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

by Jason Vail

  “I have,” I said. “There was an outbreak when my ship was at Sicily. All the officers were inoculated. But that was long ago. I don’t think an inoculation is good for more than a few years.”

  “You may be the only man aboard who’s been so lucky.”

  Chapter 13

  The North Atlantic

  October-November 1820

  A storm had caught up with us, and rained drummed on the great cabin’s windows as Willie ushered in seven men. They stood before the table, as he closed the door and leaned against it. Four were experienced seamen, part of the crews of the fore and main top crews. Three were Texas men; only one had not sailed on Wasp before. One of the Texans and a foretop man had pocked faces. I should have recalled them immediately.

  “This is all?” I asked.

  “All that would own up to it,” Willie said.

  Out of a crew of one-hundred-seventy men I’d have expected more to have been exposed to the pox. But seven would be enough.

  “You’ve heard what we’re facing?” I asked them. “We have the pox aboard. I need men to help tend the sick. I’ll not order anyone to do this. I’d like volunteers.”

  None of the seven said anything. They shifted uncomfortably from one foot to another.

  I tapped the medical book I had been studying when they came in. “This book says that if you’ve had the pox, you can’t get it again. You, Graham, and you, Rybkin, you’ve had it. Step forward and help now, when you’re most needed.”

  “I don’t believe what no book says,” Rybkin, a foretop man originally from some Baltic town called Danzig, said. “I’m not going near ’em.” He looked at the others. “We knew that’s why you sought us out, and we’ve all agreed. We want no part of it. We’ve seen the pox. We know how bad it is. And we’re not taking any chances.”

  “All of you — this is your decision?”

  Heads bobbed in assent along the line of men.

  I have led men into battle more times than I can remember, from big fights against stronger ships when the odds were against us to little skirmishes involving no more than a handful of men armed with knives and cutlasses. I never had a qualm about doing so, for battle is one of man’s natural acts. But I could not order a man into a sick room to fight an enemy that he could not see or avoid the blows he could not anticipate. I resisted the urge to put my face in my hands.

  “All right, then,” I told them. “Get out.”

  Willie let them out and slipped into a chair at the table. “The sick can’t tend themselves,” he said. “I think many of the crew would be happy if you just threw them overboard.”

  “That would stop an epidemic here, wouldn’t it?”

  “I’d say so.”

  “And if you just came down with the sniffles, do you think they’d spare you?”

  “I doubt it,” he said.

  Someone knocked at the door and Jerome Halevy came in. He kneaded the hat in his hands, and his face was whiter than usual. “Sir, I understand that you need men who’ve had the pox. I’ve had it. When I was a child.” His fingers brushed his pocked cheeks.

  He surprised me, for all this time I had thought the marks were just the souvenirs of a bad case of the pimples.

  “Thank you, Jerome,” I said. “But someone has to command the ship.”

  “Someone, sir? What will you be doing? Are you sick too?”

  “No, I am not sick, but I will be tending to those who are. It will keep me rather busy, I imagine. You do think you can find Europe, don’t you?”

  Halevy smiled slightly. “That’s Mister Harper’s job. I just steer the boat where he tells me.”

  “Yes, so we must be sure that Mister Harper does not get sick. Otherwise we might end up in Africa.”

  “Regardless, I shall do my best to miss Africa, sir.” He put his hat back on and went out.

  “You are an idiot,” Willie said, after Halevy was gone.

  “A captain should never ask men to do what he will not do himself.”

  “God help you then. I hope your inoculation is still good.”

  “I hope so, too.”

  Even though it was only shortly after noon, the overcast sky and hatches closed against the weather gave the gun deck the feeling of twilight when I emerged from the great cabin. The expanse, which seemed so large when it was unoccupied, now seemed cramped and tiny, as it was so crowded with men eating dinner that it was impossible to move about without stepping on someone. The noise of so many men talking at once was so loud that I doubt anyone could really hear anything anyone said. As I came onto the deck, a candle in one hand and the heavy medical book under my arm, the noise dwindled to nothing as heads swiveled in my direction and word of my appearance spread.

