by Robin Lloyd
Seven dollars is a white man’s pay
For screwing cotton ten hours a day.
Ezra Higgins had signed on as a crewmember, joining Red Beard, “Dutch” Olsen, and Pierre Bertrand. Townsend could have used one extra man, but he had told Don Pedro he was happy to sail with the four sailors. Salazar and Nolo were coming with the vessel as the merchant’s representatives or supercargoes as they were called, but they were not part of the crew. He watched as the two Spaniards guarded a section of the cargo as if it were a shipment of gold. He could barely read the marking on the wooden crates. The words had been partially painted over, but he could still make out some of the black stenciling, “London Armory, Her Majesty’s Service.” He presumed this was the military cargo Helm had procured for the Confederacy from British suppliers.
A small group of Guardia Civil officers with their broad-brimmed felt hats purposefully walked toward their ship. The heavy wall of rain made it difficult to see who it was. He thought he could make out the small stocky figure of Captain Vásquez with his dark blue coat and white pants out in front. He and his men were dragging along a black man, a familiar sight on the waterfront as the police were frequently arresting slaves on the docks. Since his release from jail six weeks before, Townsend had gotten to know Captain Vásquez. The Spanish official was ever-present on the docks, and he seemed to show a special interest in Townsend. Bertrand had advised him to frequently slip the man some money as a good faith gesture. The Cuban custom of handing out sobornos, or bribes, was the only way to get anything done on the docks.
As the small group got closer, Townsend gasped. The black man in custody was no dockworker. It was someone he had never expected to see again. He rubbed the water off his eyes to try to get a better look, and held up his hand to shield his face from the stinging rain. There was no mistaking the man’s features. It was Clyde Hendricks. He’d been beaten up pretty badly, eyes swollen, but his old shipmate smiled hopefully. Townsend wanted to greet Hendricks, but he resisted the urge and held his emotions in check.
Vásquez nodded to Townsend.
“Muy buenos días, Capitán. Siempre es un placer verle por aquí.”
Townsend nodded, and said the feeling was mutual. He had become accustomed to the formal introductory remarks of Spanish officials. The protocol demanded a pleasant greeting, which was then followed by the business to be discussed. It was all a façade of politeness.
“¿Conoce a este negro, Capitán? Do you know this Negro?”
“Why do you ask?”
“He claims he came to Cuba on board your ship a few months ago.”
“Yes, I know the man. He sailed south with me to Cuba.”
“Is this the Negro we deported to Key West along with the rest of your crew two months ago?”
Townsend nodded. “Why have you arrested him?”
“As you should know by now, Captain, we do not take kindly to black foreign sailors on Havana’s docks. And this Negro has returned to Cuba illegally, and by law will suffer the consequences. He is headed for the chain gang, and then perhaps to the cane fields.”
Townsend looked at Hendricks who was literally shaking. “What can I do to change your mind?” Townsend asked suggestively, smiling as he put his hand in his pocket and began jingling some coins ever so gently.
The trace of a smile crept over the Spaniard’s face. Vásquez adjusted his hat and pulled Townsend away from the other officers so they couldn’t hear what he was saying. He switched to a mixture of Spanish and English.
“Usted es un buen hombre, Townsend. You’re a good man and I like you. As you are now the captain of a Spanish-flagged ship, I am prepared to make an exception and release him to you.” He lowered his voice to a hushed whisper. “But if you do not want him, as you well know, Cuba is always in need of more bozales, more Africans to cut the cane. And slaves who speak English are hard to find. They go for a high price.”
Townsend nodded, and discreetly handed Vásquez a small handful of half-ounce gold coins. He was about to turn away when the Spaniard grabbed his arm, and spoke into his ear. He said he needed to talk to him about another delicate matter. “Se trata de Pierre Bertrand.” Townsend groaned. What had Bertrand done now? “We know the woman he is currently seeing,” the Spanish official said. “Una mulata de rumbo.”
Townsend had heard that term before. It meant a classy, good-looking woman of mixed race. The seductive stroll of these women on Havana’s streets was like a siren’s call for many Spanish men.
“Ella está prohibida,” the Spanish captain said in a stern voice.
“Prohibited?” replied Townsend. “Does she have the French pox?”
