Chapter EightSAVED BY A PIPE-SMOKING MAN
Standingin the wet salt grass at the end of Chelsea Neck, Tom Trask shifted the old blunderbuss from one shoulder to the other.
“Wisht I had my own gun,” he said to himself. “I’d rather try to lug a young pine tree, roots and all, than this critter here.”
Then he smiled sheepishly as he thought of the pretty girl who had loaned him the aged weapon. She was a pretty girl, too. Likely he’d go to her house and see her when he went down river with the logs next spring. Guess she wouldn’t have any eyes for the Newburyport lads when he was about. This fuss would all be over by then, and folks back where they belonged, plowing their own ground.
He shivered with the cold that goes before sunrise and tried to peer through the blackness and mist around him to see if the others were getting as restless as he. There were three hundred or more of them, New Hampshire and Massachusetts men, here where the Neck narrowed down. Not a torch, nota lantern, General Putnam had warned, and if any man felt the need of tobacco, let him cut plug and chew, like an old cow with cud. It was worse than being lost in the devil’s pocket, but even at that, it was better than sitting around camp playing cat’s-cradle, like they’d been doing for the past month. A man could get gray whiskers before his time, that way.
Some of the lads who came a-running so quick after Concord Fight had got tired of the game and put for home already, but Tom hadn’t quite been able to convince himself he ought to go along. No, so long as Colonel Stark saw a reason to sit around waiting for the British to jump, he guessed he, Tom Trask, could wait too. He himself hadn’t been far from the camp at Medford, but he’d heard Boston was all ringed round with Massachusetts and Connecticut men keeping the redcoats shut up tight.
“Can you hear me, lads?” bellowed a gruff voice up ahead.
“Aye,” came a dozen shouts from the tall reeds around him, and an equally gruff voice added, “Aye! We be listening all.”
“Volunteers! Old Put wants volunteers!” roared the first speaker. “There’ll be an officer come amongst you. There’ll be....” His voice grew fainter as he turned to deliver his message in another direction, but the words still sounded plain.
Tom put his blunderbuss down and leaned on it. He spoke to the man who stood in the marsh grass just ahead of him.
“Got any idea what this is about?” he asked.
The other man took his time in answering. He was older, Tom sensed, and more heavily built. In the silence they heard shouting and the rattle of musket fire. A ship’s gun flashed on the dark waters of Chelsea Creek.
“Yea—a,” said the man slowly. “I was down by the ferry stage awhile back.”
“Was there fighting there?”
“Fighting there was. The British ships firing at us, and our men waist-deep in water shooting back—even the General himself, Old Put.”
“Did you hear what the volunteers be for?”
“Maybe. You haven’t been here all along? You’re one o’ the reserves who come in late last night? One o’ Stark’s men?”
“Aye. One o’ Stark’s men, and proud of it.”
The man was chewing tobacco, Tom’s keen nose told him. He spat suddenly into the reeds, his own mouth tasting rancid.
“Likely some day you may have something to be proud of. You done no more yet than anyone else, as I can see.”
Tom ignored the rebuke. “Volunteers now,” he murmured. “If I knew what ’twas about, likely I might take a notion to go.”
“Likely they wouldn’t want you,” sneered the older man. “If I was Putnam—which I ain’t—I’d give the job to one o’ the Essex County boys.”
“Why?”
“Because ’tis a seafaring operation, of a sort, and there be none like the Essex men for maneuvers at sea.”
The firing from the river was steady now.
“Maybe,” said Tom. “What is this operation that takes such a picked crew? I never see salt water yet will fight a man as hard as old Merrimack when the freshets come down.”
“Volunteers!” sang out a voice nearby. A man, bareheaded, wearing a torn brown coat, stood before them holding a carefully shielded lantern in his hand.
“Eleven picked men I got. I need one more.”
“Twelve men, you got,” said Tom, shouldering his blunderbuss. “Where do I go?”
The man held up his lantern so that the dim light shone on his new recruit.
“Built for it, you be,” he said after a moment. “Long, and lean, and tough, by the look of you. Are you tough, lad?”
“Tougher’n a biled owl,” said Tom imperturbably.
“Can you swim?”
“Like a muskrat.”
The man grinned. “What’s your trade?”
