“Zir?” Svensen begged, unwilling to take responsibility with items unfamiliar to him.
“Then we'll let Mister Cowell or Mister McGilliveray see to that. You'll not keep this ship hidden here, as I first told you. Take her out to sea as soon as we're on our way. Meet up with
Shrike
and tell the captain we didn't think it was safe to leave her here.”
“Aye, zir, t'ank Gott, me neider!”
“Give him this letter telling him the reasons for my decision. And I expect Mister Cowell shall have one for you, too,” Alan said, smiling. “I shall go below and change.”
Alan stumbled down to the hold accommodation deck of the small sloop, and stripped out of his uniform as men bustled about past curtains that served as light traps from the hold where they could at least see what they were doing in carrying goods and weapons to the spar deck.
“This is so damned daft!” he grumbled as he exchanged white slop trousers for an old pair of buff breeches reinforced with leather on the seat and inner thighs, some cavalryman's castoffs. They were much too big for him, but they would serve. A forest-green linen shirt went on over those, a faded blue sash about his waist outside the shirt, in which he stuck a boarding axe, much the size of an Indian's tomahawk, a pair of dragoon pistols he had kept as mementos from Yorktown, and a short dagger. Then came cartouche pouch and musket implements slung over his shoulders, and a baldric for a sword.
He eyed his hanger, the lovely Gill's in its dark blue leather sheath with the sterling silver fittings, the sea-shell design on the hilt and guard, and the gilt pommel of a lion's head. It was too precious to him to traipse about before sticky-fingered Indians, or lose, along with his life, if this expedition went sour. With a sigh, he put it down and exchanged it for one of the cheap Spanish cutlasses from the ship's weapons tub. He went aft to his quarters in the stern and wrote a short note which he wrapped
about the scabbard, instructing that if he did not return, it should be sent to his grandmother in Devon whom he had never laid eyes on.
That act convinced him, if nothing else did, that there was more than usual danger in what they were about to do, and he regretted that he had not taken the time to write a few letters. There was Lucy, whom he had been forbidden from seeing since his disastrous actions of the months before. There was his maternal grandmother, who had rescued him from ignominy and poverty. There was Caroline Chiswick, now safely in the arms of her family in Charleston, if they had not already sailed for England by now. Poverty-stricken she might be, but she had been such a sweet and lovely girl, a little too tall and gawky for fashionable beauty, but damned handsome nonetheless, and devilish smart and delightful to converse with. God help him, he felt a pang for Dolly Fenton, and wished that he were back in her bed that instant. She at least had for a time loved him as well as she was able, and that was damned fine. He still regretted that last hour or so with her, when he had to tell her he was sailing away for good, and that her dreams of a little love-nest for just the two of them could not be. She had wept as quietly as she could, clung to him, given him passionate love once more, saving her real tears and squawls for total privacy. She had been so sweet, too, so dependent, yet good of heart, and, thank God, nowhere near as dumb as Lucy.
“Might as well write my fucking will while I'm at it!” he muttered, suffering a premonitory chill even as he said it. His insides cooled noticeably, and his stomach got a touch queasy as he finished gathering up a change of clothes and a few personal items in a sea-bag.
Damnit, this was a bloody undertaking, not like a sea-battle at all, which was gory enough for anyone's tastes. With McGilliveray to lead them and negotiate, they might be safe as houses, or they could end up tortured to death,
screaming
for death, and painted savages dancing about waving their own hair and their privates at them in glee!
“Jesus, I'm scared witless!” he whispered soft as he could in the privacy of his quarters, the temporary luxury of untold space in the former master's cabin. He had been frightened before. Any time he had to scale the masts. Before battle was joined, when he had time to think about how he could be mangled. The two duels he had fought in his short life. The shelling at Yorktown, or the horrible battle they had fought with Lauzun's
Legion and the Virginia Militia on Guinea Neck before they could escape. Even the first few weeks under Lieutenant Lilycrop's pitiless eyes as he fumbled his way to competence had tied his plumbing into hot knots, but nothing like this icy dread.
“Damn the Navy, damn King George, damn everybody!” he spat, within a touch of begging off at the last minute. It was all he could do to walk to the cabin door and think about joining his party.
There was a knock on the door, which almost loosed his bowels.
“Enter,” he bade from a dreadfully dry mouth.
Cashman stepped inside, clad in pretty much the same rig as Alan, but with the addition of a scarlet officer's sash.
“You look like death's head on a mop-stick,” Cashman said with a quirky little cock of his brows.
“How I look is nothing on how I feel,” Alan grumbled.
“Then let's liquor our boots,” Cashman suggested, crossing to the former captain's wine-cabinet. He drew out a wine bottle and took a swig from the neck, then handed the bottle to Lewrie.
