Liberty 1784: The Second War for Independence (37 page)

Arnold smiled. He could actually do something while getting rid of Girty’s swine who would be of no use at all in the coming fight. He called over an aide.

“Ensign Spencer, go to Mr. Girty and direct him to send Braxton’s men into the swamp where they are to watch out for any rebels attempting to get into our rear. You will command them as you did previously. This time, however, please let them know that you are truly in charge and please act like it.”

Spencer paled. Going back into the swamp was the last thing he wanted to do, especially with Braxton the monster. Arnold smiled inwardly. Spencer was the type of person he both hated and admired. Spencer was skinny, spoiled, whiny, and totally unworthy of being an officer in any army. However, he was also rich, titled and descended from Normans who had landed in England seven hundred or so years earlier. This made him privileged, while Arnold was not. So damn him. Arnold also thought that Spencer’s Norman ancestors had likely been made up of stronger and sterner stuff.

Arnold did smile. “And again, don’t forget that, as a British officer, you will be in command. Don’t let those filthy wretches tell you what do to; no, you tell them what for. Do you understand me, Spencer?”

Arnold saw a flicker of hatred replace the fear in the boy’s eyes. “I understand, sir.”

* * *

Should the women wear dresses to the battle or not? Sarah thought the question ridiculous at a time like this. Who cared what one wore? The British drums were growing louder and it looked like they were ready to march.

Still, the debate had been interesting. One group said that the women would be better off wearing men’s clothing because pants were so much more functional. They also said that the British might momentarily think that the Americans had more men than they supposed and react accordingly.

The other side had agreed, but thought that the impact of seeing they were opposed by women in skirts would bring home the fact that putting down the rebellion was so much more than fighting an army of men. The British had to know they were fighting a people.

Abigail Adams had settled the issue. Each woman could do whatever the devil she wished.

Sarah decided to wear a skirt, but she hedged her bet by having pants underneath them. If the skirt proved cumbersome, she would yank it off.

“Or a Redcoat will rip it off for you,” Hannah Van Doorn said with an impish grin. “And won’t he be shocked to see pants instead of something more intimate.”

Beside her, Faith tried to laugh, but she was too nervous, too pale, too scared. So too was Hannah and everyone else. She couldn’t imagine how soldiers steeled themselves to go into battle time after time. Sarah looked around and saw her aunt and uncle and then, to her utter astonishment, there was Benjamin Franklin and he was holding a pike. Behind him was John Hancock cradling a light fowling piece, and with them stood virtually all of the members of Congress.

She caught Franklin’s eye and he walked over. “I believe I may have said something about hanging separately or hanging together, and this is another one of those moments. If we prevail it will be because of all of us. If we fail, the results will be too dismal to be contemplated.”

She was about to say something when a host of men rushed by. They were part of Morgan’s contingent and they were heading to their posts behind the earthworks. It was beginning. God help us, she prayed.

* * *

In his quarters in New York, Lord Charles Cornwallis had awakened that morning in a cold sweat. He’d had a terrible dream. The only problem was, like most dreams, there was bloody little he could remember of it. He seemed to recall a great battle involving the British Army and a vast mob that obviously represented the American rebels. Or perhaps it was the damned French peasants who still swarmed about the French countryside and threatened to overwhelm the smaller British army that was trying to reinstate the remnants of the monarchy.

Or perhaps it was both of them.

The dreams had been frequent of late. Most had resulted in him awakening overwhelmed with concern about what might be happening to Burgoyne’s army.

It was maddening. Time and distance were doing unto him what time and distance did to His Majesty’s government in faraway London. For a moment, he felt a twinge of sympathy for Lord North, Stormont, and the others who, like him, were so out of touch with events they desperately needed to control. But only for a moment. The devil take them all.

He would not, of course, mention his dreams to his friend and brother who, with a pair of ships of the line and six frigates, had returned from Boston with the news that the rebels in Massachusetts were largely inactive. It was much the same in New York. It wasn’t safe for small British patrols to go too far out of the town, and he didn’t have enough men to risk in a larger patrol, but both sides seemed to have adopted a live and let live attitude.

