The Continental Risque

by James Nelson

  ‘I want you to take command of the bigger sloop. Weaver here … have you met Weaver? Lt Thomas Weaver, second on my son’s brig, this here’s Capt. Isaac Biddlecomb. Biddlecomb, this here’s Weaver. Weaver knows these waters inside and out. He’ll take the smaller sloop. Hazard has the Providence, of course. Captain Nicholas is in command of the marines. You’re in charge when you’re under way, Nicholas is in charge once you’re ashore. Is that agreeable?’

  Biddlecomb’s mind ran through the plan again, searching for some objection, but he could find none. ‘Perfectly agreeable, sir.’

  ‘All right then, it’s all settled. You’ll get under way with the sloops just before sunset, and the fleet will follow an hour later. Only fifty miles or so to Nassau, as you know, so you might have to back and fill some to get there just at dawn. In any event, you two have a world to do. I won’t keep you here. Report back aboard the flag at, say, beginning of the first dogwatch, and we’ll go over this in some more detail.’

  ‘Aye, sir,’ the two officers said together, and then one more thought occurred to Biddlecomb. If he was going to take command of the sloop, then Tottenhill would be in command of the Charlemagne. That should not bother him, but it did.

  ‘Sir,’ he began, stopping Hopkins as the commodore was walking away. ‘Sir, one more thing. I was wondering … uh … do you, in your capacity as commodore, hypothetically speaking, have the authority to, say, move a second lieutenant up to first and a first down to second?’

  ‘Oh, for the love of God, Biddlecomb. Look here, the Naval Committee, in their infinite wisdom, have seen fit to make all the appointments for first and second lieutenants, and I ain’t got the authority to change that. So if Tottenhill is giving you some problem, I suggest you deal with it yourself and don’t prance around like some schoolgirl asking where babies come from!’

  The commodore turned and walked away. Biddlecomb felt his face flush red. He had as much as admitted to his superior that he could not handle his officers, had crawled to Hopkins for help in solving his own shipboard problems. He had opened his mouth without thinking, something that he generally did not do, and he was experiencing the consequences that generally followed those times when he did. He cursed his stupidity under his breath and stomped off toward the gangway and the Charlemagne’s gig waiting below.

  The Charlemagne had the same powderkeg quality that the Icarus had had, right before he had led the men in mutiny. Biddlecomb knew that, had known it since the second time they had been frozen in the Delaware River, but stepping back aboard after the flagship’s almost jovial atmosphere made his own company’s discontent seem that much more acute.

  But on board the Icarus the cause was so evident: a sadistic bosun and an inexperienced captain too weak to rein the men in, a captain who had completely lost control.

  But the cause of the Charlemagnes’ grievances he could not guess. Was it so far from the quarterdeck to the lower deck that he could not tell what was thus affecting the men? He had a sudden and terrible fear that to the men on the tween deck the problem was as clear as it had been to him aboard the Icarus, but like the captain of the Icarus he was blind to it. Biddlecomb’s had always been happy ships; he had no experience in dealing with this situation.

  A minute after stepping aboard he had his officers assembled on the quarterdeck. ‘As you may have guessed, we are not going to the Chesapeake,’ he said. ‘Rather, we are going to Nassau.’

  For the next ten minutes Biddlecomb related to the officers what he knew of Hopkins’s plan and the part they would each play in it. ‘Mr Tottenhill, you will, of course, have command of the Charlemagne in my absence. As I think the chief of the work will be aboard the sloop, I would like to take Mr Rumstick with me, if you have no objection.’

  ‘None, sir,’ said Tottenhill, and from his tone it was clear that he sincerely would not mind having Rumstick gone from the Charlemagne.

  ‘Mr Rumstick, is that all right?’

  ‘Fine, sir,’ said Rumstick, equally sincere about his willingness to forgo serving under Tottenhill’s command.

  ‘Excellent. Then I’ll let you go to make your preparations,’ Biddlecomb said.

