Cape Cod

by William Martin

  The drums beat the death roll, and the mate droned a psalm. The captain in glittering brass buttons raised his hand to his shoulder, causing the drummers to cease as if they had been shot. When he dropped his hand, Miffle and Judge dropped toward the peaceful sea like birds… until the ropes snapped and broke their necks.

  Sam Hilyard felt his father’s leg press against his, to stop it from shaking.

  “Be strong, lad.”

  The captain turned his gaze onto the three who remained. One of the officers, a disheveled-looking man with splotchy skin and misbuttoned waistcoat, hurried forward to inspect them.

  He felt Sam’s pulse, tugged at a few of his teeth, and gave him a gentle smile. Sam began to think he might not hang.

  “Scurvy?” said the captain.

  “Not yet, sir. But I would recommend against any further chaining of these men.”

  “Of course.” The captain stepped closer, though he held a handkerchief to his nose for the stink coming off them. “And I agree. They will not be chained.”

  “The captain won’t chain us. The doctor says no. But now will ’e ’ang us… or let us die slow? I don’t give a mother’s fuck.” Burt stuck out his tongue and revolved it as though it were a curious snake coming out of its hole.

  If any in the crew found this humorous or were taken by Burt’s defiance, they were wise enough not to show it.

  Captain Ourry watched the tongue for a moment, a faintly amused expression on his face, then ordered Burt back to the cable tier.

  “But, Captain?” the doctor ventured.

  “I’ll not have him contaminating the ship.” Ourry raised his gaze and his voice. “I’ll not tolerate insubordination from any. Even one who’s gone daft.” Now he lowered his voice and stepped close to Ned Hilyard. “Is that clear?”

  “Heaven help us if it ain’t.” The stink of Ned’s breath knocked Ourry back, which may have been his intention.

  Ourry held the silk handkerchief to his nose and turned to the first lieutenant. “Read the sentence.”

  “For privateering against His Majesty and smuggling contraband through blockaded waters, Jeremiah Edward Hilyard and Samuel Hilyard, under the Articles of War, do hereby forfeit their vessel and shall be—”

  Here Sam closed his eyes and prayed that Serenity had gotten God’s ear.

  “—conveyed to New York to be interned aboard the prison ship Jersey.”

  Practically a death sentence, thought Sam, though not immediate. He fixed his eye on the Union Jack and thanked the God who had heard Serenity.

  “But,” said Ourry, “you have a choice. Your Mother Country enjoys a very active whale fishery off the river Plate in South America, filled almost exclusively by Cape Cod men. A harpooner like yourself—”

  “I’ll join no traitors givin’ comfort to the enemy,” said Ned.

  “Very well, then.” Ourry’s expression did not change. “Until the dispatch sloop arrives from New York, you shall serve before the mast, replacements for Miffle and Judge.”

  “I think not, sir,” said Ned softly.

  Sam looked at his father and gave his chains a shake, but his father’s eyes were locked to the captain’s.

  “You think not?” Ourry’s dark brows and long, pointed nose were warmed by the most mirthless smile that Sam Hilyard had ever seen. “He thinks not!”

  “Pa,” whispered Sam, “workin’ a mast is better than sittin’ in the hole.”

  “ ’Tis principle, son.”

  “Principle?” said Ourry.

  Ned laughed. “A fine time to be developin’ principles, but there it is. We’re prisoners of war. We can’t be forced to work for the enemy.”

  “You vile creatures, you’re pirates!”

  “We’re privateers, sailin’ under letters of marque from the Council of Massachusetts.”

  “In honorable language, pirates. You should thank me for letting you out of your stinking hole.”

  “ ’Twas you put us there. Just as King George tried to put all of this”—Ned waved his hands around the sweep of the Cape, from the Provincelands to the highlands of Manomet—“in chains. But no matter how much you flog us or tax us, you can’t put chains on our principles.”

  Sam Hilyard tugged at his chains once more. From the time of James Otis, his father had always considered himself and his family first. Principles be damned.

