Cape Cod

by William Martin

  Dr. Thayer bit his cheek to keep from smiling.

  “ ’Twas a joke, sir, merely—”

  Ourry raised his hand for silence, then turned his gaze onto Sam. “Master Kindle brings word of French shipping. We go in pursuit tomorrow. I will show you that your principles were illusions. All men are not created equal. There is no man in the fo’c’sle my equal. And no rabble of colonials and French the equal of good English oak. The Somerset is England, lad. Stay with her and see the good sense your present course describes. Then”—Ourry smiled—“will you love me.”

  Back in the forecastle, Tom Dodd grinned across the table at Sam Hilyard. “So we still be shipmates. There’s ’ope yet.”

  “None for you.” Sam stuffed a piece of ship biscuit into his mouth without rapping it on the table. He held it until he felt the worms tickling the back of his throat, which caused him to gag and bolt for the piss vat. There he vomited up biscuit, salt meat, and corn stolen from a Cape Cod field. Then he took a deep breath of urine stench, which caused him to vomit up a wad of green bile as well. This earned him a place in sick bay, where he could plan his revenge without fear of Tom Dodd’s greased prick.

  There was a strong smell of drink from Dr. Thayer but a strong air of sympathy as well. He said Sam need not eat wormy biscuit to earn the safety of sick bay, but simply ask, and the doctor would concoct a reason.

  “This can be a miserable, corruptin’ life, and a lad like you, Sam, he’s not ready for corruptin’.”

  Sam thanked him for all his kindness and for the knife.

  Around four bells, the wind came up.

  “Doc?”

  Thayer was reading, huddled beside a bucket of hot coals suspended on a ceiling chain. “Aye?”

  “The wind. What direction is it?”

  Thayer cocked his head, studied the motion of the bucket and his lantern. “No’theast, I’d guess.”

  “Good.” Sam knew that the tide would be running hard on the flood when they left. He pretended to sleep and prayed that the gale kept up. When the doctor blew out the lantern and went to his berth, Sam went to work.

  He took the doctor’s bone saw from the instrument case and, with all his stealth, sneaked up to the spar deck, past the marine watch, to the mainmast rigging, and up to the main yard halyard. His allies were the dark of a moonless night and a wind that boomed so loud it blew away all the subtle sounds of an anchored ship.

  He chose a spot just below the jeer block, where three heavily tarred, fist-thick lines formed the strongest point of the halyard, and he began to cut. It took him most of an hour to finish his work. He severed two completely and left the third hanging half-cut. It would hold, he was certain, until morning, when this would be his station, and either he or the Somerset would meet their end.

  The wind blew hard and steady the night through, sweeping every cloud from the sky and raising whitecaps even within the anchorage at Provincetown. It was still booming well after dawn when the Somerset weighed anchor and left the harbor under topsails and drivers.

  From High Pole Hill, the villagers watched her go. From the mainmast, Sam Hilyard watched the villagers. The moment the sails of the Somerset dipped below the horizon, they would rush for their fishing boats and make for the cod holes. And if the Somerset struck the bar, they would rush to her. His survival might depend upon them, though in truth, he had stopped worrying about survival.

  His desire to destroy the ship had become so concentrated and pure that nothing else mattered. A grown man might have looked down from the maintop at the guns, the red-coated marines, the officers bellowing commands, and chosen to fight the French instead. Sam looked up and out, at the Narrow Land washed in long, low rays of gold, at the roiling blue sea and the stretch of blue above, and he summoned his courage.

  Once the ship had rounded Wood End and swung north, the captain called for mainsail and foresail, maintop and foretop.

  “Get to it, Sammy my lad.” Dodd grinned at him. “And don’t fall. I’d never forgive meself.”

  “Get too close, and you’ll be doin’ the fallin’.”

  They stood on the lines above the main yard and let out sail, as they had done a hundred times before, but this time, Sam reached up with his knife and cut into the last strands of line in the jeer block. And so skillfully did he cut that not even Tom Dodd saw him do it.

  “Can’t ’ide in sick bay forever, lad,” Dodd was saying as he busied himself with his work.