“Ah, that's the ticket,” Alan sighed. “Incredibly foul
vin rouge
, my last taste of civilization.”
“I hope you've remembered rum for my troops?” Cashman asked. “God knows how anyone could do what we're about to do sober.”
“Aye, rum enough for everyone for three weeks, though not the usual sailor's measure. A sip, no more.”
“It's beginning to feel a touch insane about now, ain't it?”
“Insane ain't the word for it, sir.” Alan shuddered.
“Call me Christopher,” Cashman told him. “Growl we may, but go we must, you know. Give me that bottle, if you've had enough. I feel the need for a generous libation to put me numb enough to get on with the business.”
“Feeling daunted yourself, hey?”
“Bloody terrified,” Cashman admitted easily. “You?”
“I was wondering if I could break a leg or something at the last minute.” Alan grinned back at him. Cashman tipped him a wink.
“Either way, it's bloody daft, the way we leap at chances for honor and glory,” Cashman said with a belch, and handed the bottle back, which bottle had diminished in contents remarkably in a very short span of time. “Personally, I think it's a lot of balls, but that's what they pay us for. This is the worst time,
when one steps out into the unknown. Once we've been shoved into motion, it usually goes much better.”
“That's been my experience.” Alan nodded. “What about Cowell and McGilliveray?”
“Cowell
sahib
is still scribbling away at his objections, but the Turtle-
rajah
came round at the last, long as the goods get up-river. He suggested the sloop would do better to handle the transfer of goods from
Shrike
, instead of having your ship come inshore with her. Wants you to pass the word to your captain to load her up and stand ready to meet us once we get the
gora logs
convinced to set out the red war pole.”
“Could you possibly speak the King's English, Kit?”
“Ah, sorry, not possible, you see. Been too long away from it. I can
pidgin
with any Samboe you want from the Hooghly Bar to the Coromandel coast. I can even get along in Creole with the slaveys up in the Blue Mountains. Who knows, by the time we're done, I'll master Creek, too?”
“Well, we can open another bottle,” Alan sighed, tossing the empty onto the coverlet of the hanging cot. “Or we could get started while it's still dark and quiet.”
“Best go, then. Or we'll never.” Cashman tried to smile.
“Aye. Goddamnit.”
“Amen, parson Lewrie.”
F
lorida pretty much ain't worth a tuppeny shit, Alan thought moodily as they lay up ashore just a few miles short of the headwaters of the Ochlockonee. The past night and day had been miserable. The air was still, and foetid with the smells of marsh and mud, the swamps aswarm with mosquitoes and biting flies, biting gnats. Alligators and poisonous snakes were two-a-penny on the banks, in the water, laying out for a bask on the tree
limbs that overhung the banks when they were forced close ashore by a bend in the channel, or snuffling about under the banks in their nests and roaring at them when disturbed.
They had made very good time, though, catching a favorable slant of wind on the first night when the river was wide enough for short-tacking inland. So far they were a day ahead of schedule.
It was only after the sun had come up that they had been forced to row as the banks closed in and rose higher in thickly treed hammocks that blocked the breeze from the sea, and the familiar tang of salt air was left behind like a lover's perfume. The heat wasn't bad, though the air was stiflingly wet enough and humid enough to wring perspiration from them by the bucket, and it was a blessing that the leafy green waters could be drunk safely, or dipped up and sluiced over tired bodies.
Bald cypress, scrub pine, and yellow-green stagnant ponds spread out on either hand under the canopy of the marshes, punctuated by water reeds, sharp-edged grasses, or jagged stumps of prodigious size. Bright birds the like of which the hands had never seen cried and stalked or fluttered below the canopy. Frogs the size of rabbits croaked at them from their resting places. Water bugs skittered on the deceptively calm water as it slid like treacle through the marshes. Now and then a hammock of higher sandy ground loomed up around a bend in the channel, covered with pines thick as the hair on a cat's back, open to the bright sky as the result of a lightning fire, or burn.
Otter, deer, a host of wildlife, lurked along the banks. Alan saw raccoons for the first time, and opposums hanging by their naked tails like obscene caricatures of rats. He had been almost nauseated by McGilliveray's grunted comment that opposums were very good to eat, though he was never one to refuse a bread-room fed “miller” in his midshipman daysâat least the ship's rats were decent-sized!
McGilliveray had gone totally native by then, stripping off his shirt to bare more pagan tattooing, wrapping a length of cloth about his head like a Hindi's
turban
as Cashman styled it, naked under breech-clout, and the leggings only covering his thighs, held up by thongs from the single strap that held the breech-clout in place. Most of the sailors had tied their kerchiefs about their heads like small four-cornered mob-caps. The soldiers sported rough imitations of
turbans
, and had taken off their shirts as well, though their skins gleamed almost frog-belly pale in the fierce light, and several were already regretting the exposure,
and patting their burns with water. At least in that regard Alan's sailors were more fortunate, since they had had months and years of continual tanning by the sun, so they appeared at first glance as ruddy as any savage.
