Lone Star Rising: T.S. Wasp and the Heart of Texas

by Jason Vail

  “I understand, sir. Your order does not come as a surprise.”

  As I reached the door, which the lieutenant held open, he spoke again. “This vessel of yours, she is really British built?”

  “American, actually,” I said.

  “And she was one of ours once — yours in fact, for a time?”

  “She was.” During the last years of the war against Napoleon, Wasp had been a British naval commerce raider in the Caribbean and I had been her captain. It had been the happiest period of my life.

  “An interesting coincidence,” he said.

  I did not say anything to that for there was no coincidence involved. I had deliberately tricked the Texans and Rochelle into buying Wasp when she had gone up for sale, because I had wanted more than anything to walk her decks again as she sailed as a warship.

  “There is one more thing I must ask of you,” Cockburn said.

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “You had best confine your crew to the ship henceforth. They talk far more than they should. Moreover, the frigate has docked at the West India basin. It would be unfortunate if your crews should mingle.”

  “You wouldn’t by any chance happen to know her name?” I asked.

  “The Neptuno.”

  “Thank you. I shall give the order.”

  “Thank you, Mister Jones. And if you must exchange further pleasantries with Spanish vessels, please do so far from British waters. Particularly around the mouth of the Thames.”

  “Your servant, sir.”

  And the door closed between us at last.

  Usually the only chance you get to see your enemy close up is when you are exchanging shot, the air is filled smoke and the whistle of flying iron, the grapples are readied, the tops are filled with fighting men and musket balls are thumping the deck, the boarding parties gathered. As you can imagine, it is often hard to gain an accurate impression at such moments. Since we would have to run from her again, I yearned to know her secrets so I could use them to our advantage. Thus, the chance to observe the Neptuno was too much to resist. The West India docks lie about five miles from the Admiralty east of London in a great loop of the Thames. That may not seem like so great a distance — in the country you could ride it in less than an hour — but it took nearly three to negotiate the congestion of the Strand and Fleet Street. If I had a tail, which I suspected now was certain, he had no trouble keeping up at least as far as Commercial Road above the Tower, when the carriage horses were able to break into a proper trot, which would have forced the tail, who most likely was on foot, to run to keep up.

  It was nearly sunset when I finally reached the docks, the fading light a brilliant bronze on the rooftops under a sharp blue sky, the streets in chill shadow, a blustery wind blowing from the north that had people hurrying along, heads bowed and collars pulled up about their ears. Like the London docks farther west, these consisted of vast basins, thirty or more acres in size, dug into the low swampland of the loop. There were two and they were filled with ships, the masts as thick in the air as twigs along a hedgerow.

  The West India basin lay the farthest north. It was a relief to know, at least, that the Neptuno sat somewhere there so that I did not have to search both basins. That would have meant having to walk for miles in the twilight and cold. I could have waited until morning or sent someone else instead, but I was eager to get a glimpse of our adversary close up.

  I paid off the driver, and looked about. A couple of scruffy children spotted me standing there, and started to come toward me. I took them for beggars or pickpockets. Before they could get close, I ducked into a tavern only a few feet away at the corner of Gun Lane. It was noisy inside, noticeably warmer, and filled mostly with nautical men taking their supper side-by-side on long trestle tables and benches. Here and there toward the fireplace were individual tables for four or eight, and these were claimed by what had to be ship’s officers.

  A serving girl approached me and I asked her, “Where’s the loo?”

  “It’s only for the paying customers.”

  “I’ll have beer then.”

  She poured me a wooden tankard and waved toward a door at the back. I paid her, slipped through the crowd without managing to bump into anyone, put the tankard on the bar with some regret, and went through the door. It led down a narrow corridor that smelled of boiled beef from the kitchen just beyond the wall, and piss and vomit. Another door at the end opened into a back garden bereft of grass and paved with dirt, within which stood a great woodpile and a small shack that had to be the loo from the stench. It badly needed burning out.

  A low fence separated the tavern’s yard from its neighbor’s. I jumped the fence, almost a mistake since its top rail nearly collapsed under my weight. I had hoped to find an alley between the tenements but they were built smack against each other, presenting a solid wall of graying wood. The building directly behind the tavern seemed to be a shop of some sort with apartments above. Wooden steps led to a porch at the ground floor. Lights were on in the cellar which emitted cooking smells, a yeasty aroma from a pie of some sort, and glancing down as I mounted the steps, shadows moved against the curtains. Candlelight shown from the floor above, where a flight of stairs led upward from the porch. I tried the ground floor door and found it unlocked. Somewhere behind me, I had the impression of a door clapping shut.

  I hesitated, my mouth dry as I touched the latch. The risk of breaking and entering was considerable and had to be worth it, and that would be true only if I was being followed. I was more nervous at that moment than I have been on a quarterdeck about to receive an enemy’s volley. The loss of honor is worse than the prospect of death.