“She has another man, an important man who wants her attentions.”
“I see,” Townsend said, relieved it wasn’t the other possibility. “No doubt he is your superior, Captain?”
Vásquez glared at him with his gamy, distrustful eyes, and Townsend knew he’d guessed correctly. Secret affairs and mistresses were as common as spies and drunks in Havana.
As soon as the Spanish captain had disappeared from sight, Townsend went below. He found Hendricks in the galley in the main cabin. The Bahamian was seated at the large kitchen table that was fastened to the starboard bulkhead where they had hung several string bags filled with green coconuts, oranges, and pineapples. Hendricks was hunched over a cup of coffee. Townsend threw more coal in the stove and poured himself a cup. They stood and stared at each other silently. No words were necessary. Townsend could tell Hendricks was quite shaken. One of his eyes was swollen completely shut, and he looked like he was in pain.
Townsend opened the cold storage locker and chipped off a small piece of ice, a valuable commodity on board ship.
“Here, put this on your eye. It might help reduce the swelling. Looks like you got what the Cubans call un trancazo, a hard blow.”
“Da ain’ no lie. I tried to jump ship, but the Cap’n, he ain’ like that. It got violent, you see, and he bust up me face bad.”
“How and why in tarnation did you come back here to Cuba?”
Hendricks then explained what had happened to him over the past month and a half. He and the other Irish sailors had been dropped off in Key West, and the Navy had put him to work shoveling coal.
“Them Union boys treat me like I deh a runaway field slave. Deh call me a contraband. Deh make me a coal heaver. So after weeks and weeks of shovelin’ coal, I jump on a steamboat headed for St. Thomas. De captain put me in the boiler room with all the other negroes. Das a mean job, I tellin’ you. Hot like the devil’s own place. Smellin’ bad too. The engine clankin’ and hissin’. When we stop in Havana to pick up coal, I see the old Laura Ann tied up at the docks. And then I see you. I tried to run, but they grab me, and mash me up good.”
Hendricks flicked his right hand quickly back and forth, his index finger slapping against the second finger, making a noise that sounded like someone getting a whipping. “Yeh mon, they wup me up bad. I tellin’ you. Then they hand me over to them Spanish, and I got some more licks.”
Townsend was silent at first, and then spoke in a more somber voice.
“You realize we are now running the blockade.”
“You mus’ be jokin’? For true?”
“Not by choice,” Townsend replied quickly. “I’ve had my own trouble. The man you warned me about—the one we saved. Well, that same night he got a knife in the gut and I got arrested. The Spanish kept me over a week in a dungeon. I thought I was a dead man. I had to decide—make a deal or die. Make no mistake, I have no love for the Confederate cause,” Townsend said defensively. “It’s just a job.”
Hendricks looked at him, his brow furrowed.
“That ain’ jus’ any job. That’s a dangerous job. I seen the captured boats and the prisoners in Key West. The Navy sends many of dem blockade runners north to prison in New York.”
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��I could use your help,” Townsend insisted. “We’re headed for Mobile.”
Hendricks raised his eyebrows skeptically.
“We’re shorthanded. You’ll get the same pay as the other men.”
Hendricks looked at him strangely. Townsend wasn’t sure what the Bahamian was thinking.
“You suppin’ with the devil now, you know. With them Spanish you bes’ have a long spoon.” Hendricks paused for a moment and then finally shook his head in resignation. “But then I s’pose I ain’ got no choice. I gon’ go with you. You tellin’ me same pay, right?”
Townsend nodded, and they shook hands on it, just as Red Beard called for him from above. It was Don Pedro, who wanted to know if they would be ready to leave before dusk. Townsend nodded. They had already been cleared to leave the harbor. Even though they were intending to run into the blockaded port of Mobile, he had cleared for Matamoros, technically a neutral port in Mexico, just a stone’s throw across the Rio Grande from Texas. The Spaniard smiled reassuringly, and handed him a recent Blunt’s survey of Mobile Bay and a booklet with the secret code of flash-light night signals used by the Confederates along the coast near Mobile. “A gift from Mr. Helm,” he said with a smile. Before leaving, Don Pedro handed him a note.
“I almost forgot to give you this.”
