Kings Pinnacle (17 page)

The altercation had left him
shaken and a bit unsure of himself. In England, he had always been
in charge and was the one who cooked up schemes for others to
follow. It was disheartening to have a plot backfire on him and to
lose his two best friends, along with his investment in the
muskets, all at once. These Americans were apparently a different
breed of cat, so he would have to reassess himself and his ability
to survive and prosper in this new land.

After a few hours’ ride,
Samuel had arrived in York, Pennsylvania where he spent the night
in an old inn. A few rounds of ale before turning in relaxed him
and helped him recover from his ordeal before he fell asleep for
the night. The next morning, he arose late and soon was riding back
toward Philadelphia. It took him several more weary days on the
trail to finally arrive in Philadelphia. Without his friends at his
side and with his moneymaking scheme gone awry, he had no idea what
he was going to do next.

As Samuel rode down the streets of
Philadelphia, he decided to stop at the same tavern where his
adventure to sell the guns had started.

“
I didn’t expect to see
you back so soon,” said the barkeeper.

“
I didn’t either,” replied
Samuel.

“
What happened to
you?”

“It’s a long story. Can you
bring me a tankard of ale?” asked Samuel with a sigh.

“
Of course, I can,” said
the barkeeper as he walked off to fetch the drink.

* * * *

Alex

“
Alex Mackenzie reporting
for duty,” said Alex, while saluting Captain Ellison McCoy as he
stood in front of Ellison’s desk at Fort Cumberland,
Maryland.

“Alex lad, we are a bit more
informal out here on the frontier. You don’t have to salute me or
anyone else around here,” replied Ellison as he held out his hand
to shake hands with Alex.

“Welcome to Fort Cumberland,
Alex,” he continued.

“
Thank you Sir, I am
looking forward to serving with the Rangers.”

“Good. Our job is mainly to
protect the settlers from raids by the Iroquois. We patrol this
frontier area north to the Pennsylvania border and south almost to
Winchester, Virginia. We also coordinate our activities with the
Virginia militia and the Pennsylvania militia. It’s a big area, and
we are stretched pretty thin to cover it.

“This fort is located at the
confluence of Willis Creek and the north branch of the Potomac
River. It is also a supply depot that occupies a strategic point to
defend the Maryland frontier. We have all stood on these parapets
and watched the smoke rising in the distance from the farms and
homes that the Iroquois were burning. Our primary job is to stop
that when it is happening and prevent it from happening
again.”

“I understand, sir. What
will my job be with the Rangers?” asked Alex.

“Well, Alex, we are short a
cook right now. Your first job will be to serve as one of the cooks
for the company,” replied Ellison.

“Thank you, sir. I’ll do my
best,” said Alex.

Of course, Alex was taken
aback and extremely disappointed that he was given the cook’s job,
but it was a better job than the one he had before he joined the
Rangers, which was no job at all. So he decided that he could live
with it. He was careful not to let his disappointment
show.

* * * *

Kings Pinnacle Part 3

Robert and Hugh

“
Wake up lads; rise and
shine! There’s an American colonial ship in the harbor that needs
loading,” shouted the short, red-bearded jailer into Robert and
Hugh’s cell.

“Can it nae find a way t’
load itself?” asked Hugh who turned over in his cot, rubbing the
sleep out of his eyes.

Robert got up from his cot
and looked out the barred window in the rear of the cell, which
provided a view to the Larne harbor. Sure enough, there was a ship
sitting at the dock that had not been there yesterday.

The time that Robert and
Hugh had spent in the Larne gaol seemed to drag by slowly. As near
as they could tell, they had been in the gaol for a little over six
months, and it was now the late fall of 1773. Every now and then,
they were taken out of their cell to perform some kind of manual
labor, which served to break up the monotony of their
incarceration. But overall, the days had blended into each other
until Robert and Hugh lost track of exactly how many days they had
been in the gaol.

