The Lively Lady

by Kenneth Lewis Roberts

  Sanderson twisted up the corner of his mouth and looked at me out of eyes the color of smoke, so that I stared at him in a sort of confusion because of the memories of Lady Ransome that crowded my brain. “All Englishmen aren’t like that,” he said.

  “Probably not,” I admitted, “but since England filled her ships for this war out of jails and poorhouses, the Englishmen that Americans see are worse than anything we’ve ever been able to imagine.”

  “I’ve heard so,” he said. “It’s a great pity.”

  “Oh,” I said, “there’s no use going over and over all this! If you and the captain will give me your word to keep away from the convoy and make no further effort to join it, I’ll turn you loose with your cargo. But I wish a paper signed—a paper saying it’s done because of Mrs. Sanderson, and for no other reason, and stipulating that half the sale price of the cargo belongs to her.”

  “Sir—” said Sanderson in a choked voice; but I had no time to listen to further talk.

  “Is that agreed, yes or no?” I asked.

  Since there was nothing else for the captain to do, he agreed.

  “Very well,” I said gruffly to him in response. “You’ll step into Mr. and Mrs. Sanderson’s cabin and draw up the paper instantly.” As he seemed to demur and cavil, “Instantly!” I repeated sharply. “I mean the three of you!”

  They obeyed me, and I turned to Annie, who seemed about to follow. I frowned, to cover an unreasonable embarrassment. “You’ll remain here,” I said, and I fear I looked foolish. “You’re not needed in the drawing up of such a paper, I take it.”

  “No, sir,” she returned meekly, leaning against the table and swaying with the slow rocking of the ship. “You have something you wish to say to me, sir?”

  I stared at her sternly. “No, I haven’t.”

  “You didn’t wish to ask—”

  “Well,” I said negligently, “I seem to recall having seen you. I seem to have seen you in attendance on Sir Arthur Ransome at—”

  “No, Captain,” she said quietly, “upon Lady Ransome.”

  “It may be; it may be,” I returned. “I suppose they were both quite well when you last saw them? They reached home safely?”

  “Quite safely,” she said. “They went straight to Ransome Hall, near Exeter.”

  “Exeter?” I asked. “Oh, yes: they went to Exeter. But this ship is outward bound from Jamaica. She—they left home again, possibly.”

  “It was I,” she said, looking down at her feet. “I was not to stay there long myself. We were home in May, and in June Lady Ransome sent me to her brother’s wife in Jamaica.”

  “Oh,” I said, “to her brother’s wife! Indeed!”

  She glanced toward the door of the Sandersons’ cabin, which was just off that of the master, in which we stood. “Yes, Captain.”

  I stroked my chin. “You’ve been long in Lady Ransome’s service?”

  “Since she was twelve years old, Captain.” Suddenly she gave a hiccup and went to sniveling and catching her breath, most distressing.

  “I can’t see how she could let you go so far away, if she thought so highly of you,” I said.

  “It was over something that was lost.”

  “You mean something belonging to Lady Ransome?” I asked. “Something she thought you’d stolen?”

  “Oh, no, sir! It was S’Roth! This thing was lost, and I was the last one to see it; and S’Roth was angry and kept saying I should take better care of m’lady’s things.”

  It seemed as though I might burst in this small cabin, what with the heat and all. “Did he nag at her?” I asked. “Did he nag at his— at Lady Ransome?”

  “Oh, sir,” she cried, “he’s a devil! He’s forever peering and prying! He kept at m’lady and kept at her about it, and kept at her to get rid of me and get somebody who could be trusted not to lose valuable things, and at last he said I’d have to go.”

  I could see Sir Arthur’s thin, pale face before me and hear his whining voice chewing at his words and pushing them up against his teeth.

  I stood and simmered for a while, rolling Annie’s revelations through my head. Talk, I knew, would remedy nothing; my best procedure was to let well enough alone and hold my tongue. Yet I could not bring myself to drop the subject, not until I had asked Annie one more question; so I coughed and cleared my throat, and finally said to her: “What was it she lost? Was it—was it a piece of— was it a piece of jewelry?”