  “I always got my knife.” Sam flashed it under Dodd’s nose.

  Dodd gave a laugh and took to the ratline. Sam thought to hack a bit more, but he knew now that the halyard could not hold under the strain of the mainsail. So he dropped to the deck with the other sailors.

  As the Somerset rounded Race Point and entered the Atlantic, the gusts swept straight across the sea, and every wave struck the bow like a shot, sending spouts of white spume into the air while the deck pitched wildly.

  Captain Ourry veered several points north to swing beyond the bar before turning south. Once he passed Head of the Meadow, with the highlands of Truro to starboard, the wind would be his ally, chasing him far and fast down the forearm of the Cape. But he first had to beat against a northeast gale and a running tide that conspired to put anything that floated on the beach.

  He ordered the men aloft once more, to ready them for the next sail change.

  Dr. Thayer watched Sam climb the mainmast just behind Dodd. He had been watching Sam all morning, for when a sailor feigned sickness, his mates were known to push him harder the next day. And Tom Dodd was the sort who might push literally.

  Dodd was the first to step onto the main yard line, and something caught his attention. He was gesturing for his mates to stay on the crosstrees while he grabbed two pieces of line to splice them.

  Thayer pushed past a squadron of marines and went down the deck for a better view.

  Sam Hilyard had wrapped his arm in a length of line and leaned out, as if to help Dodd repair the broken line. A brave lad, thought Thayer.

  “A vengeful lad,” whispered Dodd, “who cuts the ’alyard I taught ’im about.”

  “Never.”

  “It was you at this station a few minutes ago.” Dodd’s eyes shifted to the other sailors, none of whom could hear his talk over the wind. “I got the goods on you now, you sweet little bugger.”

  “And I got ’em on you.” Sam did not hesitate or think an extra second on what he did. He leaned out and put his foot on the main yard. From the deck, it looked as if he was reaching for one of the loose lines.

  “No!” cried Dodd. “No more weight—”

  Another gust boomed from the northeast, carrying Dodd’s cry away from the ship, and the last halyard broke. Leech lines and buntlines snapped like thread. The parrels screeched down the mast. Dodd’s eyes and mouth formed three ovals of terror, and he fell, the sail billowing around him like a shroud.

  Sam had done it. He swung back to the crosstrees as the main top, torn loose from its stays, slammed against the mast and sent three more sailors screaming toward the deck. Sam held tight to the line and tried not to hear.

  Now sailors came rushing from below. Marines who never showed fear in the face of rebel muskets began to mill about in panic on the spar deck. The captain’s brass voice trumpet flashed in the bright sun. And the Somerset lost headway.

  Had the northeast gale abated suddenly, had the tidal current been gentler, had he not been here on the treacherous back shore of Cape Cod, George Ourry might have saved his ship. But he was quickly turned broadside to gale and tide, and then he was doomed.

  From his perch, Sam saw the light green water of the Peaked Hill Bar just a hundred yards to starboard. He thought that Ourry might throw out his anchors to hold her off, but enough canvas was set that if the anchors held, the wind might blow the masts to pieces. And so the captain screamed at the officers, the officers at the mates, the mates at the sailors, the sailors at the marines, and the marines at one another.

&
nbsp; And now, with the shoal water not twenty yards away, Ourry rushed down the deck and looked up at the mainmast.

  “You up there! Restring the block! You must… Hilyard!”

  And good English oak struck the American sandbar with a tremendous crash. The deck tilted to starboard. The sea pounded up and over the port side. George Ourry fell amidst a tumble of red coats and white wigs and was nearly crushed by a loose carronade that rolled across the deck and killed three marines. Dr. Thayer grabbed the rail and nearly went over the side. Men flew from the masts like ants flicked from a stick.

  Sam, still clutching a line, swung out over the water and back toward the mast like a pendulum, and in the second before he made fast, he decided his chances were better in the freezing Atlantic than ever they would be with the furious brass-buttoned figure now picking himself up from the tumble of marines on the spar deck.

  He pushed off with his foot, swung far out over the Peaked Hill Bar, and let go.

