Patrick Henry and the Frigate’s Keel: And Other Stories of a Young Nation (24 page)

“Take your breath because they will come again.”

And less than an hour later, the British came again. The light boats, damaged by the musketry and Gil's cannon fire, were sent back to the warship, and the fighting men they contained were divided among the five heavy storming barges. The five barges circled the clipper and drove in from all sides. Gil concentrated all his three cannon on one barge, and a lucky ball split her prow, sending her nose deep into the water, and for the moment removing her from the fight. Three other barges turned away from the blast of musketry. But the captain's barge, the largest of the lot, swept under the stern of the
Prince
, clawed against it, and hung. The two men who tried to pike it off were shot dead, and twenty-seven marines and sailors spilled onto the deck of the clipper.

Recall that this Baltimore clipper was the size of a coast guard cutter of today, only narrower in the beam; put on the deck fifty screaming men locked in a death-struggle. There was no room to maneuver, no room for firearms; it was face to face, neck to neck, knives and pikes and bare fists. And it was also—end it or the other three boats will be back.

Those who remembered—and it was hard to sort apart the events of that day—said that the second fight lasted no more than twelve minutes, a brief probing, gashing deadlock, and then a mad rush led by Johnny Ordronaux and his pike and the Negro, Maun, and his chain, a wild, desperate charge that cleared the deck of the
Prince
, from prow to stern. Seven Englishmen dropped back to the barge and pushed off, and when Johnny roared, “Sink them, Isaac, sink them!” he was gripped on the shoulder by Maun, who pointed to where Isaac lay, his innards spilled out on the deck.

There had been no quarter asked in this. The twenty Englishmen lay dead on the deck, and only fourteen bloodsoaked Americans were on their feet.

Maun said afterward that Johnny's face was like stone; but inside of himself he cried. The man Isaac Gil was a scholar and a healer, and he knew the books of the Bible like the fingers on his hand, and the Mishna and the Talmud as, well, and Johnny had taken him out of the shadowy synagogue and turned him into a man who kills men. And Johnny was tired now; there was no glory, but only death left.

The captain's barge, with the seven survivors in it, pulled over to the one that Isaac's ball had split and took aboard its crew. The wounded were put in the crippled barge and sent back to the frigate; the other four, like maddened bulldogs, circled the clipper and closed in to the attack once more.

Fourteen men were not enough to man the bulwarks; Johnny loaded the cannon with grape and grouped his men around them, in the stern. Powder-stained, blood-stained, dripping their own blood, they stood shoulder to shoulder with pike and cutlass. And the four barges emptied their men on the deck.

Then the cannon roared, grape at ten yards—and Johnny led his men in a screaming charge at the carnage.

The tale goes that the third battle was the worst of any, for it was not drive them over the rail; the rail could not be manned; it was destroy them on the deck, fourteen against sixty—or be killed, for this was the way the die had been cast, and they knew that after the toll they had taken, the enemy would not permit any of them to live.

By now, the sun was low on the horizon; on the windless sea, the clipper swayed to the desperate struggles of the men, and blood flowed through the scuppers the way water would when the high seas crossed the rail. And still the Americans fought, Johnny Ordronaux, whose pike was broken but who used the four foot length of it like a sword; Maun Caloway, flailing his blood-red chain; Jacob Peretz, former fur-trader and elder of the New York synagogue, black-bearded, with a knife in each blood-soaked hand; Freddy MacDuff, his partner, using heavy, leaded duelling pistols as clubs—those four and four more. Eight left—when suddenly the fight was done, the barges drifting away. And dragging themselves to the rail, the eight who were left saw that one of the barges was empty of the living; another held only wounded men who groaned in agony, and in the other two there were no more than forty left alive and capable of pulling an oar.

As for the clipper, it was like a butcher's ship, a fisher that hunted men instead of cod, no inch of wood that was not splattered with blood, the thin deck ripped and torn by the grape, the mast splattered with brains and gore, dead men lying all over it, so that you could hardly walk between.…

Maun Caloway, the chain hanging from his great arms, moaned, “Ah, God, let that damn wind blow and take us away—”

But the wind did not blow. The slow drift had increased the distance between frigate and clipper to three miles now, but even the swell was gone from the still sea, and the frigate made a black silhouette against the setting sun. A few hundred yards off, the frigate's barges lay, lurking, waiting.…

On the clipper, the eight who were left sank down in the blood and gore, too weary to move, so close to death that they did not mind it now—so recently for the others, so soon for them. Johnny lay with his arm against the boy, Jimmy Cadwalder; his foot touched a dead marine; the sun set and death made a cloak with darkness. He had wanted glory, but there was no glory here, and the most beautiful ship of all time would float like a coffin soon.

And in the dark, he heard the rustling under the boat's prow, and called to Maun, “They come back—back!”

That was the fourth battle, the last one, in the darkness, clubbing and gouging at the hoarse-voiced enemy, heavy splashes in the water, and then a pistol smashing the night, and then two men rolling over and over on the wet deck, soundless, and Maun's chain flailing death.…

And silence again.