  At this Annie nodded violently and burst into a storm of tears, so that it would have been difficult for me to question her further, even though I had wished to.

  Somewhat uncertainly, I fear, I watched her and thought of many things to say but didn’t say them. Instead, I finally broke out with, “Well, it’s too late to mend matters now,” and I added, not quite knowing what I meant myself: “A present’s a present and couldn’t be returned without insult, so stop your sniveling!”

  Upon this, much befuddled in my mind, I strode out to the main deck and gave a great many orders in an angry voice. Among them was one to Jeddy, which he heartily misliked—to take fifty gold sovereigns from the specie kegs and carry them to Annie.

  Seeing he was averse to the task, and being a little clearer in my mind, I took the sovereigns myself and went below. Truth to tell, I could not leave the ship until I had seen Annie once more. She was sitting in the cabin where I had left her, staring down at her folded hands.

  “Now, here,” I said, dropping the sovereigns in her lap, “I don’t understand this. I can’t wait around here all night listening to hints. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” Annie replied.

  “Well, then,” I said, “well, then—ah—you say there was—that is to say, you could see that this man—this gentleman we were speaking of—you could see he wasn’t always—ah—pleasant?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well,” I said, impatient at her slowness, “speak up! Don’t beat about the bush!”

  “Oh, sir!” Annie said, “it was a great mistake, and such a pretty little thing, always gay and happy; and now sour looks if she so much as laughs at anything! She’ll be old and bitter while she’s still a baby.”

  “Old and bitter!” I repeated, recalling how Lady Ransome had bound up my head in Arundel, and how I had felt her soft arm against my cheek. “I won’t—a man can’t—there must have been some help for it!” I looked up at the whale-oil lamp, jerking at its chains with the wallowing of the ship. I thought it burned dimly. The reek of it seemed to irritate my eyes and throat. “You can always get—I mean, couldn’t anybody help—couldn’t you help her? Couldn’t you do anything?” I may have shaken the cabin table overstrongly, for I heard the mahogany crack.

  She looked away from me thoughtfully. “I?” she asked. “I? What could I do? Now, you—”

  “I?” I asked. “What could I do?”

  “I think,” she said, moving uncomfortably, “I think she’d like to see you again.”

  “See me?” I demanded. “Why should she want to see me? How could she see me when my country’s at war with England?”

  “And will you be fighting forever?” she asked.

  I thought the matter over and over, but I could make next to nothing out of it except that it would be well if I did what I could to see that this war of ours was as short as I could help to make it.

  * * *

  It must have been one o’clock in the morning when we finished loading the indigo and specie aboard the sloop and hauled away from the Lord Starham. Toward morning the east wind that had threatened us the night before died completely, and we lay and wallowed on a turbulent gray-blue sea. On the following day the breeze came up again from the west, and we moved along in search of the convoy, without finding it. During the night, however, we heard the sound of guns and guessed that the Comet was at them again. Early the next morning we found them, twenty-seven sail, huddled together so close that from where we watched them they looked as though a skysail could have been thrown
over the lot, barring one, which hung in their rear, so that I knew it was the Comet.

  While we watched, one of the convoy put about and started back toward the single sail, all very small and distant to the eye; and we heard gums, though we were too far off to see the smoke, even.

  It seemed plain to me that the Comet was harrying the convoy for the deviltry of it, and that the Turnstone was seeking to chase her away or get within striking distance of her. If Boyle wished to play that game, I thought, I could do nothing but help him; and with that I crowded on all sail and moved off to the westward; then bore north; and in two hours’ time we had run well ahead of the convoy and were bearing down on its weather bow.

  The Turnstone was still playing at long balls with Boyle, and I hoped to reach one of the convoy before she could return; but it was impossible; for when the convoy sighted us they ran together like frightened quail and fired guns, whereupon the cruiser put about instantly and returned to them.

