The French Admiral (35 page)

“There's Frog ships on the river we can see from here. Might want to post a lookout against anyone signaling them from the house with a light or something.”

“Excellent!” Governour congratulated him. “You're nackier than I first thought. Let them see your people; I'll hide most of my troops. Now, about the boats. Is there enough here to repair them?”

“Have no idea.” Alan sighed. He took a swig of his port and got to his feet. “Suppose I'd better go look before it gets dark. So we can get started on it in the morning.”

“I won't make any demands of your sailors, then. Keep half of them on guard by the boats. Burgess and I will bivouac half our people in the woods to stand guard while you get on with your repairs.”

Alan finished his wine and went out through the back to the kitchen shed. He found a ham on the sideboard and carved himself off a healthy hunk, cut a wedge of cornbread from a skillet that had been set out to cool and headed for the barns, munching happily on his impromptu meal. Suddenly it hit him. Governour had almost shooed him out the door. He had not issued an order or made a suggestion, but it was his conversation that had gotten him moving when he would have much preferred to sit and drink and fall asleep on the settee. Damn you for a nacky one yourself, Governour! I'll have to study on how you did that.

Several of his sailors were trying to talk to the black women in the back gardens and stable area, and the slave women were responding shyly. The hands would consider them ripe for the plucking, much on par with the for-hire doxies they had grown familiar with on the islands, but the men had little or no money. It could get ugly if controls were not placed on them soon.

“Coe,” Alan called, summoning his senior hand.

“Sir.”

“There's rum and Frog spirits in the cellar of the house. We'll have an issue with supper,” Alan said. Then he laid down strict instructions regarding dealings with the women. Any man who laid hands on one who did not cooperate willingly would be flogged half to death, as would anyone who looted or got drunk. They settled on several of the nearest slave cabins as quarters for the men so they could be watched and supervised more easily. Tired as the hands were, they were put to work cleaning them and making them more civilized. Storehouses would be searched by Coe personally for victuals, and abandoned cooking pots would be given out so the men could cook their dinners, appointing their own cooks if they could not cajole some of the idle women to do for them.

Sensing that he had given his men enough to do for the moment, Lewrie went on to speak with Feather, who was at the door of the larger barn with another older sailor.

Feather made an attempt to knuckle his injured brow as Lewrie joined him. He was chewing slowly on a plug of tobacco he had cut from an opened keg, a huge straight-sided barrel full of twisted leaves.

“Anything to repair the boats, Feather?” Alan asked him.

“Rope, nails, barrel staves,” Feather said, pausing to spit a juicy dollop of tobacco to the side. “A full carpenter's shop, sir.”

“So we may begin in the morning at first light,” Alan said.

“Aye, sir. Might take a look at mine, too, sir. 'Twas workin' more'n I liked. They's pitch an' tar out back, so's we kin pay all the seams while we're at it. But, beggin' yer pardon, sir, I don't know what we're adoin' with them boats oncet they's repaired. The 'ands is askin'.”

“We're staying free, Feather,” Alan said. “If that means getting out of the Chesapeake altogether past the French, then so be it.”

Alan had not really considered a course of action. His only hope had been to get back on dry land without drowning in a leaking boat. Then perhaps they might go back to Yorktown, but Lieutenant Chiswick's observation upriver had made that moot; there was nothing to go back to, not if Cornwallis had not been able to break out. The French and the Rebels would never have stopped that killing barrage unless they thought the end was near.

“Outa the Chespeake, sir?” Feather wondered. “Doubt we'd make it in them barges. Why, it must be nigh on forty mile ta the other shore, an' the 'ands'd never be able ta row that far, not in one night, an' them old things'd be pure shit ta try sailin'. 'Sides, we ain't got no masts ner sailcloth ner nothin'. An' why leave the bay, when the army's not five mile upriver? The French patrols'd get us quick as ya could say Jack Ketch, sir.”

