The Saintly Buccaneer (22 page)

“How are things with you—in the chaplain business, I mean?” Charles asked Daniel. “Are the soldiers very religious?”

“Well, sir, I’m not with the army any longer. My uncle, General Greene, has assigned me to a new duty.”

“What is that?” Charles asked.

“Why, my fiancee and her father are owners of a privateer—
The Gallant Lady.
I’m first mate and master gunner.” Ordinarily Daniel Greene was a perceptive man, but he was so full of the past few months on the
Lady
that he did not see the flicker of warning in Adam Winslow’s eyes. He said with some excitement, “We’ve made six voyages in as many months, and we’ve taken more prizes than we thought possible, Mr. Winslow!”

As he spoke of the sea with all the enthusiasm of a newcomer to an art, he did not see that Charles Winslow’s lips were trembling, nor catch the warning shake of his head. Dorcas, too, was visibly shaken. Finally he paused, and realized from the awkward silence in the room that something was wrong.

Charles spoke slowly. “Paul was very fond of the sea. If he’d
not died, I think he would have made a most able sailor.” Then he turned and said in a whisper, “I’m not feeling well—pray excuse me, Adam—all of you—good of you to come ...”

As he left the room, the guests felt a sudden urge to take their leave. They made their exits as quickly as possible, and as soon as they were clear of the house, Daniel said to Adam, “I’m awfully sorry, Major! I never once thought—”

“It’s not your fault, Dan.” He put his hand in a kindly fashion on the young man’s arm, adding, “Don’t fret.”

Later on, Nathan brought up the subject, saying, “I know Uncle Charles wouldn’t think so—but it’s best that Paul died. He was marked for a bad end.”

Charity had been strongly affected by the evening. She wrote in her diary that night:

But that night, she dreamed again of Paul Winslow seizing her. In the dream she moved in slow motion, cutting his cheek open so that the blood ran in crimson rivulets down his maimed cheek. Suddenly her eyes flew open, and she found herself screaming, “Don’t! Don’t come back!” as she woke
up, drenched with sweat and so terrified that she could hardly breathe. Filled with fright, fists clenched, she sat straight up in bed waiting for dawn.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE PRIVATEER

A sea gull, wheeling motionless upwind, suddenly flapped its wings until it hovered stationary, and screamed raucously as it made a swooping dive at the wake of the ship below. Daniel followed it with his eyes from his perch high on the mizzenmast, smiling as he thought how he’d overcome his fear of heights.
Only six months ago,
he thought as he swept the horizon automatically,
I was hanging on to these shrouds until my knuckles were white!

A fragment of something arrested his gaze, and he instantly whipped the heavy brass telescope up and peered intently across the glittering green waters. He adjusted instinctively to the roll of the
Lady,
and after one quick look called out, “Deck! Sail off port bow!”

He slipped the telescope under his belt and slid down the ratlines as easily as a squirrel. When his feet touched the deck, he handed the telescope to a young sailor, “Thad, get aloft and keep an eye on that ship.”

Thad Alden nodded curtly, and his “aye, sir” was barely audible. Dan twisted his head and framed a sharp rebuke, but changed his mind as he watched the slender youth climb upward. He shrugged and tried to forget, but he knew that sooner or later he would have to rebuke the boy. Ever since Dan had come aboard as First Mate, young Alden had been sullen. He was totally in love with Charity, had been since he was thirteen years old, and his bitter hostility was obvious
to the crew. Charity had tried to soften his attitude, but he had stubbornly refused to change.

“Maynard, I’ll have the guns manned.”

“Aye, sir!” Giles Maynard, a husky Frenchman, began to call out orders, and soon the deck was a beehive of activity. The powder monkeys scurried below deck to bring the linen bags of powder topside, while the gun crews freed the guns from the tackle that held them firmly in place.

Dan looked fondly at the twin rows of guns and remembered the long arguments he had had with some of the crew who served as gunners on the King’s warships. He’d spent as much time as possible with General Knox’s men, especially a tall gunner named Ericson, captain of a gun crew on the
Victory.
Ericson had listened carefully as Dan explained the plan to arm a new privateer, and had given him some revolutionary advice.

