I near about dropped my speaking trumpet when Bob Wilson and his mate, both of them up on the main-topmast yard, sang out together, “Sail ho!”
“Par où?” says I, hoping the exaggerated way I pretended to look around the horizon would make my meaning clear and remind him we were supposed to be French.
“Zee wind-waird,” said Bob.
“More like two points off the wind,” said his mate, low but insistent.
“Yer s’posed to be French, you damn fool,” said Bob in a hoarse whisper, but before I could shoot them both they fell silent, having clapped their hands over each other’s mouths—and then the Shearwater’s lookout distracted everyone by shouting, “Deck, there! A Bermuda sloop. It’s that Brother Jonathan.”
“Don’t get excited, Monseer le Frog or whatever you are,” called Agnell. “That’ll be our mutual friend Captain Mèche. Come alongside and mind the paint.”
Horne had run halfway up the windward shrouds. “Suffisant,” he called, pronouncing it more or less in the French fashion. In a stage whisper he added, “She’s being chased.”
“Here, what’s that big nigger about?” cried Agnell. “Stand off or I’ll fire into you!”
“Not when I am astride your stairn, you silly fellow,” I said. I shook my head at Peebles, who was looking at me pleadingly. We could’ve sent every shot we had right through the length of her, and not a gun would we get in reply.
Shearwater’s lookout bellowed, “There’s a man-o’-war in chase of her, sir! A frigate—it’s the fucking Clytemnestra!”
Oh, lordy. “I know thees Clytemnestra,” I shouted. I shook my fist. “You ’ave betray me, dim your eye! I run away!” I glanced at Gundy. “Keep her thus.”
“Betrayed you, is it?” called Agnell. “Not I, you frog-eating bastard! Bear off, or you’ll get a bellyful, I swear it!”
Her mainsail began to come around—too late, ha ha! Her sternmost gun fired, spurting its load into the wide blue never.
“Drop them colors and raise our own! Mr. Peebles, cast off the canvas screens!” I held up my hand lest he fire too soon. The Stars and Stripes snapped open in the breeze. “Now! Fire!”
We gave them a “bellyful” of our own—four of them. The canister on top of grape on top of round shot from the three long guns on the larboard side knocked a shower of splinters off the Shearwater’s taffrail, and the carronade’s load of chain tore a wonderful big hole in her gaff mainsail. But even before the smoke cleared, a group of men was popping off at me with muskets from her stern.
A ball buzzed past my head. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Bob and his mate swinging down from aloft. The cutter’s side was coming around toward us.
“Mr. Peebles, clear his quarterdeck! Leave her hull be, damn it!”
Bob and his mate lit on the deck with a slap of bare feet. “Beat you!” said Bob. “Didn’t,” said his mate. And then the muskets fired again, and Bob’s head splattered like a dropped pumpkin.
The carronade roared and the musketeers vanished. Somebody aboard the Shearwater was tarnal concerned about something—even through the ringing in my ears, I could hear ’em hollering. Then the three-pounders popped off at once and I couldn’t hear again.
“Hold your fire! Gundy, what’re they saying?”
He shrugged his shoulders up to his ears. “Blaamed if I know, zur.”
The Shearwater fell off to leeward, her sails flapping. Her rudder wandered back and forth.
“Follow her around,” I said, and Gundy kept us turning in a slow circle to larboard. We had to come over onto the starboard tack and gather a little more way to keep on her stern, but no one aboard her seemed to be paying us any mind.
Our gun captains stood with their fists in the air to show that their pieces were ready for firing. “Shall I give ’em another, sir?” said Peebles.
“No.”
Whatever the Shearwaters were doing, it wasn’t minding her sails. A weird roaring rose from her. There was something so all-fired unholy about it that I jumped up on the rail to have a look. Sailors ran around her upper deck, not trying to brace around to bring their guns to bear on us or get out from under our guns, but pointing down into the hold at a horde of black men swarming up from below. A couple of sailors lay slumped beside her wheel; it turned idly as the passing swells played against her rudder.
Before I could think about it, I said, “Bring us alongside, Gundy! Touch and hold her!” I ran forward, calling, “Boarders to me! To me, Mr. Horne! Boarders away!”