Two men dragged themselves to their feet, black Maun Caloway and little Johnny Ordronaux; they staggered to the rail and hung over it. The moon was rising now, and not twenty yards away, they saw two of the barges; but in the barges there was only one man, swaying, screaming at them, cursing them—only one man on his feet; the rest of the occupants were wounded or dead. And on that silent sea, the two other barges and the frigate had disappeared.

There were no words to say. For some minutes the two men leaned against the rail in silence, and then Johnny Ordronaux felt a breeze like a caress on his cheek. “We make sail,” he said to Maun Caloway.

Now, in Nantucket town, six score and more years later, there is still a memory among the old inhabitants of “The Jew's Ship” and how it came into port with the dawning. You can understand how a legend might arise from a ship with a crew of two, one a black man, the other a Jew, a ship that was blood from prow to stern, a delicate Baltimore clipper that bore five dead men on its deck for each one who lived. They say that even the flag, which still flew from the masthead, was stained with blood, but what they saw on the deck of that ship, those who watched it make port, was of such terrible description that no one wrote it down, except to state:

“Including the wounded, eight survived from the crew of thirty-six.”

They also say that the port commander asked Johnny, “How did you come by the blockading frigate?”

“We fight that frigate,” Johnny answered, “and we defeat her.”

And though it was inconceivable and impossible that a little clipper should come up against a great warship and live, no one doubted the word of the hollow-eyed, pockmarked Jew.

There is only this more to tell, that Johnny came back to the synagogue in Philadelphia to make his accounting to the elders, and he entered and wrapped a tallith about his shoulders and prayed from the book until it was time for him to go to the altar and speak. Then he spoke to the congregation in this fashion:

“What is the price of liberty?” he asked them, speaking in the old tongue, using the Hebrew word for
freedom
, which is the oldest word of its kind that men know.

No one answered, but each man in the congregation considered to himself how a price might be arrived at. Was one to put on the scale the number of Jews who had died through hate, ignorance, fear and all the other means that gentiles had used against them? Or was one to weigh only those numbers who had fought and died in the Revolution, and whose names were in the synagogue book of records? Was one to add the price of a ship? A home burned? A child lost? Or was one, perhaps, to consider all men, from the beginning of time, Jew and gentile? So you see, no one answered; and how was an accounting to be given when such a price was put in question?

And finally Johnny Ordronaux said, softly, “From my voyage there are profits of a million dollars and more, for my country, my crew, and my backers. I would not mention money in the house of God, except to point out that all this is not the price. The price of liberty is. in the blood of brave men, and it was never bought otherwise. That should be written down by the scribe in the record-book of the synagogue. And when that is done, I will post my bills once more and find a new crew for my boat.”

12

Not Too Hard

 

NOT TOO HARD

A
LL
in the cabin had a sense of being imprisoned, even the four-month-old baby who lay on her back and whimpered for her mother's milk. It was hot in the cabin—midsummer heat—and six persons filled it to overflowing. It wasn't a very large cabin.

The boy was eight years old, tall for his age and skinny; he had a round freckled face, with hair like burnt straw.

The boy said: “Maw, can't I go out? Maw, can't a body go out and play?”

The woman ignored him; she was studying a book that was yellow with age. A girl stood looking over her shoulder at the book. The girl might have been a little older than the boy—or perhaps his twin; she was the same height.

The boy tried again: “Maw, lemme out.”

A child of two years, toddling on the cabin floor, glanced at the boy with interest. He spoke the boy's name: “Josh.”

A man lay on one of the beds that were built out from the cabin wall. He lay with a quilt drawn up to his chin, and in spite of the heat he seemed to be cold. Sometimes he moved a little, restlessly, but most of the time he lay still, only his eyes moving, watching the other people in the cabin.

Now he said: “Josh, you shut yore mouth! You leave yore mom alone!”

The woman glanced up quickly from the book; her eyes met the man's, and she forced her face to smile.

“Don't excite yourself,” she said gently.

The man muttered something, lay back with his eyes closed. The boy crossed the cabin to the one window that had an open shutter. He stood there in a broad beam of sunlight.

“You get from there!” his mother said. She reached out a hand, but he dodged nimbly. He went over to the crib and began to play with the baby.

Drawing up her legs, the baby only whimpered louder. Sometimes she liked to play with the boy, but now her only desire was for her mother's milk. The boy snorted with disgust, and his eyes turned eagerly to the open window. Beyond the window there showed a piece of cultivated ground, a cornfield and waves of ripe wheat, beyond that a stretch of forest. The boy could hear a brook gurgling, and he was thirsty. He thought of how it would be to roll all naked in the brook.

The woman sighed and closed the book. On its cover was printed: S
ELDE'S
A
NATOMY AND
H
OUSEHOLD
R
EMEDIES:
B
OSTON,
1770.

The girl, deprived of the book's fascination, wandered listlessly about the cabin.

When she stopped at the window, the mother snapped: “Get from that window!” But wearily, as if she had said it too many times.

The baby clamored for attention and milk.

“She makes me sick,” Josh muttered.

The woman's eyes fixed on him, and he slipped into a corner, alongside the fireplace that dominated a whole wall of the cabin. He sulked there, reaching out curious fingers toward a large clean-bore musket that leaned against the stone.