“It ain’t never been tried that I knows of,” Ericson had said. “But was I in your place, I’d use long guns.”

“Long guns?” Dan had questioned in a puzzled voice. “I’m afraid of long guns. Their pivots are too high and they weigh too much. They’d make us too slow and heavy.”

“Not if you mount ’em on carriages.”

“What about carronades?”

“‘Course you got to have ’em—but they’re for close work. They’re fat guns and can sweep a deck, right enough—but you got to remember that other ship’s goin’ to have carronades as well. What they won’t likely have is long guns. You can stand off and take shots at them till you break them up, then get close and finish what’s left with the carronades.”

Ericson had convinced Dan, and he had spent weeks searching for long eighteens, traversing pieces, and ten eighteen-pound carronades. He moved across the deck now, pleased with the result of his labors, for port and starboard bristled with ominous cannon, and the crews that manned them were sharp and quick in their movements.

“What’s away, Dan?” Captain Alden had popped out off the quarter deck and was staring eagerly around the horizon.

“Sail in sight, Captain. Too far to make her out.”

Charity cleared the ladder, and as she hurried across the deck to stand beside them, Dan thought once again how impossible it had seemed for a woman to live on a fighting ship—but she had made it possible.

“We’re about out of room, Dan.” She raised up on her toes to see more clearly through the lines, the brisk wind molding her clothing to the slim lines of her body as she stretched. There had been one scene six months earlier, when Dan had tried to convince her to wear a dress. She had stared at him in surprise, then laughed. “I can’t go up the mast in a party dress, can I now?”

She wore a pair of dark blue linen trousers, a red and white cotton shirt, and her hair tied in place with a bright red kerchief. The men, of course, had been slow to adjust to having a pretty, young woman on board, and several of them had taken liberties with their language in speaking to her—but that didn’t last long. Dan had simply waited for an example—a hulking brute named Olsen. When the Swede had made a crude remark to Charity in Dan’s hearing, he reprimanded, “Olsen, I could have you under the cat for that—but maybe you’d like to face me man-to-man.”

Olsen had grinned in anticipation. “Why, I’ll take you up on that, mate.”

It had been a simple matter; the Swede, for all his strength, was awkward. Dan had let the man wear himself out swinging, then stepped in and with a crashing blow to the sailor’s blunt jaw had driven him across the deck. It had taken six more knockdowns, for the man had the stamina of an ox, but finally his face was a bloody mask and he lay there an inert mass. There had been no more incidents, and if the men chose to sneak a look, they did it secretively.

“Looks like a brig,” Captain Alden decided after the three
had watched carefully. “Lying low in the water—like she’s loaded.”

“We’ll have to go back if she is,” Charity advised. “Three fat prizes! Not bad for a month’s cruise!”

When they were close enough to make out details, Dan reported, “She’s got twelve guns—five on a side and two in the stern.”

“Probably carronade as well,” Charity added.

The men, eager for prize money, were shouting, “Take her! Take her!”

Captain Alden asked, “You think like I do, Charity?”

“Take her!” Charity responded, and Dan turned and called out, “Double-shot the long guns!”

As they drew nearer, they could clearly see that the ports were open and the guns manned. She was flying a British flag and ran on silently, a beautiful, high-sided ship, her mass of sails ruddy in the sun. A cloud of smoke puffed from her stern and a spout of water shot into the air two hundred yards ahead of the
Lady
well off line.

“That’s a twenty-four-pounder!” Dan said quickly. “We can outrange her and take her from here.” It was exactly the sort of action he had fitted the
Lady
for, and they had taken nine rich prizes in the same fashion over the past months. “Open fire!”

Lige Smith sighted his long eighteen. The deck jerked, the gun roared, and white smoke covered the deck briefly. There was a distant crackle, like a dog crunching a stick between his jaws. A small cabin on the British ship seemed to fly apart into a million splinters. Almost before the smoke was cleared, the gun was ready. The gun crew moved with what seemed to be leisurely movements, but actually with precision beyond the ability of most gun crews.

“Caught her that time!” Captain Alden yelled. A starshaped patch of white splinters appeared at the ship’s waterline.

