Chesapeake

by James A. Michener

  They were a peaceful tribe and never warred against the whites. Indeed, the highlight of their tribal history came in 1698 when the Maryland government accused them of having killed a white farmer in an argument over a cow. Although it was later proved without question that the affray had involved Nanticokes, not Choptanks, a tribal council was held and the werowance of that day told his people, “It is obligatory that someone offer himself as the perpetrator of this crime and allow himself to be hanged, so that the rest of us can have peace.” Two young men stepped forward, got in their canoes, paddled down river and surrendered themselves voluntarily to be hanged.

  They adjusted poorly to civilization. Originally possessing some of the finest land in Maryland, they were constantly pushed back until our ancestors had to confine them in pitiful enclaves, where they lingered. A man named Turlock, whose voluminous family had infusions of Choptank blood at three different periods in history, summarizes the local understanding of what white men did to this tribe: “We married some, we shot some, the rest we starved.”

  Inch by inch they lost their lands, for they never comprehended what leases or mortgages or sales implied, and when they were located near their river, an ugly situation developed. White men told them to fence their fields the way decent farmers always did, but when the Indians complied, other farmers would knock down the fences so their cattle could graze, and then sometimes the infuriated Indians would shoot the invading cow, and endless difficulties would ensue. There was no possibility that white men and Indians could live side by side.

  They were not killed off in war, for there was never a Choptank war. They simply lost their desire to live. Their families grew smaller. Men married later and later, for they had no hunting grounds. And in the end only a few old women survived. They seemed to adjust better than the men. And now there is only Mrs. Muskrat.

  Reflecting on the vicissitudes that have overtaken her people, she told us, “No matter how poor the land you gave us, there was always someone who wanted it.” She showed us seven different offers to buy her 16 acres, but said, “I won’t sell. I shall die on the banks of my river.”

  In our appendix we give a list of all the Choptank words that Mrs. Muskrat could recall, plus some that have entered into our English language. She told us that the word Choptank meant where the water flows back strongly, but she could explain nothing, and I would point out that while there is a tide at Patamoke, it is not a considerable one. We have no other guess as to the etymology.

  And now without being familiar or presuming upon our friendship, I must confess, Tom, that all of us who studied law with you under George Wythe while at William and Mary are proud of your accomplishments, and if fate decrees you serve a second term as our President, an eventuality which seems probable, we are certain that you will discharge your duties then as capably as you do now.

  Your debating partner,

  Isham Steed

  Postscriptum. I purchased from Amsterdam the telescope you recommended and have had hours of enjoyment exploring the heavens, as you predicted I would.

  If Matt Turlock was disgruntled when he sailed away from Penelope Grimes, her nervous laughter rankling in his memory, he was enraged when he left George Paxmore. He had sailed directly to the boatyard to inspect repairs to the Ariel, but found the clipper back in the water without having been touched.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked gruffly.

  “Everything,” Paxmore said, and when he showed no signs of further explanation, Matt grabbed him harshly and asked, “Where’s the carpenters?”

  “They’re not working. They won’t be working.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because they went below, Matt. We all went below.”

  “And what happened below?”

  Paxmore called one of his workmen, a Quaker mechanic of noted skill and piety. “Tell Captain Turlock what thee saw, Lippincott.”

  “I saw the cramped hold of a slave ship,” Lippincott said. He stared defiantly at the redheaded captain and walked away.

  “Matthew, thee’s become a slaver.” Before Turlock could respond, Paxmore said with deep resentment, “Thee took the finest clipper I ever built ...”

  “And what are we going to do about it?” Turlock asked as if issuing a challenge.

  “I have this proposal, Matthew. If thee will allow my men to board thy clipper and tear out those slave quarters, we’ll do the work for nothing and then make the other repairs. If thee refuses to quit the slave trade, we’ll never touch our vessel again, even if she were sinking of the worm.”

