The Greater the Honor

by William H. White

  Lest there be any doubt in his mind of my part in this mighty armada, I added, “And Argus will be joining the squadron as soon as she has completed fitting out. She is just finished building, you know.” I knew this, and it was about the extent of my knowledge, from a letter we had received from my brother, Edward, posted just before Philadelphia sailed a month back.

  As I stopped, he took another long draught from the tankard and pushed mine toward me, nodding to indicate I should drink. Since this was ale, according to Edward Langford, and Father’s admonition had mentioned only strong drink, I lifted the pewter to my lips, swallowed my first taste of the bitter brew, and grimaced, albeit involuntarily.

  Mister Langford laughed and encouraged me to try again, which I did. And again. And again. He signaled the keeper for more, for which I again paid, and mid-way through the second, or perhaps it was the third, tankard, it appeared we had become quite good friends. We talked at some length; I told him about my cabinet-maker father and about my brother who was to have been the only one of us to join the Navy.

  “So what are ye doing here, Mister Midshipman Baldwin? I would reckon yer’re s’posed to be learnin’ the wood butcherin’ trade.”

  “Yes, sir. That was Father’s intent. But it turned out I could not be around the wood chips and dust created by the process of manufacture. Made me sneeze and teared my eyes so badly I could barely see. Father thought it best for me to go to sea and, since he and Lieutenant Decatur are friends, he prevailed on him to secure a midshipman’s warrant for me. It was Lieutenant Decatur’s thought to have me in his vessel should I be able to get myself to Boston in time to make her sailing.” I recalled that it had been Father who thought it best for me to be at sea. Mother had bitterly opposed his decision and I remembered many tearful arguments between them when they thought I was out of earshot.

  He offered comments, the content of which I am afraid I took little note, and I became aware that the din of the room had receded to a swirling buzz in my head. In fact, from time to time, I could have sworn that the room itself was swirling, and I gripped the table to keep myself from falling out of the chair. I discovered that I had a bit of difficulty forming words I had used all my life; my lips seemed to have a mind of their own.

  I have little recollection of the remainder of the evening or our conversation, save that we laughed a great deal and that, at some point, he guided me up the stairs. I know this only because when I awakened the next morning, I was in a small room on a rank mattress that quite literally crawled with vermin.

  A most unpleasant odor assaulted my nostrils. I found its source to be a disagreeable and still wet puddle of vomit, apparently mine, next to the bed. The sour smell and its proximity inspired me to alight from the cot to distance myself from it, but as soon as I gained my feet, the room spun and swirled around me. 1 put my hand on the table for support and carefully returned my bottom to the bed. Smell and vermin be damned!

  I closed my eyes in the hope that my head would stop its incessant reeling.

  I have taken a fever from the heat yesterday. That or the noxious atmosphere in the taproom last night, the smoke and all. I rubbed a hand over my face and tried tentatively opening my eyes again to take stock of my surroundings. My gaze fell upon my seachest standing open by the door, and I smiled again as I read the name on its front.

  “Open . . . it’s open. Shouldn’t be open.” The words fought their way through the fog in my brain and, I believe, some actually found their way out of my dry and evil-tasting mouth.

  I flew, or rather staggered, across the room. Though it was only two steps, it seemed to take a long while. All thoughts of my churning stomach and pounding head were gone. I dropped to my knees, steadying myself on the chest, and peered into it. Pieces of clothing hung out of the upper compartment. A dear little book put in by my mother was bent and crushed in a corner. My quadrant and books on navigation were still intact in their locked cubbyhole, and the drawer under the shelf still contained my linen, neatly folded and obviously untouched. Who possibly could have rifled my belongings in such a manner?

  I poked around, pulling things out and trying to puzzle out what might be missing. Uniforms, hats, both dress and undress, dirk, linens, some papers of food and teas and some bottles of medicines which stood in their own small compartment. Yes, it appeared that everything was still there, albeit in considerable disarray. In the haste of whoever had wreaked havoc among my belongings, a paper of some powder, the purpose of which I could not call to mind but which none the less smelled evil and potent, had burst and managed to distribute itself liberally over the contents of the chest. Whatever it was that someone had been seeking remained a mystery to me. With the distraction of the rifled chest gone, the incessant pounding in my head returned.

