Cape Cod (51 page)

And the sailors, though far from noble, were not fools. When they saw that Sam would protect himself, they gave him respect. Even Tom Dodd would offer instruction when they were assigned to the same station, as every man wanted a smart mate in a heavy gale. The sailors taught him how to handle the complex of lines that controlled a great square-rigger, and they taught him a few simple rules for survival aboard a British ship of the line.

He should never awaken a sleeping sailor, as most feared midnight sodomy. Instead, when searching for his hammock in the dark, he was to move quietly and sniff. When he came to a hammock that did not smell—at least to him—it was his.

He should never waste his piss over the side, but go into the open vat on the orlop deck, so that when there was a fire, they would not have to use drinking water to fight it. No one warned him that the smell and the swarm of bugs above the vat would nearly strangle him.

Before eating any ship biscuit, he should rap it on the table to shake out weevils and worms. If he found an especially lively weevil, he should save it for the races, in which crewmen bet their grog rations on the fastest bugs.

And above all, he should never take one of the ship’s rats as a pet… or cross Captain Ourry.

The rats seemed to pay more attention to Sam than did the captain. It was as if Ourry considered his victory over the Hilyards so complete that he no longer needed to offer them the respect of an enemy. The father had died because he refused to work. The son had seen the error in this and had taken to the rigging like a sick man to the waters at Bath.

And that was what Sam wanted him to believe. But Sam had seen only the error in his father’s reasoning. Freedom could not be won if a man chose chains. There was no honor in a principle if it killed you. Once Sam overcame his grief, he came to believe that, for all his calm courage, his father had lost his mind and chosen imprisonment over freedom, death over life.

So Sam went about his tasks with care and obedience. He sought no attention, good or bad, while he planned the revenge that would gain him his freedom. It would come, he was certain, if he bided his time.

When a sail hove in sight one November afternoon, Sam learned how little time he might have to bide. The
Somerset
was riding the swells like a balky horse, and Tom Dodd was teaching him the lines and blocks that supported the mainsail.

“This ’ere’s the main yard ’alyard, three lines run through the ’alyard jeer block. You got leech lines and buntlines, too, and parrels ’round the masts, but the main yard ’alyard’s the most important—Say, are you listenin’?”

Sam’s eyes were turned toward the south.

“You lose this ’ere block in a ’eavy blow, the ’alyard runs out, the parrels don’t ’old, the yard comes down, you lose mains’l, maintop, and control of your ship—”

“What ship would that be?” Sam pointed to the horizon.

“Oh, my.” Dodd feigned a cry of sadness. A scab had formed at the corner of his nose, and he looked more poxed than ever. “That’s the dispatch ship from New York. You’ll be gone by nightfall. You’re dead, lad. At least, if you’d let me bugger you, there’d be someone to remember you.” Dodd patted Sam’s behind.

“Remember my knife”

That evening, the captain sat with Dr. Thayer and an enormous man in a dirty brown coat, Master Kindle of the schooner
Julia
. On the table before them were a decanter of port, two glasses, a half-eaten meal of mutton, potatoes, carrots, and a bundle of dispatches.

On the captain’s carpet stood Sam Hilyard, as summoned, patiently awaiting the captain’s attention while his empty stomach gurgled like a bilge pump.

“Have a look at him, Kindle,” said Ourry at last. “Another one for that vermin scow on the Brooklyn flats.”

“A ’orrid place, the
Jersey
, and gettin’ worse.”

“Have you much typhus?” Dr. Thayer sipped his port.

“There’s typhus, starvation, and the rats is fatter than the prisoners. But young lads is always welcome.”

Ourry patted his mouth with a linen handkerchief and went over to Sam. He was not wearing his cockaded hat and so seemed slightly more human. “Principles. This lad’s father died for… principles.”

Kindle attacked his joint. “Cape Cod mutton’s a principle
I’d
die for, Cap’n.”

Ourry looked into Sam’s eyes. “Kindle doesn’t understand principles. He’s too hungry.”

“Aye-aye, sir.” Sam stood at attention and looked straight ahead, resolved to show neither fear nor disrespect.

With thumb and forefinger, Ourry pinched the flesh of Sam’s chest. “Such a fine specimen. ’Tis a great pity to lose you to starvation, pestilence,
principles
. But you must go, as your father would have done.”

