CHAPTER 4:
HIGH TIDE
When Gideon returned to the deck, he carried nails and a hammer. He turned to see the English squadron, the three ships hove-to beyond the bar, a mile away.
“Clear for action!” he roared. “Stand by your guns, New England! Drummer, beat the long roll!” And as the bay echoed with the rattle of the drum and the deck rumbled to the sound of bare, running feet, Gideon stepped to the flag locker and brought out the largest national ensign the schooner carried. Walking to the main shrouds, he put the hammer in his pocket and stuffed the flag into his waistband. Gideon ascended slowly to the tops. Reaching through the shrouds, he nailed to the mainmast the national ensign with its fifteen stars and fifteen stripes.
Returning slowly to the deck, he saw the men’s eyes on him as they stood at their station. He had just made a gesture that could not be misinterpreted: that flag would never come down in surrender. “Clear away one of the larboard six-pounders and fire it to windward,” he ordered, his brown eyes as fierce as an eagle’s, and returned to the flag locker. He fixed the flagstaff to its socket on the taffrail and raised another, smaller Stars and Stripes over the quarterdeck; at the forepeak he raised a white banner lettered in black, FREE TRADE AND SAILORS’ RIGHTS; at the mainpeak he raised a blue flag with fifteen stars circling an eagle and the silver legend CATCH ME WHO CAN.
With the men at their quarters the boy with his drum began subtly to change the rhythm of his beating, tapping out a familiar cue; the privateers, flushed with bravado after Gideon’s audaciousness, began to stamp their feet to the rhythm, and a high, sweet tenor sang out:
Our schooner is a privateer,
For the Indies she is bound;
And the pier it is all garnished
With bonnie lasses round.
Captain Markham gives the order
To sail the ocean wide;
To seek the British lion bold,
And seize from him a prize.
The stamping seamen joined in on the chorus; Gideon wondered as he stood by the flag halliards if their roar of defiance could be heard among the ships of the British squadron.
So stand up, my lads,
Let your hearts never fear!
For is there man among you
Wouldn’t be a privateer?
The English send their men-o’-war;
They think to hunt us down.
But never shall they find us, boys,
The Yankees of renown!
We’ve taken brigs off Nevis sands,
And sloops off Kingston Bay;
We’ll take all ships of English oak,
And swiftly sail away.
So stand up, my lads,
Let your hearts never fear!
For is there man among you,
Wouldn’t be a privateer?
Gideon clasped his hands behind him and walked back to the quarterdeck, his eyes still anxiously turned to seaward; he jumped as the gun went off forward, the bang accentuating the final stamp of the second chorus. He picked up his glass and trained it on the enemy. The drum rattled at his elbow.
Here’s a health to Captain Markham!
The Yankee privateer!
For with such men to lead us, boys,
We have no cause to fear.
Our guns are made of iron, boys;
Our yards are made of pine;
Our Captain of New Hampshire oak;
Our flag above us shines!
So stand up, my lads,
Let your hearts never fear!
For there’s no man among you
Wouldn’t be a privateer!
That stamping on the final chorus must have carried for miles, even to windward. The drummer was changing his rhythm again, picking up another tempo. “Secure that drum, boy, and take yer station,” Gideon growled; he resisted the rattling interruptions of his thought. The boy finished with an impudent flourish and ran forward to his position by the number one starboard gun.
The British frigate was hove-to just off the bar, its quarterdeck black with men in cocked hats. Through his glass Gideon could see that the sound of the gun, if not the hands’ outrageous bellowing, had caused a stir on the enemy ship; their own flags rose into the breeze, and as Gideon whiffed the scent of powder, he smiled grimly at the stir his gesture would have created.
A gun fired to windward was the traditional challenge to combat: Gideon had dared the British to attack. He could picture a dignified Knight of the Bath snapping to his subordinates about “demmed Yankee impudence” and “Brother Jonathan growing too big for his britches.” Gideon hoped he had made them angry.
He turned his glass to the prize brig Linnet and saw George Willard lowering the last gun truck into the pinnace, which already cradled the menacing iron tubes of the prize’s twelve-pounders. The Lord alone knew what the merchant brig was doing with such ordnance. He had planned to install them on his own gundeck; but if there was to be a fight now, he’d prefer to have his crews using guns they knew.
“Boat comin’ from shore, Cap’n,” reported Browne, the bosun. “That’s our Mr. Harris aboard.”
Gideon turned his telescope on the boat, seeing Harris’s blond head, the four tarred hats of the crew, and a bright yellow top hat that could only belong to Don Esteban de Velasco.
“Get ye ready to pipe our guest aboard, Mr. Browne,” Gideon said.
Velasco was a short, almost tiny man, so delicately built he gave the impression of fragility; he dressed at the height of Spanish fashion in yellow striped nankeen trousers, a bright green coat over a quilted pique waistcoat, a black satin cravat worn over another cravat of white linen and fixed with a diamond stud. His tall round hat elevated his stature past Gideon’s chin. He doffed his hat and bowed, and revealed elegant spit curls arranged just so on his temples and forehead. His eyes were bright and intelligent, his face eager. Gideon guessed that he and Velasco were about the same age.
“Honored, sir,” Velasco said, his English flavored more with the Thames than with the Hudson.
“Honored, Don Esteban,” said Gideon. His attention was momentarily diverted from his guests.
“Avast, there! Don’t spread the boarding nets!” he roared over Velasco’s shoulder. “We want those to be a surprise!”
Don Esteban looked about him with eagerness. “So this is the deck of a Yankee man-of-war!” he smiled. “I have been on a British ship-sloop— it was the Nymphe, eighteen guns, that captured us ten years ago. Your vessel compares favorably for its size.”
Gideon refrained from mentioning that another comparison might be made merely by looking seaward at the British squadron.
“Thankee, Don Esteban,” he said. “Perhaps you would oblige me by stepping below to my cabin for refreshment.”
“Delighted, sir,” said Velasco.
As they stepped down the scuttle, Gideon wished fervently that he could speak at least a little Spanish; but beyond a few dockyard words he knew none. He had inherited his father’s inability to remember foreign sounds. His uncle Malachi, he never ceased to remind himself, had been granted a gift for languages and had spoken several fluently.
They entered Gideon’s little cabin, and Velasco took a seat.
“We are a temperance ship, so I cannot offer you wine,” Gideon said. “Perhaps you would care for some chocolate or coffee?”
“Chocolate would be splendid, thank you.”
Gideon called for his steward and ordered chocolate and cheese, and the bargaining began. The desperate nature of the situation was known both to Velasco and to Gideon: both would lose if the British took General Sullivan and her prizes. Nevertheless their bargaining was leisurely, for neither wanted to give the impression of haste. Their haggling was interrupted once by Harris to report that the British sloop had lowered a boat and was taking soundings off the bar. Gideon ordered that the long twelve-pounder amidship be cleared and fired on the boat; the rest of his bargaining session with Velasco was punctuated every minute or so by the regular roar of General Sullivan’s long tom until after twenty minutes Harris came below to inform them that the enemy launch had been demolished.
“Convey my congratulations to Tate,” Gideon said. “He is ten dollars the richer.”
Shortly thereafter Velasco presented Gideon with a bill of exchange for fifteen thousand dollars— Cuba was desperate for European goods, in short supply due to the war— and then returned to shore to arrange for the unloading of the prizes. On deck to see his guest off Gideon saw that the British had sent another boat to pick up survivors from the first and bring them back to their ship.
Watching the boat with interested eyes and clutching a smoldering linstock in his hand was Thomas Tate, the tall, broad-shouldered black man who captained General Sullivan’s long gun.
Gideon knew that any tall hand named Thomas was going to be called “Long Tom“ by his shipmates, just as any literate seaman would be called “Professor”—“ the coincidence that Tate also captained the schooner’s long gun only heightened the hands’ pleasure at their conventional sobriquet. Long Tom Tate had learned his gunnery in a hard school: he, as well as Bosun Browne, had been at the battle of Copenhagen, but while Browne served as second loader aboard Nelson’s Elephant, Tate had commanded a Danish gun aboard the Elephanten, supporting the Trekroner battery. They had probably first met while squinting at one another over the hot barrels of cannon, and now they battled the British together— it was not uncommon to see such men serving together on American privateers.
“Tate, I’m pleased with you,” Gideon said.
