“Three,” declared the bosun.
The Indians, he thought. He had heard of Indians beyond the woods who invent ceremonies and tortures and subject their young men to them, giving them the privilege of demonstrating their bravery, their disregard for pain. Those who passed this test became warriors; those who did not—such shame was not to be countenanced. If Indian boys could stand such, a Southern gentleman must surely be able to bear that, or more. Whish, splat!
“Four,” called out the bosun.
After twelve lashes the strain had caused the sweat to pour down Sam’s brow. As he was untied from the hatch grate he found himself unable to release the tension knotted in his back. Upon standing straight, he felt liquid trickle down his back, but he had no way of knowing if it was sweat or blood, and he was glad he could not see it. He had no desire to surmise how his broad white back was now scarred for life. He felt faint, and he summoned every ounce of rage and resolve not to fall; he would not give such pleasure to this horror of a human being who now held him in his power.
An officer in a blue coat, different, not a frock but a cutaway with gold buttons, stepped forward and touched Sam’s back in several places with a white handkerchief, which came away streaked with crimson. “I am Dr. Kite,” he said quietly, “ship’s surgeon. You had best come with me, I will tend to your wounds.”
Further civility was the last thing Sam had expected. “Yes. Yes, of course, thank you.”
“Can you manage the ladder?”
“I think so.”
The bosun handed Sam his shirt and whispered hoarsely, “Well done, Yankee lad. Keep up your courage, and for God’s sake do nothing stupid. We will speak at a later time.”
Sam held the shirt to his sweating chest and stomach as they went down. The sloop Hound was small enough that she mounted all her guns on the spar deck; the ladder descended to the single berth deck.
Kite led him forward of the galley to the sick bay and indicated a narrow berth along the curve of the hull. He pointed and said, “Lie on your belly.”
Sam slipped off his shoes and did as he was bidden, watching the surgeon extract a bottle and a white cloth from a wooden chest.
“This will sting,” said Kite. “It is an astringent.” The pain was sharp and more localized than the lashes themselves had been, but not nearly as overwhelming. As the surgeon dabbed at the slices into his skin he said, “They tell me you served in the Constitution. Is that true?”
“Yes.”
“Then you were acquainted with the surgeon on that vessel?”
“Dr. Cutbush, yes, very well.”
“Did you know he is quite famous? What can you tell me about him?”
“Vastly skilled, but also very amiable.” Sam started to turn onto his side to face Kite as he spoke, but a firm hand pressed him down to keep him on his stomach.
“Tell me about him, but lie still, I am not done.”
Sam related his and Bliven’s first day on the Constitution, Cutbush having met them on deck and seen to their comfort, of his fascination with ancient doctors and medicine, an element which he did not know personally but which Bliven had told him about.
“You have gratified my curiosity very well,” Kite said at last. “Listen to me now. I want you to lie quietly on your belly until we know the bleeding has stopped. Do you feel like you could eat something?”
“Yes.”
“There are things I must tend to, but I will have a meal brought to you. They tell me we are only two days from Bermuda. I am going to excuse you from duty until then; that will give you a chance to heal properly.”
“When I get home,” said Sam, not admitting to himself that he was unsure whether or when he would see home again, “and make a report to the Navy, I will mention your kindness prominently.”
Kite departed, and Sam heard Evans the first officer accost him. “How is he, Bones?”
“As one might expect after a dozen lashes. Is the captain in his cabin?”
“I believe he is.”
Kite strode the length of the berth deck, pausing to instruct the bosun to take Sam a meal when it was time to eat, before rapping on the door of the captain’s cabin.
“Enter,” the voice issued from within.
“M’lord, I have reason to believe that the captain of that American prize is indeed who he says he is.”
Kington was seated at his desk. “Oh, and why is that?”
“Sir, I questioned him as I treated him. He claims to have served in the American frigate Constitution. The surgeon on that vessel, Dr. Cutbush, I know well from a call I made in Philadelphia many years ago. He knew the name, and he describes him so exactly, I have no doubt he is telling the truth. He would have been a very young lieutenant during the Barbary conflict, and cannot be the man you suspect.”
“Thank you for telling me, Dr. Kite.” When he didn’t move, Kington asked, “Is there something more, Doctor?”
“M’lord, it occurs to me that when we reach port and an inquiry is opened, you will of course wish me to offer these facts into the record.”
The next moment of tense silence freighted infinitely more conversation that what had orally passed to that point, that wonderful silence of polite exchange which indicates that the true message conveyed is other and greater than what was uttered. Both men recognized the impasse, that Kite had interposed himself in a matter not his concern, but to which Kington was vulnerable because he might have been treading at the very edge even of the freewheeling practice of impressment.
“You will be informed,” said Kington at last. “You may return to your duties.”
“M’lord.” Kite made his respects but delayed withdrawing just long enough for Kington to look at him again, into his eyes, and realize that his intention was serious. Kite clattered up the ladder and sucked in the fresh salt air, recovering from his brazenness at challenging the captain in such a way, but also calm and satisfied that he had acted out of conscience, something that he was not sure he could still do.