So be it.

He welcomed William to his crudely furnished quarters in the massively reinforced fort at the tip of Manhattan Island. Cornwallis had given up the idea of governing New York from Staten Island, and besides, the plague and fires had almost entirely vanished. So too, unfortunately, had most of the population and almost all of the buildings outside the military encampment. The city of New York was very nearly a ghost town.

William Cornwallis took a seat and glanced at the leather case on a shelf. “Please don’t tell me you still have that ghastly thing?”

Cornwallis chuckled. Like himself, William had seen more than enough death, but the idea of a skull in a box along with other bones managed to appall him. “I have my orders,” the general said, “or rather, the orders I was originally given have been reiterated. I am to keep Mr. Washington’s skull until the appropriate moment, which, I presume would be notice of Burgoyne’s victory. At which time I am to make it the centerpiece of a monument to our victory.”

“And if we lose?”

“Then I throw the abominable thing in the river and we all sail away.”

“And how likely is the likelihood of such a defeat, my dear General.”

“The thought of it is the stuff of nightmares, but it is not bloody likely at all, my dear brother.”

William laughed genially. Usually the army and the navy did not get along well, but the relationship between Cornwallis and his younger brother was the exception.

“And what do you think of the latest news from England?” William asked.

Lord Cornwallis merely smirked. “More of the same, I’m afraid. There is chaos in France, although the bloodletting does appear to be winding down and it may just be time for some member of the surviving French nobility—Lafayette, perhaps—to take the crown, even though it is likely that any kingship will be under tight controls. Such controls are anathema to our own beloved king, but apparently he will acquiesce if such a limited monarchy can end the killing in France and end any threat to the house of Hanover in England.”

William Cornwallis nodded thoughtfully. “And what news from Burgoyne?”

“Nothing,” Cornwallis said, “and I am frankly a little worried. There is rebel activity between here and Fort Pitt, which is raising hell with our limited ability to communicate with Burgoyne in the first place.”

William poured the two of them a brandy. He raised his glass in a slightly sardonic toast. “Then here’s to the next messenger bringing word of a stupendous victory.”

* * *

At first glance, the three-masted sailing ship looked like a large but disreputable merchantman, the type that was always putting in at Kingston, Jamaica, and delivering cargoes that varied from clothing, to foodstuffs, to slaves.

The name painted on her filthy stern said she was the
Flower,
and, given her appearance and the ripe smell coming from her, the name was utterly incongruous. Once ships like the
Flower
sailed in fear of American privateers and the occasional rebel naval vessel and either sailed in convoys protected by Royal Navy ships, or were heavily armed. Now, they sailed alone, which was just fine with their captains who were a touchy and independent lot, always jockeying for additional profit even if it meant taking on additional risk. Convoys, however safer, stifled creativity, which meant reducing opportunities to make money, often through discreet smuggling. But now there was relative peace since the rebellion had been quashed. The French navy was in disarray, and there was no reason to hide in a convoy.

The
Flower
, however, was not an ordinary merchantman. She was a floating lie. Her captain was a small hard man named John Paul Jones, and she carried no cargo. Along with her crew was a detachment of eighty Marines, men who had sailed on other, regular American Navy ships. Nor was the ship as disreputable as she seemed. Her original clean lines had been purposely and skillfully obscured to make her look totally unthreatening. Rough, even sloppy, painting covered the twelve gun ports that lined each side and totally hid the nine and twelve pound cannon behind them. Additional hastily applied planking altered her true shape.

Nor was the ship’s real name something as vapid as the
Flower
. Instead, her true papers showed her to be an American naval warship, the
Liberator
, and she’d been chosen and named for this singular mission. That she was a regular navy ship and not a privateer or a pirate was a distinction that meant a lot only to the officers and men of the
Liberator
, all of whom couldn’t wait to paint over the ridiculous name of
Flower
. So far as they knew, she was the only regular navy ship the Colonies now had. John Hancock had signed the commission a few months earlier and it was clearly of dubious legality. The officers and men of the
Liberator
didn’t care. She and they had a job to do.

