“Yes, Captain. We understand. We will wait out of sight.”
“Precisely, sir. I do not want them to know you are aboard.”
Don Jorge led his wife after the young cadet but stopped for a moment, holding up a hand. “Captain, one thing though. The rebels have a steamer? Where did they get a steamer? I thought even the central government didn’t have a steamer.”
The captain’s eyebrows raised and he nodded. “You are right, sir, the government did not have a steamer, only a few schooners to patrol the coast. And the rebels certainly did not have a steamer either, only a few small sailing vessels manned by their piratical mercenary scum. We were always able to steam away from them easily if they ever came this far off the coast, which was very rare. But it appears that all that has changed now, Don Jorge. We can’t outrun that ship over there. They will be here in a few minutes and your presence here may . . . aggravate them.”
“I understand that, Captain. We will stay out of sight. What will you do when they get here, Captain?”
Captain Rivera shook his head. “I do not know exactly, Don Jorge. I wish to God that I did.”
2
A Demented Heart
The rhythmic pounding of the propeller slowed and then stopped. The engine itself gave a hissing scream, then a gasp as the steam was bled off the boilers. Soon the reassuring sound of the engine was gone and they knew that Captain Rivera had lost control of the ship.
It was absolutely dark in the steerage hold. The air was rancid from the bilge water that sloshed around their feet and cloying coal dust that was everywhere. Now that the machinery noise had ended, the groaning of timbers and frames overwhelmed all other senses. Don Jorge and his wife held each other desperately as they sat on a massive frame, their legs cramping with the effort not to fall completely into the filthy bilge water as the stopped ship careened wildly in the seas. Huddled there in the black hell of the hold, they wondered what was happening above them.
Suddenly Don Jorge heard men’s voices approaching, garbled at first, then clearer. Occasional words could be barely discerned but not understood. He thought it might be the native dialect of the Moskito coast—the rebel coast. From the bantering tone of the voices it sounded as if the men were searching the holds, seemingly in a general way, as if to see what items of value they might find.
The shine of a lantern grew closer, increasing from a flicker to a glow, shadows darting around the hold with the sway of the light. Don Jorge counted three separate voices. The tone was no longer friendly. The men were in a hurry and sounded annoyed. The lantern was coming nearer now. The ship abruptly lurched and one of the men yelled out in rage as he hit his head on a beam. The others laughed, a cruel and mirthless laugh of sarcasm. Don Jorge gently moved his wife lower down to get below the cast of the lantern’s light, and felt her shudder as she immersed in the slime of the bilge water. He then sat down next to her and kissed her forehead and cheek, tasting the tears running down her face, his heart broken that he had gotten her into this situation.
A loud shout, victorious and excited, erupted from the closest man. The other two replied, then called up to someone on the deck above. The lantern rapidly began to advance until it was almost to them, the man holding it coming into focus from the glow. As Don Jorge stared in mute terror at the sneering face of the man holding the lantern over him, he felt another man come up from behind and pull him roughly away from his whimpering wife, running his head into the roughhewn side of the hull. His wife screamed as they jerked her up out of the bilge water by her dress, but the grip of the man behind him kept Don Jorge off balance and he couldn’t get to her. The men pushed the ambassador and his wife forward to the crude ladder, punching and kicking them to ascend the steps.
The Monteblancos emerged into the sun’s blinding glare and were dragged along the main deck until they got to the smokestack, collapsing in each other’s arms on the searing deck, where the men motioned them to stay. Captain Rivera and the crew of the packet steamer were nowhere in sight as Don Jorge tried to calm himself and take stock of the situation.
He examined the men around him. They were dark, rough-looking men with expressionless eyes, wearing filthy rags and armed with cutlasses and pistols. All appeared to be either mestizo, Indian-Hispanic, or full-blooded Indians. Some were exchanging comments in their language about the disheveled couple on the deck. Don Jorge knew the only hope left was his ability to speak with reason and understanding. It was what he did in life—try to bring a positive light to difficult situations and resolve problems with words. He had done it for many years with some of the toughest minds in the world. He attempted to appear nonthreatening and un-frightened as he stood, hoping that one among them understood Spanish.
“I am Jorge Monteblanco. May I speak to the man in charge here?”
Sudden words from the afterdeck silenced the men and they parted to allow two men, slightly better dressed than the others in that they wore trousers and shirts, to come up to Don Jorge. The older one, a mestizo, spoke in the broken Spanish of the isthmus.
“They don’t speak your language . . . Your Excellency Don Jorge Monteblanco. But I do. I am Mister Cadena, first officer aboard the warship Venganza.” He saw the reaction at his use of Monteblanco’s title and leered. “And yes, I know who you are and what you represent. That little boy cadet told us all about you as he begged to live.”
Don Jorge could hear his wife weeping behind him. Mendez had been one of her favorites, reminding her of their son the doctor. “Then you know that my wife and I are no threat to you, and that our country is not involved in your conflict. I see that you are sailing under the flag of your new country. Now is the time to demonstrate the civility of your cause, sir. We are traveling to Mexico and need to be on our way.”