“Ha! Let’s go lads,” said
the turnkey, putting his key into the rusty lock.

He unlocked the jail cell
door and ushered Robert and Hugh out of the gaol into the early,
frosty morning cold and onto Larne road. Hugh blew on his hands and
wrapped his scarf more tightly around his neck as soon as he
stepped out into the morning air.

“I didn’t see any ships in
the harbor yesterday,” said Hugh, who eyed the turnkey with
suspicion because Hugh thought he looked like a
leprechaun.

“Ha! It came in during the
night,” replied the turnkey.

“It’s the Dartmouth, fresh
out of London with a cargo of Bohea tea already on board and bound
for the colonies in America. She’s here to top off her cargo with a
load of Irish whiskey,” continued the turnkey.

“Och, whiskey and tea! That
sounds like a bad combination to me. Whiskey, I can load, if
they’ll let me sample a wee bit of it,” said the grinning
Hugh.

“Ha! There’ll be no time for
sampling, lad. Captain Hall’s anxious to sail on the morning tide,
just as soon as we can get him loaded,” said the jailer.

The turnkey marched them
from the gaol down to the dock and into a warehouse where the
whiskey was stored. One after another, the brothers lifted the
fifty pound wooden cases filled with Irish whiskey on their
shoulders. They carried the cases out of the warehouse, down the
dock, and up the gangplank of the Dartmouth.

The ship’s first mate then
led them down the ladder into the hold. They stacked and stowed the
cases while the ship’s bosun worked on balancing the cargo. The
Bohea tea chests were much larger; each one weighed about four
hundred pounds. The bosun showed Robert and Hugh where and how he
wanted the whiskey cases tied down beside the tea chests in the
hold.

The bosun was called away to
handle some last minute maintenance with the ship’s rigging, so he
left the two men on their own to complete the job, after he had
watched them stow the first few whiskey cases.

The turnkey sat down on a
barrel at the bottom of the gangplank, talking with several of the
sailors, while watching Robert and Hugh walk back and forth between
the ship and the warehouse carrying the whiskey cases.

After a few round trips from
the warehouse to the ship, Robert and Hugh stopped in the hold to
rest and catch their breath.

“Hugh, let’s pry the lid off
and scoop some of the tea out of a couple of these tea chests.
We’ll put the tea we scoop out in a couple of these old sacks that
I found in the back of the hold,” said Robert.

Hugh knew better than to ask
any questions. He kept his mouth shut and followed Robert’s orders,
since Robert obviously had hatched a plan. They pried the lids off
two of the tea chests and set the empty sacks near them. Each time
the brothers carried cases of whiskey down into the hold, one of
them spent a few minutes scooping tea out of two of the tea chests
into the sacks while the other one stowed the whiskey cases and
tied them down. After two hours of hauling and stowing cases of
Irish whiskey, the loading task was complete and two of the tea
chests were about half empty. Lying off to one side of the tea
chests were two sacks of tea that weighed about two hundred pounds
each.

“Hugh, help me carry these
sacks of tea up to the main deck and put them by the rail on the
side away from the dock,” said Robert.

It was a heavy lift and it
took them two trips to haul the two sacks up the ladder to the main
deck. There were no sailors nearby on the deck at the time, so the
two men completed the task without being seen. Standing next to the
rail, Robert lifted one of the sacks to his shoulders and Hugh
lifted up the other one. At almost the same time, Robert and Hugh
threw the sacks of tea over the rail and into the water. The force
of the sacks hitting the water made two loud splashes that sounded
like two men had dived from the ship into the cold
water.

As soon as the brothers had
thrown the sacks of tea into the water, they ran toward the hold
ladder as quickly as they could. Just before they descended the
ladder, Robert yelled, “Man overboard!” They scrambled down the
ladder and into the hold, where they climbed into the two half
empty tea chests. They lay down on the remaining tea and pulled the
chests’ lids over them. With their lids firmly in place, the tea
chests they were hiding in looked just like any of the other tea
chests that were stowed in the hold.

