The Continental Risque (19 page)

He heard steps on the ladder, and the grating easing back in place, and he waited in the dark to see who was there. Some member of the watch coming to see if he needed anything, coming to listen to his sorrows. A figure, a shade in the dark, appeared at his side, standing motionless, looking at him.

‘How are you, Hackett?' the visitor asked in a whisper. Hackett lay still, peering into the shadows. He could make out the person's outline, could see the suggestion of a white waistcoat under a darker coat, white breeches.

‘Poorly,' Hackett said, and then, ‘Who is that? Lieutenant Tottenhill?'

‘Aye.'

Hackett was silent for a moment, wavering between anger and confusion, and then anger won the day. ‘I got nothing to say to you, hear? What do you want?'

‘I was hoping to have a word with you.'

‘I got nothing to say to you. You was the one had me flogged, wasn't you? And just because you slipped on the deck?'

‘Yes, and I was wrong. I have come to offer you this, by way of apology.'

Tottenhill's shape had become more defined as Hackett stared into the dark, and now he saw the lieutenant's arm reaching out toward him. He reached out as well, and his hand touched the cold glass of a bottle, and at the same time he whiffed the familiar, comforting smell of rum.

There was no man on earth he would less wish to drink with than Tottenhill, but here was an officer offering him rum. Such opportunities did not come along often. He took the bottle and took a long swallow of the liquor, feeling it warm, not burn, as it went down. He had never tasted rum this good. He took another drink.

‘I am dreadfully, dreadfully sorry about what has happened to you,' Tottenhill continued as the fore topman drank. ‘I can see now it was an accident, tempers flaring because of this ice and all. I never … well, I don't know what it was I wanted. I lost my head a bit too, I suppose. Had the master-at-arms lock you down. I just wish to say that I am sorry.'

This was all very surprising to Hackett, and difficult to understand, and the rum, which he was drinking steadily, was not helping. ‘Why in hell would you want to apologize to the likes of me? You, a gentleman and an officer, and me just some poor rat in the forecastle?'

‘Here's the thing of it, Hackett. This is a Yankee navy, if you haven't noticed; Yankee captains and Yankee officers. Now, I may be an officer and you may be a foremast jack, but we are both sons of the South, if you follow. They've got no use for Southerners like you and me. Don't think I get treated with any respect. You better reckon on more floggings, for you and anyone who isn't from New England. You should know that Biddlecomb is convinced that the desertion the other night was all the fault of the Southerners. He's mad, and we are all of us Southerners in for a bad time, unless we look out for each other.'

Hackett took another pull from the rum. ‘I understand, sir.'

And he did understand, understood far more than Tottenhill might have guessed. Here was a rift in the crew far worse than he had imagined: Southerners versus Yankees. The best part of it was that the rift apparently existed among the officers as well. In the dark, and despite the pain, Hackett smiled. ‘You're right, sir. I can see that now. It all makes sense, when you lay it out for me like that.'

‘Good, good. Listen, I have to go now. I just wanted to make sure you were all right, as all right as you can be, anyway, after being so ill-used. Let me take that bottle; if Biddlecomb catches you with that, he'll flog you again, on top of the stripes you've already got. You get some sleep now.'

Hackett saw Tottenhill move, like a shadow in the dark, and felt him pull the bottle from his fingers.

‘Sir,' Hackett said as contrite as he could, ‘bless you, sir, for … for coming to me like this.'

‘Think nothing of it. We fellows from North Carolina must hang together, you know, look out for each other. Get some rest now.' Silently Tottenhill went up the ladder and was gone.

Hackett lay still for a long while, thinking over the strange meeting he had just had. Tottenhill was reaching out to him, actually reaching out to him even after he, Hackett, had quite purposely taken the opportunity of the fight to lay him out flat on the deck. And still Tottenhill was coming to him with a genuine offer of friendship, and showing him the perfect way to get the entire crew worked into a frenzy of self-destruction.

‘Stupid bastard,' he said out loud.