  We lay off, a little out of gunshot in case the Turnstone took it into her head to let drive at us with her long guns; and while we lay there, studying the convoy and picking out the craft that looked most likely as prizes, Boyle did a thing I was glad to have seen, so that if ever I could have a fast enough craft, I might some day find myself in a position to profit by the lesson.

  He bore off to windward of the convoy, which was closely bunched, with the sloop-of-war herding them along in the rear, and then came running along toward us, as pretty a sight as ever was. The masts of his graceful craft seemed to bend and give like willow branches and to thrust her along by their bending, as a strip of whalebone, pressed against a slender board, might spring it through the water. The Comet came close up under our lee; and Boyle, affable and dapper, clung to a stay and waved his hat.

  “You’ll dine with me, Captain?” he shouted.

  I nodded.

  “Pray put about,” he called. “I’ll be back in half an hour.”

  We payed off and watched him. He stood past the convoy; then tacked suddenly and shot across its bow. With that the Turnstone moved out from behind the merchantmen and set off after Boyle. But Boyle, having rounded the head of the convoy, hauled his wind in a flash and slipped down the opposite side, having put the entire fleet between himself and the sloop-of-war; and to us it seemed, and was indeed the fact, that the Turnstone’s movements, by comparison with those of the Comet, were like those of a clumsy, flustered crow attempting to escape the agile dartings of a kingbird.

  While our crew, and our officers as well, for that matter, stamped their feet at the bulwarks, shouting with laughter and waving their caps at this display of speed and agility, the Comet rounded to and shot alongside a fine large ship. What happened then we could not see, except that the Turnstone labored slowly around the head of her clumsy charges. Before she had rounded them we saw well what it was that had occurred; for the Comet’s head payed off again, and she flew on her way down the convoy’s lee side, while from the deck of the ship at which she had stopped there rose a pale wavering haze of smoke—a haze that grew thicker as we watched; then suddenly billowed out and puffed upward, enveloping the mainsail, topsail, and topgallant sail in a pillar of smoke and flame. We could see the Turnstone come up with the burning vessel and heave to, so the crew might be picked up, and all the while the Comet foamed along behind us, as swift and innocent-looking as a teal duck skimming the surface of a marsh.

  She drew abreast, so close we could see the rings in the gun tompions and the gold key dangling at the end of Captain Boyle’s watch fob as he stood by the wheel, beaming at us and feeling tenderly of his small mustaches.

  He lifted his hat debonairly as our crew manned the rail to cheer him.

  When I stepped aboard the Comet a few moments later he said apologetically, “I hope I haven’t made you hungry, Captain! I’m some minutes late; but dinner’s waiting in my cabin.”

  XIV

  IT WAS on the fifteenth of December that the Lively Lady came through the teeth of a blow into the Bay of Biscay, got under the lee of the land, and made the mouth of the Loire; and I know 6f nothing that had ever looked more welcome to me—barring our own oblong patch of farmland in Arundel—than the calm surface of the river, the bright green islands in it, and the small stone houses on the low-lying banks.

  We had clung to the lee of the convoy until a gale of wind blew up from the northwest, whereupon that had happened which always happens with a convoy: it had been scattered by the blow, some heaving to, some scudding under bare poles, and some setting a few rags of sail and holding their course as best they could. While they were thus scattered we captured, in two days’ time, a ship and two brigs without the firing of a gun; and it was with the last of them that our trouble started.

  The brig Loyal Nancy was laden with 146 puncheons of Jamaica rum and some mahogany; and we took out her crew and burnt her. The brig Hesperides was laden with rum, sugar and coffee, and 2,300 English pounds in specie; and we took out her crew, used her as a target, and sank her. The ship Rose of the West was laden with 320 hogsheads of sugar and 90 seroons of indigo, the latter having a value of $18,000.

  This Rose of the West was a handsome ship of 400 tons; and after we had taken the indigo from her with great difficulty because of the roughness of the sea, I gave orders to burn her, though I regretted the destruction of so staunch a craft. Before my orders were carried out, Rowlandson Drown, with three of the men, came to me. Rowlandson, his dark gray face pushed forward by his thick bull neck, looked mulish and lowering.