“Thankee, Captain,” Tate said. “Them British, damn ’em, me and this gun bugger ’em to blazes.”
“Er— watch your language, Tate,” Gideon glared. The big fifteen-stripe flag snapped overhead.
“Mr. Willard’s ashore with the twelve-pounders,” Harris reported. “He’s got the barrels ashore and is setting up a tripod and a tackle to hoist ’em on their carriages.”
“Thankee, Mr. Harris,” said Gideon. “I will be obliged to you and Browne if you’d sail those prizes to the mouth of the river, then warp ’em up to the landing. Take as many men as you need.”
The first officer and the bosun filled a boat with men and pulled off to the prizes. Gideon paced the deck, watching the British rescue boat recede toward the frigate, and rewarded his labors with a plug of tobacco.
The prizes raised their anchors and coasted gently down to the mouth of the river, where hawsers were made fast to trees by the landing and the captures were warped upstream by men working at the capstans. Later in the afternoon the work details returned, and General Sullivan, watched every second by British telescopes, raised its anchors and coasted to the mouth of the river, where the privateer was anchored across the current, bow and stern.
Gideon was amazed at the number of drays already lined at the landing, ready for the prize cargo. Velasco was a man of power in the countryside, and appeared to have mobilized every slave and peasant for twenty miles. The landing was choked with drays, with the shouting of impatient Cubans and the braying of their mules. Velasco, riding a handsome, shining stallion whose shoulders stood far higher than his own, rode through the confusion, brandishing a whip and trying to impose some kind of order. Flat-bottomed boats came down the river, manned by slaves under a driver; men ashore began building a large raft. Gideon sent forty men to the prize vessels to break open the hatches, and begin to transfer goods. It was almost noon. The tide still ebbed. The first drays began to be loaded to take the goods inland away from the vengeance of the British.
General Sullivan was slightly under a hundred feet long from her taffrail to the tip of her jib boom, and the river was at least a hundred feet wider at its broad mouth. Gideon contemplated these facts as he watched the enemy squadron. There was no hope of the privateer schooner’s being able to prevent British boats from getting past her toward the prize ships; that was why the cargo had to be moved inland. But first they would have to face General Sullivan’s fire, and they would probably choose to take the schooner before moving upriver.
Gideon looked at the bank. The high-tide mark was plain to see, ringing a few of the palm trees at the water’s edge. He cut himself a new quid of tobacco as he contemplated the possibilities occasioned by those marks...
“Ahoy, Captain!” It was Velasco, climbing the schooner’s entry port, crossing the deck to where Gideon greeted him.
“We need only three hours more,” Velasco said, looking significantly at the sun— reddening, the sun’s lower edge was already touching the lush Cuban hills, and above the opposite horizon a gibbous moon was rising, signaling the turn of the tide.
“Very good, Don Esteban,” Gideon said. “May I impose upon you to the extent of your keeping for me a few possessions ashore at your plantation? Things that may be useful if we find ourselves cast adrift in Cuba.”
“But of course.”
There were several thousand dollars in gold and silver kept in Gideon’s cabin under lock and key, the money used to pay for the privateer’s incidental expenses. Gideon did not want the money taken by an enemy: they could keep his crew fed here.
“Thank you, sir,” Gideon said. “As soon as it grows a bit darker, I’ll need you to return twenty of my men and one of my boats.”
“Do you mean to fight them?”
Gideon spat the last of his tobacco over the side and wiped his mouth with a handkerchief.
“Aye,” he said.
“These Englishmen, they are good,” said Velasco. “I spent almost a year as a prisoner in one of their ships and another three months ashore in Portsmouth waiting for a cartel.” He squinted at the three enemy hove-to off the bar. “They are good men, very efficient,” he said. “You do not need to fight them; you and your crew are welcome at Rio Lagartos as long as you wish to stay.”
“I thank you, Don Esteban. We’ll fight first.”
Velasco was earnest. “In the name of mercy!” he said. “You have sixty men, they have— how many?”
“Perhaps a thousand.”
“You will all be killed or taken!”
“That is as the Lord God wills,” said Gideon. His voice rang clearly over the water. “He has given us this war, and he has given me an opportunity to strike the enemy a blow they will not soon forget. I must not waste it. Whether we win or lose this fight, the glory will belong to the Almighty either way.”
Velasco spread his hands in frustration. “Our good God has never asked us to commit suicide!” he said.
“It will not be suicide, Don Esteban,” Gideon said calmly, watching the sun lower on the green horizon. “I’ll show you. It is time.”
He reached for a speaking trumpet and summoned Harris and twenty men, then began to give the list of orders he’d been preparing all afternoon. He turned to Velasco to explain.
“We will put out two kedge anchors off our stern, one upstream, one down,” he said. “That way we can slip one anchor cable while hauling on the other and swing General Sullivan’s stern either direction, so that the British boats will not be able to hide from our guns. Each anchor cable will be fixed to a spring so that if one of the kedge anchors is cut away, we still may be able to pivot on the cables remaining to us. Mr. Harris will break out our best bower— that is our heaviest anchor, normally kept inboard so that it won’t be lost in a collision or some other accident— and we’ll fix a cable to it and prepare it for dropping in case the enemy cuts all three cables and tries to tow us out.”
“Very clever, but I think it will only delay matters, no?” asked Velasco.
“Boarding nets will be draped over our decks,” Gideon went on. “They will cover the entire vessel, hanging loosely so that any Englishman trying to climb aboard will be caught like a fly in the web of a spider.”
“Ah— I know these nets, the British used them,” said Velasco. “But you will still be outnumbered perhaps ten to one. That is a seventy-four-gun ship off the bar, Captain Markham!”
“Battles are decided not by men, but by God,” said Gideon. “My preparations are only to make me worthier in his eyes.” He offered a grim smile. “Samson was vouchsafed to slay a thousand men at Ramathlehi and armed only with the jawbone of an ass; my namesake destroyed the Midianites at Moreh with only one hundred men— if the spirit of the Lord is with us tonight, we will be victorious, and if he is against us, a thousand guns and ten thousand men will make no difference.”
“My friend, do not tempt Providence to your destruction,” Velasco urged, taking the right tack at last. “He may look upon this defense as arrogant pride on your part.”
“I pray not, Don Esteban,” said Gideon calmly. “Drape that net loosely there!”
“Captain—” Velasco began.
“I’m sorry, sir— I must see to some business just now,” Gideon said. He left Velasco standing on the quarterdeck, then drew the first officer aside and gave him a quiet series of orders, pointing first to one bank of the river, then to the other. Harris nodded, took two men, and went below, returning with the end of a three-and-one-half-inch cable normally used as a sheet for the schooner’s big mainsail. Working efficiently, a line of men brought the entire cable up from below and coiled it neatly in Harris’s boat. Harris and a dozen men lowered themselves into the boat and rowed to the shore just at the lip of the river.
“Now you will see why I am sanguine, Don Esteban,” Gideon said. They watched as one end of the cables was fixed to a palm growing at the water’s edge some inches above the high-water mark; then Harris rowed across the river mouth, playing out the cable behind him until he came to the other bank, where his dozen men drew it taut and belayed it to two trees.
“Yon cable is stretched six or nine inches above the water, Don Esteban,” Gideon said. “It will stop the boats dead for the time it takes to cut it. During that time” — he gestured to the larboard battery facing the river’s mouth— “these guns will be firing. Before the light fades altogether, they will be aimed carefully on the cable. They will not miss.”
“Brilliant! Glorious!”
Velasco was excited by the prospect of a massacre. He swept off his hat and dabbed with a handkerchief at the perspiration on his brow. “You are inspired, Captain!” he said.
“All credit is the Lord’s,” said Gideon simply, but he found himself smiling at the praise. Carefully he extinguished the smile.
Harris returned to report his tasks finished.
“Very good,” Gideon said. “Call the men back from the prizes. We’ll sight our guns on the cable and then give the hands their supper.”
He watched the British through his glass in the waning light, dark shadows floating on the gray of the sea, anchored now for the night. They would have Americans in their crews, men pressed into service. Gideon prayed the enemy captain would not force the Americans to fight for him tonight.
“Captain Markham?” asked Velasco.
“Don Esteban,” Gideon replied. “May I be of assistance to you?”