They were free of the land, free of the land at last, and Biddlecomb's heart swooped with the long blue rollers, soared with relief and optimism. They had left Cape Henlopen in their wake two days before and had seen nothing but blue water in that time. It was like the final fulfillment of a dream long held, and he had not felt this uplifted since Virginia had invited him to her room that night over a month before. He loved every minute of it, and even the big storm building on the northeastern horizon could not diminish that fact.

The crew, however, did not seem to share his joy. He had to admit that, at least to himself. Isaac Biddlecomb's jubilant mood and former predictions notwithstanding, their southerly progress and liberation from the accursed ice seemed to have had little if any effect on the dark and brooding attitude of the men.

He stood at the weather rail of the quarterdeck, one hand on the main topgallant backstay, and squinted aloft. They were carrying full topsails and foresail, pressing their luck in the mounting wind. He looked out to weather. The gray sky, threatening at sunrise, looked positively ominous now.

Between the
Charlemagne
and the horizon to windward was the
Andrew Doria
, the first reef tucked in her topsails, and a mile ahead of her the lumbering
Columbus
, already making heavy weather of it, though worse was yet to come. The rest of the fleet was visible to leeward, with the flagship almost hull down, leading the way south.

‘Mr Rumstick,' Biddlecomb called to the officer of the watch, and Rumstick made his way across the slanting deck. ‘I reckon we're in for a rough night. Been building all day and it's still building.'

‘Aye, sir, I reckon so.'

‘This is hardly the thing to bring good cheer to the men.' Biddlecomb could not help but smile.

‘No, but it'll take their minds off their woes.'

‘Well, they seem to have a lot of woes, whatever the hell they might be, so they'll need a lot to keep their minds off it. Let's turn out the watch below. I'll have the second reef in both topsails and strike the topgallant masts and yards to deck.'

‘Second reef in the topsails and strike the t'gallant gear, aye, sir.' The
Charlemagne
's bow rose on a wave, rearing up like a startled horse. The two men took a firm grip on the rail as the wave passed under the ship. Then the bow dropped, crashing into the sea and sending a great shower of spray aft that soaked them as thoroughly as if a hose had been turned on them.

Rumstick looked up at Biddlecomb and smiled, despite the water streaming off his face and dripping from the end of his nose. ‘At least we ain't in the ice anymore, sir.'

‘And I say amen to that, Brother Rumstick.'

Six days earlier, on the morning of the eleventh, the eleventh of February, after several days of mounting temperatures, they had woken to find the ice around them reduced to floating pieces. The largest was as big as a ship's boat, but they were sufficiently scattered to allow the American fleet to weigh anchor and make its way downstream.

They ran down the last twenty miles of the Delaware River and into the wide Delaware Bay. It was five weeks since they had left Philadelphia, five weeks frozen in the river, five weeks to travel sixty miles downstream. But it seemed even longer, much longer than that.

It took them thirty-six hours in the light air to run the length of the Bay and come to anchor in the ice-free, glassy water of Holekill Road. They were joined there by the sloop
Hornet
and the schooner
Wasp
, fitted out in Baltimore and just come around to join the fleet.

Biddlecomb stood on the
Charlemagne
's quarterdeck as the longboat was swayed over the side. A red pennant hung limp from the
Alfred
's ensign staff, the signal for all captains to come aboard the flagship.

Dinner in the flagship's great cabin was an amiable affair, loud and raucous as a tavern, and as crowded as well, with the commodore, nine captains, Captain Nicholas of the marines, Jones, and the
Alfred
's surgeon. The Yankee sailors crowding the great cabin, old and young, were not men given to subtlety or much refinement, and that added greatly to the public-house atmosphere, as did the quite extraordinary consumption of wine, slings well to the northward, canhooks, and various other intoxicating concoctions.

At last dinner was done and rum punch served out, and the commodore called the group to order.

‘All right, gentlemen, listen here. We get under way tomorrow, so I reckon you should have some tolerable idea of what we're about. This here' – he held up a folded paper – ‘is the orders from the Naval Committee of Congress, and when I read them to you, you'll see what a bunch of' – and here Hopkins reeled off a string of obscenities, that Biddlecomb, despite having been a sailor for sixteen years, found genuinely shocking – ‘lawyer's clerks they truly are.'

