For Love of Country (23 page)

“As soon as humanly possible,” Richard vowed.

Dickerson intervened. “We understand, Mr. Cutler. We realize that you are doing all you can. Your coming here has given us hope, no matter how the negotiations may have turned out. We'll make it. You have my word on it, sir. We'll make it.”

Caleb had a more personal perspective. “Richard,” he said, “be careful. Not just in France. Be careful leaving Algiers.”

That Caleb, a prisoner in this sweltering, stinking, godforsaken hole of a city for nearly two years, could worry about
him
at a time like this would have entirely broken Richard were it not for Captain Dickerson walking over to offer his hand.

“Godspeed, Mr. Cutler,” he said.

Richard gripped the firm, leathery hand. “Godspeed to you as well, Mr. Dickerson,” he said, his voice a study in anguish, “and to the men. Tell them not to lose faith. Tell them their families are being well taken care of. Tell them their country is doing everything possible to get them released.”

“I'll tell them,” Dickerson promised.

As Richard turned to his brother one last time, the door reopened and this time both Muslim guards trooped in. Somehow, from somewhere, Richard had to find the heart to say good-bye and the spine to walk away.

Caleb made it easier for him. He formed a fist with his right hand and brought it up over his left breast, the way he had done in younger days when mimicking the Roman general Fabius Maximus. “Strength and honor, Richard,” he said, not melodramatically as he had done when play-acting as a child, but with a wry smile at the corners of his mouth and a twinkle in his eyes.

Richard brought a fist over his own heart. “Strength and honor, Caleb,” he said in reply, relieved beyond measure that Caleb had grown into a man capable of smiling at his situation no matter how deep the abyss of despair.

Richard turned and departed the chamber, to await Dr. Brooke outside and then to make all haste to leave Algiers.

Ten

At Sea, 100 Miles North of Algiers, September 1788

T
HE DWINDLING LIGHT OF dusk revealed nothing untoward maneuvering upon the waters of the Maghrib, at least nothing that two lookouts perched high above in the crosstrees could detect. Richard decided to call them back down to the deck for the night. The moon in its first phase was but an arched yellow sliver—how fitting, he thought, that on this of all nights the moon should mirror the crescent on the Algerian flag—and the light it cast was too feeble for Peter Chatfield and Matt Cates to put to much use.

“Tremaine, take the tiller,” he said, indicating to Micah Lamont that he would be relieved from duty once Richard had confirmed the schooner's course, speed, and standing orders. “To review, I want four men on watch throughout the night,” he told Lamont. Mr. Crabtree has the first watch. I'll take the second. You have the third watch, with Tremaine at the helm. Before sunrise I want all hands on deck and Chatfield and Cates back up in the crosstrees.”

“Understood, Captain,” Lamont said. He yielded the tiller to Nate Tremaine. “I have already informed the crew.”

“Good. Now please pass word for Tom Gardner to come aft.”

“Aye, Captain. Will there be anything else, sir?”

“Nothing else, Mr. Lamont. Go below and get some rest. I'll send word if I need you.”

A moment later the ruddy-jowled, powerfully limbed seaman who served as senior gun captain lumbered toward the after deck. “You sent for me, Captain?”

“Yes, Gardner. Are the guns primed and loaded?”

It was a rhetorical question. While
Falcon
was still within the Bay of Algiers, Richard had ordered the six guns released from their breeching ropes and loaded—with grapeshot in two, chain-shot in the third, both sides. At the same time he had ordered extra shot and flannel bags of powder brought up from the hold and stored in specially designed racks built in along the mid-deck section between the guns. There too, wrapped loosely in spare canvas like some dreadful sea creature dragged up from the depths, lay the three four-foot-long projectiles that Richard Dale had secured for the ship's arsenal before it left Boston.

“Loaded and run out as ordered, sir.”

“Good. Now, as I have informed Mr. Lamont, tonight we shall post three two-hour watches. Pratt has the first watch, Blakely the second. I want you on deck for the third. Before dawn, at the start of the fourth watch, I want every member of the crew on deck. At that time, if need be, I shall take personal command of the guns. Understood?”

