by Ron Carter
In the two days, they sighted thirteen ships flying British colors, and four flying French and Spanish, but none approached, nor did the Zephyr pause to approach them. On the morning of the third day, with the rising sun caught bright in the sails, Bartolo’s voice rang out from overhead.
“Port Royal. Starboard. Three miles.”
Caleb turned to Young. “Get below with your two men. You know what to do with the seacocks.”
Young spun, called the two men assigned to him, and disappeared down the main hatch.
Caleb called to the men waiting on the ropes in the rigging. “Furl all sails except the topsails on the mainmast. We’re going in slow.” He turned to Tunstall. “Give the helmsman a course to get us in through the channel.”
With the seacocks in the main cargo hold wide open, tons of seawater roared in with Young and his two men clinging to the heavy support timbers that reached from the hull to the main deck overhead to keep from being knocked off their feet, and every man on the ship felt it begin to settle in the sea. Young waited until the water reached above his knees before he bawled orders, and the three of them spun the wheels that closed the valves. The black waters settled, and Young and his two men quickly climbed the narrow wooden ladder up to daylight, and out onto the main deck. The two men slammed the hatch cover into place while Young called to Caleb on the quarterdeck, “Finished.”
The Zephyr had settled in the water, from all appearances carrying a load in her cargo hold.
With Tunstall pointing and giving commands to the man holding the big wheel, the little schooner cautiously squared with the broad mouth of the harbor and slowly entered. Caleb stood at the bow with the crew at both railings, studying everything ahead. A small, stone lighthouse stood on each side of the harbor entrance, and not thirty yards inside they could not miss seeing two British men-o’-war, one to port, the other to starboard, about one hundred yards distant, each with forty-eight gunports, twenty-four on each side. The muzzle of a thirty-two pound cannon gleamed in each open port. On deck were seamen dressed in the red and white uniforms of the British military, half of them watching the little schooner. In the crow’s nest of each gunboat was a man with a telescope, studying every detail of the Zephyr.
Caleb glanced at Young and a silent communication passed between them. If everything went wrong in the next twenty-four hours, they would have two British warships—forty-eight cannon at near point-blank range—to beat to get out of the Port Royal harbor alive. They accepted it and turned back to memorize the lay of the harbor.
There were no wharves nor docks on the waterfront, only the remains of a few black, rotting pilings thrusting out of the water at random angles near the shore where the busiest docks in the Caribbean had once been, before earthquakes and hurricanes destroyed them. Ships of all sizes and designs, and in various conditions of repair or disrepair, were at anchor in the deep water that reached within twenty yards of the town streets, some of which sloped down to disappear beneath the harbor waters where the convulsions of nature had sunk nearly half the town. The buildings facing the harbor were old, unpainted, irregular in order, some with walls cracked, roofs caved in. On the dirt streets, jammed among the buildings wherever they could find space, were small, makeshift stands made of old, weathered, driftwood planks, or cast-off barrels, heaped with near-worthless trinkets and bits of broken, discarded jewelry, small images carved from palmetto sticks, bits of cloth, bottles of all colors and shapes, green bananas, rusted knives with broken blades, old, rusted, useless calipers and compasses and other naval navigation equipment from wrecked or captured ships—anything that could be gathered from the trash heaps behind the town or from the refuse thrown from the ships—all for sale. In the squalor and stench, barefooted men and women wearing shapeless, dirty, frayed clothing stood nearby, with tiny children running unclothed and older children in tattered shirts and pants wandering about, waiting to pounce on the next seaman or stranger that passed, to hawk their collection of worthless wares for anything they could get.
Most ships flew the British Union Jack. Some flew no colors at all. The harbor was crisscrossed with longboats and old, battered barges manned by sweating black men dressed in ragged pants that had no belts, moving freight and people between ship and shore.