  The door to the tavern opened and someone came into the yard, paused and looked around rather than stumbling across to the loo as you would expect of someone with legitimate business. He was smoking a cigar, for the orange spot of it flared as he drew, illuminating a hook nose and a jutting chin. My heart kicked at my ribs. It was dark here on the porch and I thought I could not be seen, but even so I felt like a black spot on a white wall. I told myself that all I had to do was linger here and the tail, if that was what he was, would go back inside. The figure crossed to the loo and opened the door, but did not go in, a breach of etiquette, for it was customary to knock first, especially if you didn’t want a mouthful of knuckles. He, as it was a man wearing a tall hat tilted at a jaunty angle, looked around again. He checked around the wood pile. For a moment he was out of sight, and my fingers tipped up the latch and my feet took me inside.

  I held my breath and listened for any indication that I had been detected. Voices murmured above and below: the normal hum of an evening’s conversation, no creaking or thumping as someone moved hurriedly about as if in alarm. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I groped down a hallway past several rooms whose doors were open but were so dark I could not see what lay within them, not that I cared as long as they held no living thing.

  The hallway emptied into a small candle shop, the merchandize in little bins along the walls and hanging from their strings from wheels attached to the ceiling. It smelled of sweet spices, welcome after the putridness of the yard.

  I looked through the windows for signs of anyone on the street. Taking a deep breath, I unlocked the door and stepped outside. Then I walked slowly but deliberately away as if on business, even though my feet wanted to run.

  It took a moment to get oriented, for I did not know the lay of the streets here and had turned the wrong way, toward the river. I reversed course, passed by the candle shop and turned the corner. One of the basin’s gates loomed ahead. The iron grate was partly open and the watchman sat in his niche, bundled against the cold.

  “I’m looking for the Neptuno,” I said. “Can you tell me where I can find her?”

  “The Neptuno,” the fellow muttered, not stirring from beneath his blanket. “Don’t know no Neptuno. There’s lots of ships here. Can’t keep them all straight.”

  “No, I suppose that’s too much t
o ask. It’s so hard not to notice a warship.”

  “No need to get testy. It ain’t my job. I just watches the gate. You got business with this Neptuno? It’s a bit late.”

  “I wouldn’t be about in this cold if I didn’t have business with her, any more than you’re sitting here.”

  “I suppose that’s right. You might ask at the manager’s office. There might still be someone there.”

  “Where would that be?”

  The gatekeeper waved vaguely toward some large warehouses. “That way.”

  “That’s very helpful, thanks.”

  “I always do try to be of service,” he said, sinking his chin deep into the folds of his blanket.

  No light showed at the office and no one answered when I knocked. I stood in the dark, the mucky odor of the basin so thick in the throat that it could strangle a person, wondering what to do now, when off to the right, a party passed by conversing in a foreign tongue. It could have been Portuguese or Italian, for all I knew. All those Latin languages sound alike to me. They looked to be ship’s officers, by the cut of their clothes, which was most likely, if they were Spanish, since the captains of Spanish warships did not usually grant shore leave to the crew because of the strong possibility that he would not see many of them again.

  On the chance they were Spaniards, I followed at a discrete distance, keeping well back, staying close to the piles of barrels and the corners of warehouses, careful where I put my feet so as not to make unnecessary noise. They rounded a corner of the basin and shambled down about halfway to a vessel moored against the wharf. Two gangways ran down from the spar deck of this great ship, the terminals on the quay lit by lanterns that illuminated a gathering fog with orbs of yellow light. Several other lanterns out of my direct sight glowed above on the quarterdeck.

  The officers climbed up the after gangway to the ship’s quarterdeck, where I heard the Spanish equivalent of our boarding ritual, where they asked and were given permission to come aboard from the officer of the watch. I knew now they were Spanish because I had spent a few days during the summer aboard a Spanish frigate in the Caribbean and had heard this ritual enough to recognize it.

  She was a warship, all right. Her tall sides rose like black cliffs, soaring masts whose top-most spars were invisible in the gloom, and the rather bulky lines of a French-built vessel, if my eyes were an adequate judge. A prize, perhaps, of the last war?

  I paced off her length, and confirmed my estimate of her length, about one-hundred-sixty feet, what you would expect for a vessel of her class.

  Many of her gun ports were open despite the chilly weather, probably for fresh air, since the lower decks could be stifling in their stink. The muzzles of cannon and the figures of men moving about were silhouetted by the few candles burning on the gun decks. She smelled of baked bread, sweat and fresh paint. Still, it seemed odd those ports were open, especially in a foreign port. Men could easily slip through such large gun ports and be away if they had a mind to desert, and desertion rates on Spanish ships was very high.

  I paused at the stern, searching for her name, but there was none painted below the gallery windows that I could see. Perhaps that was due to the recent repairs and new coats of paint, for the damage we had done to the stern had been fixed so that it looked as if she had never been struck by hostile shot. I was glad to see that she was hemmed in by other vessels moored against her far side, which was not uncommon in such basins, where boats in high traffic ports often jammed together like patrons at a bar. It meant that she could not speedily put out from the wharf, and a germ of a plan began to form in my mind as I gazed at the warship and her neighbors.

  To be sure of her identity, I called up from the bottom of the after gangway to the officer on deck who had caught sight of me, “What ship is that?”

  “The Neptuno,” he replied in accented English. “Why?”

