Apparently I had put a crushing burden upon my brother-in-law. Daniel pressed his hands to the swivelgun and closed his sunken eyes. “Then we must not go ashore. If our ships sink, we must sink with them. Henry, send LaMay in a boat to the Congress. Tell the general.”
Hardie swirled off, snapping orders to some other men.
Daniel straightened, suddenly aged. He gripped the rough-cut branches that were bound to the sides of the sloop and gazed at the southerly mouth of Valcour Bay. There another ship, a schooner, was fighting for control of the wind as she exited the bay. Royal Savage, he had called it. I wondered why a Colonial ship had an English name, but decided not to ask.
“You shouldn’t have come, Adam,” Daniel uttered. “You’ve boarded a dead ship, in company of a dead crew.”
I shrugged. “God will be with me.”
“You’ll only be distracting him from the rest of us. We’re set to stew in this freshwater cauldron.” He drew a ragged breath. “This morning smells of winter. Midnight’s necromance never wicked off. And we possess only the water now…. Pray we hold it.”
“Oh, there’s more than water here,” I pointed out, trying to lighten his mood.
He looked at me. “What do you mean?”
I fingered the bare-wood fascines flanking the sloop’s rail, sticking high into the air like fortress walls. “Earth,” I said. As the cold breeze snatched at the branches, I brushed them. “Wind. Water, obviously … and fire.” I patted the stone-cold body of the swivelgun. “The four natural elements of power your mother speaks about.”
He shook his head in dismissal. “Mother visits again. I wish you’d left her home, Adam.”
“Daniel!” Hardie called. “Congress is headed back to position. General’s boat’s coming alongside.”
“Oh!” I cried. “May I meet him? I’ve heard all about him!”
White stockings aflash, I scrambled after Daniel as he descended the steep ladder to the lower deck. A rowboat, smaller than the bateau I had occupied, drew up to the ship’s side. In it were two oarsmen and an officer in a Colonial blue coat and tricorn.
“General!” I called. “Honor to meet you, sir! May I shake your hand?”
Hawk-eyed and hawk-nosed, black of hair and burly with residual power in his shoulders and hands, the general was a robust man of about thirty-five years, with burning blue eyes. He scowled up at me and Daniel from beneath his tricorn hat. “Who are you?”
“Parson Adam Ghent,” Daniel grumbled. “My wife’s brother.”
“You haven’t just arrived, Reverend, in the middle of mayhem?”
“I have, sir. And pleased I am to congratulate you for your conquest of Fort Ticonderoga! Everyone in New Haven is proud of its native son!”
The general grimaced. “Mmm, seems to have slipped the notice of the Continental Congress somehow. Why have you come?”
“To bring a parcel from Daniel’s mother, and the unwritten love of my sister. His mother has some requests of him.”
“You must pause to pay your mother attention, Dickenson,” the general said right away. “But listen first—our enemy is hull up on the northern water. The Royal Navy has toted a two—hundred tonner across the land in pieces and reassembled it. A full-rigger, twenty-four pounder cannons. Our scouts on the Revenge report counting no less than twenty-four gunboats, a radeau gun barge, and a goodly number of Indians in canoes. That’s three times what I expected, all crewed by able seamen, commanded by Royal Navy officers. Us, we have a wretched crew of green ships and green men who don’t know a halyard from a garter snake. Waterbury wants us to retreat. I’ve come to tell you and every captain that I have no intention of retreat, not before we’ve even touched off a gun. Why does he think I built this fleet? This north wind is our advantage. We must be clever!”
Henry Hardie leaned through the branches. “We could up anchor and run out suth’erd of them while we have the chance, perhaps engage them under sail as we run toward Ticonderoga.”
“We can’t outsail the Royal Navy on open water,” Daniel told him.
“Quarters in this bay are tight. Their mastery of the sea will serve less in a pond. We’re small targets, we have that on our side. And, bless it, the weather gauge.”
“I thank you for your support, Captain,” the general said. “It is our plan that the Royal Savage should lure the British ships south of the bay before the British discover we’re hiding here. I hoped they’ll recognize her as one of their own which was captured, and it might make them lose reason and pursue. Then, being a schooner, the Savage will be able to pinch back up and join us while the British fall south.”
