It took all day to get the twenty miles up to Boca Grande. Wake found the Gem of the Sea at anchor just inside the pass in the wide expanse of Charlotte Harbor. This harbor, Wake knew, was the domain of the Rebels on land and on the water. Many of the blockade runners had come out of this twenty-mile-long by five-mile-wide bay. He and Baxter had conversed several times about extending their reach up into the bay and exploring the Myakka and Peace Rivers, both well known for being Rebel havens.
Once Wake had come alongside the larger ship, which had been a difficult maneuver in the fast currents and light winds, he reported his news to Baxter. But Baxter had more depressing news for him. The yellow jack had already been reported among the ships at Tampa Bay. Baxter had a crewman down sick with the symptoms. He had not yet confirmed it as the jack and had told his surgeon not to talk about it with the others. He was trying to stop any premature panic or speculation that always attended discovery of the disease. Baxter listened as Wake completed his narration of the squadron’s affairs and then told him to leave the anchorage as soon as possible and patrol along the Gulf off the islands to the south. He was not to venture inshore until the fever was gone from the coast. Wake acknowledged his orders and returned to the sloop rafted up alongside.
His orders to Hardin to cast off and ride the ebb tide out through the pass in the almost nonexistent wind met with a questioning look but dutiful response. Wake didn’t elaborate and went below to his cabin, where he studied the scanty charts of the pass once again. On deck a few moments later he personally took the helm, now essentially drifting with the outgoing tide, through the pass and out into the Gulf. Once they were about two miles offshore he gave the order to anchor, again without explanation. He thought about advising Hardin of the situation but decided against it. At dawn they would sail to the south, try to capture another runner, and get away from this place.
Dawn found them still sitting there, in sight of the larger ship anchored inside the pass. It was Durlon who quietly came aft in midmorning and told Wake that the other ship had hoisted the yellow flag a moment earlier. He stared at his captain with the knowing look of a man who is resigned to his fate and said nothing further.
Wake pivoted to go forward and check the anchor rode when he saw the entire crew on deck and looking at him.
“I know, men. Captain Baxter is not certain but is being cautious with the yellow jack flag, as he should be. We still have work to do, and as soon as the wind pipes up we will stand south offshore and patrol for runners.”
No one replied.
“Now, get to work on the running backstays. And I want the sheet blocks set higher to improve the sheeting angles when we do get wind to sail. Hardin, if you please?”
“Aye aye, sir. All right, ya slack-eyed sons, ya heard the captain. Let’s get that work started now. Both backstays at once. Conner, set up the halyards to take up the strain.”
Four days later they were off Boca Grande again, having sailed to the south as far as Gullivan Bay with no sail sighted. This time they anchored in the pass and rowed in the dinghy a hundred yards to the windward of the Gem of the Sea. Wake and Baxter conversed, shouting through cupped hands, over the water between them. Wake told Baxter that he was very low on fresh water and getting low on food. He asked for orders.
“Sail to Key West, Mr. Wake. Stay off the port and speak to the guardship. Ask the situation of them. If all is well, then go in and reprovision and tell them of our problems. Ask for medicine to be sent here, along with regular supplies.”
“If Key West is still under the quarantine, sir, what then?”
“Then, Mr. Wake, you are to use your own initiative, sir. God protect you all.”
Wake hesitated a moment, then had the dinghy rowed back to the Rosalie. He had not expected Baxter to order him go to Key West. It must be getting worse on that ship, Wake thought, as he looked back at Lt. Baxter, who was on his afterdeck watching him row away.
The next morning, a strong land breeze came in from the southeast, the first they had had in many days. It was amazing how a good fair breeze could pick up the spirits of a sailor. Rosalie had all sail set on a close reach and acted as if she loved it. The wind, steady in strength and veering around into a nice sea breeze from the southwest as the day progressed, provided the energy to move the sloop smartly. Rosalie started to buck through the small waves on her bows. A light pattern of spray occasionally swept over the decks. The men were smiling and moving about with at least some semblance of enthusiasm. The main topic of discussion was what the guardship would tell them. The secondary topic was what they would do in Key West if they could go into port there.
Wake smiled as he heard the last, another constant in the world of the sailor. Not a thought of the wider implications or of future consequences. In the world of deck sailors next month was in the far-off future, not to be worried about or looked forward to. The turnabout in attitudes even diverted Wake’s now constant worry about water and provisions. By tomorrow, with this wind, they would be off the port, with the answer to the sailors’ primary question.
The Annie was sighted in midafternoon the next day. The two vessels converged about twelve miles off the island. All hands were by the shrouds and listening intently as Wake asked the dreaded words. The cheering of the Rosalie’s crew at the answer took several minutes to quell, Hardin threatening dire punishment if they didn’t shut up and let the captain continue. The captain of the Annie told Wake that the last sufferer of the yellow jack had recovered several days earlier, and the ships of the squadron were starting to come back to the port. He added that there were several ships on station that had not been heard from and fears were growing for their safety. At this last news, Wake told Williams of the situation of the Gem of the Sea so that he could pass it along to any ships northbound along the coast.
