Old Glory

by Christopher Nicole

  Dowding shook his head. ‘Who’s to prove we’re bound for Virginia? England is our destination, we’ll say, John. We’re just sailing north west to take best advantage of the wind until we can make the Mona Passage.’

  ‘Those are still smuggled goods,’ Paul protested, pointing at the hold.

  ‘Not smuggled by us, until we attempt to land them without paying duty,’ Dowding insisted. ‘If they were sent from Antigua to Eustatius illegally, that’s between the Navy and the West Indian planters. We bought them in good faith as Dutch produce, and we’ve the bills to prove it. And we’re standing for England and duty payment, as we are bound by law to do. Just remember that.’

  The frigate was certainly overhauling them very fast; clearly she had had her bottom scraped and painted while in English Harbour. Now her row of black painted gunports could clearly be seen, presently closed, as the brig was very obviously making no effort to raise more sail and escape her, but continued to curtsey gently over the waves until the expected blank shot was fired, a puff of white smoke rising from the warship’s bows.

  ‘Heave her to, Mr Paul,’ Captain Dowding commanded, and went to the gunwale to await the arrival of the jolly boat which had already been lowered from the Navy ship, and in which they could make out the red jackets and tall hats of the marines as well as the blue jackets of the sailors.

  The crew of the Carolina Wind gathered forward, watching the approaching boat. Harry wondered if any of them felt quite such a cold sweat as himself. No one on board had inquired as to exactly why he was a fugitive, although John Paul obviously had heard the tale from various other members of the crew of the Spirit of the West while in New York, and in fact it was extremely unlikely that a frigate on the West India station would have any idea who he was, much less possess a warrant for his arrest. Yet his skin crawled with anxiety, as he imagined Sean O’Rourke coming on board, and gazing at him … but that was impossible. The world was too small to admit such a coincidence. Yet he found himself panting as the officer, dressed with all the impeccable neatness of the Navy, from squarely set blue cocked hat, past braided blue frock coat, to spotlessly white breeches and hose and highly polished black leather shoes with brass buckles, stepped through the gangway and saluted the poop. Tall and thin, with a precise face, he bore no resemblance whatsoever to Sean O’Rourke.

  Captain Dowding hurried forward to greet him and shake hands, and they held an animated coversation, while the dozen marines filed on board and formed a line on the deck, and several of the Navy sailors filled the gangway.

  Harry could not overhear what was being said, but Captain Dowding was frowning and protesting, and the officer was clearly insisting on something. But no move or gesture was being made towards the hatches to inspect the cargo, or towards the cabin to go through the bills of lading. Instead the boatswain, instructed by the Captain, was blowing his whistle. ‘All hands assemble in the waist,’ he cried, his voice filled with savage anger.

  The crew filed aft. Harry deliberately hung back to the very rear, although he knew there was no chance of his height being overlooked. Like everyone else, he now understood why the frigate had stopped them, and why the boatswain was so angry.

  Captain Dowding stood before them. ‘His Majesty’s Ship Cormorant is short of men,’ he said, ‘having lost half a dozen to an epidemic of fish poisoning last week. She wishes to take six of you. I have protested most strongly, and reminded Lieutenant Canning that apart from leaving us short handed, there is no legal right allowing the Navy to impress men at sea in time of peace. But he will not be dissuaded, and I am not in a position to protest further until I make port, at which time I will certainly do so. I can but ask you to behave yourselves as men, whatever the circumstances in which you may find yourselves. Lieutenant.’

  Canning stepped forward. ‘A pretty speech, Captain Dowding,’ he said. ‘But one which supposes none of you is a patriotic Englishman, prepared to serve his country. Come now, who will volunteer for the King’s service? There is no finer ship afloat then HMS Cormorant.’

  He smiled at them, but no man moved. The Lieutenant stopped smiling. ‘Then I must encourage you,’ he said, and walked slowly down the line. ‘You,’ he said, and Harry realised he had stopped in front of Harragin, one of the men who had helped him escape from O’Hare’s inn. He gazed at John Paul, standing next to the captain. Paul’s face was impassive, but his eyes burned more intensely than Harry had ever seen them.

  The Lieutenant continued on his way. ‘And you,’ he said. ‘And you. Fall out. And you, and you.’

