Little Lost Lambs at the Post

by Harold Lamb

  Frowning at her, he muttered, "Oh, I’m being bought—I know that. Yet where’s the harm, if I can aid Paul Jones?”

  "Then I wish you success,” she assented wearily, and whispered, "May Christ aid the admiral,” when she turned away from him.

  At once Nick ceased thinking of the diamond. "Anya, I must talk to you tonight. But I should go with this Jones to the ships ——”

  Anger touched the girl. "Do you think, Master Nicholas, that admirals here stay on their rotting ships? I’ve bidden the Chevalier Jones to the harpsichord music at the palace this evening.”

  Not for a diamond as large as his eye would Ivak have lingered on shore after Potemkin had recognized him. No, he clung to Nick, who stuck to Jones like a shadow, not troubling to tell Jones that he was no official interpreter sent to accompany him. Nor did the real interpreter, the army lieutenant, protest. He went to sleep in the tarantas, after Jones and Nick returned from the conference with Potemkin and the army commanders.

  When they looked in vain for a barge to take them off to the anchored ships—the dozen craft, many of them small sloops anchored across the river’s mouth—Ivak found a skiff without an owner and rowed them out.

  Immediately he began to smell smoke, and to look for the fire that made it. First was the splendid barge that passed them, with a dozen rowers and a shining bronze eagle at the prow.

  "The barge of the Empress!” cried Ivak. Because he wondered why this barge had not been waiting for Jones, he asked Nick, "Who is the gray-and-gold manling under the tent? ”

  " Nassau-Siegen, the other admiral,” Nick told him after glancing at Jones and de Ligne, who sat in the stern of the skiff. Nick had kept his ears open at the conference. Although he explained that Nassau commanded only the bomb ketches and mortar barges tied to the bank, Ivak wondered. It was not good to have two drivers of one horse or two commanders of one fleet.

  Then there was the Vladimir, the biggest ship, to which de Ligne directed Ivak to row. The biggest ship, yet without sails spread or flag flying or officers to greet Jones at the ladder. Although Nick said the Vladimir was a ship of the line of battle, she had no more than twenty-six cannon. She smelled of sheep and dirt where river-men and snuff-stinking Tatars lay about the deck between the guns, and pale jailbirds sat on the poles in the middle. Some of the officers who stared at Jones wore the dolmans of hussars, and Ivak thought that hussars were good only to parade, not to work guns.

  The two who had their heads together over a bottle of wine in the low cabin greeted the Yankee as if he were breaking down the door of their house—one of them, a bearded Greek smelling of musk, had the name of Panaioti Alexiano. His rank was brigadier. The other, a stocky Russian named Korsakov, was lieutenant. Now that Jones had come, it was clear to Ivak that Alexiano would be no more than the Yankee’s lieutenant, and he did not relish it.

  "Why, in the name of Satan,” he demanded of de Ligne, who yawned over his snuffbox, "am I to serve under him?”

  "The Empress,” murmured de Ligne, "wishes it.”

  Late—too late—Ivak learned that this superior Frenchman who held no particular command had been sent to the Black Sea to serve as the eyes and ears of Catherine. But that was after the calamity.

  Jones kept silent, only looking about him quickly on all sides.

  Ivak went up to the deck of the Vladimir to breathe, because the floor was swaying under his feet. Going to the bow, he smelled stew cooking and found the stew in a pot over a fire laid on rocks, with a dozen Don Cossacks eating a little and drinking much corn brandy around it. They were from the Don, not the Dnieper, and they did not offer him brandy.

  "Eh, brothers,” said Ivak, who would step back from no man, "what passes? Will we march forward to the sea?”

  One, who had a knife with a silver hilt, spat. "Impossible.”

  "How impossible?” demanded Ivak, squatting down among them to show he was at ease and no spy.

  "Look!”

  He of the knife pointed down-river. It was near sunset and the sky glowed clear. Beyond the sandy headlands of the Dnieper stretched the gray, salt- streaked gulf. Far off at the end of the gulf rose a rocky headland, with the tiny masts of ships clustered beneath it.

  "Turks,” said the Don Cossack, "Barbary corsairs. Many of them. Those dogs will bite.”