  The sun was half an hour from setting, a great red ball in the western sky, streaking the low clouds along the horizon with bands of red and orange, when the Providence and the two sloops began to win their anchors. Capt. Isaac Biddlecomb stood on the quarterdeck rail, holding on to the aftermost backstay for support and staring out at the Charlemagne two cables away. She was a beautiful sight, her lofty spars and oiled sides tinted red by the setting sun. From a distance she appeared to be as serene a vessel as one might find.

  ‘Short peak!’ Ezra Rumstick called out from the sloop’s bow, and Biddlecomb reminded himself that everyone would be better served if he were concentrating on the vessel he was supposed to be commanding. Particularly as the Bahamian sloop, with its shallow draft, huge gaff-headed mainsail, and diminutive jib, was unlike any vessel he had ever sailed before.

  He turned his eyes inboard. The deck was jammed with men, sitting, standing, and milling about. The two hundred and twenty marines in the fleet, reinforced with fifty sailors gleaned from the various ships, were spread among the two sloops and the Providence, none of which were of any great size. Looking around the deck, Biddlecomb was reminded of the days on Narragansett Bay when he and Whipple had loaded their vessels with cattle and ferried them away to deprive the Rose of fresh meat.

  The sloops had the universal quality of working boats, from the thick paint built up on their sides and the sloppy long splices in the running gear to the odd mixture of smells: sweat and fish and fried food and a nameless substance sloshing in the bilge.

  As inconvenient as it was to the ship handlers, who had to elbow their way through the crowds of marines to get to halyards and sheets, human decency dictated that Biddlecomb allow the men to remain on deck until the last possible moment. But when they approached Nassau, he would have to order all of the marines down into the low hold, where the smells were considerably worse and would no doubt be augmented by the smells of the marines themselves, made sick by the odor and motion of the vessel.

  ‘There’s the signal from the flag, sir,’ said Ferguson, who was standing below and behind Biddlecomb at the sloop’s big tiller. Biddlecomb looked over at the Alfred. The ensign was hauled halfway down the staff, fluttering in the light breeze, then hauled up again: the signal for the expeditionary force to get under way.

  ‘Mr Rumstick, let’s get some hands on the halyards,’ he called out.

  ‘Aye, sir! You marines, bear a hand here. Clap on to that halyard there, this mainsail’ll be heavy as a bastard!’ Rumstick began to maneuver the marines into position, placing the halyards in their hands. There was an air of excitement aboard the sloop, a lighthearted quality that Biddlecomb had not felt aboard the Charlemagne for some time.

  This was in part due to the fact that all of the men aboard were New Englanders. Not one of the men shipped in Philadelphia was there, nor any of the North Carolinians. Most of the men who had been with Biddlecomb since his merchant days were there as well. He had left it to Tottenhill to tell off the men who would be a part of the landing party, and the lieutenant had taken the opportunity to rid himself of as many Yankees as he could, and the Yankees seemed quite pleased to be gone.

  ‘Haul away, sir?’ Rumstick called aft.

  ‘Yes, Mr Rumstick, haul away.’ Biddlecomb pulled himself from his reveries.

  Slowly the great mainsail peeled off the boom and spread out as the gaff was hoisted aloft. ‘Easy there on the peak, you motherless lubbers!’ Rumstick shouted. ‘Keep it parallel with the deck, the poor bastards on the throat are doing all the work!’ With that and sundry other curses the sail was hoisted, the halyards sweated taut and belayed.

  ‘Back the jib. We’ll break out the anchor now, if you please,’ Biddlecomb called, and a moment later a voice called out, ‘Anchor’s a-trip!’ and the bow of the sloop began to pay off wit
h the nimble vessel free from the ground. ‘Meet her, steady as she goes, Ferguson,’ he ordered from his perch on the quarterdeck rail, and Ferguson swung the tiller amidships.

  The sloop heeled over and gathered way, close-hauled to weather the spit of land that protected Hole-in-the-Rock from the Atlantic Ocean, slipping past the anchored fleet. From one of the ships a voice called out, ‘See you in Nassau!’ and then another shouted, ‘Save some rum for us, boys!’ and then from every ship the men cheered.

  The sun dipped below the horizon, and Biddlecomb’s sloop, with the Providence and the other sloop in her wake, stood out from Hole-in-the-Rock and met the long, gentle swell of the open sea.

