by Robin Lloyd
Townsend drew Emma into his arms again as he gave a quiet thanks. She responded by hugging him tightly.
“I am so glad you are safe,” he whispered. When he looked at Emma’s teary eyes and stricken face, he knew there was something else deeply wrong.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Abbott,” she said in a hushed whimper.
“What about Abbott? Is he . . .”
“Yes, he’s dead. And so is the other man. They killed them both.”
“How do you know for sure they’re dead?”
“The consul general told me last night. He came to the boarding house. A Union spy on board that Confederate ship, one of the engineers, spotted Abbott and Javier Alfonso being brought on board as prisoners. He told the consul general that he overheard the Confederate captain speaking to the Spaniard with pale blue eyes.”
“That would be Salazar,” Townsend seethed.
“The Spaniard told the captain the two prisoners were dead. The Confederate captain assured him the bodies would be thrown overboard as soon as the ship reached international waters.”
Townsend closed his eyes, his chin resting on Emma’s head. He felt a sudden sadness, and a deep, speechless helplessness.
The sound of church bells announcing the top of the hour made Townsend snap to attention. The bells had tolled four times.
“It’s four o’clock. I have to escape from here,” he blurted out as his eyes darted from left to right. “I have to go.”
“I know,” she said.
“You are in danger as well. You do know that, don’t you?”
“Thankfully Savage warned me in time,” she replied. “His spy told him I was in danger. I went to St. Augustine’s to warn Padre Uribe, and he insisted I stay there. I guess it was lucky I did leave the boarding house since they must have been looking for me. I met with Savage again this morning, and he told me about getting your note. That’s how I knew I would find you here.”
“Where is the padre now? They’re looking for him too.”
“He has gone into hiding.”
There was silence as they both pondered their predicament, and then Emma nodded her head in the direction of the unconscious Don Pedro.
“What are we going to do with him?” Emma asked.
Townsend thought for a second.
“I should throw him in Havana Bay for the sharks. That’s what this lizard would have done with me. What do you think?”
Emma thought for a moment, and then whispered coldly. “That might be too good for him. Let’s have the driver take Don Pedro to the shantytown.”
“You mean, off the Calzada de Jesús del Monte amidst all the mud hovels?”
“Yes, right there. Dump him in some heap of roadside rubbish,” she said. “He is a monster and deserves much worse. Perhaps the starving dogs can be his judge. I imagine he will be lucky to come out of there alive or without serious injury.”
Townsend nodded his head, and mumbled almost to himself. “It’s probably a fate he deserves.”
As Townsend watched the carriage clip and clatter away from the harbor with the trussed-up Spanish merchant on the floor of the cab, he wondered if he would ever see that man again. Emma pulled her hair back and gazed up at him with a determined look. That’s when he noticed a carpet bag at her feet. He looked down at her and saw her dress. It had an overskirt in front and a bustle draped at the back. The hemline just over the ankle was what caught his eye. The style of dress suggested she was planning on some kind of trip. So did the carpet bag. Her gaze lingered on him.
“I want you to take me with you.” Emma stepped backwards, her features set.
“I want to go with you. I have a letter of introduction that Mr. Savage has written on my behalf to the head of the Navy in Key West, Admiral Theodorus Bailey. The letter mentions you and the crew. I also have a Stars and Stripes ensign Savage gave me. It’s for you.”
She reached down to the carpet bag and pulled out a neatly folded American flag.
“All of this sounds and looks like you’ve carefully planned it,” he said with a smirk.
She simply nodded with a broad smile.
33
Townsend suddenly remembered the harbor boat of Junípero Díaz, and he grabbed Emma’s hand. Amazingly the small boat he’d left behind earlier with its oars and small sail was still there at the landing, tied up where he had left it. He helped her on board and took out his telescope to scan the docks and the shipping in the port. Out toward the entrance of the harbor, he could see the Spanish navy patrol boats checking all vessels leaving the bay. There was no sign of the scow schooner or the crew. It was now past five o’clock. The sun was low on the horizon. He swung the telescope back to the central dock where several recently arrived blockade-running schooners were unloading cotton, and he could see the large numbers of police. Security was tighter than he’d ever seen.