Sam slept fitfully and had just opened his eyes when he counted the eight bells that signaled the onset of the first dog watch. Heavy steps approached, and he looked up to see the grizzled bosun standing over him, bearing a square wooden plate, a tin cup, a swatch of cloth, and a hammer. “Are ye hungry, Yankee lad?”
“I could eat, yes.” He sat up, trying not to crack the new scabs on his back. “May I know your name?”
“You will know me as Mr. White.” He set the square plate onto the thin mattress, and Sam beheld a shapeless mass of boiled beef, a small slather of peas, and a large rocklike biscuit.
Years had passed since Sam’s last exposure to ship’s biscuit. He looked up again, and White gave him a large mug of steaming tea and laid beside him a swatch of white cloth and the hammer. “I expect ye know of naval fare.”
“When I was in the American Navy, it was not much different among our men. I was a lieutenant; the officers made out somewhat better.”
“A word of advice, Yankee lad,” he said quietly. “Do not follow that course. Protesting your identity will gain you nothing. On this vessel your name is Lively, a suspected Canadian deserter who will be used for duty pending your execution. Now, the Navy does inquire into such things, and if you can make your case, you will be set at liberty. But until then, do not provoke the captain’s displeasure.”
“I understand,” said Sam.
“The surgeon has told me you are excused duty until we make port, so be guided by me, make yourself as little noticed as possible.”
“Thank you for your consideration,” Sam said, as White nodded curtly and disappeared. Left to regard his rations, Sam took a spoonful of peas, chewing them as he folded the biscuit into the white cloth. He pulled the thin mattress aside until the wood of the berth was exposed and hammered at the wrapping until the biscuit was broken up into small sherds, whi
ch he dumped into his tea to soften. He plunged a fork as deep as he could into the mass of beef, and he bit off a small chunk of it. It was hot and tasted of brine, and he knew it had not soaked long enough in the steep tub. He should eat it first, he thought, because it would make him devilish thirsty, and save the tea for last, for he did not know when he would be offered water.
Late in the next morning, Sam was roused from his bed by the bosun, who was accompanied by a brawny but dull-looking sailor. Motioned up the waist ladder, he found himself in a line, directly behind others whom he thought must be captives.
“We have raised Nelson Island off the starboard bow,” White told him quietly. “It is the practice when coming into port to shackle the pressed men.” Sam looked to the head of the line and saw the ship’s armorer quickly and efficiently riveting irons to the ankles of each man. “You need not go back down,” White continued. “You may stay on deck and take some air, if you feel up to it.”
“Yes, I would like that,” said Sam. “Thank you. Where are the other men from my ship?”
“Them? They enlisted, so they are not considered pressed men.”
Sam nodded, calculating what a convenient policy that was to mask the true numbers of impressment, and turned his gaze aft to the unraised quarterdeck, where he saw Kington and a lieutenant quietly observing the armorer hammering the rivets of their shackles against a small anvil.
From this distance Sam and Kington made eye contact, with no sign of acknowledgment. Kington could readily admit that fitting chains to the pressed men was some inconvenience to them, but the sight of land, even such a hopelessly isolated island as Bermuda, might prove too great a temptation to impressed seamen to leap overboard and swim for it—despite the fact that there was no hiding in this tiny colony, separated from North America and safety by six hundred miles of open sea. Shackling them while in port decreased the incidence of desertions, and the subsequent odium of tracking the culprits down and hanging them.
As he waited his turn and then as the manacles were hammered about his ankles, Sam Bandy felt the ship enter a starboard turn, coming due east, and continuing until the sails were put over with the brief, confused snaps of the luffing canvas as she wore completely around, heading southwest. He could see land a half-mile off to port, and a half-mile to starboard the mole of the Royal Dockyard. He had never been here but had seen it a hundred times on the map as he shuttled up and down the coast in his trade and recognized Bermuda.
Kington leaned over to Evans. “You’ve been here before, you know the channel?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, come around easy to starboard, you may take us into the anchorage.” Kington strode a few paces forward and surveyed the length of the deck. He was fortunate, only a third of his crew had been pressed into service. Through the vastness of the Royal Navy the percentage was closer to half, and sometimes more.
“Mr. Evans,” he said at length.
“Sir.”
“Anchor us convenient to that frigate. I am going below; keep an eye on the armorer, make sure all the risky ones are chained.”
The first officer made his respects. “Very good, sir.”
At the top of the ladder Kington peered across the harbor to the much taller H.M.S. Java, gazing long enough to count fourteen large gunports down her gun deck, and saw the irregular black stubble of large carronades about her fo’c’sle and quarterdeck. That, he thought, is more like it; he could not wait to transfer over.
It is all Bonaparte’s doing, he thought as he descended the ladder. For the English, the decade and more of war with the French had required a breathtaking inflation of the Navy, now more than one thousand ships—a thousand and one, he smirked briefly, with this fat American brig. What country on earth could deploy nine hundred vessels with all-volunteer crews? Impressment in the British Navy had been accepted for three centuries; now it was needed more than ever, and it was no time to question it. Of the one hundred forty thousand sailors presently in service, at least eight thousand made good an escape every year, but Kington was satisfied never to have lost one.
