“What is more important to Whitehall?” John demanded more quietly, his fiery passion finally expending itself. “Nipping a few British deserters and impounding a bale of cotton or protecting the economy of an island whose bloody high taxes are paying for its campaign against Napoléon?”
It was a rhetorical question, but one for which there was only one rational answer.
SPRINGTIME ON Barbados offered an intoxicating mélange of warm sunshine, gentle sea breezes, and sweet-smelling flowers, each delicate bud the start of a new life. For the Cutlers, one day flowed appealingly into another until the summer-like days of May signified the time for Richard and Katherine Cutler to return home to America. During a last ride together, Katherine and Julia plodded along an unspoiled stretch of sea-shore on the Caribbean side of the island, where as newlyweds Richard and Katherine had loped and laughed and loved during the early-morning hours as the sun peeked above the deep blue Atlantic to spread its golden warmth across glistening white sands and the dewy jade of sugarcane fields.
The two women dismounted near a patch of grass up where the sand ended and the rich foliage of the interior began. As the horses grazed, Julia and Katherine gazed out across the glistening sea, each absorbed in her own thoughts. At the water’s edge, perhaps thirty feet away, sandpipers scurried about in search of sand fleas and other morsels hidden within the scattered clumps of sargasso and other refuse washed ashore during the last high tide. As she looked out upon sweet memories, Katherine smiled. She could almost see Richard in the surf, her young husband of not yet twenty years trudging toward her, holding in one hand a rock lobster he had plucked off a reef and wiping the stinging salt from his eyes with the other. The sight of his strong, lean, sunburned body had never failed to ignite her passion. They had known such hunger for each other back then, she mused, a raging appetite that seemed impossible to sate. The fires of youth had subsided to a warm, comfortable blaze, but the abiding love that had sustained them through twenty-five years of marriage lived on, deeper today than it had been even during those first glorious years of discovery and delight. The images of their entwined bodies vanished as Julia asked a simple and not unexpected question.
“Will I ever see you again, Katherine?”
Katherine looked at Julia, trying to think of a reassuring response.
“I cannot bear the thought of not seeing you again,” Julia said as tears welled in her eyes. “I realize that we promised beforehand not to talk about this, but I simply must. I hate what has happened to you, what you have had to endure. No matter how little we have seen each other over the years, you remain my very dearest friend. These past few weeks have been among the happiest of my life.”
“Of mine too, Julia,” she quietly agreed.
“And so you must agree,” Julia said firmly, “that we cannot just say good-bye. I plan to come to see you in Hingham. I have already talked to Robin about it, and he is in complete agreement. Cynthia is too. We have, in fact, agreed to come together. We both want to see Hingham, especially now that Joseph will be there.” She clasped Katherine’s hands tightly. “It is so very kind of you to invite him, and such a splendid opportunity for him! I have never seen him so thrilled about anything! You have given him a wonderful gift.”
Katherine shook her head. “The gift is from Joseph to us, Julia. As for you and Cynthia coming to Hingham, I can’t imagine anything that would please me and my family more.”
“It’s settled, then,” Julia said. “We shall do it.”
LEAVING BARBADOS had never been easy—emotionally or logistically—and Friday, May 16, was no exception. During the three days prior, Richard had busied himself with the myriad details of the voyage home, first by having Frank Bennett recall Dove’s nine-man crew from other work they were performing on Cutler vessels and in Cutler warehouses in Bridgetown, and then by reviewing the sail plan with Dove’s master and mate. Richard endorsed Bennett’s suggestion that Dove sail westward from Barbados and across the Caribbean, taking a sailor’s advantage of the easterly trades until they hauled their wind near the western tip of Cuba and sailed around the island into the Strait of Florida. From there the Florida Current would carry the ship north to the point where it merged with the five-knot northerly flow of the sixty-mile-wide Gulf Stream. Such a course, assuming fair winds, could lop days off the three weeks or so normally required for a fast vessel to sail the twenty-five hundred sea miles between Boston and Barbados. The only significant danger in shaping such a course, aside from the possibility of running into extreme weather, which was unlikely during the spring, was the threat of piracy. Richard intended to significantly reduce that threat by stationing two lookouts throughout the day and night, and by keeping the four 6-pounder guns run out and loaded with grapeshot until they reached American waters off the coast of Georgia. Until then, he would also rotate watches every four hours, as in the Navy, rather than every six hours as had been the norm during the southbound cruise. Four-hour watches were more demanding, but over the short term they kept every man jack more alert.