  “Just curious,” I said. “Beautiful ship.”

  I had seen enough and was about to turn away when another figure emerged from the blackness and called in French from the head of the gangway. “A moment, monsieur!”

  I recognized that voice, and nearly shivered at the shock. But there was nothing to do but turn and face the man, whose pointed black beard was clearly visible in the lantern’s amber light. “Captain Vasquez,” I said. “A pleasure to see you again.”

  “Monsieur Jones,” he said in French, “I thought that was you. What are you doing here?” He was exactly as I remembered him from the brief time I had masqueraded as a shipwrecked Frenchman at Omoa in Honduras and had been pressed as an able seaman on his frigate, the Victoria Rosa: a handsome man whose close-cropped black beard, pointed at the chin, gave his face an elongated appearance; half a head shorter than me but slim and lithe, who moved with the grace of a born aristocrat; dark brown eyes that were normally cold but seemed to twinkle now with astonished amusement, as if he appreciated the oddity of the moment.

  “When I heard you were in London, I thought it would be rude not to pay a call.”

  “What is it you English do, leave your little calling cards?”

  “Yes. That is the thing.”

  “Well, since you are here, why don’t you come aboard? I am about to have supper. Would you join me?”

  He smiled, friendly and honestly inviting, and I was completely taken in.

  A gentlemanly invitation like this was not something to be disdained, even from an enemy. Yet I hesitated. “I regret that I have other business.”

  Vasquez nodded. The friendly smile disappeared. “Bring him!” he called out in Spanish that even I understood.

  That seemed an odd command. But four men armed with pistols appeared at my sides. Now it became clear why Vasquez had allowed the gun ports to remain open: he had stationed guards on the wharf to catch anyone foolish enough to desert. I had missed them in the dark.

  “After you, señor,” one of the pistoleers said in English.

  I stepped onto the gangway and climbed into the belly of the enemy.

  I expected to be led down to the hold and chained in the dark, but they took me to Vasquez’s great cabin, which as in all frigates was aft on the gun deck. The steward’s mates were setting the table for supper as we entered.

  “Wine, monsieur?” Vasquez asked, decanter in hand.

  “I suppose,” I said. It was an odd gesture to make to a prisoner. Glancing at the four men with pistols who remained ready in the pantry, I asked. “Don’t they have to be somewhere? If they dally here, you’re likely to shed crewmen.”

  Vasquez said something in rapid Spanish to the four; three departed and one remained. Vasquez smiled. “No need to worry. My crew is loyal.”

  I raised my glass. “To old times. When we sailed together.”

  Vasquez frowned slightly, yet the slight smile did not diminish, as if he held it there to conceal his true feelings. “We did not actually sail together.”

  “Well, floated together then. How is the Rosa doing, by the way?”

  “She has been given to another. I have a newer and better ship.”

  “Smaller, though.”

  “But faster. Faster than your Wasp.”

  “So it seems. We shall have to match them again.”

  “Oh, they shall be matched. Regrettably you shall be occupied with other things. The outcome then will be different.”

  I almost laughed. It was a backhanded compliment: he didn’t think that Wasp would perform as well under the hands of another man. I said, “That is not sporting, you know.”

  “I am afraid so. But you are a pirate. I am not required to treat you with courtesy.”

  “I am a licensed privateer.”

  “By a power my country does not recognize.”

  “But the French recognize us.”

  He scoffed. “The French. What do they matter?”

  “Well, they are rather powerful, and you share many borders with them. I would think their feelings count for something.”

  “The French will not
protest over such a small thing as you.”

  “You hurt my feelings, sir.”

  As we talked, the mates had brought in the first course in steaming tureens: some kind of soup. And the ship’s officers had filed in and were helping themselves to the wine.

  “That smells delicious,” I said about the soup, “but I am afraid I cannot really stay for supper.”

  I drew the knife from its inner coat picket and edged around a midshipman whose eyes were wide with astonishment. Such a breach of protocol, you know, to interrupt supper in that way.

  Vasquez sipped from his glass, as calm as if I had just sneezed into my hanky. The crewman with the pistol came to the doorway and leveled his weapon at me. Vasquez stayed him with a hand.

  “I will handle this,” he said.

  He took three strides to a sideboard and retrieved a small sword. He turned to me, on his guard. “Care to fence, monsieur?”

  “Delighted,” I replied, although I did not feel that way. He wanted me dead, you see, and he relished that I had given him the opportunity to send me on himself.

  A knife against a sword, even with as big a knife as the Texans had given me, was a mismatch. I should have given up then. A rational man would have done so. But I was angry and frantic, nearly close to panic at the thought of being chained in the Neptuno’s hold, of losing Wasp, with probably the scaffold on some rock about Cadiz as the end of the road.

  As Vasquez slowly approached me, the point of his sword making little circles in the air, I snatched a plate from the table as a shield, small and inadequate as it might be. The officers, meanwhile, backed against the bulkheads to give us room. Watch the hand, not the sword, I repeated to myself, remembering my lessons as a midshipman, for the point will mesmerize you and if it does you are a dead man.

  Vasquez looked at that plate and shook his head with contempt.

  Then he came on hard.