The Beothuk Expedition (12 page)

His gaze wandered across the water. “They call us Red Indians when name is
Beothuk
—the people. They call me Tom when name is
Mogaseesh
—boy of the people. White men bring
Mogaseesh
to Fogo when small, to John Cousens. Long time ago. No going back to the people now. Wearing English men's clothes, eating his food and drinking his rum. Smelling like him.
Mogaseesh
knows he be killed if he goes up the river, just like navy man.”

Tom June's eyes locked onto mine for a moment before he turned to go. As he walked away I heard him mutter, “Navy man have wig. Huh! He make good prize. Two scalps.”

At first light the following day, before there were signs of life from the merchant's house, I took the
Dove
round Fogo Harbour. I wished to test a new rudder that the boatswain had contrived and mounted, the old one having shown signs of rot at the waterline. Neither Hard Frost nor I was willing to leave such things to chance and so we put the shallop through her paces in a moderate breeze. All was proceeding well until Rundle fouled a sheet, causing Jenkins to trip and nearly tumble overboard. I had the two of them sent aft, where they stood before me like lubbers, I declare. I roasted their ears with a few choice words and sent them forward to man our number two gun.

Lieutenant Cartwright had not thought it necessary to exercise the crew in gunnery. I was inclined to disagree, and therefore planned to drill them during our morning excursion. At my signal the gunner ordered the charges and shot removed from numbers two and four. This was to simulate a misfire and to practise the men in reloading the guns as quickly as possible. The wadding and shot were removed from the barrels without injury, though hardly with efficiency. The auger-like worm was then employed to remove the small cartridge of powder at the bottom of the gun. The whole was followed by reloading, in which a new charge was rammed home, followed by the one-pound shot and wadding to keep all in place. To be done efficiently, the manoeuvre requires each man to attend to what the other is doing. I observed that this was not the case at either of the guns. At number four, Grimes and Greening managed to jam the cartridge halfway down the bore, at number two Jenkins caught one of Rundle's fingers between the ramrod and muzzle. What was so painfully obvious had somehow escaped the first lieutenant's attention: in the event of an engagement we were likely to be destroyed.

Frost, in the meantime, had been tacking and wearing the boat around the harbour in a very light breeze. The wind appeared to be stronger outside the islands and he suggested that it would serve as a better trial for his new rudder. I agreed and we sailed for a channel between two islands with the freshening breeze on our larboard beam. The fishing boats had left for their stations an hour earlier, and so I was surprised to see a vessel entering the narrow reach from seaward.

It was a bye boat, a small craft with a stubby mast, and she was tearing along under full mainsail and jib. I judged it unreasonable to attempt a passage through the channel at the same time and gave the order to luff our topsail. We checked our headway and the boat came on quickly with a single man now struggling to lessen her canvas. He managed to do so in an unseamanlike manner and pointed his bow towards us. Having seen our guns and naval ensign, he likely thought it best to pay his compliments. I hadn't the least interest in him but I responded as expected, hailing and asking his business at Fogo. The man shouted back that he was a furrier out of the Bay of Exploits and that he was bringing in his summer pelts. What's more, he said, he'd been running from an armed French brig since the previous evening.

This news increased my interest, you may be sure. I asked him where he'd last seen the vessel and he replied that he'd lost it in darkness near the south side of Change Islands. Now my heart began to race, for the Change Islands were near enough to be seen from Fogo's Brimstone Head. I questioned him quickly on the number and weight of the vessel's guns and her general disposition, to which he gave answers that marked him for a landsman. Yet I knew that the brig could be none other than the
Valeur
, which had somehow evaded our frigates and was continuing to harass our trade.

The bye boat had drifted closer during this exchange and I took a closer look at the man who was in it. He was dressed in canvas and rough-spun clothes that were encrusted with brine, and he wore a broad-brimmed black hat of the kind favoured by religious dissenters. More remarkable, however, was his face, which might have been quite ordinary but for a feature that caused the eye to linger. On either side of his face, from mouth to ear, ran the puckered white lines of two identical scars. I took no time to reflect upon this, the need to alert Lieutenant Cartwright being uppermost in my mind. We quickly pulled our wind for shore and Greening was rowing me to the beach even before the shallop had anchored. Minutes later I was pounding breathlessly at the merchant's door.

