Later, after they had left word with a dock boy in Hamilton to ride like the wind to St. George Town if Jocelyn should sail in, Rascal threaded her way out of the harbor and sailed off on larboard up the northern coast of Bermuda. Visser understandably kept to himself at the taffrail, staring at their wake, lost in his own helplessness.
It was dusk when Rascal rounded up and let go in St. George’s harbor. The little bay was virtually empty, the only vessel a Somers salt packet swinging slightly at her anchor. The sunset’s light painted the shoreline cottage windows red, a flaming red to warm a returning sailor’s heart. As soon as Fallon saw the ship secure, he and Caleb were rowed to shore in Rascal’s gig.
Walking up the road from the harbor, Fallon could see that the candles still burned in Ezra Somer’s office. That was no surprise, and he hoped he would find Elinore there, as well. They had been apart over a month, more than he’d planned for this last cruise but the sea kept its own calendar.
As Caleb and Fallon ascended the stairs to the office they could hear voices, one of which belonged to Elinore, and Fallon’s heart leapt. When he stepped through the open door of the office, however, he was unprepared to have her leap into his arms, sobbing. Somers was there, as well, along with Little Eddy, and they all crowded around Fallon, leaving Caleb off to the side, awkward and invisible.
“I was so worried, Nico!” Elimore cried. “But this is you! You’re here! You’re back home!”
“Safe and sound, back home,” said Fallon softly into her ear. “We have a wedding to plan, remember? I always come back, love. Always.”
“Welcome home, Nico,” said Somers, slapping his captain on the back. “I never doubted it.”
“Doubted what, Ezra?” said Fallon. “Why was everyone so worried?”
“It was the gale, Nico,” said Elinore, wiping her eyes. “It was so horrible and we were so worried. For some reason it scared me this time, more than the other storms. It’s not that I doubted you, or Beauty, I just became frightened because I knew you were sailing through it to come home.”
“And there was a shipwreck, sir!” yelped Little Eddy. “At North Rock it was. There’s lots of wood on shore!” Little Eddy, the scrounger turned newsboy.
“And who is this you’ve brought home?” asked Somers, ignoring Little Eddy’s dampening outburst, and extending his hand to Caleb.
“Caleb Visser, at your service, sir,” said Caleb tightly, the alarming news from Little Eddy’s mouth having entered his brain and travelled to the pit of his stomach, where it was now forming a knot. “But tell me, if someone can, about the wreck?”
“Oh, I don’t think it was a ship from around here,” said Somers, trying to lighten the mood in the room. Elinore still had not let go of Fallon, and Little Eddy was rummaging in a sack he’d brought to Somers’ office.
“I found this, sir!” said the boy. And he struggled to pull out the piece of name board he’d scrounged from the wreck, the letter “J” clearly visible.
Caleb Visser staggered as if he’d been shot.
“My God,” said Visser, more to himself than anybody else. “My God.”
There was silence in the room as every eye watched Visser take the “J” from Little Eddy and stare at it, then rub the letter with his hands. His mouth opened several times to speak but nothing came out.
“Ahem,” said Fallon quietly. “Captain Visser is from Boston, a cod fisherman, and he and his brother were on their way to Algiers to pay a ransom for his father, also a cod fisherman, who was captured by corsairs working for the dey of Algiers. They left Boston in two ships, his brother was captain in the other one, and they were separated in the gale. We were able to pick up Caleb and his crew before their sloop sank. But… the ransom gold was in the other ship. Her name was Jocelyn.”
There was a collective gasp in the room and, instinctively, hands went out to comfort Visser, who was fighting hard to hold back tears, his eyes down and closed.
“My God,” was all he could whisper. And no one else could think of anything better to say.
SIX
THE GATHERING IN SOMERS’ OFFICE BROKE UP IN A SAD WAY, WITH LITtle Eddy showing Caleb Visser the way to the White Horse pub, which had been in Fallon’s family for generations, where the distraught fisherman planned to drink himself into a stupor. Ezra Somers headed home to go to bed and Fallon and Elinore walked slowly towards the fisherman’s shack on the edge of the marsh, their secret place. Unfortunately, their excitement at seeing each other was inevitably affected by the plight of poor Caleb Visser and the utter hopelessness of his predicament.
