Lone Star Rising: T.S. Wasp and the Heart of Texas

by Jason Vail

  Presently, he came back and said, “This way, sirs.”

  He led us into a formal dining room, which was occupied by one person, a man my age, who was eating breakfast. The places for four others were set out on the table, but his company apparently had not yet risen. He was a handsome fellow with curly brown hair. The curls seemed natural, except for the large one that hung down on his forehead. It was so large and swooping that I suspected a curling iron had been used to achieve its dramatic effect.

  “Captain Jones,” the butler said in introduction, “and his officer, Mister Crockett.”

  “Constantine Harper,” the young man said by way of self introduction. “You’re awfully far from the sea, Captain.”

  “A day’s ride only,” I said. “Lovely country.”

  “We like to think so. What brings you this far inland?”

  “We are on our way to Columbia.”

  “What treasures does Columbia have that might interest a man of the sea?”

  “You’ve an iron works there. We wanted to buy iron casks for water. None are to be had in Charles Town, I’m afraid. Only barrels.”

  “Ah, and you’ve misplaced one of your men, or so I was informed.”

  “He asked us to delay a day while he came here.”

  “Indeed, did he say why?”

  “He did not. And I did not ask. It seemed a private matter.”

  “He is a nigra, isn’t he?”

  “He is.”

  “And who is his owner?”

  “He has none, unless you count his contract to me for the voyage.”

  Harper drummed his fingers on the table. “He did come here yesterday.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “What became of him?”

  “He is detained.”

  “How so?”

  “There is an accusation that he is a runaway from this plantation, and that he is my property.”

  “That is mad. He’s a free man from Louisiana. He’s been a freeman all his life. What runaway would return to the place he has fled?”

  “He did say something about Louisiana. He also gave a false name. Curious that, don’t you think? And oddly enough, his last name is Harper. Am I not correct?”

  “I know him by that name, yes.”

  “William Harper. When I was very young, a little boy and two twin girls were stolen from us. The boy’s name was Willie.”

  “A coincidence, I’m sure.”

  “Still, it is odd. So was his behavior.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “He went to visit the very place where this boy Willie’s mother was buried. The evidence seems quite convincing.”

  “He has a right to have this determined at law.”

  “Black men have no standing in the courts.”

  “I could sue on his behalf.”

  “You could, I suppose, if you were so inclined. But he has no papers to prove his freedom. Thus, there is a presumption in my favor.”

  “He had a passport.”

  “That is insufficient.”

  I was not willing to believe that as a matter of principle, but a local court was more likely to rule in Harper’s favor than Willie’s, or rather mine. “How much will it cost to buy him back? We haven’t the time to mess with the law.”

  “You’d do that? I shall have to think on it. He’s a grown man now, and worth quite a lot of money. Three-hundred pounds at least. Besides, I’m not sure that I want to sell him. He’s family, you know. My long lost brother.”

  “I will give you one-hundred.”

  “Mercy! You’ll give me the vapors with an offer like that. This hurts me so, but all right. Two-seventy-five.”

  “One-fifty.”

  “Two-sixty.”

  “Let us meet half way.”

  “He is healthy and you are getting him at a steal.”

  “One-seventy-five.”

  “Two-forty and not a penny less.”

  “Your final offer?”

  “I think so,” he said firmly. “Cash.”

  “Cash?”

  “In a matter like this, I do not trust a note.”

  “Very well. Two-forty, cash. I shall have to return to Charles Town to obtain the funds. That will take several days.”

  “Of course.”

  “There is one other bit of business. He came with a horse. It was rented, with my money. I want it returned. Now.”

  “Certainly. I’ll have it sent around.”

  “Very good.”

  With that, we left.

  “Two-forty’s robbery,” Crockett said as we emerged onto the porch. “One-fifty is the going rate for a man Willie’s age in Louisiana.”

  “Prices must be different in Carolina,” I said.

  “Slaves are more plentiful here. The price should be less.”

  “There’s a premium for family, I suppose.”

  “Do you have the money?”

  “In cash? No. But Austin does.”

  “I can hear him complaining at the expense.”

  “I have no intention of paying it,” I said, as I skipped down the stairs and approached the slave wielding the scythe.

  “Would you mind fetching my horse?” I asked him, glancing at the house where I could see the butler watching through the window.

  “Yes, suh,” the slave said. He put down the scythe, collected both our horses and led them over to us.

  He held the bridles to steady the mounts. Crockett mounted first, while I tarried a moment. The horses were between us and the watchers in the house. I asked the slave as I fiddled with the saddle, “There was a man who came yesterday, and is now a prisoner here. Where is he held?”

  The slave looked at me with dark dull eyes. I put a shilling coin in his palm. “For your trouble,” I said.

  The brown eyes lost their servile dullness and grew sharp and intelligent. “In the quarters. Second cabin from the well on the north side.”

  “Where are the quarters?”

  The slave gestured northeast. “That way a quarter mile.”

  “Thank you,” I said and mounted, as another slave came into view from around the corner of the house leading Willie’s rented horse.