The general turned, almost wistfully, and looked at the narrow strait leading out to Lake Champlain.
“That’s my hope,” he added, “but hope must be braced with spirit. We must show ’em here and now what we’re built of. The British don’t think we have the mettle to be a nation. They don’t think we’ll fight. We’re Colonists in a fleet of rowboats, but the King’s navy would not face us until they had their two-hundred tonner ready to sail. They dallied an extra month to ready that ship. So who is afraid to fight? It comes down to their pride against our stubbornness. Today is the day we will make England understand we mean to be a nation independent. This is it, my friends—the United States Navy’s first engagement! May we prevail! Bless you all!”
With a snapping motion, he gave the order to shove off. The rowboat lurched away on a rising wave.
Daniel watched them go. His expression told nothing.
I clapped a hand to my chest. “My goodness, he is infectious! Did you see those eyes?”
“If we have a navy,” Daniel said, “that man built it. He’s the one who warned that the British could use Canada as a platform from which to strike at us. He predicted Lake Champlain might be used by the enemy to stab downward from the Richelieu River into the heart of the Colonies and split us apart. That would’ve been the end, before we even had a beginning. He was the only one who saw it, and he has knocked together this little fleet in a matter of weeks, to defend the lake today.”
Leaning sideward against the fascines, Daniel gazed after the tiny rowboat wretching away from us, heading westward toward the gunboat New York. He watched the man in the tricorn hat.
“He has some tyrannical ways and suffers indignity poorly, but if I stay, it is only because of him. If I fight, it is because he showed me why. If the United States are ever to become a nation, it will be due to the mighty spirit of General Benedict Arnold.”
“There they are!”
The wind off Valcour was unsteady, causing not swells but an unhelpful chop. A diabolical presence appeared at the mouth of the bay—a honeycomb of English gunboats struggling under sail, coming two by two and three by three, and then bigger ships with sails puffed full, yards swinging as they tried to turn. All these, all at once, attempted to claw into the bay against the wind.
I snatched Daniel by the arm. “How can I help?”
“It’s too late to train you to a gun. Help McCrae.”
“What’s his work?”
“Stephen is the only doctor in the fleet. Enterprise is the medical ship. You thought I was making a joke about last—”
From the trees on the island came an unexpected pop, and two seconds later the fascine next to my shoulder shook. Mauled by splinters and needles, I staggered on the bucking deck and fell to my knees, my mouth full of wood spray. What had knocked me down?
“Adam!” Daniel scooped me up and checked for blood, but my only injuries were scratches.
“Indians!” Henry Hardie pointed onto the high cliffs of Valcour Island. “They’ve landed Indian snipers on the island with muskets! Keep your heads down, men!”
Daniel swung around. “Lavengood, take the forward swivelgun to ’em. Lather ’em with grape!”
Now I understood the bound saplings made fast to the ship’s sides, and the canopy layered with pine boughs. Beside me, the fascines stood firm, except the very top of one was
now partly shredded. That musket shot would’ve happily cut through my chest, but instead sheared across the top of the fascine. All that had struck me was the concussion and some splinters.
“Look!” I pointed at the mouth of the bay, where I saw a huge cloud of square white sails.
“That’s their full-rigger,” Daniel said, still holding onto me in some kind of possessed preoccupation. “Inflexible. She’ll have sixteen or eighteen twelve-pounders. Each of our gunboats only has one twelve. If she comes up, she will annihilate us.”
Though we held our breaths, the big ship moved sideways against the wind, scuttling farther south, never turning toward us. Back and forth it tacked with obvious effort, courting the mouth of the bay but never coming in.
“They’re stuck downwind!” Daniel gasped. “Bless the wind!”
As the men cheered, Rochon pointed at another lick of sail just barely showing through the mouth of the bay, struggling on Lake Champlain. “Their gun raft can’t come back up either! Their biggest ships are stuck down!”
