The French Prize (33 page)

“Ah, yes, well he has no stick that will serve for new, but he'll be happy to help us fish the old one as best as can be done. But here's the part that's above and beyond the call. He's agreed to give us the use of another six six-pounders, and have his ship carpenters mount them. And you can bet they'll do a damned sight better job of it than those thieves in Philadelphia. It'll be a bit crowded topsides, I'm not saying it won't, but if we make that main hatch a bit narrower, that should answer. Then this fellow says he'll give us the powder and shot we need, and even lend us experienced hands enough to work the guns!”

Jack felt the sick twist in his stomach, which was becoming all too familiar. “Now, see here, Mr. Frost,” he said. “I had thought you were going to see about getting what we need to set the ship to rights, enough to get us to Barbados. I hardly thought you were going to arrange to turn us into some kind of damned man-of-war.” Even as he spoke he felt the shame of his failure. Had Frost ignored his instructions? No. He had given Frost no instructions, he had ceded his authority, he had allowed Frost all the latitude he wished.

“My dear captain, it's quite beyond that now,” Frost said, not unkindly. “Robert … Mr. Oxnard … made it clear enough that he wishes the ship to reach Barbados, not end up as some prize to the French. We tried sneaking through and were caught up. Now, after the drubbing you gave Monsieur Crapeau out there, every privateer and man-of-war will be on the hunt for us. Forgive me, Captain, if I have overstepped my bounds, but the simple fact here is this … if we are to reach Barbados, we must fight our way there.”

Jack nodded. Frost had said nothing with which he might argue or disagree. Frost seemed have a knack for doing that. But still Jack felt as if this business was spinning out of control, and he with no way to stop it, or even slow its momentum.

 

22

Boston in the summer could be beastly hot, or so William Wentworth had always believed. In truth, as he now realized, he had had no notion of what real heat was, but he was starting to. It had been hot enough at sea, but there had generally been a breeze of some sort that had tempered the heat considerably. There was little breeze to be found in English Harbour, however, where the sun beat down like a blacksmith's hammer, and every sound seemed unnaturally loud in the still air.

And, dear Lord, it's only
 … Wentworth had to think on it for a moment.
It's only May 22
 … What must happen, he wondered, when the really hot season arrived?

From a spot by the mizzen fife rail, a good place to observe yet stay well out of the way, Wentworth watched as they made ready to tow the
Abigail
alongside the quay. The degree of interest he took in the procedure still surprised him. A massive ship's boat came up under the bow, thirty feet long and expertly rowed by hardcase British men-of-war's men, pigtailed and straw-hatted, powerful arms with muscles that rippled under tanned skin. Watching them at their work gave Wentworth a vague feeling of inadequacy, and he reminded himself that they were seamen of the Royal Navy: poor, mostly illiterate, bound to the service, little better than slaves, while he was a Wentworth of the Boston Wentworths.

They took a towline that Burgess and a gang under his supervision had rigged from the
Abigail
's bow, and once
Abigail
's anchor hung dripping and muddy from the starboard cathead, they laid into the oars and towed the merchantman alongside the stone quay. A blue-coated officer sat in the boat's sternsheets, hand on the tiller, but if he ever gave an order, Wentworth did not hear it.

Once
Abigail
was secured alongside, her men and the dockyard's men and more men from the British men-of-war appeared and began hoisting the six pounders off her deck, which seemed an act of disarmament, but at the same time ship's carpenters appeared and as far as Wentworth could tell began cutting holes in the bulwark for even more guns to be set in place.

It was all something of a mystery, since no one had told him anything of their current plans, and so on the second day of that furious activity, when Biddlecomb seemed to be unoccupied for a rare moment, Wentworth approached him. They had not spoken more than a few words since Wentworth had confessed to his discomfort about killing the Frenchmen, an embarrassing and regrettable admission, and it took a considerable degree of curiosity to overcome his reluctance to speak to Biddlecomb now.

“Captain, forgive me, but could I inquire as to what's going on here?”