He moved the telescope to the nearby ferry landing and almost fell backwards into the water. Through the lens, he came face-to-face with Salazar and Nolo, their mouths tight-lipped and their snake eyes darting from one side of the docks to the other. They were just a few hundred yards away, walking quickly and purposefully in his direction along with a number of plainclothes police officers.
“Get down, Emma,” Townsend whispered in a panic.
“What is it?”
“It’s that animal, Salazar. He’s coming our way. Stay out of sight under the awning.”
Emma scrambled to the forward section of the boat, adjusting her cumbersome bustle as she crouched under the awning. Townsend was about to push the boat off from the landing when the two Spaniards suddenly veered away to another dock and boarded a steam launch. Townsend pulled his wide-brimmed palm hat farther down on his head and lay flat on the bottom of the boat. He whispered to Emma to stay quiet. He could hear the launch’s engine getting nearer, the paddlewheels chugging directly by them. He thought he could hear Salazar’s voice describing who they were looking for. Townsend held his breath, fearful that at any moment they would be discovered, but the engine noise faded away.
After waiting for another ten minutes, Townsend poked his head over the gunwales of the harbor boat. He could just barely make out the smoke from the small steamer. He held the telescope up to his eye and watched as the steam launch tied up to the sides of the Gaviota. An explosion of sparkling sun reflections suddenly blinded him. He saw three or four silhouetted figures board the Gaviota with what looked like knives in their hands. He couldn’t be sure, but the slender and stiff shape of one of the men looked like Salazar.
Just then, Emma hissed, “Hurry. We need to leave here. I think I see more police. They’re searching the boats.”
Townsend scrambled to get the oars ready and untie the docklines. He tore off his shirt so that he was bare-chested like so many of the other boatmen, and pulled his palm hat down firmly on his head. He pushed the boat off and grabbed the two oars, inserting them in the thole pins. He decided not to unfurl the sails. He didn’t want to attract attention. Once out in the middle of the harbor, Townsend stopped rowing and swept the telescope to his right across the bay over the roofs of Regla’s warehouses. It was then he spotted the bare poles of the scow schooner’s two masts far off in the eastern section of Havana Bay. After rowing furiously, Townsend brought the small boat up alongside the scow schooner and called out to his crewmembers.
At first, the sailors didn’t know who he was with his dirty palm leaf hat and his bare chest, and they told him to go away. They thought he was just another banana boat vendor. Townsend had to call out several times before Hendricks recognized him. Townsend scanned their faces to try to ascertain the mood. From their expressions, it seemed as if they had all weighed their choices and thrown their lot in with him. They knew they all had to leave Cuba. They had no choice.
“Did you get the sailor’s bag I sen
t with the sextant and the chronometer?” Townsend asked.
“We got all of that,” Higgins replied. “Even the cat.” He gestured toward the boat’s cabin. “What we was wondering ’bout are those two long-bladed Spanish knives. Care to tell us how you came by those?”
At that point, Townsend gave them a hurried description of what had happened to him since he’d last seen them. He was just getting to the part where he’d pulled a gun on Don Pedro at the cockfighting arena when he noticed their eyes straying way from him over to something on his right, directly behind him. He quickly swung his head around, prepared for the worst, only to come face-to-face with Emma. His frown turned to a warm smile. She had emerged from under the canopy, straightening her overskirt and bustle and was standing right behind him. Townsend sheepishly looked back at the other sailors.
“May I introduce you to Miss Emma Carpenter. Like all of us, she is in grave danger, and has requested safe passage to Key West.”
Hendricks was the only one of the men who knew about her, so he showed little reaction, but the others, who were well used to “running up a woman with a glance” were leering at her with curious eyes. It was Bertrand who offered Emma a hand to come aboard.
“Bienvenue. Welcome on board Miss Carpenter. This is the Vírgen Gorda.”
