False dawn came, a gradual relieving of the gloom, and Alan took a good look around to try and discover where the hell they were. He had to admit that nothing looked familiar.
“Land, sir, ta larboard,” Coe said.
“Yes, but damned if I can remember anything like that,” Alan said under his breath. “Here, Mister Chiswick, you have a spyglass with you?”
“Yes,” Governour replied, rousing himself from a half-sleep to offer it.
“Coe, take the tiller. Mister Chiswick, do hold me upright for a piece, if you would. ”
Alan took a good look at the land to the south. It was below Yorktown, that was for sure. Further east, his wandering eye espied some islands, and he began to get a queasy feeling. He turned his body to peer south and south-west.
“That is Toe’s Point,” he told them, sitting down on a thwart, and idly pointing to the landmark.
“Is that not near the mouth of the river?” Governour asked.
“Truly,” Alan replied. “And to starboard, that is Jenkins Neck, an arm of Guinea Neck between the York and the Severn. We were blown all the way out into the bay. We’re at least five miles from Yorktown and the narrows. One, perhaps two hours at the rate we’re moving.”
“The army has gone without us, then,” Governour sighed. “They’re to attack at first light, and we’ll never catch up with them now.”
“Don’t soun’ like it, sirs,” Coe stuck in, cupping an ear to hear sounds from the west. “They’s still at it, ’ot an’ ’eavy.”
The faint sound of cannon fire could barely be heard, but it was still going on, over one hundred guns pounding away like a far-off storm.
“Jaysus!” one of the further forward oarsmen spat. “We’s makin’ warter up ’ere, too, Mister Lewrie.”
“Stuff another blanket into it and hope for the best.”
“We’re makin’ pretty fast, now, Mister Lewrie,” Coe whispered to him as they sat together by the tiller bar. “Th’ ’ole damn wale musta been smashed. Might not make five mile. An’ even agin easy current, th’ ’ands is ’bout played out.”
“Might consider putting in and resting first?”
“Could be, Mister Lewrie,” Coe agreed.
“Sail ho!” one of the oarsmen shouted, pointing aft. Alan turned to see a tops’l above the horizon. That would be a French frigate beating back to station in the mouth of the York, he decided. They might have an hour to get under cover before even a boat so low in the water could be seen.
The French and Rebels are around York, and the Frog ships are to the south and east. We’d best go into Jenkins Neck. Only foragers there.
“We’ll put in on Jenkins Neck,” Alan announced to his weary crew. “We have to make repairs before going back to Yorktown. Ashore, we can dry out and get some rest. It will be dark before it’s safe to be seen this far down the river, so you all can get some sleep.”
Alan put the tiller over and urged his men to ply their oars for one more effort. They were shivering cold and resembled a pack of drowned rats worn down to the bone by all that had been asked of them during the night, and by their fears. But they were seamen, which meant that they were resilient, and if allowed time to rest up and get some warm food down, could do it all over again the next night.
They steered in for a small, marshy island at the tip of the tiny peninsula known as Jenkins Neck. Alan kept trying to picture the chart that Mister Monk had shown them the night before. They had concentrated on the region of the narrows and the Gloucester Point area, but it had been fully open on the desk, and Alan had glanced at it. The east end of the Gloucester peninsula was all salt marshes and low sandspits, threaded with creeks and rills like a river delta. There was a low island, known as Hog Island, ahead of them. A little further upriver was a tiny spit of hard sand known as Sandy Point, a tiny cay connected by a tidal flat to Jenkins Neck; and to the western end of the neck, there was a large creek or inlet—two actually, one being grandly named Perrin River merely because it was a broader inlet than the other. Alan remembered seeing some tumbledown wharves along the shore; tobacco loading docks for the many shallow coastal traders who worked the Chesapeake during the growing seasons. He knew there would be less than three feet of water along that shore, even at high tide. They would have to be careful not to ground their barge on the mud until they had found some place sheltered in which to hide the boat and lay up while it was being repaired. There would be enough scrub pine in the thickets to cover them, and further inshore there might be something they could use to caulk or plug the holes in the barge’s side.