“Your plan with the cable is brilliant, Captain,” the Spaniard said hesitantly. “But do you think it is consistent with the laws of civilized warfare to trap the enemy so? Could a gentleman do such a thing?”
When Adam delved, and Eve span, who was then the gentleman? Gideon thought, the words of the old rhyme coming to him unbidden. But it would not do as an answer.
“I believe it is,” he said. “If I am wrong, the Lord will judge.” If the Lord, he thought, cares about such notions as gentlemen possess.
“In that case I have a request to make,” said Velasco. “I would like to spend the night on your vessel. Your hold is filled with my cargo, and I should look after it.” He smiled as Gideon stared. “Also,” he said, “I would not want it said that Spanish bravery is inferior to Yankee impudence.”
Gideon laughed. His laughter was a rare thing, and the men nearby looked up with curiosity. “You’re welcome, Don Esteban,” he said. “We’re honored.”
“The honor is mine, sir,” said the Spaniard. “You understand that I cannot fight with you; my nation is neutral. But I will render whatever service you may require short of using a weapon.”
“Please stand by me, then,” Gideon said. “I can use you as a messenger.”
“Thank you, Captain. I would like to write a letter to my wife and send it ashore if I may.”
“Certainly. Please use my cabin,” Gideon offered. The planter accepted with thanks. When he returned to the deck, Gideon had a boat ready for his message to the shore, and had his chest of ready money in it to be taken by two of Velasco’s loyal servants to his plantation.
The western sky deepened to black, and only the moon showed the rest of the privateer’s crew returning in their black boats. General Sullivan had six guns each broadside ranging in size from short sixes to short twelves, most of them having been taken from prizes. The guns were loaded with grape and cannister, and the crews hauled on the tackles to run them out, the gun captains adjusting the quoins to lay the barrels directly on the almost invisible cable stretching across the river’s mouth. Long Tom Tate loaded his long twelve-pounder carefully and swung it on its pivot to bear on the cable.
Supper was served, and the galley fires doused. The sea breeze fluttered the privateer’s flags one last time and died. Water chuckled beneath the schooner’s stern as the incoming tide rippled the surface of the river, but the carefully placed anchors held the privateer steady in the river. Muskets were loaded and placed within reach of the crew. Browne was placed in charge of the fo’c’sle; Gideon commanded the quarterdeck; Alexander Harris took charge of the gun crew’s amidships. General Sullivan’s three swivel guns were emplaced, one forward, one astern, one amidships facing inland in case the enemy got behind them. Gideon put on a heavy coat to help protect him from British blades and stowed a pistol in each pocket.
Night birds called as the privateers stood silently by their guns, each man and gun, each rail and line of rigging, outlined in faint silver by the moon. Ten o’clock passed. Somewhere forward a seaman was snoring softly. Gideon bent his head and prayed that the Lord had vouchsafed him to do the right thing. The birds and the laughing river mocked his prayers. Velasco, standing nearby, cleared his throat loudly.
Suddenly twin explosions shattered the night’s peace, rocking the still air, shocking the nightbirds into silence. The British were crossing the bar, and George Willard’s battery of two guns was spangling the water over the bar with iron shot.
Willard’s battery thundered on, firing swiftly, invisibly, on the unseen enemy. Gideon could sense the uneasiness of his crew, the nervous shifting of weapons in their hands. In the moonlight Gideon could barely make out the taut, dark line above the water, the cable stretched to catch the enemy. The privateers must wait in the dark for their moment, Gideon reminded himself, even if the enemy were ten thousand. It was impossible to retreat now.
The last shots from Willard’s battery died away, and Gideon was suddenly aware of how loudly his own breathing rasped within his chest, and how overwhelming was the crazed thudding of his heart. For a moment he felt panic, not at the situation, dangerous though it was, but at the sudden revelation of his own fear... The regular crash of the guns had kept his mind occupied, provided a rhythm to his prayers and a companion in the darkness, but now he was alone and in shadow and afraid. He gulped air, mentally grappling with his terror, trying to wrest control of his body back from the spectral demons that had taken it...
He felt forsaken in the darkness, companionless . . .
Nearby there was the unexpected clink of a cutlass blade against a gun breech.
“Silence there!” Gideon shouted, his voice echoing on the river, startling himself with his own vehemence. A whispered voice passed an apology. Gideon felt the sudden, crazed urge to grin at his own overreaction; the brief metallic sound had reminded him that he was not alone with his fear, and his command was almost a shriek of relief. Mastering the spasm of fear and joy, Gideon forced his face to return to its normal forbidding lines and clasped his disciplined hands behind his back. And when he turned his eyes to the mouth of the river, suddenly it was full of black, silent boats, creeping upstream with the tide....
His heart turned over when he saw them, and then quite suddenly he was thinking clearly, swiftly, his mind racing as coolly as if it were a machine made of ice. His fears had a name and a shape, and they were before him where he could strike them down. “Each man shake his neighbor, make sure he’s awake!” Gideon whispered, and the order was passed forward.
Gideon picked out the boats in their formation, ten of them altogether, black shapes on the moonswept river. They were in two lines abreast, five boats per line. They were big boats, cutters. Cutters ...each could hold up to forty men. In another few seconds his fifty could be dealing with four hundred. He reached for his speaking trumpet, missing it in the dark and knocking it over with a clang. Voices, not knowing it was their captain who had made the noise, shushed him in the dark. Furious at himself for his clumsiness, Gideon bent over and picked up the trumpet. He put it to his mouth, and his voice echoed over the face of the river.
“Stay clear or I will fire into you!” he boomed. “We are in Spanish waters, and we may not fight here!”
“Tell that to your damned battery!” roared out a voice from the boats. The voice was followed by jeers and hoots. The British seamen bent to their oars and sped the boats along.
“Stay clear or you shall all be fired upon!” Gideon shouted, annoyed for having provided the British with an excuse for attack. The boats were picking up speed, racing over the hissing waters, eager silhouettes leaning forward hungrily in their bows....
Along the larboard bulwark Gideon could see the red pinpricks of light as the gun captains blew their slow matches into brightness. Gideon let the speaking trumpet clatter to the deck....
And then the lead boat struck the cable, a man in the bows going overboard with a splash, the boat slewing sideways in a confusion of flailing oars and alarmed shouts. Another boat struck beside it, hanging in the current, a swivel gun in its bows going off with a bang. Gideon heard grape-shot whirring overhead, a sound like a million angry bees.
And then the larboard broadside lit up the night, yellow tongues of flame lapping the waters twenty feet or more from the gun barrels. Gideon blinked, his night vision ruined, hearing screams from the river resounding above the triumphant growl of the privateers.
“Madre!” Velasco breathed in awe; a boat swivel banged out, and Gideon felt the thud as shot struck the schooner’s hull. Musket fire began to crack from General Sullivan’s quarterdeck.
“No muskets! No muskets!” Gideon shouted. “Wait till they’re closer!”
As his eyes gradually accustomed themselves to the darkness, he saw that one boat had been shattered, its stern canted up in the air; two others were swinging broadside to the current and drifting helplessly with the tide, a few oars waving wildly. Other boats were up against the cable— at least four of them— their bows full of milling men.
General Sullivan’s broadside roared out again, flailing the water. Through the smoke Gideon could hear British screams, and then the black form of a boat parted the gunsmoke and rowed madly for the privateer’s bows. Another boat appeared, and then a third: the cable had been cut, or the schooner’s own broadside had cut it.
“Boarders!” Gideon bellowed. “Boaaaarders!”
The bow swivel spat at the first boat. The second boat thudded up against General Sullivan’s main chains, and at once the privateers rushed to meet it, pikes thrusting down, muskets and pistols snapping. Gideon held back from the stampede— hadn’t anyone seen that third boat? He watched it anxiously. It hesitated for a moment, then sped cunningly under the stern. Gideon heard the scrape of a boathook.
Suddenly he realized that he was entirely alone on the quarterdeck; every man with him had run to deal with the first two boats— only Velasco, conspicuous in his yellow hat, stood close by.
Gideon groped on the deck for a weapon and encountered the broad muzzle of a musketoon. He imagined he could hear whispered orders from the boat beneath the stern. Gideon’s back dazzled him with pain as he snatched up the heavy musketoon and ran to the taffrail. He balanced the bell-mouthed musket on the rail, tipped it up so that it pointed down into the boat, and fired.
