How Dark the Night (8 page)

Caleb Cutler and George Hunt had no difficulty hearing Endicott. Neither man put any stock in Endicott's prediction of a pending financial catastrophe; annual revenues and profits for both Cutler & Sons and C&E Enterprises were climbing toward record levels. Yet Endicott refused to be consoled.

T
HE VESSEL
assigned to convey Richard and Katherine Cutler from Boston to Barbados had joined the Cutler fleet just two months earlier following sea trials under the watchful eye of her captain, Frank Bennett, a burly, no-nonsense Hingham native whose services had recently been acquired by Cutler & Sons. Launched at Fell's Shipyard in Baltimore—the same shipyard that gave birth to the superfrigate
Constellation
, in which Richard had served as second lieutenant in the war with France—she belonged to a new breed of two-masted schooners and brigantines called “Baltimore clippers,” both because of their Maryland heritage and because many of them were actually built in Baltimore. Prized for their exceptional speed with or against the wind, they were normally 100 feet at the waterline and featured a heart-shaped midsection with a short keel and strongly raked stem, stern post, and masts. The low-sided, sharp-lined,
sharp-bowed hull permitted minimum freeboard. Typically, these sleek, jaunty vessels boasted no figurehead, headboard, or trailboard, and most were painted black.

The schooner
Dove
carried no square topsail on her mainmast as some clippers did. Instead she carried a large quadrilateral fore-and-aft sail on her taller mainmast and a larger quadrilateral sail on her taller mainmast. Adding in her three headsails, her sail plan was designed for maximum maneuverability and sail-handling efficiency. She also carried four 6-pounder guns, two on each side on her weather deck, plus six 3-foot swivel guns mounted three to a side on y-shaped brackets bolted to the outside of her hull—all there to ward off pirates and other maritime miscreants.

Speed was a clipper's primary asset, but it was also a bit of a liability. Because of their speed and maneuverability, Baltimore clippers were fast becoming the vessels of choice for pirates, privateers, and slavers. Thus the need for
Dove
's naval-style guns, the cost of which, though not insignificant, was minimized thanks to a long-standing business relationship between Cutler & Sons and the Cecil Iron Works of Havre de Grace, Maryland. It was a relationship first forged by John Rodgers, who had served with Richard in the French West Indies and whose father was a close friend of Stephen Hughes, the proprietor of Cecil Iron Works. Hughes had supplied the guns for
Constellation
at government expense, but he had subsequently agreed to a generous discount on the cost of guns supplied to vessels of Cutler & Sons and C&E Enterprises that were paid for from family funds. It was the promise of such steep discounts that had prompted Jack Endicott, who had supplied the majority of the startup capital for C&E Enterprises, to offer the Cutler family a 50 percent share in the Far East business venture.

Leave-taking for Richard and Katherine came on a cloudless and unusually warm day for the third week of March. At the docks in Hingham to see them off were Diana and her fiancé, Peter Sprague; Agreen and Lizzy Crabtree; Peter's parents; and a host of Hingham residents, many of them the same friends who had stood vigil on Main Street during the night immediately following Katherine Cutler's surgery. Everyone agreed it was God's blessing to see her looking so hale and hearty, and so clearly excited by what lay ahead.

“See you in May, Richard,” Agreen said soberly to Richard as they clasped hands at dockside. In years gone by, he would have offered an off-color remark regarding the loose morals and insatiable sexual appetites of the scantily clad minxes awaiting Richard's arrival in the exotic Windward Islands. Today he did not.

“In May,” Richard acknowledged, and then stepped down into the packet boat that was to take them to Boston, where
Dove
and the remainder of his family were waiting to say farewell. He helped Katherine on board and then helped stow their luggage for the brief trip. At the command of her master, the mainsail was raised, the jib set, and the mooring lines cast free, and the packet boat edged away from the quay, the southwesterly breeze quickly filling her sails on a beam reach.