  “A fine speech.” Ourry looked at the crew. “This pirate refuses an order. This pirate does not understand naval discipline. Mr. Speel, teach him with fifty lashes.”

  “Fifty!” cried Sam. “You can’t.”

  Ourry strode to the taffrail, as though he had not heard that remark, and when the doctor approached him, he raised his hand in warning.

  Sam looked at his father. “You said the smart man picked his fights.”

  “Serenity picked one that was too big, too. But God heard her. That must say somethin’ for principles.”

  Fifty lashes stripped every scrap of flesh from Ned’s back and shoulders, like a massive burn. The captain ordered him back to the cable tier, but the doctor insisted that he be brought first to sick bay.

  Thayer dosed Ned with laudanum, then washed his back in seawater, as good a medicine as there was for a flogging.

  Through the haze of the drug, Ned called for his son, and Sam was brought to him under marine guard.

  “Will he live?” Sam asked the doctor.

  “I hope so, son. But fifty lashes is a… a brutal punishment for a man of any age, and your father—”

  “He’s strong.”

  “Aye. In more ways than one.”

  Sam knelt by the cot. The scent of his father, which had grown so comforting during their time in the cable tier, had become an unfamiliar sweet stink of blood and raw flesh, something that struck the back of the throat rather than the nose.

  “That captain, he won’t get away with this, Pa. I’ll—”

  Ned shook his head. “The smart man picks his fights. And the smart man don’t stretch his neck for revenge. He don’t for anything, save family or friends. Remember that.”

  “Then why—”

  Ned tried to laugh. “Sometimes an idea just creeps up and bites you in the ass.”

  “It’s a good idea, Pa, freedom.”

  “We were free on Billingsgate, son, afore all this started. That’s one kind of freedom. But—” A wave of pain caused his body to shudder.

  “The laudanum wears off,” said the doctor.

  But Ned managed a few more words. “Real freedom… liberty… that’s hard. It gives you principles. It forces you to make decisions.”

  “I’ll get us free again, Pa. I’ll think of somethin’.”

  Ned touched his son’s hand. “I’m free now, lad.”

  “But you go back to the cable tier.” Sam could not understand this kind of freedom. He thought the laudanum clouded his father’s mind. How could they gain their freedom in chains, or seek their revenge?

  Four longboats put out from the Somerset the next day. Three carried detachments of Royal Marines on a foraging party. The fourth carried the body of Ned Hilyard.

  viii.

  In Halifax, Nova Scotia, a young girl named Hannah Bigelow spent each Thursday afternoon poring over the weekly Intelligencer, searching for stories of the war. She was never disappointed, because Halifax was the largest Atlantic seaport in Canada and the point of refuge for most of the Loyalists who had left New England.

  The paper made it seem that the rebels were losing. It went on about Washington’s floundering campaign and underfed rabble while giving the American victory at Saratoga scant attention. The alliance with France was treated as satire. And the fact that American ships were taking British prizes in the English Channel was of little consequence. But when a privateer that had tormented Halifax was captured, the news was trumpeted.

  All of this worked its way on Hannah, and she came to decide that her passion had simply been girlish enthusiasm. A young man named John Digby helped her in
this. He was seventeen, intelligent, of a good Falmouth shipping family that refused to remain in Massachusetts when mobs came to rule.

  Hannah and John went to the dock to see the Serenity. They had to ask which ship it was, because the name had already been painted over. A British officer proudly took them aboard and pointed out the bullet holes and bloodstains on the deck. “The father and most of his crew are dead. The son is bound for the prison ships.”

  Hannah went home and cried. For all her change of heart, she had never forgotten Sam Hilyard or the excitement of their first kiss. She prayed that he would survive the prison ship, though she could not imagine him in chains.

  ix.

  Fire? An open seacock? A torch in the magazine? How would he do it? Night after night, Sam lay awake in his hammock, and he plotted. Somehow he would send Captain Ourry and the Somerset to the bottom… if he survived the berthing deck.