They entered the shack with the key Elinore kept under a rock by the door and Fallon began building a small fire. It was a simple, one-room shack with a small table and chair on a circle of rug and, of course, a bed beneath the window where Elinore sat. The question now was whether they could set the world aside for a few moments and be the lovers they wanted to be.
As the shack heated up, the answer appeared to be yes. Elinore stood up as Fallon knelt and poked at the fire; she slipped off her coat and then her dress and undergarments, and when Fallon turned and looked up he gasped, for she was the most beautiful woman in the world, glowing white as an apparition, her blonde hair falling over her breasts, her legs slightly apart, the moonlight just peeking between them.
In moments he was beside her and her hands tore at his clothing with a fierce urgency that spoke of her fears for him and her need for this moment. All thoughts of the world’s troubles vanished as they fell onto the bed, Elinore’s hands and mouth finding remembered places and her tongue tasting the salt of the sea on Fallon’s body. She guided his hands where she wanted them, and when he mounted her and began pushing gently she smiled a wicked sort of smile and rolled him over and sat astride him, still in command of this moment, breathing short gasps as she moved back and forth, holding him tightly inside of her. She leaned down over him, inches from his face, and began slowly rocking, then faster, until finally she sat up and arched her back and pounded her hips into him with a ferocity that came from someplace primal, undiscovered until that moment; and she screamed a scream of sexual release that filled the shack and perhaps the night around the shack.
Spent and wet from sweat, she collapsed.
Fallon held her to him and felt her heart pound his chest, her body relaxed at last, soft and tender again. He thought she might go to sleep just like that, on top of him. So he was surprised when she suddenly spoke.
“The bell,” she said softly. “We need the Bermuda Bell.”
SEVEN
JUST BEFORE CHRISTMAS IN 1613 AN IMPOVERISHED BUT BRILLIANT young man named Robert Norwood set foot on the Somers Isles, before they were called Bermuda, and decided to seek his fortune diving on the many wrecks that littered the shoals. He had lately been a pirate, but found the pay lacking, from bad luck, perhaps, or lack of industry. So he was casting about for a new profession.
Salvaging seemed just the thing. His inventive mind devised a method of diving that was a first in the New World: he inverted and converted a wine barrel into a diving bell, hung weights about it and, with some help from a crew on the surface, descended upon the wrecks, breathing the air trapped inside the barrel. Thus, the Bermuda Bell was born. No written or oral history survived as to Norwood’s success, but wags did say he failed at piracy when piracy was in full bloom, so there.
Over the next hundred plus years the Bermuda Bell was more or less continually put to use salvaging wrecks; albeit there were improvements made over time. The bell was enlarged, sheathed in lead, and a glass window installed. But the biggest improvement was the foot pump on the surface that continually pumped fresh air through a hose to the bell to replenish what the diver breathed. This latest incarnation of the bell was to be found in Tucker’s Town, on the south coast of the island, in a salvager’s barn.
So it was that Ezra Somers, Caleb Visser, and the ever present Little Eddy set out in a carriage the next day for Tucker’s Town. Little Eddy seemed to
have a particular liking for Visser, or at least felt badly for having found the letter “J” that sent the American into despair and thence to the pub.
The constant bumping and jerking over the rutted road was certainly doing Visser’s headache no good. Fallon’s father had finally put him to bed well after midnight in Fallon’s old room, having heard the fisherman’s tale several times over several hours at the bar. The senior Fallon wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t heard from his son last night; Elinore was first in line.
It was almost eight miles to Tucker’s Town and it was the forenoon before they found the salvager’s barn. He was a man in his sixties named Walker, a dour man who did not smile as he introduced himself. He led them into the barn and pulled a tarp off the bell and there it sat, a leaden mushroom that seemed to have grown out of the straw and dirt. After inspecting it, though no one knew what they were looking for, Somers asked when the thing might be delivered to North Rock.