  By late afternoon, our party reached a clearing off the road which I had marked on the return to Charles Town, and turned in to rest the horses and await nightfall. The Rangers dismounted and let the horses graze while they sat in the long grass and ate the meals prepared for them. Willie was a popular man, and all the Rangers and even some sailors had volunteered for this mission — so many, in fact, that I had to turn men away, since we could not afford horses for all of them. So the little field was crowded.

  Shortly after we settled in, a carriage went by on the road, the driver and passengers, a well-dressed man and woman, giving us the eye. They were headed toward Charles Town rather than away from it, so I did not worry about them giving any alarm of our presence, for it was highly unusual to see such a large body of armed men, and we were thus certain to attract official notice.

  As dusk deepened into night, we remounted, filed up the road and moved off at an easy trot toward Monck’s Corner.

  It was fully dark when we reached the Corner and turned onto the road to Cricklade. Candlelights showed in two of the windows, but no dogs barked to announce our presence and no one came out to investigate the long line of horsemen.

  The hardest parts of the journey now faced us, as we were moving in unfamiliar country in the dark. But Crockett had the lead, and he had an uncanny ability to find his way about, and within a hour, he led us off the road and up the drive to Cricklade mansion.

  We paused at the lawn before the mansion to give ten of the men time to surround the house, while Crockett took stock under the stars, which were visible through scattered cloud.

  “That way,” he said to the rest of us and rode off into the dark along a pathway that was almost impossible to see now that the crescent moon had set, leaving only the inade
quate illumination of the Milky.

  Presently, gray blocks arose out of the ground ahead and we passed a well and a privy. The privy door swung open as we approached, and a dim figure stood frozen for a moment, then ran off, making a racket in the fallen leaves.

  “Second house on the right, north side, you said,” Crockett matter-of-factly, as if he was in a general store looking for a hammer that had been put out of direct sight.

  “Yes,” was all I could manage, my worry that we would not find the right place now replaced by the concern that Willie was not there.

  Crockett dismounted and approached the designated shack. He found the door padlocked. He rattled the lock, showing that it was secured.

  “Willie,” he called through the door. “Are you there?”

  “David?” came Willie’s muffled voice. “Is that you?”

  “Last time I looked in a mirror I was me,” Crockett said.

  “What took you so long? And don’t tell me you got lost.”

  “All right. I won’t tell you that.”

  Crockett pulled open a shutter on one of the windows and he and two other Rangers wormed inside with our tools: a couple of iron pry bars and a hacksaw.

  “Nice place,” I heard Crockett say.

  “It’s comfortable enough, but I’m ready for a change,” Willie replied.

  “Hurry up in there!” I said impatiently, imagining a crowd of deputy sheriffs riding up to interrupt our work. Heads were peeping out of the slave houses and I barked: “Get back inside if you know what’s good for you!”

  “Keep your shirt on, Captain,” Crockett said. “Or would you rather we cut off Willie’s arm instead of his cuffs?”

  “That would be quicker,” one of the Rangers in the hut said. “He don’t need but one hand for sex, anyway.”

  “Watch how you’re sawing!” Willie said. “You just might cut off my hand!”

  “Always complaining,” Crockett said. “Do a fellow a favor, and what do you get? Nothing but criticism.”

  “Just hurry!” I said.

  It wasn’t much longer, thank God, until first one figure, then another wiggled through the open window to stand on the path between the slave houses.

  “Come on, boys,” Crockett said. “Get mounted. We’ve a long way to go yet.”

  It was a hard, fast ride back to Charles Town. I was glad that the Rangers had volunteered for this, because they were accustomed to long hard rides, and knew how to get the most speed out of their horses without killing them, for we rode alternating walks and trots, a quarter hour given to each gait, throughout the night, and dawn was breaking as the earthworks on the north side of Charles Town at last came into view.

  We had left town in parties of five, gathering into a single body outside town. But now we returned in a mass, for there wasn’t time for subterfuge, and as we rode down Meeting Street to the stables at Cumberland, people turning out to attend to their morning business gaped at us as we went by as if we were an invasion or a circus parade.

  There was a lot of milling about before the stables as we dismounted to return the horses, and I had Crockett take most of the men and Willie down to the wharf where our boats were tied, while I finished up with the stable owner. The sooner we were all aboard Wasp, the better I would feel. I don’t mind horses or land under my feet, but I always felt safer with Wasp’s deck boards under my heels, even knowing that sense of security was an illusion, for there are few things more precarious and impermanent than a wooden ship.

  I was the last down the ladder to the final boat, a new pinnacle bought to replace one of the boats we had lost in the action on the Mississippi, which now seemed so long ago that it might as well have been in another life.

  I climbed Wasp’s ladder to her deck and as I stepped down, I felt at home at last.

  The deck swarmed with the crew and they made a space for me. Willie extended his hand. “Thanks, Paul,” he said.

  “Think nothing of it,” I said, clasping his hand. “That skinflint wanted too much for you anyway.”

  “Are the baron and his sister aboard?” I asked Austin, who was just behind Willie?

  Austin nodded. “Reluctantly.”

