The Beothuk Expedition (22 page)

The blood returned to my head with a speed that matched its descent and I felt my face flush red. My voice abandoned me entirely and I stood as dumb as a plank while the men looked on with amused or curious glances. They did not watch for long, as Froggat had unsheathed a cutlass and was attacking the great lump of meat. The crew fell to like a flock of terns, leaving me alone with the apparition before me. Indeed, she might have been a spirit raised from my past, for she had yet to speak or do anything but hold my eyes with that unflinching stare. I was at a loss for something to say or do until I thought to invite her into the cabin. I found my voice and did just that, to grins and nudges among the crew. I held the door ajar and she bent her head to enter. Inside, I positioned a stool for her and sat myself on another with the low table between us. She sat and a long moment passed before she spoke. When she did, her voice was no louder than a whisper but I heard it well enough.

“May God damn your black heart, Jonah Squibb.”

What had I expected her to say, when it came down to it? In my confusion, I had supposed she'd come aboard to say hello and to renew our acquaintance. I was, after all, an old childhood friend and she a respectable woman. I thought she might even say that it was nice to see me again. I was wrong, of course, and how wrong was made clear when she repeated her words in a louder voice. My tongue failed me still. Her face was a picture of sadness and hurt, though her eyes bore a hardness that hinted at an anger nurtured long and deep.

“Why did you never come back?” she demanded. “Why did I never hear from you again?”

I found my voice and replied, “Forgive me Amy, but—”

“Forgive you!” she cried. “I will never forgive you for what you did to me, sir.”

“But … but you chose to marry!” I protested. “You wrote to me. I still have the letter!”

“What did you expect of me, Jonah?” A tremor had crept into her voice. “After all them months and months of never hearing a word from you? Of running down to the landwash every time a boat or a ship come into the harbour, hoping it was carrying a letter for me? What did you expect? I thought you was dead. Or worse, that everything you'd told me was empty lies.”

I drew a shallow, unsteady breath. “Amy, I did write to you. Upon my soul. I wrote often but some of my letters went astray, as will happen when war—”

“Yes, some might have gone astray,” she shot back, “but what of the rest?” Her voice broke again as she fought to keep her composure.

“Others came back to me, Amy. I still have them.”

In her eyes I saw a tiny flicker of doubt, the shock that a long-held conviction may have been mistaken. “You still have them?” she whispered.

I reached behind me and threw open the lid of my sea chest. From beneath a spare shirt and my volumes of Fielding and Smollett, I drew out a packet of letters tied in a blue ribbon. The ribbon was faded and the papers foxed and stained from dampness and sea air, but her name and address could still be read on the outer pages. I laid the packet on the table and she stared at it. When she reached out, ever so gently, to touch the frayed ends of the ribbon, I saw that her hands were rough and red from labour.

She said nothing, her lower lip between her teeth, until I untied the bow and offered her the topmost letter. It was one of the last I'd written at St. John's six years before and the page shook in her hand as she read it, her tearful eyes following my words. They declared my love and a pledge to marry her as soon as I could find my way to Trinity. The letter had never left my ship because of a scheming purser and an officer who had made my life a torment.

It was strange to see those words read at last by the one for whom they were intended. There was no joy or satisfaction to it, only sorrow and regret. I am certain that she felt it too, for she laid the letter aside and put her hands to her face. I gave her a kerchief and wiped my own eyes with the sleeve of my coat, the tears mingling with the crusted salt of the sea The cocks crowed around the harbour as I stepped onto the beach at Mackerel Point. The Taverner plantation was a shambles compared to my memory of it. The once bountiful garden was choked with weeds and the roof of an old outbuilding had fallen in on itself. The house, which had been among the finest in the harbour, was missing a patch of wooden shingles and an upstairs window had been boarded over. For whatever reason, I felt a stab of guilt concerning Amy and her son. I walked up from the beach and knocked on a door that rattled in its frame.

