The French Prize

by James L. Nelson

  But standing on the quay, under a sun such as he had never felt before, surrounded by a place the likes of which he had never seen, he was nearly overwhelmed by the sensation, the strangeness of it. He was Adam waking in this new-made paradise. Palm trees—palm trees!—were waving as if in greeting. Bright-plumed birds unlike anything in his experience flickered past, making the cardinals of his native New England, perhaps the gaudiest of birds found there, look dull in comparison. A lizard, five inches long, stood in his path as if daring him to proceed.

  A few hundred feet away stood the buildings of the dockyard, stone and brick and rough-hewn wooden beams. They looked out of place in their familiarity, stolid, humorless British architecture set down in this frivolous land. Worn paths, or perhaps they might be called roads, ran from the quay in various directions, dusty and paved with a layer of broken shells. One ran past a three-story stone building punctuated by a series of windows along its face, a flagpole with the Union Jack waving in a lazy, desultory way.

  William took this building to be a barracks of some sort, a place for the officers to live when ashore, perhaps. A trellis stood to one side of the building; a profusion of vines and massive vivid flowers covered the wooden frame, giving some blessed shade to the four men at the table below it. British naval officers. They were in shirtsleeves and waistcoats. Their blue uniform coats were draped over the backs of their chairs and there were half-full glasses before them, a half-empty bottle amidships. They seemed to be taking their pleasure in a quiet, unhurried way, the only way that seemed right in such heat.

  Their presence reminded William of yet another unique aspect of his situation, another novel thing after a lifetime of studiously avoiding novelty. He was now in a foreign land. He was in a colony of the British Empire. He had of course been born in a colony of the British Empire, had been British himself for all of ten months before the Congress declared independence and his father, among others, had fought to turn that declaration into a political reality.

  William’s father, Charles Wentworth, was never a wild revolutionary, despite having shot at Englishmen and having been shot at by them in return. Père Wentworth was not one of those who came to hate the mother country. Quite the opposite; he continued to admire the British and dislike the French, and his dislike of the French had expanded exponentially with the outbreak of their revolution, which, unlike that of the Americans, exhibited a hedonistic liberality of which he did not approve.

  These attitudes, like wealth and a somewhat prominent nose, he had handed down to his son. William Wentworth would normally have felt an affinity for British naval officers. But at that moment, he was not so sure.

  Standing there on that dusty road, wearing only a loose cotton shirt, rumpled from having been crammed in a sea chest and already wet from perspiration and quite wilted, wool socks and shoes that had suffered much from their sea voyage, and a straw hat such as a foremast jack or a field hand might wear, Wentworth was feeling every bit the Yankee Doodle Dandy. For all the heat, the officers under the trellis did not seem to be in the least discomforted, and their waistcoats and shirts were white and smooth as if fresh from the laundry, the buckles on their shoes glinted when the sunlight found them through the vines overhead.

  Wentworth sighed. There was nothing for it. He would have to walk past them, secure in his knowledge that in wealth, breeding, or learning he was the equal of any of them. He put his rifle over his shoulder and walked on, he shoes crunching over the shells underfoot, the birds making weird noises from the cover of the thick and pungent vegetation.

  He could feel the eyes on him as he walked past, and he was not entirely surprised to hear one of the officers call out, “I say! You there, I say!”

  Wentworth stopped. He could feel the color rising in his face, felt the familiar sensation of growing resentment, of smoldering offense. What would happen if he was insulted? In Boston the answer would be as obvious as his reaction would be swift. But here? What would happen to him, or the men of the Abigail, if he were forced to call one of these fellows out and put a bullet in him?

  But there was no time to think that through, to weigh the various possibilities. One of these fellows had called to him, and he could not ignore him. He turned on his heel. They were all looking at him, all four officers, three near his own age and one a decade or more older. It was one of the younger men who had called out, and he was now regarding Wentworth with considerable interest.

  “I say,” the naval officer continued, his tone one of surprise and admiration. “Your rifle, sir, is that a Jover and Belton?”

