The sky was overcast. A civilian messenger had joined them. They carried all the provisions the skiff would hold. With the cargo plus an extra man, there was little room to move about and the six men moved carefully, taking their positions with their feet among the bags and barrels. Clark found a place to sit on a bag of flour, his feet on the gunnel, enjoying the rare chance to travel by boat. They had little freeboard but the bay was calm, fog shrouding them like a winding sheet. By nine o’clock the fog was thinning, the sky bright, a breeze pushing them down the west side of the bay, the water a little choppy now, slapping against the hull. The wind freshened and they were under easy canvas. They passed the mouth of the Mobile River and were coming up on Dog River, six miles out of Mobile, two miles south of Choctaw Point.
Without warning a freak of wind was on them, slamming against the sail, throwing the boat over, sail flat on the water, catapulting the men into the bay along with the provisions and sacks of coin. Clark, gasping with the shock, struggled back to the capsized boat. In an instant the water had penetrated his heavy clothing, seeming to squeeze the air out of his lungs. The others floundered, shouted. The boat, unable to complete its roll because of mast and sail, unable to right itself with half a load of water, lay on its side, a low half-moon of gunnel that offered a place to hold but nothing more.
Chandler, hat gone, wet hair plastered to his face, gasping for breath, regained the boat, shouted at the others to swim, get to the boat. He grabbed out at one man who was shouting in terror, choking, unable to swim, flailing helplessly. He brought him in. Another man was trapped under the sail, his hands punching up at it, unable to free himself, Chandler went to him, reached under the heavy cloth, grabbed him by the collar. Clark had followed Chandler. They dragged the man out, got him to the boat. Gasping from the struggle, the leaden weight of water-logged clothing, boots, dragging at them, Chandler told them to hang on, get out of their coats and boots. Shirts and trousers would hold any body heat a little, keep the cold water from direct contact.
Only the men’s hands and heads were above the water. They were hardly able to speak for the chattering of their teeth, splashed and choking on the waves that broke against the hull. Under Chandler’s direction they tried to right the boat but their efforts only tended to settle it further, risking the loss of equilibrium, sending it to the bottom. Spontaneously, desperately, they shouted for help, singly, then together. The fog swallowed the sound, there was no reply.
Silent then, the men looked to the lieutenant, at each other. They were far from shore, out of the channel. Who would see them, hear their shouts? Should the strongest swimmer strip and head for shore? But in the confusion, the fog, they had lost all sense of direction. If their strength held until the fog burned away, if land was not too far . . . But the cold was taking hold, bodies shuddering, hands and feet, arms and legs, going numb.
A long time passed, or seemed to. The fog had lifted, the shore was visible, impossibly far away. Even if a ship should pass in the distant channel they would never be seen. Talk dwindled to oaths, prayer. Suddenly a man was gone, vanished. Terror joined fear, cold. Clark was aware of Chandler’s voice, others, then silence. He held. Then a shout. Chandler was struggling with a man, trying to hold him to the boat. Clark’s numb hands gripped the gunnel, face resting on his hands. He was unable to move, only to endure.
More time, and then the sky was darkening, night was coming. Clark looked down the boat’s side, not sure where he was, what he was doing. He was alone. Night, and he knew only that he must hold on, must not let go. He tried to hold to the image of Lucy, a future, but his mind was growing as numb as his body, feeling nothing, knowing nothing, except that he must not let go, must not go down in the dark water to die in the mud.
He heard something. He opened his eyes. The fog was back, thick and bright. Morning. The sound was almost on top of him, a persistent mooing sort of sound. He had heard that sound before. The Sangumon, the steamboat that had brought his company the last leg of their march to Fort Morgan. The whistle. A steamboat whistle! He tried to move, to shout. Suddenly the boat was visible, side like the wall of a barn. Men were shouting, calling to him from the huge ship. They had seen him, he was saved.
The steamboat Watchman, out of New Orleans bound for Mobile, had got out of the channel on account of the fog, crewmen had seen Clark in the moments of passing the overturned skiff. He was hauled aboard, wrapped in blankets, given hot rum. They took him on to Mobile, put him in the hospital. In a clean bed, warm, well fed, he recovered in three weeks, could return to duty. A reporter from the Georgia Enquirer came to him before he returned to Fort Morgan, asked how he survived when all the others were lost. Clark stared at the man, remembering the shock, the cold, the fear. Why had he held? Lucy had said, “This is our time, Mr. Clark. We must live.” He told the reporter only, “Lucy.” The man stared, shook his head, turned away.
4
A fellow officer had described Captain Belton as “one of the most intelligent and accomplished officers of the United States Army.” Yet a decade ago he had been court-martialed and suspended, prompting another officer, Brig. Gen. Winfield Scott, to write him: “How has it happened that you have so many enemies? I will not believe there is anything wrong in your heart, but have been driven to the conviction that there is much which requires improvement in your temper. It would be idle to say that you could, otherwise, have made so many of your associates your personal enemies. Your case calls for all your fortitude. Show yourself a man.”
Belton, along with his men, had been in virtual exile at Fort Morgan since October 1835 when Fraser and his company had been transferred to Fort Brooke on Tampa Bay. As the long, listless, empty days passed, Clark had often seen the captain sitting outdoors with his easel, placidly sketching the fort and vicinity, adding color with pencils and paint. Having discovered that Clark could read and even write, Belton had assigned him the sometime job of clerk, sending for him whenever a ship called. Aside from letters to Harriet, his wife, he liked to have Clark read his military correspondence aloud to him, the better to make reply. In August he had received a letter from Col. James M. Fannin Jr. in Texas, whom he had met briefly the previous winter in Mobile. Fannin had proposed that Belton join him in the service of Texan independence, offered him the command of “as brave a set of backwoodsmen as ever were led to battle.” Clark knew from the papers that Fannin, along with William Barret Travis, James Bowie, and David Crockett, planned to join the Mexican province of Texas in a bid for secession. Belton had hesitated, replying to Fannin in September that “it would be a step of great importance to me to discard as nothing domestic duties and military responsibilities.” He had agreed only to visit New Orleans, act as inspector of cannon, arms, and other military stores gathering for the coming struggle with Gen. Martin Perfecto do Cos, brother-in-law of the Mexican president, Santa Anna. De Cos had established his headquarters in an abandoned mission east of San Antonio called the Alamo.
While Clark had sat, pen in hand, Belton paced, talked to himself. To join Fannin would be a gamble of all against nothing. He would have to resign his commission after twenty-three years of slow progress rank by rank, years spent trying to overcome the stain of court-martial, suspension, all gone for the hope of rank and glory under a foreign flag. And what of his only child, Winfield Scott Belton, sixteen, whom he was preparing for West Point? Fort Morgan was as secure but as lonely a spot as military service offered and the idea of adventure and advancement had a lot of appeal—from a distance. He was finally spared the agony of decision when, on the twenty-second of November, 1835, he received orders to take his company to Florida.
Clark boarded ship with his company on the 30th, glad to be in motion, glad to leave their lonely brick fortress. Headwinds and stormy weather slowed the long crossing of the Gulf, not reaching Tampa Bay until the 11th of December. Men crowded the rail as they made the last thirty miles north and east up the bay. Fort Brooke finally in sight, Clark could see the partially palisaded area set back only a little from the water’s edge, docks thrusting out like fingers from a wooden fist. Among the log buildings were giant live oaks laced with yellow jasmine, like a woman with flowers in her hair. The area looked more like the grounds of the courthouse in Geneseo than the