Cadena laughed and said something in the native language to the man beside him, which caused the crowd to cackle with laughter. Cadena shook his head and went back into Spanish, his partner translating it for the other men. “Then you have no luck, Don Jorge Monteblanco, Ambassador to the Republic of Mexico from the United States of Venezuela. No sir, you have no luck at all, because according to your country, we have no cause and no civility. In fact, we do not even exist! So therefore, I think we do not have to demonstrate anything to you, except what we demonstrated to the fools who sailed this ship so close to our coast without our permission.”
The men grumbled as they heard the translation, then grunted louder at the ending. Several moved closer and Don Jorge could see blood on the cutlass of one of them. He tried to placate the leader.
“We thought we were at least thirty to forty leagues off your coastline, sir. The ship’s officers told me that.”
“Ha! How arrogant of them. They know we claim fifty sea leagues for our new nation. Everyone knows that—”
“Cadena!”
The shout stopped them all. Don Jorge saw that Cadena instantly lost his haughty demeanor. The shout came again, followed by oddly accented Spanish that Don Jorge could not place.
“Cadena! There is nothing more back here. Let’s return to the ship. Burn this bitch.”
A tall, muscular, blond-haired man stepped out from the after cabin and halted, looking at the scene on the deck. His gaze settled on the ambassador and his wife. “Cadena, who are these two? I thought they were all dead.”
“These two were hiding in the bottom of the ship, Jefe. That boy officer told us they were there. The man is the Venezuelan ambassador to Mexico. That is his wife.”
The tall man gazed at Don Jorge, studying him. Then he smiled. “Really? So does he have any money on him?”
“No, we looked. People like him do not carry it on their person. They have it in their baggage. We got it all out of that.”
Don Jorge finally recognized the accent of the stranger’s Spanish. It was from North America, from the United States. His heart lightened. The
re was a chance. He took a step forward and spoke in English.
“Excuse me, sir. Please allow me to introduce myself in English since I think I recognize your accent as that of the United States. I am Don Jorge Monteblanco and this is my wife, Esmeralda. We are from Venezuela and traveling peaceably to my new assignment as ambassador to Mexico. We respectfully request permission to continue on with our journey. May I have the pleasure of knowing your name, sir?”
“You think I’m from the United States?” came the reply in English, the tone low and menacing.
“Why yes, sir. And now that I hear you speak English I am certain that you are from the great United States of America. From the northern states, I believe, sir. One of my sons is the assistant to the deputy ambassador at the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington. Perhaps you know him? Pablo Monteblanco.”
“Yeah? Well you’re wrong, mister high-falutin’ ambassador. Dead wrong. I’m from nowhere. I don’t have a country.” He pointed over at the tattered flag flying from the rigging on the other ship. “Hell, I don’t even claim that little pissant excuse for a country. I just use the flag ’cause it’s fun to see the look in people eyes when they see it. And I don’t care one whit about you, that fat cow of a wife, or your little brat in Washington.”
“Please sir, we are no threat—”
“Shut up, you old man. You mean nothing to me.”
Cadena interrupted in his fractured Spanish. “So, Jefe, what do we do with them?” He eyed the woman. “Kill them now or maybe have a little bit of entertainment?”
Don Jorge’s momentary sense of hope was extinguished when he heard Cadena. He stepped backward to where his wife knelt on the deck, their hands instinctively reaching for each other. The tall norteamericano pursed his lips pensively and squinted up at the blazing sky, then gazed leisurely around at the horizons, his arms akimbo and legs planted far apart in an intimidating stance as he swayed on the heaving deck. His face, burned dark red by the sun, swiveled further around and stopped to regard the couple before him. The gray, lifeless eyes communicated their own reply to Cadena, making Don Jorge shudder as his bowels involuntarily voided, staining his trousers to the laughter of the mob around him.
The man turned to descend the ship’s side to the longboat floating alongside and spoke, his words coming out in a soft sigh. “Cadena, I do not truly care what the hell you do. We will be gone from here in ten minutes, so until then you can do whatever your demented little heart desires, as long as they are dead at the end of it.”
3
Backwaters
March, 1869
Oh, Peter, just look at that. She’s becoming quite the big sister, isn’t she? See the way she’s watching over him.”
Peter Wake and his wife Linda stood just above their two children on the gently sloping hillside by Fort Barrancas. Wake smiled as he watched his four-year-old daughter, Useppa, playing mother to her little eighteen-month-old brother, who stumbled and rolled a little way down the hill, laughing at it all.
It was a beautiful day. The sea breeze from the south brought warm Gulf air and cottony clouds, bright white against the faded blue sky, over Pensacola Bay. The change in sky and temperature broke the cold spell they had been having. The winters in Pensacola really could be very cold, Wake admitted to himself, then chuckled out loud as he remembered the winters of his youth in New England. Good Lord, he thought, even I am becoming a transformed Southerner.
“What dear?” His wife swung her gaze around to him, her long auburn hair so soft on her shoulder where his hand rested.
“Oh nothing, Linda. I was just thinking how cold it’s been lately. Then I remembered winters in New England and what truly cold air felt like. This place isn’t even cool compared to there.”