Emma stood there speechless as she took measure of the boat she had agreed to sail on. Even Townsend gulped as he realized how basic this vessel was. The scow schooner was little more than half the size of the Gaviota, and most of the stern area was covered by a large square deckhouse just aft of the main mast. What alarmed him most was that the stubby ship’s rail was just three feet off the water. The only consolation was that she was fully decked, and her rigging with a mainsail, foresail, and a jib appeared to be intact.
Townsend could tell that Emma was having second thoughts. He hadn’t told her much of anything about the boat. He immediately took her inside the deckhouse, which seemed to make matters worse. The inside of the cabin was nothing more than a roofed shack that had been built over the deck.
“This is not what I expected,” Emma said simply.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. He had to admit, the cabin was sparser than he had imagined, ten feet by fifteen feet. There were only two small windows, a small iron stove in one corner, and four stacked bunks on the other side.
“There is no privacy for a woman. Where am I going to sleep?”
“Don’t worry,” Townsend said as he tried to console her. “As soon as we get out of the harbor, I will fashion a private area. Maybe use some old sails. The men will sleep outside on the decks.”
Emma walked around the cabin, tight lipped with a brave smile, but said nothing. Townsend looked around the space as if he could somehow improve it.
“Well, at least there are two lanterns,” she finally said. “I won’t have to sit here in the dark.”
Townsend took one look at the two gimbaled lanterns attached to the walls and he rushed over to smell them. It was what he thought. The beginnings of a plan began forming in his mind of how they might get out of the harbor. He told Emma to stay in the cabin, and he bolted onto the deck, shouting for Red Beard and Bertrand.
“Where are the ship’s supplies?” he asked.
They took him forward past the smelly, fishy cargo hold to a small fo’c’sle that was used as the boat’s storage area. He jumped inside and was soon taking inventory of what was there, bags of old tattered and worn sails that had been patched so many times they looked like they would tear with the slightest pull. He threw those sail bags on deck. There were crates filled with cordage, twine, and oakum and a replacement anchor. He spotted a couple of wooden sea buckets with lines attached to their handles, and he handed them to Bertrand. Suddenly he found what he was looking for, a large wooden barrel marked turpentine oil. The fisherman had used red paint to emphasize how flammable it was.
“What you aimin’ to do now?” Red Beard asked. “This harbor is crawlin’ with patrol boats. One of them will stop us for sure if we try to go out the channel.”
The other sailors had gathered to see what Townsend was doing. They were all glum-faced and pessimistic.
“Even if we somehow get out of the harbor,” Higgins groaned. “they’ll probably come after us. This barge is slower than a lame mule. We can’t possibly escape.”
Townsend looked at the five sailors and explained his plan.
“Hendricks will come with me in the harbor boat,” Townsend said. “That is if he’s willing?”
Townsend took a hard look at Hendricks. He’d chosen him because he knew the Bahamian was the best sailor of the bunch, and unlike the others, the two of them could communicate without speaking. He wasn’t sure if Hendricks would say yes—the plan was a dangerous one, filled with high risks.
“I ain’ got no quarrel with that,” Hendricks replied finally. “The onliest ting I know is the faster we get off this island the better.”
Townsend nodded approvingly.
“The rest of you can row this whale barge back over toward Casa Blanca. Drop the anchor in the shallows at the Feliciano shoal area off the docks. There’s only six feet of water there so it’s not likely the patrol boats will bother you. Wait for us. No lights. We’ll find you even though it will be dark. We won’t be long once the commotion starts.”
Townsend put the telescope to his eye and studied the heavily loaded Texas schooners he’d seen the night before, their decks piled high with cotton. His eye focused on the thick hemp anchor lines. He wanted to make sure the cables were hemp, not chain. He swiveled the glass to his left in the direction of the Gaviota. There was no trace of anyone on deck. Whoever had boarded the ship must be hidden below. Slowly he nudged the glass back following the shear of the ship until he reached the door into Gaviota’s main cabin house. A man was peering out. It was Salazar.