  “And we’ve replaced the damaged casks and have sufficient water, I hope?”

  “Yes,” Austin said. “At greater expense that I would have liked.”

  “All right, boys,” I said to the rest. “We’ve had enough fun. Let’s get that last boat up, make sail and get the hell out of here.”

  The tide was still flowing in, not the best time for a sailing ship to set out from any port. But we had a west wind that would help. Under topsails, jib and spanker, we crept against that tide south then southeast toward the mouth of Charles Town bay and the sea.

  “Cap’n!” Hammond, our white-haired quartermaster called from the wheel, where he was superintending the work of one of his mates. “That big Britisher is making sail.”

  I went back to the stern for a clear look. The British frigate which had lain about two hundred yards from us up river was indeed setting her topsails. A look through my glass showed men straining at the capstan to raise her anchor as well.

  “Do you think it’s trouble?” Crockett asked at my side.

  “I doubt it’s coincidence,” I said.

  “She’s coming after us.”

  “I would say so.”

  I glanced aloft, wishing for a better breeze, for it now would be a race to the sea and then to England.

  Chapter 11

  Charles Town Bay, Carolina Province

  October 1820

  The wind began to strengthen as Wasp crept beyond the point of the cape which the town occupied and we emerged from the shadow of the land. Wasp swung southeast by east and nosed toward the channel into the bay.

  I paced the quarterdeck, trying to suppress my anxiety. It was like Port-au-Prince all over again: escaping a hostile harbor through treacherous sandbars and shoals without a pilot. The way out of the bay was narrow and bordered by mudflats and bars that easily could entrap those who strayed from deeper water too close to shore. And on my chart there were even bars here and there in the channel. Some were marked with colored buoys or posts, to warn ships but also to tell the local fishermen where the shallow water was so they could harvest oysters, but some were not. I had been enough times in Charles Town that I thought I could pull this off, but that did not keep me from worrying about the worst.

  As we crept away from town, a customs cutter put out from a dock on the western river and took up the pursuit. She was a fore-and-aft rigged vessel of fifty foot or so, I guessed from the wavering view of her I got through my glass, which I steadied on the transom beside the stern chasers. She’d be shallow draft and not have to be concerned about the shoals and could tack closer to the wind if that became necessary. But what worried me most was the pair of what looked to be twelve pounders in her bow. This told me she was not only a revenue cutter, but a pirate and smuggler chaser. All she’d have to do is get close enough, and then she could knock down a mast or damage the rigging, which would slow us enough for the frigate to catch up. The water was calm, so she’d have good shooting.

  “Mister Halevy!” I called, straightening up. “Have the stern chasers manned and charged.”

  He looked at me aghast. “You don’t mean to fire on her?”

  “I mean very well to do so. And call the men to quarters. All cannon to be loaded and ready, but do not run them out yet. Have the small arms distributed as well. Have full mast crews stand by their stations.”

  The young fellow’s already pale face went even pastier. No one who had ever been through a sea battle looked forward to one, and while that cutter might seem to be a gnat bothering a bull, there was that frigate in the distance.

  Our drummer began the beat to quarters, a stirring roll that never failed to quicken the blood. I wondered if the sound carried far enough for our pursuers to hear. Wasp rumbled and shook as the men rushed to their positions. The voices of the gun
captains floated from the open waist as they shouted their orders, a cacophony, yet with an odd cadence to it.

  Then, as all fell ready, an odd silence settled upon us. I could hear only the fluttering of the sails, the lapping of the water on our hull, and Willie’s subdued voice at the bow giving steering instructions to Hammond at the wheel, as we crept forward with fearful slowness under high wispy cloud.

  With agonizing slowness Charles Town diminished behind us, yet the open sea so far ahead seemed no closer, while I eyed our pursuers. I have had dreams where I was pursued and no matter how hard I’ve tried, my legs seemed caught in an invisible muck that prevented me from racing at only the velocity of a snail. This race was like that: a snail’s race, not a dash to the sea, but a barely perceptible inching slower than the transit of the sun.

  Then the tide turned at last . . . and the wind died.

  There was no direct indication of the turn of the tide at first. I only knew it happened because my watch told me the time had come. Then a glance over our stern showed a change in our wake that confirmed to me the time had arrived. For a moment, my heart lightened, as I thought the pace would pick up, for driven by both wind and tide we should have made the sea more quickly.

  My relief was momentary. The soft pressure of the breeze against my face drained away, and the sails began to luff and flutter, and at last to hang limply like so much laundry. I stood on the quarterdeck for what must have been a full minute, gawking at those useless sails, refusing to accept what my eyes told me, raging at the unfairness of fate, hoping that this was just a momentary break in the wind. But it persisted. Five minutes, ten minutes passed. The sea about us grew glassy, not the slightest ripple showing on its surface. Hammond spun the wheel back and forth.

  “We’ve no steerage,” he said.

  “Mast captains!” I shouted. “Buckets! Fetch buckets and wet down all sail. And set all studding and stay sails!” As the mast crews scrambled to carry out those orders, I looked into the waist where Crockett stood. “Mister Crockett!”