  “A fine-lookin’ lad with a buggerin’ bum,” a strong temptation for a seaman away from women too long. It was that hairy ape Dodd, fingering his bottom again.

  Sam tried to move, but Dodd’s weight pressed down on Sam’s back. His breeches were torn down. Something long and hard and, it would seem, covered in grease, entered his body where things usually went out.

  Sam let out a muffled cry and tried to roll over.

  “Just be quiet now, lad.”

  “Get off. Get away.”

  “You gots a friend in old Tom. There’s some would use you, then pass you ’round to their mates, but you be good to old Tom, and ’e’ll pertect you from all the rest. Just…”

  The pain was terrible, tearing. Was this what women felt when men did them? It couldn’t have been, or there would be no human race.

  Dodd’s stubbled face scratched the back of Sam’s neck; his breathing came harder and faster.

  Somehow Sam managed to get his knife out of the little pocket in the bottom of his hammock. Dodd’s eyes must have been closed, because he did not see the knife, and he must have been near finishing, because he never felt it in his nostril until it sliced.

  Dodd muffled his cry, so as not to wake the rest to his buggery, but with blood spilling everywhere, he grabbed Sam by the throat and began to strangle him. Had their weight not spun the hammock over, Sam’s dreams of revenge might have died right there. But when they struck the deck, Sam freed his knife hand and pressed the blade against the thing still poking at him. Dodd’s member deflated, and with it his fury.

  By now, the scuffle had awakened some of the other sailors. It was unlikely that any were shocked by what Dodd was doing, but it was certain that the young Yank, who held his knife in one hand and pulled up his breeches with the other, made his reputation that night.

  Sam could have been berthed with the powder monkeys and drummers. But he was too big for their work, and they fell under the province of the junior officers. He preferred to be among common seamen. If he fought off their advances, he would not be caned for it.

  So Dr. Thayer had given him the knife, violating the captain’s rule that no seaman could have one except in the rigging. Ourry did not even permit sailors to shave themselves, as a straightedge made a dangerous weapon. Instead, barbers worked through every watch to keep the crew beardless. But Dr. Thayer believed that one young man protected from buggery was a soul saved in a world of corruption. Sam definitely agreed.

  And the sailors, though far from noble, were not fools. When they saw that Sam would protect himself, they gave him respect. Even Tom Dodd would offer instruction when they were assigned to the same station, as every man wanted a smart mate in a heavy gale. The sailors taught him how to handle the complex of lines that controlled a great square-rigger, and they taught him a few simple rules for survival aboard a British ship of the line.

  He should never awaken a sleeping sailor, as most feared midnight sodomy. Instead, when searching for his hammock in the dark, he was to move quietly and sniff. When he came to a hammock that did not smell—at least to him—it was his.

  He should never waste his piss over the side, but go into the open vat on the orlop deck, so that when there was a fire, they would not have to use drinking water to fight it. No one warned him that the smell and the swarm of bugs above the vat would nearly strangle him.

  Before eating any ship biscuit, he should rap it on the table to shake out weevils and worms. If he found an especially lively weevil, he should save it for the races, in which crewmen bet their grog rations on the fastest bugs.

  And above all, he should never take one of the ship’s rats as a pet… or cross Captain Ourry.

  The rats seemed to pay more attention to Sam than did the captain. It was as if Ourry considered his victory over the Hilyards so complete that he no longer needed to offer them the respect of an enemy. The father had died because he refused to work. The son had seen the error in this and had taken to the rigging like a sick man to the waters at Bath.

  And that was what Sam wanted him to believe. But Sam had seen only the error in his father’s reasoning. Freedom could not be won if a man chose chains. There was no honor in a principle if it killed you. Once Sam overcame his grief, he came to believe that, for all his calm courage, his father had lost his mind and chosen imprisonment over freedom, death over life.

  So Sam went about his tasks with care and obedience. He sought no attention, good or bad, while he planned the revenge that would gain him his freedom. It would come, he was certain, if he bided his time.

  When a sail hove in sight one November afternoon, Sam learned how little time he might have to bide. The Somerset was riding the swells like a balky horse, and Tom Dodd was teaching him the lines and blocks that supported the mainsail.