“I have a contract at Bird Rock next week,” said Walker. “Then the week after I could get the bell to you. Weather taken into account, of course.”
Well, that was the best they were going to do, it seemed, but still it caused Visser to fret. Somers arranged a fee for Walker to bring the bell to the beach at North Rock in two weeks’ time. He would be bringing it by wagon, along with the pump, of course. Somers would have to arrange for a barge to be at the beach with a mast and boom for raising and lowering the bell into the water.
“Tell me, sir,” said Visser, rubbing his temples, “who will be diving on the wreck?”
“Well, not me for sure,” said Walker. “You can dive on it yourself, of course. But it will go faster if you use someone who’s done it before. You tell ’em what you’re after, like money or jewels, and where in the wreck it is, or was, and it will go much better.”
“Who would that be?” asked Somers, wondering whom he knew who had ever been in the bell. No one came to mind.
“Why, I would hire Indigo, of course,” answered Walker, referring to one of his slaves. “But you’ll have to pay him. He’ll expect what I always let him have.”
“And what is that, sir?” asked Somers.
“Whatever he can fit in his mouth and hands,” said Walker, and for the first time he smiled, revealing he had no teeth.
Fallon spent his morning with his father, the best time to catch up before the pub opened, and thanked him for taking in Caleb Visser.
“He’s a good man in a bad spot,” said Fallon. “I can’t imagine what I would do or how I would feel in his shoes.”
“Yes,” said the senior Fallon, kindly, “he’s lost his brother and the gold they needed to free his father and he feels helpless. He’s very grateful to you, I must say. Told me so over and over. And to Beauty; my God, how in the hell did she handle that ship?”
“I could never have done it,” Fallon said modestly, but his father knew better. “It was a near thing; I could have reached out and touched Liberty’s bowsprit, I think.”
They sat in companionable silence for a while, father and son just feeling good being together. They were in Fallon’s childhood home above the pub, where the family had always lived, and the hall clock near Fallon’s bedroom ticked the time away. It was a remembered sound from his youth, constant and regular, a sound to be counted on to lull a young boy to sleep.
“Where is it for you now, son?” asked his father.
“Boston, it appears,” replied Fallon. “Ezra said a big order for salt has come through, the first in a while. So I am to convoy two ships from Grand Turk to Boston. I saw one of them in the harbor when I came in last night; no doubt her captain will want to be off to Grand Turk as soon as possible to load his salt. There should be no problem getting a convoy through. The problem is that most of our ships aren’t sailing in a convoy, of course, and pirates and privateers are always a problem. All our ships must be protected, and there is only one Rascal. I need a plan I don’t have.”
Fallon’s father nodded. The clock in the hall seemed to tick louder.
“That’s never stopped you before,” he said with a smile.
It was late morning when Fallon climbed back aboard Rascal. There was only a small portion of the crew aboard, for Rascal was in a safe harbor. Beauty was out of the ship, no doubt at home with the woman she loved, and Fallon was greeted at the gangway by his second mate.
“Aja,” said Fallon, “if Cully is aboard please ask him to come to my cabin. And you come too, please.”
Aja went to fetch Cully, who was belowdecks taking stock of powder and shot, for they would need both before Rascal sailed again. Cully was a master gunner, the best shot Fallon had ever seen, in spite of having only one eye. He looked devilish with his black eye patch and wild white hair, but he was Fallon’s right hand at the guns and was as loyal as a retriever. His Irish good humor always cheered the crew, and he was surprisingly well-read. He would scrounge for books in each new port, trading his well-thumbed copies for books from other ships’ crews. Not many tars read, but some did.
In minutes, Aja and Cully stepped into the great cabin and found Fallon staring out the stern windows, deep in thought. He turned and bade them both sit at the desk while he ordered his thoughts.
“Cully, there is a veritable navy of French privateers and pirates who are stepping up the war on our packets, none of which has enough guns or manpower to fight them off. There is only one Rascal, and we can’t protect all of them.”
Cully nodded solemnly, as did Aja, both seeing the problem and turning it over in their minds. No one spoke then, for no good answer presented itself.