The Rosey’s crew turned to with a purpose as they squared away for Key West after leaving Annie. Wake could sense the change as clearly as if a hood had been lifted from his head. The wind smelled cleaner, the sea looked greener, the ship felt livelier, and the crew sounded happier. It was amazing what a positive piece of information could do for a man’s outlook. All hands had almost a glow about them as Rosalie arrived at the harbor anchorage at sunset and looked around themselves at the town and the ships.
The yellow jack signal was gone.The harbor was still not as crowded as it usually was, but vessels were coming in, even after dark. Sounds were coming from the streets of the town, and Wake could see his sailors anticipating the delights of the port. He ordered Hardin to report in to the squadron office and then take two men on liberty until dawn. Wake would stay on board with the rest until Hardin’s return. With a clamour of bragging about previous liberties and plans for this one, the liberty men departed. The rest of the crew gathered on the foredeck and yarned into the evening, with only one man on anchor watch.
Wake sat at the transom and watched the harbor and the night sky. Linda filled his mind. He wondered and feared and dreamed about what had happened to her and her family. The enormity of it all consumed him as he sat there listening to and watching the harbor at night. He could feel his heart beating in his chest with fear for her. It had taken all of the discipline in his character to allow Hardin that first liberty. Wake knew it was the proper thing to do, but he also knew that it prolonged his agony. Come sunrise he would know. His future was tied to the path and timing of the sun. Wake sighed and lay on deck, listening now to his crew talk about rum and women and gambling and beds ashore. His last waking thought was of Linda lying beside him, both of them slowly falling asleep.
The movement of the sloop woke him. A steamer had come though the harbor, sending a wave that had moved Rosalie enough to bring her captain to his senses. He looked forward along the deck and saw the lookout standing by the mast staring at the steam gunboat as she glided through the silent harbor,
an apparition in the dark night. Above him, Wake saw the tropic stars in a carpet across the sky, with the moon a cold amber light just touching the eastern horizon.
He slowly got up from the deck, knowing the day would be a long and stressful one. He felt as if he had had too much to drink the night before, the effort of rising draining him of strength. The consequence without the pleasure, he thought. He crawled down the scuttle into his cabin and searched for his pocket watch in the darkness, a task he was well acquainted with by now. Four a.m. by the watch, with a flood tide and no wind. Wake started to remember the plan he had formed the night before and returned to the deck to have the seaman on watch call up the boy to row him ashore.
Twenty minutes later he was ashore at the officers’ landing watching the boy row back to the sloop. Semi-refreshed by a saltwater rinse and in his number two uniform, he walked through the dark and quiet streets of the town, down Caroline Street to Whitehead and around to the back of the house that he knew so well by now, fanning away at a mosquito hovering around his face. He heard a provost patrol from the army garrison walk by, over on Duval Street, but nothing else was overtly stirring.
Moments later he was in the house through the back door and creeping silently up the stairs to Linda’s room. Every creak of the house seemed like a gunshot aimed at him, and every moment he expected the challenge or the charge of Linda’s father. The tension instantly faded as he saw that she was alive and sleeping soundly in her bed. As quietly as he could, he sat on the bed beside her. Linda looked up with a frightened face and was about to scream until she recognized his form.
In a voice filled with emotion that he hoped sounded soothing, he whispered to her in the darkness, “Shshhh . . . it won’t do to have all your family walk in right now, my love. I’ve only an hour to be here before the sun will be arriving.”
Linda said nothing but held onto him and buried her face in his chest, silently sobbing and trying to get the strength to tell him what had happened. Wake felt the conflict of sadness and anger rising inside him, desperate to know the cause of her sorrow.
“What is it? What happened?”
She first spoke so softly he could barely hear her, but then the words came in a flood, and he sat there, holding her, as she recounted the horror of the epidemic. The yellow jack had swept the island. Each day more people had come down with a fever and some were dying. Life in the town stopped as families huddled behind the doors of their homes, waiting for a sickness they did not understand and could not fight. It went on for two weeks, getting worse each day. People scanned each other for signs of the disease and prayed fervently to find none. But each day, more would get sick. She had seen the carts herself as they moved through the early morning hours collecting the dead from the homes.
Her home had not been spared. Through her sobs she told him of the day that her mother had come down with the aches and the fever, how her father and the cook had also had the symptoms. As her mother got worse and was confined to a bed, her father had somehow managed to hold his own and nurse his sick wife. But the efforts to help were of no avail for her mother, and she died one night with Linda and her father holding the frail hands of a woman who had done her best in life to build a family. The doctor had been there, but his feeble work had produced no effect. The cart came the next morning. The funeral was at noon that same day.
Mattie had died three days later. With his wife gone, Linda’s father had sunk into a deep depression. Linda cared for Mattie by herself, not knowing when the dreaded sickness would attack her own body. As Mattie slid off into the fevered sleep that preceded death, Linda almost gave up hope in anything. Her father was not communicating or even coming out of his room. Her love was far away in this evil war. She was all alone in this house of death. Waiting for her father to start being her father again. Waiting for the sickness to stop. Waiting for her love to come back to her. Waiting, helplessly, for what would come no matter what she did.