“I’m a timber man. Floating logs downstream out of the Hampshire woods is my trade.”
“Good! Come along then. Down by the water. Ike Baldwin has charge o’ the action, and he’s gathered his men there.”
Tom followed as he was bidden, down a rough path to the border of Chelsea Creek. Looking over his shoulder once, he saw in the sky a long streak of sunrise, salmon and silver-gray.
The Neck ended in a narrow strip of shaly beach, and as Tom moved out of the protecting reeds he drew his head down turtle-fashion. A British ball whined past him, and then another. Half an hour now, and it would be broad daylight. Whatever this seafaring operation was, they’d better get it over, and soon. Then a little group of men loomed up in the thinning mist ahead of him. Eight, nine, he counted, most of them no older than he. They were stripped to the waist and unarmed, save for their leader, a stalwart man in a blue coat and knee breeches who leaned on a musket. Tom and his guide approached the group.
“Here’s your twelfth, Ike,” said the brown-coated man. “Swims like a muskrat, tougher’n a biled owl, and is used to riding log rafts down the Merrimack. Think he’ll do.”
Ike cleared his throat and spat into the water lapping gently along the beach. “Have to, now,” he said. “We’ll be sitting ducks in fifteen minutes more. Cal and ’Lisha’s gone for a keg of pitch.” He turned to Tom. “You one o’ Stark’s men?”
“Aye. Tom Trask of Derryfield.”
“Good. Get rid of your gun and strip down.”
Tom looked around and found an outcrop of ledge where he thought he could probably leave the blunderbuss in safety. Then he peeled off his hunting shirt. British mortar fire still droned overhead—too high; he had heard back in camp that the British usually shot that way. As he shook his hands free from the loose sleeves and flung the garment down, he lifted his head and looked at the man nearest to him. Then a wry smile twisted his mouth.
“I think I seen you before,” he said.
The other lad peered through the thinning mist, then his eyes widened in recognition and he smiled.
“Aye,” he answered jauntily. “Last time I seen you, you was playing hide-and-seek. You grown up yet, I wonder?”
“There was others playing it, too,” retorted Tom.
“Yes, others. Kitty Greenleaf, you’ll likely remember.”
“Kitty Greenleaf! So that’s her name. I never did know the whole of it. Promised her I’d call by and see her, if I ever happened back that way.”
“Don’t take the trouble. Kitty’s closer now. She’s in Charlestown with her cousin, Sally Rose. I went home to get some clean shirts and a better gun, and ’twas there I heard it.”
“In Charlestown?” asked Tom in surprise. “Charlestown’s not held to be very safe these days. ’Tis thought the British may strike at us from there. I heard there be only a couple hundred people left in the town, and most of the women sent away.”
“I heard so, too. But Sally Rose took a notion to go home and nothing would stop her, so Kitty went along. I ain’t got over there yet to see them, but I mean to. I heard Granny Greenleaf went legging after them, mad as time.”
Tom laughed in spite of himself as he remembered the thin old voice quavering excitedly, “Stop, thief, stop!”
“Maybe I’ll just go along with you, when you do go,” he said. “What’s your name now? Eben, was it?”
“Eben! No! You’re thinking of Eben Poore. He’s naught but a foolish little lad. I be Johnny Pettengall.”
“So,” said Tom. In the river ahead of him he could see two low green islands getting plainer every minute as the mist cleared away. “Well, Johnny, for old times’ sake then, tell me what’s afoot and what are we down here for?”
Johnny’s face brightened and his voice grew eager, now that he was intent again on the business in hand.
“Likely, being a New Hampshire man, you come in with Stark’s reserves last night.”
“No. I wasn’t detailed to go—nor to stay, either. Couldn’t sleep, and long in the night sometime, I thought I’d just wander this way.”
“I been here all along. We was sent over to Noddle’s Island yesterday to drive the cattle off. Farmers who pasture there have been selling beef to the British. We’d cleared off Noddle, burned the house of one man who resisted, and was on our way back across Hog Island, when a sloop and a schooner sailed close in. Fired on us, they did, and o’ course we answered back.”
“O’ course,” agreed Tom.
“Been firing ever since, except for the schooner—theDiana, she is, one of our men said who recognized her. She’s run aground and been abandoned. It’s her we’re going out to burn.”