Biddlecomb looked at him with an odd expression, part annoyance and part surprise that he should ask such a question, as if Biddlecomb expected him to know quite well what was going on.

“We are getting the guns and stores off her, getting her ready to heave down,” Biddlecomb said, unhelpfully.

“‘Heave down'?”

“We'll make a block fast to her mainmast head, a great four-part affair, and run the fall to a capstan and heave away, roll the ship on her side. Not all the way, just enough to get at that hole the Frenchie gave us, so that we might repair it.”

“Ah…” Wentworth said, now partially enlightened. “And these other fellows?”

“Are cutting new gunports for the additional guns we're to mount. Now, please forgive me, but here's the last of the water casks hoisted out and I must see if we have any damage below that was not obvious before.”

And so William Wentworth was left alone for that day, and the next, being, apparently, the only man in English Harbour, or perhaps on all of Antigua, who did not have one damned thing to occupy his time. He watched them heave the
Abigail
down, which was certainly interesting, and watched the rest of the preparations, which became increasingly dull with each passing moment. He managed to extract information from Frost, not much, but enough to give him some sense for what was going on. Or at least some sense for what Frost wished him to believe was going on. William Wentworth was many things, many of them unpleasant, but na
ï
ve was not one of them.

By the third day he had had his fill of dockyard procedures and decided to see if there was any shooting to be had on the island, so he collected up his rifle, powder horn, and shot bag and made his way down the gangplank to the quay.

It was all new, all utterly new and foreign to him. In twenty-two years he had left Massachusetts all of six times, and of those, New York was the farthest afield he had gone, save for his passage to Philadelphia to meet the
Abigail
. William Wentworth had never been one for travel, for novelty and new experience. He had never seen the appeal.

But standing on the quay, under a sun such as he had never felt before, surrounded by a place the likes of which he had never seen, he was nearly overwhelmed by the sensation, the strangeness of it. He was Adam waking in this new-made paradise. Palm trees—palm trees!—were waving as if in greeting. Bright-plumed birds unlike anything in his experience flickered past, making the cardinals of his native New England, perhaps the gaudiest of birds found there, look dull in comparison. A lizard, five inches long, stood in his path as if daring him to proceed.

A few hundred feet away stood the buildings of the dockyard, stone and brick and rough-hewn wooden beams. They looked out of place in their familiarity, stolid, humorless British architecture set down in this frivolous land. Worn paths, or perhaps they might be called roads, ran from the quay in various directions, dusty and paved with a layer of broken shells. One ran past a three-story stone building punctuated by a series of windows along its face, a flagpole with the Union Jack waving in a lazy, desultory way.

William took this building to be a barracks of some sort, a place for the officers to live when ashore, perhaps. A trellis stood to one side of the building; a profusion of vines and massive vivid flowers covered the wooden frame, giving some blessed shade to the four men at the table below it. British naval officers. They were in shirtsleeves and waistcoats. Their blue uniform coats were draped over the backs of their chairs and there were half-full glasses before them, a half-empty bottle amidships. They seemed to be taking their pleasure in a quiet, unhurried way, the only way that seemed right in such heat.

Their presence reminded William of yet another unique aspect of his situation, another novel thing after a lifetime of studiously avoiding novelty. He was now in a foreign land. He was in a colony of the British Empire. He had of course been born in a colony of the British Empire, had been British himself for all of ten months before the Congress declared independence and his father, among others, had fought to turn that declaration into a political reality.

William's father, Charles Wentworth, was never a wild revolutionary, despite having shot at Englishmen and having been shot at by them in return.
P
è
re
Wentworth was not one of those who came to hate the mother country. Quite the opposite; he continued to admire the British and dislike the French, and his dislike of the French had expanded exponentially with the outbreak of their revolution, which, unlike that of the Americans, exhibited a hedonistic liberality of which he did not approve.

These attitudes, like wealth and a somewhat prominent nose, he had handed down to his son. William Wentworth would normally have felt an affinity for British naval officers. But at that moment, he was not so sure.