“I’ll… I’ll miss the
Somerset
, sir.”

“Will you, now? And what would your father say?”

“He’s… dead, sir.”

For some reason, Ourry found this answer more humorous than anything that had happened since the Hilyards came aboard. He laughed in the boy’s face, threw his head back, and laughed from the back of his throat. “Dead indeed, along with the principles he so conveniently espoused after he’d finished raiding innocent commerce.”

“My father, he did what the colony asked, sir,” said Sam. “I do what I must.”

“Principles are slippery things, Kindle.”

The fat man gnawed on the mutton leg. “Aye.”

“Some men let their principles kill them. Others let their principles die. And either way, hate follows. This lad hates me because I killed his father. But could he hate one who showed him that his principles were merely illusions?”

“My hatred’s real, Captain.”

“That’s good. Hate keeps a man alive.”

“Honest lad,” said Dr. Thayer. “Honest lads make good sailors, Captain.”

“Perhaps… perhaps.” Ourry returned to his meal, rubbed his napkin over his brass buttons, and picked at his food.

Sam had come with contrition and yet had demonstrated spirit. He could do no more, and he resolved now that if he was banished to the
Jersey
, he would fall on Ourry and kill him, consequences be damned.

But Ourry, it seemed, was not finished with Sam. There were many lessons to teach these rebels, and the best rebels to learn were the youngest. “Gentlemen, I hate to have a man leave my ship hating me.”

“They either leaves lovin’ you… or dead.” Kindle poured a shot of port down his throat and began to laugh.

“You’re very crude, Kindle.”

Kindle stopped laughing instantly.

Dr. Thayer bit his cheek to keep from smiling.

“ ’Twas a joke, sir, merely—”

Ourry raised his hand for silence, then turned his gaze onto Sam. “Master Kindle brings word of French shipping. We go in pursuit tomorrow. I will show you that your principles
were
illusions. All men are
not
created equal. There is no man in the fo’c’sle my equal. And no rabble of colonials and French the equal of good English oak. The
Somerset
is England, lad. Stay with her and see the good sense your present course describes. Then”—Ourry smiled—“will you love me.”

Back in the forecastle, Tom Dodd grinned across the table at Sam Hilyard. “So we still be shipmates. There’s ’ope yet.”

“None for you.” Sam stuffed a piece of ship biscuit into his mouth without rapping it on the table. He held it until he felt the worms tickling the back of his throat, which caused him to gag and bolt for the piss vat. There he vomited up biscuit, salt meat, and corn stolen from a Cape Cod field. Then he took a deep breath of urine stench, which caused him to vomit up a wad of green bile as well. This earned him a place in sick bay, where he could plan his revenge without fear of Tom Dodd’s greased prick.

There was a strong smell of drink from Dr. Thayer but a strong air of sympathy as well. He said Sam need not eat wormy biscuit to earn the safety of sick bay, but simply ask, and the doctor would concoct a reason.

“This can be a miserable, corruptin’ life, and a lad like you, Sam, he’s not ready for corruptin’.”

Sam thanked him for all his kindness and for the knife.

Around four bells, the wind came up.

“Doc?”

Thayer was reading, huddled beside a bucket of hot coals suspended on a ceiling chain. “Aye?”

“The wind. What direction is it?”

Thayer cocked his head, studied the motion of the bucket and his lantern. “No’theast, I’d guess.”

“Good.” Sam knew that the tide would be running hard on the flood when they left. He pretended to sleep and prayed that the gale kept up. When the doctor blew out the lantern and went to his berth, Sam went to work.

He took the doctor’s bone saw from the instrument case and, with all his stealth, sneaked up to the spar deck, past the marine watch, to the mainmast rigging, and up to the main yard halyard. His allies were the dark of a moonless night and a wind that boomed so loud it blew away all the subtle sounds of an anchored ship.

He chose a spot just below the jeer block, where three heavily tarred, fist-thick lines formed the strongest point of the halyard, and he began to cut. It took him most of an hour to finish his work. He severed two completely and left the third hanging half-cut. It would hold, he was certain, until morning, when this would be his station, and either he or the
Somerset
would meet their end.

