by Jason Vail
Somehow during all this, the rearguard had shrunk down to only two: me and the African. We stood between two overturned gun carriages, trading blows left and right, so many coming so fast that I have no distinct memory of any of them. But I remember one thing clearly, the ferocious grin on the African’s face as he fought with that cutlass like he had been born with it in his hand. Where he had acquired his terrible skill I have no idea.
I don’t remember our men at the portal calling for us to fall back. I heard later they even tugged on our coats.
Then I slipped on something, part of a severed arm, I think. I fell. Three enemy sailors loomed over me.
At last, our bomb went off.
End-of-the-world fever swept southern British America many years after the war of independence and seeped into Texas with the unwashed immigrants the country was so happy to admit. My wife and I went to a revival once to see what all the fuss was about, for the preachers were very popular and had great followings. Huge crowds withdrew to hilltops at the times predicted for the end of things. Sadly, people were disappointed. The world did not end. But I vividly recall the descriptions we heard: of the tumult, the ground shaking and splitting apart, spouting fire that would consume all. When I heard those sermons, the final horror on the Neptuno came back to me.
It was as though the hammer of God had landed upon me. The blast liked to drive my flesh from my bones, and left me dazed and barely conscious. I sat up to a scene of devastation such as I have never seen. I thought the work we had done with our cannon terrible, but that had been nothing to compare with what I saw now. Choking smoke filled the gun deck, reducing vision to only a few feet, but fires burned everywhere I could see and bodies lay tossed about as if cut down by the devil’s scythe, many in pieces. Already the smell of roasting meat began to overpower the aroma of gunsmoke. A few here and there who had not been killed struggled to sit up or thrashed among the mass of the fallen like giant maggots; blood streamed from their noses and ears, as it did, I realized, from mine when I glanced down to see if I still had all my parts and my nose dripped on my shirt front. My body shrieked with pain, my limbs did not work properly, and I could not stand up.
Someone grasped me by the shoulders and began to haul me through the gun port. I tried to tell them to help the African, who had fallen beside me and who seemed to be unconscious, but my mouth worked no better than my limbs. Those who helped me — Austin and another — returned for the African. But the limpness of his body and that tell-tale slate tinge to his skin, discernible even with its blackness, told me that he had not survived. I have always regretted that, for he had been a brave man, and I did not ever know his true name. Our clerk had not been able to understand the Africans when we put them on our roster, and had set down his name as Juki.
I felt Wasp bumping against the Neptuno’s hull, and I struggled to order her to be cast off, if that was possible. Our men were just standing there, seemingly without purpose. Austin knelt by my head. “C-c-c-cutttt,” was all I ever managed to get out.
“Be still,” he said and smoothed my brow as if he expected me to die at any moment. I swear, though I’m not sure, but I think he wept.
Nova Ascendant: The Life and Times of David Stern Crockett
by Victor D. Lautenberg and Maeve Crockett Haverford
With cries of “Forward!” the Spanish surged over the rail onto the Wasp’s quarterdeck. They struck the line of Wasp’s seamen and there the fight hung for a long moment like one of the battles of old: men crushed together in a hand-to-hand struggle of pike, sword and axe, pushing and shoving where the press forced them together.
Above on the tops, muskets thumped and rifles cracked as the marines and Rangers attempted to clear the tops of the opposing ship and pick off the officers on the enemy deck. A few enemy sailors who tried to cross on the rigging were shot down like birds on a branch. Soon the superior marksmanship of the Texans began to tell, and all the sharpshooters in the Spanish tops had been killed or wounded. Now the Spanish officers began to fall one by one, easy targets to spot with their tall hats, though not so easy to hit upon the rocking ships surrounded by the press of men.
The enemy’s greater numbers pushed back the Texans. The line broke and the fight became a general melee on the quarterdeck, all the men mixed together in a heaving mass where death as often as not cut a man down from behind.
Crockett was forced back into the space between the wheel and binnacle by four Spanish sailors armed with bayonetted muskets, cutlasses and axes who sought the reknown of Crocket’s death or capture. Old Hammond watched transfixed, his hands still gripping the wheel, his eyes wide with fright, as Crockett battled furiously with the enemy, cutlass in one hand and long Texas knife in the other. Hemmed in by the two obstacles so that he could neither evade nor escape and out-numbered, it was only a matter of time before the Spanish sailors cut him down.
“For God’s sake, man!” Crockett cried desperately to Hammond as he parried a bayonet thrust with his knife and replied with a cutlass blow that severed the attacker’s hand at the wrist. “Lend a hand!”
Hammond swallowed, hesitated, then tackled one of the attackers. They rolled away, Hammond reaching desperately for the seaman’s knife at his belt.
This reduced Crockett’s adversaries to two, but it was not enough to save him.
Then the bomb exploded.
