Peter Wicked

by Broos Campbell

  “No, son, I’m afraid he wasn’t captured. Stewart in the Experiment spoke the Insurgent off Barbuda. Seems Towson was aloft, leading the mids in some kind of capers, when a white squall came up of a sudden, as they will, and when it had passed over, he was gone. Vanished—swept away. Stewart and Fletcher spent the better part of the afternoon looking for him, but they never found him.”

  “Stewart?” says I, my mind gone blank. “I thought Maley had Experiment.”

  “So he did. But he got caught sending a shipload of niggers into the Havana instead of sending ’em back to Africa, if you can believe it. Damned paperwork. I’d’ve set ’em adrift . . .”

  His voice droned on, not needing me to listen to it. I was aware that I should’ve felt a great loss, but I didn’t. I’d gone empty in the heart, like an essential part of me had jumped ship. It felt the way I imagined it might feel to have a hand chopped off. I’d adapt in time, but in the meanwhile it was going to be damned awkward.

  “If you’ll excuse me, sir,” I said. I stood up, and went lightheaded. I was cold despite the heat. “I got to be going. I got an idea Mèche’s base is to the south, and I mean to cut him off from his supplies.” The leg of my chair caught my ankle. I sat down again.

  “Damme, but I’m a lummox,” said Oxford. “This has struck you harder than I thought. You have an understanding with Towson’s sister, I recall.”

  “No, sir, a mis understanding with his sister.” I laughed outright when Oxford looked shocked. It was like I was watching myself from a distance.

  “Shall I call the surgeon?” says Brownstone.

  “No. I’m all right.”

  “I insist,” said Oxford. “No doubt he’ll want to bleed you. I’ve entirely bungled this—I didn’t realize you were high strung.”

  “I ain’t high strung, sir. Just give me a little whiskey. Yes, rum’ll do, thank’ee.” I poured the spirits down my throat, reveling in the heat fanning out across my chest and up my spine to the cavern of my skull. An old pine tree in a forest fire weren’t in it. My head blazed like glory, and I held out my glass for a refill. “I’m entirely well, honest I am. Just a little upset. If I can just sit quiet here for a minute, I’ll get over it.” I’d be giggling pretty soon, but I knew the cure for that. I kept my mouth busy by pouring liquor into it.

  “There’s some mail,” Oxford said at some point. “The commodore put it aboard of us in case we should meet. I’ve already had it put in your boat.” Later on he said, “Are you sure you won’t take some broth? The surgeon—”

  I found myself in my stuffy closet of a cabin, swaying in my hammock and watching a matched pair of Choptanks disappear and reappear in the swell. They got smaller each time we crested a wave; and each time we did that, about a pint of rum sloshed around in my bilge, first away off to larboard, and then roaring through the middle and off to starboard and back again. My arms were swinging around in the air, and I kept busting out into snatches of “Hark, hark, ’tis a voice from the tomb! ‘Come, Lucy,’ it cries, ‘come awa-a-ay,’” but that was tarnal gloomy, and I switched to the one about how if Neptune had been wise, “Instead of his brine, he’d have fill’d the vast ocean with ge-enerous wi-hi-hi-hi-hi-hi-yine,” till my head felt like it’d been cleft in twain with a rusty axe.

  I calculated if I could stay in my hammock without hanging on, I weren’t near as drunk as I was going to be. All I had to do was open my mouth, and my steward would bring me all the whiskey I wanted. But every time I opened my mouth I started singing again, and I figured if anybody else aboard hated to hear me sing as much as I hated to hear me sing, I might not survive the night. It was a dilemma. I wanted whiskey, and I wanted to sing.

  Two letters from Dick lay unopened on my chest. They were the only personal letters for me that had come across in the locked canvas bag from the Choptank, and one had been stuffed inside the other.

  While I watched the clouds crawling past the little stern windows, I chanted, “What Cato advises most certainly wise is . . . we pass the long evenings in pleasure away,” but I couldn’t remember the middle part, and I sang the beginning and end of it over and over till I thought my brains might leak out my eyeballs. At long blessed last, just at six bells in the afternoon watch, Tomahawk skimmed past Round Island and I fell silent. I listened to O’Lynn’s Irish lilt as he sang “fifteen fathom . . . sixteen fathom . . . fourteen fathom . . . no-o-o-o bottom! No bottom with this li-i-i-ine” as the island came into view on my right and sank in our wake.