Tomahawk’s bow scraped across the cutter’s starboard quarter. I scrambled up onto her quarterdeck with my boys behind me, Horne with his broadax, and Bob’s mate with blood and tears on his face and a cutlass in either hand, and all of us shrieking like Pawnees . . . And we all stopped at once, amazed by what we saw. There weren’t just black men but women, too, most of them naked, and all of them beating the Shearwaters with fists, buckets, the loose chains on their manacles—whatever weapons lay at hand.
“Mr. Horne, secure the wheel. You others, clear the quarterdeck.”
In a sudden weird quiet, the Africans laid off throwing Englishmen overboard and looked at us. I wondered what John Paul Jones would’ve done; and then, like the voice of tarnal salvation rumbling out of the heavens, it come to me:
“Run like hell, boys!”
The Tomahawks flooded back over the rail into the schooner, but Horne was too far away, too close to the mob. As he turned to run they knocked him down. There was nothing for it—I raised my death’shead sword and ran screaming into the crowd. With a rasping shriek, Bob’s mate ran in beside me. The mass of people parted like a single being, and then engulfed us.
Hands grabbed at my hair, my clothes. Hands closed on my blade. I yanked it free, and there was gore on the blade. I saw a bloody black hand waving a blue jacket. The crowd surged, taking me with it like the tide. I saw a naked white man. I guessed him to be Bob’s mate, but his head was gone. And then a powerful arm hooked around my waist and flung me toward the stern rail. I rolled on the deck and there was Horne, grabbing me again, hauling me to my feet, and the mob melted away foreward, running down more of Agnell’s men.
Horne and I goggled at each other, astonished to be alive, and then vaulted over the rail together.
As the cutter fell away to leeward, men and women, black and white, living and dead, dropped into the sea or fell fist and tooth on each other. The wind had kicked up considerable, and we thrashed along to windward; and then the Breeze— which I am ashamed to say I had forgotten about—tore by at long pistol-shot off our starboard bow. She had her guns run out, and we didn’t have so much as a peashooter ready on that side. On her quarterdeck, Peter stood with his arm raised as if about to give the command to fire. He stared at me.
“You! Peter Wickett!” I shouted.
He swept off his hat, and his face twisted in the grimace that passed as his smile. “Hello, Matty! Fancy meeting you here!”
“Heave-to, Peter!”
He laughed. “In this blow? I dare not.” He glanced over his shoulder at the Clytemnestra, tearing along toward us with her twelve-pounders showing. “My work here is done. You’ll forgive me if I don’t stop to chat, but I have urgent business elsewhere.”
“I’ve been sent to bring you back, Peter.”
“‘Always catch a man before you hang him,’” he called, quoting Whipple. “Perhaps some other time. I do believe that cutter needs—” And with that he was out of shouting range.
But he wasn’t out of shooting range. “Permission to run out and fire, sir?” said Peebles.
The Clytemnestra was taking in sail and heading to close with the Shearwater.
“No. Run the guns in and secure them. Gundy, bring us alongside the cutter again.”
The Shearwater fell helplessly down toward Anegada. The setting sun cast a golden light on her untended canvas beating itself apart in the blustering wind. The fighting had stopped, but no one moved to check her course toward the reefs of Ane
gada; white caps broke over the sunken rocks and coral ahead, but I didn’t guess there was anyone left alive on board that knew how to sail her.
Three times we crept close enough for Horne to heave a line, and three times it fell into the sea. On the fourth try a man caught it, but a surge tore it from his hands. Soaked with spray, his face twisted with fury or tears, Horne hauled the dripping line in and coiled it for another heave.
The Clytemnestra loomed up on the far side of the cutter, riding far more steadily in the seas than we could. A shirtless ape of a man in her larboard mainchains swung the belaying pin on the end of his line in a slowly widening circle and then heaved it across. A black man in the Shearwater caught it—but instead of hauling it in, he tied it around the rail. A midshipman in the frigate shouted from an after gunport, pointing behind him where men would be waiting on the gun deck with the other end of the hauling-line made fast to the large towing-cable, ready to pay it out like lightning when the order came; but the black men in the cutter didn’t understand what they needed to do. Or maybe they couldn’t understand each other—some were trying to haul the line in, while others pushed them away, pointing at the knot. The Clytemnestras heaved the end of the cable overboard and pantomimed hauling the line in, but the seas sent the frigate one way and the cutter the other. The heaving-line snapped.