The news, to my great surprise, had nothing of the effect I had anticipated. The lieutenant received it with a purse of his lips and little more. Even when I said that the
Dove
was ready to sail in an instant, he maintained his silence. When finally he spoke, it was with the careful phrasing that I had learned to dread from those who are slow to grasp an opportunity. In the polite parlance of the service, they are reluctant commanders, more concerned with weighing the benefits or repercussions of an action than with seizing the day. I knew his reply before he gave it; the answer was like a white flag flown before the battle has even begun.

In a word, he said that we had no orders for pursuit, to which I answered that our standing orders were to protect the trade of the colony. He countered that we were not equipped to fight an armed brigantine, which was true enough. My response was that we might shadow the enemy and learn his intent, thereby providing intelligence to our frigates. I saw his nose lift at my impertinence.

“You will return to the
Dove
, Mister Squibb,” he said in a tight voice. “There you will await my arrival and our departure for the Bay of Exploits. Those are your orders, sir!”

The door closed in my face and I was left to stare at its weathered boards. I made an angry retreat across the potato field to where Greening was waiting on the pebbled beach. His eager expression died with a glance at my scowl and he rowed us to the shallop without a word.

John Cousens

It was not the emotion of Cartwright's argument that swayed me. It was instead the nerve that it touched—a nerve that had lain exposed and sensitive these many years. His words had rekindled the pain, and in a way I was grateful for it, as it gave me the chance to make amends.

Like my fellow men of business, I had come to Newfoundland for one purpose only—to turn a profit on my investment. It has been no easy feat, given the lack of governance and the knavery of my competition. At first I concentrated on my purpose and kept a distance from the many evils, both social and political, that are a curse upon this island. I turned an unseeing eye and an unhearing ear to all that did not concern me and I felt that I was doing no wrong. But after a time my conscience began to trouble me.

When Tom June was brought to my plantation I was quick enough to take him in, if only to ease my guilt. It was the guilt of the indifferent and it has burdened me these many years. I told myself that I hadn't come to the New World to take up a crusade against my fellow Englishmen. In fact I was sympathetic to their complaints at first. They had been harassed and attacked by the savages for as long as anyone could remember. Nets, traps, and tools disappeared in numbers, threatening the ruination of men like myself. But then I began to hear tales of reprisal, of murder so foul that I could no longer ignore my feelings of horror and shame. Yes, they used ten-shilling words like reparation and dissuasion, but then I saw their deeds for what they really were—needless violence and barbarous cruelty for which there is no justification.

Then, over time, I began to see a change in the pattern of these acts. At first they had been carried out at random by angry, frustrated individuals, however cruel they might have been. Soon I discerned another hand at work, one that was more methodical, more systematic and wide-reaching in its destruction. Whoever this is, he remains unseen and unknown to me, even today. And if one man is capable of such a thing, he could not attempt it without a highly placed accomplice to watch his back for him.

I need say no more. Any decent person will understand why I agreed to be a part of Cartwright's mad plan. And mad it was, because not a man amongst us was a woodsman. If we survived the arrows of the Indians it would be a miracle. Against that unforgiving wilderness I gave us even less of a chance. As for Tom, I could not blame him for refusing to help. He was afraid. Whether afraid for himself, for us or for his own people, I could not say. I did not tell Cartwright, but in the fall Tom took his leave of us for weeks at a time and had done so since he was old enough to have a mind of his own. I never asked him what he did or where he went and he never offered to tell me. My men said that he met with his father, though idle talk is all it may be. And yet, I believe he knew more about the state of his people than he was willing to tell me.

