The Saintly Buccaneer

by Gilbert, Morris

  The funeral was held the next day, with the pastor preaching a sermon. Afterward the family returned to the house that now somehow seemed so empty.

  After the funeral, they were all seated around the living room and Charles announced, “I have something to say to all of you.” Immediately there was a hush, and he looked around with determination in his thin face. “Mother is gone, but my son is in a prison. I want to tell all of you that until he’s free, nothing else matters to me.”

  “Why, Charles, there’s nothing to be done, is there?” Dorcas asked.

  “Yes, there is and I’m going to do it. Maybe it might surprise you, Adam, but I’ve been reading the Scriptures myself a little bit.” He smiled at his brother as he continued. “I even know a verse you may have missed.”

  “That’s possible, Charles,” Adam replied. “What’s the verse?”

  “It’s in Ecclesiastes, chapter 10, verse 19, I believe. It says, ‘Money answereth all things.’ ”

  Adam looked curiously at him, as they all did, then asked, “I don’t recall it. Does it say something to you?”

  “It says that Dartmoor is like any other prison on this planet. It’s run by men, and men can be bought. It’s simple. I’m going to get Paul out of Dartmoor if it costs every cent I’ve got. If I need more, I’ll steal it.”

  Adam shook his head. “Don’t do that—steal, I mean. Your assets are frozen by the Congress until you lose your Tory ways—”

  “I just lost them!” Charles interrupted. “I don’t blame England for all our problems, but for whatever reason, I’m an American. I know people won’t believe me, but it’s the truth.”

  Adam stared at him, nodding slowly. “Well, I believe you, Charles—and I can drop a word here and there. I think we can get your property released.”

  This meant he himself would speak to Washington, and that was all it would take. Charles bit his lip, but said only, “I thank you, Adam.”

  “Nonsense!” Adam cried cheerily. “The boy’s a Winslow, isn’t he? Of course, we’ll have him out of that place. But you can’t go to England. In the first place, you’re not able—and in the second place you’d be under suspicion from the minute you set foot within a hundred miles of Dartmoor. And I can’t go—nor Nathan. This war seems to be winding up to a climax, and we have to be here.”

  Charles looked at him, a haggard expression on his face. “I know—but somebody has to go!”

  The room was quiet, and then without the slightest intention of doing so, Charity stated flatly, “I’m going!”

  They all stared at her, and she reddened, but held her head high. “I was going anyway—to try to get Dan out of that place. I might as well get two as one.”

  “But, Charity, you’re only a woman,” Anne protested.

  “I was only a woman when I was captain of a privateer, Anne, and I did that job all right. I’m going to sell my house and use the money to get Dan and Paul out.”

  Adam started to argue, but Julie interrupted him. “She will do it, Adam. The Lord said to me last night, ‘I will deliver these men from prison—but not by the hand of man.’ I didn’t understand it at the time, but now I do. It’ll be by the hand of a woman!”

  Charles argued, “Charity! What could you do?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m going.”

  “And you’re going as a Christian, aren’t you, Charity?” Julie asked.

  “Yes. I have given my life to God,” Charity declared. Lifting her head high, she went on. “I’m only a weak woman, but God will go with me.”

  Charles snapped his fingers and leaped to his feet. “Of course! Adam—William! She can stay with William!”

  Adam looked startled; then a smile broke across his wide lips. “That’s right! His church is very close to Dartmoor!”

  “Who is William?” Charity inquired, confused by this sudden burst of enthusiasm.

  “William is Adam’s older brother,” Julie explained. “He is a Methodist minister in England, and very fond of Adam.”

  “He’ll be risking everything, Charles,” Dorcas warned.

  “He’ll do it! I know he will!” Charles assured, his face was alight with excitement. “Adam, how soon can you get something done about the property? I want Charity to start right away.”

  “I’ll get on it—and I think with a little ‘encouragement’ in the right place, things will go pretty fast.”

  “I’m leaving this week,” Charity added. “I can sell my house tomorrow, I know for a fact. I’ve already had offers.”