  Men squatting or sitting cross-legged separated me from the head of the after gangway. Those in the way slowly rose and edged aside

  Candlelight flickered around the edges of the officer’s pantry and voices came from the wardroom at the foot of the ladder as we descended to the berth deck, but before anyone called out or came to investigate, I passed through the doorway to the great space where the crew hung their hammocks.

  It was as dark except for a single candle around which sat a dozen or so of the men who had contact with Forest and the others who were infected. They had been quarantined here as a precaution. I made my way forward, each step seeming heavier and more difficult than the one before it. Fletcher sat at the foot of the midships gangway. He, too, had been banished from contact, and he was not happy about it.

  I paused at the opening of the curtain, trying to breathe calmly. I have to admit that I was more frightened of going through that curtain again than I have ever been at anything, even the prospect of a broadside from a bigger ship.

  I put my hand in my pocket and clasped the toy horse. It had not protected my wife and children from yellow fever while I was at sea. Would it protect me now? But there was nothing to do.

  I pulled aside the curtain and stepped into the sick bay.

  Time did not exist there. I heard the ship’s bell sounding off the watches, the rumble of many feet as the crew went through one task and the next; occasionally the smell of food made it down to the berth deck and got beyond the curtain. The steward’s mates left our meals at the parting of the curtain, not daring to enter. So I knew that time passed, but I seemed to be standing still, as if everyone else was moving on the river but I was stuck on a snag.

  I tended the sick, though there was little I could do for them: wipe their faces with a damp cloth to try to bring down the fever, hold their heads so that they drank water, and swab their chins when they were done. And watch them from the surgeon’s chair. Watch them with dread as the disease advanced, leaving its tracks upon their faces.

  Within a few days, the others already in sick bay developed sores on their lips and tongues, then a light, almost velvety rash that did not coalesce into the raised pustules which I had seen last time I had witnessed a pox outbreak.

  It wasn’t long before Forest died. He passed away soundlessly in the night, while I was sleeping, for when I awoke and made my rounds from one man to the next, I found him with waxen face and open mouth, and when I touched his forehead, he was already cold. I sewed him up in his hammock and carried him to the foot of the midship gangway.

  Fletcher saw me coming, and skittered aft, where he bumped into some of the men quarantined there, and they sent him back with thumps and curses, for they wanted to have no more to do with him than anyone else.

  I lay Forest at the foot of the ladder and called up for someone to fetch him and our reverend too. I don’t know if they sent him to his grave in proper fashion with prayers or just dumped him overboard like so much garbage, because I shambled back to my exile behind the curtain and when I looked out at meal time, the bundle was gone.

  Four other men joined the sick, all with the same raging fever — three from the group isolated on the berth deck, one of them Fletcher. The mates delivering my supper found him curled u
p under a blanket by one of the posts just forward of his ladder. I fetched him, hung a hammock, and helped him into it. He looked at me and moaned. I had felt contempt before for his weakness when he had refused to volunteer, but I could not help being sorry for him now.

  One by one, the others died as well, until only Fletcher was left.

  He never spoke. From the time I put him in the hammock until he finally died, he never said a word. Not to me, not to call out to someone remembered in the fever of his dreams, not even to God who embraces us all and decides our fates, for good or ill.

  I stood over Fletcher at his final moment. A storm was raging: the ship pitching as she climbed one wave and then dropped down hard into the trough, water cascading down the hatches, and men chanting as they worked the pumps. I hung on the strap of his hammock, weak, useless, inadequate, and watched him go.

  People make an odd sound when they die. The novels describe it as a rattle, but that does not quite describe it. It is more a rasp deep in their throats as they struggle for those last breaths, their mouths opening and then closing slightly but never fully as they fight to hold on. But always the struggles dwindle, the rasps diminish, until at last, sometimes even in mid-breath, it all stops, and they are still.

