The Beothuk Expedition

by Derek Yetman

  It was strange to see those words read at last by the one for whom they were intended. There was no joy or satisfaction to it, only sorrow and regret. I am certain that she felt it too, for she laid the letter aside and put her hands to her face. I gave her a kerchief and wiped my own eyes with the sleeve of my coat, the tears mingling with the crusted salt of the sea The cocks crowed around the harbour as I stepped onto the beach at Mackerel Point. The Taverner plantation was a shambles compared to my memory of it. The once bountiful garden was choked with weeds and the roof of an old outbuilding had fallen in on itself. The house, which had been among the finest in the harbour, was missing a patch of wooden shingles and an upstairs window had been boarded over. For whatever reason, I felt a stab of guilt concerning Amy and her son. I walked up from the beach and knocked on a door that rattled in its frame.

  If she were surprised to see me there was no hint of it, nor did she seem embarrassed by her circumstances. I had only to remove my hat and say good morning and she invited me in with a smile and a glance at her neighbours’ windows. She led me to the kitchen and offered a chair, which I accepted, and a cup of tea, which I did not. We made some small talk about the weather and how the September gales would soon be upon us. There seemed to be little else to say after our long talk of the day before, and yet I had come here because of a sense of something left unsaid. Yesterday I had told her the story of my recent life and she had done me the favour of relating her own. She’d tried to put it all in a good light but behind her words I saw a life of poverty and struggle. It included a husband who had poured their meagre earnings down his throat and an uncle, as rich as he was, who offered nothing. Even after she was widowed, old Lester ignored her plight except to employ her at making fish for a penny a day. By contrast, the first thing I’d seen on entering the harbour was his fine new mansion at the foot of Ryder’s Hill.

  Her blonde-haired boy was there, watching me from the parlour doorway. He was about five years of age and his round cheeks and shy smile made me think of the Indian child. The dark cloud was about to revisit when her voice drew me back. She asked after my guardian, the Reverend Lindsey, and I told her that he had died these three years past. She did me the kindness of saying that he was remembered fondly and was greatly missed when he retired and returned to England.

  Our conversation was restrained and polite, though my heart was pounding within me, and I dared to hope that all of the anger and pain of yesterday had been purged. On board the Dove we’d talked for nearly an hour and in the end we forgave each other for all the wrongs we’d imagined. In truth, our fates had been sealed through no fault of our own. Unhappy circumstance alone had intervened to take away the joy and promise of our young lives. But Lord, what I would not have given to go back in time and change all that had happened. I would have gone to Trinity as I’d intended, in spite of her letter, and we would have been married and happy these last six years.

  But of course the past could not be changed. There was only the present, and I longed to say that I had thought of her every day for six years, but I did not. I opened my mouth to do so several times, and I believe she looked at me in expectation, but no words would come. My feelings had been bottled too long, and the cork would not come loose. In the end I took my leave without a word to her of my feelings. I was a fool, I know, if not a coward, and we parted with nothing more than a bow and a curtsey. She did say that she hoped we would meet again, and half an hour later I sailed from Trinity with a tortured heart.

  For the whole of that day and half of the next, I spoke to no one. After giving command to Froggat, I shut myself into the cabin to write my report and to think upon the two weeks that had passed since we departed St. John’s. There had been little enough joy in that fortnight and I was deep in gloomy reflection before long. I might have remained there until we reached Toulinguet, were it not for the events of our second day at sea. We were off Cape Fogo with a rising glass when the French brigantine took wind of us again. Greening spied her a good way off, coming on from the northeast. I was summoned and my first act was to curse my complacency. Until then we had been sailing at our leisure with the waist full of stores and wood for the stove. As I surveyed the rapidly advancing vessel I knew that something would have to go by the board.

  Greening and Grimes were ordered to jettison the firewood and supplies while the boatswain drove Rundle and Jenkins aloft to set the little topsail. Bolger began laying out powder and shot for the guns and Froggat and I consulted our chart. At a glance, we knew that we would have to run with the wind, straight into the Bay of Exploits. There we might stand a second, small chance of escaping among the islands that Captain Cook had marked so well.