Pain shot through him again as the discharge of half a dozen musket balls and a handful of nails, wire, buttons, and other metal scrap sent Gideon staggering back along the planks. Gasping for air, Gideon felt hands steady him and found they were Velasco’s. Pistol balls whistled and hummed past the stern as the British in the boat fired randomly up into the darkness.
“Thankee,” Gideon breathed. “For God’s sake get five men here!”
Velasco vanished into the darkness and smoke. Gideon drew his pistols and ran to the rail. The boat below swung wildly in the current as the British tried to control it, hampered by dead and wounded men lying on their oars. An officer’s voice barked a desperate series of orders. Gideon fired his pistols down into the boat, seeing flashes and hearing reports as the enemy fired back; then the boat was swept away by the tide, the officer still bawling commands, the cutter cartwheeling as its crew tried to get it under way.
“Here we are, Captain!” Velasco had arrived with five men and in the nick of time: another boat was approaching through the dark. It swept up to the stern, the privateers’ banging muskets answered by wild pistol shots from the cutter. Black forms swarmed up the side but were beaten back by pistols and clubbed muskets, and the boat pushed off and rowed farther upstream, swinging around the privateer to board from the starboard side. Velasco was sent running to tell First Officer Harris he was about to be taken from behind, and Harris met the British with rattling musketry and a swivel gun fired at point-blank range. The boat, out of control, was drawn against the privateer’s side by the current, and every man in the cutter slain with pikes. Gideon looked wildly around for an enemy and found none. The few boats still in sight-were withdrawing. The privateers ran to the great guns and sent grapeshot after them until the enemy boats vanished in darkness.
The silence that followed was shocking in its depth. Gideon could hear distinctly the gurgle of the tide as it rocked the schooner, the rasping of ramrods in musket barrels, the thudding of the boat full of corpses as it bumped against the privateer’s side. There was no cheering. Everyone knew that the British would be back.
“Mr. Harris! Mr. Browne!” Gideon called. The first officer and bosun came aft, carrying their weapons; Browne’s sword arm bled freely onto the deck. The bosun clutched his wound and apologized for marking the clean deck.
“Never mind, Mr. Browne, just get the wounded tended to directly,” Gideon said. “Can you man your station?”
“Aye,” Browne said with a savage grin. “I’d rather swing a cutlass left-handed than swing by the neck at Plymouth Howe, if you get my meaning.”
“Do we have any others hurt?”
“Some scratches like mine,” Browne said. “We can all still fight.”
“Jem Hamilton has a cut over one eye. That’s all,” Harris added.
Gideon breathed relief; the first British attack had been beaten off without the loss of a man! He felt like capering madly in celebration. Instead he said as calmly as he could, “The Spirit of God was with us. Let us give thanks and make ready.” He felt in his pockets for his pistols and looked carefully over the deck, but they were gone— he must have hurled them into the enemy boat without remembering it.
The nightbirds, their astonishment fading, began once again to cry aloud. Gideon waited patiently in the shadow of the mainmast, heard his own sweat pattering on his coat...
The British came again just before midnight. There were six boats this time, firing small carronades or swivel guns from their bows as soon as they came into range, General Sullivan’s broadside thundering in return, raising avalanches of spray from the quicksilver river.
Three cheers chorused from the enemy as the boats shot alongside the privateer, but there were only five: the sixth had been sunk or decimated by grape. Two boats grappled to either side of the stern as crackling, blinding volleys of pistol and musket fire blasted down at them and the great musketoon roared, but this time the British were not turned back. Wraithlike figures climbed the ship’s side, claws clutching at the rail. Cutlasses slashed madly at the boarding nets, the shellbacks uttering harsh, inarticulate cries, like fierce nightbirds sweeping down on their prey. Thrusting pikes and whistling swords threw them back to their boats. Gideon battled in that clattering maelstrom of steel, slashing with his keen hanger, feeling deadly fingers plucking at his coat and sleeve. An officer in a cocked hat hauled himself over the rail, his teeth shining in the moonlight, an animal grin... as he swung a knee up and over, Gideon lunged at this insubstantial form and suddenly it was gone, vanished utterly. Gideon wondered if it was some illusion, until he felt warm arterial blood dripping from his sword onto his hand.
The British dropped back into their boats then, baffled, and rowed to the starboard side and tried again. Once more Gideon sent his men to drive them off, the pikes reaching down to the British in the dark. It was then that Gideon saw through dissipating smoke and the enveloping darkness that a British boat was trying to cut the larboard stern anchor cable.
He looked around him desperately. The muskets and pistols had all been fired, and the pikes could not reach to where the enemy boat hovered on the river five yards out. He ran to the rail, peering out, seeing axes flashing on the enemy cutter, the cable vibrating; as he thrust his neck out beyond the bulwarks, he could see another boat clinging tenaciously to the fore cable. Something would have to be done quickly.
Panting, Gideon ran to the waist of the schooner where the long tom rested on its pivot. Men were snatched from the bulwarks, the capstan was manned, and Tom Tate and two of his men swiftly loaded the twelve-pounder with grape.
“Heave, boys! Put your backs into it!” Gideon shouted and threw his weight on a capstan bar, his shoes digging into the deck for traction. The capstan lurched, pawls clattering, as the starboard stern cable was hauled in while the larboard cable was slacked. The schooner’s stern swung upstream, and the British boat suddenly swung confusedly as the cable they were trying to cut was slacked and disappeared below the surface of the water. Tate blew on his slow match, the fire’s reflection glittering redly in his eyes. The long gun roared, blowing the British boat and its axemen to smithereens. For an instant, in the gun’s mighty flash, Gideon saw a frozen, yellow moment of the battle, the privateers with their knightly weapons, lances and swords, defending their bulwarks as if the schooner were a castle, while the wounded sprawled on the bloody planks and the host below tried to scale the ramparts against a wall of steel and furious humanity.
Tate’s voice rang out as the twelve-pounder was reloaded. The fore cable was slacked, and Gideon bent his back to the capstan. General Sullivan pivoted sluggishly on its springs, the bow lurching upstream, the enemy boat exposed. The flame from the long torn scorched the deck as it was depressed to bear on the British boat, and the grape-shot swept through the enemy like a hurricane through chaff. The boat spun away out of control.
With the crash of the long torn came the cessation of other noise; the rasp and clatter of steel on steel died suddenly away, replaced by the shouts of British officers as they ordered their men to the oars. “Man the great guns!” Gideon bellowed. “Load with grape!”
The broadside guns pursued the enemy, grapeshot skipping after the British boats. The silence that followed did not last long: from the darkness came the distant thumping of George Willard’s twelve-pounders— and suddenly the privateers were cheering, waving hats and cutlasses, screaming their triumph and relief. The British were heading back out to sea over the bar; they’d had enough. Gideon felt a grin twitching at his lips as he loosened his sweat-heavy neckcloth and gasped for air.
“My felicitations, Captain Markham,” Velasco offered, taking off his hat respectfully. “I had not thought it possible.”
“Thankee, Don Esteban,” Gideon said, still gasping for breath. “The author of this victory was Almighty God; the congratulations are His.” His face grew troubled. “I fear that earlier this evening during the first attack, when we were in danger of being boarded, I spoke the Lord’s name in vain when I told you to bring men.”
“I am sure he will not hold it against you,” said Velasco with a smile.
“I pray he will not,” said Gideon. “Mr. Browne! Mr. Harris!”
Browne and Harris reported two men killed and seven privateers wounded, none of the latter seriously. Browne’s head was bandaged, and the bandage stained red; he’d taken another wound. The dark stains on his cutlass blade showed that he’d dealt out ruin as well as received it.
The two dead Americans were laid on the planks abaft the foremast, and the wounded who could not be attended on deck were sent below, where a carpenter’s mate acted as surgeon. With Willard’s guns still booming regularly in the background Gideon gathered his crew around the bodies and took off his beaver hat.
“Off hats!” Harris snapped, and Browne blew his pipe. Gideon clasped his hands and bowed his head.
“We implore Thee, Lord, for Thy mercy on behalf of these men who have fallen today,” he said, his voice echoing from the river and the rustling palms, “and we implore Thy grace as well on our enemies, whom we have slain in obedience to Thy will. And thirdly we implore Thy benefit upon the wounded that their pains may be eased and their wounds healed. And this we ask in the name of Thy blessed Son, Amen.”