“Mister Chiswick, give me your studied military opinion about something,” Alan requested of the weary infantryman, which brought Governour’s head up from his bleak study. “We could land on this shore along the river, but there are wharves, as I remember, and we might not wish to draw much attention to ourselves. Or, we could head north about Hog Island here and land in the marshes or on the far side of Jenkins Neck. Which would you prefer?”
“Each wharf is connected to a plantation,” Governour told him. “That means Rebels. It might be better to hide in the marshes, but then I doubt if you could find what you need to repair the boat in those. I’d try the marshes, though, if we can find some high ground that is dry. My powder is soaked, and we could not fight off a pack of children now.”
“Very well, the marshes it is,” Alan agreed. “There is sure to be an inlet that leads to dry ground somewhere. And it’s out of sight from those Frog ships in the river.”
Once more, he turned the tiller to larboard to steer the boat into the gap between Hog Island and another sandspit whose name he could not remember. There would be immediate cover behind them, at least.
“Boat, sir!” the bowman croaked.
“Hellfire and damnation!”
“Looks like it’s stuck in the mud, sir.”
Lewrie rose to his feet to use Chiswick’s telescope once more as the hands ceased rowing for a much-needed respite.
“Looks like one of our barges,” Alan said. “Canted over in the mud on yonder tidal flat, but there’s no one about it.”
“Spare plank, sir.” Coe brightened. “Ready-cut an’ shaped.”
“Right you are, Coe.” Alan laughed. “Men, we are about to take a prize. Doubt if an Admiralty Prize Court would give us tuppence for her, and no head money, but she’s ours. Give way.”
They rowed up close enough to the stern of the abandoned barge so that a hand from up forward could splash into the water and wade over the mud flat to the barge. He clambered into her and poked around.
“One o’ ours, she is!” he called back. “They’s blood on her, sir.”
“God save us,” Coe muttered softly.
“Hoy!” a man called from the low sandspit beyond the abandoned boat, standing up from the sedge and sea oats and waving a musket. “Hoy!”
“That’s a British sailor, by God!” Alan exclaimed. “Hoy yourself!”
“Mister Lewrie, sir?” the stranded seaman yelled back. “Mister Feather, ’tis one o’ our boats come fer us!”
They turned about and stroked to shore on the sandspit, grounding the bow into the beach as more of the boat’s party came down to the shore to greet them. Feather was there, his head now wrapped in a bandage, some North Carolina Volunteers half caked with sand and mud, and half a dozen sailors from Desperate. Alan was relieved to see Burgess Chiswick, too.
“What happened to you, Mister Feather?” Alan inquired after they had gotten their own boat firmly beached.
“When ’at gale blew up, I got lost, sir,” Feather admitted.
“So did we. We were blown all the way out into the bay.”
“We got ashore on Gloucester, but ’twas beyond the lines on the right, an’ we tangled with them French marines. Nobody’s firelocks wuz worth a shit, an’ they like ta cut us ta pieces with bayonets an’ such. We drove ’em off an’ got away, but I lost ’alf a dozen men adoin’ it, an’ mebbe ’alf a these soljers. Only ’ad
the five oars left, so we couldn’t do nothin’ ’bout gettin’ back upriver, an’ tried ta ’ide in ’ere, but we grounded when the tide started agoin’ out,” Feather reported.
Alan looked at his watch, then studied the set of the tide over the mud flats. It would be at least an hour, maybe two, before they could expect the tide to refloat Feather’s barge, hours in which they would be exposed as naked and helpless as foundlings to the full view of the French blocking ships now working back to their stations in the York. “We’ll have to man-haul her into deeper water, then head for those marshes over there.” Alan sighed wearily. “I have nine oars left. We’ll share them and the crews out and find some place to hide.”
“That’s where I was agoin’, sir,” Feather agreed, careful not to nod his head too energetically. “They’s a deep inlet round that second point ta the left, an’ ya kin see the forests. We lost our water and biscuit, so me lads ain’t ’ad nothin’ since last night. We wuz gonna see what we could scrounge up afore ’eadin’ back.”
