It was not until late July that a commission was brought to me by post. It bore the signature of James Madison and authorized the private armed vessel Lively Lady to cruise against the enemies of the United States under the command of Captain Richard Nason. With that we made more haste, laying in supplies and rounding out our crew, which was not easy because nine tenths of the folk in Arundel and neighboring towns were bitter against the war and those who had forced them into it. It would put an end to their prosperity, they said, and they wanted nothing to do with it.
What I most needed were men handy with small arms; and by bribery and arguments of one sort and another I got eight of the best marksmen the town afforded, among them Moody Haley, who in a morning could shoot enough Eskimo plover to fill a hogshead; and Moses Burnham, whose rifle, though carrying a ball no larger than a pea, would kill rabbits and moose with equal thoroughness; and Pendleton Quint, who could drop a flying partridge without raising his fowling piece above his hip, he having learned to shoot in this fashion, he said, because of the weight of his weapon, which made it a nuisance to lift; also Bezaleel Bird, whose eyes were so keen he could distinguish goslings from ganders in a flock of geese and kill only goslings. I was fortunate in signing Jotham Carr, he having worked at rolling pills and holding forceps in Dr. Wiswall’s office, so that we wouldn’t be without a doctor. With him came Alley McAlley, an Irish tailor who had appeared in our town from some place to the south and been cured of the itch by Jotham, so that he was Jotham’s ardent follower, and glad for the opportunity to ship with him.
Also, in a cabin near Durrell’s Bridge on the river road lived two black men named Pomp and Sip, which are names given to all black men in our part of New England, and these two I persuaded to sign on the Lively Lady, both of them being good-natured and handy at fishing, snaring, or shooting, as well as at cooking simple messes such as lobscouse and fish chowder.
By the end of August, thanks to the defeat of the Guerrière by our splendid frigate Constitution, and the news of the privateering successes of the little Fame out of Salem, our Arundel folk had become heartier for the war, so that we had more than enough men from whom to choose when our work was completed. Nevertheless, I held the crew to thirty men, over and above Jeddy and Cephas Cluff and ’Lisha Lord and Cromwell and myself, for I figured this number would answer my needs.
If we were lucky, the smaller the crew, the richer they’d be; for the owners were to receive one half of our taking, the other half going to the officers and crew. In this, there was matter to trouble the mind of any conscientious privateer captain, especially that of a young one; for the swelling of the shares by the taking of rich prizes was all too likely to become the main object with the crew, to the exclusion of what was more patriotic and important.
* * *
The crickets were loud the night before we sailed. I sat with my mother in the large room; and since then I have never heard a cricket’s monotonous plaint without recalling the fragrant perfume of a Maine August—sweet grass and pines and wet sea sand and uncovered ledges—and without seeing quick pictures in my brain: the sharp current riffles in our river; a distant sail on the horizon; a handful of men standing silent and staring by the side of a long gun, their mouths hanging open against the explosion; and other pictures not so pleasant.
“There’s a number of things I’ve had it in mind to tell you,” she said, rounding off the toe of a white woolen stocking she was knitting. “War’s a dirty business. They talk a lot about chivalrous enemies and land knows what-all; but chivalry doesn’t help much if you have to be sewed up in a topsail and dropped overboard with an eighteen-pound shot at your feet. The chief idea in war is to kill and destroy. If you feel a bit of chivalry coming on, I’d recommend fighting it off till there’s no chance of being killed and destroyed yourself.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I told her.
“Privateering,” she persisted, “has its bad points. Any Britisher that gets an opportunity will treat you like a pirate. You’ll find, oftentimes, they’ll keep on firing after one of our privateersmen strikes his colors. They did in the Bevolution, in between some of their talk about chivalry. You needn’t look for much mercy.”
“I don’t figure on giving ’em the chance to show me any.”
“Weight of metal’s a thing you can’t do much against,” she continued. “It may look cowardly, but don’t lose time in running when you see a big one after you. Do what damage you can, and take as little as may be.”