  Horne left me alone as the watches changed, but shortly into the first watch we rounded Saint Croix, and I was required on deck to supervise the change of course. “South by east,” I croaked, clutching one-handed at the weather rail. A storm was blowing up in the north, announcing itself with spindrift and gusty showers. “Put a reef in the gaff mains’l. Set the square course and tops’l on the fore. Call me if there’s any change.”

  The closest land afore us now was a good forty leagues away. Unless something carried away or an enemy hove over the horizon, I could wallow in whiskey for twenty hours or more, and maybe for as much as four days if the wind dropped.

  But as it happened I left the bottle alone, and when I read Dick’s letters I did so with a mix of dread and hope. If I was drunk at all it was on sorrow, not spirits.

  Thurs., Augst. 6, 1800

  White Oak Plantation, Md.

  Dear Matty,

  Good news, just rec’d word Captin Fletcher has asked for me in the Ensurgint frigate. A good Word from Father is to blame I’m sure, no doubt my Alowance has as much to do with it as Fathers influence in Congress. I will put in my pennys worth to get you as my Bunky, if Fletcher is lunk head enogh to take me, sure he’ll take you ha ha!

  The boat awaits. will mail soonest.

  Your friend,

  Dick

  p.s. Wasn’t Arabella mad when you upped Anchor and sailed away. Vexation ain’t in it, as you would say.

  p.p.s. Mrs. Towson sends her love.

  The next had been scribbled in pencil and sealed with a wafer instead of wax:

  Ensurgint

  Friday, Septr. 4, 1800

  at Sea, near Barbuda

  Dear Matty,

  We are hove-to next the Experiment schooner. Liut Stewart has her now, did you know that? He continues to play merry Hell with the French, taking Deuce Amis of 8 guns Tuesday last. He says he is to rendazvou with the Choptank or her tender, and will take our mail.

  Just found my previous unsent in my other coat pocket, which I will send with this (the letter I mean, not my pocket!) Hope you are not still mad I got this birth. Fletcher sailed on short notice, I had barely slung my hammok when we put to sea and did not see the inside of it for two days. I wish you had come aboard with me, my jaw is sore yet, but I am not.

  Continued fair weather, and dull if you ask me . . .

  I came on deck, not sure of the reception I’d get. Horne moved to leeward, to give me the weather rail. Gundy stood unusually straight by O’Lynn at the tiller. All three of them looked a little saggy under the eyes.

  “Good morning, Mr. Horne,” I said after digesting the information on the traverse board and the slate, and glancing over the rough log. “You all will want your beds, I expect.”

  “Not on such a beautiful day, sir,” he said. I couldn’t read him at all.

  “As you will, then,” I said.

  But here was Greybar, taking the air on the quarterdeck. I bent down to pet him. He scooted away and stopped just out of reach, looking around at me and twitching his tail.

  I got down on one knee. I held out my hand and made kissy noises, the way O’Lynn and the others called him. And dog me if the little chap didn’t come to me. He rubbed his cheek against my outstretched fingers, and I tried scratching him behind the head where the fur was thick. He hunkered down and commenced to purr.

  I snuck a peek at Horne and Gundy. Horne was examining something in the maintop and Gundy was shading his eyes and staring at something on th
e horizon.

  Greybar twisted around to rub against my shin. The tip of his erect tail tickled my chin. And then, as I knelt there, he put his paws on my knee. His purring got louder, and he hopped up on my thigh. His claws were like little needles as he kneaded my flesh.

  Well, I couldn’t kneel there all day with a cat tearing holes in my britches. So I tucked him under one arm and put my other hand under his hind legs and stood up. My chest rumbled from his purrs. He had his eyes squinted shut against the sun. I bent my head to see was he all right, and he touched his nose against mine.

  He opened his eyes like he was as surprised as I was. But then he closed his eyes again, and purred like cannons going off. That’s how it felt in my heart, anyway. I stood there trying to decide if I was going to weep or something.