The deck beneath Crockett’s feet jolted as if a great hammer had struck the Wasp. The masts swayed, pitching one of the Rangers off the mizzen top so that he landed with a terrific thud only a few steps away. Had it not been for the binnacle, Crockett would have fallen, for the blast knocked men everywhere off their feet. Great jets of smoke erupted from the Neptuno’s hatches and seeped from the Wasp’s waist.
What the hell was that? Crockett wondered, taking the opportunity to slip out of the confined space between wheel and binnacle.
Uncertainty and doubt rippled through the men on deck, beginning with those on the Neptuno. Crockett could see it in their faces and the way they anxiously glanced back at the Spanish warship. He had no idea what had just occurred, for in his haste Jones had not confided his plan, but Crockett guessed it was to the Wasp’s advantage. He heard shouts of alarm from the Spanish ship: fire had broken out there. Some of the enemy engaged in the fighting began to scramble back to the Neptuno.
“At ’em, boys!” Crockett shouted. “We’ve got ’em on the run!”
He lay into the two remaining men who opposed him, disemboweling one with a horizontal stroke that swept around as if it had a mind of its own to knock aside the downward smash of another enemy’s axe, creating the opportunity for Crockett to finish the man with his knife. Crockett and a third man exchanged blows and then found themselves almost chest to chest. Crockett dropped his sword and threw the man over his hip to the deck, where he finished the Spaniard with his knife.
He rolled off the dying man and lay on his back for a moment as the fight still raged around him. No one seemed to notice him lying there, and he had a moment to assess. More Neptuno men were retreating to the larger ship, but enough still remained on the Wasp that the fight for her was not yet over.
“What are you doing down there?” a voice asked at his head. It was William Harper. “This is no time to rest.”
“I fight very well lying down,” Crockett said, retrieving his cutlass as Harper and Austin helped him to his feet. “What happened?”
“Never mind that now,” Harper said. “We have to cut the cables.”
“With what?” Crockett asked. “Our teeth?”
“With this,” Austin said raising a boarding axe.
“All right, then. After you.”
“You are too kind, sir.”
“My pleasure, sir.”
“Quit wasting time,” Harper said.
Austin led the way, axe in one hand, cutting about with his cutlass in the other, Crockett and Harper at his side. They forced their way to the port rail by one of the after carronades where the firs
t grappling hook gripped the Wasp. A length of chain connected the hook to its cable which was intended to prevent what they had in mind now.
“You’ll have to cut the rail,” Harper said, turning to trade cutlass blows with a Spaniard.
“Give me the axe,” Crockett said. “I’ve more experience at chopping wood than you.”
“Well,” Austin said, “I am the better fencer anyway.”
“Like hell,” Crockett said raising the axe.
“He always thinks he’s the best at everything,” Austin muttered as he covered Crockett’s back.
“That’s because I am,” Crockett said, as he carved a cleft in the rail with a few deft strokes. He levered the grapple’s claw sideways into the cleft and it fell away. “Where’s the next one?”
“Over there.” Harper gestured toward the bow.
Again they forced their way through the press, which was thinner now, to just before the gangway leading to the forecastle, where a second grapple held the Wasp fast to the enemy ship.
The fires aboard the Neptuno where burning more furiously now. Smoke poured from the hatches and gun ports, swirling in their faces so that they could barely breathe.
“Hurry up,” Harper said.
“I’m hurrying,” Crockett gasped, as he worked with his axe.
“Hurry faster.”
A figure loomed above them on the enemy’s rail, a man wielding an officer’s small sword, a neat beard framing his face like a V: it was Vasquez of all people, the enemy captain.
He thrust at Crockett who jumped back, nearly knocking Austin down. Harper cut at Vasquez’s leg, but missed, and when Vasquez returned a thrust at him, Harper caught the blade with his left hand. He struck at Vasquez’s extended arm. Rather than sacrifice the arm, Vasquez released the sword.
“You’ve lost something,” Harper said.
Vasquez snarled and stepped back to the Neptuno’s deck. Crockett finished cutting another notch in the Wasp’s rail. He again levered the grapple claw through the notch. Forward, the forecastle crew had succeeded in freeing the last grappling hook. The ships bumped against each other a few more times, and then began drifting apart. Harper, Crockett and Vasquez regarded each other across the widening gap. Vasquez turned away.
Quite a few Spanish sailors were trapped on the Wasp. Some tried to jump the gap. A number made it. Others fell into the sea. Those still on the Wasp’s deck cried for quarter.
“Should we kill ’em?” one of the Texas men asked Crockett. “They’d have slaughtered us, given the chance.”
“No,” Crockett replied. “We won’t kill ’em.” He turned to Harper. “Are we fit to sail?”
Harper looked at the rigging and the sails. “Yes.”
“Then let’s get on with it. Where’s Paul, anyway?”
Harper did not answer that question. Instead, he called, “Hammond! Where are you! No one’s tending the wheel!”
“Here I am, Mister Harper,” Hammond answered, climbing to his feet.