  The question took Wentworth full aback, completely disarmed him. He approached the men, handed the weapon over for their inspection. The fellow who had called to him took it up with respect, held it at various angles to admire it, handed it off to his fellow officers, then insisted that Wentworth join them in a drink.

  The shade was a blessing, a soft breeze had come up. The wine, which was Madeira, was actually cool, made so through an evaporative process that the officers explained to Wentworth as they opened a second bottle. The officer who had first called to Wentworth introduced himself as Lieutenant Thomas Chandler, fourth officer aboard the seventy-four Warrior, Sir James Wallace commanding, the very ship about which Wentworth had been asking Jack. Chandler told Wentworth that he owned a fowler by Jover and Belton and a brace of pistols, and he recognized the craftsmanship right off. They discussed the merits of the guns for a few animated moments, with the enthusiasm of the true aficionado, the sort that those outside the club find hard to fathom.

  The older man, who was second aboard Warrior, said, “We were about to have a bite, cheese and fruit and cakes, nothing extraordinary, but we would be most pleased was you to join us.”

  “Delighted, sir, thank you,” Wentworth said. The thought of fresh fruit and new company, enjoyable company, was powerfully compelling. He sipped his Madeira, sweet and cool. He took the ridiculous straw hat from his head.

  “Beastly hot, and only going to get worse,” the older man observed.

  “You are from this American merchantman, I presume?” Chandler said. “Must be, we haven’t seen a new face around here in weeks, not until you sailed in. It’s tedious in the extreme, sitting out here, no one to look at but these three. God, but their conversation can get dull.”

  “Dull, you say?” said one of the officers. “Ah, my dear Chandler, you are always the whetstone to our dull discussions. By ‘whetstone’ I mean to imply that you are coarse, rough, and quite unpolished.”

  Wentworth wondered if this was going to grow more heated, how ugly it might become, but then he saw that this was simply how they talked with one another, men so familiar with each other’s company that they could toss out insults of that nature and give no offense. Wentworth had seen that before, though he had never personally had such a connection to anyone.

  The food and more drink were brought out by a young black man in bleached white slop trousers and shirt. The second officer said, “So you were in that action with that corvette, that L’Armançon, or so goes the rumor flying around here. Pray, tell us more.”

  Wentworth could see the men leaning a little closer in, more interested now that the discussion had turned to the topic of their profession, and he knew he was about to disappoint them. “Forgive me, gentlemen, I’m a passenger aboard Abigail and remarkably lacking in knowledge, even for a landsman, but I’ll relate what I can.”

  He started in, describing the fight as best he could, from their first sighting of the Frenchman to their sailing off with the battered enemy in their wake. The officers asked a few questions, but Wentworth’s stumbling, partial answers discouraged them from asking any more that required expertise of a maritime nature. But he managed a credible recounting, suitably humble, of the part he played, firing from the “maintop,” savoring the use of one of the few nautical terms he remembered.

  “Ho!” said one of the officers, “you made a one-man contingent of marines! Well done!”


  “In a sea fight we will station the marines in the tops,” Chandler explained, “to fire on the enemy’s deck. I would we could equip them all with small arms from Jover and Belton.”

  “Jover and Belton or not,” one of the others said, “that’s a damned fine shot. And to take out the helmsman just as they were rising tacks and sheets, or so I gather from your description, well, I dare say that won the day for you.”

  “Just like a Frenchman, ain’t it,” another observed, “to have but one man at the wheel during a sea fight?”

  The others nodded. Wentworth thanked them for their kindness. He did not tell them about shooting the two helmsman with a single shot. He feared they would not find that entirely credible, just as Biddlecomb clearly had not.

  Wentworth’s original plan to go shooting was lost in the languid, pleasant afternoon and evening, eating, drinking, conversing, and Wentworth had all but forgotten about it when Chandler asked, “Say, William, were you off for a bit of hunting when I so rudely stopped you?”