  We are all ephemeral, we all die and are forgotten. For those who die at sea, it is worst of all, as they are given to the water and it is as if they never were. The cruelest thing is that our memories of those who have left us fade until we have only our imaginations to give them life. I could not by then, and I cannot even now, remember the faces of my dead wife and children; there were only the shards of memory, a smile thrown back as they went off to do something I have forgotten. I wish I could have them back.

  I watched Fletcher’s body swing with the rocking of the ship. I was the only thing alive here now with not even rats for company. After a while, I could not bear the sight of him. So, I sewed Fletcher into his hammock as I had the others and carried him out to the ladder. It was hard going because for a small man he was an awkward burden with the deck rising and falling beneath my feet. Out of breath, I paused at the foot of the ladder. “Sorry about this, old man,” I said, and slung him over my shoulder. It was an undignified way to go to the grave, but he was easier to carry that way.

  The rungs were slick with the seawater crashing over the side of the ship and pouring through the open waist, and I nearly fell back twice before reaching the gun deck. It was night, somewhere deep in the middle watch, I think. The crew were huddled among the guns on the deck as far from the open waist as they could manage, wrapped in whatever rags they had to keep warm and dry. It had been chilly below but it was bitterly cold here, with a vicious wind whipping in through the waist.

  The men were so lost in their misery that no one paid any attention as I struggled up one of the waist ladders to the quarterdeck.

  Not until I reached that upmost deck did anyone notice, and they shied away as I staggered toward the stern. The three men at the wheel — Hammond; one of our lieutenants, Aiden Ferguson; and a quartermaster’s mate — stared aghast at me.

  “Captain!” Hammond shouted over the storm. “What in the devil’s name are you doing?”

  “Fetch Heberly!” I shouted back. “He has work to do!”

  Ferguson nodded to the mate, and he went below to find Heberly, our ship’s preacher, as I lay the corpse on the quarterdeck and put a foot on it to keep it from rolling about upon the tossing deck.

  By the time the mate appeared with Heberly, I was a shivering wreck with the cold, but the man had the sense to fetch me a heavy coat.

  “What’s the hurry?” Heberly shouted in his Scots accent over the wind, his broad-brimmed hat jammed over his ears, the rain streaming off in a veil so thick that I could barely make out his face. “Why can’t this wait till morning? He won’t know the difference.”

  He was right, of course. This was no way to send Fletcher to his final rest. I had come too far to turn back. I had to be rid of him. I could not stand another minute in his presence. And it finally occurred to me there, with his body rocking under my foot, that I was terrified of him — no, not just of him, but of the disease. In the end, I was just like he had been, consumed by fear.

  “No,” I said, “he won’t know the difference. Say something, quick. It’s cold.”

  Heberly had not brought his book even though the mate must have told him what was wanted. I suppose he didn’t need it, for he read the words so often that I am certain he had the whole thing in memory. His lips moved and I heard his voice, but I could not make out what he said, and the truth was I did not care. I just wanted it to be over, not just this, but the whole ordeal. I just wanted to be safe, I wanted Wasp safe. I could not tolerate the thought of Wasp destroyed or in the hands of someone else, who would not love her as I did.

  When Heberly finished, he nodded. I grasped Fletcher by the shoulders. The quartermaster’s mate hesitated, then took him by the feet. We lifted him and dropped him over the side, and he disappeared into the swell without leaving a splash.

  I grasped the rail and stared back at the place where I imagined Fletcher had fallen, thinking about the cold embrace of that heaving sea. The water this time of year was frigid and a man who had the misfortune to fall overboard could not survive long in it. They say that death from the cold is not so terrible, that you simply fall asleep and do not wake up. I thought about that, because I told myself that if my inoculation failed and I caught the disease, I would give myself to the sea rather than take the chance of infecting any more of the crew. I hoped that when the time came I would have the courage.