  Our speed increased with the added sail but Grimes was damnably slow in clearing the wood. Frost remedied his indolence with a piece of rope, and had he flayed him alive I would have held my tongue. The man was a festering boil upon our collective ass and my patience was nearing an end. If I sound cruel I cannot say otherwise with a clear conscience. Grimes had used up my store of civility and I was not about to spare him if it meant the difference between capture and escape.

  The brig continued to gain and I knew that our load would have to be lightened further. Greening was working like a demon and timber was bobbing thick in our wake. I ordered the barrels of provisions over the side and Bolger and Frost hoisted the first cask to the bulwark and dropped it into the sea. Another followed and then another, until the deck was clear of all but our powder and shot, one small barrel of pork, some scraps of wood, and a sack of potatoes. I stopped the men there; we had established a separation of a thousand yards and were in no immediate danger from the Valeur’s guns. When that distance did not alter over the next hour, I told the men to organize a meal while they had the chance. What lay ahead was uncertain but it was a fair guess that there would be no time for eating.

  Our wake was foaming white as they calmly fired the stove and Rundle took a hammer to the lid of our remaining barrel of pork. When it came loose we recoiled at the smell. Whether all of Lester’s barrels were spoiled we would never know, but the thought crossed my mind that while fortune may have improved the man’s circumstances, it had done nothing for his character. The lid was hastily replaced and the men made ready to tip it over the side when I stopped them. If there were even a few pieces unspoiled it could mean the difference between a hungry surrender and a long chance of escape. The hands ate their dinner as the chase wore on. There was grumbling, of course, for a seaman without good pork is a touchy beast. I reminded them all that they would eat much worse before their days in the Navy were ended. Once, on a bedeviled voyage to the Indies, my shipmates and I had eaten nothing for days but a cold, crawling mess of black-headed weevils. They were all that remained of the bread they had grown fat upon.

  All that day we drove south and east, until sunset found us in the Reach, that familiar strait south of Chapel Island. Here I ordered our sails reefed with the coming darkness, assuming the brig would do the same. It was a gamble, but the greater risk lay in driving ashore, for the currents were unpredictable and the channel too narrow to manoeuvre in. At midnight the Frenchman fired a ranging shot to no effect, though it did rattle the men who’d gone to their hammocks for an hour’s rest. Shortly before dawn Froggat called me aft and declared that they had begun to close the distance. It was still dark but I put my trust in his instincts and ordered Frost to let out the reefs without delay. The Frenchman may have had the same intuition, for he loosed another shot that threw up a plume of water a dozen yards from our stern.

  Dawn brought the realization that the wind was failing. What was worse, it was localized and seemed to have less effect upon the progress of the other vessel. I called for the sweeps and the four seamen manned one apiece. The effort was largely in vain, however, and even with the warrant officers lending a hand we could not escape the Valeur’s range. Her next shot struck a glancing blow aft larboard, shivering a few of our timbers but causing no real damage.

>   Some would say that my next decision was rashly taken, though at that moment I saw it as a bold stroke that might win us some time. By then the fitful wind had disappeared entirely and the sea lay between us in a near calm. The Frenchman’s sails were as slack as ours and they were preparing their sweeps as well. We had by then passed out of the Reach and were near Birchy Island with Shoal Tickle Point to larboard. Between these two lay Shoal Tickle itself, a tight little entry of one hundred yards width and no great depth, as its name implied. The tide being at the ebb, I urged the men to pull for all they were worth. I called to Bolger to make ready the aft starboard gun.

  “Cartridge is pricked, sir,” he said as I sighted along the barrel.

  “I make it eight hundred yards, master gunner.”

  “Aye, sir,” he said, looking at the brig, “and perhaps another twenty-five for good measure.”