  Ivak reflected. About the war he only knew that the Russians, having taken the Crimea from the Krim Tatars, were moving down the Dnieper to take this gulf and this Turkish port of Okzakov at its end, to reach the Black Sea.

  "But if we go and pound them with cannon, and sink the sons of dogs?” he inquired.

  "Impossible. No bags for our powder.” The man from the Don tapped the deck with his pipestem. "Green wood.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the others of the crew, now standing by ropes and guns while the officers inspected them. "Green sap. Not accustomed to battle.” Carefully he eyed Ivak, and grunted. "You have served your time, Cossack? Then you know.”

  "I served in the cavalry,” explained Ivak. "You tell me about these ships.”

  Pleased, the man from the Don held out the vodka flask to Ivak. The ships, he answered, could not march forward without calamity because the green wood was beginning to rot, letting in a little water even when they sat, tied to the river bottom. Moreover, they could not march haphazard forward into the gulf, which was strewn with sand bars. "This fleet,” he explained, "was built only for the Empress to see a year ago. For a parade!”

  Over the low singing of the Cossacks, who had drunk enough to be moody, Ivak heard voices raised among the officers, with Nick’s interpreting. When Jones asked Korsakov for a chart of the gulf, the Russian lieutenant explained that he had none. De Ligne, calming the dispute, said that some of the Cossacks knew their way around the waters of the Liman, as he called the gulf.

  Brigadier Alexiano, getting his first sight of the Don men around the pot, shouted, "Attention!”

  The singing went on. Jones stared at the pot of goat stew and smiled. Stepping forward, he picked up a spoon and tasted a bit of the stew. Surprised, one of the Cossacks wiped a plate on a blanket and offered it to the strange officer, rising to do so. But Jones ignored it, staring at the entrance of the gulf dissolving into the sunset. When he ceased to smile, he looked very tired as he talked to Nick.

  "Ivak,” Nick called, "the admiral asks: Have you been over these waters? ”

  "At command!” Standing, Ivak said, "Yes, but not when the Turks are swarming.”

  Nick explained that the new admiral had a whim. He wanted Ivak to go back to the skiff and tie the middle of the oars with rags, and to rig a tiller of some kind.

  Because it was full dark by then, and because Ivak had kissed the brandy flask many times, he was still working to set in place a tiller made of a broken board and pikestaff when the Yankee admiral came down the ladder to the skiff, with Nick and the Prince de Ligne following. Nick was explaining to the puzzled Frenchman that Jones held the officers, not the men, responsible for navigation charts, and that it was necessary to begin making one.

  "But why?” demanded de Ligne. "Because the admiral intends to take these ships to sea.”

  "The devil! He’ll lose the ships.” Truly, they spoke in stiff words. Nick said, "The responsibility of these vessels and their crews lies now upon the admiral, not upon your excellency.” What words! Yet Jones would have only the French prince accompany him, not Nick. Jones took the rudder when Ivak crossed himself, spat to drive away evil and picked up the oars. "Marsch!” said Jones, with the prince sitting angrily beside him.

  On the flood, the skiff went fast, When the lights of their ships fell away. Jones took a line from his pocket—a line with knots tied in it at places, and lead at the end. This line he kept throwing into the water to measure it, looking back at the faint lights.

  The air became cold. Ivak felt seaweed clutching at the oars—a bad omen. Suddenly Jones bent his head down close to the water, and grasped Ivak’s knee. When Ivak ceased rowing, Jone
s turned the rudder, and the skiff drifted into a mass of seaweed. Then the others heard the steady threshing of oars—"sik-soo.” The prince motioned for Ivak to pull back toward the river, but Jones’ hand still gripped his knee.

  It was as if the two of them were fighting a duel, one to get away, the other to keep still. Above them, a shape rose against the stars with a white wash at its bow. Ivak saw the sharp point of a felucca’s sail.

  The oars threshed near, and de Ligne moaned. Then the oars came up, the felucca’s sail shook, so the vessel slowed its pace by the skiff. Ivak’s hair prickled against his head when he heard a hail in Turkish.

  He looked at Jones, who signed to him to answer. By God’s grace, Ivak could answer, having lived so close to the Turks. "We are from the island, with salt for Okzakov!”

  Another hail demanded the password.