“The lake’s too narrow for ships that size. They haven’t tacking room. Good thing—we’re hopeless of counterbalancing the presence of a two-hundred tonner. She might be even more, by the look of her. Might be three hundred, war loaded.”
I saw the truth in Daniel’s eyes, that sinking and desperate awareness of complete overwhelm. As the British ships came and came and kept coming, we gradually swallowed the terrible spoonful—we were inferior in almost every way, insufficient against the numbers and quality of both ships and seamen. We faced trained officers who thought themselves our ruling class, who had the privilege of a king’s navy to command. They possessed the whip hand. We were but Colonial thimbles bobbing purposefully on the white chop.
Rochon blew on a guttering linstock to keep it lit. “Here comes a schooner. What’s its name?”
“The Carleton, I think,” Daniel said, “if our scouts got it right. Do they mean to take us on alone?”
“I can see her guns. Look like sixes to me.”
“Let’s make our fours speak well to them. Fire at will, Joe!”
“Welcome to America, Carleton.” Rochon’s burly body took a single step forward. “Fire in the hole!”
Some of the men had the sense to block their ears. Sadly, I was not one of these. Again I was jarred to my knees, this time by the sheer stupendous noise. Never had I heard such a noise, and I was once nearly struck by lightning! A second later, the tremendous boom echoed off the rocks of Valcour Island and assaulted us a second time.
Around me, many men were huddled in shock. They apparently hadn’t heard a loaded cannon go off either, nor had they smothered in the gassy cloud of gun smoke.
“Get up!” Daniel raged. “Load, aim, and fire! Worm and swab and do it again! Doubleshot ball and canister! We’re not here to save ourselves! Give me that schooner’s rigging for breakfast!”
His conviction drove away our terror and charged every man. Better get used to it. I stumbled up.
Scarce a second later, head-splitting cannon blasts rang from all the other Colonial ships, and the brawl was on.
The Schooner Carleton was the only English ship that got anywhere near us. It now began a savage response. Hot shot bounded through the air. Their first ball struck the Gunboat Philadelphia right in the middle of her canopy, ripping most of it away. Then a full broadside brutalized many more of our ships. In minutes Valcour Bay was shrouded in acrid smoke.
But the wind was from the north. Bless the wind—the Crown’s big ships, which they had carted from the St. Lawrence, were useless to maneuver up the narrow strait at the mouth of Valcour Bay. Finally, in a tantrum of sheer muscle, the twenty or more British gunboats dropped their sails and rowed themselves into a raggedy string across the bay behind the Carleton, manned by feral sailors ashamed that they had to row. Once in position, they tore into us. The inhumanity began in earnest.
Fiendish with desperation, we returned savagery for savagery. There were no calls for heads down, take care, step cannily, no concern for the injuries or death being suffered. Something completely else was at work. These men were willing to lose limb and life. Half-frozen all night and now sweat-greased under cannonfire, they cared nothing for their comfort. They were fighting not to live, but to live in liberty. It made all the difference.
The casualties began to arrive almost immediately, ferried in rowboats heaped with bloody moaning bodies. I did what I could, hauling the wounded aboard, giving a shot of rum, holding them down while a grim Stephen McCrae took his capital knife, saw, curved hooks, and ligatures to their bones, flesh, arteries, veins, ligaments … then it was my job to cauterize the wounds with hot tar—if time allowed. The first one made me ill. The fifth made me cold. Over the side went arm after leg after foot after hand, until the shot-dimpled water around us ran red, decorated with a piteous stew.
And then, a boy of seventeen heaved back and died in my arms while his leg was being cut off. At first, I didn’t realize he was gone. In the middle of my prayer, McCrae pressed his hand to mine and said, “He’s done for this world, Parson. Put him overboard.”
Somehow I was efficient about it. I heaved the corpse headfirst into the bubbling water. “God be with you, fellow.”
