by Ron Carter
He gestured to Young and Tunstall, then the chest. “Take a look at the papers inside. Tell me what’s wrong.”
Young slipped the lock from the hasp, opened the chest, and lifted out the papers. For a full minute he studied them, face drawn in puzzlement, then handed them to Tunstall, and waited while Tunstall peered at them.
Caleb spoke. “This man said his home port was Carenage. Where is Carenage?”
Tunstall’s answer was instant. “An island in the Lesser Antilles called Saint Lucia. More than fifteen hundred miles southeast of here. French.”
Caleb nodded. “I think those papers say the home port of this ship is Bordeaux, France, not Carenage. The company selling the slaves is LeBlanc, and this ship is the Angelique. All French. Not Spanish.” He pointed upward. “This crew speaks Spanish and they fly the Spanish flag. Put it all together, and what have we got?”
For the first time the captain showed the faintest hint of fear, panic. Caleb watched him lick at his lips, and start to speak, then fall silent. To Caleb’s left he saw the Spanish crew, wild-eyed, making calculations of how many would survive if they tried to cover the twenty-five feet between them and the Americans while the Americans were firing at point-blank range.
Caleb did not hesitate. “If your men are thinking resistance, you’re the first one down. Tell them!”
The captain looked into Caleb’s eyes and called orders to his men, and they settled, but the look of brazen defiance did not leave their faces.
Without moving Caleb spoke once more to Tunstall and Young. “What do those papers tell us?”
Suddenly Young’s head jerked up, wide-eyed in stunned surprise as the truth broke clear in his mind. He pointed and blurted, “This crew stole this ship! They’re pirates!”
Instantly the Spanish crew bolted for the Americans and the captain made a lunge for Caleb. Caleb and Adam fired their pistols in the same grain of time and the captain went down backwards. A dozen muskets from the Zephyr blasted and the first six of the running Spanish seamen tumbled and lay still or writhing on the deck. Those running behind sprawled over the fallen bodies and slowed, staring into the muzzles of fifteen more muskets and bayonets, and they retreated back to the port railing, hands raised high. It was over in less than ten seconds.
In one motion Caleb shoved the empty pistol into his belt and drew the other one, cocked it, and called out, “Anyone else?”
All heads shook.
Caleb spoke to Adam. “Get our surgeon over here.”
Five minutes later the surgeon rose from the body of the captain. “Dead. All seven of them.”
For one strange moment every man who could see them stared at the dead bodies, each unexpectedly caught up in the eternal mystery—how one moment a man is a living, feeling thing, and the next moment all that made him a man is gone. The lifeless, useless dead corpses were there before them, and they would be sewed inside a canvas sack and dropped into the sea and soon forgotten. But in the instant of death, what had left the body? From whence had it come? Where had it gone? Or was it nothing? All just a monstrous, meaningless, cruel prank played by random chance of pointless laws that follow no plan, no master, nothing? Each saw what he wanted to see in the death of the seven men and made a silent explanation that satisfied himself, and shifted his feet, and looked at Caleb, waiting.
Caleb reached to jerk the large key ring from the belt of the dead captain and gestured to Young. “Have some men move these bodies up on the quarterdeck—away from here.”
Young gave orders, and men moved the bodies while others held their muskets on the Spanish crew, hands still in the air, crowded against the far railing. With their eyes never leaving the Spanish crew, Caleb gathered Young, Tunstall, and Adam around him, drew a deep breath, and asked, “Where do we go from here?”
Young answered. “You were going to put this Spanish crew in longboats for the mainland.” He shook his head. “We can’t do that. They’re pirates.”
Caleb looked him full in the face. “So what do we do?”
Adam spoke up. “Put them in chains belowdecks, where the slaves are. Take them on to Boston and turn them over to the maritime commission. Notify the owner of this ship. Let him come claim it.”
Caleb turned to his brother. “What about the slaves?”
Adam thought for a moment. “Take them on north to Canada.”
“What do we tell whoever owns them?”
“The truth. Pirates took them from the owner and we took them from the pirates. If they want to file a claim, let them.”