Julia and Robin and their three youngest children were at the dock to see them off. John and Cynthia were there as well, of course, and despite their propensity to keep chin up whatever the circumstance, they were having a difficult time saying good-bye to their only child. It was Joseph who broke the embrace with his mother. He gently coaxed away her arms and slid his hands down to take hers. “I will see you soon, Mother,” he promised. “You are coming next spring—less than a year from now. Please do not worry about me. I’ll be fine.”
“Of course you will, my dearest love,” Cynthia managed, “Of course you will.” Beside her, Katherine and Julia embraced for a final time.
“Good-bye,” Julia managed, ignoring the tears blinding her vision. “Godspeed.”
Katherine shook her head. “À bientôt, my sweet friend. I will see you again soon.” She turned toward the boat as Julia gave way to sobs.
Within less than an hour Dove was sailing westbound on a broad reach. The three Cutlers standing at her stern waved at those watching them from the dock, never stopping until the stretch of sea separating them became too great to distinguish one human form on shore from another.
Five
Grand Terre, Louisiana Territory
May 1806
RICHARD CUTLER awoke with a start and stared up through the open skylight in the deckhead, listening intently. He heard nothing beyond the squeak of blocks, the hum of wind in the rigging, and the gurgle of water running along the clipper’s hull. Uncertain what had roused him from a deep sleep, he reached out for the waistcoat watch that he kept during the night in an open compartment secured to the lower bulkhead. The feeble light of a guttering candle encased in a glass lantern allowed him to read the time: 3:50. Falling back on the double bunk that had been specially constructed for this voyage, he listened again—and again he heard nothing but the small sounds of a vessel rigged for night sailing. Dove was heeling slightly to larboard, which meant that earlier in the night she had hauled her wind and was now heading east on a starboard tack. Mentally calculating elapsed time and approximate speed, he estimated their position to be somewhere within the southern reaches of the Gulf of Mexico, northwest of Havana and approaching the Dry Tortugas, a group of sparsely vegetated islands located six hours or so, assuming fair winds, due west from an island the Spanish called Cayo Huesco. Legend held that the island, located at the extreme end of a hundred-mile-long coral archipelago stretching southwestward in an arc from mainland Florida, was an Indian burial ground. Not a particularly pleasing thought in the dark early-morning hours.
From long experience, Richard realized that sleep would not return once a sea sense had tolled its silent alarm. He tossed aside the light blanket and sat up at the edge of the bunk, rubbing his eyes and stretching out his arms. When he reached forward for the shirt and trousers draped across a heavy wooden chair, he felt the warmth of his wife’s hand on his naked back.
“What is it, Richard?”
she asked groggily. “Why up so early? Is something the matter?”
He turned to her and took her hand. “No, nothing’s the matter. I couldn’t sleep, is all. I’m going topside for a few minutes.” He kissed her forehead. “Go back to sleep, darling. It’s hardly four o’clock.”
“I will, if you’re sure nothing’s wrong.”
“I’m sure.”
As Richard’s head emerged through the aft companionway, the gentle caress of a southeasterly breeze ruffled his hair and loose-fitting cotton shirt. His eyes swept the deck. Dove’s mainsail and two of her jib sails were set; overhead, a cloud-covered sky was just barely coming to light. Afore her mainmast, at deck level, two lookouts kept station, one to larboard and one to starboard. At the first spread of dawn they would climb aloft to more than double their range of vision across the slight chop of the Florida Strait.