As he heard the Hound’s cable thunder from its tier and the anchor crash into the water, he opened a large red leather pouch and began assembling his papers—his commission, his orders, his personal correspondence.
Let no one doubt they were about the King’s business. Well—the King’s business after a fashion. The King himself was now famously imbecile, a raving, wigless waif wandering the corridors of Windsor Castle, or playing his organ, or holding imaginary conversations and, it was said, pissing purple water. The regency was now firmly in the hands of the Prince of Wales, who was a great friend of the Navy’s—or at least he was when he wasn’t paying more attention to his frills and laces and embroidered waistcoats. Luckily, he was under the influence of high and respectable men in the Admiralty.
The right half of Kington’s mouth again screwed up into something like a smile. Sardonic irony was not his only emotion, but it was his favorite, and the closest to unaffected amusement as he was capable. One day these American upstarts must realize what kind of game the English were running there in Bermuda, that they were not just taking the odd American sailor while capturing “deserters” to round out deficient crews. Rather, they were harvesting them from America’s growing merchant fleet, harvesting whole strings of them, like hops in August. Bermuda was their principal clearinghouse, from where they were distributed as needed to their undermanned men-o’-war.
When these Americans did realize how they were being used, great must be their rage, but greater still would be their impotence, for there was nothing they could do about it.
Lord Nelson himself, God rest his pickled soul, had endorsed the practice with all his heart. No admiral in the Navy had been so vocal in his disgust, his disdain for America and Americans. He respected those wonderfully designed heavy frigates of theirs well enough, and no doubt he would have approved the memorandum circulating within the Admiralty at this moment, a proposed instruction that British frigates not engage them with less than a two-to-one advantage. That was unduly alarmist, in Kington’s opinion. Their ships might be well built, but their seamanship had nothing to offer against centuries of British tradition. And these United States, these Americans and their concept of a country and their vision of themselves as a people—no officer more than Nelson would have more stoutly advocated reducing them back to their proper station as colonial tributaries of the Empire.
Kington wondered, if it were not for the satisfaction he had derived from this business, whether he should have remained in the Navy. The duke his father was not without friends in the Admiralty; perhaps he had something to do with rescuing his fortunes, all very well if he did. At least now he was resuscitated to the point of commanding a frigate. That was a good step.
There came two sharp raps at the cabin door. “Enter.”
It was First Officer Evans. “All the pressed men are secure, sir.”
“Very well. Send a boat over to the frigate, alert them to pipe me aboard shortly.”
“Very good, m’lord.”
“Oh, and have that Canadian deserter, Lively, taken over as well. I think he is not who he says he is, but he is an experienced seaman and I can use him. Besides, he could raise a good deal of dust if we leave him here. I think we’ll just keep him where he can cause no difficulties.”
“Aye, m’lord, I will send him over with the boat and let them know the situation.”
“Very well, I shall be ready to transfer by the time they get back.”
The arrangements took only half an hour before Kington was in a boat, sitting with his back straight and his pouch upon his knees. As he approached the Java he could tell that she was but lightly constructed; she was French, a fifth-rate, captured at Madagascar with considerable damage only the previous May. He knew she had been refitted at Portsmouth before coming out to meet a seasoned capta
in. Kington noted darkly that on her stern below his cabin windows he could make out the shadow of her previous name, the Renommée, lurking beneath the golden letters JAVA.
Still, he was happy to have read in his briefing paper that she was only four years old, and he knew that her builders, Mathurin & Crucy of Nantes, turned out creditable vessels. Once they had tied up to the ladder, Kington looked up in surprise to see a bosun’s chair being lowered to him.
“If you please, sir.”
He had barely time to say “Oh” before he was being hoisted up and swung in.
“Welcome aboard, m’lord.” Kington beheld a plump lieutenant with dark hair and eyes making his respects. “Lieutenant Freemantle, sir, first officer.”
“Mr. Freemantle.” He returned the salute and extended his hand, which the first officer took, but not in an overly familiar way. “Did you think I could not manage the ladder?”
“We saw that you were carrying a large pouch of papers, sir. The chair seemed indicated.”
Kington inspected him. “Observation and initiative, eh? Very good. We’ll get on.”
“Will you inspect the ship, m’lord, or see your cabin first?”
“See the ship, yes, at once. I am pleased at what I see already.” He gestured up to the fo’c’sle and down the spar deck. “How many carronades?”
“Eighteen, sir. Thirty-two-pounders.”
“Excellent.” Ordinarily, commanding officers were given a choice of what guns to mount, but Java had come out to Bermuda as a completed package. Still, this was exactly the secondary battery he would have chosen, for he preferred close action behind the raking power of carronades over mounting lighter long guns topside. Kington ran his hand lightly down one of the stumpy barrels. “They look new. Are they just from the factory?”
“Yes, m’lord. Each one came on board with its full kit just before leaving Portsmouth.”
The Tempest--Commander Putnam and Mr. Madison's War Page 3