Standing there on that dusty road, wearing only a loose cotton shirt, rumpled from having been crammed in a sea chest and already wet from perspiration and quite wilted, wool socks and shoes that had suffered much from their sea voyage, and a straw hat such as a foremast jack or a field hand might wear, Wentworth was feeling every bit the Yankee Doodle Dandy. For all the heat, the officers under the trellis did not seem to be in the least discomforted, and their waistcoats and shirts were white and smooth as if fresh from the laundry, the buckles on their shoes glinted when the sunlight found them through the vines overhead.

Wentworth sighed. There was nothing for it. He would have to walk past them, secure in his knowledge that in wealth, breeding, or learning he was the equal of any of them. He put his rifle over his shoulder and walked on, he shoes crunching over the shells underfoot, the birds making weird noises from the cover of the thick and pungent vegetation.

He could feel the eyes on him as he walked past, and he was not entirely surprised to hear one of the officers call out, “I say! You there, I say!”

Wentworth stopped. He could feel the color rising in his face, felt the familiar sensation of growing resentment, of smoldering offense. What would happen if he was insulted? In Boston the answer would be as obvious as his reaction would be swift. But here? What would happen to him, or the men of the
Abigail
, if he were forced to call one of these fellows out and put a bullet in him?

But there was no time to think that through, to weigh the various possibilities. One of these fellows had called to him, and he could not ignore him. He turned on his heel. They were all looking at him, all four officers, three near his own age and one a decade or more older. It was one of the younger men who had called out, and he was now regarding Wentworth with considerable interest.

“I say,” the naval officer continued, his tone one of surprise and admiration. “Your rifle, sir, is that a Jover and Belton?”

The question took Wentworth full aback, completely disarmed him. He approached the men, handed the weapon over for their inspection. The fellow who had called to him took it up with respect, held it at various angles to admire it, handed it off to his fellow officers, then insisted that Wentworth join them in a drink.

The shade was a blessing, a soft breeze had come up. The wine, which was Madeira, was actually cool, made so through an evaporative process that the officers explained to Wentworth as they opened a second bottle. The officer who had first called to Wentworth introduced himself as Lieutenant Thomas Chandler, fourth officer aboard the seventy-four
Warrior,
Sir James Wallace commanding, the very ship about which Wentworth had been asking Jack. Chandler told Wentworth that he owned a fowler by Jover and Belton and a brace of pistols, and he recognized the craftsmanship right off. They discussed the merits of the guns for a few animated moments, with the enthusiasm of the true
aficionado
, the sort that those outside the club find hard to fathom.

The older man, who was second aboard
Warrior
, said, “We were about to have a bite, cheese and fruit and cakes, nothing extraordinary, but we would be most pleased was you to join us.”

“Delighted, sir, thank you,” Wentworth said. The thought of fresh fruit and new company, enjoyable company, was powerfully compelling. He sipped his Madeira, sweet and cool. He took the ridiculous straw hat from his head.

“Beastly hot, and only going to get worse,” the older man observed.

“You are from this American merchantman, I presume?” Chandler said. “Must be, we haven't seen a new face around here in weeks, not until you sailed in. It's tedious in the extreme, sitting out here, no one to look at but these three. God, but their conversation can get dull.”

“Dull, you say?” said one of the officers. “Ah, my dear Chandler, you are always the whetstone to our dull discussions. By ‘whetstone' I mean to imply that you are coarse, rough, and quite unpolished.”

Wentworth wondered if this was going to grow more heated, how ugly it might become, but then he saw that this was simply how they talked with one another, men so familiar with each other's company that they could toss out insults of that nature and give no offense. Wentworth had seen that before, though he had never personally had such a connection to anyone.

The food and more drink were brought out by a young black man in bleached white slop trousers and shirt. The second officer said, “So you were in that action with that corvette, that
L'Arman
ç
on
, or so goes the rumor flying around here. Pray, tell us more.”