  “I can’t let you do that,” Charles protested.

  “You can’t stop me, Charles Winslow!” Charity was startled at her own boldness, but laughed, “Now you know the worst about me—I’m a stubborn female, bound to have her own way!”

  “I think, Charity,” Adam told her, “your way is God’s way. And I want us all to pray right now for God’s angels to go before you, and that our men will be delivered by the same hand that delivered two other men long ago from a jail in Asia—Paul and Silas.”

  “But that was in the old days!” Anne protested.

  “He’s the same God—yesterday, today, and forever! Now, let’s pray to that God!”

  As they all joined hands, Charity felt a moment of fear. But as Major Winslow bombarded heaven, the fear fled like a beaten dog, and she was convinced that God was going to England with her!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ESCAPE

  Paul adjusted to the rigors of Dartmoor quickly, primarily as a result of those in his mess. There were six men, including Dan, Laurence Conrad, Thad Alden, Rufus Middles, and Miles Johnson, the white-haired ex-master of the Lady. The sixth man was introduced to the group by Paul himself, about whom he wrote in the journal he began keeping from the first day.

  Dec. 25, 1780

  Christmas Day—and my third month in Dartmoor. My beard is long and full of lice, I’m down to no more than a hundred and thirty pounds, and the Christmas dinner was a chunk of cold beef, stringy and well on its way to being spoiled, washed down by a cup of flat ale—but that’s nothing!

  Dan and the others have been my salvation—for since I’ve come here, more than one of the prisoners who came with me have given up and died. They were sick when they came and never had a chance. Our mess is a little band of brothers—reminds me of the words of Henry V in Shakespeare’s play: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers!” If it hadn’t been for these men, I would have been swallowed up by now, for the survivors here become beasts of prey, vultures that swarm over the weak and destroy them.

  So, I’m thankful for our mess—and it grieved me when Lige Smith died last week. He was wounded when we took the Lady, and despite all Lester could do, the wounds worsened and he died. All the men in the mess except Laurence Conrad and I are Christians, and they took it better than us—the unbelievers. Before we took Lige’s body to the guards, there was a “funeral” service, and it was like nothing I’d ever seen. Dan did the talking, and he was smiling through his tears—they all were!—and it was like saying, “We’ll see you soon, Lige!”

  Well, it almost sank me. I was so depressed that I could hardly eat—but yesterday, a miracle happened. (I’ll have to learn to believe in miracles if I stay with this group of Christians long!) I was amazed to see Enoch Whitefield brought in with a new group of prisoners. He was just the same as ever, calm as you please. He’d left the Neptune and gone to be with his cousin, the famous preacher, George Whitefield. Then he’d signed on an American ship, which had been captured by the British—so here he was. I was so glad to see the poor fellow, and so sad that he was in this place, but he said, “Why, it’s God’s will, sir!” I proposed him as a candidate for the vacancy, and all the men were glad. Conrad had to be opposed, just to keep his status as resident cynic. “He’ll want to have all of us falling to the ground like those Methodist enthusiasts. Oh, for a group of sound atheists for me to have fellowship with!”

  But Conrad’s a fraud. He’s fascinated by these m
en who can have joy in their God, even in this hellish place—just as I am!

  I have tried all I know to find a way out of this place. My only ray of hope was one of the guards. When he saw my gold, he made me all kinds of promises and took the money—but I never saw him again. Conrad says I was a fool, and he’s right. Now I have nothing—no money at all. It’s hard not to give in. All I want to do is die—better that than this place for the rest of my life!

  * * *

  Paul wrote the last words, closed the small notebook, then leaned forward and put his head on his knees. He was sitting alone in a corner of the large room, in the cobwebby hours of the morning. The din of a thousand voices had not yet begun—only the groans and cries from dreams came to him as he sat there. He tried to pray—something he’d been doing for weeks, without much result—and he had no sense of God. He had observed that when Dan or Enoch prayed, a smile would come to their faces, and it was like they were lifted out of the dark and squalor of Dartmoor, lifted to a place of light and music and pleasure. They could pray like that for hours, and he longed to know what it was that could make the horrors of Dartmoor grow dim.