Townsend looked at the small folded piece of high-quality linen stationery with apprehension. It was sealed with red wax. At first he thought it might be from his father, it was so official-looking, but the florid handwriting was not his.
“Open it,” Don Pedro said with a smile. “It’s from one of your new admirers in Cuba.”
Townsend unsealed the letter and began reading.
I want to wish you a safe voyage, Captain Townsend, and a speedy return. I hope you will come see me at my estate in the Yumurí Valley as soon as you are back in Havana.
Respectfully, Doña Cecilia de Vargas.
“It seems Doña Cecilia has taken a liking to you,” said Don Pedro as he lit one of his Fígaro Regalía cigars, his drooping, black eyes gleaming like river stones.
“Where is the Yumurí Valley?” Townsend asked.
Don Pedro puffed on his cigar. “Near the city of Matanzas.”
Even with the wall of windswept rain, Townsend could make out the blue Confederate Navy Jacks quivering and snapping on several ships’ masts, cracking like distant artillery fire. It might be terrible weather for loading cargo, but these were good conditions for running the blockade, as long as the wind held steady. Townsend looked over at the flagstaff at the Captain of the Port’s office. The half-blue and half-yellow triangular signal fluttered ominously, warning that the bad weather was worsening. With darkness so close, Townsend gave the order to raise the sails.
“Ready on the mainsail throat! Ready on the peak!”
Olsen and Bertrand stood on the starboard side holding the peak halyard. Hendricks and Red Beard were on the port side ready to pull up the throat halyard.
“Heave. Heave. Get the jaws all the way up!”
“Heh yah, Ho yah.”
The foresail went up next with a squeal of blocks, clicking of mast hoops, and a flogging of canvas, followed by the jib and the boomed staysail. The sails stained with coal ash fluttered and then filled in, the boat suddenly straining to be free of the docklines. The rain had let up, but the winds were still strong. The storms were rolling through in a parade of squalls.
“We’ll pay off on the starboard tack,” Townsend cried out. “Cast off and sheet in.”
With a steady southeasterly wind gusting at twenty miles per hour, the lead-gray colored schooner quickly gathered headway. Two other schooners running the blockade for the T.W. House Company of Houston and the R. and D.G. Mills Company of Galveston were right behind them. A Confederate-flagged sidewheeler tugboat was just off their starboard bow. The entire fleet of blockade runners got a warm send-off with many of the anchored ships blowing their horns in support. A few boatmen waved the Confederate flag, and yelled out, “¡Vivan los Confederados!”
Townsend could see the blue coats of some young Navy officers standing on board an anchored Federal gunboat. It was a big screw-propeller steamship. The officers watched through their glasses. Townsend had learned the rules of engagement in this so-called neutral port. The Navy’s East Gulf Blockading Squadron with its fleet of warships based in Key West could enter Havana for recoaling and repairs, but international law prevented them from chasing any ships inside or directly outside the harbor. They could do nothing to stop them, not yet. Townsend wondered if any of the Navy men could have been at the Academy with him. As he looked at their blue uniforms, he realized he was still resentful, still angry about what the Navy had done. He felt a tightness in his stomach. He didn’t want to be seen by anyone from his old life.
Townsend looked back over the city’s old wall toward the rooftop of Mrs. Carpenter’s boarding house, and raised his glass to his eye. He thought he saw a lone figure standing next to one of the urns looking out to sea, but when he looked again the figure was gone. He felt a sharp tinge—sorrow and regret for what might have been. Red Beard’s nudge snapped him from his reverie. He turned to see the first angry puffs of black smoke coming out of the funnel of the Navy ship they had passed.
“She got steam up, Cap’n. Looks like she may be fixin’ to give chase. Might be we’ll see her out thar in the Gulf.”
Booming cannons signaled their approach to El Morro Castle and the line of guns known as the twelve apostles. In the fading light, he could see the armed sentries and gunners above him waving their black caps in support. The irony didn’t escape him. He had been imprisoned by the Spanish, and now, sailing under the Spanish flag, they saluted him as a hero with their cannons. He had never been celebrated for anything, but here he was the focus of admiration and adulation for a cause he didn’t believe in. He felt a strange mixture of pride and unease run through him. Behind him, through the stormy haze, he could just make out the skyline—Havana’s domes and steeples. It hardly seemed possible that he was leaving this city.