Tunstall broke in. “Let’s get to Boston and lay this all out with Matthew and Billy and Tom. They have a stake in this—a big one.”
Caleb looked into the faces of each of the three men and saw agreement. “Boston,” he said. “I’m going to get the slaves up on deck and feed them, and those Spaniards are going to be chained down in the hold in the stink and filth for the night. The slaves can sleep on deck. Tomorrow the Spaniards are going to clean out the hold and they’re going to stay chained down there the rest of the voyage with the slaves, and the slaves won’t be shackled. Are we in agreement?”
All three heads nodded.
“All right.” Caleb tossed the dead captain’s keys to Adam. “Take about ten men and get the leg irons off the slaves and get them up here on deck. Move slow, and be careful they understand you’ve come to help.” He turned to Young. “Get enough of our men with muskets to move this Spanish crew into the hold and put the shackles on them. Hoist the anchor and get the sails filled. It will be full dark soon and we need to be under way. Then take some of our crew into the galley of this ship and start the evening mess, enough for the Spaniards and the slaves. Get our evening mess going on the Zephyr.”
Adam led ten men down into the blackness of the hold while Caleb and the others held their muskets on the Spanish crew. Minutes passed before Adam stepped back onto the deck, gasping for clean air, leading the first of the slaves. In the fading light they came, wearing tattered loin cloths, eyes white and wide in their dark faces, thin, bent over, bones and joints too big, some with bellies bloated from hunger. They stood on the deck, cowering, waiting to be clubbed and thrown overboard. The Americans looked at them and then lowered their faces and set their teeth before they raised them again, battling to control the rise of anger that came choking. The others stumbled up the stairs onto the deck—ninety-three of them—and Adam’s men brought up the remaining eleven dead. Five men, one woman, and two boys and three girls who had not yet reached their fourteenth year.
While the men in the galleys of the two ships prepared the evening mess, the sailmakers sewed the bodies inside their canvas bags and moved them to the port railing of the Angelique. Under starlight the Americans herded the Spanish pirates at bayonet point down the narrow staircase into the hold and locked the leg irons above their ankles. Back on deck, in lantern light, they brought out six kettles of stew and hardtack and sat the slaves down in rows. They passed out wooden bowls and spoons, and ladled smoking chunks of salt beef and potatoes into the bowls while the slaves peered up, eyes wide and white in the starlight, unable to believe what they were seeing. They set the spoons on the deck and raised the bowls to blow on them and then brought them to their open mouths and used their fingers to push the chunks in as fast as they could chew and swallow. Some turned their heads to wretch, then tried to wipe it from the deck to swallow it again. They wolfed down the hardtack and picked every crumb from the deck. They did not know how to ask for more, so they held up their bowls in silence, eyes begging, and the Americans went down the rows a second time, filling them again.
They opened two barrels of fresh water, and the slaves dipped it with their bowls and drank, dipped again, drank, and dipped a third time. The Americans sat them again in rows, and the galley crews served the seamen on the decks of the two ships. They had scarcely begun to spoon the hot stew into their mouths when a low moan came from the slaves, and then, beneath the faint starlight, the rumble of primiti
ve voices came in a rhythmic chant that stopped every man on the ship. They did not know how long the thrilling, gutteral voices continued, nor did they understand the words. They only knew they were hearing something primal that reached to their very core and left them changed somehow. The Africans fell silent as suddenly as they had begun, and the white men finished their supper mess.
It was shortly before midnight that they all, Americans and Africans, stood to the port rail of the big ship with bowed heads, peering at the twenty-three sealed canvas bags. By lantern light, Adam read the Twenty-Third Psalm, and then the Lord’s Prayer. Caleb nodded, and one by one, the deceased were placed on two boards balanced on the railing. Strong hands lifted one end of the board, and the remains slid into the night. They heard the sound as the bags hit the water, but they could not see them slip beneath the surface and disappear. Once again the sound of the African voices drifted outward, and their hands made the signs and their feet padded in rhythm on the deck as they said farewell to their own. Only then did Caleb give orders, and lukewarm stew and hardtack were taken into the stench of the hold to feed the captive Spanish pirates.