  Twice rejected in as many days was too much for Turlock. Shoving Paxmore aside, he growled, “I’ll have her mended by carpenters of courage—who know what the world is and how damned difficult it is to find a cargo and an open port.”

  But Paxmore would not be so easily repulsed. Returning to where Turlock stood glowering at the Ariel, he said quietly, “Matthew, I would to pray with thee. And so would Elizabeth. Come to our home.”

  “I need no prayers. I need a carpenter.”

  “We all need prayers.”

  “Get away from here, Paxmore. You make me sick.”

  “Then I shall do the praying.”

  “Don’t bother to pray for me. I need it no more.”

  “I shall not pray for thee. I shall pray for myself. I shall ask for forgiveness for having built the clipper. You have defiled ... it’s no longer a vessel of mine.” Gravely he looked at the beautiful clipper, the epitome of his family’s tradition, and with an awkward movement of his left hand, erased it from the harbor. It was contaminated and would never again enter the Paxmore yards.

  With a slave ship that ran the risk of daily capture, Matt Turlock furtively sailed the Atlantic, trying to devise a way of slipping into St. Eustatius for a much-needed overhaul. When he finally reached there he had to supervise the work, and did much of it himself, but when he and the Dutch carpenters were through, the Ariel was in maximum condition, with a third gun carriage on deck and strengthened bulwarks below, each with riveted iron rings for the secure fastening of chains.

  When the job was completed he told the Dutch chandler, “With this we’ll make a hundred trips to Africa.”

  “Lucky if you finish one. The British battleships have begun their patrol.”

  “Idiots! They’ll never halt the trade. Not while Brazil and America are hungry for slaves.”

  “They’ve made four, five captures already. A Captain Gatch brought one—”

  “Who?”

  “Captain Gatch ... Dartmoor ... eight guns.”

  “He came here?”

  “He captured a Spanish slaver, brought her here to mend the damage his guns had done. Too deep. We could do nothing.” He said ve coot do nossing, and Turlock smiled. “So Gatch sailed her out there and burned her.”

  “He’s in these waters?”

  “He is. And he’ll hang you even if your hold is empty ... if you’re a slaver, that is.”

  “Will he be coming back to St. Eustatius?”

  “They cover the entire ocean.”

  When Turlock sailed, he lingered in the vicinity, praying that Sir Trevor would return with some capture, but he did not. So Matt ran to Luanda, ducked in close to shore and swiftly loaded two hundred slaves to be smuggled into Georgia, and on his next trip, more than three hundred for Havana,

  It was in this port that he met Spratley, a small, gap-toothed, foul-smelling, foul-talking British sailor from the dregs of London. He had jumped ship in Haiti and with extraordinary conniving had made his way to Cuba. Matt was standing in a waterfront tavern when he sidled up, tugged at the sleeve covering the silver fist and whispered, “You’re Captain Turlock, yes?”

  “I am,” Matt said, looking down at the unsavory stranger.

  “I’d like to sail with you.”

  “I need no one.”

  “You need me.”

  Matt drew back, studied the unlikely applicant and laughed. “You’d ruin any ship you touched.
”

  The sailor returned the laugh, then mumbled, “That’s what Captain Gatch said.”

  “Sir Trevor Gatch?”

  “Clever Trevor. You seek him. I seek him.”

  “How do you know I seek him?”

  “Everyone knows.”

  “And you?”

  “I want to kill him. I want to hold his head under a bucket of slime and watch his eyes as he gags for breath.”

  “Because he whipped you,” Turlock said, making no effort to hide his contempt. “What’s your name?”

  “Spratley.”

  “Well, Spratley”—and he grabbed the man by his shirt, dragging him close—“I’d whip you too, for a no-good. Now get away.”

  But Spratley had seen how Captain Turlock reacted at the name of his enemy, and he was certain that he had found his next employer. “I know what you don’t know, Captain.”

  “What?”

  “I know where Captain Gatch is.”

  “You do?”