“There's plenty of rope, you said,” Alan pointed out. “Enough to rig them with a mast each, though two short ones would be better with the shallow draft they have. There's timber enough about for masts and spars, and enough sacking in this barn to sew sails from.”

Alan did a quick survey of the barnyard. “Those wagon tongues are ready forked to fit around a mast—use 'em for booms. And look here.” He knelt down in the dust and drew quick sketches with his dirk. “Sacrifice two oars for gaff booms, or if nothing else, sew up some lug sails instead of getting too complicated. There's block and tackle in the drying barns for hoisting. Rig 'em loose footed to the boom, maybe even loose to the mast if that's easier, like a Barbary Coast lugger.”

“We could do it, I 'spect, Mister Lewrie, but them barges'd go ta loo'ard like a woodchip, an' unstable as the Devil,” Feather carped.

“What would make them more stable?” Alan asked. “More ballast or a heavier keel, a deeper one?”

“Mebbe any keel at all, sir.” Feather frowned, still unconvinced. “They's only 'bout six inches o' four by eight fer keel members now.”

“Below the hull?”

“Aye, sir, below the 'ull. Mebbe could nail on some barn sidin'.”

“You can tear this fucking barn down if you get some heavier timbers out of it,” Alan said. “The barges are what, over forty feet long and nearly nine feet in beam—wider than normal river barges. What if you bolted some heavier timber onto the existing keels? Surely there are some finished about, squared off, maybe twelve feet long or better. Channel 'em in the center to fit over what protrudes below the hull, drill holes and fit pine dowels through the holes, or through-bolt 'em if we find iron.”

“Wouldn't swim good.” Feather shook his head. “'Ave ta fair 'em in with somethin' fore an' aft o' the added piece.”

“We're not out to win a contract from the Board of Admiralty,” Alan scoffed. “It doesn't have to be pretty. It doesn't even have to be all that fast, just as long as it will sail upright.”

“'N then there's freeboard, Mister Lewrie. Might 'ave to add on ta the gunnels 'bout six more inches.”

“Barn siding nailed into the existing gunwales.”

“Mebbe. But they'd still make a lot o' leeway.”

“Shallops, Mister Feather,” the older seaman finally said through his own cheekful of tobacco twist. “Iver see 'em Dutchie coasters up in N'York? Got leeboards t'either beam. Swings 'em up outen th' warter on a 'ub.”

“Well, I don't know nothin' 'bout that . . .” Feather stiffened at an unwanted suggestion from a common seaman. The hands were trained by society and by the harsh discipline of the Fleet to sit back and let the warrants and petty officers come up with the miracles, with an occasional flash of genius from the gentlemen officers that the middle ranks would translate into organized action. Talking without being given permission was, in some tautly run ships, an offense.

“Then I suggest you find out!” Alan barked, exasperated with the petty officer's intransigence. “We have two choices, Mister Feather. We repair these damned barges, make them seaworthy, and get across to the other coast to escape, or we get taken by the French and the Rebels as prisoners of war, if they even give us a chance. We are on our own out here, so the sooner we get on our way, the better!”

Feather was used to taking orders, used to having an officer at hand to tell him what to do. He was not an imaginative man or a creative one. In the absence of authority, he had been floundering. But with the midshipman making loud noises pretty much resembling those of a commissioned lieutenant, he fell into line readily. His former stubbornness dropped away like a veil, and when Alan left them, after delivering an order that they would begin boat construction at first light the next morning, Feather and the older seaman were busily drawing in the dust, walking about their plans and spitting tobacco in a juicy fit of naval architecture.

Once the slave cabins had been swept out and prepared for quarters, the men turned to washing up their few garments, scrubbing the worst dirt from their bodies, and getting ready for the evening meal. Alan saw to the simmering pots that contained haunches of a fresh-slaughtered pair of sheep, inspecting the snap beans and ears of corn that would be the hands' suppers. Women were baking cornbread for them, and there were more smiles and flirtatious looks passing between his sailors and the slaves than before.