If she were surprised to see me there was no hint of it, nor did she seem embarrassed by her circumstances. I had only to remove my hat and say good morning and she invited me in with a smile and a glance at her neighbours' windows. She led me to the kitchen and offered a chair, which I accepted, and a cup of tea, which I did not. We made some small talk about the weather and how the September gales would soon be upon us. There seemed to be little else to say after our long talk of the day before, and yet I had come here because of a sense of something left unsaid. Yesterday I had told her the story of my recent life and she had done me the favour of relating her own. She'd tried to put it all in a good light but behind her words I saw a life of poverty and struggle. It included a husband who had poured their meagre earnings down his throat and an uncle, as rich as he was, who offered nothing. Even after she was widowed, old Lester ignored her plight except to employ her at making fish for a penny a day. By contrast, the first thing I'd seen on entering the harbour was his fine new mansion at the foot of Ryder's Hill.

Her blonde-haired boy was there, watching me from the parlour doorway. He was about five years of age and his round cheeks and shy smile made me think of the Indian child. The dark cloud was about to revisit when her voice drew me back. She asked after my guardian, the Reverend Lindsey, and I told her that he had died these three years past. She did me the kindness of saying that he was remembered fondly and was greatly missed when he retired and returned to England.

Our conversation was restrained and polite, though my heart was pounding within me, and I dared to hope that all of the anger and pain of yesterday had been purged. On board the
Dove
we'd talked for nearly an hour and in the end we forgave each other for all the wrongs we'd imagined. In truth, our fates had been sealed through no fault of our own. Unhappy circumstance alone had intervened to take away the joy and promise of our young lives. But Lord, what I would not have given to go back in time and change all that had happened. I would have gone to Trinity as I'd intended, in spite of her letter, and we would have been married and happy these last six years.

But of course the past could not be changed. There was only the present, and I longed to say that I had thought of her every day for six years, but I did not. I opened my mouth to do so several times, and I believe she looked at me in expectation, but no words would come. My feelings had been bottled too long, and the cork would not come loose. In the end I took my leave without a word to her of my feelings. I was a fool, I know, if not a coward, and we parted with nothing more than a bow and a curtsey. She did say that she hoped we would meet again, and half an hour later I sailed from Trinity with a tortured heart.

For the whole of that day and half of the next, I spoke to no one. After giving command to Froggat, I shut myself into the cabin to write my report and to think upon the two weeks that had passed since we departed St. John's. There had been little enough joy in that fortnight and I was deep in gloomy reflection before long. I might have remained there until we reached Toulinguet, were it not for the events of our second day at sea. We were off Cape Fogo with a rising glass when the French brigantine took wind of us again. Greening spied her a good way off, coming on from the northeast. I was summoned and my first act was to curse my complacency. Until then we had been sailing at our leisure with the waist full of stores and wood for the stove. As I surveyed the rapidly advancing vessel I knew that something would have to go by the board.

Greening and Grimes were ordered to jettison the firewood and supplies while the boatswain drove Rundle and Jenkins aloft to set the little topsail. Bolger began laying out powder and shot for the guns and Froggat and I consulted our chart. At a glance, we knew that we would have to run with the wind, straight into the Bay of Exploits. There we might stand a second, small chance of escaping among the islands that Captain Cook had marked so well.

Our speed increased with the added sail but Grimes was damnably slow in clearing the wood. Frost remedied his indolence with a piece of rope, and had he flayed him alive I would have held my tongue. The man was a festering boil upon our collective ass and my patience was nearing an end. If I sound cruel I cannot say otherwise with a clear conscience. Grimes had used up my store of civility and I was not about to spare him if it meant the difference between capture and escape.

The brig continued to gain and I knew that our load would have to be lightened further. Greening was working like a demon and timber was bobbing thick in our wake. I ordered the barrels of provisions over the side and Bolger and Frost hoisted the first cask to the bulwark and dropped it into the sea. Another followed and then another, until the deck was clear of all but our powder and shot, one small barrel of pork, some scraps of wood, and a sack of potatoes. I stopped the men there; we had established a separation of a thousand yards and were in no immediate danger from the
Valeur
's guns. When that distance did not alter over the next hour, I told the men to organize a meal while they had the chance. What lay ahead was uncertain but it was a fair guess that there would be no time for eating.

