The French Prize (14 page)

The sun rose the following morning on a hazy sky and a wind fair for clearing Cape Henlopen, so they weighed even before the turn of the tide. With topsails, topgallants, and the foresail set they were able to stem the current with ease, and when at last the tide began to ebb they found themselves within a mile of the Capes. From there it was a matter of less than an hour's time before the waters emptying from the Delaware Bay swept them the balance of the way to sea, with Cape May passing down their larboard side, and, much nearer still, Cape Henlopen to starboard.

An hour after clearing the Capes, Jack found himself standing by the middle gun on the weather side, one foot on the gun carriage, his admittedly new favorite spot from which to look over the set of the sails. He was wrestling with a moral dilemma, but it was not much of a contest, since the easy way out, which he would have preferred, stood on very shaky legs. He gave a barely audible sigh, spun around, and approached Frost and Wentworth, who were standing by the leeward quarter and watching the shoreline disappear in their wake.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I would be honored if you would dine with me today in the cabin, four bells in the afternoon watch? Two o'clock,” he added.

“Delighted, Captain Biddlecomb, delighted!” Frost said. “Wentworth, what say you?”

Wentworth gave a small nod of his head in Jack's direction. “I should be honored, Captain,” he said. “But let me check my calendar. Oh, no, it appears I am quite free these next six weeks or more.”

“Very well, then,” Jack said, annoyed by Wentworth's tone of
noblesse oblige
, such condescension being the master's prerogative, not his passengers', but he said only, “It will be my pleasure to see you at table.”

It would have been a nightmare, in fact, hosting the gentlemen passengers in the cabin if Jack had been left to his own devices. He had put no thought into cabin stores and would have contented himself with the same salt pork and salt beef and dried peas and ship's biscuits and such that were served out in the forecastle.

Had he considered the possibility of having to entertain, he would have thought vaguely that something could be done to dress up the seamen's rations into a meal acceptable to a more discerning palate, and would have thought no more about it. That is, until confronted with the horrible reality that nothing could be done to render a seaman's fare edible to any but a seaman.

Such a transubstantiation certainly could not have been performed by the ship's cook, a former seaman of indeterminate but advanced age named Israel Walcott, a man whose chief qualifications for the job of cook were that he was willing to do it, he could boil water, he had been taught how to make a plum duff, and he was too lame to do anything else.

Nor would his steward have been of any help, a young man named Barnabus Simon foisted on Jack by Robert Oxnard for reasons Jack did not quite understand, but which had nothing to do with Jack's convenience or comfort. In their short time together Jack had formed the impression that Simon was lazy, incompetent, ignorant of his duties, sullen, and dishonest. Once they had cleared land and the inevitable dinner with the passengers was behind him, Jack was determined to send him packing to the forecastle.

It was Jack's mother, Virginia Biddlecomb, who had seen to it that dinner would not be an utter humiliation. Unbidden, she had sent aboard cabin stores consisting of cured and fresh beef, hams, vegetables, chickens in portable coops, a goodly supply of wine, brandy, and port, cheeses of various descriptions, real bread as opposed to ship's biscuit, along with well-fruited spice breads, dried fruit, butter, jam, and even some dishes prepared by Maurice the day before sailing and packed to travel.

Each of those dishes was made in quantities to feed upward of half a dozen men, as if Virginia had anticipated this very situation, which, in fact, she had. She had never asked for Jack's input or permission, because she knew he would have had nothing of value to add, would have dismissed the very notion and then deeply regretted it later.

At noon, after Jack had fixed their position, triangulating off the Capes, he commenced to badgering Simon to prepare the meal and set the cabin in order to receive guests. One of Maurice's dinners, an asparagus soup and rabbit fricassee, was heated in the galley on deck, and since Simon was not to be trusted with such a task it was done under the watchful eye of Lucas Harwar, whom Jack had shipped as second mate.

And so, after considerable effort and forethought by a number of people, none of them Jack Biddlecomb, a respectable meal was laid by the time a seaman on deck rang out four bells, the last note just dying away when Frost knocked on the cabin door.