Townsend told Hendricks to tack the small boat back and forth away from the city lights until darkness fell. He wanted to stay hidden amid the anchored ships away from the docks. The breeze was blowing steadily from the southeast as Townsend had anticipated, and the small boat skipped across the rippled grooves of the water like a flying fish. Under the boat’s awning, Townsend was busily soaking the old tattered and patched sails from the scow schooner in the barrel of turpentine. With Hendricks at the tiller, he poked his head over the gunwales. He noted with satisfaction that it had gotten dark quickly. Nightfall was not far off. Off to the right less than fifty yards away, he could see the familiar shape of the Gaviota, and the two other cotton schooners anchored next to her. Townsend pointed his finger at it, and Hendricks nodded. That was their target.
Both he and Hendricks closely studied the schooner as they sailed by. There was a dim light in the aft cabin house, but it was dark up forward. A five-foot-high wall of stacked cotton bales extended from the foremast all the way back to the mainmast, effectively separating the bow from the stern. With a subtle nod of his head, Townsend signaled to Hendricks to bring the boat into the wind, dropping the small sail at the same time.
The breeze and the slight current now carried them back toward the schooner, drifting slowly and silently in almost complete darkness. At a signal, Hendricks snagged the ship’s anchor cable and pulled them in closer to the schooner’s bow. Clasping the schooner’s whisker shrouds with both hands, Townsend gingerly got off the small boat and stepped onto the schooner’s bobstay. The taut large chain was a perfect near vertical walkway from the water up to the end of the bowsprit. Holding on to the whisker shrouds, he cautiously edged his way forward. He couldn’t see anything. The blackness of the night had come more quickly than he’d expected. Suddenly his feet slipped off the chain, and Townsend found himself dangling over the water. He hung there for several haunting seconds looking up at the shadowy bowsprit above him before he was able to swing his feet back onto the chain.
Like a tightrope acrobat, Townsend inched h
is way upwards. Then with one hand he grabbed the secured canvas sails tied down on top of the bowsprit and pulled himself upwards. The faint sound of an accordion and a banjo drifted back from the stern of the ship, but Townsend couldn’t see anything. Someone laughed on another boat. Frozen, his body molded into the sails. He waited for another minute, and then, straddling the bowsprit, he began wiggling his way toward the ship’s bow.
Once he had a solid deck underneath his feet, Townsend looked down at the shadowy form below him in the harbor boat. He signaled with his hand and Hendricks threw him a line, the other side of which was tied to the turpentine-covered sails. Townsend hauled the turpentine-soaked canvas on deck. He stuffed the wet, tattered sail around the cotton bales, and then began hauling up sea buckets filled with turpentine oil from the harbor boat. He dumped the smelly liquid on top of the stacked bales of compressed cotton. The strong vapors were almost unbearable, making him lightheaded. He was woozy and dizzy, and he began to worry he might faint. There was no time to waste. He pulled out his box of Lucifer matches and struck one inside the turpentine-soaked wooden bucket and watched the flames quickly leap up. He stuffed a corner of the sails in the burning bucket, and then quickly crawled over the side of the schooner, sliding down the anchor line until he dropped into the harbor boat.
“Cut the line, Hendricks,” Townsend said breathlessly.
Hendricks swiped his knife across the last remaining strand of the four-inch-thick hemp anchor cable, freeing the schooner to drift with the current. Pushing off into the darkness, they quickly raised the sail, and headed to windward away from the cluster of ships.
“We’re in the shoals now,” Townsend said in a hushed whisper. “It’s all open water here. Let’s head for the lights of Casa Blanca.”
Townsend could see the orange flames flickering up at the bow of the drifting schooner. The turpentine-soaked sails were burning, but the cotton bales had yet to catch fire. The big schooner was now floating down on the Gaviota, pushed along by that southeasterly breeze. As they sailed over the shallows, Townsend looked back and saw the midships section of the Texas cotton schooner suddenly burst into a ball of flame. The cotton cargo had finally erupted into a roaring bonfire. The harbor filled with the popping and crackling of burning wood along with much shouting and yelling and screams of alarm. The stern of the burning schooner, now adrift, hit the anchor cable of the Gaviota and soon the two boats had swung together, their rigging becoming entangled. The flames spread quickly to all the furled sails, flickering up the masts like an uncontrollable wildfire.