  And then a flying fish soared in over the rail and hit me in the face. Greybar hopped down at once, all business with the flopping fish, and Horne and Gundy had lost their unnatural preoccupation and all was as it should be on a quarterdeck of a man-of-war.

  Horne looked at the scales and fish guts that Greybar was flinging around the deck.

  “Nothing a bucket of water won’t cure,” I said.

  Horne didn’t smile much, but when he did it was like sunshine in February. I near went blind from the brightness. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  THIRTEEN

  Even half a hundred miles west of the arc of the Leeward Islands there was any number of island traders, some of them probably even legal, that slapped on canvas and melted away from us like butter in August. We took the opportunity for a little gun drill, running out the three-pounders and using up some of the powder supplied by the goodness of Congress for the preservation of free trade and sailors’ rights. Two of the ships we managed to overhaul threw all aback and awaited our pleasure after a single shot, which disappointed Peebles tremendously; but I didn’t trouble myself to look too close at either of them, as it wasn’t in my orders, they spoke English, and we didn’t have any people to spare for prize crews even if they’d turned out to be sailing on the account—which if they were, they wouldn’t have heaved-to in the first place. That was my thinking on it, anyway. Three times in one forenoon watch we heaved shot into ships in earnest, or at least in their general direction, which all in all it was just as well they gave us the air, us being shorthanded as we were. We whiled away the afternoon watch by blasting the great blue empty with the carronade just to make some noise. It had a boom that got you deep down in the oysters and set your blood a-boiling in a way that a pop from a three-pounder never could.

  At four bells the next morning, though, with the sun’s disk just clear of the eastern horizon and gleaming like gold on the untroubled sea, we found ourselves in chase of a large cutter. She was pierced for fourteen guns and flying British colors. Now Johnny Crappo had a few cutters, some very large ones in fact, but I’d never seen a French one in West Indian waters. But there was something odd about her that I couldn’t quite figure out.

  I offered Horne my glass. He took a long squint and handed it back.

  “Just your ordinary royal scout and dispatch boat, sir.”

  “Gundy?”

  He shrugged his shoulders and pulled a long face while he took his turn with the glass.

  “Not sure, me cabbun. Cutter rig’s as English as chasse-marée is Vrench—but if English, why do ’ee run vrom us?”

  “If he’s carrying dispatches he’ll be under orders not to sit around jawing with admirals nor anyone else.”

  “But he’d fly a signal to say so, sir,” said Horne. “And he’s not exactly cracking on sail.”

  “Odd place to find ’un,” said Gundy.

  I glanced at the compass. “Nor’-nor’east on the sta’board tack. Could be coming up from Jamaica, bound for Spanish Town or even England.”

  “He’ll be a while if he doesn’t jank ’ee along an’ zcoot away,” said Gundy.

  I looked at Horne. “He means if he doesn’t hurry up,” he said.

  “Is’t an echo, Mr. Horne?” said Gundy. “Didn’t I just zay—”

  Peebles had wandered over. “Why doesn’t he stop and say hello?” he said to no one in particular.

  “Maybe he just doesn’t believe our colors,” I said. “Hoist the challenge of the day.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” He had to look it up in the codebook, which took him several minutes to find, and the answer was several more minutes in coming. Then three pieces of bright bunting broke out at the cutter’s peak. Peebles ran his finger along the lines of text and the hand-colored drawings. “She hoists the right reply, sir.”

  She also fired a gun on her away side to indicate a peaceful intent. I might have been forgiven for thinking all was well with her; but the name on her transom was missing, as if it had been blacked out, and she looked like she had more speed in her than she was showing; but we were at quarters with our slow match smoking, and I was curious.

  She rolled along on a bowline to windward and sunward of us on the starboard tack. Except for having come about to follow her, we kept the relative position we’d had at sunup, which was about half a mile to leeward of her on her larboard quarter. Gundy and Horne shaded their eyes with their hands against the sun.

  “There, she done it again,” I said, lowering my glass. “Didn’t she just luff up?”

  “No, zur. I didn’t—”

  “She does too spill her wind,” said Horne, opening his fingers and squinting. “Just a tiny—there! She’s doing it again.”

  “Nay, me luvver,” said Gundy. “’Ee art bedwaddled.”

  “Oh, I’m be-what-led, am I? Don’t deny what I can see with my own eyes. Now I ask you plain, does she luff up or doesn’t she?”