“Are the scantlings on the packets strong enough to handle more guns? Or bigger guns?” asked Fallon, getting to the heart of the matter and the reason he’d asked Cully to his cabin.
“Most of those ships are old, Nico,” answered Cully, using the familiar with an old friend. “I’m afraid the big guns would rip the deck out of ’em. Well, anything more than a 6-pounder, say. Maybe you could reinforce the decks but…” And he let the thought drift off while he tried to work out the effort required in his mind.
The problem wasn’t just guns, Fallon knew, but finding and training the crews to handle them. As well, the privateers were mostly sloops and the odd schooner, fore and aft rigged ships that were smaller but handier and quicker than the clumsy salt packets. Their goal was to cripple and board quickly, and they could overtake a salt ship from the rear with no danger of return fire, slipping unharmed under her counter no matter what armament the bigger ship carried.
Protecting all of Somers’ ships seemed impossible, and for the life of him Fallon couldn’t devise a plan to do it. Rascal couldn’t be everywhere at once, but the damned pirates and privateers could, and that was the real problem. When the pirates got close enough to grapple, not even a packet’s 6-pounders could depress enough to fire down into them.
Cully may have been thinking the same thing. May, in fact, have been thinking exactly the same thing, because a wide grin split his face.
“What if we let ’em get alongside, Nico?” he said. “We sure as hell can’t beat ’em away, sounds like.”
Fallon looked at his friend and master gunner a moment, trying to see where he was going with that idea. But Cully just kept grinning, and now nodding, and then he picked up an empty wine bottle from Fallon’s desk, held it up a moment, and dropped it to the floor, where it shattered.
“And then we bomb the bastards!” shouted Cully. Aja jumped, but Fallon laughed out loud.
EIGHT
THE NEXT MORNING CULLY LED FIVE CREW MATES TO THE DOORSTEP of St. George’s only farrier, a gruff farrier at that, named Wilton. He lived on the outskirts of the village in a hut of sorts surrounded by paddocks and several small sheds, one of which was where he worked trimming and shoeing horses’ hooves. Out behind this shed was a midden, a refuse pile of bent nails and bits of metal that he was only too happy to sell. It was here that the crew went to work filling the canvas bags they’d brought.
Meanwhile, Aja led another five crewmen to the midden behind the White Horse where Fallon’s father dumped the daily refuse of the pub, the food scraps and empty wine bottles and beef bones. The smell was extraordinary, and the men worked to gather bottles as quickly as possible, alternating between holding their noses and stuffing their bags. It was the first of many trips they would make to many pubs.
The meeting in Somers’ office began before lunch and included Ezra Somers, Fallon, Cully, and Jeremiah Pence, captain of the salt packet Lucille, who was visibly agitated from having been at anchor too long, waiting on instructions to leave. The partner’s desk dominated the center of the office, and was broad enough for Fallon to sit opposite Ezra Somers. In truth, Somers’ side was messy with papers and Fallon’s side was clean, for Fallon was rarely there.
“Captain Pence,” began Somers, formally addressing the corpulent captain. “Your next cruise will take you south to Grand Turk, as usual, and thence to Boston. But we have an increasing problem getting our ships through from the Caribbean up the U.S. coast. French privateers and pirates are thick as thieves. I am not telling you something you don’t know, of course, but what’s wanting is a strategy to protect our ships no matter where they sail. And I believe Captain Fallon has something interesting in that regard.”
“My strategy, Captain Fallon,” snorted Pence, interrupting, “is to drive the buggers off! My men are more than capable of fighting back, I can assure you.”
“I’m sure that is true,” said Somers soothingly, “but you and I both know, Jeremiah, that even a brave packet is no match for a ruthless privateer bent on taking a prize. Or, worse, several privateers working together.”
Pence’s face fell a bit at that, for there was truth in what Somers said and he knew it. Pence had even been captured once by pirates off Curacao and sent to shore in a small boat, where kindly villagers kept him and his small crew nourished until he could be found and rescued. The pirates had been in a single sloop.
Barbarians on an Ancient Sea Page 3