Blankets were passed out to the Africans and for a time they stood confused, unable to understand what they were to do. It was only when the Americans draped a blanket about the shoulders of one of them, and then sat him on the deck that they all sat down, and some laid down, covered with the blankets.
On Caleb’s orders the anchor was hoisted, the hawsers binding the two ships together were loosened, the sails unfurled, and set to capture the night wind. The little schooner separated from the freighter, and with Young in command of the Angelique and Tunstall charting her course by the stars, and Caleb in command of the Zephyr with Adam as his navigator, and the thirty American seamen divided between them, the larger ship started north with the smaller one trailing, their wakes white in the starlight.
It was well past one o’clock in the morning when a knock came at Caleb’s door. He was seated at his small table, back to his bunk. Deep weariness had settled in as he called, “Enter.”
The door opened and Adam ducked to enter through the low, narrow door and took a seat on a stool in one corner of the cramped quarters, facing his brother. For a moment the two sat quietly in the yellow light of the single lamp on Caleb’s table.
Adam broke the silence. “Long day. A lot happened.”
Caleb studied his younger brother but said nothing. Adam looked down at his hands and began working them together slowly, thoughtfully.
“We killed seven men.”
Caleb leaned forward, forearms on the table. It had not occurred to him that Adam had never been in a kill-or-be-killed fight before, never spilled blood, never taken life. Caleb felt a stab in his heart and searched for words.
“There was. . . . It had to be done. There was no other way. I wish you hadn’t been there.”
Adam looked up. “It’s all right. I’m all right.”
“It’s never all right. That captain had to be killed, but it’s never all right. I wish I could take that memory out of your mind, but I can’t. It will always be there. You’ll see it in your dreams tonight. Tomorrow night. It will become a familiar thing, but it will never be all right. I wish I knew how to stop it.”
Adam saw the pain and the need in his brother, and he stared at his hands for a moment before he spoke again.
“I came here to tell you. You did right today. You did right.”
Caleb slowly shook his head. “I broke half a dozen laws of the sea. I could be hanged for some of what I did.”
Adam spaced his words. “I was afraid that’s what you’d be thinking.”
Caleb straightened in his chair, seeing something in his younger brother he had never suspected. He waited and Adam finished.
“You did the right thing. The rest of it doesn’t much matter. When we get to Boston, I’ll tell them. I’ll tell them.”
Adam stood and for one moment the two brothers looked into each other’s eyes, and then Adam turned and walked back out the door into the night.
Notes
The characters and events in this chapter are fictional.
For maps of the islands and the ports mentioned herein, including the island of Saint Lucia, Port Carenage, the Lesser Antilles, and the several countries that laid claim to the islands, see Mackesy, The War for America, 1775–1778, pp. 3, 226.
For a thorough study of the slave trade, including the ships involved, the inhuman treatment of the slaves, the routes and ports, see Herberts, The Atlantic Slave Trade, all chapters.
Boston
Late July, 1787
CHAPTER XXIII
* * *
Matthew Dunson turned the key in the lock and pushed open the door with the sign above that read: DUNSON & WEEMS SHIPPING. The high rift of cirrus clouds in the eastern half of the blue heavens were flaming with reds and pinks and golds from a sun just rising, and the familiar smell of the salt sea and the sounds of the gulls and men working on the Boston docks were all around him, but unseen, unheard, unnoticed.
Shoulders hunched and head tilted forward, he closed the door, hung his tricorn on the rack of pegs on the front wall, and walked through the silent room to his desk. He dropped a freshly printed newspaper on the desktop and slumped into his chair, smothered in the crosscurrent of too many responsibilities, too many details, and too little time, while his thoughts ran, unchecked.