  Five, Harry thought, heart pounding. But the Lieutenant had stopped in front of him. ‘By God,’ he said. ‘Here’s two for the price of one. Certainly we must have you, my great fellow.’

  He had known, deep down in his heart, almost from the moment the man had stepped on board, that this moment would come, just as he had known how he would react, if he died for it. ‘You’ll not take me from this ship,’ he growled, and reached for the nearest belaying pin. But as he did so, the morning exploded into blackness.

  CHAPTER 4 – The Caribbean and New York 1769

  ‘You’ve been flogged before,’ the carpenter remarked. He worked his hands over the open cuts in Harry’s back, rubbing salt into the wounds, while the boy gasped and squirmed, stretched on the deck, held there by four men, while the rest of the watch below, which included two other of the men taken from the Carolina Wind, stood around sympathetically.

  ‘Aye,’ Harry groaned.

  ‘But nothing bad. That could have been no Navy ship.’

  ‘No,’ Harry said.

  ‘Aye, well, you’re a strong fellow. You’ll survive.’

  Survive, Harry thought. He had no clear recollection of surviving the past few days. He had been unconscious from the blow on the head when he had been dumped in the jolly boat and taken to the warship, had awakened with a thumping headache and a bloodied scalp when a bucket of water had been poured over him, and sat up, no doubt looking as vicious as he had felt, and had promptly been knocked down again by another savage blow. And when he had come to again, he had been stretched on a grating and given twenty strokes of the cat — one hundred and eighty lashes. He had no clear recollection of, either, perhaps fortunately. The pain had been so severe he had done all the things he had refused to allow himself on board the Spirit of the West; he had screamed and howled, and wept and urinated, and wanted to die. If only, like Samson, he could tear the ship apart as he did so, and send them all to the bottom.

  Or flap his wings and like some immortal bird fly back to the Carolina Wind, hull down on the horizon.

  ‘Providing you keep your wits about you,’ the boatswain commented. ‘There’s no man can get the better of the Navy, lad. Remember that. And this ship is worst than most.’

  Because in the Navy a captain’s word was law, and the captain of the Cormorant suffered from stomach ulcers. Thus his officers were always at the mercy of his lashing tongue, and they in turn vented their misery on the men they controlled like wild beasts. Harry rapidly realised that life on even the Spirit of the West had been almost a paradise when compared with life on the Cormorant, while the good company and bonhomie of the Carolina Wind, long since vanished over the northern horizon, appeared like some dream.

  He wondered if John Paul ever gave a thought to the man he had risked his life for? Certainly there had been hatred in those blue eyes as he had watched the officer picking them out. But there had been nothing he could do, save thank his good fortune that as an officer himself, he was immune from the risk of impressment.

  And what lay at the end of it? The most any man on board could hope for was a return to England, and discharge. Supposing any of them survived. Supposing he could make himself possess the patience to survive. He had written both his father and Biddy, from Norfolk, Virginia, to tell them he had had some scrapes but had at last fallen amongst friends, was making a single voyage to the West Indies to earn some money, and would be back, if not in September,
then by Christmas. But the crew of the Cormorant told him they had yet another three years on this station, which was one reason for the Captain’s ill temper: he did not like the heat.

  So why not leap over the side and drown, Harry wondered? Or try again to make the shore. Because, again as the crew told him, this wasn’t America; there were no free thinking John Palmers waiting to rescue him. Here in the West Indies there were either black slaves who would run away from him, or white planters who would return him to his ship; the West Indians might be determined to market their goods in their own way, in defiance of the Navigation Laws, but they were not disposed to attempt any overt opposition to the rule of England, simply because the islands were too small and sparsely inhabited, and a single frigate such as the Cormorant could take over any of them if provoked to do so.

  There were, of course, islands where the planters did not hold sway. But on such places there were even more dangerous inhabitants to be encountered, the renowned Carib Indians, described by the crew as the fiercest people on earth, a man-eating nation of warriors who had once ruled the entire Caribbean, and were only slowly being conquered by the superior arms of the British and French. To come ashore on a Carib held island meant being eaten alive.

