The Lively Lady

by Kenneth Lewis Roberts

  He turned on his heel; then swung back to us again. “I’d like to see your captain in my cabin.”

  When I stepped forward he nodded curtly, spoke briefly to a young officer near him, and walked off without another word. Tommy Bickford would have followed me with my duffel bag; but a red-coated marine took it from him.

  I cast a final look around as I mounted to the quarter-deck of this towering vessel. Back under our lee, a smudge of black smoke pouring from her forward hatch, lay the Lively Lady, forlorn and untidy, her foremast dragging in the Channel chop; her mainsail lying half over the side, slack and useless, like a broken wing. A mile to the south I saw the Chasseur slipping toward the southeast. Even as I looked she hauled her wind and stood back toward us again, so I knew there would be no better days in store for the poor hulk we had just left. Boyle would sink her if she didn’t sink herself. I tried to remember, watching her, when it was I had brought the cheese to Boyle; but I could only remember it was long, long ago.

  The young officer spoke to me, sharp and haughty, ordering me to follow; and I stumbled after him with a slack and gone feeling, as though my legs and brain were stuffed with straw.

  The captain’s cabin in one of these British seventy-fours is a palace by itself, rising from the rear of the quarter-deck like a rich house set down at the end of a village green; and I, entering it, felt myself shabby, with something of mendicancy and disgraceful misfortune about me.

  The young officer rapped at a paneled door and stood aside for me to pass in, looking as though he wished me the worst luck in the world. I entered a low-ceiled room that seemed enormous, larger than our living room in Arundel, and stood before this tall, thin, crinkly-haired captain. He had laid aside his great cocked hat and was sitting at a polished table with a hand on either knee and his lips pursed as though he intended to clap me in chains for life.

  “I’ve been told, sir,” he said, without preamble, “that you purposely set fire to a prize.”

  “No, sir; I did not.”

  “I have the word of an Englishman for it!” He eyed me coldly. “I have his word you shouted to the commanding officer of the privateer brig that annoyed me so determinedly before I came up with you. You told him to stand by until your vessel had been destroyed.”

  “I didn’t strike my colors until after the fire had broken out,” I said.

  “Then you set the fire?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then in effect you set fire to British property; for you had no means of escaping and were as good as captured.”

  “It wasn’t a prize till I struck my colors,” I repeated, feeling dull and numb. “You might have blown up.”

  Despite my hair-splitting, he gave me a courteous reply.

  “So I might! So I might! I never thought of that!” He compressed his lips again and made a flirting motion with his hand. “That’s no reason, however. If you destroyed a prize with no greater justification, I shall be forced to take steps. I’ll be forced to make representations to the Transport Office.”

  There was a dull roar far astern, like the muffled rumble of a nearing thunderstorm, and I knew I would never set eyes on the Lively Lady again. Something seemed to go from me, so that I could hardly stand on my feet before this captain, who suddenly appeared to me more powerful than any man I had ever met. I saw he was waiting for me to speak.

  “Well,” I said, “there was no way out of it. I passed my word.”

  He frowned. “Come, come, Captain! You’d better tell me the full tale. And let me have your name, while you’re about it.”

  “Nason; the Lively Lady, eighteen guns and—”

  “Yes,” he said, flirting his hand again, “yes, yes! Wise is my name: Granicus, seventy-four. Now, Captain Nason.”

  “Well,” I said, “there it is.” For the life of me I couldn’t remember what he’d asked me.

  Captain Wise eyed me closely. “So you passed your word, did you?”

  “Yes. I couldn’t get the brig till I passed my word she shouldn’t fall into the hands of the British. I passed my word, and so I got her.”

  “Indeed! And to whom did you pass your word?”

  “Robert Surcouf,” I said. “Fox-faced man. Damned French pirate. Asked double what she was worth and made me give my word to boot.”

  “Was that Surcouf of St. Malo?”

  “Yes. Surcouf. Look out for him. Had to have her, and he traded close, damn him. There’s worse people than Yankees, and you can tie to it.”

  “And where did Surcouf get her?” he wanted to know. It seemed to me his face had come loose from its fastenings, for it appeared to slip sideways: then waver back into place.