Tom looked where the other lad pointed. Sure enough, there in the gray light, not very far from shore, rode a two-masted schooner, listing badly to one side. Her foresail hung in long streamers that stirred as the morning wind blewthrough them. Her colors had been shot away, and the lower side of her deck was all awash with sea.
“All right, boys!” Ike Baldwin straightened them to attention with his command. “Here’s Cal and ’Lisha with the pitch. Now we can go.”
Two young men, dark-haired and muscular, came panting up with a heavy keg between them, swung in a cradle of stout rope. Baldwin went on, speaking rapidly.
“Cal and ’Lisha will tow the pitch out to the schooner. Got that now?”
General murmurs of assent passed among the little group.
“Aye,” murmured Johnny brightly, like a smart lad repeating catechism.
Tom inclined his head and chewed nervously at a bit of grass he had picked up somewhere. It had a rank salty taste. He wished he knew exactly what he was supposed to do.
“The rest of you ain’t going along for the swim, remember,” the relentless orders went on. “You’re there to help get the pitch aboard and spread it around on whatever parts of her is driest and most likely to burn. Don’t want her to go back into British service again. Don’t want the British to think they can come shooting amongst us any time they choose without having to pay.”
He stood still for a moment, in a defiant attitude, waiting for his words to take effect.
“How we going to kindle the pitch, Ike?” asked a voice at the rear of the group. “Flints and tinderboxes’ll be wetter’n a drowned cat ’fore we get there.”
Isaac Baldwin frowned. Then his face cleared and he waved a nonchalant hand. “Likely there’ll be a cookfire in the galley,” he said. “She ain’t been abandoned long. Likely you’ll find a tinderbox there—or somewhere else aboard. Her crew must ha’ had some means to light a fire.”
“Maybe,” said Tom. He stood thoughtfully for a moment,wondering how much time he would have before Ike Baldwin ordered them into the water. It would take a few minutes, the thing he wanted to do.
Luck was with him, for Baldwin bent over just then to speak with Cal and ’Lisha who were tightening the cradle ropes about the keg. He looked up the hill in the direction he had come, then back at the creek again. Out beyond the strandedDiana, the guns of the sloop were still firing harmlessly away. After a moment of indecision, he turned and ran up the hill.
He found the man he had been talking to a short time before, seated now on a tuft of marsh grass, his gun beside him. He was just in the act of filling a pipe, as Tom had gambled he would be. The New Hampshire man loped up and accosted him.
“You with that pipe there!”
The man did not look up. His fingers moved leisurely with flints and tinder. He lit the pipe, drew on it deeply, then took it from his mouth and asked, “Was you speaking to me?”
“Yes. General Putnam gave out the word there was to be no smoking amongst the men. He sent me to collect every pipe I found lighted. Like this.”
Tom’s hand reached forth lightning quick and snatched the pipe from its owner’s startled jaws. Then he sprinted off, down the Neck.
“Hey! Give me back my pipe!” yelled the man, scrambling to his feet, his arms flailing the air. “Them orders against pipes was night orders only. It’s safe enough, now day’s come.”
“Tell it to General Putnam,” called Tom over his shoulder. He did not slow his pace until he reached the beach. Cal and ’Lisha had waded out waist-deep, floating the keg between them. The others plunged in now, and began swimmingtoward the schooner. Their officer laid his musket down and shed his clothes, obviously intending to follow them, like a shepherd after his sheep.
Tom stood still, put the pipe in his mouth, and took a pull on it. Great Jehovah, it tasted worse than sulphur and molasses that the old women dosed you with in the spring. It tasted worse than wormwood and bear’s grease, worse than dragonroot tea. Ike Baldwin stepped into the water now, and Tom followed at a little distance. By and by he felt the river floor sloping away under his feet, but he managed to keep on wading, though the others launched forth and swam. He held his head high and his neck still, and kept puffing on the pipe. The schooner was only a little way off, stranded in shallow water, but it seemed to Tom as if he would never get there, with the ill-smelling wooden bowl and its little treasure of fire. Maybe they wouldn’t need it, he thought, but if they did they would need it bad, and he meant to have it on hand.