Caleb pointed, and the helmsman angled to starboard and held her steady until Caleb called up to crewmen waiting on the topsail spar, “Furl ’em,” and then to two men waiting at the anchor, “Drop anchor.” The Zephyr slowed and settled, then stopped as the anchor hit the water and sank to seize the sandy bottom. They were positioned at the right side of the harbor, alone, ninety yards from the nearest ship, which was an ancient, fat freighter with a dirty, ragged Union Jack fluttering from the top of the mainmast. The two gunboats were nearly two hundred yards behind them, commanding all who passed in or out of the harbor. Five hundred yards ahead and to their left, at the west edge of the ramshackle town, was the large, lone, square, two-storied stone building with the great double doors open and the British flag flying from a thirty-foot flagpole mounted on the roof. Red-coated soldiers moved in and out on the business of the day.
For a time the crew of the Zephyr stood at the rails, apprehensive, watching in the breeze, waiting to see if anyone would come inquiring, but no longboat came angling toward them through the maze of watercraft. Caleb checked his watch—half-past seven o’clock under a blazing morning sun—and asked Young, “Do they send out someone to see who we are?”
Young shook his head. “I’ve been here three times. There’s no harbormaster.” He raised his arm to point at the big building over a quarter-mile distant. “They expect you to report to that building after you go ashore so they know if you’re peaceful or pirate, and to pay your harbor dues before you leave. If you don’t, they collect the dues with those two gunboats back there.”
Caleb straightened and spoke quietly. “We’ll see about that.” He turned to the crew. “It’s time. You all know the plan?—what you’re to do?”
Heads nodded.
They launched the two longboats, and two crewmen stayed behind on the ship while the others took their places on the plank seats of the undulating longboats, shoved the oarlocks into the mounts, dropped the oars into the slots, and began the rhythmic stroking toward shore. They were sun-browned, bearded, wearing the long-sleeved, striped cotton shirts, and the cotton pants of ordinary seamen, and sandals fashioned from sail canvas. All except Young, Tunstall, and Caleb. With his British accent and knowledge of the ways of British officers, Young was dressed in a loose, white cotton shirt closed with a tie at the throat, dark trousers, white socks, and black, square toed shoes with brass buckles. He carried a small packet of documents wrapped in oilskin, some of which were fictitious, with forged signatures. Young was the one who would do the talking with the British authorities in the big building. Caleb and Tunstall were dressed in long-sleeved white shirts, open at the throat, dark trousers, white stockings, and worn, buckled shoes. Caleb had a leather purse filled with coins stuffed into his pants pocket.
They threaded their way through the mix of barges and anchored ships, dragged the bows of the longboats onto the sand and tied them to an old, tilted piling at water’s edge. The crew scattered in all directions, instantly surrounded by poverty-stricken natives who grasped at their sleeves and burst into a dialect that was a mix of at least three languages, begging them to buy the priceless treasures heaped on the old driftwood planks and broken barrelheads. Young turned left, drew a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and with Caleb and Tunstall on either side, said simply, “Ready?”
“Let’s go.”
They marched west, down the most poverty-stricken, worst waterfront they had ever seen, walking toward the British command building from which the red-coated military maintained an ironfisted control of Port Royal. A detachment of sweating regulars were quartered in the building, which, with the two huge men-o’-war at the mouth of the harbor, kept the peace in what otherwise would become a sanctuary
for every crime and sin known to mankind. The three men ignored the natives clamboring around them, tugging at their sleeves, thrusting broken objects in their faces, and marched on, past the last of the derelict buildings at town’s edge, to the large stone structure. Young did not slow. He kept his chin high and thrust forward in the finest tradition of a proud British officer as he led Tunstall and Caleb to the big, brass-studded doors of the building where two pickets, one with yellow corporal chevrons on his red sleeve, the other with those of a sergeant, stopped them.
The sergeant, sweating in his woollen uniform, studied them for a moment, suspicion plain on his face.
“Your business?” His proper British accent was prominent.