“Apalachee scout over there,” McGilliveray whispered, coming to Lewrie's side. “I shall go speak to him.”
“Is that wise?” Cowell asked, almost prostrate with exhaustion, though he had not done a lick of work since plunking his posterior on a thwart the night before. Alan thought it comical to see how McGilliveray had tricked Cowell out in breech-clout, leggings, moccasins and calico checkered shirt, with a
turban
of his own, like a maggot done up as a man. He could not have fooled a European at a hundred yards, and any Indian running across him would have asked him how fast the pitch was at the new Lord's cricket grounds.
“We have to let them know who we are eventually, sir,” McGilliveray said. “They saw us land, tracked us up-river. I had hoped we would make contact with them last night. It's only polite, seeing as how we've crossed most of their territory already.”
“If this is the best real-estate they have, they're welcome to every bloody stick of it,” Alan griped.
McGilliveray stood up and waved an arm, calling out in his odd language, and from where Alan thought only a mosquito could live, up popped a full half-dozen savages, dressed in breech-clouts and tattoos only, bearing long cane bows and arrows. McGilliveray took off his moccasins and waded across a shallow slough of weeds and reeds to converse with them.
“They don't look like Rousseau's noble savages, do they, Mister Cowell?” Cashman asked, coming to join them as they stood idly by watching the parley.
“Look how lithe and tall they are, how nobly they bear themselves, sir,” Cowell disagreed softly. “One does not need much clothing in such climes. Mankind, reduced to Eden, without a houseful of possessions and gew-gaws, with no prating philosophies to occasion rancor, shorn of metaphysics, of confusing science. They are a handsome folk, you'll not be able to deny. All pretensions of society cast aside, and relying on Nature and our Creator and their native wit for sustenance. You may speak of barbarity, of quick anger and bloody-handed murther, but has Mankind, in all our wisdom, gone far beyond those passions for all our supposed improvements, Captain Cashman?”
“We don't kill quite so openly and easily, sir,” Cashman replied.
“Life, in all its facets, is closer and more personal with them, sir. They are not like us, but we were once much like them, and still are, in many ways yet. The brave man slays with a sword, the coward with an invitation to tea, if I may paraphrase the quotation, ha ha.”
“I've never been
scalped
at a cat-lapping,” Alan quipped. “Fucked with, God yes, and damned proud of it, mind.”
“We are in luck, Mister Cowell,” McGilliveray told them when he returned. “There are Seminolee a few miles ahead of us, in a spring camp to fish. Lots of horses.”
“Any Spanish?” Cashman pressed.
“None seen this far inland in weeks. Some parties passed north of the swamps and crossed the rivers heading west a few days ago,” McGilliveray/White Turtle grunted, having seemingly given up the act of smiling for the duration. “A company of horse, and one of foot, with baggage train. But they were busy driving stolen cattle they took from British colonists far off to the east.”
“According to this map, there is a small stream that leads to the Apalachicola River,” Alan pointed out, folding out their large chart. “How deep is it? This one that leads west and nor' west.”
“Very shallow. Dugout canoes have trouble there,” their guide said, after peering at the map, and at Lewrie. “Another change, Mister Lewrie?”
“We've made good time by water so far, why change bets now?” Alan replied, mopping his face with a kerchief. “If it goes our way.”
“Best we continue on north.” White Turtle scowled, pointing in that direction with a chin jutted over his shoulder. “This river bends easterly to the lake. Where the lake begins we find horses. Leave the boats, and a guard over them.”
“Damn, splitting our party again,” Cashman spat. “What's odds these Apalachee, or your relatives the Seminolee, would keep them safe for us. For a share of the profits, of course.”
“If the Seminolee want something, they take it.” He shrugged.
“Well, they can't make off with anything big as a launch and a gig, can they?” Alan japed. “I saw something up at Yorktown, a set of poles lashed together from a horse so it could drag, instead of carry a load. We could take the rations, masts, oars, everything on the drag behind one horse. I assume we'll march?
Right, then. We haul the boats ashore and hide them from the Spanish at least. Then if they rip out the thwarts, we may still make new ones later. Wrap everything else up in the sails and shroud lines, which we can't easily replace.”
“You are a paragon, Alan,” Cashman beamed. “I'd never have ever thought of anything like that. See how fortunate we are, Mister Cowell, how well the Admiralty has provided for you?”
“Let's simply be on our way. It's stifling in these swamps,” Cowell fluttered petulantly.
“Right you are, then. Off we go. Andrews? Back into the boats.”
They began to get back aboard, but several of the men from the launch shrank back in fear and scrambled back ashore quick as they could.