Once a British ball struck close by, throwing up a shower of spray that left him shaken and half blinded, but he kept puffing away at the pipe and forged steadily ahead. Then another ball struck even closer. The British were finding the range, he thought. They must have realized what their opponents meant to do.
When he reached the schooner, she was so sharply tilted that he found it as easy to climb aboard her as it would have been to swarm up a sloping beach. The other lads were there ahead of him, busy spreading pitch on a pile of canvas mattresses and hammocks fetched up from the sleeping quarters below, spreading it on the dry parts of the deck above water line.
A brisk wind sang through theDiana’sbroken rigging. It struck cold on Tom’s bare shoulders and drove the last of the mist away. Sounds of firing came from the British sloop, but he forgot the sloop. He cupped his hands about the pipe bowlto shelter its living contents from the wind. He took a long puff.
“So this is the way Stark trains his lads!” Isaac Baldwin’s voice lashed out at him. He turned sharply and looked into the grim, angry face of their leader.
Tom took the pipe cautiously from his mouth. “’T hasn’t got nothing to do with Stark,” he said.
“If this were a regular engagement, you could be court-martialed. Smoking a pipe! Skulking here smoking a pipe! Look at the other lads!”
Tom stared miserably at the busy group who were still heaping up whatever inflammables they could find. Then he put the pipe back in his mouth and gave another dogged puff.
“Here! Give me that!” Livid with rage, Ike Baldwin made a grab for the pipe.
Tom put one hand up before his face and ducked away. The deck under his feet was worn by the tramp of many men, and it was slippery with morning dew. He fell, half recovered himself, and then went down on his knees, his teeth still clamped to the pipestem.
From the hatchway that led below came confused cries.
“Oh, Captain! Tell the Captain there’s not a spark aboard her! Galley fire’s been put out and the ashes raked over! Not a flint! Not a tinderbox! How’s to have a burning without fire?”
Tom felt his pulses quicken. It was as if there were shooting sparks of triumph in his blood. His guess had been right, then. He lifted his head. Baldwin had turned away, having greater troubles now.
“There must be flints somewhere,” he exclaimed crustily. “Have you searched the officers’ quarters? The mess cabin? The hold?”
“Aye, sir. Everywhere.”
Tom got to his feet and looked around him. The men werestanding idle now, about the heap of mattresses. They looked bewildered and—well, not afraid—uneasy, maybe. Turning his head a little, he saw the green shores of Hog Island with Noddle’s Island just beyond it, and far beyond that, the roofs of Boston touched with the morning sun. In the foreground hovered the British sloop. Her guns were silent now, but her sails were spread and she seemed to be drawing close. Perhaps this was the time for him to speak.
“Give me that pipe!” Isaac Baldwin’s command had a different tone to it this time. Before he had been angry and somewhat scornful. Now his voice was full of eagerness, quick and keen.
Tom took the pipe from his mouth. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I thought we might need it, sir. That’s why I brought it along. I—I’m not much of a smoking man.”
“Good boy,” said Isaac Baldwin.
He walked quickly across the deck, knelt down, and ripped a bit of tow from a mattress, testing the dryness of it with his fingers. Then he placed it lightly across the bowl of the pipe.
The other men were holding their breaths as they looked on. Tom watched, too, but he felt a strange dizziness coming over him, so he went and clung to the rail.
At first nothing happened. Then it was as if the tow began to melt away. Ike held a larger piece of tow above the first one—a fluffed-out piece. Suddenly the fluff burst into open flame. Someone started to cheer and quickly choked the sound back. From the fluff, Ike lighted a still larger piece of tow and dropped that on the heap of bedding. The men watched, fascinated. First one little tongue of flame leaped up and then another. Then a tiny roaring sound began, growing louder every moment.
When he saw that there was a splendid bonfire a-going, Tom turned to the rail and hung weakly overside. He knew now that his trick had worked and the British schooner wouldsoon be a seething mass of flame. Soon his comrades, their mission accomplished, would be leaping overside and swimming back to Chelsea Neck. When that time came, he knew, he would straighten himself up and go with them, but right now there was a rancid taste in his mouth and the smell of burning pitch in his nostrils. He’d had enough of pipe-smoking to last him a lifetime, and he didn’t feel very well—in fact, he didn’t feel well at all.