“That’s why I shipped Moody Haley and Bezaleel Bird and the others.”
“That’s right,” she said absently. “Pick ’em off at the top. That’s how we won at Saratoga. The British don’t like it, but that’s because they aren’t as good at it as we are.” Her needles clicked rapidly. “Were you figuring on leaving her that dirty green color?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I thought you might be planning to paint her a nice fresh green, like that green dress of Lady Bansome’s.” She eyed me sharply.
“I hadn’t thought of it,” I said. I had, but there seemed to be no reason to say so to my mother; and I had decided, finally, that the very dirtiness of the green was an advantage, since it might make us less easily visible to enemy craft. Once or twice, too, I had been tempted to speak to her of the miniature I had found in the pocket of my coat; but I knew nothing would be gained by idle chatter on the subject, so I remained silent about that as well.
She moved restlessly in her chair and sighed. “Get your charts,” she said, not looking up from her knitting. “I’ve been thinking about the British trade routes. It’s easiest to go to the Grand Banks and so intercept the merchantmen bound to Halifax from Britain and the Indies; but I’m beginning to suspicion it would be a mistake.”
“I’ve been thinking,” I said, unrolling a chart for her, “that all our privateers will run for the Grand Banks at the same time.”
“That’s been my thought,” my mother said. “If I were captain of the Lively Lady, I’d head out across the Gulf Stream and bear south to the sugar trade route.” She tapped her finger on the point that coffee and sugar traders from the West Indies must cross in sailing to England: the same point where there are always slow-moving merchantmen laden with English goods, heading for the West Indian markets. “It’ll be hot down there,” she said, “but you can’t let a little heat stop you. What’s more, I think you’ll find next to no enemy war craft and few enough of our own privateers to compete with you.”
“That’s what I’ll do, though I’d mislike to be caught by one of those tidy little hurricanes.”
My mother lifted her shoulder. “They won’t hurt you,” she said. “You’re lucky. They’ll only stave up the merchantmen so you can take ’em easier.”
Again we sat in silence. The crickets chirped on and on. I stared at a picture of Rome on the wall paper, a picture showing a sheep herder putting his arm around a handsome, dressy girl, though from what I had seen of sheep herders in Spain and Portugal they’d be given a wide berth by any girl not weak in the head.
My mother finished the stocking. “There,” she said, “that’s the fastest knitting ever done in this town! If you’re going out on the flood tide you’d better get forty winks.”
We stood in the door, listening to the soft, slow, irregular plunge and murmur of the surf on the hard beach, and to the chirping of the crickets. Then she patted me gently on the shoulder, and we went upstairs.
I’ve heard it said we New Englanders are cold folk, taking no pleasure in life or love. I don’t know how such beliefs spring up, for there’s as much marrying among us as among people said to be more passionate; and our families couldn’t conveniently be larger. And I, at least, knew that although my mother failed to scream and burst into tears because of my departure, as more excitable and less sensible mothers might have done, she took no pleasure in my going and would be happy when I came back.
XI
IT WAS early on the fifth day out that Pen
dleton Quint sighted the first sail, bearing north with the Gulf Stream. We made sail in pursuit; and since it was our first chase the men were excited and in high spirits, though they made an effort to remain calm, leaning over the bulwarks and spitting when asked a question, and looking always at the sky before answering, though there was no cloud in sight and no chance of a change in wind.
As we drew up on this first sail of ours we cleared for action. The muskets, except those for the sharpshooters, were ranged in a rack by the main hatchway; each man was at his post, a cutlass buckled around him, the two long guns were cleared of their screens, the hatchway coamings were set with eighteen-pound shot; and ready on the decks were boxes of grape and langrage, water buckets, tubs of wadding, rammers and sponges, among which Pinky sniffed as though they were there for the sole purpose of letting him locate the rat that had made free with them.