Richard pulled himself up through the square hole at the top of the companionway and strode aft to where Robert Jordan was writing on a chalkboard, recording the four o’clock readings of wind direction, present course, and speed as indicated by the log line. Next to him, the helmsman of the watch kept a steady eye on the compass rose illuminated by a lanthorn secured to the binnacle.
Jordan glanced up as Richard approached the helm. “Good morning, Mr. Cutler,” he said, his voice registering no surprise at seeing his employer on deck during the graveyard watch. “A pleasant morning, it would seem.”
“Good morning, Bob,” Richard returned. “Yes, so it would seem.”
Richard glanced at the binnacle; the compass arrow was floating between 85 and 95 degrees. To the south and southeast lay the Spanish-held island of Cuba. Ahead to the east-northeast lay the Spanish-held territory of Florida. Due north was the Gulf of Mexico and, beyond it, the vast territory of Louisiana recently purchased for $15 million by the United States from Napoléon, who desperately needed the money to finance his war in Europe. Although Louisiana was now a U.S. possession, its southern reaches, particularly in and around the port city of New Orleans, remained predominantly French. That population had recently been fortified by an influx of French men and women who had fled the civil war on Haiti and its aftermath. Toussaint L’Ouverture, a self-educated former slave, had waged a brilliant campaign against the French and won independence for his country in 1801. Soon afterward, Napoléon betrayed him and had him taken to France, where he languished in prison for two years before dying from neglect and starvation. When word of Toussaint’s death reached the Haitian capital city of Port-au-Prince, the last remnants of the former French settlement on the island—both the whites and the mulattoes, the gens de couleur—decided to get out, and quickly, especially after an 1802 expedition led by Napoléon’s brother to reclaim Haiti as a French colony ended in humiliation for France.
Many of Haiti’s French population had fled first to Cuba, bringing with them their knowledge of sugarcane cultivation. But when Napoléon invaded Spain, the Cuban colonial government ordered everyone of French pedigree off the island on pain of death. From Cuba these émigrés fled to Louisiana, a land born to French culture and named in honor of the French Sun King, Louis XIV.
If trouble was brewing, as his sea sense told him it was, Richard suspected that it would more likely come from the French than the Spanish. Peering into the still-dark sky to larboard, he could make out little beyond the few feet illuminated by the cutter’s lanterns. He was not surprised when an image of Agreen Crabtree sprang to mind. He would have been glad indeed to have his old friend and shipmate by his side this morning. No one was more reliable in a tight spot. He found himself wondering if Agreen’s tender of resignation had wended its way through the Navy Department. Odds were that it had. I won’t be far behind you, Agee, he thought.
“Good morning, Mr. Cutler,” a voice greeted him at the railing. Richard was relieved to see Frank Bennett looming in the darkness. Frank wasn’t Agreen, but he was a reliable and competent sea officer who demanded much from himself and his crew—which is why Caleb had been so eager to sign him on at Cutler & Sons. Plus, he was pleasant to talk to and in general a good man to have around.
“We should have light in another thirty minutes or so. Dawn comes early in these latitudes. If there’s anyone out there,” Bennett added, reading Richard’s mind, “we’ll spot him soon enough. Shall I send below for some coffee? The water’s hot, and I could use a cup myself. I had Turner stoke up the stove before the start of the watch.”
“Yes, do, Frank. And a long glass, if you please. I’m going aloft with the lookouts. And Frank,” he added, “at first light have the men standing by the guns.”
A half hour later Richard climbed the ratlines, secured himself within the hempen cords attached to the mainmast crosstrees, and trained his glass northward across a mottled sea quickly transforming from ebony black to pewter gray. There was indeed a vessel out there, just as his instinct had told him. She was a good distance downwind of Dove—perhaps five or six hundred yards—on a parallel course and closing. He lowered the glass, studied her with his naked eye, and then raised the glass anew, focusing the lens in and out until the image grew clear and unmistakable. “Damn!” Richard cursed under his breath. Captured in the lens of his glass was a single-masted vessel boasting a triangular fore-and-aft sail on her single raked mast with a square topsail above, still furled to its yard. At her bow, three large triangular foresails were set on a jib-boom that was perhaps twice the length of Dove’s. It was the exceptional length of that boom—in alliance with her trim lines, deep hull, and narrow beam—that pegged her provenance.
