by James Haley
“Yes, I would think so, most surely.”
“Then, sir, General Houston as he retreats, either because he is luring Santa Anna within range of the American army in Louisiana or because he finds himself at an insupportable disadvantage, has no way of knowing that he can now engage Santa Anna with no fear of being slaughtered at a distance by artillery.”
“Yes, that is true.”
“You and I are the only ones who know what strategy he is truly following, and you must stay with the ship. May I recommend that you put me ashore as soon as we can manage it, and I can get this intelligence to him?”
Bliven considered it. “But where? We don’t know how far the Mexicans can have advanced. If what we heard in Galveston about the loss of the Alamo is true, he might have already swept the country clean.”
Sam thought for a few seconds. “You can put me ashore on Galveston Island at night, west of the town. I can just walk in and excite no comment; no one knows me there. If the town is occupied, I will be just one more of the citizens there; if it is still in our hands, as I believe it must be, I can learn where the army is and get to them.”
Bliven thought hard about it. “Are you sure you are willing to risk this?”
“I see no other way. Besides, it is not as though my own livelihood is not at hazard.”
“Very well.” Bliven saw the bosun forward by the capstan. “Mr. Yeakel, a new course!”
The Gonzales came around east-northeast, her yards snapped hard on the starboard tack, hauling as close to the wind as she could take. Galveston Island might be four days away, two and a half days in a better wind.
* * *
* * *
They aimed to put him ashore unobserved, but close enough to Galveston that Sam would not be waylaid by foraging Karankawas who might think a man alone, be he ever so heavily armed, was worth the risk to attack. The norther eventually lightened, replaced by a light east wind that then swung to the south; they approached the western tip of the island from the south, aiming to raise San Luís Pass just at dusk, shortening sail and shortening sail again. Having lost the foretopmast in the Bahamas, the Gonzales crept along under main and mizzen topsails and the staysails between them. Carpenter Caldwell called out the soundings without pause until his voice took on a tone of urgency at five fathoms. With only ten feet of water beneath his keel, Bliven ordered a turn to the northeast, edging up the coast for ten miles more, ever alert to sheer back to deeper water at the first sign of an unknown shoal or wreck. These waters had had three hundred years to collect the bones of ships that ventured too close to the beach’s never-ending combers; Bliven envisioned their ribs rising like fishhooks to catch the unwary.
For the last five miles Sam waited on deck in civilian clothes, with Yeakel standing by to lower the captain’s gig and row him ashore. It was two nights after the new moon; the beach of fine, pale, fawn-colored sand that would have shown him in stark relief in moonlight would now offer him good concealment. He should have no difficulty blending into the town without raising comment.
Bliven came up behind him quietly and tested the knapsack strapped to his shoulders. “Well, how do you think you’re going to manage this?”
“Start with that lieutenant where we left all the small arms, I guess. Houston sent him there, so he is the safest guess to be in Houston’s confidence.”
“Quite right, but I wouldn’t just march right in. It’s been a while, as we said Mr. Potter will likely be in charge now. You might visit that lawyer of yours across the street and talk about your will. You can keep an eye out the window and see who comes and goes, maybe catch that Besanson fellow on the street and learn the lie of affairs.”
“That’s just what I was thinking. Have you a report you wish me to hand to General Houston?”
“No, your report must be oral. In the unlikely event that you fall into Mexican hands, we don’t want any papers on you.”
The inky night made the gig hard to make out only a hundred feet from the ship; Bliven and Sam raised their hands in farewells, and he ordered a lantern hung from the main fighting top to guide the gig in its return.
It was then, after Sam was out of sight, that Bliven found himself able to think more clearly about matters that had troubled him for days. He sent Ross to bring him tea with rum and sugar and quinine water. As soon as the gig returned and was hoisted up and secured, he ordered easy sail to stand south-southwest, angling away from the coast, so that by morning they would be in safely deeper water but would still be in the shipping lanes. Almost alone on the deck but for Lieutenant White, who had the watch and the wheel, Bliven sat himself on the hatch cover, elbows on his knees, his hands wrapped around the oversized porcelain cup of tea and medicine.
What cleared for him was the realization that these Texians, in their revolution fought on however shabby a scale it was, might well be acting out the very questions of duty and morality he had put to himself, though in abstract, two years previous. With the American administration now captured by the scheming, vulgar Jackson, he had asked himself then where one’s duty lay when the government to which he had always been loyal became a grotesque of itself.
Could Santa Anna be such a monster as he was portrayed? According to Austin, still sick from his year and a half of confinement without trial or charge, he was. Bliven had himself heard of Santa Anna, of his abrogating the constitution, of the massacre of thousands of civilians in Zacatecas, long before he was so unceremoniously sent to New Orleans or had any connection with these Texians. Had not Jefferson himself famously written that the tree of liberty must be watered now and then with the blood of patriots—and tyrants? Surely if there was a tyrant now in power in the New World whose blood could properly water the tree of liberty, it was Santa Anna.