  I sat on the floor for a long moment considering what to do. I half-heartedly brushed at the specks of blue-green powder from the burst medicine paper which seemed to cling tenaciously to many of my garments and were, of course, most easily visible on my snow-white breeches. I rearranged the clothes in my chest, clothes which Mother had so painstakingly folded, in a manner that I am sure would have caused her to frown and cluck, but so that at least I could close it. That effort alone took some time as I had to stop repeatedly to quell the heaving that had a firm grip on my poor stomach. The aroma of the spilt medicinal potion compounded my distress. The pounding in my head, the terrible thirst I suddenly realized 1 had, and the pain behind my eyes all the while gained strength. All I wanted to do was to lie back down, anywhere, and keep my eyes closed. That seemed to make the pain ease some.

  When I finally gained the courage to again get to my feet, I realized I had no idea of the time or even whether it was morning or afternoon. I had to get myself out to the ship. I spied my green coat on a rickety chair and grabbed at it, seeking the watch my father had given me on my departure.

  “It must be in another pocket,” I told myself as 1 felt around for the heavy timepiece.

  But it was not and I realized, with increasing alarm, neither was my purse. Panic took hold of me and I sank to the floor reeling from the knowledge, certain that I was doomed. My first experience away from the neat house on Held Street and my parents’ protective and comfortable circumstances had ended in disaster only a few days from its beginning! What was I to do? I was penniless and quite obviously dying of some distressing malady. My family would never know what happened to me, beyond the fact that I never reported to my ship. I could see Mother wringing her hands and repeating, “I told you, Edward, he was too young to go off by himself.” The tears stained her face, and my father could only shake his head in sadness. I felt a tear start down my own cheek as my panic gave way to the horrible certainty that what was to be a wonderful adventure, and my start down the road to manhood, had died a-borning.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It must have been some hours later that I awoke on the floor, my green coat, now devoid of my possessions, clutched to my bosom and my cheeks salty with dried tears; I was stiff and thirsty. My head and stomach were only slightly improved, but my resolve had strengthened. With the realization that my only likely source of help lay in the Argus brig, I managed to struggle into my dress uniform, resting often during the process. Quitting the cubicle with its foul smells and worse memories, I made my unsteady way to the taproom in search of the proprietor to explain my unfortunate circumstances.

  There I found a woman, the owner, who seemed to know me (she explained that the evening before I had spoken to her about a room) and who felt some measure of pity for my bad luck. She handed me a mug of water and directed me to the landing where the boats from the naval vessels arrived, suggesting I might find a boat from Argus that would carry me to the anchorage for no charge. My room was paid. She mentioned that a man fitting my recollection of Mister Langford had settled with her last night.

  “And no favor he’s done me! It was with my own money, he did!” I wondered aloud whether it was after he had robbed me.

 
; “Oh my, young sir. I wouldn’t imagine such a thing would go on in my establishment! The men who frequent the Horn and Musket would most certainly not be of such low character. You must have misplaced your belongings when you . . . well. Surely you wasn’t robbed here! Now hurry yourself down to the landing so’s you don’t get left ashore again.” Barely were the words out of her mouth when she turned and hurried off.

  After watching her retreat into a back room, I carefully fitted my cocked hat onto my pounding head and made my way to the street door. When the full force of the mid-day sun hit my eyes, the pain almost made me cry out. Knives in my eye sockets could not have been more painful. Tears streamed forth and rolled down my cheeks. My whole head felt as if it were squeezed in one of the vices Father used to hold a board and my stomach continued to churn and roil. But despite my surely serious, perhaps fatal, illness, I was resolved to get to my ship.

  I found the landing the woman had mentioned barely one hundred yards further down the quay from where I had met Mister Langford yesterday and carefully lowered my chest to the rough stones. There were four boats—I learned quickly they were three cutters and a jolly boat—secured to a ring set in the stones. Two sailors guarded each and chatted quietly without regard to my approach. I shifted so as to cast a shadow over the ones in the nearest boat and tentatively cleared my throat.