She was a slow brig of some three hundred tons. The closer we came, the more Jeddy Tucker licked his lips, pleased and eager at what was about to happen. Just then the brig hove-to and hoisted Russian colors, so I was certain she was a neutral and our first chase a vain one. All around the deck the men settled back on their heels, growling and swearing; while I, wishing to make no mistake, spoke her and found her to be the Russian brig Moskva, Captain John Blanton, eight days out from Havana bound to St. Petersburg with a full cargo of sugar, logwood, and coffee. Jeddy Tucker went on board to examine her papers, log book, letters, crew and passengers. All was in order, as I had felt sure would be the case; and from Blanton, a Louisianian, Jeddy picked up intelligence that did us little good—that he had been boarded five days before by His Majesty’s brig Scorpion but had sighted no other sail; that there were many British vessels at Havana, several ready for sea, and that a convoy was expected to set out within the month.
We sent the Moskva on her way and made sail to the southwest. Finding only light airs and calms, such as are often found in this section of the Gulf Stream in the month of September, we got out our lines and trolled, which I do whenever I can in the Gulf Stream because of the innumerable fish that cruise on its surface—ferocious fighters and as good eating, or better, than halibut.
When the breeze picked up we moved along to the southwest-ward. Toward evening of the second day we sighted another sail, but darkness fell. Jeddy was exasperated by this disappointment. We were, he said, carrying a Jonah aboard, one that soured our luck; and from various of his phrases having to do with chair makers and grayfaced wild men, I gathered he had somehow got it in his head that Rowlandson Drown would be at the bottom of any ill success we might have.
We laid a course, that night, calculated to hold us in the neighborhood of the sail we pursued; and when dawn came, the lookout spied it four miles astern. She was a brigantine, a clumsy, slow thing; and when we ran down toward her and fired a gun, she hove-to and hoisted the American flag. She seemed to have a familiar look; so when we boarded her I went myself with Jeddy to see what it was that stirred my memory. As our boat came up to her side, I saw a nick in the galley stove pipe. A moment later the lean face of Eh Bagley stared over the rail, as inflamed and congested as when I had bound him in his cabin in Halifax harbor.
“Well, Captain,” I said, as I came aboard, “this seems like old times.”
He smiled a sick smile, and I suddenly remembered he was what we call a fish-chowder sailor: one who lacks the courage or the skill to navigate out of sight of the coast.
“Aren’t you a little far from home?”
“Oh, a leetle; a leetle. I—I got me a sailing master.”
“Well, well! You’re coming up in the world! You’ll be working a tea ship before you know it! Let’s look at this sailing master of yours.”
Bagley hesitated, his jaw bones moving like the- gills of a fish. I could see he wanted to question my authority, but felt he might be treading on delicate ground. “I hold a commission from President Madison,” I told him, “to capture, burn, sink, or destroy all enemy craft.”
“Gosh,” he said, “I ain’t no enemy craft! You know me: I’m out of Portsmouth.”
“Where’s that sailing master?”
He hesitated: then pointed to a lean, red-nosed man who stood at the lee rail, looking fixedly at nothing and chewing busily.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“His name’s Thomas,” Bagley said hurriedly.
“Tammas McAndrew,” said the red-nosed man, a hint of sourness in his voice.
“A herring choker!” I said. “I don’t like it. Let’s see your papers.”
“There ain’t nothing wrong,” Bagley said. “You know me, Nason. You won’t find nothing out of the way.”
“Let’s see your papers.”
We went into his smelly little cabin. The pewter whale-oil lamp, unmended, had been hung back on its hook beside the door.
“Well,” I said, when I had finally wormed his papers from him, “you’re bound from a British port to a British port with lumber for the British. You’re as good as a Britisher yourself.”
Bagley’s lumpy jaw bones moved convulsively. “Why, that ain’t so! I’m just a poor man with a living to make! Why, Halifax harbor’s full of New Englanders running flour to the Canadians! Gosh almighty, Nason, them poor Canadians couldn’t live a week if we didn’t run flour to ’em!”