  For a moment, he hung suspended in midair, looking back at the ship. She lay against the bar, the waves pounding over her, the Union Jack flapping impotently at her stern, and he decided that if this was his last vision, it would be enough. Then he struck the icy water and nearly passed out.

  In the rolling surf, he managed to grab a broken spar, and clutching it with all the stubbornness he had gained in fifteen years on Cape Cod, all the cussedness he had inherited from his grandmother, all the will he had learned from his father, all the life he had drawn from his mother, he rode the rising tide to the beach.

  For a few moments, he lay exhausted at the wrack line, and then, above the pounding surf, came the sound of… cheering. He looked toward the low bluffs and recognized this as Head of the Meadow. Provincetowners had gotten here quickly from High Pole Hill. The people of Truro had turned out as well. Eyes were always watching for ships to founder, and Somerset was the biggest thing ever to hit the back shore.

  There were hundreds of them lining the bluff to watch the death of the ship that had so long invested their coast.

  The cheering grew louder as the day wore on and Captain Ourry tried to work his way off the bar. He threw over food crates and casks, which were carried to the beach, where the scavengers fought over them. He threw over cannons to lighten his load. He put out a longboat with rowers, but the waves swamped them and drowned the men, and the people bellowed and screamed over the steady roar of the day.

  Their hatred, thought Sam, was greater than his own, with so little reason. From them the British had stolen corn and cattle; from him they had taken a father. He wrapped himself in a blanket that a charitable soul had given him and sank to his knees. He could no longer watch the dying ship. This was war, but he was bitterly sorry for those he had killed, even for Tom Dodd.

  Then the tide lifted the Somerset off the bar and pounded her, bow first, onto the beach, as though she had been sailed there.

  The screaming of orders had ceased on her quarterdeck. The cheering had faded on the beach. Only the thunder of surf and wind remained, like a living presence between the rebels and the shipwrecked men. HMS Somerset carried two hundred marines and sixty-four cannon. But because of her list, the starboard cannon could be brought to bear on nothing more than the sand, and the port cannon simply pointed down the beach.

  “ ’Tis time to strike, Captain,” said Dr. Thayer.

  Ourry’s hand was frozen on the hilt of his sword. His eyes were fixed on the sand beneath his ship.

  “Damage, Mr. Speel?” he asked the mate.

  “Starboard stove in. Port side battered. God knows if the keel’s in one piece.”

  Ourry raised his chin as if to allow some invisible noose to be passed over his head. “She cannot be refloated, then, and fighting their militia is pointless.”

  “The better part of valor, sir,” said Thayer.

  “Valor, honor, principles…” Ourry looked at Thayer. “That Hilyard boy was on the main yard.”

  “He went over when we hit the bar. He was trying to fix the broken halyards.”

  “Perhaps.” Ourry gazed up at the Union Jack, now blowing out straight and strangely proud in the wind. “Strike.”

  The flag fluttered down. On the beach, a great cheer exploded.

  In the cable tier, Barmy Burt was laughing and crying at the same time. He sat in a pool of urine and stared at the thin shafts of light now cutting through the cracks in the hull.

  Dr. Thayer unlocked him and helped him stand. “We’re goin’ ashore.”

  “Are we ’ome?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Yes. We’re ’ome. We’re in dear old, merry old, jolly old England, where Britannia rules the waves. We been chained and been throttled and damn near been drowned, and the captain, ’e’s made us all slaves. But we’re proud, yes, we are, of the bravery we’ve showed, in subduin’ them nasty old Yanks, and now all we ask is a soft friendly bed and the captain can kiss both me shanks!”

  As Militia Captain John Otis would write, there were “riotous doings at the wreck” that day. The men of Provincetown and Truro divided the spoils, Provincetown taking a third and Truro two-thirds of everything from marlinespikes to bread casks to the brass fittings from Ourry’s cabin. A Truro man even tried to take possession of a North Carolina Negro who had joined the Somerset crew.

  Sam sat in the sand and listened to their negotiations, democracy in action, while Ourry marched down the beach behind his crew, last of four hundred eighty survivors to leave the Somerset under guard of the local militia. Sam had won, yet was he drained of joy as surely as he had been purged of hatred. In a way, he felt as stranded as the great hulk now swarming with scavengers.