“Let them turn in after supper,” Alan directed Coe. “We'll start on the boats in the morning. Just as long as there is no trouble.”

“Won't be, Mister Lewrie.” Coe smiled. “Once they eat their fill an' 'ave their grog, they'll be droppin' like tired puppies. Won't be no trouble from 'em tonight, I lay ya.”

“I can believe that.” Alan smiled back, realizing how bone-weary he was himself. His clothing itched and still smelled like dead fish—foul as a mud flat. He could feel grit every time he moved. “I'll be berthing in the house, if I'm needed.”

He entered the house through the back door and clumped to the parlor to pour himself a drink. There was a decanter of rhenish out on the sideboard already, and he filled up a large glass of it, slumping down on the settee once more in weariness. Someone had lit a fire in the parlor, and he stared at the dancing flames as the hard wood began to take light from the pine shavings and kindling beneath it, almost mesmerized by exhaustion. Before his eyes could seal themselves shut with gritty sleep, Governour and Burgess came into the house by the front doors, forcing him to sit up and try to look alert.

“It's quite homey,” Governour said happily, plopping down into a large wing chair nearer the fire and putting his legs up on a hassock.

“How are your men?” Burgess asked Lewrie. He poured himself a drink from the sideboard.

“Cleaned up, ready to eat and get their grog ration. Coe assures me they'll sleep like babies after last night.”

“Mine, too,” Burgess replied, coming to sit next to him on the settee. “Let some of them sleep the afternoon away so they'd be fresh on guard mount for the night. Lookouts are posted for anything, coming or going.”

“Good,” Alan said automatically, glad to leave their security in the capable hands of the North Carolina Volunteers.

“Now, what do we do to escape this muddle?” Governour asked from his chair, leaning back and almost lost behind the wings.

Alan outlined what they would do to make the barges sea-worthy and where he hoped to go with them once they were ready to take the water.

“You are confident we can make it?” Governour said.

“We would have to leave at dusk, since there is no cover out in the inlets and marshes,” Alan said slowly. “We'd be spotted if we left earlier. Only trouble is, the tide will be fully out and slack then, so we'll have to slave to get the barges poled out into deep water. Once we have depth enough, we may do a short row east through a pass called Monday Creek, north of Guinea Marsh and Big Island, if Feather has his geography right. Hoist sail there. It's forty miles or more to the eastern shore. With any decent wind at all, even against the incoming tide flow, we could . . .”

He paused to use his brain, and it was a painfully dull process.

“Yes?” Governour asked, thinking Alan asleep with his eyes wide open.

“Say . . . three knots over the ground at the least. We could make forty miles in twelve hours. Fetch the far shore around half past six the next morning, if we left here about half past four or so.”

“Have to lay up for the day,” Burgess said. “We don't know what the Rebels have for a coast watch on the other shore, if any.”

“Yes,” Alan agreed. “Then, another thirty miles or so the next night to get out to sea. There are islands off the coast we could lay up in until we spot a British ship. Or skulk from one to the other on our way north. There will be someone patrolling.”

“But how do we get out past the French fleet?” Burgess asked.

“We stay close inshore round Cape Charles,” Alan told him. “The main entrance they're guarding is south of the Middle Ground by Cape Henry. Nothing of any size may use the Cape Charles pass, and with our shallow draft we could negotiate the shoals close under the cape in the dark, where even an armed cutter could not pursue us.”

“What about rations?” Burgess asked.

“Plenty here,” Governour said. “Bake enough pone or way-bread for all of us. Casks enough for storage. More water kegs. Meat would be a problem once it's cooked. Or we could slaughter and pack it in brine in small kegs, enough for two or three days at short commons.”

“Too bad we could not jerk some meat, Governour,” Burgess said. “I have no idea about domestic animals or the chance for fresh game on the eastern shore, or whether it would be safe to hunt.”