The Shores of Tripoli

by James L. Haley

  “Is something amiss?” asked Bliven.

  “We are fully manned at present. We have no place for you.”

  “That cannot be; are you quite sure?”

  “A moment, let me inquire.” The clerk pushed back from his desk and took up a crutch from the back of the chair that Bliven had not noticed before. He got to his feet and Bliven saw that he had no right leg below the knee.

  “Oh, good God, I am sorry,” Bliven said, before he could stop himself.

  The blond clerk stopped and turned. “Sorry?”

  “To . . . trouble you to inquire.” He knew very well that what he was apologizing for was judging the man for a history he had only imagined from a first sight. Never must he do such a thing again.

  “No trouble. Certainly it was our mistake and not yours. Wait one moment, please.” He disappeared into an adjoining office, then returned to his desk. “You will forgive me if I sit back down.”

  “Of course,” said Bliven. “How did you—”

  “French cannonball in the West Indies, in the Undeclared War. Took it right off, never felt a thing. One minute I had two legs, the next minute I fell, fainted from loss of blood; no terrible amputation to remember, thank God. But”—he gestured around—“this is now my quarterdeck.”

  “I see.” That could be me, thought Bliven, one day—instant injury, or instant death, or, as he saw, instantly maimed in a way that would never end.

  The clerk arranged himself again. “There is a lieutenant in the Adams. Our information was that he would remain on sick leave, and you were sent for as a replacement. After we sent your orders, he reported for duty and will sail. I regret that we neglected to countermand this order.”

  But he busied himself writing now. “We want to retain you, however. You will continue on half-pay until we recall you.” He handed up the hasty new order. “Send us a voucher for your travel expenses, here and home; you will be recompensed. You see my name, Lawrence Todd, Lieutenant—at the bottom. Send your expenses to my special attention. I shall tend to it at once.”

  “I thank you, although I was prepared for duty,” protested Bliven. “I am at a loss what to think.” He did not try to mask the lack of comprehension that he knew must show. “How is it this other man sails and I do not?”

  “He has seniority. Mr. Putnam, as you well know, the size of the navy was slashed once we made peace with France. My God, we went from twenty-eight captains to nine! We had upwards of a hundred lieutenants; we now have billets for thirty-six. You and that other midshipman from the Enterprise were the latest to be commissioned, and therefore are the most junior. Your reputation was such that Commodore Dale especially recommended your recall, above several others of greater seniority.”

  “He did?”

  The clerk nodded. “Directly before he retired.”

  “Retired? I was unaware.”

  “It was sudden. He had such a rocky time, as it were”—the clerk smiled vaguely—“in the Mediterranean, he was quite undone by the time he returned. He was to go back this spring, but he laid down certain conditions that the secretary of the navy could not accept, so he retired.”

  “He was not so disarranged when I left him. What has happened?” asked Bliven. “I have heard nothing.” It did not sound like Dale to give the navy an ultimatum.

  “Ah, no, you might not have heard. After he sent the Enterprise home, he went to Port Mahon to collect dispatches. There was an idiot of a Spanish pilot, ran the President aground in the harbor, sheared off the whole forward part of her keel. She stayed tight, but crossing the Atlantic was out of the question. He spent the winter in Toulon, seeing to the repairs. Managing foreign workmen in such an undertaking left him quite exasperated.”

  “And the ship? Was she permanently damaged?”

  “No, thank the Lord.”

  Bliven nodded. The President’s massive internal strength would have kept her watertight. “What conditions did he lay down?”

  “That the government support the squadron more effectively.”

  Bliven agreed. “Yes, he would.”

  “That, and I believe there was a quarrel over his duties. You know the navy is finally going to start building up to meet the Berber threat. Captain Barron—James—who had command of the President while Dale commanded the squadron, was needed for another command. Mr. Dale was informed that he would have to both command the new squadron and run his own ship without a captain on board. He would not brook it.”