It was suicide to resist, and the ship dipped its flag in a
surrender sign. It was a matter of minutes until Captain Alden and Dan were aboard. She was the ship
Blue Cloud,
James Tennant, master, from St. Thomas to the Indies, 518 tons and laden with a wealth of cargo.

“I should have stayed with the convoy another day,” Tennant mourned. His remark caused Alden and Greene to exchange a quick glance.
Good luck for us and bad for the British,
Dan thought with a surge of pleasure.

“Well,” Dan responded carelessly, “we’d have got you in the end. It’s probably a small convoy and weakly guarded—like most we find in these waters.”

“Not so little—and not so weakly guarded!” Tennant shot back. “Twenty-two sail and guarded by a frigate!”

Dan stared at him, then shrugged. There was no way for the
Lady
to take on a ship of that size, so he gave the orders, and the hard work of shifting the cargo to the smaller ship began. By late afternoon Charity informed him, “No room for any more, Dan. We’re stuffed with cargo.”

“Hate to sink that ship,” Dan commented. “She’d bring forty thousand back home.”

“Maybe next time we can bring prize crews,” she mused.

“Maybe.” Dan gave the order, and Lige blew a hole in the bottom of the ship. She sank quickly, and Dan looked away soberly. “Could be us, Charity.”

“No. God’s with us, Dan. We’ll be all right.”

There was a feast for everyone that night, even the prisoners who were stacked together into two small cabins. The enemy ship had been filled with galley stores, and the crew ate as few of them ever had.

In the great cabin, Malloy, the steward, served the captain’s table with a liberal hand. The table was small, just large enough for Captain Alden, Charity, Dan, Middles, Conrad, and Lester. Rufus Middles was a fat man who served as sailmaker, but had considerable medical experience—having been apprenticed to a physician at one time. Laurence Conrad, the coxswain, was a tall, thin man, almost cadaverous.
He was an incurable pessimist outwardly. Miles Lester was an older man, pushing sixty. But he had the bright eyes and indefatigable stamina of a much younger man.

All of them waded through a dozen courses—a huge joint of beef, chicken, kidney pie, steaming hot vegetables, plum duff and fruit washed down with rough, dry Cape Town wine and topped up with port. The captain did not drink, nor did Dan or Charity, but the others imbibed freely.

Finally they all leaned back, and Lester stated contentedly, “Well, man and boy, I’ve been aboard ships—but never a meal like that!” He took out a battered briar pipe, and soon the cabin was fragrant with the blue smoke rising from the bowl. “I suppose it’s back home, eh, Captain?”

“Well, I suppose...”

“I think we might have a nibble at the convoy the captain of that Britisher told us about,” Dan suggested.

Conrad stared at him in surprise, his thick eyebrows rising. “Whatever for, Greene? We’re loaded to the waterline now!”

“That’s right,” Middles agreed. His fat face was sweaty in the lamplight, and he was so full of food he groaned as he leaned forward. “We get this ship back and we’re all rich. I say set sail right now.”

“A few days won’t make any difference,” Dan argued. “We might be able to pick off a stray.”

“And do
what
with her?” Conrad’s frown grew stronger and he demanded suddenly, “Didn’t that captain say there was a frigate guarding the convoy?”

“Well, he did say that—”

“Then we don’t need to be hanging around these waters!”

“I agree with Conrad, Dan. That frigate can throw enough iron to blow the
Lady
out of the water.” Lester’s wise old eyes were blue as a summer sky, and his wealth of experience commanded everyone’s respect.

Charity looked at Dan. “What’s your thinking?”

There was a pause as the big Quaker thought about his words. He was quick in action, but there was a characteristic
way that came from his Quaker background—a slowness, perhaps the result of many hours sitting in “Meeting” waiting until the Inner Light fell on one of the Friends. Charity had heard him say that it was not unusual for a group to sit stock-still for two hours in absolute silence until one of the number heard from God.

The cabin was quiet as he paused, the silence broken only by the creaking of the timbers and the faint cry of a seaman calling out the watch change topside. Finally he spoke. “Maybe it’s a great thing to be rich—though it’s not something I’ve given much thought to. I guess the winter I spent at Valley Forge changed me.”