I do believe it’s a good tonic for the men in this heat. The soldiers will still be there an hour from now, if they’re alive.”
“I agree with ya, sir. Nary a one could be breathin’ after that journey, I’m thinkin’, sir. Hell of a row from the Tortugas. ’Specially for farm boyos not used to this heat. This ol’ Irishman ain’t used to it neither, sir!”
“Give the men another twenty minutes, then send off a boat’s crew. Have them row all the way around the islands on this side of the group, we’ll search the other side tomorrow. Check anything that looks odd. If those soldiers are here, they’ll be needing help by now.”
“Aye, sir. I don’t much think they’re here though, sir. Me thinks the poor beggars are most likely in the belly of some sharks somewhere.”
“Probably you are right, Rork, but we’ve got to confirm that they’re not here. If they are, the Tortugas might even look good to them by now. Wonder what the colonel will do to them if he gets them alive?”
“No way of telling that one, sir.”
A half hour later the pleasant noise of the men relaxing in the water gave way to the somber sounds of the boat crew rowing away from the schooner. Armed and looking serious, they were like all sailors told to go after deserters. They had no qualms about dragging those men back to their duty and would show no mercy to any deserter who did not surrender. Wake had seen it happen other times at Key West and was always amazed at it. One would think sailors would sympathize with the deserters, but they never did. Instead they despised them as weaklings that made extra work for the others.
For the thousandth time, Wake marveled at the discipline of the navy. That men could, and would, work in such conditions without mutiny showed the tremendous contrast to the merchant marine life he had known up until the year before. As hard as life was for a merchant sailor, the harsh realities of naval service were worse. That he, in his mid-twenties, was the undisputed master of these sailors’ lives gave Wake a chill down his spine. It was such a long way from his previous life aboard the coastal schooners of New England.
That thought took him to another, more melancholy one. The previous year, while stationed at Key West and before commanding the St. James, he had fallen in love with a woman named Linda Donahue. Daughter of a rabid anti-Yankee Key Wester now languishing in a prisoner-of-war dungeon in Boston’s Fort Warren, Linda still lived in Key West with her pro-Confederate uncle. The strain of carrying on a love affair with the enemy of her family had proven too much for Linda, and one day four months ago she had told Wake it had to end, that she couldn’t take it any longer and their love could not endure the hate that was all around them on both sides of this dreadful war.
For those four months Wake had not been the same man. It was as if he’d had a leg amputated and still had the ghost feelings of the severed member. He loved and desperately needed Linda. He was not able to get through a day without thinking of her, and routine things would somehow bring her to his mind, saddening him. His periodic visits to Key West for supplies or orders were a constant pull upon his heart to go near her house and maybe just see her in the distance. But his will power had managed to overcome his heart, and he had not burdened her with his presence since that day.
The sun had sunk low into the western sky when Wake, lying under a shade awning on the afterdeck, was shaken from his reverie by a gunshot in the distance on the lagoon side of the island closest to them. Rork, who was stretched out by the twelve-pounder amidships, leaped to his feet and peered at the island in the failing light.
“Quick, Dumfrey, get your sharp eyes up the mast and spy out what would be happenin’ over there with our lads. Did ye hear that, sir? ’Twas a gunshot, sure as Jesus, sir.”
“Yes, I heard it too, Rork. Get the anchor hove short and the furl lashings off her, in case we have to move quickly.”
Dumfrey ran to the shrouds of the mainmast and ascended them to the crosstrees, scanning the eastern horizon in segments. With no sighting, he climbed to the very masthead, clinging precariously. Seconds later he cried out.
“Captain sir! I see the boat over on the lagoon side with a bunch o’ men in the shallows around it, sir. Can’t tell who’s who, but it looks like some o’ them is prisoners, sir. Trussed up, like.”
Wake looked up at the eighteen-year-old Dumfrey and realized his understanding of what was happening was entirely through the boy’s eyes and interpretation. Dumfrey was from Vermont and had been in the navy for five weeks. He’d only been on the St. James for two.
“Anyone lying down, Dumfrey? Can you see if anyone is wounded?”
“Yes, sir. Now I see one man in the boat lyin’ down, like, sir. Could be wounded.”
Rork, standing by his captain, had gotten the remaining crew working to make the St. James ready for weighing the anchor. The dinghy was being repaired in Key West and there was no second small boat to go ashore. He looked over at Wake.
“No way to support the lads, sir. Just have to wait till they come back. But it sounds like they’re all right, by Dumfrey’s eyes.”
“I hate this waiting, but you are right, Rork. We wait.”
Fifteen minutes later, as the sun was making its daily show of farewell on the western horizon, the schooner’s boat was seen coming around the point of the island. It was pulling steadily for the St. James, and from two hundred yards away the men on the schooner’s deck could hear the coxswain, White, calling the steady cadence to the men rowing. In the growing darkness there was no discerning the condition of the men aboard, and all hands on the deck stared without a sound at the boat until Rork bellowed out.
“White! Are ye all right?”
“Nay, Bosun! Man shot!”
The bosun’s voice stirred the others to action and a dozen pairs of arms reached out to fend off and hold as the boat finally came alongside its mother ship. The lantern shed light into the well of the boat. A collective gasp exhaled from the crew looking down. At the same time a wail came up from the boat’s floorboards. A writhing man was down there doubled over and clutching his guts, which were spilling out of his hands like a nest of slimy snakes. Two sailors were trying to hold the man down and stuff the glistening intestines back into the gaping wound in his belly, while several others were prodding three skulking men up from the bows of the boat to climb the hull of the schooner. The prodding was being done with their cutlasses and not too lightly. White looked up from below at his captain.
“Only found four of them soldiers, sir. They said the other’s dead on the beach on the northern island. These ones walked to this island through the shallows. Molloy had to shoot this one, sir. Damned sorry, but nary a choice.”
Wake saw, as he listened to White, that the three ambulatory deserters were now lashed to the foremast and the sailors were trying to get the wounded soldier lifted up on the deck. Gentleness was not employed as they finally threw the now screaming man up after several failures at being more delicate. Wake looked again at White.
“All right, White, come up and tell me what happened. Rork, try to get a dressing on that wound and bind it up. Use some of the laudanum to quiet that man.”
Both men acknowledged Wake, with Rork adding that White had better get the ship’s boat cleaned up before any of the mess set in. White told the ship’s boy to start on it as he climbed up the main chains to the deck and walked aft with the captain. When they reached the stern White stopped, took off his canvas hat, and stood quietly waiting.