“Understood, Captain.” Gardner snapped a salute, a hard-to-break old habit that reflected his service as senior gunnery officer aboard the 32-gun Continental Navy frigate
Raleigh.
“You may depend on me.”

Richard returned the salute. “I always have, Gardner.”

With Gardner gone, Richard strode a few steps aft to larboard, toward Agreen, who was leaning against the taffrail peering southward across the dark sea. Increase Hobart and Isaac Howland had taken lookout positions, one on each side of the schooner abaft the mainmast; two other seamen stood watch afore the forward chain-wales.

Richard and Agreen stood side by side in silence, alert for any unusual sound out there in the gloom: words shouted in Arabic or, above them in the rigging, a sudden flutter of sail that could indicate either a shift in wind or—less likely, considering who had the helm—the schooner veering too far into the wind.
Falcon
was sailing due north on a beam reach, a moderate easterly breeze square on her starboard beam. Richard had specified in the night's sailing instructions that she would remain on this tack for another six hours. They would then come off the wind on a course that would take them through the Strait of Gibraltar, along the southern coast of the Iberian Peninsula, and northward past Lisbon toward the Bay of Biscay and the French port of Lorient.

“I have the deck, Richard,” Agreen said at length. “I suggest you follow the advice you gave Lamont and go below.”

“I'm enjoying the night air, Agee. If it's all the same to you, I'll remain topside for a while.”

“Always glad for your company.” Agreen stretched out his arms to loosen tense muscles. “Think I'll take a gander 'round the deck, maybe check the guns while I'm at it. I'll be back quicker than a rooster chasin' a hen in heat,” he added cheerfully.

As Agreen walked slowly forward, pausing to have a word with Increase Hobart, Richard glanced southward for the hundredth time since sunset. He could see little beyond the few feet of white wake bubbling out from the rudder, but that didn't matter. He had a premonition that they were not sailing alone this night, a premonition that nagged at him in whispers of warning from Caleb and Captain Dickerson.
Perhaps they were wrong,
he defied the whispers. Perhaps they had misread the situation. Perhaps Agreen and Lamont shared his premonition simply because they were taking their cue from their captain. Was not the dey aware that Richard was to meet with Captain Jones, a man on a mission that would expedite payments of ransom and tribute to bin Osman and other Barbary rulers? Why would he attempt to thwart that mission? What would be the incentive? Down whatever path such reasoning led, however, it always ended at the same pitiless blockade. It was not only what the dey had to gain by taking
Falcon,
which was a king's ransom. It was also what he had to lose, which was nothing.

His thoughts went inevitably to Caleb, to Dickerson and
Eagle
's crew, to the treasure undelivered in his hold, to his sons Will and Jamie and his daughter Diana, to so many people: Katherine, her brothers, and especially her father, who finally was beginning to think well of him—every member of his own family and others, lifelong friends and neighbors among them, those families of his employ who had relied on him to prevail in Algiers, to bring their men home. Rage bubbled through his veins; he felt his hands coil into fists. He had always been taught to play by the rules: the rules of law—English law—that his country had adopted. Those rules had been inculcated in him since he was barely old enough to understand the difference between right and wrong, when Will was alive and able to explain such things to him. The righteous will always win out in the end, Parson Gay had thundered from his pulpit in Hingham; good will prevail over evil, his father had assured him; never hate your enemies, his Uncle William had counseled,
for hate clouds your mind and your ability to respond effectively. Well, Richard thought, I am here to tell you, Uncle, that I
do
hate my enemies. God is my witness, I hate them for what they have done to my friends, my country, my blood. Jeremy was right: Algiers is nothing more than a den of thieves with no laws or rules other than those ordained by a petty dictator surrounded by sycophants and cutthroats.
But think on it,
his inner regions taunted him,
think on it.
Is Algiers really so different from other states? Had not his brother been executed under English law, specifically the Twenty-second Article of War decreed by Whitehall? How was justice served in that travesty? Where was the “winning out” there? What “good” existed in any of this? The temptation to pound his fist on the taffrail and scream out to the Almighty was proving irresistible. It was tempered only by a sympathetic hand placed on his shoulder and a voice, equally sympathetic, inquiring, “Captain, are you all right?”