  CHAPTER 17

  Trojan Horses

  John Brown slept little that night, despite the two snifters of brandy and the cool, comforting winter weather.

  He was concerned over his decision to change the governor’s mind about alerting the militia. He had assumed that the American rebels would be a bit backward in their attack, that they would lie at Hole-in-the-Rock for some time preparing, voting, forming committees, whatever it was that American rebels did.

  But what if they did not? A competent admiral would strike quickly, and Brown had no way of gauging the competence of the American commander, though from the news he had heard, from Concord and Ticonderoga and Bunker Hill, the Americans had been acquitting themselves with some distinction. It was not impossible that the fleet was on its way now, and his, John Brown’s, options would be greatly reduced if the island was caught unaware.

  He threw off his thick cover and climbed out of bed, fumbling around for his breeches. He dressed quickly in good, plain working clothes, slung his cartridge box and telescope over his shoulder, picked up his musket, and stepped quietly out of his house.

  It was an hour before dawn and the streets of Nassau were deserted. The coral-brick houses that lined George Street were dark, their bright-colored shutters, gray looking in the faint light, closed over the windows. Brown took a deep breath. The air carried on it flowers, drying fish, and conch, a hint of the ocean.

  He turned and looked south. Mount Fitzwilliam and Government House loomed over him like some ancient monolith. He could see a lantern burning in the kitchen; the house servants would have been awake for an hour already, preparing for the day, but the governor himself would not be awake until two hours after sunrise, if even then.

  He walked down steeply sloped George Street, feeling the uneven cobblestones through the soles of his boots, hearing the crunch of the ubiquitous sand. The morning was beautiful, cool and moist and quiet, an atmosphere that did not lend itself to thoughts of imminent attack.

  Brown turned left on Bay Street, walking along the waterfront. The smell of brackish water and moldering conch shells was stronger here than it was on the slopes of Mount Fitzwilliam, and the quiet was broken by the creaking of ships against the wooden piers.

  Before him stood Fort Nassau, that odd-shaped, crumbling, largely indefensible fortification, framed against the darker sky. A wooden palisade twelve feet high formed the first line of defense against anyone who might bother to attempt a frontal assault. Brown walked along the palisade to the gate, where a bored guard stood half inside his guardhouse. No regular troops were left on the island; the men of the local militia took turns manning the fort, a dozen men at any one time. In the deep shadows Brown could not tell whether the guard was awake.

  ‘Who goes there?’

  ‘John Brown, President of His Majesty’s Council.’

  ‘Oh, good morning, Mr Brown.’ The guard laid his musket aside and lifted the heavy latch from the gate. ‘A bit early for an inspection. Are you expecting some trouble?’ he asked as he swung the gate open. ‘I heard some rumors about a rebel fleet from America.’

  ‘We must be always prepared,’ said Brown, the most non-committal statement he could think of. He stepped through the palisade and across the open stretch to the front gate of the fort proper.

  The fort itself was a more substantial affair than the palisade. An impressive, castlelike main gate was the only break in the thirty-foot-high stone walls topped with forty-six heavy guns, twelve and eighteen pounders. Over the battlements of the main gate, which rose half again as high as the walls, flew an enormous, if a bit tattered, British flag. On paper the fort was quite formidable.

  But in fact, over the past thirty years it had received only the most perfunctory maintenance, and the integrity of those massive walls and the heavy guns was dubious at best. Its poor repair, along with its vulnerable location, made Fort Nassau one of the last places President of His Majesty’s Council Brown wished to be if the island were attacked.

  The main gate was opened for him by another guard, who had also heard rumors of an American fleet and who received the same noncommittal answer.

  Brown paused briefly and in the gray light of false dawn surveyed the inside of Fort Nassau. Around the perimeter of the fort the ground had been built up into wide, flat ramparts twenty feet high, leaving just ten feet of wall visible above them. These ramparts, extending out thirty feet from the walls like an earthen catwalk, had once been hard-packed dirt but now, from long neglect, were covered with a fairly even carpet of grass. On that built-up area the cannons rested, each peeking out of its embrasure, some looking out over the city, some looking out to sea.