  “I’ll not argy again’ ’ee, Mr. Horne. She luffs up, aye, but not by scuddin’ ’ee wind.”

  “Well, how then?”

  “By doggin’ a zee-anchor, is how.”

  “Oh, a sea-anchor, you say?”

  “Iss, zur, a zee-anchor, zes I.”

  “What in tarnation Harry are you two on about?” I said, pretending like I hadn’t been listening with every ear in my body. I raised the glass to my eye again. She was dragging a line, sure enough, but I didn’t see any spars or canvas or anything else in the water that might slow her down.

  Gundy pointed with a gnarled finger. “There, me cabbun. Like a shadow under the zurface, just abaft ’ee rudder-post.”

  “I see it, sir,” said Horne. “It’s awkward for her on the weather side like that. It snubs her short, which is why she luffs.”

  “I expect so.” I said it sharp—Horne could admit to being wrong all he wanted, but I couldn’t have him include me among the ignorant. Besides, I could see it for myself now, showing as a paler patch of sea off the cutter’s starboard quarter. The line leading to it tautened as I watched, faint as a spider’s thread at that distance, and I followed the progress of its effect with my glass. Her bow gave a little jog to windward, her great gaff mainsail shivered just for an instant, and the way came off her just a touch.

  “We’re not buying today,” muttered Horne.

  “If you please, sir,” said Peebles, “what’s happening?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. But that didn’t seem like the right thing for a captain to say, so I added, “Either he’s French or he thinks we’re flying false colors. Either way, he’s trying to lure us close enough that he can put on a sudden burst of speed and snatch us up.”

  “Iss, zur,” said Gundy. “But he’ll have to ease ’ee along more ’an’some than that to fool we.”

  “Any fish’ll bite if you got good bait.” I glanced up at our commission pendant and then at the compass. The breeze was holding steady in the northeast.

  “But if he’s British, sir,” said Peebles, “won’t he just let us go afterwards?”

  “It’s an insult to have to show every British skiff, yawl, and bum-boat our papers,” I snapped. “That’s what our flag is for. Besides, we let ’em on board who knows how
many people we’ll have left afterwards. They’d take Gundy and O’Lynn and every other British seaman, claiming they’re King’s subjects or deserters.”

  There’d be no escaping to windward, even if the cutter didn’t have the weather gauge on us already. Just as I was about to tell Gundy to put us about and run like Jiminy to leeward, the lookout hollered, “Sail ho!”

  “Where away?”

  “Two points on the sta’board bow.” He pointed. “A frigate, sir, about three-quarter-mile yonder of the cutter.”

  The frigate had placed herself well, or taken the utmost advantage of her luck at first light, swooping down from windward with the sun at her back and all her cloth abroad. But the cutter is a nimble rig, and this one had teeth as well. She let her head fall off the wind, bringing her starboard broadside to bear against the frigate. She stood out in sudden silhouette against a bank of white smoke.

  Gundy stiffened like a hunting hound. “Areeah! Raked ’un!”

  I had counted past two and not quite to three when the low rumble of gunfire reached us. That put the cutter at just about exactly half a mile, which is what my eye had told me, and as I was congratulating myself on my fine eye for distance, she let fly with her larboard battery as well—the one facing us.

  “Well, that’s just pure meanness,” Horne said.

  “Sure, ’tis a wicked waste of the Dear’s good powder, tryin’ to hit us at such a distance,” said O’Lynn at the tiller.

  Horne laughed, and Gundy told O’Lynn to hush ’eeself and mind ’ee luff, and then a line of splashes rose about halfway between us and the cutter. Naturally I was pleased to see her shot land far away and no harm done, but I doubted she was armed with anything larger than a four-pounder, not if she wanted to keep her speed. She could hit us in theory but not too likely in fact.

  The splashes melted back into the sea. We sailed along in company to enjoy the view. The frigate yawed to starboard, and a sudden bank of smoke hid her. More low thunder rumbled across the water, a nation louder than the cutter’s broadside. No sense sticking my nose in where it might get bit, I thought, but as I opened my mouth to say, “’Bout ship,” a weird groaning came out of the sky. A forest of geysers shot up around us.