  This interrupted the conversation, and all eight of the sailors now looked at me with gazes ranging from hard to merely curious.

  “What can we do for you, sir?” The sailor in the nearest boat stood and faced me.

  “I am Oliver Baldwin, midshipman, and assigned to the USS Argus. Can you take me to the brig?” I was not going to show my ignorance by referring to the Argus as a ship again. I smiled hopefully.

  “Well, now. A young gentleman for Cap’n Decatur.” The sailor grinned and shot a glance over his shoulder at another man in the boat farthest out from the steps. He raised his voice. “Looks like this one’s one o’ your’n, Tom.” He turned back to me. “That ugly fellow yonder, the one for’ard in the jolly boat there. He’ll be offn the Argus. You’ll have to ask him, I reckon.”

  Well! What a stroke of luck. Here was a boat from my ship and sitting right at my feet waiting to take me to my new home. I looked inquiringly at the man now standing in the front of the boat; he didn’t seem terribly ugly to me, though it did appear that his eyes were uneven on his face and his mouth turned down on one side. He wore a hat of varnished straw with a red and blue ribbon tied ’round its crown, and a short pigtail showed below the brim. I bent to take hold of my seachest, but before I even got a satisfactory grip on it, the man, Tom, spoke.

  “You’ll be wantin’ to heave to there, sir. This here’s Cap’n Decatur’s jolly boat, and, while I am sure he would certainly not mind waitin’ in this hot sun while we rowed you out yonder and then rowed back to fetch him, I would think you might be wantin’ to find yourself some other way out to Argus. No tellin’ when the cap’n’ll be back.” He looked at me hard for a moment. “You sick, young fella? You look some peaked.”

  “I am quite fine,” I said, trying with all I could muster to sound and look better than I was feeling. My ride to the ship had evaporated in a cloud of sarcasm as quickly as it appeared. I was no closer to getting aboard than I had been an hour ago and felt nearly as bad on top of it.

  “Aye, sir. I am glad o’ that. You walk just a ways down the quay there, maybe a musket shot is all, and you’ll come onto the landing where the wherrymen pick up they’s fares. Reckon one o’ them’ll take you out to Argus and glad of the fare.”

  “But 1 haven’t ...” I realized that my complete lack of funds was of no interest to these sailors and stopped. As I again took hold of my chest, I sensed a presence behind me and noticed that the men in the boats had all stood up, assuming a position of attention.

  “What have we here? A new young gentleman for Argus, perchance?” The voice was kindly, almost amused.

  I turned, swinging my heavy seachest around and squarely into the midsection of a perfectly turned out lieutenant in the Navy. I recognized the single epaulette (I recall Edward had called it a ‘swab’) on his shoulder as the mark of that rank and remembered when my brother had so proudly shown off his own same uniform a few years back. Edward had let me touch the gold on his swab, which he wore on his left shoulder. But this man was wearing it on his right. As my addled brain struggled with this twist, I heard Edward’s voice bragging that “As soon as I get a command of my own, this shifts to starboard.” So the man, the lieutenant in front of me, whom I had just about knocked over, was captain of a ship! What had I done?

  “Oooof!” He stepped back and caught his wind. “Watch where you’re swinging that chest, sir. You very nearly put me on my stern end!” He studied me briefly, then glanced at my seachest, still carried by its ends across my own midsection. He scowled, thinking. Then the scowl evaporated as he took in my new uniform, spotless save for a few tenacious bits of blue-green powder on one leg of the snowy breeches and the opposite stocking, and returned to look at my blushing face.

  “It’s Oliver C. Baldwin of Philadelphia, I collect. We’ve not met, but I am well acquainted with both your father and brother. I am Stephen Decatur.” He smiled and stuck out a hand.

  I, of course, still held my seachest and stood rooted to the spot unable to shake his hand, doff my hat in a practiced and proper salute, or, in fact, so much as speak. My brain, in its weakened state, quite refused to function. Finally, and with some effort, I managed to gather my wits and again set my burden down.