At the sound of the two
splashes and the “Man overboard!” yell, sailors from all over the
ship ran to the rail and looked into the water to see if they could
spot the men they thought had jumped overboard. The sailors and the
turnkey lounging at the bottom of the gangplank ran up it onto the
ship and over to the seaward rail to try to look for the men in the
water. But they could see nothing in the water except the circular
waves surrounding the splashes. The waves bounced off the ship’s
hull and were rapidly advancing out to sea.

“
Who went overboard?”
asked the jailer.

“I don’t know,” said Captain
Hall, who had walked up to join the crowd of men at the ship’s
rail.

“Ha! Has anyone checked to
see if my two prisoners are in the hold?” asked the
turnkey.

“I’ll have a look down
there,” said the bosun as he turned to climb down the ladder into
the hold.

“We’ll all take a look with
you,” said Captain Hall as he followed the bosun toward the hold
ladder.

The entire group descended
the ladder and searched the hold. After the prisoners could not be
found in the hold, the captain instructed the sailors to search the
rest of the decks and all the cabins of the ship. There was no sign
of Robert and Hugh anywhere on or off the ship, so the group
reassembled on the main deck.

“They must have jumped over
the rail and swum under water either away from the ship or under
it. Since no one saw them swimming at sea, they must have gone
under the ship. They are most likely hiding under the pier,” said
Captain Hall.

“Ha! They’ll have to come up
sometime or freeze to death in the water. I’ll collect them
shortly,” said the jailer.

“Well, the whiskey is all
accounted for and your prisoners are not on my ship. I’m not going
to miss the morning tide,” said Captain Hall.

“Ha! Good luck to you
Captain, and smooth sailing,” said the turnkey as he walked down
the gangplank with a smile on his face. He began searching under
the pier for Robert and Hugh.

“Cast off the hawsers and
prepare to edge away,” commanded Captain Hall as the sailors began
the process of readying the ship to leave the dock. After a few
minutes, the gangplank was pulled in, and the Dartmouth began to
slip its mooring and slowly move away from the dock as the outgoing
tide pulled it toward the ocean.

* * * *

Samuel

Samuel Ruskin was out of
options and feeling quite low about his life in America. His two
best friends were dead, and he had spent most of his money and lost
his investment in the rifles he had purchased in England. He had
worn out his welcome with the few other friends he had in
Philadelphia. He had stayed drunk for several weeks and after a few
months of wandering aimlessly around the city, he decided that it
was time for him to sober up do something for himself. The problem
was he didn’t have a clue what to do.

As he sat in his favorite
tavern drinking ale, he felt as if the world was coming down around
him. He had no prospects and was thinking about returning to
England when two British soldiers walked into the tavern wearing
their uniforms. He knew that they were off-duty infantrymen since
they weren’t carrying their rifles.

“
You two redcoats drink up
quick and then get the hell out of here fast,” said the barman to
the two infantrymen.

“Hold on there barkeeper;
these two lads are friends of mine. Come on over here and sit a
spell,” said Samuel as he ordered a couple of pints of ale for the
two soldiers.

Samuel had acted on a spur
of the moment impulse. He didn’t exactly know why, but he smelled a
profit and wanted to explore it before it passed him by. He didn’t
personally know the two soldiers but he was interested in learning
why they were not welcome in the tavern.

“
Why’s the barkeeper so
anxious for you two lads to get out of here?” asked Samuel, turning
to the soldier who held the rank of sergeant.

“Well, the British Army is
not too popular among the colonists right now. General Gage has
been moving British troops from their frontier stations back to the
big cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.
There are so many of us now in the cities that there are not enough
barracks to hold all of us. We have been forcibly quartered in
private residences, much to the dislike of the residence owners.
Food and other supplies have become scarce. The colonists still
hate us for the Boston Massacre that happened a few years ago.
They’ve started calling us redcoats and lobster backs,” said the
sergeant.