  And all of that was supposing a deserter ever made the shore at all, Harry was constantly reminded. The Caribbean was not the North Atlantic. Here the warmly beautiful blue sea contained every specimen of voracious saltwater fish known to man, from six foot long barracudas which could open you up like a fisherman’s knife to twenty-five foot long sharks, into which a man could disappear altogether. So it was best to endure, and pray for war to break out, to permit them some savagery of their own to relieve their tensions, and perhaps even provide some prize money at the end of it. ‘Peace is hell,’ the boatswain said, ‘on a Navy ship.’

  Endure, Harry thought. Endure hell, day in and day out. Endure salty beef and mouldy biscuit, while the ship put into one of the many islands which surrounded them every third day, and boatloads of fresh fruit and vegetables were brought aboard for the officers’ delight and health; endure the pain of gazing at pink sand beaches and shady forests only half a mile away, and never be allowed from the ship; endure the whims of the officers, who would sometimes turn out the entire watch below in the middle of their sleep for no reason but to order the flogging of the last man on deck; endure this daily routine of floggings, for there was at least one every morning; endure the sensation of being regarded as nothing more than an animal. Once he had sought to hate, and had failed. He did not think he would even have to seek, in the future. If he was to be a wild animal, then he would be a wild animal. One day. When he got off this hell ship. Until then, he would endure. So he scurried about his duties, and touched his forehead whenever an officer looked at him, and dreamed … and still suffered. Because the worst form of amusement and discipline practised on board the ship was the whipping of the last man out of the shrouds every time they were sent aloft, and they were sent aloft several times in each day. At the foot of every mast there was an officer with a knotted rope’s end, and the last man down received a hearty thrashing about his back and shoulders and head, no matter if he was but a breath behind the man in front — someone always had to be last. This led to tensions within the crew, as they would thrust their weaker comrades out of their way to gain the deck in a hurry, and to accidents, as often men fell from considerable heights and broke bones, while one day a topmasthand plunged right over the side; the ship was put about to regain him, but he was not seen again. ‘Straight down like a stone,’ the boatswain said. ‘That’s how it happens.’ Harry, with his size and agility, avoided any encounter with a rope’s end for several weeks, but it was impossible forever, and the day came when the watch was sent aloft just before noon to reef the topsails, as Mr Canning had observed the black clouds of a typical noonday rainstorm gathering about the island they were in the process of passing. Coming down in their usual helter skelter haste, Harry paused to grasp the wrist of a man who had slipped and would have plunged twenty feet to the deck. He set the man back on the shroud beneath him, and only then realised that he was going to be the last man on deck by several seconds. He checked himself, and looked down, at the grinning officer, already twirling his knotted weapon, and knew a surge of the most complete anger he had ever experienced, equalling that of the moment Boru had died.

  ‘Come on down, McGann,’ the officer invited. ‘You’ll not stay up there forever. Come on down.’

  Harry hesitated, then jumped to the deck. ‘You touch me with that rope and I’ll kill you, if I swing for it,’ he said in a low voice.

  The officer gaped at him, involuntarily taking a step backwards before he recovered himself. ‘Mutiny, is it?’ he demanded, and drew his sword.

  Marines appeared, and Harry was surrounded. It had all happened before. Only this time he knew his situation was incomparably worse than on board the Spirit of the West.

  He was marched aft to face the quarterdeck. ‘That man was a bad choice, Mr Canning,’ the Captain remarked to his First Officer. ‘He is incorrigible. The Irish are always so, and when in addition they have been exposed to this vile contagion of rebellion that is sweeping the colonies, why, sir, they are only fit to be hanged.’

  ‘He’ll make a good man, sir, eventually,’ Canning protested. ‘He knows the sea.’

  ‘Maybe. But eventually will be too long for our comfort, Mr Canning. Still, we must try. Certain it is that scarring his back means nothing to him. We’ll try something a little more brusque. Keel haul the bugger. Stem to stern.’

  ‘Sir?’ Canning queried.

  ‘You heard me, Mr Canning,’ the Captain said. ‘Do it now.’

  ‘Sir,’ Canning protested. ‘The weather may be upon us any moment.’ He looked at the huge black rain clouds, swinging lower and closer by the moment.