  Now as he tried to pray, he did not have a similar experience, but something came to his mind—something so different that it frightened him.

  It was the face of a woman, a beautiful face. He was half asleep but totally conscious of himself. He could smell the stench of the prison, feel the dank cold air, hear the bedlam of voices that was beginning to sound—but for a few seconds in his mind a scene unrolled.

  He was at a ball, and the woman in his dream was there. She was outside on a terrace kissing a man, a very tall man with blonde hair and eyes bluer than any he’d ever seen. He felt a rage in him in the dream, and he saw himself going out on the terrace, seething with anger. The woman had fair skin, rich brown hair, and her clear hazel eyes were unafraid as he rushed out to meet the two. The blue eyes of the tall man were angry, and suddenly there was a violence of some sort—and then the memory faded.

  By the good Lord! Paul cried out, coming back to the present with a jerk. I remember! I remember it! He sat there with his heart beating, his eyes hazy with tears, for it was beyond all doubt a scene from the shadows of his past. He did not know who the man and woman were, but it was something!

  He was still sitting in the same position when Dan came in, and he immediately told him about the experience. “I don’t know who they were,” he ended, “But, Dan, I remember!”

  Dan smiled at him and said gently, “I know who they are, Paul. The man is your cousin, Nathan Winslow—and the woman is Abigail Howland. You two both courted her. Nathan himself told me about that scene. He’d had too much wine, and the two of you nearly had a brawl over the Howland girl.”

  “It was so real, Dan!”

  “Praise the Lord, I believe it’s a beginning, Paul. I’ve been praying about your loss of memory, and God’s going to give you back your mind and your memory.”

  ****

  His words had been prophetic, for in the next three weeks, all through January, flashes of scenes, bits of memory, a parade of faces came to him. He’d be almost asleep, or eating or listening to the talk of his messmates, and some face would leap into his mind clear as a painting. He told no one except Dan, but the hope of regaining his memory revived his anticipation of escape.

  He threw himself into the work of making soup bones into small pieces that would serve as planks for the fashioning of ship models to be sold. After whittling at this project for a while, he realized it would take six months, and at that rate he knew he’d never make enough money to bribe anyone; so he tried plaiting straw into baskets and boxes, but despaired. One day when Enoch stopped to talk to him, Paul grumbled, “We’ll never buy our way out of this place! It’ll have to be something else. Maybe we can get together and break out by force.”

  “It’s been tried—and every man was killed,” Enoch informed him. “Just pray, my boy. God has you here for a purpose.”

  “He has me here to be eaten alive by these pesky lice?” Paul had a bitter smile on his face as he spoke, but then added, “You’re beginning to sound like Angus Burns with his confounded Calvinism!”

  “Well,” Enoch leaned forward to stir the soup he was brewing, “the lieutenant is a pretty fair Bible scholar. I remember once in Savannah a couple of years back, my cousin George was preachin’ to ’bout twenty thousand people out in the open. He read a scripture from Romans—let’s see, it goes like this: And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose. ’Course, I can’t say it like George, but I believe it like he does.”

  “Why, Enoch, that doesn’t make sense!” Paul cried in exasperation. “How could a good God let us wallow in this place?”

  “He let Joseph stay in a jail that was probably ’bout as bad as this one! Did that prove he didn’t love Joseph? No, sir! It proved He did love him. ’Cause later on, Joseph faced his brothers—who’d done him ’bout as wrong as they could—and he said, ‘You thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good.’ Why, if it was the goodness of God that put Joseph in that prison, and if he hadn’t gone through all that, he would never have been able to save ’is people from the famine.”

  Paul stared at him, and replied quietly, “I’d like to believe that, Enoch. It’d be a little easier to be in this place if I thought there was a purpose in it.”

  From that time on, Paul listened more and more to the words of the Bible, for each day Dan or Enoch would read aloud to the group. He borrowed the worn black Bible and pored over it, trying to find the secret, but day passed into day with nothing changed.