  Ivak crossed himself this time, and shouted as if angered, "How can we have the password! We came from the island! What ship is yours?”

  It was the brandy he had swallowed that helped him to sound angered. Some words came over the water to him, "Kirlangich...kaptan-pasha...."

  Then, as if tired of wasting time on a skiff, the felucca beat with its oars and passed on. Ivak wiped the sweat from his eyes. The words had told him that was the galley of the Turkish commander, evidently spying in the night.

  De Ligne shivered. Jones waited, listening, and said, "Forward.”

  Ivak rowed out of the seaweed and the Yankee began to measure the water again. This time Ivak felt that the other knew the risk they ran, and yet expected to come out of it alive. He felt reassured and warm, but, returning in the cold of early morning, the shaken Frenchman demanded to be put on shore at the Kherson pier.

  On the Vladimir, instead of preparing to sleep in the disordered stern cabin vacated by Alexiano, Jones got a sheet of paper and a pen from his own kit, taking out his sword of honor as he did so. When Nick explained to him what Ivak had made clear—that they had barely escaped capture by Hassen Bey, the Turkish commander, in his felucca—Jones merely replied that the enemy kept a better watch than they.

  Puzzled by the slender man’s behavior, Nick wondered if Jones was not preparing to write his resignation rather than serve under such conditions—a divided command and an ill-found fleet and his own ignorance of the language. Not daring to question the admiral, Nick asked if he might go ashore with Ivak to sleep. The truth was, the boy wanted to see Anya again, to learn more about Nassau and Alexiano and this semblance of a fleet.

  But Jones did not look up from the sheet of paper. "Your duty will be here with me, Mr. McRae,” he said, "and we will not be going ashore again.”

  On the paper he was tracing a rough outline of the channel they had followed from the river. A man, Ivak thought, determined to win success, and glory for himself.

  No, Nick did not get ashore that night, nor for five nights. Nor did Jones. Day and night the new admiral called to quarters, watching the gun carriages run back and forth, "kerrumph!” Up the rope ladders to the sails, down to the magazine to inspect the corn sacks being made into powder cartridges, the admiral kept hurrying, like a squirrel on a hot stove. Over to the Little Alexander, the other ship of battle, out into the mist of the Liman at night to measure the water again. Always Korsakov, the Russian sailor, kept at his side, watching him, disliking him, but respecting him because he showed the most ignorant with his own hands how to pull ropes and wield rammers, while he gave vodka and purses of silver to the few experienced crews. Always he kept Nick by him. Without Nick, he had no tongue to speak.

  The other commanders—Nassau with his barge, and de Ligne and Alexiano—spent most of their time at the camp on shore. Once from the camp came an order to Jones to move out into the Liman, so that his ships could cover the army which was crossing the river and marching down the shore toward Okzakov. The order said Potemkin was pleased with Jones’ activity on the ships, yet the army could not be delayed because of the ships.

  "We are not ready,” said Jones. He would only give command to lift the chains that raised the anchors of the squadron, so the ships drifted a little way down the current—perhaps a league —out into the Dnieper’s mouth. There he had the anchors dropped again. It was easily done on account of the shallow water.

  Ivak wondered what Nassau and Alexiano might be saying on shore to Potemkin. But he felt secure with the Cossacks and the muskets on the platforms up the masts, and he did not guess what evil was coming. That is the way calamity strikes.

  The letter that was handed him by a boatman smelled good and had the impress of a shield of arms on the wax that sealed it. Nick said—when Ivak took it to him to read—"What boyarina is longing for your manly arms, Ivak? She writes, "Come tonight, late, to the lemon garden, please.”

  It had no name signed, but they both knew it was Anya’s. Only Nick argued that she meant it for him, too, because Ivak could never have read it alone.

  And it happened they were able to go, because Jones was willing to sleep from midnight to an hour before dawn, when he requested Nick to return to work at the gun drill with Korsakov. Not until he rowed the skiff to the familiar pier at Kherson did Ivak begin to think the letter might be a trick to draw him and the boy ashore in the dark. He did not know Anya’s writing from another’s.