  ‘Do it now, Mr Canning.’ The Captain allowed himself a rare smile. ‘If the bugger gets wet, he deserves it.’

  Canning hesitated a last second, then saluted. ‘Aye-aye, sir,’ he said. ‘Boatswain, do your duty.’

  The ship was entirely silent save for the gentle swish of water past its hull as Harry was led forward; even the junior officer he had threatened seemed utterly taken aback by the severity of the sentence.

  ‘That’s a death sentence, that is,’ the carpenter muttered. ‘Stem to stern … that cannot take less than five minutes. Can you hold your breath for five minutes, boy?’

  ‘I’ve never tried,’ Harry said. But he knew it was unlikely. So he was done, at last, he thought. A red mist seemed to swim before his eyes.

  ‘It ain’t possible,’ said another seaman. ‘Stem to stem … it ain’t legal. It’s bad enough port to starboard.’

  ‘So let me rush them and end it now,’ Harry said. ‘Better a ball in the chest.’

  ‘Avast there,’ the boatswain snapped. ‘Do you really think they’d kill you, straight off? You listen to me, boy. Keep your head. I’ll give you slack knots on your wrists. Don’t attempt to free yourself until you’re under the hull, or they’ll know we’ve tricked them and make you do it again. Once you go under the bows, get your wrists free, and we’ll pull you up by your legs. They’ll think the rope parted, and there’s a tradition says if that happens the man can be pulled out.’

  ‘And what then?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Well … I reckon they’ll still flog you. But you can survive a flogging. You’ve done that already.’

  I have survived too much, already, Harry thought, as he inhaled, and looked out at the sea. And the nearby island, not three miles away. In the Caribbean, there were always nearby islands. This one was the most verdant of them all, an immense green hump, with mountains several thousand feet high, to which the low black clouds of the midday rainstorm clung, sweeping constantly lower. It was called Dominica, and was about the only island in the entire Antilles to which neither British nor French had laid claim, because it was the true home of the Caribs.

  A fit
ting place for him to die.

  ‘You’ll hasten there, bo’sun,’ called Mr Canning. ‘It will be raining ten minutes.’

  Already the sun had disappeared as the clouds moved out to sea.

  ‘Aye-aye, sir,’ replied the boatswain. Harry was stripped of his clothing, and ropes attached to his wrists and ankles, long enough to be held from the deck. ‘Now remember, boy,’ the boatswain said. ‘A simple tug will free your wrists. Then leave the rest to us.’

  Harry gazed at him. ‘You’ve my gratitude, no matter what happens.’

  The boatswain shrugged. ‘You’re too good a man to drown for no reason. Come along now.’

  He was taken beyond the heads to the base of the bowsprit, and the rope holding his wrists was passed beneath the spar and pulled up the other side.

  ‘We’ll take no risks, anyway,’ the boatswain said. ‘I want ten men on each rope, and you’ll move aft as sharp as you can. But look out for his signals.’

  The sailors nodded, and grasped their ropes.

  ‘Now crawl out to the very end, boy,’ the boatswain said. ‘If you hit the bow going in, you’re done.’

  Harry nodded.

  ‘Is that man ready, bo’sun?’ Mr Canning shouted.

  ‘Aye-aye, sir.’

  ‘Then get him over. And may God have mercy on his soul.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ the boatswain said. ‘Away, lad.’

  Harry crawled out on to the bowsprit, feeling the breeze, suddenly chill since the disappearance of the sun and the threat of the approaching squall, flicking at his naked flesh. He went out to the very end, the ropes pulling now at his wrists and ankles, looked back at the waiting seamen. Every man on board was watching him, including all the officers, assembled on the poop and quarterdeck. ‘The devil take you all,’ he shouted, and dropped from the spar. He rolled as he fell, watching the immense bluff bows of the frigate surging at him, then plunged into the boiling bow wave, and sank deep beneath it, his lungs filled with every last inch of air. Immediately the ropes tightened, and his body arced, as the men on deck commenced pulling; he opened his eyes and peered upward through the tumbling water to watch the hull of the frigate rushing by above his head. But only inches, and then he struck the keel with a jerk which drove some of the precious air from his lungs. She was too long a ship to be survived, with stars already commencing to fill his brain.