by Jason Vail
“What makes you think we’re talking about you?” I asked.
“I heard my name. In the same sentence with rocks and sinking.”
“This is a funeral, man. Do you really think we’d make light of anything at such a solemn occasion?” I asked. But if the faces of the crew were any indication, solemnity would be hard to obtain. More than a few were sullen, and many chafed at being made to stand in the cold for a man they had disliked and who had died owing money they would not now collect.
The funeral was swift. Heberly said his few words and when he glanced at Adele for some indication whether she wanted to give a eulogy. Her gaze remained on the deck, her lips pressed together, her expression troubled. So Heberly waved at the sailors holding the board on which Crequy’s body lay weighted by a pair of cannonballs. The sailors tipped up the board, and the body rolled off into the gray waters of the Channel. The foam from the splash receded behind us as the wind drove us onward to Calais.
Adele went immediately below to my sleeping cabin. I did not see her again until she left the ship at Calais. Nor did we ever say a word to each other, not even good bye.
In time, I completely forgot about her until many years later I read in the Jacksonville papers about her trial. It was so famous that word of it reached even as far as Texas. And since then I’ve often wondered about what really happened in the sick bay that night. But like the prosecutor in Paris, I have no proof, only suspicions.
Lone Star Rising: A Short History of the Republic of Texas and the Free States of America
by Victor D. Lautenberg
The media is always quick to call the trial of any celebrity the Trial of the Century. Every few years, it seems we have one of them.
But the murder trial of Adele La Fontaine, who became baroness of Crequy upon the untimely death of her epileptic brother and one of the richest women in Europe, was such an international sensation that it came close to earning the title. She went to the dock in Paris during March and April 1844 for the murder of her husband, who was found dead in his bedroom clad in women’s undergarments. As it was her third husband to die under mysterious circumstances — events that left her richer each time — infidelity was a factor, and the condition of the body was shocking, the trial attracted attention from Moscow to San Francisco. The galleries were mobbed so that people collapsed in the crush, and the street outside was so crowded that distinguished members of the press reporting on the trial sometimes could not get through and at least one was trampled during the rush to see the baroness exit the justice building for her carriage.
The baroness was not at home at the time of her husband’s collapse, having gone to visit a sick friend. But she and her husband had dined together not two hours before, and, as the medical examiner’s verdict was strychnine poisoning, she was one of the first suspects, especially since it was well known that the couple had quarreled violently over the affair he was having with a housemaid. When a recently discharged footman came forward to accuse her in the papers of serving the wine at that final supper, the prosecutor brought charges. The fact the housemaid had disappeared did not seem to affect his decision.
However, a spirited and skillful defense by one of France’s premier attorneys and the baroness’ charm, beauty and obvious bereavement led to her acquittal.
She had three more husbands, the last more than thirty years her junior, and died at the age of ninety-five.
Chapter 15
Calais, Republic of France
24 November 1820
I have never understood the French. They have a king, whom they revere and proudly call Emperor, but style themselves a republic ruled by the people and animated by a spirit of equality that officially acknowledges no differences whatsoever among men and women, but in practice eagerly perpetuates distinctions to preserve the power of this or that favored group. The group most eager to amass and to exercise power is that body of men tasked with the running of the government, who excuse their autocracy by saying they do so for everyone’s good. They have such power now that it seems that no one can fart in France without a license.
Somehow or other, the little men in the customs service found out that Wasp had smallpox aboard, so the only people from the ship to set foot in France were Adele de Crequy and her servants. They got off before word leaked out, and, looking back from the advantage of many years, I wonder if Adele wasn’t the source of the warning. It prevented officials from questioning anyone aboard about the death of her brother, although at the time nobody thought there was anything suspicious about it.
In consequence, we could not buy supplies, especially of fresh water, which we had begun to run short of. Even the little peddlers’ boats which ordinarily swarmed about newcomers in harbor were warned away by customs cutters that prowled around and kept watch upon us.
At the same time, the customs men refused to allow Wasp to leave for fear the people of France would be blamed if we happened to spread the pox at our next port.
So we sat in the harbor, gazing at a town we were unable to visit and a sea upon which we were forbidden to sail. Our anchorage was beneath the guns of the fortress that dominated the west end of the town, and if we tried, the men upon the walls who kept their eyes upon us day and night clearly intended to sink us. The snouts of black thirty-two pounders protruded from the embrasures. Guns that size could hit targets a mile away with confidence, and the shot was heavy enough to turn Wasp into hopeless driftwood.
Austin chafed at the delay more than most. It wasn’t money that worried him, although even as we were captives, the harbormaster came by each day to collect a harbor fee, or the diminishing reserve of freshwater — I worried about that far more than he did. Rather, he gloomed over the prospect of our late return to Texas with the arms needed for her army, so that we would find Jacksonville in the possession of the victorious forces of the Empire and all the patriots either hung or in prison. Austin had many friends in Texas, including a sister and her children, whom he dearly loved.
Even Crockett had grown morose. His inexhaustible fund of stories seemed not so inexhaustible after all, for he had none to enliven us in the great cabin in the evenings. I knew things were bad then.
