that too was desirable, but rather that the captured ships were now presumed to be private property. Not the property of the United States, but of the privateers like the low-slung, raked-masted, rattlesnake-decorated sloop.
‘They are pirates, Mister Coningsby,’ Saltonstall growled.
‘Aye aye, sir,’ Midshipman Fanning replied. Midshipman Coningsby had died of the fever a week previously, but all Fanning’s nervous attempts to correct his captain had failed and he had abandoned any hope of being called by his real name.
Saltonstall was still frowning at the privateers. ‘How can we find decent crew when piracy beckons?’ Saltonstall complained, ‘tell me that, Mister Coningsby!’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘We cannot, Mister Coningsby, we cannot,’ Saltonstall said, shuddering at the injustice of the law. It was true that the privateers were patriotic pirates who were fierce as wolves in battle, but they fought for private gain, and that made it impossible for a Continental warship like the Warren to find good crew. What young man of Boston would serve his country for pennies when he could join a privateer and earn a share of the plunder? No wonder the Warren was short-handed! She carried thirty-two guns and was as fine a frigate as any on the American seaboard, but Saltonstall had only men enough to fight half his weapons, while the privateers were all fully manned. ‘It is an abomination, Mister Coningsby!’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ Midshipman Fanning said.
‘Look at that!’ Saltonstall checked his pacing to point a finger at the Ariadne, a fat British merchantman that had been captured by a privateer. ‘You know what she was carrying, Mister Coningsby?’
‘Black walnut from New York to London, sir?’
‘And she carried six cannon, Mister Coningsby! Nine-pounder guns! Six of them. Good long nine-pounders! Newly made! And where are those guns now?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘For sale in Boston!’ Saltonstall spat the words. ‘For sale, Mister Coningsby, in Boston, when our country has desperate need of cannon! It makes me angry, Mister Coningsby, it makes me angry indeed.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
‘Those cannon will be melted down for gew-gaws. For gew-gaws! It makes me angry, upon my soul, it does.’ Captain Saltonstall carried his anger to the starboard rail where he paused to watch a small cutter approach from the north. Its dark sails first appeared as a patch in the fog, then the patch took shape and hardened into a single-masted vessel about forty feet long. She was not a fishing boat, she was too narrow for such work, but her gunwales were pierced with tholes showing that she could ship a dozen oars and so be rowed on calm days and Saltonstall recognized her as one of the fast messenger boats used by the government of Massachusetts. A man was standing amidships with cupped hands, evidently shouting his news to the moored vessels through which the cutter slid. Saltonstall would dearly have liked to know what the man shouted, but he considered it was beneath his dignity as a Continental Navy captain to make vulgar enquiries, and so he turned away just as a schooner, her gunwales punctuated by gunports, gathered way to pass the Warren. The schooner was a black-hulled privateer with the name King-Killer prominent in white paint at her waist, her dirt-streaked sails were sheeted in hard to beat her way out of the harbour. She carried a dozen deck guns, enough to batter most British merchantmen into quick surrender, and she was built for speed so that she could escape any warship of the British navy. Her deck was crowded with men while at her mizzen gaff was a blue flag with the word Liberty embroidered in white letters. Saltonstall waited for that flag to be lowered in salute to his own ensign, but as the black schooner passed she offered no sign of recognition. A man at her taffrail looked at Saltonstall, then spat into the sea and the Warren’s captain bridled, suspecting an insult. He watched her go towards the fog. The King-Killer was off hunting, going across the bay, around the northern hook of Cape Cod and out into the Atlantic where the fat British cargo ships wallowed on their westward runs from Halifax to New York.
‘Gew-gaws,’ Saltonstall growled.
A stub-masted open barge, painted white with a black stripe around its gunwale, pushed off from the Castle Island quay. A dozen men manned the oars, pulling hard against the small waves, and the sight of the barge made Captain Saltonstall fish a watch from his pocket. He clicked open the lid and saw that it was ten minutes past eight in the morning. The barge was precisely on time, and within an hour he would see it return from Boston, this time carrying the commander of the Castle Island garrison, a man who preferred to sleep in the city. Saltonstall approved of the Castle Island barge. She was smartly painted and her crew, if not in real uniform, wore matching blue shirts. There was an attempt at order there, at discipline, at propriety.
The captain resumed his pacing, larboard to starboard, starboard to larboard.
The King-Killer vanished in the fog.
The Castle Island barge threaded the anchorage. A church bell began to toll.
Boston harbour, a warm morning, June 23rd, 1779.
The paymaster of His Majesty’s 82nd Regiment of Foot strode west along Majabigwaduce’s ridge. From behind him came the sound of axes striking trees, while all around him was fog. A thick fog. Every morning since the fleet had arrived there had been fog. ‘It will burn off,’ the paymaster said cheerfully.
‘Aye, sir,’ Sergeant McClure answered dully. The sergeant had a picquet of six men from the 82nd Foot, the Duke of Hamilton’s regiment and so known as the Hamiltons. McClure was thirty, older by far than his men and twelve years older than the paymaster, a lieutenant, who led the picquet at a fast, enthusiastic pace. His orders were to establish a sentry post at the peninsula’s western heights from where a lookout could be kept on the wide Penobscot Bay. If any enemy was to come, then the bay was their likeliest approach. The picquet was in thick woodland now, dwarfed by tall, dark, fog-shrouded trees. ‘The brigadier, sir,’ Sergeant McClure ventured, ‘said there might be rebels here.’
‘Nonsense! There are no rebels here! They have all fled, Sergeant!’
‘If you say so, sir.’
‘I do say so,’ the young officer said enthusiastically, then stopped suddenly and pointed into the underbrush. ‘There!’
‘A rebel, sir?’ McClure asked dutifully, seeing nothing worthy of note among the pines.
‘Is it a thrush?’
‘Ah,’ McClure saw what had interested the paymaster and looked more closely, ‘it’s a bird, sir.’
‘Strangely, Sergeant, I was apprised of that fact,’ the lieutenant said happily. ‘Note the breast, Sergeant.’
Sergeant McClure dutifully noted the bird’s breast. ‘Red, sir?’
‘Red indeed. I congratulate you, Sergeant, and does it not put you in mind of our native robin? But this fellow is larger, much larger! Handsome fellow, isn’t he?’
‘Want me to shoot him, sir?’ McClure asked.
‘No, Sergeant, I merely wish you to admire his plumage. A thrush is wearing his majesty’s red coat, would you not consider that an omen of good-fortune?’
‘Oh, aye, sir, I would.’
‘I detect in you, Sergeant, a lack of zeal.’ The eighteen-year-old