  I grabbed the swivel’s handle and made the adjustment. The barrel lay level with the sea. “Beggin’ yer pardon, sir,” the gunner said. “But a one-pounder with that charge will only make six hundred yards at fifteen degrees. That angle won’t—”

  He was silenced by the tremulous hum of a four-pound ball that passed no more than two or three feet above our heads. The wind of it sent his hat flying into the sea. “Stand by, tiller and sweeps,” I called. The men rowed with determination while I watched the Frenchman and waited. We entered the tickle and the points of land on either side came amidships. I counted one, two, three strokes of the oars until we were clear.

  “Belay larboard sweeps. Hard over tiller, Mister Froggat.”

  The shallop turned on a gold piece, straight for the shelter of Birchy Island. One, two, three strokes from the starboard side and I put the smoldering match to the touchhole. The swivel roared and the shot hit the flat water five hundred yards out. It ricocheted like a skipping stone in a series of diminishing arcs that might have carried it a thousand yards or more, had it not met with the bow of the Valeur. In a shower of sparks the ball severed the anchor chains and her best bower broke loose and plunged into the sea. The crew of the Dove gave an astonished cheer as we passed out of sight behind Birchy Island.

  “I’ll be a spiny dogfish!” the gunner declared. “I seen it done before but never with a blessed swivel. Upon my word, young sir! Well done!”

  The men laughed and whooped but I told them to pull for their liberty, if not their lives. The shot had been no more than bravado, fired in hopes of angering the Frenchman into rash pursuit. It was a gamble with poor odds but with the tide at its ebb I was betting that the brig would draw more water than was in the tickle. A gentle waft of air lifted our topsail and Froggat worked the tiller to take full advantage of it. My immediate concern was to remove the Dove from harm’s way, should the Valeur either pass through the channel unimpeded or run aground with its four-pound guns blazing away at us. The Spruce Islands lay about a league distant and their shelter was our only sanctuary.

  With the help of the rising breeze we were halfway there when the Frenchman entered Shoal Tickle. Just as I’d hoped, her captain had thrown caution to the wind and was taking the channel with all the speed he could muster. I watched from the stern of our little shallop and hardly dared to breathe. Froggat stood beside me with his knuckles white on the tiller. On came the brig, even as I wished aloud that she would seize the bottom and rattle her masts. On and on she came without so much as a scrape, until she had cleared the Tickle and was coming up fast in our wake.

  The French captain had either sailed Shoal Tickle before, or else he was the luckiest man afloat. The brig passed through it without so much as a scratch to her keel, and then celebrated by firing her guns at us. I gave new thought to our situation as a plunging shot threw a spray of water over the deck. The Spruce Islands were still half a league away with the wind rising on the starboard quarter. The islands were the largest part of a maze of rocks and shoals, and in these I placed our final hope.

  The Frenchman kept up his ragged fire but the standard of gunnery was a scandal. Four-pound balls dropped into the sea on all sides of us, none but the first coming close enough to remark upon. Over the next half-hour the wind continued to rise and the sea to build, until the Dove was pitching sharply in the deepening troughs. My plan, such as it was, involved leading the brig among the islands and as close to the rocks as I dared, again on the chance that she might strike bottom and be damned. This would be risky enough in light airs, but now the sea was becoming capricious.

  The waves in fact seemed to be heralding something of a squall. “Like dogs before their master,” I heard Froggat say. As we passed the first of the Spruce Islands, the wind brought drizzle and fog swiftly into the bay, quickly obscuring the rocky knoll. Treacherous shoals now lay all around us and I gave Froggat a heading that would take us deeper within the labyrinth.

  The Valeur kept up her occasional fire until she suddenly luffed up into the wind and gave us a single broadside. Three of the balls thrummed harmlessly overhead, but the fourth spelled the end of able seaman Rundle. I had ordered the Dove about on the larboard tack a moment before and it was a lucky shot that found him. He was standing in the shrouds, reaching for the topsail sheet, when the unseen ball took away his arm. At first there was scarcely any blood, owing to the shock of it, but it came fast enough when he fell to the deck. Frost tried to staunch the flow with the shirt from his own back but the little Cornishman died some few minutes later. I have to say that I was sorry to see him pass. In life he scarcely had the sense to know his duty, and yet I think he might have done well enough, had he been removed from the influence of Grimes. Jenkins sobbed as he helped put the body over the side, but Grimes did not give his old shipmate as much as a departing glance.