“We have some, not much. Share it out with your men, but be sparing,” Alan told him.
“Aye, thankee, sir.”
“Seen anyone else?” Alan asked. “Ours or theirs?”
“Mebbe two er three o’ our barges went by upriver just ’bout dawn, but too far out ta ’ail. Frog ships’re back in the mouth o’ the river, but no patrol boats yit, sir.”
Good as it was to know that they were not alone in their isolation, their situation had not been improved by the addition to the party.
Alan looked about the beach as he sat down at the high tide line among the screening sea oats. There were eighteen sailors, plus Feather the quartermaster’s mate and Coe as steady senior hands. There were not thirty soldiers, including officers. They had one barrico of water, which would not make more than a taste for each man, one box of biscuits, which could not sustain life for more than a day or two, two boat compasses, and two leaky and unseaworthy barges. Their powder was soaked, so they could not hunt, and if they did get some game, they might not be able to light a fire to cook with. His sailors had come away with only jackknives and cutlasses for weapons. Lewrie had two pistols on him, both sure to misfire after all the rain, his midshipman’s dirk, and a cutlass. Not exactly daunting prospects if they ran across Rebel troops ashore on the neck. Alan cocked his head to listen to the sound of the far-off cannonade around Yorktown. Bad as it would be back within the lines, they would be better off there than out in the wilds on their own so poorly equipped.
“Morning, Alan,” Burgess Chiswick said, plopping down next to him on the sand as though it were merely another morning back in the redoubt.
“Burgess,” Alan replied, “glad to see you still among the living.”
“Not for want of trying on the foe’s part, I assure you. The very devil of a quandary we’re in here, is it not?” Burgess said.
“Goddamn Admiral Graves.” Alan sighed. “He’ll never come now.”
“Nor will General Clinton, so goddamn him, too. Have a sip on this,” Burgess said, offering a flask of liquor; it was corn whiskey.
“We must really be in trouble,” Alan quipped after sliding that liquid fire down his gullet. “I’m beginning to like this.”
After a brief rest, there was enough water over the tidal flat to try to drag Feather’s barge off. They shared out the hands to give equal rowing strength to both boats and started heading up north again, close enough together to talk back and forth. Feather, now that he felt rescued, was talkative and full of lore about the Chesapeake.
“Over ta starboard, that’s Guinea Marsh.” He pointed. “An’ that’s Big Island beyond. Now, ta larboard, we’ll turn west inta this ’ere inlet. Round t’other side o’ ’Og Island, ya’ll see solid land. I ’member they’s a cove, runs back like a notch offa this inlet. Damn near cuts Jenkins Neck inta an island, an’ marshes on either ’and afore we gets to woods an’ ’ard ground. No reason nobody’d come down ’ere alookin’ fer us, an’ mebbe not a dozen farmers down ’ere anyways.”
“Been here before, have you?” Alan asked, weary of the garrulous lecturer. He wished fervently that Feather would shut the hell up and let him be as miserable as he wanted to be.
“Did some tradin’ ’ereabouts ’tween hitches, afore the Rebellion,” Feather went on. “Sweet li’l barque outa Boston, an’ we’d row in ta pick up baccy an’ whatnot an’ land trade goods. Mind ye, ’twern’t strictly legal, Mister Lewrie, ’cause the King’s Stamps wasn’t on everythin’, but . . .”
“Is this your cove off the inlet?” Alan demanded, pointing to the left at a narrow waterway that led back almost to the south.
“No, sir, that’s a false cove. Good beach fer smugglin’ at low tide at the back of it, but we got further ta go. Now like I said, we wuz . . .”
I wonder if anyone would mind if I shot him? Alan asked himself.
At nearly nine in the morning they discovered the cove that Feather went on (and on) about, a long and narrow tongue of open water between salt marshes and some higher ground with scrubby coastal forest on it. Alan could tell Feather to shut his gob in case there were enemy lookouts about, which brought a blissful silence, broken only by the sound of the oars and the birds, and the continual barrage that was by then a natural background sound, much like a ship groaning as it worked across the sea while they slept. It was shallow, and the barges dragged on the bottom now and then and had to be poled across in places, though from the detritus on the shore they could see that there must be at least three feet of water at high tide.