Our wake was foaming white as they calmly fired the stove and Rundle took a hammer to the lid of our remaining barrel of pork. When it came loose we recoiled at the smell. Whether all of Lester's barrels were spoiled we would never know, but the thought crossed my mind that while fortune may have improved the man's circumstances, it had done nothing for his character. The lid was hastily replaced and the men made ready to tip it over the side when I stopped them. If there were even a few pieces unspoiled it could mean the difference between a hungry surrender and a long chance of escape. The hands ate their dinner as the chase wore on. There was grumbling, of course, for a seaman without good pork is a touchy beast. I reminded them all that they would eat much worse before their days in the Navy were ended. Once, on a bedeviled voyage to the Indies, my shipmates and I had eaten nothing for days but a cold, crawling mess of black-headed weevils. They were all that remained of the bread they had grown fat upon.

All that day we drove south and east, until sunset found us in the Reach, that familiar strait south of Chapel Island. Here I ordered our sails reefed with the coming darkness, assuming the brig would do the same. It was a gamble, but the greater risk lay in driving ashore, for the currents were unpredictable and the channel too narrow to manoeuvre in. At midnight the Frenchman fired a ranging shot to no effect, though it did rattle the men who'd gone to their hammocks for an hour's rest. Shortly before dawn Froggat called me aft and declared that they had begun to close the distance. It was still dark but I put my trust in his instincts and ordered Frost to let out the reefs without delay. The Frenchman may have had the same intuition, for he loosed another shot that threw up a plume of water a dozen yards from our stern.

Dawn brought the realization that the wind was failing. What was worse, it was localized and seemed to have less effect upon the progress of the other vessel. I called for the sweeps and the four seamen manned one apiece. The effort was largely in vain, however, and even with the warrant officers lending a hand we could not escape the
Valeur
's range. Her next shot struck a glancing blow aft larboard, shivering a few of our timbers but causing no real damage.

Some would say that my next decision was rashly taken, though at that moment I saw it as a bold stroke that might win us some time. By then the fitful wind had disappeared entirely and the sea lay between us in a near calm. The Frenchman's sails were as slack as ours and they were preparing their sweeps as well. We had by then passed out of the Reach and were near Birchy Island with Shoal Tickle Point to larboard. Between these two lay Shoal Tickle itself, a tight little entry of one hundred yards width and no great depth, as its name implied. The tide being at the ebb, I urged the men to pull for all they were worth. I called to Bolger to make ready the aft starboard gun.

“Cartridge is pricked, sir,” he said as I sighted along the barrel.

“I make it eight hundred yards, master gunner.”

“Aye, sir,” he said, looking at the brig, “and perhaps another twenty-five for good measure.”

I grabbed the swivel's handle and made the adjustment. The barrel lay level with the sea. “Beggin' yer pardon, sir,” the gunner said. “But a one-pounder with that charge will only make six hundred yards at fifteen degrees. That angle won't—”

He was silenced by the tremulous hum of a four-pound ball that passed no more than two or three feet above our heads. The wind of it sent his hat flying into the sea. “Stand by, tiller and sweeps,” I called. The men rowed with determination while I watched the Frenchman and waited. We entered the tickle and the points of land on either side came amidships. I counted one, two, three strokes of the oars until we were clear.

“Belay larboard sweeps. Hard over tiller, Mister Froggat.”

The shallop turned on a gold piece, straight for the shelter of Birchy Island. One, two, three strokes from the starboard side and I put the smoldering match to the touchhole. The swivel roared and the shot hit the flat water five hundred yards out. It ricocheted like a skipping stone in a series of diminishing arcs that might have carried it a thousand yards or more, had it not met with the bow of the
Valeur
. In a shower of sparks the ball severed the anchor chains and her best bower broke loose and plunged into the sea. The crew of the
Dove
gave an astonished cheer as we passed out of sight behind Birchy Island.