“Hats on!” Harris shouted, and suddenly there was much work to do— pistols, muskets, and cannon were reloaded, boarding pikes stacked neatly in their racks, the capstan manned, and the schooner placed over its three anchors again.
“I noticed, Captain, that you asked God for mercy on the slain,” Velasco said, still at Gideon’s elbow. “But not for mercy upon yourselves, who have performed all this killing.”
“The killing was done in obedience to Divine Providence,” Gideon said confidently. “We do not need to ask his mercy on us; we merely did his will.”
“You seem to know your God’s mind very well,” said Velasco.
Gideon looked at him sternly. Velasco coughed politely into a fist.
“I submit my thoughts to His when I can,” Gideon said. Velasco saw the gleam of utter self-assurance in his eyes and shivered in spite of the heat. He had seen that gleam only once before, in the eyes of a fanatic hedge-priest who had preached slave revolt and who had been executed after stirring a group of slaves into attacking their masters. Velasco had been a spectator, hypnotized by the conviction in the priest’s lunatic eyes, until the firing squad had closed his eyes forever.
For a moment Velasco had felt that such a man could turn the world upside down simply through his own fierce determination.
In Gideon’s eyes Velasco saw conviction and anger and absolute confidence; there was nothing weak there, nothing human. He shivered again.
“Shall we send the starboard watch to their hammocks, Captain?” It was Mr. Harris.
“Nay, Mr. Harris,” Gideon said. Now that fanatic gleam was gone, and Gideon’s face was soft again. He peered over the water toward the sea. The tide was running out now, taking bodies and shattered boats with it.
“The enemy may return,” Gideon said. “The crew will lie rough tonight.”
“Rough it, sir? Very well.”
Gideon awarded himself a plug of tobacco, feeling the harsh juices bite his welcoming tongue. He clasped his hands triumphantly behind his back, stood quietly on the quarterdeck, and inhaled the sweet, warm airs of Cuba. The moon was setting behind the trees, and the schooner’s flags flapped darkly in the heavy, sluggish land breeze. The only light on the schooner was provided by the slow matches winking redly in their tubs.
An hour passed. The crew, those not on watch, snored on the deck. General Sullivan tugged at its cables, testing its careful mooring, as tide and current united in an attempt to sweep the schooner out to sea. Standing quietly at the rail, Gideon found himself looking up and losing himself in the dazzling eternity of stars.
He heard Velasco’s quick step beside him and turned to the Spaniard.
“You’re not asleep, Don Esteban?” he asked.
“I cannot.”
“Nor can I, Don Esteban,” Gideon said. He spat tobacco juices over the rail to clear his mouth for conversation.
“I am astonished at the neatness of your vessel,” Velasco marveled, gesturing with his cane to General Sullivan’s orderly, flush deck. “I have been on many Spanish ships, merchantmen and men-of-war both, and never have I seen such order. Even after a battle your deck is clear, the weapons are loaded and laid neatly by— even your crewmen, laid out on the deck, are sleeping in rows! On a Spanish ship all would be in confusion, ropes and guns and men lying everywhere.”
“Orderly habits are the habits of the successful sailor,” Gideon said. “The Yankee sailor is a successful one.”
“The English as well,” Velasco said. “They are orderly; the Nymphe was an orderly ship. They observed a rule of silence as well.”
“That makes for a sullen crew, I believe,” Gideon said. “Besides, if one of my crew sees a sail or notices that we’re about to run into land, I want him to sing out without fear of reprimand.”
“That is sensible.”
There was a flash of lightning inland from the Cuban hills. Seconds later distant thunder rolled down to them, a reminder of the entire world at war.
“Forgive me, Don Esteban, if I offend,” Gideon said, “but I cannot in good conscience fail to speak my mind. It is my considered opinion, and one that I do not hold lightly, that the success of Yankee and British commerce must be traced to the Protestant religion.”
“Indeed?” said Velasco. Gideon felt warmly uncomfortable under Velasco’s polite gaze, but he cleared his throat and continued earnestly.
“It is the Roman Catholic practice of interceding for their flock with God which is chiefly to blame,” he said. “It encourages people to indulge all manner of irregular habits, knowing that they have a priest to absolve them afterward of the consequences. A Protestant, who must keep his conscience clear at all times and who has no priest to intercede with the Lord, but must each face the consequences of his own acts himself, will develop regular habits, leading to industry and neatness and to their consequence, prosperity.”
“Very interesting,” said Velasco. “I must ask Father Reies’s opinion— after you leave, of course. I should warn you also that if you should be forced to stay in Cuba any longer, to please reserve your opinions— ashore here you could get into dire trouble if you voice such utterances.”
“But surely you can understand my point?” Gideon asked, his hesitance waning under the force of his faith. “Take the matter of feast days, now— thirty or forty calendar days in which you papists are not obliged to work. I have often seen Roman Catholic ships wasting the days in harbor, their crews singing and indulging in liquor, celebrating some saint’s day, while Yankee ships loaded their cargoes and sailed home to make their profits. A man of education and sense like yourself can surely see the commercial advantages of Protestantism— not to mention the benefit it does to the immortal soul.”
“I shall have to consider the matter,” Velasco said tactfully.
“Perhaps you may wish to look at some tracts? If you would care to step below—”
“Do you think the British will come again?” Velasco asked quickly.
“Eh?”
Gideon cast a searching glance out to sea. “The British aren’t used to failure,” he said. “The moon will set soon, and they may have another try. The tide is against them, but the tide is very small here. Mr. Willard will warn us if they come again.”
“Mr. Willard’s battery is vulnerable to land attack, no?” Velasco asked. “He may not be able to give warning.”
“Aye, that’s so,” said Gideon. He considered briefly, his eyes worried, and then walked to the rail and peered anxiously into the darkness. At last he called for Harris.
“Man a boat and bring that cable up,” Gideon said. “Splice it and lay it across the river again.”
“Aye aye, Captain.” Harris looked at Gideon curiously. “Do you think they’ll come again?” he asked.
“What I think is not your concern, Mr. Harris.”
“Indeed not, sir. I’ll do it directly.”
The cable was untied from the trees on one side of the river, brought across to the other side, spliced, and set again. Gideon called to his steward to make coffee for himself and Velasco.
Shortly after two rain clouds swept down from the Cuban hills, and for half an hour the privateers ran busily on the wet decks, setting up awnings to catch the rainwater and pour it into the fresh water tubs. Some of the crew asked permission to block the scuppers in order to create a little lake the length of the schooner and be able to do laundry in fresh water. Gideon, rain dripping off his beaver hat, reluctantly forbade the exercise: if the British came again, he didn’t want his men slipping about in a two-inch soapy lake.
The rain subsided, and the sky cleared quickly. The rainwater began to steam from the decks. Bats fluttered low between the masts to snatch insects, avoiding as if by magic the jungle of halliards and stays. Gideon tightened his neckcloth against the chill. Upstream the mist began forming, slipping slowly down the river with the night breeze, enfolding the privateer schooner in its moist cloak. Gideon cut himself more tobacco and began to chew anxiously. The schooner rocked as the increased flow of water from the rainfall nudged its bilges.
From below there was a sudden shriek. Standing in the mist, Gideon felt his hackles rise. Another scream rent the night. Somewhere below a wounded crewman had just awakened to the fact that he lacked an arm. The third scream was muffled, as if the carpenter’s mate who served as the privateer’s surgeon was trying to silence the man. In the sudden comparative silence Gideon could hear one of the crewmen near him muttering a prayer in some incomprehensible guttural tongue, German, perhaps, or Danish— the language the man had spoken as a boy and in which he’d learned his prayers. From below there was another wail, a single, sobbing shriek that trailed gradually away and left the privateers awake and stung with horror.
General Sullivan seemed to hover in the gentle mist, wisps floating over the bulwarks, creeping among the crew. The flags hung sodden on the masts. In the shifting, claustrophobic world of clinging vapor all movement, all noise seemed unnaturally loud, and the echo of the crewman’s cries seemed to last forever. Gideon paced, his heels thudding loudly, his head craned anxiously toward the mouth of the river. The mist had obscured the cable stretched across the waters, and he might not be able to see a British attack in time. He would have to hope that he could hear it. He wondered if he should call hands to their stations: there would be more noise, more interference, but their reaction to any attack would be quicker.