And what a provenance it was. The speed of a Baltimore clipper such as Dove was legendary, but if any other type of vessel could outsail a clipper, it was a Bermuda sloop. Like the one he was looking at now. The Royal Navy’s respect for these Bermuda-built vessels was such that it had commissioned large numbers of them into the service. They were ideal for reconnoitering and for chasing smugglers. They were also ideal for communicating important information to other ships both distant and near—and to shore, as HMS Pickle aptly demonstrated when she raced from Gibraltar back to England in record time to report the stupendous victory at Trafalgar and the untimely death of Horatio Nelson.
Richard could not immediately determine the sloop’s nationality; she flew no ensign. But he noticed that she had six guns run out on her starboard side and three-man gun crews standing by each of them. He climbed down to the weather deck and was about to speak to Frank Bennett when a lookout above called down that the sloop had fired a blank charge to windward. The heavy thud of the discharge washed over Dove several seconds later.
“That should dispel any doubt,” Richard muttered, “if ever we had any.” A gun fired to windward was an international signal of malice.
“Fucking pirates,” Bennett snarled. “They must have spotted us late yesterday and shadowed us through the night. You were right, sir: we should have doused our lanterns.”
“It’s too late to worry about that now,” Richard said. “We don’t know who these people are yet, and we don’t know their intentions. Besides, as you correctly pointed out, dousing our lanterns would have exposed us to other sorts of dangers.” He squeezed Bennett’s arm. “Chastising ourselves serves no purpose, Frank. The question is what we do now.”
Bennett nodded grimly. “I say we set all sail and show them our heels,” he stated emphatically. “The wind is freshening and the men are ready.”
Richard set his jaw and considered his limited options. In this stretch of water there was not a friendly port for hundreds of miles, and there was virtually no possibility of outrunning the sloop over such a distance. His only other option, beyond immediate surrender, was to stand and fight. Although his training as a naval commander demanded he take such action, he was hesitant to fire on a vessel that heavily outgunned and outmanned his own, especially with his wife and nephew on board. But he had to make a decision, and he had to make it now. The sloop was closing fast.
He summoned Robe
rt Jordan, who had yielded the helm to another sailor and was standing by for orders, and looked at Captain Bennett. “I want you at the helm, Frank,” Richard said. “We’ll come off the wind and bear up. When the sloop shadows our move, I’ll give her a broadside. I’ll aim for her mast and rigging—and who knows, we may get lucky. As soon as our aft gun is fired, we’ll come off the wind, clap on all sail, and resume our present course. If we do that smartly, Bob, we can put some distance between them and us while they’re trying to get back on course. Have the men stand by to dump everything portable overboard, and that includes our guns and supplies. Understood?”
Both men saluted in crisp naval fashion. “Aye, aye, sir,” they said in unison.
Richard hurried below to warn Katherine and Joseph to remain in their cabins. He gave his wife a quick summary of what was happening. “We can expect a return volley or two,” he said in conclusion. “But not to worry. I’ve never known a pirate who can shoot straight at a hundred yards. If it turns out we can’t outrun them, then so be it. I will not put you and Joseph in further jeopardy.”
Katherine nodded her understanding. “What are the odds?”
“Slim, I’m afraid.”
“Be careful, Richard,” she pleaded.
Richard nodded and closed the door.
Topside, the Bermuda sloop continued to close as Dove bore off the wind and her three larboard guns were run out. The gun crews looked expectantly at Richard, who was on a knee by the forward larboard gun, peering through its sight, waiting for the sloop to bear up. Two hundred yards narrowed to a hundred yards, and still the sloop continued to come at them bow-on. A sickening feeling washed over Richard as he realized that she had no intention of turning. He was losing valuable time—and distance. He had to shoot now, and pray to hit a pole a hundred yards away.
The sloop drew into Dove’s sights, dead-on to her single mast.
How Dark the Night Page 9