Caleb and Adam. The Zephyr. Overdue. Gone far too long. Where are they? Sunk? In a British prison? Dead? Captured? If the Zephyr is sunk, we’ve got to file the insurance claim, but if we do, what do we declare as her business at the time she was lost? The insurance policy is limited to ships that are lost “during the regular course of the business.” For Dunson & Weems, the “regular course of business” is carrying goods on ships for customers, not taking an armed schooner and a volunteer crew into hostile waters to find lost employees. And what of the crew? How long do we wait before we presume them dead or in prison, and hire new seamen to replace them? What do we tell Mother if Adam and Caleb don’t come back? Two sons, lost?
He shuddered and pushed it away, and his thoughts ran on.
What of the convention in Phildelphia? The newspaper says “GRAND CONVENTION IN PHILDELPHIA CONTINUES.” More than two months. What’s gone wrong? Are they deadlocked? Beaten? Failed? He straightened and smoothed the newspaper, read again the brief single-column article, then shoved the newspaper away, fighting frustration that bordered on anger as his thoughts continued. The fate of the United States hanging in the balance, and they are hiding behind their veil of secrecy, doing things known only to them and the Almighty. If they fail, what becomes of America? At least two separate countries, maybe three. And if that happens, what becomes of Dunson & Weems Shipping? Do the middle and southern states put tariffs and restrictions on their harbors that will stop the trade from the northern states? Will we lose the markets? If we do, what’s left to us? The Caribbean trade belongs to the British and French and Spanish. Does Dunson & Weems go bankrupt?
He could remain seated no longer, and rose, agitated, pacing. He glanced at Caleb’s desk, conspicuous because Tom had cleared everything from the top and put it into the drawers, then pushed the chair into its well, ten days earlier. Matthew would never have supposed that a cleared desktop could become a thing so foreboding, so ominous.
He started at the sound of the front door opening, and peered at the black silhouette that entered and became Billy as the door closed. Billy paused to hang his tricorn next to Matthew’s.
“You’re here early,” Billy said.
Matthew sat back down in his chair. “Can’t sleep. Too much happening.”
Billy walked back to stand at the corner of Matthew’s desk. “Too much,” he said quietly, “and too heavy.” He paused for a moment. “If Caleb and Adam are gone. . . . ” He slowly shook his head and did not finish the thought.
There was an edge to Matthew’s voice. “I’ll wait about five more days, and t
hen I’m going down there looking. I have to know, one way or the other. Mother has to know.”
Billy let a little time pass before he answered. “If you do, you’ll have to let go of the convention in Philadelphia for a while.”
Matthew nodded. “And that leaves you with this office to run. You and Tom.” For a moment he stared at his desktop. “It seems like you’ve carried this office almost from the beginning. That shouldn’t be.”
Billy shrugged. “We’ll manage.”
“For how long? You didn’t bargain for that load when we started. You can’t keep it up forever. “
“Forever’s a long time. Things are bound to change.”
Matthew snorted. “Change for the better or worse? Lately there’s been more worse than better.”
A wry smile flitted on Billy’s face. “And we’re still here. One day at a time. One foot in front of the other.” He broke off speaking and walked to his desk. “I have a month-end statement to finish.”
Both men looked up as the front door opened, and old Tom entered, round-shouldered, slightly stooped, gray hair prominent in the early morning sunlight. He spoke as he hung his hat on the peg.
“Heard any more from Caleb or Adam? The Zephyr?”
Matthew answered, “Nothing. You?”
“Nothing,” Tom answered. He walked to his desk and set a jar of apple cider on it, then sat down facing three stacks of documents. “Never lets up. The paperwork.” He paused to study Matthew for a moment. “You all right? You don’t look like it.”
Matthew’s face was drawn, scowling. “Too much gone wrong. Adam. Caleb. A ship wrecked. Another missing. The convention in Philadelphia. Too much.”
Tom reached for a paper form. “About finished with the insurance papers on the Belle. Got to get the final figure on the dollar value of the cargo.” He raised his eyes to Billy. “You got that figure yet?”
Billy shook his head. “Have it finished today.”
Tom tipped his head forward and peered over his spectacles at Matthew. “Stay busy. These things work out better if you stay busy.”