As the schooner cleared out of the harbor, Townsend stood at the wheel and felt the heavily loaded ship lean into the wind. He admired the graceful sheer of his boat from the raised quarterdeck to the long bowsprit and jib boom thrusting out an additional forty feet from the bow. At that moment, the Gaviota felt like a small clipper ship to him. With the wind getting stronger, he did a visual check of everything on deck. The large twelve-foot launch boat had been tied down forward of the main hatchway, the panniers of live chickens placed under the boat for protection. All the other hatches were battened down, portholes dogged, lines coiled, and all gear including the freshwater barrels securely lashed on deck. He looked through the telescope and could see far in the distance the heavy gusts blowing against the Gulf Stream current, creating steep, jumbled whitecaps, and scuds of sea spray flying in the air.
“I reckon it will be a wet ride,” said Red Beard. “Should be foul weather at least as far as the Tortugas, and I don’t doubt we’ll be tolerable busy looking for smoke on the distant horizon. What’s our course, Cap’n?”
“West toward the Yucatan banks,” Townsend replied. “Then before reaching Bahía Honda and the Colorado reefs, north towards the Tortugas. We want to get as far out to sea as possible before daylight.”
“That’s about when we might see if any Navy gunship came after us,” Red Beard said.
Townsend handed the helm over to his first mate, and then steadied himself like a gimbaled lantern, seesawing back and forth with the pitch and roll of the waves as he looked up at the sails and the rigging. He breathed in deeply and smelled the salt in the air. The clouds of misty sea spray seemed to wash away the tensions and restlessness that haunted him ashore. As he reacted to the familiar heave and roll of the ship’s deck, Townsend suddenly felt free of the land, like a gliding seagull in the sky. But then he saw the shadowy figures
coming up the companionway steps. The two supercargoes, Salazar and Nolo, emerged onto the quarterdeck. Townsend clenched his teeth and felt his stomach tighten.
14
It was midnight and pitch black when Townsend took his turn at the wheel. With the wind almost dead astern, the schooner was sailing wing and wing, with the foresail on one side and the mainsail on the other. He peered out into the darkness. The weather was still thick with gusty winds so he decided to keep the schooner under a reefed main and foresail. To stay clear of the Gulf Stream current, they hugged the Cuban coast, judging their distance off shore by observing huge fires on land, presumably from some of the seaside plantations. They were well within the six-mile territorial limit claimed by the Spanish, so they were in little danger of being spotted by a Navy cruiser. For safety, Townsend had installed a reinforced boom tackle to both the fore and the main to prevent jibing. He told the crew to leave the tackles on a semi-permanent basis, ready to be rigged at any moment. After what had happened to Captain Evans, Townsend was taking no chances with the boom swinging over at night.
As he watched the dark, unknown shoreline pass by, Townsend saw in his imagination the cane fields, coffee plantations, and lush tropical forests, the land of his mother’s childhood. He wondered if he would ever see the farm where she grew up. He thought of the letter he had received from Doña Cecilia de Vargas. It struck him as strange that this refined woman of the Cuban upper class would invite him, a young unknown American ship captain, to her plantation. He assumed it was because of her friendship with Don Pedro. Perhaps he’d find that place called Mambi Joo his mother had spoken of. Perhaps he could find a distant relative. He looked out into the blackness. Answers about his mother’s Cuban heritage could be out there.
He thought of his mother’s lithe, slim figure and her thick black hair. Her sharp, perceptive eyes had a way of seeing through people, detecting their flaws. She could pick the honest ones from the scoundrels and the frauds. She had always called his well-meaning father a fool for trusting people. He hoped he had inherited some of her keen sensibilities in judging character. He was beginning to feel that some of that skill had rubbed off on him, not just her hot-headed temperament, an unfortunate trait he knew he shared with her. He suddenly felt a deep pang of sadness, an oddly specific emptiness knowing she wasn’t there anymore. Thank goodness, she didn’t suffer the shame of hearing about his dismissal from the Naval Academy. Poor soul. They said it was pneumonia, but he thought she’d died of a broken heart from the news about the death of her younger son.