  The central area of the fort, the parade ground, was a great rectangle twenty feet lower than the rest, at the same level, in fact, as the land outside the fort. This too was covered with grass, and at either end a set of stairs led up to the ramparts. Nothing moved within those walls.

  Brown stepped quickly along the western rampart to the crooked corner at the far end of the fort that jutted out over the harbor. A line of black guns, wet with the morning dew, stood staring out over the water. Brown turned and looked toward the east. The gray line on the horizon, the lessening of the blackness, was more pronounced now. In half an hour it would be dawn, and he would know if he had been needlessly worried, or if he had made a terrible mistake.

  Biddlecomb felt ready for the dawn and the action that it heralded. The crowd of marines that had packed the wide flush deck of the sloop for the easy sail down from Abaco were now below, poor devils, jammed into the low, stinking hold. If anyone on shore bothered to look, they would see only six men aboard the sloop.

  A ship’s forecastle tended to contain the most heterogeneous assortment of men one was likely to find, with the possible exception of a prison, and the ships of the American navy were no exception. Biddlecomb had taken advantage of that to glean from the fleet a sufficient number of black sailors to man the sloops, as someone watching from the shore would expect to see aboard Bahamian vessels. They were dressed alike, deck hand and officer, black and white, in loose trousers and shirts, with the one distinction that he and Rumstick wore blue jackets, much battered, and the men did not.

  The three vessels – the two sloops and the Providence – lay hove to. The wind had built during the night and was now blowing close to twenty knots from the northwest, blowing them into Nassau harbor faster than they cared to be blown.

  The rest of the American fleet was somewhere to windward, hopefully ten miles or more to windward. When the sun came up, they would have to be below the horizon, out of sight from Nassau, so as not to create alarm in the city. Hopkins would have to be careful, with the wind blowing as it was, tending to drive his fleet toward the island. Biddlecomb hoped that Hopkins had hove the ships to hours before.

  Now the sun was coming up, and the high point on the island that had been just visible at first light resolved itself into Mount Fitzwilliam and Government House, that familiar landmark to vessels approaching from the west. It was time to go in.

  Biddlecomb picked up his speaking trumpet and stood on the leeward rail of the quarterdeck. The two other vessels were downwind of him and his voice carried on the breeze as he called, ‘Mr Weaver, Mr Hazard, do you hear?’

  ‘Aye!’ he heard Weaver’s voice,
and then ‘Aye!’ from John Hazard.

  ‘It’s time to go in. Keep your marines hidden until we’re alongside the dock. Keep astern of me, but don’t make it look as if we’re in formation. No hailing from this point on! Understood?’

  Two more ‘Aye’s’ were returned, and the three vessels were put under way once more, turning off the wind, their long booms jutting out over their leeward rails. Biddlecomb leaned against the weather rail, arms folded across his chest, trying to enjoy the peace of the morning.

  Rumstick stepped up and leaned against the rail beside Isaac, in the casual manner of the Caribbean merchantmen. It had been just over a year since the two of them had been arrested by the British marines, pulled from Sabine’s Tavern in Providence, Rhode Island, and it had been a hell of a year. Biddlecomb could not image this situation, this calm before the fight, standing into danger, without Rumstick there.

  Not that Biddlecomb felt particularly calm at that moment; his stomach had taken a round turn and the soles of his feet were tingling like mad. But he knew that if, say, Tottenhill were standing there, and not Rumstick, he would be feeling considerably worse.

  When at last the sun peeked over the eastern horizon, New Providence Island was clearly visible off the starboard bow and Hog Island the larboard. The half-mile strip of water that separated the two and that constituted Nassau harbor opened up before them. Biddlecomb swept the shoreline with his telescope, but Fort Nassau was still lost in the deep shadows of the land.

  The two other sloops were astern of his, in no particular formation and giving no indication that they were all sailing in company. They were just three little vessels that were waiting for daylight to enter the harbor. He could see the black deckhands moving slowly about, the officers lolling about the quarterdeck in a markedly unmilitary fashion. He could see no reason that anyone onshore would think things were in any way amiss.