The French Prize (49 page)

Abigail
lay in the roadstead at Saint-Louis for several days, during which Dauville saw they were provided with what they needed: cordage, ironwork, blocks, deadeyes, a new main topmast and yard. The Abigails sent it all up, crossed yards, bent sail, rove off running gear, and missed the abundance of experienced hands they had enjoyed before the British jacks had left them.

They set sail for Barbados a few days later, the hovering French privateers still a threat, but they saw only one sail on the passage, and it turned and fled while still hull down, so if it was a privateer, it was not a particularly bold one. They were only two days under way, a quick passage, but quicker still was word of their bold rescue of
L'Armançon
. From Marie-Galante and from the British sailors at Antigua word spread of the master who ignored the fact that he had been attacked without provocation, with no state of war existing, and had plucked the disabled ship from the clutches of certain death.

The first inkling of their newfound fame arrived with the pilot, who met them as they stood into Carlisle Bay at Bridgetown. He scrambled up the ladder and pumped Jack's hand, exclaiming that all of Barbados, all of the West Indies, was talking about his bold and selfless act.
Abigail
was brought directly to one of the most convenient berths along the busy waterfront, with men sent aboard by Oxnard's agent to handle lines, so that the crew of the
Abigail
could stand back and enjoy their well-earned leisure.

Business was conducted amid a series of dinners and various celebrations. No one on Barbados was particularly interested in saving the lives of Frenchmen, but as an island colony they were all intimately bound to the sea, and so were quick to recognize the heroism of one mariner saving another. And when a mariner saved another who, the day before, had tried to kill him, it made the act all that more selfless.

Captain Biddlecomb's health was drunk all over town, and Captain Biddlecomb was often called to join in, so it was no surprise that he woke one morning in his bunk feeling not so very healthy at all, head pounding, eyes declining to open. He managed to get one lid up, slowly, and found himself staring at the same reddish-brown homespun stockings, the same set of beefy calves, the same cuffs of brown breeches he had seen on his first morning in that cabin.

“Ah, Captain Biddlecomb,” the familiar voice said. “You are awake.”

Jack sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bunk. The great cabin was nearly set to rights, and only those places where the patched woodwork had yet to be painted and the furniture that was not so perfectly repaired indicated that any violence had been done to the place.

“Good morning,” Jack said, scratching and looking around through the one eye he'd managed to open. “I don't believe I ever caught your name.”

“Tillinghast,” the man said. “Jeremiah Tillinghast.”

“Is it an odd quirk of fate that you should happen to be here?”

“No,” Tillinghast said. “Captain Rumstick sent me. I come out in that lovely Bermuda sloop of his, the
Town of Bristol
, do you know it?”

Jack nodded. Tillinghast continued. “We finally smoked what was going on, why that Bolingbroke cove tried to kill you.”

“Because he hates me,” Jack offered.

“There's that,” Tillinghast agreed. “But more. He was well paid, you know.” Tillinghast went on, telling Jack a story that he had in part guessed at himself, and in part been told to him by Wentworth, and in part did not know and wished he had not found out.

It had, in the end, been all about his father. The command of
Abigail
, the way he had been manipulated into fighting
L'Armançon
, it had all happened because he was the son of the great Isaac Biddlecomb. Jack could hardly stand the irony.

“How did you manage to find me?” Jack asked.

“This is where you were supposed to be,” Tillinghast said. “But in truth, everywhere we called they knew the story. You're a famous man, in the West Indies, at least.”

“Uncle Ezra sent you out to protect me?”

“To warn you. But I'm too late for that, it seems. So now I have another task.”

“To protect me?”

“No,” Tillinghast said. “Don't seem you need much protecting, but if you can stay out of any tavern brawls, it would be best all around. Tide turns in an hour and I mean to be under way then.”

“So soon? Where are you bound to in such a great rush?”

Tillinghast did not answer at first. “Do you know Captain John Derby, of Salem?”

“Certainly,” Jack said. Derby was a venerable old seaman, part of the Derby clan of merchants and mariners.

“Well, right after the fighting at Lexington and Concord, just days after, Dr. Joseph Warren sent him to England in a fast schooner. Derby carried eyewitness reports, and a letter from the good doctor to the people of England. You see, Warren understood that the most important part of getting your story told the way you wish it to be told is getting your story to market first. So what I need from you, young Master Biddlecomb, is your story. Tell it all to me, the fighting, towing the Frenchman off, every detail.”

Jack sighed. He had told this story many times already in the week or so since those incidents had taken place. But he told it again, and Tillinghast asked questions as he did, questions that spoke to his intimate understanding of the affair. He probed in a way that the others to whom Jack told the tale would have considered impolite. And when Jack had finished to Tillinghast's satisfaction, Tillinghast stood and extended a hand.

“Thank you, Captain Biddlecomb,” he said, shaking Jack's hand. “You did an admirable job, and everyone who hears the story will agree. At least those parts of the story we want them to hear. So, now I know I can report to Captain Rumstick that any hurt done you was done by your own hand, and with that I will bid you good day, Captain.”

Tillinghast clapped his hat on his head, and then he was gone.

Jack was another week securing a cargo for
Abigail
's return voyage, setting the ship to rights, and playing the honored guest in various households, it becoming a mark of one's place in Bridgetown society to entertain Captain Jack Biddlecomb. It was a great relief when he finally ordered
Abigail
warped away from the dock and set the fore topsail to the steady breeze.

They were three weeks in returning to Philadelphia, greeted by light and baffling winds as they made northing past the Turks and Caicos. It was midsummer when they made that familiar landfall at Cape Henlopen. The shores of the Delaware Bay and the Delaware River were a rich green, the forest filled out with leaves, and fields showing substantial growth at last. They anchored in the stream and were assured that a berth would be ready for them on the turn of the tide. No waiting for Captain Jack Biddlecomb, whose fame had preceded him by weeks, and whose return was so greatly anticipated.