Linda was emotionally and physically exhausted as she spoke these last words. Her summation of that time from hell told of how her father’s brother, another widower since his wife had died many years earlier, had moved into the house last week. He and her father now stayed up late at night and spoke of how the damned Federal army and navy had let the town die. How they had withheld medicines that would have saved the people. How the Yankee beasts had no decency or shame. Their illogical anger grew into hate, which manifested itself in a form Linda had never seen before. Her father’s whole being descended into a deep core of rage against all things that were connected with the U. S. government and the American flag.
Linda, scarred permanently by this ordeal, looked at Wake and said no more. They both knew their lives had changed, that an unseen force had increased beyond any limit the dangers of their relationship. Wake was sure now that Linda was the woman of his life. He knew now that they, one way or another, would be intertwined forever. However, he knew that any distant hope in his heart that he and her father could be reconciled had ended. And the hope that he and Linda could live a normal life together in Key West was now dashed.
And all because of an evil force that had moved among them and destroyed randomly. Yellow jack had done his malevolent work well.
5
The River of Peace
The autumn on this coast was certainly not like the ones in New England, Wake thought as he stood by the mast and swatted a mosquito on his face. Moving sluggishly in a light wind along the coast of Pine Island, northeast of Sanibel Island, the Rosalie was looking for blockade runners reported in the area the day before. Wake thought of the smell of the leaves burning in the crisp, clean air as his ship came to anchor at Boston after a fast and profitable voyage.
Letters recently arrived from his father added to his pining for the season, the real season, up north. Six of them, grimy from handling and covering five months, had been bundled together by various clerks who had received them and then searched for Wake down the coast to the squadron off Charleston and finally Key West. Each letter was read and reread for news of the family and the business and the war. Then Wake would swear to himself not to read them anymore for the pain of homesickness they caused. The next morning he would read them again, envisioning his family and former life.
Hardin brought him out of his daydream as he asked if they should post a man with a musket by the mast now that they were closing in to the jungle. Instantly the dream was gone, replaced by the smell of vegetation rotting in the dank humidity and the squawk of a heron upset at the arrival of this giant, winged creature disturbing the bird’s hunting. Wake replied affirmatively while swatting at still another of the buzzing little torturers that plagued them whenever they got close to the mangroves. Lord, how he missed New England.
Since the beginning of the summer, they had patrolled along the Gulf beaches of the islands, but now they had been given orders to penetrate up into the bays and rivers and bring the war to the Confederates’ home bases. Wake wondered if the man who gave that order, Admiral Barkley, had ever actually been up in this area. He doubted it. If he had, he would have left it to the Rebs.
The morning was young, only three hours since sunrise. With the sun still low, the heat had not progressed to the point of overwhelming, but the humidity was already stifling. The easterly land breeze was a breeze in name only. Wake estimated their speed at maybe one knot at the most. At this rate it would take all day to get to Punta Gorda, twelve miles to the north at the mouth of the Peace River. The enemy was probably further up the river. His check of the tide showed a half flood, which was likely the main reason for his forward motion. Only about three hours of helpful tide left.
He looked at the crew, who looked back at him, knowing what was on his mind. Hardin stood up from his seat on the twelve-pounder gun and said the inevitable.
“Run out the sweep oars ta get her goin
’, Captain?”
A look at the sky and one at the water told Wake that no wind of any strength would come that day. Confederate lookouts at Punta Gorda would watch them approach, slowly and without surprise. Wake decided to wait.
“No, Hardin, we will wait until nightfall and then slide along the coast with the night wind and sweeps, if we need ’em. That way we will catch them unawares at dawn with a flood tide at the mouth of the river.”
The crew, having heard all of the conversation, started to go back to their work. No cheering or appreciation came from them, only a grudging acknowledgment of the captain’s orders that for once meant less exhaustive exertion.
“We hidin’ for the day, sir? Get amongst the mangroves and they won’t see us atall afore dark.”
“Yes, make it so. Get her over into the mangroves.”
At this last the crew glanced at Hardin with looks of disgust, for moving the sloop into the mangroves meant mosquitoes and maybe sharpshooters, but they got the sweep oars out and ran the ship in among the dense foliage of the mangrove jungle. The sounds of the men complaining of the heat, the lack of wind, and the mosquitoes soon became a background of noise to Wake as he sat down on the transom board and tried to think through his mission and how he would accomplish it.
Lt. Baxter had ordered him to investigate up the Peace River and try to ascertain exactly where the Confederate docks were. Those docks were one of the bases for the supplies that came in to this coast from outside the Confederacy. They were connected to the interior trails that wound north through the middle of the peninsula. Cattle, cotton, and other agricultural goods moved south. Munitions, medicines, and manufactured goods moved north from the coast. There were other bases along the coast, but the ones on the Peace River were reputed to be the most important to the enemy.
At the Edge of Honor (The Honor Series) Page 6