Not even the fine weather, unseasonably warm and sunny, perked up the spirits of the officers, and their dismay at the delay communicated itself to the men, who went surly to their work and to their training, for even though we were marooned in harbor, I did not stop the drills at small arms and the guns.
The good weather ended after the first week, when an overcast set in and it grew noticeably colder. That evening after supper Austin pulled the gallery windows closed and returned to his seat at the table of the great cabin. Supper had been cleared away and we were all staring into our cups.
Willie, who was slumped in his chair with his cup resting on his belt buckle, said as if to fill the silence, “It’s going to rain tonight.”
“What makes you think so?” Austin challenged him.
“A sky like that,” Willie gestured toward the windows, “low and dark, it always means rain.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Austin said tartly. The wait had so frayed his nerves that he sometimes forgot to be diplomatic.
“My pleasure.”
I swiveled toward the window at my back for a better look at the sky. Willie was very good at predicting weather. “What’s the moon phase tonight?” I asked.
“Waning half moon,” Willie answered.
“Which won’t come up until midnight,” I said.
“And with that cloud, it won’t give much light,” Willie said.
“It will be as dark as the inside of a sack,” I said.
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Austin asked.
I leaned forward to reply, but Willie answered him first. He waved toward the big star fort not far away. “Well, for one thing, it means that their fuses will be wet.”
Crockett perked up. He saw immediately where Willie and I were going. “But it will be
so dark that we won’t be able to find our way out of the harbor.”
“But with the rain, the lookouts will suspect nothing and will be sheltering from the storm,” I said.
“So they won’t see us go,” Willie finished for me.
Crockett smiled for the first time in days. “A desperate plan. I like it.”
I lifted the wine bottle and the officers around the table held their cups forward for a refill.
I poured for all and said, “Then pray for rain, gentlemen. Pray hard that it comes tonight.”
Despite the optimistic talk of escape, there was little appetite for conversation, and the gathering broke up early. I lighted a candle as darkness fell, and tried reading Livy, but ended up rolling the toy horse back and forth with my fingers, thinking of the open sea, wishing that Wasp was upon it where she belonged. Fatigue swept over me and I put my head on my arms, thinking to rest only for a moment.
A hand shook me awake sometime during the night. The candle had burned so low that it had gone out, and I chided myself for letting it do so: a bad habit that could cause a fire.
It was Willie’s hand. Crockett and Austin stood behind him
I heard the pattering of rain on the window panes even as Willie spoke: “It’s begun, Paul.”
“What time is it?”
“Just after six bells of the first watch. Wind’s from the west northwest.”
That meant it was closing in on midnight and we had a good wind, one that would not be in our faces as we left the harbor.
“What is the tide doing?”
“Flowing, I’m sorry to say,” he said.
“We shall have to fight it getting out,” I said more to myself than to Willie. It would have been preferable to leave on an ebb tide, but then we’d have to wait a long time for the conditions to be right for that.
I listened to the raindrops striking the windows: a steady down pour, but not heavy, not thick enough by itself to conceal us from the lookouts in the fortress, but enough to drive them into their little nooks and cupolas for shelter.
“Rouse both watches, but do it quietly. We’re close enough to shore that they can hear us talking on deck. We will go out under double-reefed topsails, jib and spanker. Also, put out two boats. They will lead us through the traffic in the harbor and the gap in the breakwater.”
With the tide, we could not expect to tow Wasp out of the harbor, so I ordered double-reefed topsails to give us some extra help. We crept very slowly in that wind, the slapping of the tidal waves against the bow sounding like gunshots to me ears. And I feared the dark. There was the chance of collision with another ship in the harbor, which while not crowded presented an obstacle course, and the possibility of overrunning our own boats. I wanted Wasp to make just enough headway so that the boats did not have to tow her out, and I had the mast crews ready to back sail and another crew at the anchors just in case of collision.
Despite these precautions, we brushed spars with a fat, double-decked Indiaman and only a few moments afterward with a smaller brig, and then to my horror, our hull actually bumped that of another, a fore-and-aft-rigged coastal schooner whose masts did not reach as high as our main yards.
Someone aboard the schooner cried out at the indignity of the bump, which must have been sharp on the receiving end, for Wasp’s starboard quarter fairly shoved the smaller boat out of the way. The schooner yawed wildly and I feared for a moment that her mast, whipping over, would catch in our rigging.
The voice on the schooner awakened the town watchmen, who appeared on the town walls with torches. We could not have told where the town was without those torches and it was closer than I wanted it to be, for there was a bastion with guns at the far eastern edge of town that we were gradually approaching. Now that the alarm had been given, the battery would be manned, the guns unplugged and charged, and ready for us.
“Damn it, Mister Crockett!” I called out to our rowboats, for now that we were discovered, silence didn’t matter. “How could you not miss that boat?”
“There’s a bigger one to port!” his voice came back out of the dark, for I could not see our boats except for the lanterns hung at their sterns to guide us. “Mind your head!”
I rushed to the port rail in time to see another great Indiaman loom out of the dark and pass so close that I could have spit upon her. An enraged voice on the Indianman called out to us in Dutch.