The question jolted him. He glanced to his left where Lawrence Brooke was staring at him with an expression fraught with worry.

“I apologize, Doctor,” Richard managed. “What did you say?”

“I asked if you are all right, Captain. It doesn't take a physician to see that you are deeply troubled. May I ask, is it your brother?”

Richard pushed back his long hair with both hands, gently massaged a throb in the old wound high on his forehead. “Yes,” he allowed. “Caleb and his mates and a host of other people you don't know. It appears their faith in me has been misplaced.”

Brooke's response was a look of disbelief. “Captain,” he chastised, “that is one of the most unfair statements I have ever heard. What are you thinking? That you failed in Algiers?”

Richard let silence be his answer.

“Then you are wrong,” Brooke went on. “Dead wrong. Impossible demands were placed on you in Algiers; still you did everything you could for those men. Your brother realizes that. So do his shipmates. It's what they told me when I examined them in prison. No one blames you for what happened, so why blame yourself? It defies logic, Mr. Cutler. Our visit to Algiers has inspired hope. Not just among
Eagle
's crew but in every American held captive in North Africa. These men need such hope to survive.”

For what must have seemed to Brooke a prolonged span of time, Richard continued to stare out into the night. Finally he lowered his eyes to the deck and said softly, “Thank you for those words, Doctor. They mean a lot.” He shook his head to exorcise the demons abiding
there and said in a more natural tone, “Did you come on deck to take the air, Doctor? Or is there something I can do for you?”

Brooke shook his head. “There is nothing you need do for me, Captain. I came on deck to tell you that I have finished my report on the prisoners. I gave it to Abel Whiton to put on your desk.”

Richard smiled. There was no need, aboard
Falcon,
for Brooke to walk all the way forward to locate the captain's steward, in order for the captain's steward to walk all the way aft to the captain's cabin carrying what Brooke had gone forward to give him. Brooke was indeed a product of naval regulations, Richard mused, regulations that specified that only the captain's steward was permitted inside the captain's cabin without a formal invitation.

“Thank you, Doctor. I shall look forward to reading your report. Briefly, how did you find the men?”

“I found them in remarkably good health, Captain, considering what they've been through. In remarkably good spirits, too. As I said, your coming to Algiers was just the tonic they needed. They could hardly believe you were actually there.”

Richard nodded his understanding. He motioned to Agreen, who had made the rounds of the deck and was now standing discreetly by the bulwarks a short way away, a black shadow in the dim glow thrown off by a flickering candle enclosed in a lantern attached to the binnacle. He was confirming the compass heading reported by Tremaine. “Anything to report, Agee?”

Agreen came closer, shook his head. “Nary a lick, Richard. The wind's picked up, so we're makin' a good six knots to northward. It's as quiet out there as a nunnery at midnight, and everything aboard is shipshape. The guns are ready, should we require 'em.”

“God willing we won't,” Brooke said somberly. “But I'd best go below to prepare for that eventuality. A pleasant night to you both, gentlemen.”

“And to you, Doctor,” Richard replied. He checked his watch and turned to Agreen. “You'll be needing sleep for tomorrow, Agee. Go below. I have the deck.”

Agreen glanced up at the main topsail, the breeze ruffling his reddish-blond hair. “I've a mind t' remain topside,” he replied, continuing to stare upward at the topsail and the star-studded sky beyond. “If it's all the same t' you.”

“Always glad for your company,” Richard said.

LAMONT ROUSED THE FIRST and second watches from their bunks at 4:00 the following morning. Men groggy from lack of sleep clambered up the forward hatchways and took position at preassigned stations either by the guns or by the standing rigging. When the ship's complement was assembled on deck and the first slivers of dawn were giving form to the eastern horizon, Lamont sent Chatfield and Cates scurrying up the ratlines. In a consuming, eerie silence broken only by the creaks and groans of block and tackle, the slap of water against the bow, and the snap of the American ensign coming to life in an awakening breeze, they waited, captain and captain's steward alike, until the horizon became clear enough to distinguish sea from sky, friend from foe.