“Starboard three points then! Mast crews! To your stations! Hurry up! We’ve a ship to sail here!” Then Harper strode to the waist and called to the men below. “You there! Man the larboard guns! Let’s give our friends a farewell!”
The Wasp’s guns thundered once more.
Then she wore about and headed west for Texas.
Chapter 30
Galvestown, Province of Texas
Empire of Spain
March 1821
They tell me that smoke from the fires on the Neptuno could be seen all the way to Galvestown. I wouldn’t know. The concussion from the explosion did something to my innards. I could barely move, let alone stand. So the men carried me back to the wreckage of my cabin and laid me out in my cot. With the cabin partitions taken down when we came to quarters, I had a fine view of the sea through the demolished gallery windows, but I did not see any smoke. I read much later that the Spanish frigate burned to the waterline and had to be abandoned. The Neptuno did not have enough boats for five hundred men, so only a few were saved: the surviving officers, including Vasquez, and a handful of favored others. It was rumored that they had to fight off panicked crewmen, beating their hands from the rails as the mob swamped the boats they managed to launch before fires destroyed them. I believe that rumor. Those in power always save themselves first and leave people beneath them to rot.
Austin superintended the unloading of the muskets and whiskey, which he sold the following day for a tidy profit.
By that time, I was able to totter about, and I saw the damage to Wasp’s bow. She had been holed a dozen times by the Neptuno’s forward guns, and my heart ached at her splintered and shattered timbers.
Austin was in a hurry to get to Jacksonville and present the scribbles he had worked on so diligently during our return voyage, and as soon as he had disposed of the whiskey, our little group — Willie, Crockett, Austin and me — escorted the muskets by barge up to the town. Crockett had wanted to send them on ahead immediately, but Austin had none of that. He felt it was his duty to personally attend them.
Jacksonville, Province of Texas
1 March 1821
Jacksonville in those days was not the metropolis it is now. Then it was just a collection of rude shacks surrounded by scrub scattered about an ambitious grid of unpaved streets beside Buffalo Bayou. I have seen slums that were more impressive.
The news of our arrival in Texas had already preceded us, and a crowd of at least a hundred people greeted us at the docks when word spread that we had tied up. After the guns were safe in a shack grandly called the arsenal, the people followed us to the tavern that served as the meeting house for the Committee of Correspondence on what is now Congress Street. It had another name back then, but I can’t remember what it was.
This tavern was one of the grander buildings in Jacksonville: it had two rooms instead of one. Even so, from the outside, no rational man would predict it could hold forty men at once, but somehow they had managed it, the delegates packed hip to hip on chairs, some on the floor, a few on tables. Our appearance interrupted debate on some weighty matter that was so contentious we could hear the delegates shouting at each other while we were still down the block. But they ceased shouting and listened eagerly to Crockett’s report that we had brought the means of Texas’ salvation in the form of six-thousand muskets, powder and enough lead for plenty of shot. We were rewarded with a cheer and a vote of commendation, and the delegates were about to return to their debate when Austin piped up that he had brought something else of equal if not greater importance.
“All right then,” Andrew Jackson said. He seemed a bit impatient at this interruption, but he asked politely enough, “What have you got?”
You’ll no doubt have read a great deal about Jackson, father of his country and all that, and his picture is everywhere, not only on money. But words and those stiff portraits do not even come close to capturing the measure of the man. He was tall and thin, of course, that rather spindly body folded into a high-backed chair; that great shock of hair rising up above a tall forehead going gray and looking as though it resented the attentions of a comb; the long narrow face dominated by a nose that projected like a crag in the mountains; shaggy brows that shaded steely eyes; and a thin mouth that would have looked well on a hanging judge, cold and perfect for sneering, yet which could produce a surprisingly warm smile. One really noticeable feature was how thin and delicate his hands were. Like Armand Rochelle, you would never expect those to be the hands of a killer, yet he had put down his share of men in his time. He could box and wrestle with the best of them, and was pretty fair with a knife, I’ve heard. Crockett swore to me once that in Oak Ridge before they came west Jackson bit a man’s nose off over an insult to his wife. He was touchy about his wife, not to mention his pride in general, but in that he wasn’t much different from most.
He had an air about him, too, that nothing I’ve ever seen adequately captures. He radiated — it’s hard to describe exactly what — confidenc
e, power, command, certainty. You just knew that in a hard spot, he’d advance to face the foe and that you would have no choice but to be drawn after him. It is a truly rare quality. I’ve met only a few who had it in my time: that Prussian fellow Bismarck was one; Arthur Wellesley was another; Lord Nelson, little smidgen of a man that he was, had it too, not that it helped him much when he became First Lord of the Admiralty. I’ve seen both King Georges and one of the Napoleons as well as several other kings and God knows how many other presidents and politicians, and none of them had it, not even close, fat pompous self-important men mostly. Well, Crockett did occasionally when he wasn’t trying to be funny.