“Come, come, welcome,” Jack said with all the graciousness he could muster as he led his guests around the narrow confines of the cabin and seated them at the table. “Simon! Some wine, here, Simon!” he called and soon the steward appeared with a bottle, from which he filled each glass with all the grace of a gin-house keeper filling glasses for his drunk-for-a-penny customers.

Despite the want of good service, dinner passed tolerably well, Frost doing more than his part to uphold the conversation and keep it on course, straight and true. Wentworth dipped heavily into the wine, and in truth Jack had the impression he had been doing so even before arriving for dinner, making free with his own private stores, which rendered the generally taciturn young man more taciturn still. But since he was unlikely to have anything to say that Jack cared to hear, it was not a problem.

“So, pray, what brings you gentlemen to Barbados?” Jack asked as Frost served out the last of the rabbit. “Mr. Oxnard never indicated you would be returning in this ship, so I assume you are bound for an extended stay?”

Wentworth made a sort of noncommittal face and poured the remains of the wine into his glass. Frost looked up from his task. “Business, this and that. Some work for the government. I have any number of friends in the administration. I help out where I can, on an informal basis, you know. But still, the less said…”

“Oh, of course,” Jack said, embarrassed to have appeared to be prying. Then Simon stepped up and took the empty serving dish, sloshing juice on the tablecloth, and Jack was for once happy for the distraction.

The meal had been cleared, only a single plate and one wineglass dropped and broken, cheese and port were laid out, and cigars fired up when Frost asked, “What of your man, Captain, the big Irish fellow? Maguire? Is he up and about?”

“Oh, certainly, a good night's sleep on a soft deck and he's right as rain. I believe he's standing his trick at the helm as we speak,” Jack said. The skylight was partially open and Jack had been keeping tabs on what was taking place topside, sometimes without even realizing he was doing so.

“No punishment?” Frost asked. “No consequences for his actions?”

Jack shrugged and took a puff of his cigar. “No,” he said. “It would be pointless, as I said at the time. If he were a poor seaman I would leave him on the beach, but since he's a most excellent hand once he's beyond the reach of liquor, I am willing to forgive his foolishness.”

“Foolishness, indeed?” Wentworth asked. “And what if he had struck you? What if his fist had connected, had knocked you to the floor in front of your men?”

“I don't know,” Jack said, and he genuinely did not, as he had never thought on that. “It's never happened. A man must be pretty well in his cups to swing at a ship's master in that way, and thus their punches are generally pretty easy to avoid.”

Wentworth made a grunting sound and took another puff on his cigar, then removed it from his lips and regarded it. “It's all so wonderfully in keeping with this spirit of republicanism that seems to run amuck these days,” he said.

“Now, Mr. Wentworth,” said Frost, and Jack could hear just a hint of alarm as the conversation wandered into the shoals of politics, “Captain Biddlecomb has his ways, you know, which come from being at sea many a year.”

“No, truly,” Wentworth said, looking up from his cigar. “Was it not the worthy Sir Francis Drake who said, ‘I must have the gentleman to haul with the mariner, and the mariner with the gentleman'? Such a good republican spirit that reigns here at sea.”

“Don't believe it, sir,” said Jack. “On a small ship such as this, the master must wade in more than aboard some grander vessel, but don't mistake this for any sort of democracy. When we are at sea, this is as great a tyranny as you will find in the Christian world, and I am the absolute tyrant.”

“Ha! A benevolent monarch, I have no doubt!” Frost said.

“Well I am pleased to hear it,” Wentworth said dryly. “With all these French notions spreading like a pox across the country, one never knows. Hah! French pox, there it is.” He waved Simon over, who was lurking by the forward bulkhead, and signaled for his glass to be refilled.

“A ship cannot be run in that manner, Mr. Wentworth,” Jack said. “There needs a chain of command that is not questioned.”