“Sorry about that!” I replied. “Just passing through.”
“Are you mad?” the same voice replied in Dutch-accented English.
“Just a little,” I murmured. “We’re from Texas.”
“What ship are you!” the indignant voice demanded.
I did not answer. He would know well enough in the morning.
As I remember Calais, it lay on the south side of an oblong tidal basin that served as its harbor, with the east end of town overlooking the outlet to the sea. A breakwater stretched out at the end of town separating the harbor from another basin, and we had to turn to avoid it. It was unmarked in the darkness, and the only gauge we had was the lighthouse, which blinked on the spit dividing the basin from the English Channel.
I held my breath as we drew off from the cluster of ships anchored by the town quay, and that dangerous breakwater drew nearer, unseen and even unheard, for the water was calm in the basin, with no waves lapping against stone walls to give any alarm of its approach.
Then ahead one of our guide lanterns blinked twice and the pair of lanterns began to pull off to port.
“Come port, Mister Hammond!” I cried to the quartermaster, and Wasp began her turn to match the turn of our guide boats.
Nimble as she was, Wasp could hardly pirouette as fast as a rowboat, and I gripped the rail with fear in my heart that Crockett, who had very little experience with boats, had mistimed the turn, hardly hearing the clatter and hum of the rigging as the crew trimmed sail to the changing course. I should have sent Halevy or Willie, but had given in to Crockett’s eagerness to volunteer, a mistake?
Slowly, ever so slowly, Wasp pivoted to port and came about behind the guide boats like a bulldog on a leash. I saw the breakwater now, a long low wall stretching out of one dimness only to disappear into another. To my surprise there were the figures of people on the top of the wall. Why anyone would be out here in the wet this deep into the night was a mystery, but there they were, and no doubt as surprised to see us as I was to see them. I had a glimpse of a boat up against the breakwater and it occurred to me that perhaps we had found smugglers, but I had little time to spare for such considerations.
“Steady now, Mister Hammond!” I called back to the quarterdeck. “Straight ahead!” Straight ahead into gaping darkness, the sparkles of the lanterns and the baleful eye of the lighthouse the only points of light to tell us where to go.
“Straight ahead, aye!” he shouted, his voice taut with fear. He liked this escapade even less than I did, and I cannot blame him for that. As that Dutchman had said, we were mad, the lot of us as mad as the Hatter in that children’s story.
There was a flash to stern followed closely by a terrific thump: the firing of one of the cannon in the town’s eastern battery. The ball flew by to port making a whup-whup-whup noise, chain shot if my ears were any judge. But the shot went wide and sent up a plume ahead. I could only think that the gunners must have scared the hell out of the smugglers, because they had scared me well enough.
Another cannon flashed and thumped and this shot struck near enough to the stern that I felt the impact with my heels.
“Damn it!” Hammond shouted. “Can’t we go faster!”
Could we not go faster indeed! I would have liked to race out of that harbor now, for we were making no more speed than a walking man.
I glanced above to the foreyards. High above and out of sight, there were men balancing on the top yards: the foretop crew, waiting for orders.
We came abreast of the end of the breakwater, which signified that we had almost reached the outlet. The charac
ter of the sea had changed as well, from the smoothness of the basin to a slight, and increasing, swell.
Two more cannon shots flash-thumped together: those boys on the guns were better at keeping their powder dry than I anticipated.
“Take out the reefs!” I called to the mast crews. “Full sail to the tops!”
It took only a moment to take out the reefs and the top sails draped down as far as they could stretch. They luffed at first as Halevy bawled at the men on deck to sheet the sails tight to catch the west wind. Wasp picked up speed.
“Beware behind, Mister Crockett!” I shouted through the drizzle to the distant guide lights. “Prepare to be overtaken! We shall take you under tow, and then we’ll get you all aboard! But we won’t be stopping to do it!”
As the lighthouse came up on our larboard shoulder, the entire battery fired with a blinding flash that illuminated the harbor and revealed how crowded it was and how lucky we were to have made it through with only a few close scrapes. The enormous roar seemed to echo until drowned out by the rain. But by a miracle, all the shot went wide, throwing up plumes all around.
“It’s a good thing they can’t shoot straight!” Crockett’s voice came out of the dark, closer now and slightly to port as we overtook the guide boats.
“They can’t hit what they can’t see, Mister Crockett! Get your boat alongside and aboard as soon as you can!”
“Aye-aye!” he called back, as the dark swallowed Wasp so we had no more shot from the town.
Chapter 16
The English Channel and the North Sea
November 1820
The storm blew out by dawn, and despite a lingering haze, the lookouts in the tops reported with some wonder that they could see England and France at the same time.
They also reported two sails no more than three miles off. The Channel was a busy place and often filled with traffic, so the mere report of sails was not the reason for concern that it might have been in other seas. But when I turned my glass upon one vessel and then the other, it became clear that something was amiss with them, for they had both turned and begun to head toward us, a top-sail schooner and a ship-rigged vessel. An odder thing still, the schooner lay to our west, that is upwind, and the ship was to the east, as if they were acting together, but separated by so much sea, that seemed unlikely.