Mail was sent out, and a flurry of invitations, and copies of the latest papers. Jack begged off the invitations, claiming too much work to do in preparation for coming alongside the dock, but in truth he was giving himself the gift of one last night of peace before the maelstrom that he knew was coming his way.

The headlines said it all:
True Account of the Rescue of a French Man-of-War by Son of Naval Hero Isaac Biddlecomb
.

Captain Jeremiah Tillinghast Reports News of Jack Biddlecomb, Son of Captain Isaac Biddlecomb, Late of the Continental Navy.

Apple Does Not Fall Far from the Tree.

Jack sighed, tossed the papers on the scarred table in the great cabin, and drained his glass.

“Oh, come now, what honestly did you expect?” William Wentworth asked, refilling the glass. “You're not the only one living in the shadows of the old man, you know.”

“I know. But I suspect it will be hard to remember that, these coming days.”

“Honored, toasted, given lavish meals. The young ladies of Philadelphia swooning over you, their fathers lauding you as a great hero. It will be a hellish time, Jack, hellish indeed.”

Jack smiled and picked up his new-filled glass and drained it again. The barometer was falling fast, the storm would be on him soon, the next day, as soon as his foot hit the dock. It would blow hard but it would blow itself out and then there would be calm.

And then soon enough the barometer would fall again. At sea, there was no such thing as normal.

 

Glossary

ABLE-BODIED
    a rating applied to a sailor that indicates he is entirely proficient in all the sailor's arts, in particular working on a ship's rigging.

AFT
    toward the back end of a ship, the opposite of
fore
.

ATHWARTSHIPS
    from one side of a ship to the other.

BACKSTAY
    a heavy rope running from the top of one of the masts aft to a place near the deck where it is secured. The backstay prevents the mast from falling forward.

BEFORE THE MAST
    refers to a member of a ship's crew, as opposed to an officer. The term in an allusion to sailors living in the forecastle, forward of the foremast.

BELAYING PIN
    a wooden pin resembling a long billy club and mounted through a hole in a pin rail. The lines of the rigging are hitched to the belaying pins to secure them.

BEND
    to attach one thing to another. A sailor bends a sail to a yard.

BINNACLE BOX
    cabinet mounted to the deck just forward of the helm that houses the compass and other navigational equipment.

BLOCK
    pulley.

BOATSWAIN
    sailor in charge of maintaining a ship's rigging and other maintenance duties, overseeing the work of the crew, and often enforcing discipline.

BOOM
    a heavy spar running fore and aft that secures the bottom edge of a sail.

BOW
    the front end of a ship.

BOW CHASER
    cannon mounted in the bow of a ship at such an angle as to allow it to fire as directly forward as possible.

BOWLINE
    a line attached to the edge of a square sail and used to prevent the sail from curling over when the ship is sailing close hauled. Thus when a ship is sailing on a taut bowline, she is sailing close hauled.

BOWSPRIT
    a type of mast extending at an angle up from a ship's bow to which the stays for the foremast are attached.

BREECHING
    a heavy rope running between the sides of a ship and the back end of a cannon to limit the distance a cannon can recoil when fired.

BULWARK
    the low wall around the outer edge of a ship's deck.

BUNTLINE
    line attached to the lower edge of a square sail and used to haul the sail up prior to furling.

CABLE
    a nautical unit of distance, about two hundred yards.

CAPSTAN
    a vertical manual winch turned by the use of horizontal bars inserted like spokes into the capstan's upper part. Used for very heavy lifting.

CAST
    to turn a vessel's head away from the wind when getting under way.

CEILING
    planking on the inside of a ship.

CLEWGARNET
    line used to pull the lower corner, or clew, of a course sail, the lowest square sail on a mast, up to the yard above.

CLEWLINE
    line used to pull the lower corner, of clew, of any sail above the course up to the yard above.

CLOSE HAULED
    point of sail in which a ship is sailing as directly into the wind as she is able. A square-rigged ship could sail at best about forty-five degrees toward the wind, a fore-and-aft-rigged ship somewhat better.

COURSE
    the lowest square sail on a mast.

CROSSJACK YARD
    the lowest yard on a ship's mizzenmast. Pronounced
cro'jik
.

CROSSTREES
    short, horizontal timbers running side to side at the base of an upper mast which spread the base of the shrouds supporting that mast and used as a place for a man aloft to stand.

END FOR END
    to run a piece of rope in the direction opposite of how it has been run to more equally distribute the wear.

FIFE RAIL
    a three-sided, freestanding pin rail at the base of a mast where running rigging from that mast is belayed.

FORE
    in or toward the forward part of the ship.

FORE AND AFT
    running along the centerline of a ship, the opposite of athwartships. Also used to denote the entire expanse of the ship.

FORECASTLE
    the compartment in the bow of the ship. In merchant vessels it was traditionally where the sailors lived. Pronounced
fo'c'sle.

FOREMAST JACK
    colloquial term for a common sailor.

FREEBOARD
    the part of a ship or boat's hull from the waterline to the edge of the deck.

FURL
    the act of pulling a sail up to a yard and tying it in place.

FUTTOCK SHROUDS
    short ropes extending from the edge of the top to the mast below. These secure the upper shrouds and are used by sailors to climb around the edge of the top.

GAFF
    a spar that supports the upper edge of a trapezoidal sail such as a spanker.

GIRTLINE
    a line extending from the deck to the top of a mast and back to the deck, used for hoisting aloft whatever needs hoisting. Also called a gantline.

GREAT CABIN
    the captain's cabin at the very after end of the ship. It generally runs the full width of the ship and features windows in the after wall looking astern.