His wife, who Wake thought was becoming more beautiful with the years, pulled him close, a mischievous twinkle in her dark green eyes. Her hair smelled of jasmine, a scent he always associated with her—with love and gentleness. She pulled his head down to hers, whispering as she kissed him.
“Well, I try my very best to keep you warm.”
“And a job well done. Very well done.”
It was a long kiss, until a tiny hand tugged at his trousers.
“Daddy! I said look at Sean. He’s pointing at the boat,” said Useppa.
Wake looked over at Sean and found that he was indeed pointing at a ship steaming out Pensacola Bay channel. She was the Nygaard, the last of her class of gunboats from the war still in commission. She had just gone through minor repairs and maintenance at the naval yard and was returning to her patrol duty. From their vantage point Wake could see over a large expanse of the bay, from Warrenton in the east to Fort Pickens in the south. Nygaard had almost made it out the channel to sea. She was almost free, he ruminated.
“See, Daddy. Sean wants to be a sailor, like you! Will he be a sailor, Daddy?”
“Well I don’t know, sweetheart. He can be anything he wants to be. But I think he has a little while before deciding about all of that.”
Useppa reached up and traced the gold cuff lace of his uniform with a finger, then looked up at him. “Do you want him to be a sailor like you, Daddy?”
Wake was aware of Linda listening to his replies while trying to suppress a laugh. Could she have somehow gotten Useppa to ask that question, he wondered? No, she wasn’t the type to have children ask her questions for her. But he did have the feeling this particular answer would be remembered for a long time, possibly to be entered into family lore in the years to come. Wake was the son of a son of a sailor and knew about the influence of family lore.
“Only if he wants to be a sailor, honey. To be a sailor can be a good life, but it’s not easy. You have to want to be a sailor for it to be a good life.” He looked at Linda and shrugged his shoulders. “So how was that for an answer, dear? Pass inspection?”
She made a show of deliberation, chin on hand. “Not bad, Lieutenant Wake. Predictably positive . . .”
He suddenly felt the need to press further. “Do you disagree?”
“No, Peter. You’re right, of course. If it’s in his heart, then he’ll have to go to sea or he’ll be miserable. I don’t completely understand this mystical bond with the sea, the yearning sailors have for it when they’re ashore, but I do recognize it.” She hesitated, looking into his eyes. “I’ve seen it in you lately.”
As usual, Wake told himself, Linda got right to the point. He appreciated her candor and her independence. Linda was strong enough not to be one of those clinging wives, but gentle enough to be there with a soft word or gesture. He wondered how in the world he had been lucky enough to find her and keep her during the war. He also wondered if his demeanor lately had given away his secret longing for watery horizons, for which he felt a twinge of guilt flush through him.
“Yes . . . I suppose you have. How does that make you feel?”
“The perfect answer would be that I’m happy that the man I’m married to now is the same kind of man I first married five years ago. Right?” She sighed. “You’re a sailor, born and bred, Peter Wake. I knew all that when I said yes, years ago in Key West. I just wish you didn’t want to leave me and the children and go to sea so much. We’ve been a real family here and I just want that to continue. I guess I’m a fool for that.”
“Linda, you’re no fool, and I am absolutely the luckiest sailor on earth to have you for a wife.”
Wake held her tight again and they stood watching the children playing in the grass, the bay beyond a mass of green water flecked with white wave tops. Useppa rolled Sean over, causing more giggles. He glanced at Linda’s face as she smiled at the antics of her children.
Wake himself didn’t understand a sailor’s bond with the ocean. How could a man who had a wife and family like this still want to go to sea and leave them behind? Sometimes he thought it might be a type of sickness, a self-c
entered destructive defect in his character.
Growing up as the son of a Massachusetts merchant schooner captain, he had not seen his father for as much as a year at a time. By the time his father had finally come ashore in older age to run the office of the family shipping business, Wake had gone off on his own to sea. That had been the way of his family for generations.
Wake’s brothers were sailors too. One was killed in the war aboard a navy monitor gunboat near Charleston. Another had returned after the war to sailing schooners on the North Atlantic in the old tradition. It was a hard and strange life for both the seaman and his family, either making everyone stronger or destroying relationships. He had known families who were examples of both.
But Linda had never really complained before this, sharing vicariously his sense of awe about the sea and displaying sincere pride in his accomplishments in the navy. She, more than most, knew what he had overcome during the war and how far he had come in the last six years.
For the past two and a half years, Wake had been on his career’s first shore duty assignment, at the Pensacola Naval Yard as the assistant to the assistant commandant of the yard. It had been an education in the seemingly mundane and desperately crucial support side of the United States Navy, made even more difficult by the drastic funding cuts instituted since 1867. Since then the navy had gone from over six hundred ships during the war down to fifty, and competition for sea billets had been fierce. Wake, a relatively junior lieutenant, had been stationed at the yard since his last command assignment aboard the armed steam tug Hunt had ended. He had learned quite a lot about how the navy functioned, and frequently dysfunctioned, in that time. And he had worked hard to make the yard as efficient as he could in his position.
A Dishonorable Few (The Honor Series) Page 2