  “Yes, I suppose I was,” Wentworth said, recalling those intentions like some long-ago dream. One of the other officers snorted.

  “Best of luck to you. Not a damned thing on this island worth shooting at.”

  “Maybe we should stock the hills with some Frenchmen,” another suggested.

  Chandler, an avid hunter, had to second his fellow officers, but he offered to meet Wentworth the next day so that they might go shooting together, an arrangement that Wentworth accepted with pleasure.

  Wentworth was back on the quay just after sunrise the following morning, and as he approached the stone barracks Chandler appeared, wearing a white linen shirt and straw hat similar to Wentworth’s. He had no rifle or powder horn, which struck Wentworth as odd, until two seamen appeared from the dark interior behind him. One carried a rifle, powder horn, shot bag, and a haversack that bulged with some unseen contents. The other carried two haversacks, the straps crossed over his chest, and some other odd-shaped item bound in a cloth and resting on his shoulder.

  “William! Good morrow! Here, let my man carry your gun and such!” He took the rifle from Wentworth’s hands and passed it to the seaman, who shouldered it beside the gun he already carried. “Mind that gun, Kipfer,” he said, “it’s a Jover and Belton, worth more than you’ll see in wages and prize money this year, I’ll warrant.”

  “Aye, sir,” Kipfer said, giving the weapon a loving pat, and Wentworth thought, This naval service, this seems a damned fine, civilized occupation …

  “Good man with guns, Kipfer,” Chandler said to Wentworth. “Mine is a Wilkinson, a decent gun, but you’ve inspired me to bring the Jover and Belton next commission. Thigpen there has our dinner,” he continued, nodding toward the second man, “along with a couple of bottles of a passable Bordeaux. One of the few benefits of being stationed in the West Indies, you know. Surrounded by Frenchies. They won’t fight, damn their cowardly hides, but they’ll sell us wine quick enough.”

  Chandler led the way across the dockyard, then along a narrow road that ran into the interior of the island, finally turning onto a path that led up to the higher ground. He explained as they went that there was virtually nothing to hunt on Antigua save for the feral goats, but they could be quite wily, as was their nature, and that made them worthy adversaries.

  They spent a few hours circling up into the higher country as the sun climbed aloft and the day grew hotter. Chandler located a small herd of goats with his pocket telescope. They worked their way to leeward of them, but the herd spooked and ran, and they were another hour in getting back up with them. Finally, from seventy-five yards, hidden by the scrubby brush, they dropped two respectable bucks, firing almost simultaneously.

  They found their vanquished quarry on a spot of hill that enjoyed an unparalleled view of dipping valleys and the higher, scrubby green hills of Antigua rising and falling like ocean swells to the north, the ring of white beach, the great spread of blue sea beyond. Not the heavy, serious blue of the deep ocean but a lighter, more benign, warmer blue. Far below they could see English Harbour and the great bulk of the Warrior at her moorings. With Chandler’s glass Wentworth could see Abigail, now hove down and listing at an unnatural angle.

  Chandler ordered Kipfer to field dress the goats and Thigpen to lay out dinner; it was past the dinner hour and they were in as fine a spot to dine as they could hope to find. In the center of Thigpen’s bundle, it turned out, was a ham, cheese, and the Bordeaux. Plates, silver, and glasses appeared from his haversack and soon the two of them, Wentworth and Chandler, were enjoying a pleasant meal, which was shared equally with the sailors, who ate some distance away.

  “This is quite the business you fellows are about, I dare say,” Chandler said, turning his carving knife back on the ham. “It’s been all the talk around the barracks, though the dear Lord knows those old women need something to talk about.”

  “What business do you mean?”

  “Why, this business of arming your merchantman, putting all those guns on her. There’s been quite a bit of speculation as to how much hard money is being laid out for all of that.”

  “Hard money? It was my understanding that the dockyard superintendent was helping of his own volition. That he was eager to help anyone who planned on doing violence to the French.”