Hopkins held the sheet of paper up to the light coming in from the stern windows and read, ‘“To Esek Hopkins, Esquire, Commander-in-Chief of the fleet of the United Colonies, Sir. The United Colonies, directed by principles of just and necessary preservation against the oppressive and cruel system of the British Administration whose violent …” They always write this kind of horse shit. Who do they think they're talking to? Preaching to the god-damned choir. If we didn't already know this crap, we'd be out making our fortunes on some privateer, eh, Whipple, like the last war, instead of sitting on our arses here.

‘Anyway, let's see … “and hostile proceedings by sea and land” et cetera, et cetera … “Continental Congress have judged it necessary to fit out several armed vessels … you are instructed with the utmost diligence to proceed with the said fleet to sea and if winds and weather will possibly admit of it to proceed directly for Chesapeake Bay, in Virginia … you are immediately to enter the said Bay, search out and attack, take or destroy, all the naval force of our enemies that you may find there,” blah blah blah.

‘“… should be so fortunate as to execute this business successfully in Virginia you are then to proceed immediately to the Southward and make yourself master of such forces as the enemy may have both in North and South Carolina …”'

Now brows were furrowing around the table, and several captains were exchanging glances. ‘That's getting to be something of a tall order, ain't it, Commodore?' asked Hoysteed Hacker of the
Fly
.

‘Oh, it gets better, sir, depend upon it,' Hopkins said, and turned again to the orders. ‘“Having completed your business in the Carolinas you are without delay to proceed Northward directly to Rhode Island, and attack, take and destroy all the enemies' naval force that you may find there.”'

A howl went up from the captains as a dozen different points were offered up in loud and louder voices. ‘Rhode Island?' said Nicholas Biddle, fairly shouting to be heard over the rest. ‘After we get the tar beat out of us down South? That ain't some cobbled-together bunch of merchantmen, there, that's an honest-to-God British squadron. What have they got there, two frigates?' The last he directed at Captain Whipple.

‘Two frigates and then some,' Whipple said. ‘The
Rose
and the
Glasgow
, and the frigate
Cerberus
is always poking around. You can ask Captain Biddlecomb here about them.' He gave Biddlecomb a conspiratorial wink. ‘They got the
Nautilus
too, and the brig
Bolton
, and the Dear knows what else. That's quite an assignment we've got there.'

‘And our men sick already, before we've even got to sea,' added John Hopkins of the
Cabot
. ‘I've got twenty down with the smallpox, and my surgeon won't give odds on how many'll live.'

‘Silence, please, gentlemen.' The commodore held up his hand and the great cabin fell silent. ‘Your objections have been duly noted. Of course only a covey of goddamned, rutting lawyer's clerks would expect us to maintain on a cold coast like this with so many men down sick. In any event, here's the last part I want to read to you.

‘“Notwithstanding these particular orders,” et cetera, et cetera, “if bad winds or stormy weather, or any other unforeseen accident or disaster disable you so to do, you are then to follow such courses as your best judgment shall suggest to you as most useful to the American cause and to distress the enemy by all means in your power.”'

Hopkins tossed the orders from the Naval Committee on the settee behind him. ‘All right, listen here. Your orders are simple enough. Just keep company with the flag while we make our way south. Watch for my signals. If you get separated' – Hopkins pulled nine identical sealed envelopes from a haversack on the table – ‘these here are your orders and the rendezvous. Read 'em whenever you want, I don't go in for that “open them at this or that goddamned latitude” nonsense. I don't know how you could mend it if you but do what I've just told you.' He picked up a bottle of Jamaican rum and said, ‘Now, on to new business.'

By the time Biddlecomb climbed with elaborate care down the
Alfred
's side and into the waiting boat, he felt decidedly unwell, having been eating and drinking, smoking a pipe, and shouting with his fellow officers without respite for the past five hours.

He boarded the
Charlemagne
on the larboard side to avoid the ceremony that must accompany the captain's official boarding on the starboard. His head was in no condition to endure the shrieking bosun's calls, nor did he feel he could manage another civil word. But four hours later, after a restorative nap, he called to the marine sentry to pass the word for the first and second officers.