  Hammond shook my shoulder. “Captain, you’d best get below, before you catch your death.”

  I grinned at his choice of words, a common phrase that popped out without thought, for only God knew if that had already happened. “You’re away from your post, Mister Hammond.”

  “The ship is well tended in my absence. As it is in yours. Now get below, or I’ll have you dragged.”

  I turned away from the rail, hardly observing the concern on the faces of the four men.

  Heberly tugged my sleeve. “Come on, Cap.”

  He led me below.

  I paused on the gun deck and stared back at the doors to my cabin, which were lost from view in the gloom. I longed to crawl into my own bed. But Crequy occupied the great cabin during the night and his sister had my sleeping cabin. I almost went in there, but Heberly pulled me down the ladder to the berth deck, and we shambled through the dark to the sick bay, where the candle I had forgotten to put out burned on the table behind the curtain to light the way.

  He held the curtain aside for me. “Anything I can get for you, Cap?”

  “I don’t suppose there is.”

  “You look like you could use a drink.”

  I smiled at the thought. I almost never drank on ship. I had made a vow that I wouldn’t get drunk aboard Wasp for fear that I might neglect her, but I wasn’t in command now. I didn’t think she would mind. “I’d like that. There’s whiskey in my trunk.”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  He withdrew and I settled into the single chair at the long table where the surgeon had done his work. Presently, Heberly returned. He hesitated at the parting of the curtain and put the bottle on the deck. The ship’s rolling knocked it over and it would have run out of the sick bay if Heberly had not put a foot upon it.

  I retrieved the bottle and said, “Thank you, Heberly. Go back to bed. It’s the middle of the night.”

  “Is it really? I hadn’t noticed. Good night, then, Cap.”

  When he was gone, I uncorked the bottle and sniffed the contents. Heberly had neglected to bring a cup. I had the bottle to my mouth when I thought: it will be easier to jump if I’m stumbling drunk. I recorked the bottle and stowed it among Fletcher’s medical books, where it should be safe, climbed in a hammock, and tried to sleep.

  Chapter 14

  The North Atlantic

  November 1820

/>   The storm ebbed by morning. The violent pitching gave way to a more ordinary rocking as the swells subsided. No waves crashed through the waist to cascade down the hatches and gangways, and the grinding of the pumps diminished.

  I slipped aft of the sick bay curtain and climbed partly up the forward companionway ladder so I could get a glimpse of the sky through the open waist. It was blue with scudding low cloud.

  The men on the gun deck were lined up for breakfast and they stared at me warily. No one said anything, but no one shied away, either.

  One of the steward’s mates bearing a tray came to the top of the ladder and knelt down. “Your breakfast, Cap,” he said.

  I smelled fresh biscuits, bacon, and ham choking in gravy.

  “How you feeling?” the mate asked.

  “All right,” I said, accepting the tray, “for now.”

  “You look like shit,” he said, straightening up so as not to linger too closely.

  “I feel like shit, but from lack of sleep, if you must know.”

  “Heard you were up with Fletcher last night. Too bad, that. No one else sick, though now, is there?”

  “No.”

  “Well, perhaps you’ll get lucky. You better hold on, for a while, anyway. I’ve got two pounds riding on it.”

  “Two pounds?” I repeated, trying to get through my thick skull what he had just said.

  “The baron, he’s got a pool going on when you’ll die.”

  “Two pounds is a lot of money. What if I live?”

  The mate grinned. “You made me a rich man, our last voyage. I can afford it.”

  “But you bet on me to die?”

  “Well, not for another week. I’ve got Friday, so if you have to go, make it Friday.”

  “How many others are in the pool?”

  “About half the boys, I’d say.”

  “I hope they haven’t bet too much,” I said darkly, inching back down the ladder.