  Carefully Ivak kept away from the lights as he led Nick on foot to the garden behind the private door of Potemkin’s palace. There they moved only in the shadow because the tall windows of the anteroom shed a glow through the trees. Voices and the snatches of music showed that the people of the palace were awake late, as usual. Ivak, uncertain whether he would be greeted by Anya or by a bullet, satisfied himself that no one else was afoot under the lemon trees. Nick, however, was growing impatient of squatting in the shadow. He had edged away to look through a window, when a woman and a man came out of the tall window.

  When the woman moved casually toward the lemon trees, her bare shoulders showing white, Ivak recognized Anya Graeme and the Prince of Nassau-Siegen. The nobleman was paying her compliments while the girl responded playfully, as if the two of them were alone among the trees. ". . . and the gossip is all of your excellency’s desire to advance with the fleet against the enemy!” she exclaimed.

  "Faith, my sweet,” Nassau laughed, "my motto is to attack, always to attack. Yet this is too fair an evening to spoil with a thought of war.”

  Nassau’s plump, impassive face was complacent with flattery, if not with wine. And Ivak felt relieved because, while the foreign admiral spoke casually to the woman at his side, Anya had raised her voice as if she meant to be heard by anyone in the garden.

  "A pity,” she cried, "that the Yankee admiral lacks your excellency’s boldness! ”

  Nassau moved his shoulders. "Ah, well. He has the reputation for daring when in command of a single ship. Obviously he is less able to manage a squadron.”

  Anya giggled, her head near the prince’s shoulder. "They are calling him 'the hesitating admiral’! Haven’t you heard?”

  "I’ve seen that the brave Jones allows the galley of the Turkish commander to have the run of the gulf, unchallenged. But I tell you again, sweet, you must call me Charles ——”

  Ivak reflected grimly that the squadron had no vessel to pursue the swift felucca, the kirlangich, over the shoals. And it seemed to him that Anya was trying to warn them of some plot against Jones.

  Then the talk ceased, for Nassau suddenly gripped her around the waist and shoulders. At the touch, she strained back. Nassau, bending her head back, began to kiss her.

  Out of the darkness stepped Nick, catching Nassau’s silver-corded collar and wrenching him away. In his other hand he held a pistol. He said, "Get back into your kennel.”

  To Ivak’s surprise, Nassau ran to the window, calling for aid.

  "You dumbheads! ” Anya exclaimed.

  But angrily Nick caught her up in his arms, hurrying out of the garden, berating her in Scottish. All because he had seen the girl kissed. Following the
m, Ivak was aware of lanterns flashing under the trees. Guiding Nick and the struggling Anya to the space where grooms slept beside the harnessed teams and horses of the palace guests, he pushed the others into the seat of a carriage and sprang up to the box, whipping the horses up the first lane he saw. It led uphill.

  At once Ivak let the horses walk, to quiet the sound of the carriage. By the time they reached the crest of the rise he knew that they were not followed, and that they had climbed to the sedge-grown headland above Kherson. Peering back at the seat, he saw that Anya and Nick were no longer fighting; they were talking softly in Scottish and she lay back against his arm. He waited.

  The girl was laughing. "Ohai, Ivak, how Charles, Prince of Nassau, ran away! For all his roaring, he’s such a coward!”

  "But you let him kiss you," said Nick. "Idiot! I wanted to warn you, and now what have you done? Nassau will believe I led him out to be attacked, and Nassau is Potemkin’s favorite ——"

  "To warn whom, of what?”

  A dark spirit seized on the girl, and she would speak only Russian. "You, Master Nicholas McRae. This Nassau is jealous of your Paul Jones, and by eliminating you, he would make Jones dumb. Do you think, Nicholas, they have no eyes and ears on the ships? Well, Nassau begged the Kuraginskaya, who is now Potemkin’s mistress—sent out by Catherine—to find a way to make you disappear into the water of the river. The lovely Kuraginskaya is, of course, attached to Potemkin, but she has a fondness for Nassau, who makes love so expertly ——”

  "Anya! You are a child, yet you understand such things.”

  "So the Kuraginskaya, aware that I was acquainted with you, asked me to send for you to come to her house. I promised her to send for you tomorrow. Instead, I sent for Ivak today, because I dared not warn you, Nicholas, in writing.”

  Her white face gleamed under the stars. Ivak judged that she was lying altogether or telling them all the truth.

  "But you spoke of Jones,” objected Nick.

  "Certainly of Jones.”