The wounded crewman shrieked again and Gideon shivered. The wails echoed skyward. He decided to call his men to their stations. That screaming had wakened the crew anyway. It was best to give them something to do rather than have to listen to it.
Gideon turned to give the order, but suddenly the shore was alive with yellow fires, and the air with humming. Bullets cut white wood from the mainmast near him. Gideon threw himself to the deck, his round hat tumbling off his head as he shouted for all hands. Muskets on the riverbank continued to flame.
There was a rush on deck for the muskets, and the roaring voices of Harris and Browne as they tried to establish order among their men. Barefoot privateers ran to the quarterdeck, fired a hasty volley over the taffrail. Bullets buzzed overhead, cracking against the bulwarks. With an astonishing roar the number three larboard gun leaped inward on its tackles, belching fire into the night.
“Avast, there!” Gideon bellowed, jumping to his feet.
“Avast firing the great guns!” He glared fiercely at the crew of the gun and ran to the rail to look out into the night— there was no sign of boats. Two men sheepishly began to reload the six-pounder.
Another volley spat forth from the shore. Gideon ducked behind the rail, feeling the wood leap as balls struck it. Privateer muskets barked in reply. Gideon’s heart froze as he realized that the British were methodically sweeping the quarterdeck with their volleys, trying to kill the captain and the other officers. Kicking his scabbard out of the way, Gideon crawled to where Velasco, trying to look unperturbed, was sheltering by the mainmast.
“I have been keeping your hat for you, Captain,” Velasco said, handing it to him. “A gentleman should look to his attire in these situations.”
Gideon jammed the hat on his head and ducked involuntarily as a bullet whined between them. “Marines!” he gasped. “They must have landed during the squall.”
“Your man Willard must have been made a prisoner,” Velasco said. “Ah well, these Indios are expendable, no?”
“Be silent and let me think!” Gideon roared. Velasco fell obligingly silent as the hissing bullets continued to cut the air. Gideon knew that things could not continue this way for long with British volleys regularly sweeping over the decks. The privateer muskets were firing blindly into the darkness or at the flashes of the British muskets, but the British had a large target, the dark stern of the schooner outlined against the mist. Soon the British boats would come again.
The stern swivel gun went off with a defiant bellow. Gideon lunged across the deck and seized a man by the shoulder.
“You!” he shouted. “And you there and you! Ready the capstan!”
Crouching as the bullets whimpered overhead, Gideon hurried more men into place, stationing them at the capstan while all was made ready below. “Now!” Gideon shouted. “Heave, all!” He threw himself against a capstan bar, feeling a hot stab of pain in his back. The capstan spun as the man bent to their labor, swinging General Sullivan’s stern upstream as the kedge anchor was hauled in. “’Vast heaving!” Gideon gasped. “Man the great guns!”
General Sullivan’s broadside of six guns, charged with grape and canister, roared out at the invisible enemy, revealing in the great yellow flashes the shadowy forms of the enemy marines in their tall shakoes among the palm trees. Musketry crackled out defiantly in answer to the cannon, but the great guns lashed out again and again, flailing the shore with grapeshot until the British were extinguished. The kedge anchor was slacked off, and General Sullivan’s stern swung downstream again, broadside to the current once more.
Shouts of warning rang over the deck: the boats were coming again! The hot cannon spat into the mist, and British grapeshot from the boats’ bow guns wailed overhead and thudded into Yankee timbers. The cable stretched across the river stopped them only for a brief moment. Soon the schooner was surrounded by shouting men in boats, and the mist rang with the clash of steel.
Gideon fought with his men at the rail, slashing at the enemy, parrying their pikes and swords. Screaming, demonic faces appeared at the rail, men with scarves wrapped around their heads, men who shouted, swung their cutlasses, and died beneath American iron. Some of the British seemed to have been detailed to run up the shrouds, and soon there was musketry from the schooner’s own tops, firing down into privateer backs. Gasping for breath during a brief respite from battle. Gideon shouted that the wounded should take up muskets and deal with the threat from above.
General Sullivan lurched, and then its bows began to swing downstream. The bow anchor cable had been cut. There was a rumble overhead as the fore topsail was loosed and filled with the breeze: the British were going to try to take the schooner out to meet the squadron whether the privateers wished it or not.
Gideon sliced at a blackened visage that appeared above the rail, and the face opened from chin to eyebrow as the Briton was hacked down. The boarders tumbled back into their boats, gathering themselves for another leap. Gasping for breath, Gideon jumped back from the rail, seeing, as he had before, another boat working madly to cut the stern cable. He would have to man the capstan again, slack that cable, haul in on the other so that his men could get a good shot at the boat... but suddenly commands rang out from the boats, and there was another rush of men over the stern, dark figures swarming through the sagging, tattered boarding nets. Gideon, his privateers at his back, ran to meet them, his sword meeting metal or cutting flesh or blindly slashing at the air until the enemy were thrown back into their boats or left dead on the decks.
“Captain! Captain!” A hand tugged at Gideon’s elbow, and he spun with his sword raised, ready to hack the man down, until at the last instant, he realized it was Velasco.
“Browne and Harris are dead!” Velasco shouted. “They’ve captured the front part of your ship!”
At that moment there was a lurch, and a British cheer—the stern cable had parted. Gideon leaned wearily on Velasco’s shoulder, his mind whirling. The schooner was drifting downstream. All three cables must have been cut. He could hear desperate fighting forward, screams and the clash of steel. The British had been driven off the quarterdeck, their three boats nearby filled mainly with dead and wounded. If only he weren’t so tired . . .
Suddenly he reeled, then stood erect, feeling energy coursing through him. His eyes flashed in the mist and the gunsmoke. “Forrard!” he heard himself roar. “Forrard, all ye men of Israel!” As if flung by a giant hand, Gideon led his men across General Sullivan’s deck, the Yankee seamen bellowing as they ran for their enemy.
“Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into hell!” Gideon shouted as he felt his sword bite. He saw Long Tom Tate, a boarding axe in one hand and a cutlass in the other, swinging both weapons madly as he fought his way among a pack of enemy. There was a man in a cocked hat on the privateer fo’c’sle, and Gideon flung himself at the man, his first desperate stroke glancing off the enemy sword.
“Wickedness is in their dwellings, and among them.” Gideon’s sword rang as he lunged again, was parried again. The enemy officer was wearing epaulettes, one on each shoulder. Gideon could smell his sweat, his fear. “As for me, I will call upon God; and the Lord will save me.” Through the melee Gideon caught a glimpse of a yellow top hat— Velasco, a noncombatant no longer, dangerous laughter rippling past his lips, beating down an enemy seaman with his cane.
A British epaulette took Gideon’s next cut and turned it, then Gideon stumbled backward as he tried to throw himself out of the way of the officer’s return blow. The stroke missed by an inch and carried well past. “Evening and morning and at noon will I pray and cry aloud: and he shall hear my voice.” Gideon lunged again as the officer’s sword struck the deck. He saw terror in the Englishman’s eyes as his enemy realized there was no way to parry the next blow. The enemy officer tried to throw himself backward but took the blade full in the chest and fell to the deck with a sob. Gideon spared him no more time; he stepped over his victim and ran on, and when he next bothered to look, the man was dead.
The privateers swept the decks from one end to the other, Gideon roaring aloud his devotions as he struck at his enemies. The British were driven back into their boats or killed where they stood. Gideon, his strength evaporating as suddenly as it had filled him, leaned against the fore shrouds and gulped in air, oblivious to all but the overtaxed beating of his heart.
“He hath delivered my soul in peace from the battle that was against me: for there were many with me,” he whispered and closed his eyes in weariness. The sudden sound of surf reminded him that they were under way and heading to sea. Gideon sprang up and almost fell, his foot sliding on a patch of blood; he glanced wildly and saw the best bower, readied earlier that evening, still poised at the cathead.
“Drop the bower anchor!” he shouted wildly. “Cut it! Cut!” Tate leaped to the bulwark and swung his axe. A pike thrust at him from below; he parried it and swung again. The cable holding the anchor to the cathead parted, and from below there was a shriek and a rending crash as, on its way to the river bottom, the best bower shattered a British boat.
General Sullivan jerked and swung in the current, the fore topsail going aback as the schooner pointed upstream. The river around them was littered with British boats, some few under control, the rest content to drift. Weary privateers reloaded their muskets and fired, driving off those few enemy still trying to draw near.