  Bliven considered this sadly. “I am sorry to hear that they could not accommodate him. He was very kind to me on a number of occasions.” His mind drifted back to the duel with Sam that they were goaded into by the lieutenants on the President. “But it is good hearing that they are going to increase the fleet. I was afraid we had made a peace with the pirates of which I was unaware.”

  The look on the clerk’s face showed resignation, betraying his preference that they should have continued fighting until they brought home a conclusion. “It will take time. Your squadron under Commodore Dale rather did its job. You let the Barbary pirates know that we mean business, we have enough sail to escort our commercial vessels, so the government is hoping that a modest continuing presence will be enough. Commodore Morris sails with a new squadron to relieve the ships that have been longest on station.”

  “So I am to go home and wait.”

  “Enjoy your time with your family. I am certain that you will be wanted again. Perhaps you have not heard—the Algerines have taken one of our diplomats, and his daughter. He was to have been our consul to the Sicilies. Up until now we have had some trouble getting the State Department to go all in for a war, but they seem to be on board now. The wheels of government turn very slowly, but be patient. As they measure time it will not be long.”

  “I thank you for your attentions, Lieutenant”—Bliven looked at the paper—“Todd. You have been very kind.” He turned to go, but paused. “By the way, I heard it said in Connecticut that Lieutenant Sterett has been dismissed. Can this be true?”

  Todd registered surprise. “Hardly. It is true he has been relieved of command of the Enterprise, but he has been ordered to Hampton Roads to oversee fitting out a new twenty-gun brig, which he will command. In effect, he has been promoted.”

  Bliven nodded. “I am glad to hear it.”

  “Yes, you served under Sterett, did you not? Perhaps your source in Connecticut heard merely that he had been relieved of the Enterprise, and concluded for himself that he must have been dismissed.”

  “Perhaps so,” said Bliven. That lay squarely within the likelihood of John Calhoun and the other Carolinians at Tapping Reeve’s law school to set sail on a conclusion with only half a cargo of facts.

  Bliven had planned to eschew an inn that evening to save money and carry his sea bag direct to the stage depot, intending to doze at their door to take the predawn coach for the return journey. But with the new order in hand authorizing his reimbursement, he dined and slept well. This also relieved him of the annoyance of paying for the weight of his books on the coach, and thus he called at a bookshop and acquired the six volumes of Gibbon’s history of Rome for himself, for they had a used set for a reduced price, and a fashionable novel to present to Miss Marsh, when he could gain her company.

  When Mr. Strait’s coach paused again at the Putnam farm long enough for Bliven to disembark with his sea bag, his mother spied it from her keeping room, where she had been kneading dough. That chamber had been added to the side of the house and had a window onto the front road. She met him in the front yard, leaving wet strings of dough on her apron as she wiped her hands; she embraced him with a quizzical look on her face. “I had prayed of God to deliver you safely home to me again,” she said. “But He does not usually answer so quickly.” Benjamin was also out of the house before she was through speaking.

  “Well,” said Bliven, “in this cas
e His instrument was a lieutenant on the Adams who first was too sick to sail, but was miraculously healed.”

  They went into the house, then into the kitchen, where they partook of a corn pudding just out of the oven. “How did you find Boston?” asked Benjamin.

  “Boston thrives and is busy,” said Bliven. “But the navy yard, Father, it is a disgrace. You should see the ships laid up, one after the other, even some of the frigates, beached like whales. We could crush these pirates in a stroke, but the government will not spend the money to send a whole fleet. Commodore Dale retired; he told them he would lead a squadron back only on condition that it was adequately supported.”

  “And they would not give him that assurance?”

  “They would not.”

  Bliven’s father packed tobacco into a long-stemmed Dutch clay pipe. He was not particularly fond of the Dutch, whose settlements dotted the Hudson Valley thirty miles to the west, but he appreciated that they knew how to smoke. Poughkeepsie was the closest of their towns, and he knew the leading families, the Van Kleecks and the Van Oosteroms, whose notorious thrift had left them very well off. They could buy what they wanted, and that included Putnam’s hard cider, though he sometimes felt he had to shake the coins from their pockets.