  “Captain, I’m dyin’ for a drink.” And as they sat in the cantina, Spratley told of his experiences with Gatch. “He looks trim and proper ashore, or in battle. All erect and that. But on the long reaches he’s a demon. Want to see my back?”

  “I told you I’d have flogged you,” Turlock repeated. He had learned from long experience never to credit tales of brutality at sea; the narrators were invariably scoundrels who had deserved punishment, afloat or ashore. But when Spratley told of how Captain Gatch had led the shore party that had impressed him on the streets of London, and of how Gatch had refused to pay his men on the principle of “Keep the pay and keep the man,” and of the ranting tirades Sir Trevor was accustomed to deliver, Turlock’s appetite was whetted, and against his own best judgment he signed the sniveler.

  He held him in contempt, yet repeatedly on the return voyage from Cuba to Luanda he sought him out, eager to hear any rumors concerning the man he had sworn to defeat, and as Spratley talked—“If we grapple, let me board first. I want to sink my knife into that one”—Turlock saw that this little wharf rat was as deeply committed as he.

  Actually, the little Englishman proved to be a good sailor, he understood his duties and performed them well. He was a gunner, too, and pleaded with Turlock to let him man the third gun—“I want to shoot his eyes out.”

  “You said you wanted to lead the boarding party.”

  “I want to kill him,” Spratley said, and he was so convincing that Turlock broke his rule, and began to sympathize with him, and asked to see the scarred back the little fellow had been so eager to show, and when the crisscrossed welts were visible, Turlock almost retched.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “Ten strokes one day. Twenty another. Then a hundred.”

  “No man could survive a hundred.”

  “That’s what the mate said, but Clever Trevor shouted, ‘I’ll cure him or I’ll kill him.’ ”

  “Cure you of what?”

  A strange look came into Spratley’s eyes and he said, in what seemed to be honest bewilderment, “I don’t know. He was in one of his moods.” He thought about this, then added, “At nineteen strokes the mate stopped it.”

  Turlock nodded. “No man could ...”

  “He’s at the Bight of Benin.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  “Sooner, you wouldn’t have believed me.”

  “How long will he be there?”

  “That’s his station. A year at the Bight. Then back to England.”

  “Does he roam?”

  “Greatly. I escaped in Haiti. For seven weeks we chased an American ship.” Then he added a fragment which clinched his veracity. “You know he despises Americans, Ungrateful rebels, he calls you.”

  “Did he ever mention me?”

  Spratley laughed. “Said he’d beaten you twice and would do so twice again, if he didn’t kill you first.” The little fellow laughed again. “That’s when I started watching for you. They told me of your silver fist—that you don’t kill easy.”

  But as the Ariel approached the coast of Africa, Captain Turlock had a most disturbing nightmare. He wasn’t really asleep, just dozing in his hammock, when a nebulous thought swept across his mind: Spratley had been deposited in Havana by Clever Trevor, and everything which happened subsequently had been an intended hoax. He was being tricked into entering the Bight of Benin, where Gatch would have a flotilla waiting, a hundred guns to three.

  So without reflection he rushed forward to where Spratley was sleeping, knocked him from his hammock and began hammering him with his silver fist. When the bewildered seaman tore free he cried, “Captain! Captain!” and Turlock came to his senses.

  But this did not help Spratley, for Turlock grasped the back of his neck and began hammering his face against the bulkhead until Mr. Goodbarn ran down to see what was happening. “Leave us alone,” Turlock shouted, and in the darkness of the fo’c’sle he accused the Englishman, “Gatch put you ashore, didn’t he? He rehearsed you in all you’ve said, didn’t he?” He laid Spratley’s duplicity before him, but the man was bewildered, unable to grasp the accusation.