At any rate, my more pressing concern was the hiring of a guide and pilot to take us to my plantation at Indian Point in the Bay of Exploits. All of my men were away fishing and I was no navigator, having never been in a boat before my first trip to Newfoundland. I am a man of business and inclined to leave the mysteries of the sea to those who know them best. I was therefore compelled to scour the port of Fogo for someone to guide the shallop, a task that young Mr. Squibb urged me to pursue with the greatest haste. Unlike Cartwright, he and several of the crew were much excited by news of a French brig-of-war cruising nearby.

My search did not take long, as all but one skilled man was away at the fishery. I found this fellow in a lean-to tavern in Bank's Cove, in the shadow of Brimstone Head. He was neither drunk nor sober and the sight of him gave me some reservation. He was short in stature, as lean as a fox, and it was plain from his appearance that he was a furrier. He wore a beaver hat and leggings of tanned hide, and his face resembled those leggings in colour and texture. The tip of his nose was white and bloodless, no doubt from frostbite, and above it were two coal-black eyes set uncommonly close together. He also had a mouthful of fine brown teeth and these he showed me in a sly grin when I addressed him. His name was Thomas Rowsell, a name that I am never likely to forget.

He agreed to my offer, though at a price that was only slightly less than a king's ransom. I tried negotiation, then argument and threats, and in the end we settled on a sum that was only slightly less than he'd first demanded. That evening he came on board and we sailed without delay.

I soon had the measure of this Rowsell. A surly, ill-tempered cur would be a good description. He had not the least regard for those around him and he knew nothing of common manners. He farted, spat and wiped snot on a sleeve or whatever else lay at hand. Once I saw him put a finger alongside his nose and blow something disgusting onto the deck. It was only by chance that Mr. Squibb's back was turned. Had he seen Rowsell defile his boat, he would have thrown him overboard. The young lieutenant was very particular about the appearance and operation of that humble shallop. It might have been a flagship for all the attention he lavished upon it.

As we sailed from Fogo, past the northern end of Change Islands and then south of Bacalhau, I had time to observe the others in our party. I was soon struck by what an odd collection they were. Cartwright and Squibb, the two officers, seemed steady enough but the same could not be said of their midshipman. When awake, this Froggat was strange in his speech and manners and was sometimes taken with a kind of fit. I had no doubt that he was ill and I pitied the lad as much as I eyed him with caution.

He was not the only peculiar hand on board the
Dove
. We had as passengers Mr. George Cartwright, the first lieutenant's brother, and a man of the cloth named Neville Stow. Cartwright was of the country sort, forever bidding his servant to polish his muskets and pistols when he was not firing them at some unsuspecting bird or porpoise. This practice of wanton destruction clearly annoyed Mr. Squibb, and I was somewhat put out by the practice myself. The other gentleman, the preacher, was much the opposite in character and disposition. I have rarely seen a man so nervous upon the water and never one so inclined to hold fast to large, heavy objects for safety. I tried to engage him in conversation only once, a mistake that led to some nonsense about the saving of heathen souls. I began to suspect that he was only slightly less mad than the midshipman.

The warrant officers, Bolger and Frost, were typical man-of-war's men. They were blunt and efficient, though I cared little for the boatswain's handling of the crew. Still, he had good reason to abuse some of them. Two in particular seemed half-dazed much of the time, and the petty officer named Grimes was a proper scoundrel. He took liberties where and when he could and was forever cursing the officers under his breath. He and Rowsell fell in together straight away and I frequently saw them consorting and whispering on the forecastle. Mr. Squibb saw them too, for there was little that escaped his notice on board that unhappy shallop.

Jonah Squibb

In ten hours of fair sailing we came to John Cousens' plantation at Indian Point, near the mouth of the River of Exploits. In that time we saw not a trace of the
Valeur
, and Mr. Cartwright and I said nothing more about it. In fact, we said nothing to each other at all. As fractious and disagreeable as he was, our pilot knew the waters well and guided us without incident through a starlit night. I followed our progress by chart, keeping the watch and making notations of my own when he called for a change of heading. I might have engaged him on the finer points but the man was so repugnant that I could scarcely bear to be civil.