In Boston, the transfer to
Dove
was made quickly and comfortably. After another round of farewells to family members and friends,
Dove
nosed out of Boston Harbor under jib and mainsail, sailing before the wind with a handpicked crew of nine sailors—five of whom had served in
Portsmouth
during the war with Tripoli—Captain Bennett, and mate Bob Jordan. Once clear of the lighthouse on Little Brewster Island, Captain Bennett ordered the clipper's foresail, fore staysail and flying jib set. With the extra press of canvas and a fifteen-knot offshore breeze kicking in,
Dove
leapt forward like a living being, her sails taut and thrumming at the leech. Foam creamed out from her stem as she drove through a light chop of cresting waves. Long past Provincetown she hauled her wind and headed southward on a close haul. Off the coast of Cape Cod and Nantucket—and the dangerous shoals lurking beneath those waters—
Dove
passed by a number of vessels bound for Georges Bank—named in honor of England's patron saint—and the rich harvests of cod and halibut there for the taking.

Since the beginning of the cruise, Katherine had stood either amidships, when the spray was active, or at the clipper's very bow, exhilarating in the splendor of the sun-drenched sea sparkling around her. Richard was concerned, for the sea air was cool, but he was loath to call her away and diminish her obvious joy. Plus, he knew from long experience that gainsaying Katherine when she was determined to do something was at best an act of futility.

“Very well, my lady,” he said to her late in the afternoon as he stood on her windward side amidships with an arm wrapped around her waist. “If you're going to remain topside, allow me at least to go below and get you another layer. I can see your breath, it's so cold, and the wind is not wont to show mercy even to you.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder. “As you wish,” she said happily. “But I promise you, I am not cold.” She looked up into his face, placed a hand on each side of his mouth, and kissed him hard on the lips, her mouth open. “Thank you,” she said softly, when reluctantly she pulled away from him.

“For what?” he asked.

“For this,” she answered, gesturing with both arms. “It has been a long time since I have felt so alive!”

Richard went below to the locker in the after cabin and took out a fleeced coat lined with goose down, the warmest he had brought. Back up on the weather deck, he walked aft along the flush deck to speak to Captain Bennett at the helm. “What are we making, Frank? Good Lord, it must be fifteen knots!”

“More like eighteen, Captain,” Bennett replied, allowing a rare glint of satisfaction to shine through, “last we threw over the chip log. We'll have a hundred fifty sea miles behind us by nightfall, another hundred by morning. If this wind holds, I daresay the crew and I will be taking supper Sunday night at Gleason's Pub in Bridgetown.”

“I doubt that,” Richard said, grinning, “but I appreciate your optimism.” He clapped Bennett on the shoulder and made to walk forward with the coat.

A word from Bennett stopped him. “Captain?”

“Yes, Frank?”

Bennett chewed his lower lip and pushed back the black hair blowing across his forehead. “I'm a bit concerned about your missus, sir,” he said finally. “Never in my life have I seen a woman so pleased to stand on a rolling deck. It's a marvel to watch, I admit, but I can't help being worried. In her state and all,” he added uncomfortably.

Richard nodded as a smile played across his lips. “I appreciate your concern, Frank. In fact, I suggest that you go up there and advise her to go below. But be forewarned: she tends to set her own mind on things, and it can be the very devil to change it. You're welcome to try, however. You have my blessing and I wish you the best of luck. I'll take the helm in the meanwhile.”

Bennett continued chewing his lip as he mulled the implications of Richard's suggestion. “That's all right, Captain,” he said eventually. “I'd be a fool to think I would have better luck than you. If it's all the same to you, I believe I'll just stay put.”

“A wise decision, Frank.”

W
ITH
R
ICHARD'S APPROVAL
, Bennett had shaped a course for the Caribbean that, once free of Cape Cod and the islands, took them southwestward and then south along the coast to North Carolina. Off the Outer Banks they pushed out to sea until they lay within easy reach of the highly predictable trade winds. Now comfortably within the warm caress
of these northeasterly breezes,
Dove
kept the wind two points abaft her beam on a course that, without unforeseen interference, her crew would likely not have to alter until they approached Barbados. This sailing plan involved considerably more sea miles than a more direct southerly approach into the Caribbean through the New Bahama Channel or the Mona Passage between Hispañola and Puerto Rico, but it also kept
Dove
clear of the pirate lairs that infested many of the more remote islands of the Bahamas, the Caymans, and the Greater Antilles.