“They's a bloody
snake
, Mister Lewrie, sir!” one of the hands yelped.
“Well, kill it and let's go.”
“No!” McGilliveray shouted. “Never kill a snake! Bad luck with my people!”
“Wot're we s'posed ter do wif'em,'en, kiss 'em an' tuck 'em inna bed'r somefin'?” one of the older men muttered loud enough to hear.
“I do it. They're poisonous,” McGilliveray offered, and climbed into the boat, using a long club to lift the snake out and toss it over the side, after greeting it in Muskogean.
“Notice how his speech is getting more pidgin as we go?” Cashman noted before they shoved off.
“Yes, I had. Must be getting back into the mood of his people,” Alan replied.
“Perhaps,” Cashman whispered, rubbing his nose. “Perhaps.”
Â
After camping at the lake shore with the party of Seminolee men, they started out at first light after a dip in the water and a quick breakfast. The Seminolee had provided some rather good horses, and had known what Alan was driving at when he described a drag. With some of the trade goods left behind, and at least the promise that the boats would be left undisturbed, there was nothing for it but to proceed.
Once out of the swamps, the land opened out into grassy meadows almost like park land, where the heat was not so oppressive and the gentle winds could cool them on their march. It
was early January, and the skies were cloudier than before, promising rain.
With a pair of cotton stockings on, rolled down to the ankle, Alan found moccasins rather comfortable to march in. They went in a single file, with soldiers and sailors gathered round the pack-horses, and Seminolee out on the flanks and rear, with a scout out ahead.
“Great warrior, the Raven,” White Turtle said, pointing with his chin to the head of the column. “The bravest man. He gives call of a raven if he sees trouble. To the left, the Wolf.”
“Who howls, I presume?” Alan replied, meaning to be civil.
“To the right, the Owl, who will hoot. Behind us, the Fox who will yelp.” McGilliveray nodded in agreement. “The others should go all in each others' moccasin prints, so it only looks like one man. Might be a big party, might be one man alone. Makes for safety.”
“Seems safe enough now.”
“Nothing is safe here, you will learn.”
“But it's so open!” Alan protested, shifting the sling of his fusil on his shoulder. “Two hundred yards to the trees, and the scouts.”
“Hide behind tree, hide in those groves. Lay in the grass. Ten warriors, twenty? They could be on you before you get that gun to your shoulder.”
“Delightful.” Alan shuddered. “Look, about that snake yesterday. Never kill a snake.”
“No.”
“Never wash meat in a stream, never piss in one, never put out a fire with water. Never get downstream of a widow, or upstream from a wife. Avoid women in their monthlies like the plague. What else?”
“A great deal more, Lewrie,” McGilliveray said. “But it makes sense to us. Women are a separate animal from man. Not like us at all, so we have to be careful we are not defiled. We know the Thunder Boys are the ones who create mischief in this world, and people bring it on because they mixed elements that should not have been mixed. In the world above, everything is perfect, each animal, each plant, and man and woman, larger than us, and perfect. Down below in the underworld, monsters and witches and Water-Cougar, one of everything, but evil. In the right here world, sometimes the perfect comes down, sometimes bad comes up from below, like Spear-Finger, the old woman who kills and steals men's souls to feed on so she can
live forever. Even when she was finally killed, she did not really die. The good and the bad always come back, so people must always be on their guard not to defile their spirit, or offend the Great Spirit by defilement. For their own good, their family and clan, and their nation.”
“Is that what you believe personally?” Alan asked. “Are you a Christian, or do you believe the native religion?”
“When my father took me to Charleston, and then to England, he taught me about God and Jesus, but I always found it a little confusing,” McGilliveray admitted. “Even after a year at Cambridge, I find the old ways more comforting. Mister Cowell and his friends tried to explain the unexplainable as he puts it, but the various points of doctrine are troubling to me.”
“Ah well, most people have that problem. Most call themselves Deists and let it go at that.” Alan grinned.
“Then you do not honor your God who made you, as we do. To say that God exists, and then continue your life your own way, is to negate your belief,” McGilliveray expounded. “Others leap about and speak no known tongue, shake and dance in glory. They raise the Bible on high and declare everyone sinners but themselves. But then they go out and kill eagles for sport, kill snakes, sleep with their women in their courses. All Christians treat the earth as a dead thing to walk upon, and all animals as dumb food. When we kill an eagle to get its feathers for our great men, it takes much prayer, and we ask the eagle, and the Great Spirit, who is most in the birds, and in the eagles of any race of animals on earth, to forgive us for we have to do this. Christians would strip this land bare, chop all the trees, slaughter all the game far beyond what they could eat, because God gave man
dominion
back in the cloud-time before the clans saw their signs. Look here,” he said, pointing to a circle tattoo on his chest, which enclosed a four-legged equilateral cross.