The wind blew hard and steady the night through, sweeping every cloud from the sky and raising whitecaps even within the anchorage at Provincetown. It was still booming well after dawn when the
Somerset
weighed anchor and left the harbor under topsails and drivers.

From High Pole Hill, the villagers watched her go. From the mainmast, Sam Hilyard watched the villagers. The moment the sails of the
Somerset
dipped below the horizon, they would rush for their fishing boats and make for the cod holes. And if the
Somerset
struck the bar, they would rush to her. His survival might depend upon them, though in truth, he had stopped worrying about survival.

His desire to destroy the ship had become so concentrated and pure that nothing else mattered. A grown man might have looked down from the maintop at the guns, the redcoated marines, the officers bellowing commands, and chosen to fight the French instead. Sam looked up and out, at the Narrow Land washed in long, low rays of gold, at the roiling blue sea and the stretch of blue above, and he summoned his courage.

Once the ship had rounded Wood End and swung north, the captain called for mainsail and foresail, maintop and foretop.

“Get to it, Sammy my lad.” Dodd grinned at him. “And don’t fall. I’d never forgive meself.”

“Get too close, and
you’ll
be doin’ the fallin’.”

They stood on the lines above the main yard and let out sail, as they had done a hundred times before, but this time, Sam reached up with his knife and cut into the last strands of line in the jeer block. And so skillfully did he cut that not even Tom Dodd saw him do it.

“Can’t ’ide in sick bay forever, lad,” Dodd was saying as he busied himself with his work.

“I always got my knife.” Sam flashed it under Dodd’s nose.

Dodd gave a laugh and took to the ratline. Sam thought to hack a bit more, but he knew now that the halyard could not hold under the strain of the mainsail. So he dropped to the deck with the other sailors.

As the
Somerset
rounded Race Point and entered the Atlantic, the gusts swept straight across the sea, and every wave struck the bow like a shot, sending spouts of white spume into the air while the deck pitched wildly.

Captain Ourry veered several points north to swing beyond the bar before turning south. Once he passed Head of the Meadow, with the highlands of Truro to starboard, the wind would be his ally, chasing him far and fast down the forearm of the Cape. But he first had to beat against a northeast gale and a running tide that conspired to put anything that floated on the beach.

He ordered the men aloft once more, to ready them for the next sail change.

Dr. Thayer watched Sam climb the mainmast just behind Dodd. He had been watching Sam all morning, for when a sailor feigned sickness, his mates were known to push him harder the next day. And Tom Dodd was the sort who might push literally.

Dodd was the first to step onto the main yard line, and something caught his attention. He was gesturing for his mates to stay on the crosstrees while he grabbed two pieces of line to splice them.

Thayer pushed past a squadron of marines and went down the deck for a better view.

Sam Hilyard had wrapped his arm in a length of line and leaned out, as if to help Dodd repair the broken line. A brave lad, thought Thayer.

“A vengeful lad,” whispered Dodd, “who cuts the ’alyard I taught ’im about.”

“Never.”

“It was you at this station a few minutes ago.” Dodd’s eyes shifted to the other sailors, none of whom could hear his talk over the wind. “I got the goods on you now, you sweet little bugger.”

“And I got ’em on you.” Sam did not hesitate or think an extra second on what he did. He leaned out and put his foot on the main yard. From the deck, it looked as if he was reaching for one of the loose lines.

“No!” cried Dodd. “No more weight—”

Another gust boomed from the northeast, carrying Dodd’s cry away from the ship, and the last halyard broke. Leech lines and buntlines snapped like thread. The parrels screeched down the mast. Dodd’s eyes and mouth formed three ovals of terror, and he fell, the sail billowing around him like a shroud.

Sam had done it. He swung back to the crosstrees as the main top, torn loose from its stays, slammed against the mast and sent three more sailors screaming toward the deck. Sam held tight to the line and tried not to hear.

Now sailors came rushing from below. Marines who never showed fear in the face of rebel muskets began to mill about in panic on the spar deck. The captain’s brass voice trumpet flashed in the bright sun. And the
Somerset
lost headway.

Had the northeast gale abated suddenly, had the tidal current been gentler, had he not been here on the treacherous back shore of Cape Cod, George Ourry might have saved his ship. But he was quickly turned broadside to gale and tide, and then he was doomed.