  “Well.” Putnam rose, took a lighted brand from the kitchen fireplace, touched it to the bowl of the pipe, and puffed. “There is no need to be surprised. That is our government for you, what? They are willing to have a war, they love the rewards of a war, but they do not want to pay for a war. Probably at this moment someone has gone to Mr. Hamilton to ask his advice, how to arrange the figures in columns to make it look like it is paid for, but will not in truth cost them anything.”

  Benjamin Putnam sat heavily in a Windsor rocker with thin cushions on the seat and hung on the back. “It is the business men, you see? They want the trade with Spain and Italy and the south of France, even Greece and the Levant. And they don’t want to have to pay the pirates. So they send the navy, too few ships, mind you, and men whom they feed”—he censored himself, mindful of his wife’s presence—“stale bread and cheese, to do their dirty work for them.”

  Bliven was astonished to hear this. “I had no idea you felt this way, Father.”

  Benjamin sucked pensively at the fragrant Virginia tobacco in his pipe. “This is why I opposed your entering the navy. Not that I want to keep you here forever, not that I feared that you would fail to acquit yourself honorably, but because your life is worth less to them than the moldy cheese they send you.”

  “But surely, Father”—Bliven set his bowl of corn pudding on the table though he had not finished it—“the piracy is indeed a fact. These Mohammedan states capture and kill and enslave white Christians by their thousands. The men are put to hard labor until they fall dead, the women”—he glanced at his mother—“far . . . worse. Surely it is honorable for any nation to put an end to that.”

  “And that, you see, is why I let you go.” He let that register. “But look you, where are the British, the French, the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Sicilians? They all pay tributes and ransoms, do they not? Even while they fight each other! They ought to be paying us to fight the Berbers for them, as they shall reap the benefit of free seas.”

  Bliven nodded. “Yes, that I grant you. As cynics and insincere cads, the Europeans make Americans seem innocent as babies. But I had no idea that you had considered all this so deeply.”

  “Where the life of my only son is concerned? Yes, I have thought much on it. And when this war with the Moslems is over, it will not be long before the British or the French are back at our door, that’s the kind of devils they are. We will need a navy then, rightly enough, so let us build all the ships we can, sail them or lay them up, it doesn’t matter, so long as they are there in the future.” There was quiet for a moment. “Dorothea, have you naught to say in the matter?”

  She began to collect the dishes. “Trade, war, honor, that’s all men’s business. A woman’s business is to want to keep her family alive.” She would not speak her bitterness, but she hoped very much that it would carry in her tone of voice.

  “How shall I explain myself now?” asked Bliven suddenly. “Everyone is expecting that I have gone to sea. It will be humiliating to be seen again as though I were not wanted.”

  Benjamin tapped the warm ashes of his pipe into a ceramic bowl. “I think not. I shall have a word with the news printer. He feels as stridently as you about the navy being left to languish, and now being sent forth in only part strength. He can announce your return and light off on their maladministration in one piece. He will be glad of it, and will excite sympathy for you.” He patted the palms of his hands down on the chair arms. “Well, home you are, and home you are like to stay for some months, now. Is it not so?”

  “Yes, it seems your fledgling is back in the nest a while longer.”

  “Spring is not half over. The widow Baker spoke to me about renting her back field that adjoins the end of our orchard. I declined, thinking that I would be full occupied this year. But if you are here to help work it, we can make good use of it. If you agree I shall go see her at once.”

  “Yes,” said Bliven. “Yes, by all means.”

  They rose together, Benjamin kissing his wife on the cheek. “I hope she has not let the field to someone else. I shall hasten.”

  “That will be well, my dear.” Dorothea Putnam did not need to be told that an additional field rented on any fair terms would be more corn, which meant more chickens, more winter hay, perhaps pumpkins.