  “Get her?” I asked. “He built her! The Revenant. Meant Revenge, Jeddy said. He’s a crazy little fool. She never meant Revenge. She’s a ghost. I mean she was the Ghost. I took her out of the grave, Captain, and made her the Lively Lady, but now she’s a ghost that’s laid for good, green dress, red hair and all.”

  With that, feeling somewhat upset because of the throbbing in my shoulder, I laughed at the thought of the ghost that had been laid— laughed till the tears ran down my cheeks and till I had to hang to the table. Then I found myself in a chair, drinking a glass of brandy, and heard Captain Wise at the cabin door, passing the word for the surgeon.

  “Well, well,” he said, “well, well, well, well! So that was the Revenant! Well, well, well! I should have you shot for that, my boy! Well, well, well, well! The Revenant.”

  I might have fallen asleep from the persistence with which he repeated himself and the regularity with which he nodded his head as he sat staring at me, if the surgeon had not come in, a man both pompous and obsequious, followed by a pimply-faced assistant smelling of medicines.

  “Now,” Wise said, “anything wrong with you? Get hurt this morning?”

  “No,” I said, not liking the looks of the surgeon. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  The surgeon’s assistant had my coat off and whipped the shirt over my head before I could down the last of my brandy.

  “Pretty!” the surgeon said, looking at my shoulder. “Sweet as a daisy. Very finely cushioned by the deltoid muscle.” He prodded me with a forefinger like a red banana. “Hm! Hard! Surprised the splinter didn’t bounce off! Take out half a pint of blood and he’ll be better than ever!”

  He bled me, as I knew he would; for these navy surgeons bleed a man for everything under God’s heaven—for headache, toothache and footache; for bums, frostbites, loss of memory and even loss of blood. Whenever they don’t know what to do, they bleed their patients; and since they seldom know what to do they’re forever bleeding someone. Yet I must admit that when he had taken a cupful of blood from my arm I felt relieved.

  “How’ll he do for dinner?” Captain Wise asked the surgeon, while the assistant helped me on with my shirt.

  “Admirably,” the surgeon said. “Ten minutes’ rest and he’ll be fit to eat a sheep!” He went away with his assistant, wheezing mirthfully like a porpoise clearing his nose of a vast accumulation of air and water.

  “Yes,” Captain Wise said, “a bite of dinner’ll do you no harm. It’ll occupy your mind and improve my own. I’ve heard monstrous strange tales about Americans, but I’ve had few opportunities to speak with them.”

  The wheezy surgeon was right; for after I had stretched myself for a time on the berth in the small gun-deck cabin in which I was stowed by the captain’s orders, and had freed myself of blood and powder stains and struggled into the clean clothes Tommy Bickford had stuffed in my duffel bag, there was a stiffness in my shoulder; but the blackness that filled my brain after the blowing up of the Lively Lady had fallen away, as the tide falls on our Arundel beaches, though now and again a black wave came out of the receding tide and lapped at my brain once more, as I suppose must always be the case whenever a tide goes out.

  Sir Arthur and Lady Ransome were in the captain’s cabin when I went to it, and Captain Parker as well; and I cannot deny feeling bit
ter when I saw how they had become gay and light-hearted and inclined to toss scraps of gaiety to me, whether I wanted them or not.

  “Ow, Captain,” Sir Arthur said, as I came toward them, “we owe you an apology, I fear, for making you a trifle late for your appointment at the Island of Jersey.”

  I smiled as pleasantly as I could.

  “Jersey!” Captain Wise exclaimed. “Weren’t you getting a little deep in enemy waters?”

  Sir Arthur laughed spitefully. “You’d not have thought so, Captain, if you’d heard Mr. Nason making free with our Channel, no longer ago than last night! You’d have thought the place was full of his friends! He was talking, even, of blockading Great Britain!” He stared at me. I looked from him to Lady Ransome and felt a sudden tightness in my breast to see her bend down her head as if to hide the wave of color that mounted suddenly into her face.

  “I think that was Captain Boyle,” I said. “It’s Captain Boyle who intends to blockade you.”