“Quarter! Quarter!” It was an English seaman, trapped at the foretop, his friends either killed or jumped for their lives to the river below. Another man was found hiding at the main masthead, wrapped in the FREE TRADE AND SAILORS RIGHTS banner; the two prisoners were sent below and put in irons. The east began to pale with the oncoming dawn.
As the privateers began to sort through the jetsam of battle, assembling weapons, counting the dead, and comforting the wounded, Gideon sat wearily on a gun carriage, trying to catch his breath. Glancing down, he saw a yellow top hat at his feet. With a weary grin he picked it up from the deck and walked to where its owner stood on the quarter-deck.
“Your hat, Don Esteban,” he said. “A gentleman should be careful of his attire in these situations.”
“Thank you, Captain,” said the Spaniard. He placed the hat carefully on his head and turned to silhouette his profile against the approaching dawn.
“It will be good to see the sun again after such a night, Captain,” he said. “I hope I was able to be of some little service to you.”
“I thank God you were here, sir,” said Gideon, and the Spaniard smiled.
Dawn brought the return of George Willard and his ten men. They had been attacked by enemy marines during the squall and had tried to fire their guns as a warning, but the powder was damp and they’d had to run before a gun was fired. They’d managed to escape in their boat, however, and had hidden in the trees all night. Willard and his men were positive they’d sunk a boat during the retreat of the first British assault.
General Sullivan swung at its cable at the very mouth of the river, in plain sight of the enemy squadron: the three ships were lying within half a mile of the bar, signaling continuously to one another, boats plying back and forth. The privateer’s flags flew brightly in the brisk ocean breeze. Eight Americans were dead, including Alexander Harris, the first officer, slain by an enemy pike as he stood on the bulwarks. Nineteen were wounded seriously enough to require attention, including Browne the bosun— who hadn’t been killed, as Velasco had mistakenly reported in the heat of the fighting, but had been wounded twice more and then struck in the forehead with a spent pistol ball that had knocked him senseless until the end of the battle. Gideon sent the wounded men ashore, where they would be tended by a Spanish surgeon Velasco had sent for. The two British prisoners were paroled. The survivors ate a cold breakfast.
General Sullivan’s hatches were opened, and the weary crew was set to work unloading the schooner’s cargo, transferring it to Velasco’s boats and rafts. The bay’s white beaches were littered with dead men, and boats that rocked in the surf without a live man’s hand to guide them. Sharks’ fins efficiently cut the water.
Gideon went to his cabin to change his shirt, stock, and coat, all splashed with blood; he stayed for half an hour on his knees, his prayers so confused— mixture of thanks, imploring mercy for the dead and injured and awestruck gratitude for the divine wind that seemed to have taken possession of him in the last of the fight— that in the end he struggled to his feet and vowed to give proper thanks later.
On deck again he watched the enemy through his glass. They were a beautiful sight, those taut men-of-war— even anchored, the frigate seemed alive, tossing its proud head at the waves; the seventy-four-gun ship of the line, presenting its gilded quarter galleries, showed itself a bluff, proud, commanding warrior, perhaps a veteran of Aboukir Bay or Trafalgar, confident in its own power and majesty. Yet they had been beaten the night before, humiliated by the sixty men of a thirteen-gun privateer schooner.
Fifty corpses decorated the bay. English wounded would be screaming their lives away in the red-painted cockpits. The officer with the epaulettes, killed by Gideon during that mad, inspired fight at the fo’c’sle, had been a post-captain and had probably commanded the frigate. The British would be aching for revenge, and the sight of the schooner’s taunting flag, catch me who can, would be an infuriating reminder of their unqualified defeat.
But the British could not blockade the schooner forever; sooner or later they would be forced to leave. Gideon could afford to be patient. The British might yet be tempted into a rash gesture.
“Another two hours, Captain Markham,” said Velasco, “and you will be unloaded. Will you try to run past them tonight?”
“The tide is coming in again,” Gideon said. “It will put another twelve inches of water over the bar— at least twelve. Look ye— there are boats putting off from the seventy-four. Those are tarred hats those men are wearing. Sailors. I think they’re reinforcing the sloop of war so she can come at us.”
“This morning?” Velasco asked in alarm. “May I use your glass?”
“Certainly, Don Esteban.”
The Spaniard adjusted the telescope to his eye. “Hijo...!” he exclaimed. “There must be a hundred men in those boats. Can you fight her, that sloop?”
Gideon shook his head. “Not if she’s handled well,” he said. “I could outrun her on the open sea, but embayed on a lee shore, she’ll destroy us. She’s armed principally with carronades— thirty-two pounders— and they’ll wreck us at close range. I could fight them at a distance, but not close in this little bay.”
Velasco looked up with concern. “What can you do, my friend?” he asked.
“I shall pray,” Gideon said. “I shall pray that there is not enough water over the bar, and I shall pray that Long Tom’s gun is accurate today.”
“I will add my prayers to yours, Captain,” said the Spaniard and returned the telescope to Gideon. “And I will tell my men to hurry.”
“Haste may well be necessary, Don Esteban.”
Gideon returned his telescope to the rack and called for Tate.
“Man your gun, Long Tom,” Gideon told him. “If you have not enough, pick more men— the best. I’m relying on your marksmanship to keep the British from crossing the bar.”
“Aye aye, Cap’n,” Tate said. He peered expertly out to sea at the stretch of brown water over the bar, seen clearly against the ocean’s sparkling blue.
“The range be long, Cap’n,” he said.
“Do your best, Tate.”
Tate arranged his shot carefully on the ready racks, choosing the roundest, most perfect iron balls to be fired first for the straightest possible flight. Shortly before high tide the sloop of war hove its anchor short and ran up the White Ensign. Faintly the sound of three cheers came down the wind. The sloop weighed its anchor and sheeted home its jib, spanker, and fore-topsail, and came cautiously down the wind.
“Do your fastest, lads!” Browne shouted, standing at the loading port, his five wounds bandaged. “No lookin’ over your shoulder, just do your work, and quickly!”
Tom Tate’s gun, elevated prodigiously high, spat flame and iron. Gideon peered seaward to spot the fall of shot. He failed to see it, but he heard one of Tate’s men shout, “Two hundred yards short!”
“Fine, fine,” came Tate’s voice; apparently he was pleased. The gun was loaded again, and again it barked. This time Gideon saw it splash twenty yards before the ship-sloop’s plunging bowsprit.
“Swab her out careful, Hijinks,” Tate said, “and this time we hit her.”
Gideon saw no shot fall, nor did any of the crewmen. The crew of the long tom cheered, confident they’d hit the enemy, but Gideon was far from sanguine. The range was just short of a mile; it was absurd to expect a hit at that range.
“We make widows today, boys,” Tate laughed and carefully drove the quoin a little farther past the breech, lowering the twelve-pounder’s muzzle. The shot that followed was a clear hit, pockmarking the enemy ship’s fore-topsail. Again there was a cheer. There was no obvious fall of shot for the next attempt or the next. Gideon looked at Tate in amazement: could he hit the enemy so consistently at this range?
“I seen Nelson over my gun at Copenhagen, but the ball she not fly straight,” Tate remarked conversationally, and again his gun roared. White splinters flew from the enemy rail, shining brightly in the sun.
The ship-sloop tried to cross the center of the bar where the water was probably deepest, but the British warship slid quietly onto the sand and stuck fast. Even Gideon raised his voice in a cheer, waving his hat, while the privateers went mad in celebration.
Again and again the long torn crashed out, striking the enemy with almost every shot. The sloop tried to kedge off, to no effect. They tried firing their broadside to jar the ship off. The frigate came in to tow them off the bar, but the wind was dead against the work, and the tow seemed only to jam the British more firmly onto the sand. The enemy stayed hung on the bar for over an hour, until their fore-topmast was shot away and their main yard hung in its slings. Through his glass Gideon could see water being pumped over the side as the British started their water casks, trying to lighten ship.
“We’re whippin’ up the last load, Cap’n,” Browne reported. Gideon blinked for a moment at the report and then remembered they were putting off cargo— he’d been so intent on the battering General Sullivan was giving the enemy that he’d forgotten their purpose in being here.
“Very good, Browne,” he said. “I’ll thank you and Mr. Willard to report to me afterward.”