“Nor can a country be run in that manner,” Wentworth replied, after taking a healthy sip of the port. “There is a class of men who are born to lead, and a class who are born to follow. And yet here we are, with the middling sort snatching at the reins of power, every self-important shopkeeper, every blade who farms a few pathetic acres thinking himself worthy to be a senator.”

“Now, sir,” said Frost, “surely the War for Independency was not fought so we might replace one aristocracy for another?”

Wentworth shifted his gaze toward Frost with a look that Jack thought was part suspicion and part—a large part—intoxication. “The War for Independency? Made officers of men quite unworthy of the rank, and now those officers would put themselves over the rest of us. I wish to God they had all gone back to the plow, as Washington did. Most I wish would have stayed there. That rascal Jefferson would do well to keep to his farm, spouting off about the injustice of slavery as his darkies tend the fields.”

Jack, like his father, was no fan of Jefferson, and when he thought on it, which was not often, he tended to lean toward the Federalist camp, with its belief in the strength of the new federal government and a strong navy. So, apparently, did Wentworth. Where Frost stood, Jack could not tell. He seemed most concerned that a battle between political factions not break out in the great cabin.

Having spent half his life on shipboard, Jack understood hierarchy as mankind's central organizing principle. But a growing number of Americans loathed the Federalists, and suspected them of trying to create a British-style aristocracy in America. Jack and Wentworth were ostensibly on the same side of this political divide, but listening to Wentworth reminded Jack of why it was so easy to despise the Federalist faction. Even he was ready to take offense.

“Men unworthy of the rank of officer?” Jack said. “Would you put my father in that company?”

“Your father?” Wentworth said. “You have a father? You didn't seem the type.”

“You don't know who my father is?”

“No, should I?” Wentworth asked. “I believe you said you were from Rhode Island.”

“His father—” Frost began but Jack cut him off.

“He was an officer in the war. Naval officer. One of your middling sorts, elevated well beyond his natural station.”

Wentworth lifted his glass. “I congratulate you and your family then, sir, and I am delighted to find you so elevated.
Libert
é
,
É
galit
é
,
and all that.”

“Pray, sir,” Frost said to Jack with a tone that suggested a desire to change the subject, “but why do you look at the barometer so? Forgive me, but I could not fail to notice you stealing glances in its direction. I would be sorry if we were such dull company as to make it so fascinating. I dare say, if you were looking at the clock the same way I should be worried.”

Jack smiled. He was not aware that he had been glancing at the barometer, any more than he was aware of monitoring the goings-on on deck. It was a lovely mahogany instrument crafted by the renowned Jesse Ramsden of London, its long cylindrical body gimbal-mounted and swaying with the roll of the ship. It had been a present from his father, given to him just a few days before he sailed. Its polished beauty alone might have been enough to attract his attention, but it was in fact the fall of the glass, not the aesthetic quality of the instrument, that had gained his notice.

“Forgive me,” Jack said. “The conversation has been delightful in the extreme, but there is nothing that can command a shipmaster's undivided attention, save for his ship. And I'm afraid my eye has been drawn to the steady fall of the glass this hour or more.”

“Falling quickly, is it?” Wentworth asked. “I once knew what that meant. ‘When the glass goes high…' No. What is it you tarpaulins say, now?”

“‘When the glass goes high, let your sails fly, when the glass goes low, you're in for a blow.' I believe that is the bit of doggerel you are searching for.”

“Ah, yes!” Wentworth said. “What poetic blades you are! And the glass goes low, you say? Is it falling fast?”

“The glass is indeed getting lower,” Jack confirmed, “but not at any great rate, which is more worrisome. You see, when the glass falls quickly, it means you will see a violent storm, but one that will soon pass by. But when it falls slow, as it is doing now, it means we may be in for a nasty time of it, a storm of some duration.”

“Well, then, we must see all is secured in our cabins, what, Mr. Wentworth?” Frost said.

“I shouldn't think that will be much of a problem for me. I didn't find room for above half a dozen items in my closet. My cabin, I mean. A long and nasty storm, you say, Captain?”

“It seems likely. But do not fear, Mr. Wentworth,
Abigail
is a sound ship.”