This was the first day in my life I had ever put my hand on the dead. What it did to me, I cannot describe, except that in a few hours’ time I went from a country minister flinching at a muzzleloader’s pop to a flint-hearted veteran unaffected by the blare of a cannon two steps from me. Hundreds of howling Indians peppered us with musketshot, but I soon learned to trust Benedict Arnold’s wooden barriers. Though mangled friends writhed all about me, I can only say my mind began to shut down. My hands worked independently of thought. My brain dully registered the shouts of Daniel and Hardie, the only two seasoned sailors aboard, helping the other men to aim the cannons to some effect.
Though my head was mostly down to my work, I registered the progress of the battle through individual cries that made it from ear to brain through the cannons’ crash….
“Royal Savage is aground on Valcour! They’re abandoning ship! Send a boat for them before those Indians kill them all!”
“Look at Arnold running about aiming the guns on Congress himself. I wish I had his guff.”
“He’s the only one aboard who knows how.”
“They’ve boarded Royal Savage. They’re turning our own guns on us. Thorsby, train the tackles on the forward gun to fire on them.”
“I rerigged the Savage with my own hands.”
“She’s not ours anymore.”
“Quoin that gun down, LaMay! You’re overshooting! Go for the Carleton’s rigging!”
“Men, watch yourselves! Their grape is cutting straight through the fascines!”
“What’s that explosion?”
“Gunboat! We hit the ammunition locker!”
“Great Lord Almighty…”
“Carleton’s cable springs shot away! She can’t stay broadside! Rake her for all you’re worth when she swings to her anchor!”
It wasn’t until nearly five o’clock that McCrae and I stole a moment to look up.
What a sight—all around us the Continental ships were in shreds, fascines shattered by grapeshot, rags dripping where sails had been. The British Carleton lay tattered, many casualties making colored dots on her decks. There wasn’t a sail flying. She was unmaneuverable, taking volley after volley from our cannons. The sight was tantalizing. We might not win, but we were not losing!
I choked on cannon smoke and blinked stinging eyes at the schooner, where a young officer in a blue uniform was crawling out onto the bowsprit, right in the midst of heavy fire.
“Looks like a midshipman.” Henry Hardie squinted his watering eyes. “Other officers must be dead. Poor boy’s probably found himself in command.”
“He’s doing something!” I cried, pointing.
“Getting their jib up,” Joe Rochon described. “Gotta give’m credit, if he lives.”
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Gradually the triangular sail farthest out crawled upward and took some wind. The enemy schooner wobbled, then moved with some purpose, using the wind to turn her bow away from us. The boy on the bowsprit cast a line to one of the English gunboats, which mightily began to tow the schooner out of direct fire. Retreating!
So they had saved their ship, but we had forced them to fall back. We had forced them!
I grew up seven years in seven hours. I had thought battles went an hour or two. But here, from noon until sunset the two forces pounded each other. To our credit, we never folded. Not until dusk did the Inflexible finally crawl upwind enough to get in range. She loosed the malevolence of five broadsides at us, a barbaric way to behave, when one thought about it. The result was much destruction in our line and the further ravaging of the unfortunate Philadelphia. It seemed they were aiming for Washington or Congress, but kept striking the gunboat. Rochon said he thought the British assumed Benedict Arnold must be on one of the galleys, and they were right. Arnold’s ruthless drive kept us all firing away. We knew he would never quit, so we never considered quitting, and we hammered Inflexible back to seven hundred yards. When darkness came, even the mighty three-master had to cease fire, unable to aim. After a few last impudent pops, silence spread quickly. When night enclosed us, the struggle waned in a pathetic kind of draw.
For fifteen ships against fifty-three, that was a kind of victory, wasn’t it?
Soon we stood on the half-shattered deck, Daniel, Hardie, McCrae, and I, gazing south. A great mesh of darkness shrouded the bay, which now was flat as a pool of ink. Many wounded rested below, some slipping away. We could not help them more.
On the land, Indian fires glowed through the trees, and on the shore of Valcour Island, the British had set our Royal Savage ablaze. The ship burned furiously. Earth, air, fire, and water.
“So different,” I murmured, standing beside Daniel. “Even the water. It seems to accept the dead with almost human arms. Your mother said this was the time of year when the gate stands open and the Veil between worlds is thinnest. I think she’s right.”
Star Trek: Enterprise Logs Page 3