  With the wind and rain upon us, we ran before the squall with jib and reefed mainsail alone, the topsail having threatened to part or take away the mast. Frost had rigged a reefing jackstay for extra support but I was not convinced that it would take the strain. All the while I kept a close eye on the brig and was happy to see that her seamanship was showing again. Canvas went up and down according to a momentary gust and the vessel yawed like a drunken sailor.

  As dusk approached the wind dropped a few knots and turned a point to the west. Darkness descended quickly and the sky merged with the sea while I resisted the urge to crowd more canvas. We were south of Upper Black Island and I knew that Lobster Rock was somewhere near, dangerous and invisible in the night. The wind turned another point and the rain gradually lessened. Stars appeared and the moon broke through the clouds to illuminate the bay in a wash of silvery light. I had taken up my compass to try and fix our position when I heard Jenkins shouting from the bows. I looked up, and as I did the light of the moon revealed a sight that nearly caused my heart to stop. Dead ahead, and not more than a biscuit toss away, was the Lobster, a tiny speck on my chart that now loomed as large as a continent.

  “Helm a-lee!” I cried. Froggat did so in an instant and the sudden change in direction nearly threw Greening from the masthead, where he’d been watching for the brig.

  “Deck ahoy!” he called when he’d recovered his hold. We were then shaving past the foaming rocks with not a dozen yards to spare. If I heard his cry it did not register, occupied as I was in willing us to safety. “Deck ahoy!” he roared again. “Sail on the starboard beam!”

  This time his words forced me to tear my eyes from the breakers. There, out of the darkness and bearing down with stunning speed, was the Frenchman. He’d thrown caution to the wind and was upon us with the weather gauge in his favour. I could not manoeuvre without allowing him to change course the more easily and intercept us on his own terms. We were in as tight a spot as any I could imagine, and yet I was unwilling to surrender without a fight.

  “Bear off the wind, Mister Froggat,” I said, hoping my voice sounded calm. By wearing ship I hoped to round the Lobster, away from the brig to prevent its broadside from coming into play. “Set topsail, boatwsain. Ready the guns, Mister Bolger. All hands sta
nd by.”

  We were now running before the wind but a glance astern told me that it was not enough. The Frenchman had three times our sail and nothing could prevent him from overtaking us. It was now a question of which side he would engage us on. The moon’s light showed clearly the faces of my crew as they stood at their quarters. The warrant officers looked grim but determined and young Greening was fidgeting with nervous excitement. Jenkins waited, open-mouthed and staring, while Grimes wiped his palms repeatedly on his breeches. Cutlasses and pistols had been laid near at hand and I quickly tucked a primed piece into my belt.

  “Are you ready, Mister Froggat?”

  He nodded and heartened me with his reply: “Dying is of no importance, Jonah, for it lasts so short a time.”

  I smiled at his paraphrase of Johnson and turned to the business of drawing all that we could from our little sloop, for sloop was how I now thought of her. In the last few days no humble shallop could have served us so well, and I thought it only fitting that she be accorded some dignity before being sent to the bottom.

  The Frenchman now made his intentions known, altering course to come abeam on our larboard side. At my word the crew rallied to our two small guns. Every man expected the worst as the brig drew abreast, but then, just at the critical moment, we witnessed a sight that caused us to stare in disbelief. In altering course her crew missed stays and lost so much of her headway that she dropped astern again. It was an unexpected deliverance, but one that merely delayed the inevitable.

  While this was absorbing our attention there was treachery afoot on board the Dove. All hands were watching the antics of the Frenchman while Grimes was climbing unseen onto the forecastle with a cutlass in his hand. There he began hacking at our jib sheets and halyards with clear intent to disable us. I turned at the first sound and my reaction was immediate: I drew the pistol from my belt and levelled it at his back.