  “This ’ere’s the main yard ’alyard, three lines run through the ’alyard jeer block. You got leech lines and buntlines, too, and parrels ’round the masts, but the main yard ’alyard’s the most important—Say, are you listenin’?”

  Sam’s eyes were turned toward the south.

  “You lose this ’ere block in a ’eavy blow, the ’alyard runs out, the parrels don’t ’old, the yard comes down, you lose mains’l, maintop, and control of your ship—”

  “What ship would that be?” Sam pointed to the horizon.

  “Oh, my.” Dodd feigned a cry of sadness. A scab had formed at the corner of his nose, and he looked more poxed than ever. “That’s the dispatch ship from New York. You’ll be gone by nightfall. You’re dead, lad. At least, if you’d let me bugger you, there’d be someone to remember you.” Dodd patted Sam’s behind.

  “Remember my knife”

  That evening, the captain sat with Dr. Thayer and an enormous man in a dirty brown coat, Master Kindle of the schooner Julia. On the table before them were a decanter of port, two glasses, a half-eaten meal of mutton, potatoes, carrots, and a bundle of dispatches.

  On the captain’s carpet stood Sam Hilyard, as summoned, patiently awaiting the captain’s attention while his empty stomach gurgled like a bilge pump.

  “Have a look at him, Kindle,” said Ourry at last. “Another one for that vermin scow on the Brooklyn flats.”

  “A ’orrid place, the Jersey, and gettin’ worse.”

  “Have you much typhus?” Dr. Thayer sipped his port.

  “There’s typhus, starvation, and the rats is fatter than the prisoners. But young lads is always welcome.”

  Ourry patted his mouth with a linen handkerchief and went over to Sam. He was not wearing his cockaded hat and so seemed slightly more human. “Principles. This lad’s father died for… principles.”

  Kindle attacked his joint. “Cape Cod mutton’s a principle I’d die for, Cap’n.”

  Ourry looked into Sam’s eyes. “Kindle doesn’t understand principles. He’s too hungry.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.” Sam stood at attention and looked straight ahead, resolved to show neither fear nor disrespect.

  With thumb and forefinger, Ourry pinched the flesh of Sam’s chest. “Such a fine specimen. ’Tis a great pity to lose y
ou to starvation, pestilence, principles. But you must go, as your father would have done.”

  “I’ll… I’ll miss the Somerset, sir.”

  “Will you, now? And what would your father say?”

  “He’s… dead, sir.”

  For some reason, Ourry found this answer more humorous than anything that had happened since the Hilyards came aboard. He laughed in the boy’s face, threw his head back, and laughed from the back of his throat. “Dead indeed, along with the principles he so conveniently espoused after he’d finished raiding innocent commerce.”

  “My father, he did what the colony asked, sir,” said Sam. “I do what I must.”

  “Principles are slippery things, Kindle.”

  The fat man gnawed on the mutton leg. “Aye.”

  “Some men let their principles kill them. Others let their principles die. And either way, hate follows. This lad hates me because I killed his father. But could he hate one who showed him that his principles were merely illusions?”

  “My hatred’s real, Captain.”

  “That’s good. Hate keeps a man alive.”

  “Honest lad,” said Dr. Thayer. “Honest lads make good sailors, Captain.”

  “Perhaps… perhaps.” Ourry returned to his meal, rubbed his napkin over his brass buttons, and picked at his food.

  Sam had come with contrition and yet had demonstrated spirit. He could do no more, and he resolved now that if he was banished to the Jersey, he would fall on Ourry and kill him, consequences be damned.

  But Ourry, it seemed, was not finished with Sam. There were many lessons to teach these rebels, and the best rebels to learn were the youngest. “Gentlemen, I hate to have a man leave my ship hating me.”

  “They either leaves lovin’ you… or dead.” Kindle poured a shot of port down his throat and began to laugh.

  “You’re very crude, Kindle.”

  Kindle stopped laughing instantly.