Tate’s long gun roared again, spitting another iron round at the enemy. Gideon felt triumph surging through him— he’d weigh anchor and fight them, raking them at pistol-shot range as they lay helpless on the bar unable to reply.
He put the glass to his eye once more and saw two broadside carronades being heaved off the ship-sloop’s bows. Gideon’s eyes blazed fire. An eighteen-gun sloop shot to pieces on a Caribbean bar by a New Hampshire privateer! Even in Federalist New England they’d ring the bells in celebration! Tate’s twelve-pounder thundered once more.
As the gunsmoke was blown slowly away, revealing the enemy, Gideon’s heart sank. Through his glass he could see clearly that they were afloat and crossing the bar under the main topgallant. For a moment Gideon felt fury at being cheated out of his victory. Why, he demanded in despair, must all my joys be so qualified? Why must every happiness be attenuated with such misery and loss?
Slowly he mastered his despondency. The Lord was testing His servant, he told himself, there was opportunity in this. He must search through his anger and hopelessness and find it.
The last bundle of dry goods was dropped into a waiting boat, and slaves turned the flat-bottomed scow around and paddled it upstream. “Man the guns!” Gideon shouted. “Two roundshot and a round of grape!”
The crew cheered as they ran to their stations, confident they would engage the enemy, ready to follow their captain against the battered sloop of war.
Their expectations were in vain. The guns were loaded, run but, and primed. “You have five minutes to bring your belongings to the boats!” Gideon shouted, his stern face masking his anguish. Gideon brought up his two sea chests, his privateering commission, and his spyglass, and had them all carefully put into a boat. The crew, all except Tate’s gunners, carrying their, belongings wrapped up in scarves or hammocks, filed quickly down into the waiting boats.
“Don Esteban!” Gideon called, seeing the Spaniard standing quietly by the taffrail. “’Tis time for you to leave!”
“I believe I shall wait, Captain,” Velasco said. His smile was nothing short of impudent. “If you will not object to my company, I would prefer to see the end.”
“Very well, Don Esteban!” Gideon answered, feeling a kind of mad recklessness rising inside him. “We’ll kill a few more Englishmen before the end!”
Tate’s twelve-pounder roared out another challenge. Gideon reached into a weapons tub and picked out two tomahawks.
The enemy sloop was five hundred yards off and approaching rapidly. A puff of smoke appeared over its fo’c’sle, followed seconds later by a moaning shot that passed over General Sullivan and crashed among the trees on the riverbank.
“Follow me, Don Esteban!” Gideon called, and he and the Spaniard trotted forward along the deck to the fore scuttle. Descending the companionway, they passed through the berth deck to the carpenter’s storeroom and the forward storeroom. From the carpenter’s stores they removed all the odd bits of lumber and piled them on the berth deck, then took barrels of tar from the storeroom and rolled them, out, tomahawking them open onto the pile of lumber. There was a crash from above as one of the sloop’s chasers smashed home into the schooner’s timbers.
“Follow me!” Gideon repeated and led Velasco up onto the deck.
Tate and his gun crew, sweat streaking their gunpowder-coated faces and bodies, were working their gun with demonic fury, the twelve-pounder barking every thirty seconds. The enemy were three hundred yards off, their chasers cracking out in systematic reply.
There was not much time. Gideon snatched a slow match from a ready tub and dashed down the aft scuttle, Velasco following. In his little cabin Gideon emptied his desk drawers into a pile on the floor and threw his bedding over the mound of papers. “Smash the windows!” he shouted, and Velasco began the shattering with his tomahawk. The sound of breaking glass mixed with the tortured noise of rending wood as Gideon smashed up his desk drawers for kindling and added them to the pile.
When all was done, Gideon lit the brass lamp and took it down from the chain that swung from the cabin beams; he gestured Velasco aside and smashed the lamp with his tomahawk, and watched as the flaming oil spat down onto the papers and the bedding, the slivers of New England pine, and the rainbow-edged shards of glass.
And then they were running again, up the companion-way, through the scuttle, and forward, Gideon snatching a lantern from the bulkhead near his cabin and lighting it with his slow match as he ran. The enemy sloop seemed huge, a little over a cable length away, its starboard broadside sliding menacingly out of its ports. Within seconds it would be crossing General Sullivan’s stern.
“One more shot, then into the boat!” Gideon shouted as he ran past Tate, and the black man nodded. Down the forward scuttle Gideon smashed the lantern into the pile of lumber and tar. It caught fire instantly, the flames shooting upward toward the beams. Gideon ran back to the deck.
The long torn rocked back on its swivel once more, and then the gun crew ran for the boat warped alongside. The sloop loomed like a huge shadow off the stern. Its sails stole the wind. Gideon snatched an axe from a weapons tub and ran for the boat.
Velasco waited at the entry port. “After you, Captain,” he urged politely with a bow.
“Nay, after you, Don Esteban,” Gideon said.
“Sir, I insist.”
“The captain must leave last of a—” The enemy’s first starboard carronade fired, the schooner rocking as the raking shot crashed massively into her stern. The air around Gideon and Velasco shrieked with musketballs as cannister swept the deck, and suddenly both men were airborne, crashing simultaneously into the boat’s stern sheets as Thomas Tate shouted, “Fend off! Out oars!”
“Stop at the ...the anchor cable,” Gideon gasped, breathless. The axe haft had caught him a painful blow on the hip as he’d landed. Canister shrieked and moaned around them as the enemy sloop crossed the schooner’s stern at fifty yards’ range, the thirty-two-pound shot smashing the length of the privateer, threatening to tear it asunder. Gideon heard the hearty thunk of musketballs cracking into the boat’s stern. Blessedly the gunsmoke poured over the boat and hid it from its enemies.
The last carronade roared. There was a sudden, anxious silence, broken only by the sound of British anchors dropping to the bottom of the bay and by the high-pitched commands of British officers.
“Stop yer vents!”
Gideon stood in the stern sheets as the boat approached the anchor cable, picking up the axe, hefting it to his shoulder. Tate maneuvered the boat expertly, bringing the fifteen-inch cable over the stern sheets. Gideon coughed in the thick smoke.
“Better let me do that, Captain,” Tate said, standing, his long, muscled arms reaching for the axe.
“Sponge out!”
“I’ll do it myself, blast you!” Gideon roared, sweat pouring down his forehead. He blinked, almost blind. “If my General Sullivan is to be destroyed, I’ll do the job!”
He brought the axe down onto the cable. It vibrated to his steady blows.
“Reload!”
Gideon coughed again in the smoke, and then, as he labored, he realized that the choking smoke was not all from the British cannon but from the fires he’d set aboard his privateer. The smoke stung his eyes, and he blinked away tears.
An enemy carronade barked out. Gideon could hear the progress of the enemy shot, bashing its way through bulkheads, fetching up with a crash against the timbers of the schooner’s bows. The next carronade sent sparks showering into the air, dark ashes landing on the boat’s crew like some sinister snow.
With a crack the anchor cable parted. “Bring us ashore, Long Tom,” Gideon said wearily as he threw the axe into the water. He sat down in the stern sheets. The black man nodded and sang out the necessary commands. Gideon sat facing forward in the boat as the crew stroked for shore, refusing to look back.
The rest of the boat’s crew, facing sternward as they pulled at the oars, saw General Sullivan begin to drift with the river current, stern first through the shroud of gun-smoke that wrapped the schooner at its death and obscured it from the waiting sloop of war. Fire spit from its hatches as the schooner thudded gently against the sloop’s tumble-home; and the privateer’s guns, primed and run out, began to fire randomly as the flames reached powder. The British ran madly to slip their cables and get away; they had been handled roughly by Tate’s long gun and had lost their fore-topmast, which kept them from working into the wind and making their escape. Brave men, risking immolation, fended the schooner off with pikes. The sloop broke free, its main topgallant afire; bucket brigades running frantically up the shrouds. The sail was cut free, and the fires doused.
General Sullivan’s guns continued to fire randomly through the haze of smoke. She was half a mile from shore when the magazines blew her open to the sea. She settled on an even keel and sank in shallow water. The masts, their defiant flags still waving, remained above the waves. Gideon Markham saw none of it. He could not bring himself to watch, through the tears he could no longer hide, the destruction of the only home and the only joy he’d known since he’d laid down the schooner three years before.