  “Oh, yes, sir. I am glad to make your acquaintance, sir.” I shook his hand and then reached for my hat. Instead of doffing it as I had practiced a hundred times in front of my long-suffering but patient parents, I simply knocked it to the ground, where it bounced once and slid neatly down the slime-covered steps toward the water below.

  A sailor who had watched the preceding from one of the boats, calmly reached out and scooped up my new hat a scant inch before it would have hit the waters of Boston Harbor and, with a smirk, held it out to me. Retrieving it required me to go down several of the slime- and seaweed-covered steps, each slipperier than its predecessor; even with the caution I exercised, I very nearly wound up in the same water my hat had only just escaped. Only by dropping onto one knee was I saved from the ignominy of falling into the water before I had even so much as seen my ship. Of course, my knee breeches and stocking paid the price.

  “Thank you, sir.” I uttered as I took the proffered hat and placed it firmly back on my head. So far, this day had not gone well at all; I collect it could have been somewhat worse, though how, exactly, quite eluded me. I carefully made my way back up the slippery stones; I could feel my face flushing to an even deeper crimson than it already was as I heard the suppressed laughter of the sailors behind me.

  Captain Decatur was still smiling, whether at my antics and obvious embarrassment or just because it was his nature, I knew not. “You needn’t call the men ‘sir,’ Oliver; it’s you they call ‘sir.’ Since you’re quite obviously heading out to the brig, I should be happy to offer you a lift. Save you the expense of dealing with those thieves in the wherries. They would likely try to take advantage of a young man like yourself and overcharge you for your passage.” He looked to his sailor in the jolly boat. “Lockhart, where is your crew? Get them rounded up, if you please, and let us depart as quickly as we may. There is much to be done aboard.”

  The sailor, Tom Lockhart, touched his forehead with a knuckle and, stepping through each of the other boats with nary a false step, scampered up the same stones I had found so troubling. He headed for a knot of seamen I could see some distance, (perhaps a musket shot?) down the quay.

  With his crew at their positions, Captain Decatur sharing the back part of the boat (I quickly discovered it was called the sternsheets) with me, and my chest tucked away in the front, we set out for the anchorage. So intently was I watching the men as they pulled their oars in perfe
ct rhythm, fascinated by the ease with which they maintained the cadence of their stroke, that I became aware that the captain was speaking to me only after he had raised his voice some and repeated my name.

  “Oh! Sir. Yes, sir. I am sorry, Captain. I didn’t realize it was me you were speaking to.”

  “All I said, Mister Baldwin, was ‘I trust you saw your parents well when you left Philadelphia?’ I have not seen your father in quite some time, though I did have a pleasant visit with your brother on board of Philadelphia some two weeks before they sailed—’bout a month ago I recollect it was. You’ll be pleased to learn he was well and quite looking forward to getting into this scrap with the Pasha.”

  “Yes, sir. My father was in fine health when I left, as was Mother. She was more than sorry to see me off to sea, I think, but otherwise in quite fine fettle. Father has been commissioned to build the Cabin furnishings for a Navy vessel currently laid down in Philadelphia. 1 think he is quite pleased to again be manufacturing furniture for ships.”

  “I have seen his work and am indeed sorry that the Department of the Navy decided to build Argus here in Boston rather than in Philadelphia; it would have pleased me no end to have had Edward Baldwin’s handiwork in my Cabin and the wardroom.”

  I smiled at the compliment, though it was to my father and one I had heard many times before. Since Captain Decatur seemed to have returned to his private thoughts, I said no more and began to look at our surroundings as we made our way through the calm waters of Boston Harbor.

  There was scant breeze and, while there were a great number of ships which seemed to be heading in every direction possible, none was having much luck in making forward motion. They seemed to float, motionless, above their own reflections. I noticed that even the men who peopled these ships seemed motionless. The sails hung limp without the hint of a breeze to even ripple the canvas. The heat of the day had built, and just sitting still in the boat caused me to perspire copiously. I noticed that the captain seemed untroubled by the intemperate weather; his brow remained dry and there were no tell-tale trickles making their way down his cheeks.