Every day that conditions permitted it, Richard called out the crew for an hour to exercise the guns. Since each 6-pounder gun required three men to service it, Richard rotated the crew into two groups of four, with himself acting as the third gunner for each of the two guns exercised on a given day. The drills were intended to keep the men highly skilled in their gun assignments, but they were hardly necessary: every member of the crew save one had hands-on experience with naval gunnery, and each sailor respected Richard's own experience as commander of the gun deck in
Constellation
. On that deck he had outranked everyone, including, at Captain Truxtun's insistence, Captain Truxtun himself.

It was during such a drill on a cloudless, soporific day in early April, with
Dove
swaying lazily back and forth in the gentle Atlantic swells, that an urgent call came down from a lookout high in the foremast.

“On deck, there!”

Richard shaded his eyes and glanced up. Because they had crossed the latitude of the Tropic of Cancer at daybreak, he assumed that the young lookout had raised the British-held island of Anguilla. “Deck, aye! What is it, Walsh?”

“A ship-rigged vessel, sir,” Walsh yelled down with more than a note of worry in his voice. “She's showing all plain sails to royals.”

“Where away?”

“Broad on our larboard bow. She's following a reciprocal course, sir.”

Richard frowned. A ship-rigged vessel, signifying that she carried square sails on all three of her masts, was a vessel of consequence. The fact that she was showing all plain sails to royals strongly suggested that she was a man-of-war. To his surprise and disgust, he could already make out the white head of the foremast royal on the distant horizon ahead. She was, he calculated, only about five or six miles from them, and closing fast on a starboard tack.

Richard cursed under his breath. “Can you make out her ensign?” he shouted up through cupped hands.

“No sir. Not yet.”

“Stand by, Walsh. I'm coming up.” To Bennett at the helm: “Bring the wind to two points on her quarter, Mr. Bennett.” Bringing the wind onto her larboard quarter on a broad reach would shift
Dove
from a fast point of sail to her fastest point of sail. It would also set her on a course obliquely away from the oncoming vessel.

“Two points on her quarter, aye, Mr. Cutler,” Bennett acknowledged. To his mate he said: “Stand by to loose sheets!”

“Stand by to loose sheets!” Jordan shouted through a speaking trumpet. Instantly the crew responded by leaving the guns and assuming their sailing stations. At the mate's subsequent command, the sheets on all standing sails were eased out.
Dove
's jib-boom swung to starboard. When she had veered a full twenty degrees on the compass rose, Bennett ordered the sails sheeted home.

Richard stole a glance at his wife watching him intently by the bulwark amidships before clambering up the larboard ratlines on the mainmast shrouds, using the ship's heel to starboard to facilitate his climb. At the first crosstree he met Walsh, who offered a hand up. Richard ignored the hand and secured himself within the hempen cords, then took Walsh's long glass from him and brought it to his eye. He could make out little detail on the deck of the oncoming ship, although he would bet his life on the pedigree of those three towering pyramids of white canvas.

“Sorry, sir, I should have spotted her sooner. She came up sudden-like.”

Richard was too angry to trust himself to reply. Walsh was right. He
should
have spotted her sooner. A ship of that size does not appear “sudden-like” on a clear horizon on a relatively calm ocean. Walsh had been caught daydreaming, Richard concluded, a dereliction of duty that in the Navy would earn him twelve lashes at the grate even in peacetime. He felt the fury rise within him. Damn this youth for putting his wife and vessel in jeopardy! He rued the day he had agreed to sign on the eager young topman, the one sailor on board who lacked naval experience. He did have excellent vision and a thorough knowledge of ship design, which was why his primary responsibility on this cruise had been as a lookout. But daydreaming on watch!