The frigate did not put in at the major port of Kingston. Instead, she anchored in a cove a dozen miles away from the city. This did not attract undue attention. Many planters had their cargoes unloaded at places more convenient to them than the town. As long as duties were paid, no one cared. And if duties weren’t paid, then sometimes nobody cared either, especially when a bribe to an underpaid local official was cheaper than paying duty.

When darkness fell, there was no one to see the ship’s boats lowered. They were filled with heavily armed Marines who were dressed as ordinary seamen, a fact that they accepted as necessary but resented nonetheless. They were proud of their uniforms, particularly the leather collars that kept their heads proudly upright.

Captain Samuel Nicholas commanded the Marines. Nearly forty, he’d served with Jones when, in 1775, the pugnacious little Scotsman had command of the
Alfred
and attacked the British in the Bahamas. Thus, neither he nor Jones were strangers to each other or to the Caribbean waters.

Nicholas marched his men quickly overland to their target, a sprawling farm compound a couple of miles inland. However, it was no longer a farm. It was a prison.

It was a little after midnight and all was quiet when they approached. A handful of the stealthier Marines reconnoitered ahead and returned with the information that only a few British soldiers guarded the compound and seemed to be uninterested at best. After all, where would the occupants go even if they did manage to set themselves free?

The Marines waited until a squad was in position to block anyone from escaping down the road to Kingston.

A scream and a musket fired. Nicholas cursed—surprise was lost. “At them,” he hollered and his men swarmed into the compound. British guards tumbled out of their barracks and were quickly and brutally cut down by Marine muskets and then by cutlasses and bayonets. It was over in a couple of minutes, and a score of dead and wounded British soldiers were sprawled on the ground, while a handful of others stood with their hands in the air.

“Any of them get away?” Nicholas asked and no one was certain. Nor could the British commander tell them. He had fallen with a musket ball in his neck. The Marines would assume the worst and make all haste back to the ship. Nicholas was suddenly aware of many pairs of eyes watching him and his men from behind the barred windows of the prison buildings.

Nicholas gave the order and the prison buildings were broken into. Scores of confused and bleary-eyed men poured out and stared at the Marines who stared back in dismay at the wretches. The men the Marines had come to liberate were thin to the point of being little more than sticks. Many of them were half naked and their backs bore signs of floggings. Some couldn’t stand up and Nicholas suddenly despaired of getting them back to the ship anywhere near as quickly as planned.

Nicholas swore and sent a runner back to Jones with the bad news. It would take longer then planned, and he would need additional manpower from the
Liberator
to help with the men they’d freed while the Marines maintained a rear guard.

Damn, he thought. But that was the way with plans. They never worked out as they were supposed to.

Thus, it was mid-day before the last of the wretched men had been aided across country, and then been helped aboard the
Liberator
, and put below decks. Some of the freed prisoners had to be carried, which meant that litters and stretchers had to be improvised, and all of them needed to be aided during the slow, tortuous journey back to the waiting ship. Many of the Marines and crew of the
Liberator
wept openly at the misery they were witnessing, while all of them treated the freed prisoners with a degree of tenderness and compassion that would have surprised those who’d seen them in battle.

Fortunately, no attack from the city materialized. While the crew of the
Liberator
made ready to sail, the freed men were given soup and fruit and some seemed to improve dramatically. Food and the prospect of freedom will do that to a man, Jones remarked to Nicholas, even though more than a few of them had vomited their meals.

As they raised anchor and put to sea, a small cutter showing the British flag rounded the point of land that had shielded them. Jones ordered the guns run out and a dozen cannon made ready to blow the tiny vessel out of the water. The cutter mounted only swivel guns.