“Lots of trash washed up.” Governour was pointing. “Once we put in we can cut some brush and cover the boats easily enough. You couldn’t spot ’em ’til you stumbled across ’em.”
“Thank God for that,” Alan said.
They came to the end of the cove. To the west there was still salt marsh and some barren sand humps broken by stunted scrub growth. On the left hand, to the east, there was firmer beach and a long finger of green land to screen them from the sea. A small creek poured down into the back of the cove and meandered off to the south and west, too shallow to be navigated. All about were thick stands of trees.
“Put in to the east of the creek,” Alan said softly. “Fill that barrico first thing, if it’s fresh water.”
“My men can fill their canteens, and then we must needs reconnoiter,” Governour said. “Your sailors should wait near the boats, just in case, ready to shove off. Wait as long as you can, mind.”
“I’ll not abandon you, whatever you run into,” Alan swore.
“God bless you, then,” Governour said, readying his arms.
Almost as soon as the barges stuck their bows into shore, the Loyalist soldiers were off and gone as silently as smoke going up a chimney, rifles on half cock and long sword-bayonets fixed in case their cartouches and primings were bad. They faded off into the woods and the underbrush and disappeared, scouting like savages in all directions.
“Coe, take a party to fetch water. Feather, stand ready to cast off in case they run back here and say it’s not safe.”
Feather was silent and yawning with nervous trepidation now that they were back ashore in hostile territory, which was a blessing for Alan. The men clutched their cutlasses, those ashore squatting down near the high tide mark, those in the boats flexing their muscles to leap out and push off at the first “View Halloo.”
Alan sat down on the bow of his boat, feet resting on the sand and carefully scraped the caked powder from his pistols’ priming pans. He shook some loose powder from his powder flask and rolled it between his fingers to determine how dry it was, and reprimed his weapons. The pine plugs were still in the barrels, so there was a good chance that the charges were still dry in the muzzles. Both ends of the plugs were dry to the touch.
Mollow came creeping back through the scrub, bringing a gasp of alarm from the tense sailors, who were so keyed up even the sight of a red coat could frighten them.
“Mister Governour says
’tis clear,” Mollow reported to Lewrie with his usual lack of formality. “But they’s a plantation over yonder.”
“Anyone about?” Alan asked as calmly as he could, repocketing the pistols.
“Looks ta be. Some house slaves, not so many,” Mollow muttered. “That means somebody there ta keep ’em in line. Nothin’ stirrin’, though. Nobody in the fields, an’ that rain las’ night wouldna done that tabacca no good. Not much o’ hit been harvested. Shoulda been dryin’ in barns weeks ago.”
“Big place?” Alan wondered aloud.
“Bigger’n some,” Mollow allowed with a shrug, then busied himself with his damp canteen. “Water’s frayush, iffen ya go up the crick a ways.”
Burgess came drifting back to the cove and waved Alan to him.
“Quiet as a country church.” He grinned as he offered his full canteen to Lewrie. “Looks to be only one farm this far down the neck, and it’s a big one. Twenty, thirty slave cabins t’other side of these woods. Lots of corn and beans, and a fair tobacco crop gone to rot if they don’t get it in soon. Looks like they tried. Most of the slave cabins are empty.”
“Run off?”
“Probably. There’s smoke coming from the house and the kitchen shed, so somebody’s to home. Only slaves I could see were dressed good.”
“House servants, your man Mollow suspected.”
“Aye, most like. Nice big house, too. And barns and sheds. Four wagons but no stock other than a saddle horse or two, maybe coach horses. Livestock enough.”
“Lumber and tools.” Alan brightened at the possibilities. “No one would come this far to forage, would they?”
“Hard to say exactly. But we could be gone in a day,” Burgess told him. “The cove here almost cuts the neck in two. There’s one poor road to guard, and we could see anyone coming across the fields from the edge of the woods. It’s not three hundred paces to the far shore, and half of the distance is marshy. It’d be a killing ground for a dozen riflemen.”
The French Admiral Page 28