  Nevertheless, Turlock had to believe that the nightmare had come as a warning, and he refused to sail north to Benin; he anchored boldly at Luanda, defying any British patrol boats that might be on station to suppress the slave traffic. And just as boldly he went ashore, dickering with the Portuguese for the slaves they had collected from the interior. And when he had accumulated some five hundred at a good price, he personally supervised their loading and raised anchor for a speedy run to Havana. He knew he should have thrown Spratley onto the beach, but he kept him, and the more he listened to the tales of Catch’s insanity, the more satisfied he became that Spratley was no more nor less than what he had said from the beginning: a London alley rat impressed into the naval service and abused there tul the moment of desertion. That he thirsted for revenge on his cruel captain, there could be no doubt.

  So from Havana, Turlock sailed not for Luanda but for Benin, and since Belém lay on the direct route, he stopped there to take on an additional supply of powder and ball, for with the third gun he now carried, the usual supply might soon be depleted in battle. Spratley was enthusiastic about the idea of more ammunition and told the men how he proposed to use it: “One! Down go Sir Trevor’s sails. Two! Down goes Sir Trevor’s mast. Three! Down goes Sir Trevor.”

  To obtain ammunition, Turlock had to anchor some distance from the harbor, away from normal traffic, and one steaming afternoon when he was satisfied that his men could handle the loading, he rowed ashore to renew acquaintance with the Infierno, whose ebony devils winked at him as if he Were their brother. He winked back, and then, according to his custom, studied the sky before going inside—“Storm could be rising. We’ll stay here some days until it passes.” And he was sitting relaxed with a mug of spiced beer when a mild commotion occurred at the door; he heard loud voices and a scuffle and looked up to see that Captain Sir Trevor Gatch had entered, accompanied by five of his officers. For a brief moment he considered flight, before the Englishman could see him, but as soon as he contemplated this action he rejected it. Seating himself firmly in his chair, he placed his silver fist on the table where it could not be missed.

  The officers swaggered in, looked insolently about but did not identify him as Matt Turlock, but as they seated themselves one young man did ascertain that the lone drinker was probably an American, and told his mates in a loud voice, “Wherever one goes, Americans.”

  Captain Gatch had his back turned and could not see Turlock, but when they were served he asked superciliously, “Did you say, Compton, that we share this place with Americans?”

  “I did, sir.”

  “Unfortunate.” Turlock ignored the remark, but soon Gatch returned to the subject. “One would have thought that Americans would stay clear of the seas, after the drubbing we gave them.” Still no response, so he added, “Especially since we captured two American slaver
s last week and sent them home for hanging.”

  The officers laughed and this encouraged their captain, who said, in a voice so loud and squeaky-high that no one could ignore it, “Slavers and grubby merchants, that’s what they are.”

  “Who are?” Matt asked quietly.

  Gatch tightened, his military composure manifesting itself in his straightened shoulders. More quietly now he said, “The Americans are. They’re good for absolutely nothing but—”

  He did not finish his sentence, because Turlock interrupted sharply, “You, sir, are a damned fool.”

  Gatch leaped up, whirled about, and found himself facing Captain Turlock. He showed no surprise, nor did he retreat. He looked at the red beard, then down at the silver fist. He realized that his group overpowered Turlock, six to one, and that some kind of magnanimity was called for, but he also hated this man and could not control himself. “I take it, Captain Turlock, you’re out to seek a third thrashing.”

  With a great swing of his left arm, Turlock brought his weighted stump about, catching Sir Trevor a blow on the shoulder which glanced upward, striking the top of his head and knocking him down. Four of the officers leaped at Turlock and might have killed him, except that Captain Gatch, from his fallen position, restrained them. “Let him go, the boor. We don’t want him. We want his filthy slaving clipper.”

  The young officers dropped their hold on Turlock, allowing him to return to his table for his cap. When he had paid his bill he backed slowly toward the door as Captain Gatch announced to the bar’s patrons, “Tonight we drive one more slaver from the Atlantic.” Then Turlock slammed the door and dashed toward the wharf, leaping into his rowboat and pulling furiously. Against the darkening sky he could see the six Englishmen running toward the Dartmoor, hidden around a bend in the opposite direction.

  His arms wearied, but as he pulled the boat through the water he began shouting, “Ariel! Up sails! Up anchor! We go!”