  “Captain,” Rowlandson said, “there’s been some talk among the men about the destruction of these vessels. It seems to us as how it might be possible to make a dollar out of this ship if she was handled different.”

  “How would you propose to handle her, Rowlandson?” I asked, fearful that I had overlooked something, and desirous of getting as much prize money as could be got.

  Jeddy thrust in a contemptuous oar. “He wants to make chairs out of her and raft ’em ashore.”

  “Go ahead, Rowlandson,” I told him. “Let’s hear what’s on your mind.”

  “Well,” he said, “it appears to us we must be close to some port or other after all this sailing. We could put a prize crew aboard that ship and run her in.”

  “No,” I told him, “I won’t do it, Rowlandson. We came out intending to man out no prizes, and we’re not equipped for it.”

  “Couldn’t you spare four men?” he asked.

  “No,” I told him, “I’d have to send a navigator with them. I can’t spare them, anyway. We’ve got barely enough men as it is.”

  “We could sell that ship for forty thousand dollars!”

  “You could if a sloop-of-war didn’t take you prisoner, which it probably would, and if you got to port, which you probably wouldn’t. I won’t do it.”

  “A dollar’s a dollar!” Rowlandson grumbled. He stood looking at me, gray-faced and glum, but I shook my head.

  “It isn’t safe,” I told him. “What I’m doing is best for all of us.”

  In spite of his dissatisfaction and that of a good part of the crew, when we slipped into the yellow waters of the Loire we had a cargo aboard that weighed little but was almost as valuable, we later learned, as those brought in on the first cruises of the True Blooded Yankee or the Comet or the Grand Turk or the Governor Tompkins, or the General Armstrong or the sloop Polly out of Salem, or the Harpy of Baltimore, privateers that made enormous sums from the beginning, and harried the British until the very mention of their names was enough to cause a flutter in the insurance rates.

  * * *

  We found Nantes a good town, as Captain Boyle had told us, though there was an air of depression and sorrow to the place, and unusual numbers of womenfolk. For every man that met the eye there were three women—all on account of the millions of men that Bonaparte had slaughtered in the making of his vainglorious wars.

  There was infinite detail to the sale of our cargo, which had to be done slowly
by French agents; and after that there would be the figuring of shares and the refitting for another cruise, so I left the crew aboard the sloop and went to take lodgings at the Golden Eagle Inn—L’Aigle d’Or: a tall, narrow building facing the Place du Commerce, near where the small river Erdre flows through the city and into the Loire.

  Captain Boyle had told me that all American captains patronized L’Aigle d’Or when they were in Nantes, because the proprietor, M. Marcel Solbert, had spent several months in America and learned what he believed to be English. M. Solbert met me at the door and immediately proved that he thought he spoke our tongue.

  “Ah!” he said, clasping his hands in front of him like a woman. “Ah! Gentiman, you are capitaine, eh? Ah, oui! Gentiman, you live Philadelphia, no? I have work wiss limes in maison de livres de mon ami, M’sieu le Comte Moreau Saint-Mery in Philadelphia, eh?”

  He took me to my room, a narrow room with windows opening on a courtyard smelhng peculiarly of stables, soapsuds and cheese rind; and when I came down I met three other American captains, all waiting impatiently in Nantes until their cargoes should be sold —Captain Dawson of the letter-of-marque schooner Ned of Baltimore; Captain Troutman of the privateer schooner Lion out of Marblehead, and Captain Hewes of the privateer Leo out of Boston.

  Through them I found agents—the Latour brothers: polite men with bushy whiskers large enough for squirrel nests—and thought to settle down to wait for our rich booty to be turned into money; but there was such an air of discomfort about the country, what with Bonaparte’s terrible battles and the ghastly news of the death of four hundred thousand Frenchmen on the steppes of Russia, and the conscriptions that were forever taking place to provide more men to be slaughtered, that none of us could rest easy.