  Captain Wise made a mildly explosive sound in his throat. “I’ve heard of him!” he said. “In the Indies. The whole British navy has heard of him. It wasn’t Boyle—why, by God, sir, of course it was Boyle who squittered around me like a petrel! So that was Boyle! I nearly ran off after him when you got under way this morning. Why, I’d as soon expect to mash a flea with my best bower anchor as catch that gentleman!”

  He led the way to the table and, when we were seated, looked at me sharply. “Your brig, now,” he said. “How did she sail with Boyle’s brig?”

  “About the same,” I told him. “Under favorable circumstances we did fifteen knots.”

  He shook his head wonderingly. “I can’t account for it. Boyle’s vessel was American built, I take it.”

  “Yes. Baltimore built.”

  “We can’t build such vessels,” Captain Wise said, “and if we could, we couldn’t sail ’em.”

  Sir Arthur widened his eyes slightly. “Don’t you think it possible, Captain, that Americans brag a little faster than they sail?”

  Captain Wise studied Sir Arthur carefully. “No,” he said at length, “no, I regret to say that doesn’t explain it. We’ve taken a few of these fast American vessels, but had the devil’s time trying to use ’em. Were afraid of their long masts, so we shorten ’em. We strengthen the hulls and find we have tubs.”

  “And may I ask, Captain Wise,” Sir Arthur asked, “whether or not you’ve ever been in America? You appear to display a peculiar tolerance for its people. Ah—they shoot birds sitting!”

  Captain Wise coughed. “Then I wish to God, sir, they’d be as thoughtful of us and wait till we sit!” He turned to me. “You people are different from us on sea, and I’ve heard you’re more so on land. Yet most of you are only two or three generations out of England. How do you explain the difference, Captain Nason?”

  I think I got red, and I know I spoke foolishly; for what came upon my tongue were only the stock phrases of our politician orators. “I think it’s the air of liberty we breathe that makes us different. Our fathers won our freedom from British bondage; we cast off the shackles—”

  Suddenly I stopped, remembering in what plight I stood myself at that lamentable moment, and seeing that the others thought it strange I should speak just then of freedom and the casting off of shackles.

  Captain Wise coughed again; not even Sir Arthur looked at me, and the air seemed heavy with discomfort. It was Lady Ransome who spoke; her voice was low, and her eyes hidden by her lashes.

  “Freedom,” she murmured. “Yes, Americans seem to love freedom; and what will so many of them do when they’re in our prisons?” She spoke the last word in so faint a voice that it was scarcely audible.

  I stared at the table, unwilling to trust myself to look at her. Her husband laughed comfortably. “It’s to be feared, my dear,” he said, “that you’ve asked a question Mr. Nason will unfortunately soon be able to answer. Fortunes of war, fortunes of war!”

  Lady Ransome didn’t look up, and Captain Wise cleared his throat. “I was thinking about your little dog, Captain Nason. Lady Ransome tells me the dog she brought aboard is yours, but is nevertheless English. My thought was this: for a time American prisoners in English prisons were allowed to keep dogs, but there got to be too many of them, and someone gave an order they should all be killed. I’m afraid there was great lamentation: rather hard on the poor men, because seven hundred of those little comrades of theirs were destroyed on one day. Too bad, too bad!”

  He assumed an air of gruffness that deceived no one. “Too bad, of course! Ah—since your little dog’s already in Lady Ransome’s custody and seems happy with her, it might be—you know your own business best, of course—Sir Arthur being a sportsman—ah, I thought it might be well if Sir Arthur could persuade you to—ah—”

  “I’d consider it a great honor,” I said, “if Lady Ransome would accept my dog: a great honor and a great relief, for to have him killed would be worse than—”

  “No,” Sir Arthur interrupted promptly. “The dog has points; I’ve noticed him, but I shouldn’t want to be indebted. I don’t mind purchasing the dog for my wife; but no gifts! No gifts!”

  Lady Ransome looked up; her hand was at her throat, flat against it, so I could see the little indentations in the smooth skin over her knuckles. Yet the fingers seemed almost to flutter, as if she were about to make a gesture toward me; and I wondered, if her impulse carried, what that impulse would be.