  But he would soon enough find his bearings. Word reached Truro village that he had escaped, and word came quickly back that his mother had moved there to be near her husband’s grave and her son’s anchorage. She was staying at the home of Samson Rich, and she was now in labor.

  Thus did she become the patient of the Cape’s new doctor, William Thayer, and his assistant, Mr. B. Burt.

  Before that day was out, Sam stood in the borning room of a house on the Little Pamet and met his brother, Edward William Hilyard. With one hand, his mother held the infant to her breast, and with the other, she reached out to Sam.

  He jammed his hands into his pockets and tried to keep the boy in him from crying. “I’m sorry. ’Twas my fault that we never saw the ambush that night.”

  She twined her fingers in his hair. “God has a purpose for everything, son.”

  The familiar sound of her soft French accent filled him with joy and sorrow both. He knelt at her bedside and pressed his face to her cheek.

  x.

  “This war is far from over.” Dr. Thayer stood outside with Sam. The booming gale had finally passed, and a quiet November cold was settling on the land. In the Rich cottage, women were preparing a meal, and the sound of their chatter was tonic to men who had been so long aboard ship.

  “I done my part,” said Sam.

  “A fact I’d not make light with. Should His Majesty be victorious, you may pay for your sabotage.”

  Sam looked sharply at the doctor.

  “That would be Ourry’s word for it,” Thayer said, “though others would call it an act of war. I considered what you did a great release. I could not have stood the ship another week, or I’d have drunk myself to my grave.”

  “But now you’re a deserter.”

  Thayer pretended to ignore this. The sun’s last rays were reaching up the little valley. The bay was going gray in the fading light. “What are we looking at? I’d best know, that I may become native quickly.”

  “The Little Pamet River. To the left is Tom’s Hill. To the right, that’s Cornhill.”

  A flight of geese came in and settled in the river.

  “Cornhill…” mused Thayer, “Cornhill. That’s where your name comes from.”

  “Where?”

  “A book I once read, about this place and the Separatist settlers.
It mentions Cornhill and goes on at great length about a man named Jack… Jack Hilyard! Ever since I heard your name, I’ve racked my brain over that.” Thayer laughed, like a man who had found a lost penny.

  “What is this book?”

  “I believe it’s the log of the ship that brought the Separatists a hundred and fifty years ago. The Mayflower.”

  Sam tried to calm himself. “Where did you read it?”

  “Doctors with a taste for the grape often end up aboard His Majesty’s ships. And they often are found, before that, in waterfront taverns.”

  Comeuppance… The word began to echo again in Sam Hilyard’s head. Comeuppance… revenge. He drove it away.

  “I once tended a young man who’d been beaten in a tavern brawl, the wastrel son of a Hertfordshire squire, he was. As I hailed from the same town, he invited me to spend time at his father’s estate. The squire took great pride in his library, which contained an ancient Bible, a Shakespeare Folio, and the log of the ship Mayflower.”

  “Do you remember the name?”

  “Of course. Bellamy.”

  Down by the marsh, Burt was picking cattails. For the first time since Sam had met him, he was neither laughing nor muttering to himself. He was singing, singing his poems in a most pleasing voice. He was free, but Sam felt the past chaining him into another cable tier.

  “Did this book speak of a family named Bigelow?”

  “It sounds familiar. Though I must admit I was well filled with Madeira most of the time.” Thayer fixed his eyes on the horizon. “Terrible vice, the grape. Destroys a man’s brain, then his gut. Perhaps here I can start anew, ’fore it destroys me.”

  Comeuppance… Sam heard his grandmother’s word again, mingling with the call of the gulls. The book of history was in a town called Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire, in the hands of a family called Bellamy. What would his grandmother want him to do?

  Then he heard the cry of his baby brother. He had had enough of comeuppance. He wanted to feel his mother’s love. And the love of a spirited Cape Cod girl, exiled now in Nova Scotia. How would comeuppance win her, when comeuppance would bring her family low?