  Chandler chuckled at that. “That seems damned unlikely to me. Dockyard superintendents are a corrupt lot, but this fellow here could teach a course at Oxford on how it’s done. He can barely move himself to help His Majesty’s ships if there’s no gain in it for him, let alone a Yankee, beg your pardon.”

  Wentworth extended his pardon with a nod.

  “No,” Chandler continued, “your captain must have paid him well for all that matériel, and the help, to boot. I wish we could get Warrior attended to with that alacrity. Wallace—he commands Warrior—Wallace won’t pay a sou to ease things along, and so we sit and ground out on our beef bones.”

  “Indeed,” Wentworth said, taking a sip of the Bordeaux, which was better than Chandler had represented. Did Biddlecomb bribe this dockyard cove? he wondered. He probably would have no moral qualms about doing so, nor did Wentworth necessarily think he should. But did he have the ready money? Was it Oxnard’s money?

  Not Biddlecomb … Frost, he realized. Frost was the one who had arranged for the work at the dockyard, the guns, the additional crew.

  “But tell me,” Wentworth continued, feeling his way along, “surely you fellows are not adverse to our going out and tangling with these damned Frenchmen?”

  “Never in life,” Chandler said. “But … and I say this because I know you are a passenger, and thus none of this is your doing … but we think you’re mad to try it.”

  “Mad? Why?”

  “Well, because the French ships here, the privateers or whoever you might meet, they are heavily armed and well manned. This L’Armançon is a man-of-war, by God, and you are not. She will certainly be on the lookout for you. Sure, I can’t say I hold the French navy in any high esteem … they’re a damned sight better than they were a few years ago, but still they are a bloody floating circus … but that notwithstanding, they are still a navy ship, do you see? And you a merchantman.”

  “Certainly,” Wentworth said, not sure if he should be feeling a wounded national pride, “but pray don’t forget we beat them before.”

  “You escaped before. If you had beat them, they would be floating in the harbor down there with the Stars and Stripes wafting above the Tricolor. No, it was some damned fine seamanship from what I can see, and some excellent small arms fire…” Chandler raised his glass in salute and Wentworth raised his in return. “But if you stand up to them broadside to broadside, you’ll certainly lose. L’Armançon does not mount six pounders, she mounts twelves, she has a crew twice as large as yours, even with these new hands you’re getting. Her scantlings, that is, the thickness of the planks in her sides, and much greater than yours. Your six pounders will likely bounce right
off.”

  “Oh,” Wentworth said, and could think of nothing more. He did not know enough to counter Chandler’s argument, nor did he necessarily think Chandler was wrong. During the course of their conversations Wentworth had learned that Chandler had been twelve years in the Royal Navy, had fought pirates in the Mediterranean and the West Indies, had fought the French in the Channel and throughout much of the Atlantic, had taken part in the Glorious First of June. Chandler understood naval affairs, and he had no cause to mislead Wentworth, at least none that Wentworth could see.

  “So,” Wentworth said at last, “what would you have us do? Surely we’d be in considerable danger venturing to sea without these new guns, and men to man them, what with the French eager for revenge.”

  Chandler considered the question for a moment. “Probably the best thing would have been to make right for Barbados, before L’Armançon had a chance to refit, before the story was out. Too late for that. I guess was I the master, that is, master of a merchantman in this situation, I would think it best to repair as quick as ever I could and get under way, not waste time with all this gunport nonsense. Speed and seamanship will save you, not those ridiculous six pounders.”

  “I see,” Wentworth said, and they fell silent, enjoying the view, the heat of the sun, the rich smells of the land.

  “I’ll be honest with you, William,” Chandler said at last. “I would wish you wouldn’t sail with the ship when she leaves. No good will come of it, I fear. I would suggest you remain behind, but I know you are a man of honor, and staying behind is not a thing that a man of honor would do.”

  “No, it’s not,” Wentworth agreed. But what, he wondered, what, in these circumstances, would a man of honor do?