  “Of course,” I said to Sir Arthur. “However it’s done, it’s a favor to me. Make the price whatever you like.”

  “Ow!” Sir Arthur said, “I never make an offer. You make the price, you know: if it’s reasonable, I accept: if not, I won’t, eh?”

  I have no doubt, as I have said, that the man tried always to be just and fair; yet to my way of thinking he could do and say nothing gracefully.

  “Would two pounds be too much?” I asked.

  “Ow, not in the least,” Sir Arthur said. He drew a wallet from his breast pocket, took out three bits of paper, and tossed them across the table. “I think he’s worth all of three pounds, you know!”

  I picked them up and put them in my pocket, unmindful of his manner in my relief at Pinky’s safety.

  “That’s right,” Captain Wise said, “that’s right. You’ll find use for that before you know it.”

  There was a knock on the door, and the captain’s polite young secretary entered and bowed. “Land, sir,” he said. “Wembury Point.”

  “Plymouth!” Sir Arthur said. “We’re nearly home, eh, Nason?”

  At the word “home” I turned to Lady Ransome sharply, as though she had spoken. She was staring full at me, almost haggardly; and for that moment it seemed to me, strangely, that we were actually speaking to each other, though I could not have said what the words were or even what they meant.

  Suddenly she sprang up. “Plymouth?” she cried to Captain Wise, “Plymouth? But that means—Dartmoor!”

  “Yes,” he said, and he seemed ill at ease. “I—that is—well, really, there’s nothing to be done about it: you’ll go to the depot at Dartmoor, Captain Nason.”

  XX

  THE harbor of Plymouth is cup shaped, with deep green hills rising abruptly from it; and because of the persistent rain that fell as long as I stayed there, it gave me the feel of a large green funnel that was gathering all the misery in the world and pouring it down my neck.

  We moved up, in the early morning, past a partly finished breakwater between the sound and the inner harbor; and I, thinking to myself that I must, if possible, have a final word with Lady Ransome before I was taken ashore, set out to go on deck, only to find myself stopped by a red-coated marine on guard at the cabin door.

  “Captain’s orders,” he said, barring my way with his cudass. “Prisoners to be took to the berth deck for disembarking.”

  I backed up and sat on the edge of my bunk, half desperate with disappointment. I had watched and watched, the night before, and vainly tried for a word
alone with her, for I couldn’t forget the little movement of her hand at her throat. It had seemed to me, the more I thought of it, that there was something she wanted to say to me but couldn’t. Later, half asleep in my berth, I could have sworn I heard her voice in my ear: not a dream voice, but a living voice, saying nothing of importance, but saying it so distinctly that I started up on my mattress, dry throated and my heart pounding fit to push my ribs apart.

  The marine shuffled his feet outside the door and coughed. “Captain’s orders,” he repeated. “Prisoners to be took to the berth deck for disembarking.”

  “Now?” I asked him.

  “Yerss,” he said.

  There was nothing for it but to go, so I picked up my duffel bag and followed him into the bowels of the ship.

  Our men were peering from ports at the slanting drifts of rain that tinged the green hills of Plymouth with a bluish haze. They were guarded by so many marines that I thought there must have been a mutiny, though I soon found this to be the custom of the British where American prisoners were concerned.

  Tommy Bickford took my bag. “Where we going, Cap’n Dick?” he asked.

  Jeddy and Tisha Lord pushed up close to hear the answer. When I told them Dartmoor, they blinked, as a dog blinks at a threatened blow.

  We came to anchor in that portion of the harbor known as Hamoaze, and no time was wasted getting boats into the water and us into them, so that the Granicus might be relieved of the burden of feeding us. As we lay in the boats and cutters, sopping up rain like sponges, I stared and stared at the quarter-deck of the Granicus and at the cabin windows, unwilling to admit I had looked for the last time on the face of Lady Ransome, and her hair like rubbed copper, and her smoke-colored eyes that had silently asked me for God knew what. But in return for all my staring I saw only rivulets of rain water trickling from the galleries, and an occasional scowling face peering from the after ports.