by Jason Vail
“Sir!” he came back, the formality of his response appropriate to the occasion yet odd coming from his irreverent mouth.
“Starboard watch to launch and man all boats and take Wasp under tow!”
“Aye-aye!” He turned away and the relayed my order, and there was an even greater scramble now as the eighty men of the watch rushed to launch our four ship’s boats.
We had not practiced launching the boats at speed, for there had never been a reason to do so. But the men hurried to carry out the order, for the sailors among them understood the danger we faced and communicated the urgency to those who where not yet salty. No more than ten minutes could have passed before we had every boat in the water, one dropped a little too hastily from the davits so that it splashed and wobbled and I thought it might be lost, and manned at every oar, and pulling ahead of Wasp.
As the hawsers that connected Wasp’s bow to the boats rose dripping out of the water, the ship gained ever so slight a wake, indicating we were making headway. Hardly any headway at all, like a dying man creeping along the floor. Half a knot, that was all that could be expected.
I turned my glass to our pursuers. The cutter’s sail was as dead as ours and she sat on the glassy bay, as if glued there. The frigate, about half a mile behind, rested transfixed as well, but there was confusion on her decks and as I watched she launched boats, just as we had done.
I heard the murmur of familiar voices and turned to see Jean Crequy and Adele climbing to the quarterdeck. A black servant held an umbrella over Crequy’s head against the cascades of seawater being poured on the sails, which fell like intermittent showers and puddled on the deck. Adele carried her own umbrella. They joined me at the stern, which was relatively safe from the downpour.
“Sir, you have caused me to lose five hundred pounds!” Crequy said, without bothering with Nice day isn’t it?, how are you doing today?, or any other pleasantry.
“I what?” I asked, startled at the accusation and his vehemence.
“Five hundred pounds, man!” he fairly sputtered.
“Careful what you say,” Crockett said softly at my ear. “I smell a lawsuit.”
“I would like to see that,” I replied. Then to Crequy, “Explain yourself quickly. As you may have gathered, we are rather busy here.”
“Your manner of departure cost me five hundred in winnings,” Crequy said. “We had to leave so quickly that I was unable to collect.”
“So how much are you short?” I asked.
Crequy fumed, then said, “I was down seven-fifty.”
“In cash.”
He nodded shortly.
“Oh, dear. That is quite a lot of money.”
“I shall have it back from you!”
“A sharply worded letter to Mister Rochelle should do the trick,” I said. “I’m sure you’ll find a sympathetic ear in that quarter. Now, would you please mind running back to the great cabin? We’ve a battle to fight here.”
“A battle?” Crequy gazed around, bewildered because the sails in sight were too distant to seem a threat to anyone. “I don’t see a battle.”
“This may seem like a leisurely sail on a Monday morning, but it is a fight to the death nonetheless. Now get below and don’t bother me any further.” He seemed about to protest further, so I said, “If you tarry, I shall have you carried.”
He shook his finger in my face and sputtered, “You shall regret this!”
“I am regretting it already.”
Crequy turned away so quickly that the black servant failed to get the umbrella over his head, and when he passed beneath the main mast, a shower fell upon him, flattening that fashionable curl to his forehead like so much seaweed. He struck the servant a backhanded blow and clambered down the ladder to the gun deck, slipping once on the sopping rungs and nearly falling. I can only imagine how the laughter from the crews at their guns must have stung. The Texans especially were not prone to giving him or his title any special respect.
Adele lingered, interpreting her brother’s dismissal as not applying to her. “It is truly a battle?”
“Well,” I said, “a struggle. We are pursued.” I pointed to the cutter and the frigate.
“Oh, my.”
“If they catch us, it will be a battle.”
“You wouldn’t just surrender?”
“No.”
“All this for that fellow there?” She glanced to the bow.
“Afraid so.”
“An expensive friendship.”
“It’s too late now to worry about the cost.”
“You’re not so unlike my brother, you know.”
“How is that?”
“Reckless gamblers, the both of you.”
“There is risk in every worthwhile endeavor from trade to war, mademoiselle, but I am not reckless.”
“As you say. Or, perhaps it is something else. Sentimentality?” She turned toward the bow, careful to shelter under her umbrella, and went down to the gun deck.
“She has you there,” Crockett murmured.
“Oh, shut up.”
The snail’s race continued until well past noon, when the wind finally rose. It was a wind just north of east, blowing into our faces from out of the sea, and would have stopped Wasp dead if she had not reached the opening to the bay. As it was, we could not sail through the channel that led easterly to the sea, for that meant heading almost directly into the wind. We were forced to turn south and take the meandering channel along the coast, with the wind on our beam. But at least we left a wake behind us as we rocked through the swells, and I had the log line thrown down, and it came back eight knots.
The cutter appeared and cut southeastward across the shoals and bar, apparently confident that we would turn northward and certain that, with her shallow draft, she could pass over them without mishap. I had planned to turn north as soon as we cleared the bars, but now I thought better of it. I wondered about her course, and it occurred to me that someone must have spoken of our destination, but I had not done so and I had cautioned the men who went ashore to keep that information close. It must have been one of the Crequys. I could not control either of them.