“Close her, Gundy,” I said. “I’m going to jump.”
“Zur!” He pointed downwind toward Anegada, where surf climbed the reef in booming white towers.
Horne shouldered Gundy aside. His coat was torn, and he was missing a shoe, and his face was a welter of scratches. “Please, sir, let me go.”
We were on the verge of arguing about it when the Clytemnestra fired a gun across us. On her quarterdeck, Captain Sir Horace Tinsdale, in his workaday coat, looked strangely small without gold braid and epaulets. He lifted a speaking trumpet.
“Stand clear! That cutter, sir, and all in her, is His Majesty’s property.”
And he was welcome to her. “All hands, Mr. Horne,” I said. “’Bout ship.”
“But—but you can’t just leave her, sir!” He looked across at the Africans in the cutter.
I looked at them, and I looked at Horne with his skin as black as a coal bin, and I looked down at my brown hands; and I looked across at Sir Horace, standing with one pale hand on his hip and never doubting he would be obeyed.
My hatred for Agnell and the murderers was gone. I didn’t know why I’d come. I turned away. “All hands, ready about,” I said again, and the Tomahawks ran to their stations. I heard the cutter hit the reef, but the cries were lost in the wind.
Once we were clear of Anegada, I took a few minutes for an unpleasant task that still needed doing. I hove us to and pointed to the yawl we’d taken aboard off Birds Island. “Mr. Horne,” I said, “get that boat in the water.”
Horne gave me a ferocious look, his head jutting forward, his wild braids snaking around his shoulders in the wind. No land or ship lay close enough to be fetched safely by boat, and the men who made whatever trip I had in mind would have a wild time of it.
Before he could defy me, I said, “Did I mumble, Mr. Horne? Get the yawl in the water.”
“Sir—”
“You got a better idea, Mr. Horne?”
“No, sir.” With a troubled look he turned away, cupping his hands around his mouth and shouting, “All idle hands! Man the stays. Walk away with the stays—so! Lower away of all!” The yawl jounced as it touched water.
“Now,” I said, “fetch me Morris and Manson.”
“Aye?” said Manson, eyeing the boat as it bobbed and skipped in the waves.
“That yawl belongs to you. You’re going to get in it.”
“Here now! Yer wouldn’t give up a good pair of sailormen. Yer promised us safety!”
“I promised I wouldn’t turn you over to the Royal Navy nor anyone else, and I aim to keep that promise. Now get in.”
He looked up at the clouds rolling down the wind, and looked over the side at the roiling sea. “We won’t do it—we’ll drown!”
“Not if you’re the sailormen you say you are. I ain’t of a mind to drop you ashore with dry shoes. Now, ups-a-daisy. In you go.”
“Sweet Christ, yer wouldn’t,” cried Morris. “I’ll sign the articles. Yer can use two good topmen, sure!”
The wind moaned in the shrouds. The air was wet with spray or rain. The Tomahawks began to edge in closer, but whether to stop me or help me, I didn’t know. Either way, I couldn’t give them time to commit themselves. Once they acted in concert without me, they’d be beyond my control.
“I won’t have skulking dogs in my crew!” I pointed to windward. The wreck of the Shearwater hung on the reefs of Anegada. I could see people moving on her, jumping into the surf and not coming up again. Beyond the island the frigate labored. “Look, the Clytemnestra’s bearing up. She’ll be heading this way. Make up your mind, man—the boat or a hanging.”
“What about Jakes?”
“He stays. You don’t have much time.”
The yawl strained at its tackle, skipping off the top of the waves and slamming against the Tomahawk’s side. Another moment and its wales might get stove in.
“But it’s murder, sir,” said Morris.
A mutter ran through the crowd.