“Nor the British army in Canada,” I said.
“No,” he agreed uncertainly.
He seemed to have no idea he was doing anything out of the way. “Will you tell me how in hell we’re going to whip the British if we keep feeding ’em before we fight ’em?”
“We got to five, ain’t we?”
“I don’t see what’s gained by it. I’ll keep these papers, and you can make for the nearest port in the United States.”
“No,” he protested, “I’m going to Jamaica! I got to have those papers.”
“You’ll never hit Jamaica in a thousand years. I’m taking your sailing master with me, so you’d better head for more familiar waters.”
“You can’t!” he shouted, his face a mottled green and crimson, like a half-ripe apple. “I can’t find my way without McAndrew.”
“Yes, you can,” I said. “All you need to do is steer west. You’ve got to hit land if you do that. Columbus did it, and so can you, if you know where west is.”
“Gosh!” he said, his eyes round and staring, “what’ll I do if a British frigate chases me?”
“It ought to be worth watching,” I said. “Maybe you can outmaneuver her.”
We threw overboard his deckload of lumber. As an afterthought I sent Jeddy to the cabin to hunt for rum. He found a keg; but after tasting it I left it with Bagley, fearful it might poison my crew if I took it with me.
McAndrew made no protest when I ordered him into the boat. “Accept my apologies,” I said, “for taking you off that tidy little craft; but this is a war, even though some haven’t sensed it.”
He spat over the side. I saw he was chewing slippery elm. “Tidy!” he ejaculated.
“Didn’t he set a good table?” I asked.
“Ghastly!” McAndrew said.
I shook my head at Jeddy. “Life can be very disappointing. Under the circumstances we’ll have to let Mr. McAndrew mess in the gun room—at least until we take other prisoners to keep him company.”
* * *
We were not long in doing that. On the third of November we came up with a brig flying the Spanish flag. We brought her to, for I hoped to buy a few pipes of Spanish wine from her, so our crew might not brood over our failure to take prizes. She was the Dos Hermanos from Pernambuco to Portsmouth—a fine craft, coppered to the bends and clean as the inside of a mussel shell, which isn’t usual with Spanish vessels, all those I have seen being thickly crusted with dirt and smelling villainously of rancid oil, garlic and mold. To add to these suspicious circumstances, she had two Englishmen aboard as passengers, one of whom was standing with the captain at the rail as we came up; and her cargo was composed entirely
of India goods: silks, guavas, opium, indigo, tea, ivory, carpets, and spices, chief among these being ginger and turmeric. Now it seemed unreasonable to me that this brig out of Pernambuco should be laden with India goods, rather than with sugar or coffee or aguardiente or cigarros, which are Pernambuco products.
The captain was a Spaniard and held the backs of his thumbs against his breast when I sought to question him, flapping his fingers limply in the air and looking stupid as a goat.
“All right,” I told Jeddy, “bring down those two Englishmen.”
They came down, polite and affable, and we had a glass of Spanish wine together.
“You gentlemen took passage from Pernambuco?” I asked them.
They said that was the case.
Jeddy walked around them and around the captain, looking at them front and rear. I could see he made the Englishmen uneasy.
“You gentlemen have lived in Pernambuco for some time?” I asked.
One of them, a squatty red-faced man, looked helplessly at the other, a small man with the protruding upper front teeth that seem almost a fashion with so many of the inhabitants of mighty Albion. He said quickly they had been traveling.
“For business or for pleasure?”
“Pleasure,” he answered readily enough. The squatty man, I thought, relaxed gently in his chair.
“And where have you traveled?”
“Oh,” said the man with the teeth, waving his hand loosely as if to indicate far-off lands, “China, India, Ceylon, Madagascar, Brazil—”
Jeddy laughed, his eyes as wide and blue as those of a china doll. The glance of the buck-toothed man shifted and wavered.
I poured him another glass of wine, and we drank, all of us.
The Lively Lady Page 10