Yet there were elements of the Texas revolution that smacked merely of rhetoric. Did these Texians really think they should claim as a justification to revolt that they had been denied religious freedom when few of them had any intention of going to any kind of church anyway? Besides, they had accepted this condition when they entered the country. Most had never laid eyes on a priest. Might not these Texians merely be venting the same anti-Catholic hysteria that he had seen in Boston, not just shared but personified by someone as supposedly urbane and educated as Lyman Beecher?
And there were elements that remained unspoken. Slavery was illegal in Mexico, and it was the state government in Coahuila, not the national regime, that permitted its existence in Texas, so as to allow the creation of a cotton economy the same as in the American South. It caused him to wonder now whether there might have been something to the articles he had read in the Whig newspapers back home claiming that America’s sympathies were being fraudulently invoked to support an incipient new slave state. If that were true, then he himself was playing a part in the furtherance of slavery, the thought of which made him nauseous beyond the malarial fever working in his blood.
Or perhaps elements of all of these things were true, just as it was true that Mexico had granted these American colonists vast tracts of land—more land than any New Englander would know what to do with—to leave their mother country behind. They had forsworn their American citizenship and pledged their allegiance to Mexico. Surely Mexico was reasonable in requiring that they leave behind as well their American expectations of the almost boundless personal liberties they knew at home, and adapt to life as it was known to millions of other Mexicans.
On the other hand, is not the right to self-government so fundamental that it cannot be bartered away? The twenty-five or thirty thousand Americans now in Texas—no one knew exactly how many, for there had never been a census—had pledged their loyalty to a constitutional government that no longer existed. The question then reduced itself to whether the American colonists’ obligation to Mexico ended when that country sank into chaos and despotism.
Bliven sipped the last of his tea and nodded slowly; he could leave the argumen
t there and perform his duty as he was ordered with a clear conscience—but with the proviso that if it became clear that American policy was using him to aid slavery, he would resign his commission and go home to stay. More fundamentally, he recognized now how Providence had been rubbing his nose in slavery, and Catholicism, since Jamaica, and Haiti, and the Castillo de San Marcos, and the nunnery that had burned down in Boston. For some purpose, he was supposed to understand all this.
9
The Tree of Liberty
Once ashore, Sam quickly found the strip of firm sand between the surf line and the soft dunes where he had sunk ankle-deep with each step, providing him an avenue eastward to the city. The town of Galveston sheltered on the harbor side of the island, and three times Sam turned north to surmount the dunes, each time seeing only marsh and knowing he had still farther to walk. It was on the fourth attempt that he descried rooftops, and beyond them masts in the harbor.
He walked into the town from the south, nearing the harbor and at last seeing the waterfront warehouse guarded by sentries, with the flag flying before it, where they had deposited their cargo of small arms. He entered a boardinghouse across the street and bought some breakfast. Not knowing from what direction he might first see Besanson, if he saw him at all, it was a great surprise to see him pass by the boardinghouse window right beside him. He had only met the man the one time, but Sam was certain it was he: tall and swarthy, black hair, an angular face, and a big Gallic beak of a nose. Before he could pass, Sam was at the door and stepped outside. “Lieutenant Besanson, good morning.”
He turned in surprise. “Why, good morning.”
“If you join me, I will buy your breakfast.”
“Gladly.”
They shook hands and Sam conducted him inside.
“I am sorry, you have taken me by surprise, and I do not recall your name,” Besanson said.
“Bandy.”
“Yes, Samuel Bandy, of course. Where is your uniform?”
“I thought it best to enter the town discreetly until I should learn the lie of things.”
“And it is well that you did. We are reaching a crisis here. In fact, everything in Texas is reaching a crisis.”
They fell silent as the proprietress, a stout brunette virago who appeared unduly curious, brought Besanson breakfast of eggs and ham and toasted bread, and Sam handed her an American silver half dollar. “My friend and I have much to discuss, and I would be grateful if you could keep our cups of coffee full.”
She closed her hand around the coin. “I guess I can do that well enough. Is your food all right?”
“It is very satisfactory indeed.” When she was gone he turned back to Besanson. “What do you mean? Are you still in General Houston’s confidence?”
“I am, but I am now in command only in the absence of Mr. Potter, who has been named secretary of the navy and commander of the port. You and your captain were expecting this development, I believe.”
“Yes, it comes as no surprise.” He nodded toward the armory. “Is he here?”
“No, he is with the army at present, and then most likely must go to New Orleans to see to fitting out our ships. He was here, and he was fit to be tied when he heard talk of a Texas warship here before he was. He has been relentless in his interrogations about you and your captain. You would think he has his hands full, with two new ships at sea and two more fitting out in New Orleans.”
“Indeed? What sorts of ships?”
“Small armed schooners, about a hundred tons each. Nothing to keep a great fuss over, but they are a match for Mexico’s little cruisers and can certainly take any merchantman when they like.”
“What sort of man is Potter?”