  Winter wore on, and his hopes at times grew as cold and barren as the prison he was in. Only the flashes of memory that kept recurring and the encouragement of his friends kept him alive.

  And then, one day late in the afternoon—though afternoon meant nothing inside the dark prison—he was walking aimlessly through the babbling crowd, looking at the wares brought in by the vendors that were permitted in from time to time. He had no money, but it was something to do, and he found himself confronted by a short, fat man with a handful of chestnuts. “Hey, buy some fresh chestnuts! Cheap!”

  “No money,” Paul shrugged, and would have turned away, but his arm was caught in a steely grasp, and he stared at the vendor who closed one eye in a wink. He held up a small sack and there was, Paul saw, a slip of paper protruding out of it.

  Paul’s heart lurched, and he stared at the man, who grinned and murmured under his breath, “Pretend to give me some money.”

  With his hands trembling, Paul reached into his ragged coat and pretended to bring out some coins and give them to the man. The vendor handed him the bag and whirled away without a word.

  Paul left the crowded area at once, and getting to his own smaller area, opened the note and read:

  Be selling something in the market one week from today—Jan. 22.

  He stared at the words, then with his heart racing, he folded the note carefully and put it in his pocket. He leaned his head against the wall and cried out to himself, Dear God! Somebody cares!

  For a week he waited impatiently, saying nothing to anyone, but on the twenty-second he was in the market with a few baskets he’d woven out of straw. They were poorly done, and none of the buyers that came in from the villages for the sale looked more than once, but he kept moving, his eyes searching for the fat man who’d given him the note. When, after hours, he did not see him, his heart sank.

  He was about to leave the market area when he heard a voice at his elbow: “Let me see your baskets.”

  He turned quickly—and found Charity Alden looking at him, her greenish eyes gleaming in the flickering candlelight.

  “Charity!” he breathed. “Good Lord, what—!”

  “No time, Paul,” she answered softly. “Show me the baskets while we talk.” She spoke quietly, and there was an assurance in her manner that brooked no argument. �
�You’ll walk out of here in three days—you and crew of the Lady.”

  His head was spinning, and he responded, “How can we do that? It’s impossible!”

  She gave him a smile, confident and fearless. “With God all things are possible. Just be ready. Have the crew come to the east gate. They’ll be taken out as a work party. When you get outside the prison, watch for a wagon with a canvas top. The guards have been bribed. They’ll put you in the wagons; then they’ll disappear.”

  He stared at her, and would have asked more, but she said hurriedly, “I can’t stay—someone might suspect. Remember—three days!”

  She took one of the baskets, gave him a coin, and left, threading her way through the milling crowd.

  Paul walked back to the inner cell, his mind humming. He wanted to shout, but keeping a tight grip on himself, he said nothing until late that night. The prison went to sleep, and for a long time he listened as Dan read the Scripture. Finally, when the Bible was tucked away and the men were turning to their hammocks, he whispered, “Come close. I have news.”

  They stopped, moved in close, and he began, his voice barely audible. “We’re getting out of this place in three days.” Seeing the unbelief in their eyes, he pulled the note out of his pocket and showed it to them.

  “That’s Charity’s writing!” Dan uttered excitedly, keeping his voice low.

  “Yes—and somehow she’s paid the guards off. We’ve got to be ready. The agreement is for six of us. Members of the crew of The Gallant Lady are paid for.”

  “Why, that’s not me,” Enoch returned quietly.

  “Yes, you’re one of us,” Paul reassured. “You’ll be going along in Lige’s place.” He stared at Enoch, saying, “I guess God took Lige home so you could make the escape with us. All things work together for good. That’s what the Book says, didn’t you tell me?”

  There was a sudden burst of smiles on the men’s faces, and Paul cautioned them, “Don’t act any differently. Only the guards on the outer gate who take the work patrols out are bought. If one soul in this place gets wind of what’s going on, it’ll be over. Everybody in Dartmoor will be lined up to make the break.”