  “I remember that field; I shall go and have a look at it,” said Bliven. “We must know how much preparation it will need.” From the back of the house he walked through the garden, past the chicken yard and pigsty; he stopped in the barn and picked up a digging trowel. Beyond the barn, leaving the house and road farther behind, he looked in the small stone building that housed the cider press. It was instantly familiar, the crusher, the press, the rows of earthen crocks to ferment the hard cider, now clean and dry, awaiting the autumn.

  Bliven took his time walking through the orchard. His father’s father had been the first to bring Roxbury russets from Massachusetts down to his great-uncle Israel Putnam’s farm near Brooklyn, in the very east of Connecticut. Now these golden leathercoats were their own staple, so sweet that they needed but little sugar when placed in the fermentation crocks.

  Many of their Litchfield neighbors had added the peculiar codicil to their religious creeds that equated the consumption of alcohol in any measure, be it ever so mild and harmless, as sinful. This they carried to a point surely of pride—an irony that Benjamin Putnam was not shy to point out, for pride should also be taken for a sin. Nevertheless, for them in season he also prepared sweet cider, for which his golden Roxbury apples were so perfectly suited that even those most partial to the hard cider conceded that the juice, sluiced directly into cups beneath the press, was of astonishing sweetness. The mash they consumed as applesauce, and even the tough skins the hogs competed for.

  But these were not the apples that Bliven most remembered from his childhood. Nearest the house his father had planted four rows of Baldwins, brilliant scarlet woodpeckers, tart and hard. One of Bliven’s first associations was of the first frosts of October with fat slices of apple pie, hot and topped with melted cheese; such a breakfast fortified him well into the school day.

  It was a young orchard, he was happy to note; with time and proper care its growing production would provide them a comfortable living. As he reached the far end of it he saw on his right the split-rail fence that separated their land from the widow Baker’s. He swung easily over it and judged the parcel to be near ten acres or somewhat less in extent. It had not been planted since her husband’s death seven years before. Much but not all had gone to brush, but that and the small trees that had started would not be difficult to clear; the stones had been plowed up years before. With spring
half gone, planting quickly took precedence over orderliness; the field could not be seen from the road, in any case.

  He knelt and thrust the trowel into and through the grass, pulling up a clod of earth that crumbled from the roots. It was dark and reasonably moist. He put his nose to it and inhaled the rich, dank fragrance. Yes, he thought, I remember this. He could think of only two primal smells, aromas that must extend unbroken back to the Creation. One was the fresh salt air of the sea, the other rich, moist earth; he dreaded having to choose between the two, and wondered how he might manage to keep both, as he had both now.

  As he returned to the house, the wind brought the scent of bread baking and he thought, Oh, very well, there may be three primal smells. Benjamin returned with a year’s lease on the field, renewable by mutual agreement. That night they ate roast venison, parsnips from the root cellar boiled and mashed with butter, and fresh greens new from the garden. This was Thursday, Bliven reflected with satiety, and the men at sea were eating salt pork with a half-pint of beans, and biscuit, and the worms in the biscuit. What stripe of fool must he be to even consider leaving this place again?

  • • •

  DURING THE LATE SPRING Mrs. Baker’s field became Bliven’s domain, and he was racing to clear it and plow before the season left them behind. He planted four acres in corn first, then cleared and planted four acres in hay, which was not so dependent on the calendar. There was room left for beans and squash, and pumpkins that his mother had such a taste for. It was hot work, even for a strapping fifteen and a half; occasionally he thought of bracing mornings at sea that appealed to him, but almost at once he would remember an important advantage of home.

  Two days after the announcement of his return appeared in the local broadside, Bliven penned a letter to Clarity Marsh, explaining his return and asking her permission to call on her. In return he received an invitation to attend church with them on the first Sunday in May. They were Congregationalists, and it raised Bliven’s hackles when he contemplated too close an association with them. They were an authoritarian church, long since stripped of the compulsion of law they had formerly enjoyed in the days of the Pilgrims. They also had no overarching governing structure; each local consociation controlled the churches in its area, which professed according to their leaders’ persuasions. Thus dissenting sects now proliferated on questions of scripture and doctrine, free now of the threat of stocks or ducking stools.