“Oh, God, he is the most snotty-nosed short little turd of a man I have ever met. If I were not a Christian I would wish him struck dead. He learned, of course, that a purported Texas warship had been in port, and he saw how you supplied the armory, and he has been sniffing like a bird dog ever since to bring you under his command. He has published a circular declaring you to be pirates and licensing a vessel of any nation to bring you in for trial.”
“Well, our commissions from General Houston will stand proof against that. But you say he is out of town for now?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Is there a government? How goes the war?”
“Badly. You knew about the Alamo before you left here.”
“That is right.”
“Do you know about Goliad?”
“No. What about Goliad?”
“Fannin and his entire army are lost.”
“What! How?”
“Houston ordered him to blow up the fort, fall back, and join him, but the silly man dawdled and dallied until Urrea’s southern column overtook him. There was a big battle at Coleto; Fannin was surrounded and Urrea offered him terms. Said they would be treated as prisoners of war until they could be sent home to the United States. So Fannin and his men surrendered and were locked up in the presidio. Santa Anna heard about it and blew up. Sent positive orders that all of them were to be shot, and so they were, four hundred of them. They surrendered honorably under terms and then were murdered. Some few of them escaped by running into the woods or diving into the river, which is how we learned the news.”
“Oh, my God.”
“If people hated Santa Anna after the Alamo, you cannot even imagine the feeling about him now.”
“Where are the armies now? How does it stand?”
They fell quiet again as they were served more coffee.
“As I said, things have reached a crisis. Houston and Santa Anna are both twenty or thirty miles north of here. The battle must come at any day.”
“How do I get to Houston? I was put ashore last night on the western portion of the island with a report for him that is most urgent.”
“God, Bandy, that is hard. I don’t know. At last report, Houston was north of Buffalo Bayou, and Santa Anna was south of it. That puts the Mexican army between you and him. Let me think.”
“Is there a way to get around him?”
“Maybe. Can you sail a small boat?”
“Of course.”
“Do you know the bays hereabouts?”
Sam shook his head. “No, not at all.”
“Then I must go with you. We have a small boat. The nearest place where we can get news is Morgan’s Point; then we can decide further.”
“Will you not be missed here?”
“Did you not understand? The whole issue of revolution will be decided any day now. You must get to General Houston, and I can get you pretty close. If Houston is victorious, we will be heroes. If he suffers the same fate as the Alamo and Fannin, I will be that much closer to striking out for Louisiana and safety. Let us hope it does not come to that. Come, there is a paper on my desk that you must have.”
As they crossed the street, Sam cast his glance into the bay, noticing the morning light. He never knew why it happened, but the air at the seaside always seemed to shimmer; perhaps it was from the evaporation of the salt water, but sunlight through it always made objects seem to waver and float. It was a mystery that he never grew tired of, even as he marked that the earth and its beauty seem to take no cognizance of human violence and desperation.
Inside the armory, he surveyed the cases of muskets, barrels of powder, and lead bars, unmoved since they had deposited them there.
“Here, you might like to have a copy of this,” said Besanson. Sam took it and squinted, for he did not have his spectacles with him.
THE NAVY DEPARTMENT
of the
REPUBLIC OF TEXAS
A PROCLAMATION
WHEREAS, the people and nation of Texas have undertaken a war of revolution against the despotism of Mexico, and we are determined to prosecute the said war according to the laws and customs of civilized nation
s; and
WHEREAS, there has been of late operating in the waters of the Gulph of Mexico a ship, supposed to be a large sloop-of-war, operating under the presumed name of the Texas Warship Gonzales, that has committed depredations upon the neutral shipping of the United States, and perhaps of other nations; now be it
PROCLAIMED: that the presumed Texas Warship Gonzales has in fact no connection to the Republic of Texas, and is piratical, and therefore the navies and merchant ships of all nations are enjoined to capture or aid in capturing this vessel and her crew; and be it further
PROCLAIMED: that a reward of five thousand dollars will be paid to the master, to be held in trust for his government or ship’s owner, that does deliver the said ship Gonzales into the port of Galveston, to face the justice of the Republic of Texas.
BY ORDER:
Robert Potter
Secretary of the Navy
Commander of the Port of Galveston
Sam looked up and smirked. “That is not how you spell ‘Gulf.’”
“Mr. Potter is not a man to brook correction on any point. But look now, these have been in circulation in New Orleans for some time now; he had a stack sent there by express messenger.”
“Your two ships now in operation—are they aware?”
“Yes, they put in here for orders.”
“May I have a second copy? If I live to see Captain Putnam again, he will surely want to have one.”
Besanson handed it to him, then picked up a rolled blanket from the floor by the wall and took a pistol with a powder horn and sack of balls from a hook on the wall.
* * *
* * *
In the port’s twenty-foot sailing skiff, a southerly wind carried them across Galveston Bay. They kept to the western shore of Trinity Bay and then proceeded into the broad estuary of the San Jacinto River. By midafternoon they raised land ahead of them, the promontory of Morgan’s Point.