Young’s answer was amiable, perfunctory. “Captain Miles Young. I command the schooner that anchored in your harbor this morning. The Zephyr.” Young’s British accent was just as authentic and prominent as that of the sergeant. He paused for a moment before he continued. “Our business is to resupply with water and provision and locate a ship. The Belle. She was to be here two days ago. She is not in your harbor.”
“Your papers?”
Young quickly unrolled the oilskin wrapping, selected one, and handed it to the sergeant. “My commission as an officer in the Royal British Navy.”
The sergeant studied the document for a moment, read the date—October, 1779—and the signature—Admiral Sir George Rodney—and recognized both as authentic. It was Admiral Rodney who had been assigned by the British Parliament to command British naval operations in the West Indies in 1779. His reputation in the Caribbean as a competent officer was well remembered. The sergeant handed the commission back to Young.
“These men with you?”
“My first mate, Caleb Dunson, and our navigator, Nathan Tunstall.”
The sergeant studied the two for a moment before he pushed the heavy door inward. “Go to the second office on the left.”
Young half-bowed. “Thank you, sergeant,” and led his first mate and navigator down the hall to the door marked “REGISTRAR.” He pushed through the door into a square room with a large desk and a wispy, gray-haired, uniformed officer behind it, hunched over a ledger, silently mouthing words as his finger moved across the page. The thin man flinched at the sound of the door, peered over his spectacles at Young, then Caleb and Tunstall, and spoke in a high, breathy voice.
“Who are you?”
“Miles Young. Captain of the Zephyr. We anchored in your harbor this morning.”
“You here to register?”
“We’re here looking for a ship that’s overdue, and we need water and provisions. Do we need to register for that?”
The little man nodded brusquely. “You do. You’re British?”
“Yes.”
“Papers?”
Young handed him his commission, and the nervous little man laid it on his desk, flattened it, and carefully mouthed the words as his finger moved on the lines.
“Admiral Rodney, eh? Gone now. You still in the navy?”
“No. A private shipping company.”
“What port?”
“Nova Scotia.”
“Papers?”
Young drew a second document from the oilskin packet and laid it before the little man. On its face, it was a declaration designating the Zephyr to be a British vessel claiming Nova Scotia as its homeport. In fact, it was the best forgery Young and Tunstall and Caleb could make, hunched over Young’s small table in his quarters on the Zephyr, six nights earlier. Young’s face was a mask of indifference, while Tunstall and Caleb glanced casually about the plain, austere, stone-walled room, from all appearances bored, waiting to get the nuisance of paperwork behind them.
The little man scanned it quickly and handed it back, then squared his open ledger before him and reached for his quill. Young watched him make the entry and lay his quill back in its place. “You come back here before you leave the harbor and pay your harbor fees. Understand?”
“I do. Could I inquire something, sir?”
A look of mild irritation crossed the thin, long face. “What is it?”
“The ship we’re looking for is the Belle. Heard anything about her? Or her crew? We need to deliver our cargo to her.”
The man leaned back in his chair. “We’re holding what’s left of two crews, waiting for their homeport to claim them and pay damages.”
Caleb did not move. Tunstall wiped at perspiration with his sleeve. “Crews from which ships?”
The registrar shrugged. “Don’t know. Not my department.”
“How can we find out?”
“Ask the jailer. At the building behind this one.”
Young stood. “Do I sign anything? Or get anything showing I’ve been here?”
“You get a receipt before you sail. If you don’t, you’ll have trouble leaving the harbor.”
“Thank you.” Young wrapped his papers back into the oilskin and walked back out into the hall with Caleb and Tunstall silently following. They stepped back out into the sunlight with the wind rising, blowing their hair, relieved they had gotten past the registrar. Young came to a stop, and for a moment he shaded his eyes and peered east, then turned to Caleb.
“Weather’s coming. A squall. Or a storm. From the windward side. The Atlantic. I can smell it.”