Manson raised his hands. “Lads,” he cried, “will yer stand dumb whilst we are assassinated by a bloody tyrant?”
Jakes hobbled forward, the clanking of his irons filling the sudden silence. “Down with the bloody tyrant!” he shouted, to my horror. But then he continued, “Three cheers for liberty, and bugger King George!”
Huzzahs all around, except for Manson and Morris.
The last I saw of them, they were pulling at their oars for all they were worth. Manson spared a moment to shake his fist at me before a wall of rain hid him from sight.
SIXTEEN
It was too late to take refuge in Drake’s Bay, the sheltered pool encircled by the eastern group of the Virgin Islands. Closehauled on the port tack, we clawed off the line of islands that lay to leeward till we had passed safely south of Saint Croix. Then we lay to under the close-reefed gaff mainsail and steadied her with a goose-winged topsail—made up snug on the windward side and with the lee clew set—taking the seas on the larboard bow. We drifted downwind that way, but now we had a good six hundred miles of open water under our lee.
Horne rigged the tiller with relieving tackles, and the Tomahawks stowed every bit of equipment below that could be gotten below and lashed it all down taut. We ran the long guns out—if we needed them in this weather it would be on short notice—and lashed them fast with canvas covers over their tompions and touch-holes, and double-lashed the carronade to the deck. We roused out a spare lantern to read the compass card by. We rigged lubber lines to give the watch on deck something to hang on to and as a guide for the helmsmen when they couldn’t see aught else to steer by, and we spread tarpaulins in the lower weather rigging to give the watch on deck some shelter from the wind and wet. Wooden wedges lay ready by the chocks to secure the rudder in case the tiller broke or the relieving tackles snapped, and Horne roused out a spare tiller bar and placed it by the helm. We unshipped the anchor cables and got the ends inboard, and packed the hawsepipes with greased oakum and pounded wooden plugs into the ends. We stretched canvas covers over the hatch gratings, and nailed wooden battens over all to hold them shut, leaving an after corner of the main hatch open for ventilation and so the watches could come and go. The topmen labored aloft, sending down whatever wasn’t necessary—having our topgallants and fore-topmast aboard was a good head start—and rigging preventers on the weather side of the yards, and doubling any gear that might be carried away, and making sure all loose ends of line and sail were tucked in tight against the wind. Then I sent the watch below to their hammocks, there to lie in the shrieking darkness and wonder if I’d drown us all.
In a rare moment when I found time to snatch a few minutes below, I dri
fted in a kind of waking sleep, staring back at Greybar staring down at me from on top of my clothes rack. The storm wouldn’t last long, I thought. But it lasted three days, and on its heels followed another blow worse than the first, and then another worse than that. During the brief lulls between them we worked to windward, hoping to make Saint Kitts or Dominica or any of the other British islands open to us. After two weeks of battering and our water running low, I even considered Guadeloupe, the big island where the French stowed captured Americans, but the gales came howling across from Africa again and Tomahawk swirled across the sea like a rat in a millrace.
The wind dropped away on the Ides of October and left us tossing in the middle of the Caribbean. Occasional gaps appeared in the writhing clouds, showing the sun by day and the stars by night. That was the natural order of things, and my sextant told me our position between the poles—fifteen degrees and some minutes north—but I had no way of knowing what our precise rate of drift had been. We might be far away at sea or about to fetch up on the swampy shores of the Yucatán.
Despite the tempest and the misery, life and routine continued in their course. We even found time for punishment.
“It’s hardly a flogging offense, Mr. Peebles,” I said. The wind had dropped but the sea still sloshed and slapped against the hull.
“But sir! He was smoking below decks!”
“Well, what of it? It’s been tarnation wet out, you know. No harm done, was there?”
His lip quivered. “No, sir. But you said you’d flog any man that smoked below decks and break his pipe, too.”
“I did? I never.”
“You did, sir. Back when Mr. Horne first showed you where the powder is stored.”
“Oh, that’s right. Well, didn’t he put his pipe out when you told him?”
“Yes, sir. But he laughed when he did it.”
I felt sick to my stomach. “So you said you’d see him flogged, I expect.”
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