account of the first attack on what he called ‘the Boston lighthouse’ which had been led by himself and Major Joseph Vose and during which the only thing they had not carried off had been the fog-signal gun, Rathburne had made a second descent on the night of the 30th and 31st of July. In the interim the Rattlesnake had been in Plymouth Harbour, sailing at dawn on the 30th with a number of whaleboats in tow and having embarked a detachment of three hundred New Hampshire troops under Major Benjamin Tupper.

  The troops had overwhelmed the garrison of thirty British marines under two officers with the loss of only two men, and then captured a dozen carpenters and bricklayers working on repairs to the lighthouse and its outbuildings. All, including the two keepers, their wives and families, were withdrawn by Tupper and Rathgburne had returned to Plymouth. Here Rathburne had completed negotiation for the purchase of a British vessel from her captors. Like the Wentworth, she had been illegally seized and a party of influential Rhode Islanders, desirous of forming their own coast guard, had offered a sum of money to acquire her. Rathburne had accordingly placed half of the Rattlesnake’s company aboard, to refit her and bring her round to Newport, which accounted for the parlous state of his own ship when she had engaged the Spitfire.

  ‘She was not your ship, Rathburne,’ Kite had said gently, as he sat at the side of his enemy, ‘she was mine.’

  ‘You lost her and I acquired her by force of arms.’ Rathburne’s eyes had glittered with passion as well as fever.

  ‘Is force to justify everything in your new country, Captain?’ Sarah had asked, her hostility to the man who murdered her first husband unmitigated by the catharsis of action.

  ‘Why did you not shoot me through the heart, Madam?’ Rathburne had turned his eyes on her.

  ‘Because I wished to see you suffer.’

  Rathburne had looked at Kite. ‘Your wife is mad, Captain Kite. I wish you joy of her.’

  ‘I am not mad, Captain…’

  ‘Hush Sarah, he is still fevered…’ Kite had begun when Rathburne interrupted.

  ‘Feverish but sane…’ he had said, breaking off to chuckle mirthlessly. For a moment the trio remained awkwardly silent, then Rathburne had turned to look at Kite with a sudden intensity. ‘That midships gun of yours, where did you get it? Was it from the lighthouse?’

  Kite had inclined his head and Rathburne had murmured, ‘of course,’ and turned away, closing his eyes.

  ‘It was my wife’s idea,’ Kite had said quietly, taking Sarah’s hand.

  ‘She is mad,’ Rathburne had added in a low voice and without opening his eyes. ‘Quite, quite mad.’

  The decision to land Rathburne conspicuously had been Kite’s. He had no wish to take the man prisoner and, despite his assurances to his patient, had no idea whether he would yet survive. But on the morning of his departure from the Spitfire Rathburne was fully lucid, though still weak.

  As the long-boat had approached the landing place, Kite had bent over him and spoken to him for the last time.

  ‘It would seem that the entire populace has turned out to welcome you,’ Kite had said, ‘so I shall wish you a full recovery and have done with you.’

  ‘No, Kite, you shall hear more of me. You too are mad, like your wife and all your foolish countrymen.’ Rathburne’s tone had been low and intense in its vehemence, but Kite had grown weary of the American’s bombast and straightened up as the boat had glided towards the waiting crowd.

  The Spitfire sailed from Halifax at the end of the first week in September. The eighteen-pounder had been struck down into the hold along with all but four of the smaller carriage guns and on top of which Kite had loaded a full cargo of timber. Her stability thus secured, the men made their final preparations for sea. Kite offered any that wished to take it, their discharge. Four seamen availed themselves of the opportunity of remaining in North America; the rest having been paid and permitted leave to enjoy a short debauch ashore, rejoined for the trans-Atlantic passage.

 
Battened down, her long-boat once again nestled in its amidships chocks, her sails and rigging repaired, the schooner had stood bravely out to sea at first light on Saturday 2nd September, to run east towards England before the equinoctial gales.

  Chapter Twenty

  The Return of Odysseus

  Katherine Makepeace looked up at her husband. He stood by the unshuttered window against which the wind dashed the rain.

  ‘Bennett, my dear, do close the shutters and come and sit by the fire…’ Doctor Bennett grunted but continued to stare out into the dark street. ‘Are you waiting for a summons?’ Katherine asked, fearful that some inconsiderate and ailing soul would deprive her of her husband’s society on this foul night.

  ‘No,’ Bennett replied.

  ‘Don’t tell me that Milton wishes to pay a call?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then why do you stare out of the window?’

  ‘To be truthful, my dear, I do not know beyond the fact that I am entertaining an apprehension.’

  ‘Ahhh…’ Katherine nodded. Her first guess was correct and her husband was dissembling. She had come to learn that her husband’s ‘apprehensions’ were apt to precede some cataclysmic event occurring to one of his patients. She bent again to her stitchwork, a little irritated but resigned.

  Then Doctor Bennett suddenly closed the shutters, crossed the room and rang the bell. He remained standing until Mrs O’Riordan entered the room.

  ‘Siobhan, my dear, do please warm the bed in the back bedroom…’

  ‘Captain Kite’s old room, Doctor?’ Mrs O’Riordan’s face bore an expression of astonishment.

  ‘If you please…’

  ‘Are we expecting company, Bennett?’

  ‘No, we are not expecting company, Kate, my dearest, but I apprehend it may arrive.’ The doctor bent, threw out his coat tails and sat down while the two women exchanged glances. Having rolled her eyes to heaven, Mrs O’Riordan bobbed her habitual curtsy and swept from the room; Katherine looked at her husband but the doctor had closed his eyes and clasped his hands contentedly across his portly belly. She resumed her needlework with a sigh.