Shortly afterward the frigate emerged and made a stately turn to follow us. Colorful signal flags showed from her mizzen, as she instructed the cutter to cut us off.
That possibility worried me less than another at the moment, however. We still had to get over the shallow water to our larboard and there was only one way through for us and it was not well marked.
After what seemed an age, we came up to Light House Inlet, which appeared as a river to those ignorant of Carolina geography, but was only a tidal creek. A small lighthouse stood on the northern spit of the inlet to mark the place and to give travelers a sign of the way in and out.
“Mister Hammond!” I said at last.
“Sir!”
“Come southeast! Mister Halevy! Prepare to trim sail!”
This course would put us dangerously close to the wind, which had held steady out of the east. That cutter, which could sail closer to the wind than Wasp, was fast approaching. I wished now that I had some long guns to take her under fire before she got close enough to be a real threat, but we had only our short-range carronades.
I paced the quarterdeck, trying not to show my anxiety as we neared and then entered the pass, which was indicated here and there by small buoys that bobbed on the surface. But lobster fishermen abounded along the American coast, and a trap’s marker could easily be mistaken for one intended to reveal the channel. It was a dangerous pass, especially on an ebb tide, and there might not be enough water under our keel. I imagined the dreaded sound of the hull scraping and of the sudden lurch as we struck.
“Deep water!” Willie finally called from the front. “We’re out of it!”
That was a relief, but the cutter was now dangerously close, no more than seventy or eighty yards off our larboard beam. I could plainly see men clustered around the two twelves in her bow. She displayed signa
l flags ordering us to stop and be boarded.
“Run out the larboard guns!” I ordered.
As the gun ports slapped open and the ship shook with the sound of ten gun carriages being roped forward and tilted slightly with the shift in weight, a man’s voice carried easily across the gap between Wasp and the cutter: “Fire!”
Both the cutter’s twelves bellowed at once. One ball struck short of Wasp, but instead of diving into the sea, skipped like a thrown rock and passed over my head, missing the mizzen mast by inches. The other carried away a portion of the rail forward of the main, but by a miracle, neither cut any rigging. She had fired round shot; why she did not use either bar or chain, I will never understand.
It was Wasp’s turn now, and I bellowed the order to fire.
The ship jolted with the shock of a ten-gun broadside and seemed to lurch sideways in the water. Gunsmoke swirled between the two vessels and the cutter was lost to sight.
“What can you see?” I called up to the men in the main top.
“We missed!” one of them replied.
As the wind carried off the smoke, it was evident that our fire had come as a great shock to the captain of the cutter, for she had backed sail and we were drawing ahead. I saw no activity among her bow gun crews that indicated she intended to fire again.
“I think we’ve given them a scare,” I said to no one in particular, trying to make the best of our bad shooting.
“I foresee a lot of gunnery practice in our future,” Crockett said. “The boys will like that.”
The cutter fell behind, making signals to the frigate about what had just transpired, although the captain of that greater vessel easily saw for himself that Wasp was neither your ordinary merchantman nor pirate.
Wasp continued on the same heading, all courses, topsails and topgallants set, clawing as close to the wind as she could manage. Soon we were away from the greenish water of the coast into the deep blue of the Gulf Stream.
Night fell and a half moon rose over a rolling sea to give light to the chase. The British frigate hung on, falling at least ten miles behind. She matched our northward turn, but by dawn had apparently given up, for when the sun rose the following morning, Tuesday October 17, we were alone on the vast ocean.
Chapter 12
The Northern Atlantic
October 1820
I almost did not hear the knock on the great cabin’s door over the clatter of singlesticks on the gun deck, where Halevy and Crockett were drilling the crew in the cutlass and small arms. I wish now that I had never heard it, for the terror it portended.
The knock sounded again and Fletcher, the ship’s surgeon, stuck his head in the door. “Captain,” he asked in a hush as if he was afraid that those behind him would hear, “Can I see you for a moment?”
I looked up from with my charts of the Thames and the Kentish coast. He had caught me daydreaming of England. I was looking forward to our arrival more than I cared to admit. I had not been home in a very long time, and even though London had never been my actual home, it was close enough. “I’m busy,” I said.
He stepped into the room and shut the door. “You’re not too busy to hear this.” He took a deep breath, as if what he had to say would not be easy. When he spoke it was almost a whisper. “I think we have smallpox aboard.”
I’ve had to face bad news before, but nothing like this. Fear so chilly shot through my body that it was as though I had been dunked in the North Sea. Few plagues are more fearsome that smallpox. It kills half to three-quarters of those it infects. It could rip through Wasp like a raging fire, leaving few alive. I swallowed. “You can’t be serious.”
“God smite me if I’m not.”
“You must be mistaken.” What did he know about smallpox? I thought, not wanting to believe it. He was a dentist from Massachusetts, and the only thing he had ever done beyond fiddle with teeth was treat injuries and dispense herbal remedies. Even that he had not got right, for he poisoned a patient and had to flee for his life. He must be panicking for nothing.