With the wind in his face, Caleb peered east, searching. “How soon?”
“Evening. Tonight. Could give us trouble getting out, if we try it tonight.”
For several seconds Caleb stood still, staring at the dirt, unseeing. “The tides are with us tonight. We have to go. Let’s move.”
He led them past the back of the building to a great open area of dirt, packed hard by the stiff soles of British military shoes worn by men during drill. To their left, where the open drill field met the thick tangle of jungle, a small detachment of sweating men, four per rank, five ranks, were marching to the bellowed commands of a sergeant. Young stopped for a moment, then raised his arm to point to an ancient, low, moss-covered stone building at the far end of the drill field. There were no windows, and the single door was of black, rusted iron hung on great iron straps.
“That has to be the prison,” Young said quietly. “Looks like a dungeon from two hundred years ago. Do we go down and ask?”
Without a word Caleb led them across the drill field and banged on the iron door, then stepped back with Tunstall to let Young do the speaking. Twenty seconds later the sound of a heavy bolt sliding on the inside came through the iron, and the door groaned open. A sickening stench rolled out and the three men clamped their mouths shut and breathed light as they faced a filthy, bearded, surly civilian whose shirt would not close around his belly. He glowered at the three of them and his jowls shook as he demanded, “What do you want?” The words were in English, but with a strong accent none of the three recognized.
Young hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “The registrar said you have some men held here.”
“You got papers?”
“The registrar already looked at our papers. He sent us here.”
Disgust was thick in the gutteral voice of the heavy man. “Release papers. You got to have release papers.”
Young said, “Where do we get release papers?”
“The registrar. Don’t come back ’til you got ’em.”
The man started to close the door, and Caleb stepped past Young to jam his hand against it. “The registrar said you could tell us who you’ve got in there. You have men from a ship named the Belle?”
The little pig-eyes flashed with anger. “Get papers.”
Caleb dropped his hand, and the heavy door clanged shut. They heard the inside bolt slam into place, and for a moment they stood there, pondering what to do next.
Caleb broke the silence. “The registrar sends us here and the jailer sends us back. Forget it.” He turned to Young. “Did you see anything inside?”
“Only a light at the far end of the hall. I heard voices, but not words.”
Caleb s
aid, “Come on,” and Young and Tunstall fell in behind him as he walked across the front of the building, then down the side, along the back wall, and up the remaining side to the front. There was no window in any of the old, dark, weather-stained, mold and moss-covered walls, and no other door. Each wall had been cracked by earthquakes, and the cracks were filled with flora from the thick jungle, which came within twenty feet of the back wall.
Caleb stopped in front of the building for a few moments, studying the roofline. “Has to be a flat roof, and there has to be an open courtyard in the center. Those walls are two feet thick, at least.”
Tunstall looked at Caleb, skeptical. “What are you suggesting?”
“Nothing, yet. Let’s go find the crew.”
They strode back across the barren drill field with the wind rising, blowing dust, and they squinted their eyes until they were past the large building, back into the streets of the squalor-ridden town. It was five minutes past ten o’clock when the last of the crew returned to the longboats in which they had arrived, and Caleb gathered them around.
“Find anything?”
A grizzled seaman with a gray beard stepped out. “This.” He handed Caleb a navigator’s compass. The glass was shattered, the needle twisted and bent, useless. Carefully Caleb turned it over, and froze. Etched in the back of the instrument, in beautiful cursive scroll, was the name “Adam Dunson.”
Caleb raised his eyes. “Where?”
“Waterfront. An old man. With junk on a blanket on the ground.”
Caleb studied the instrument for another moment, then asked, “Anything else? Anybody?”
A younger man with a blonde beard and a deep southern drawl spoke up. “A woman said she saw British longboats bring in ten, twelve men. About a month ago. Marched ’em down to the British building.”
“She see ’em leave?”
The young seaman shook his head. “Says they’re most certain still there, in a prison.”