“Come see for yourself. You know what to look for, don’t you?”
My hands shook as I laid down my pencil and stood up. “You’ve quarantined him?”
“They’re in the sick bay.”
They’re. Good God, there was more than one already.
We went out to the gun deck, swerved around the pairs of men drilling with their sticks, mindful to protect our heads and limbs, and descended to the berth deck by the aft companionway. We crossed forward through the berth deck to the bow. As both watches were above either drilling at singlesticks or at the lines and sails, the deck was deserted, and our footsteps — for Fletcher and I were among the few who bothered with shoes even in this cooling weather — echoed in the dim, cavernous space.
The sickbay was neither room nor cabin, but merely a space forward of the bow companionway around the foremast, which ran through the deck like the trunk of a great tree. Canvas curtains hung from the beams overhead to delineate the space. Normally they were not drawn, but this morning they had been pulled.
Fletcher drew aside one of the drapes to admit me. I expected him to follow, but he hung back.
“What’s the matter with you, man?” I demanded.
“There!” he said waving at one of the hammocks to the left. “There! See for yourself! Dear God!”
At first I was unsure which hammock he meant, since there were five. That many sick was unusual. Seamen are as hard as beef jerky and not prone to illness. Most men end up in sickbay because of an accident or injury. As Fletcher kept pointing I realized he meant the farthest.
I recognized the man in the hammock as a young seaman named Nathan Forest. His hair was sopping and his shirt was drenched. I felt his face. He was burning.
“How are you, Forest?” I asked.
He licked his lips and I saw he had small red spots on them, as well as on his tongue. The coldness deepened at the sight of those sores. One of the sores on his lip had broken and watery fluid dribbled down the corner of his mouth to his chin. And I saw even in the bad light of my candle that he had what appeared to be a rash beginning to blossom on his face and neck.
He said, “I’m all right, Captain. Just a fever. I’ll be up and about in a couple of days.”
“I’m sure you will.” I hesitated, then patted his shoulder.
I went back beyond the curtain with Fletcher, who was shaking. We moved off some distance.
“So,” I said, glancing upward at the grating of the hatch almost over our heads, and keeping my voice down so that anyone close by could not hear, “you think it’s the pox?”
“I’m certain of it,” he said, shifting nervously from one foot to the other. “I’ve seen it before. Once.” He shuddered.
“And the others? They’re infected too?”
“They have the fever, the vomiting. So, yes, I think so. They haven’t any pustules yet, but they should in a day or so.”
“Let’s hope for all our sakes that you’re wrong.”
But like the surgeon, I had seen smallpox before. This was how it began.
The ship’s officers crowded into the great cabin and occupied every available chair. I rested my palms on the pages of a medical text that I kept in my library and said, “Gentlemen. There is smallpox aboard.”
The shock, fear, and disbelief showed upon every face, and everyone started talking at once.
I called for silence. “There are five men in sickbay who appear to be infected.”
“You’re certain of this?” Crockett asked.
“Of one man, definitely. He has the spots and the beginnings of the rash. The others are only in fever. A day or two more, we will know for sure. But I don’t think there’s any doubt.”
“How could they have been infected?” Hammond cried, the plume of his white hair bobbing in his agitation. “How could they have brought it aboard?”
“Who knows how the pestilence spreads?” I said. “We can’t waste time worrying about suc
h things. We have to take what action we can.”
“What do you propose?” Crockett asked.
“We will evacuate the berth deck, except for the officers, who may remain in their quarters, if they wish to. The men will hang their hammocks on the gun deck until the crisis passes. No one but Fletcher is to have any contact with those who are sick —”
“Not me!” Fletcher said. “I’m not going near them.”
“It’s your duty. You are the ship’s surgeon.”
“It’s a death sentence!” he hissed. “I’ve not had the pox, nor been inoculated. I’ll not go anywhere near them. You can throw me overboard if you like.” He glared at the others. “But I won’t do it!”
I took a deep breath. “Anyone else either had the pox or been inoculated?”
Everyone at the table shook his head.
“Spread the word to the crew that they are to stay off the berth deck, and ask if anyone among them has had the pox or an inoculation.”
The others left, but Willie remained in his seat. “Who are they, the sick, I mean?” he asked.
“Forest,” I said, and gave him the names to the other faces I’d seen.
“Curious,” Willie said.
“How so?”
“They’re all in the same gun crew.”
“Well, that means they all mess together. Probably one of them caught the pox and gave it to the others.”
“They were also in the party that rowed our friend the baron to the village at Head of Passes. There was a fight, remember? Forest was the fellow who was bitten.”
I recalled the man-shaped packages that had drifted by Wasp while we lay there at anchor. Could it have been there? I had no way of knowing. One thing I did know from the text was that it could not have happened in Charles Town, for the book said it took upwards of two weeks from exposure to the onset of symptoms. Which, when I paused to consider what Willie had said, made the Head of Passes the most likely place.
“Also,” he said, “haven’t you been inoculated?” He smiled thinly at my expression and added, “Well, you said we were supposed to ask among the crew.”