Chesapeake (82 page)

Mr. Goodbarn, a cautious man, ran up to ask, ‘What’s happening, sir?’

‘Gatch! The
Dartmoor’s
hiding upstream.’

Mr. Goodbarn choked, then pointed out, ‘Sir, we aren’t forced to leave port. The Brazilian government won’t allow Gatch to attack us so long as we stay inside.’

‘I want him outside,’ Turlock said as the ship began to move.

‘Halloo,
Ariel!’
came voices from the shore, and Turlock bellowed back, ‘Swim!’ and Steve Turlock leaped into the bay, followed by his companions.

‘Our papers haven’t been cleared,’ Mr. Goodbarn warned.

‘To hell with papers.’ And gradually the
Ariel
caught the late-afternoon breeze and began moving more swiftly, and a Brazilian guard boat sailed out to protest the departure, but its attention was distracted by the fact that the English ship of war was also leaving without proper clearance.

The
Ariel
had a slight start, which it improved when the shore was left behind, but the
Dartmoor,
hoping to increase speed as the winds strengthened, did not propose to allow her enemy clear sailing. In the fading daylight a salvo of well-aimed shots tried to knock down the
Ariel’s
rigging, but fell short. Before the gunners could reload for a second try, the
Ariel
had moved out of range and during the long night she stayed ahead.

At dawn the two vessels retained their relative positions, because no matter how swiftly the
Ariel
sailed, the rising wind enabled the
Dartmoor
to keep pace, and a worried Mr. Goodbarn told his captain, ‘Sir, they’re keeping up.’

‘That’s what I intend.’

‘But in this heavy wind they may overtake us.’

‘I want them to,’ Turlock said, and Mr. Goodbarn, whose neck would also be stretched if the
Ariel
was captured, looked back at the menacing
Dartmoor
and shivered.

‘Break out the topsails, Mr. Goodbarn,’ Turlock said.

‘Sir, the wind is rising.’

‘That’s what we want,’ and Turlock watched approvingly as the two square sails climbed to the tops of their masts. ‘Now we’ll see if he’s a sailor.’

It was a dark overcast day, with a heavy breeze from the shore, and for nine hours the two ships pounded eastward, decks awash and the wind beginning to howl. At dusk they remained separated, and through the long night Captain Turlock kept all sails aloft, even though the
Ariel
was listing perilously to starboard. Twice Mr. Goodbarn asked if he wanted to lower the topsails and twice he asked, ‘Has Sir Trevor lowered his?’

In the darkness the
Ariel
began to shudder from the impact of tall canvas and rough seas, and some of the sailors expressed apprehension: ‘He’s drivin’ us to the bottom of the sea.’

‘He knows what he’s doin’,’ one of the Choptank men replied, but as he spoke the schooner took a sickening drop to starboard, twisted in the trough between the waves and roared upward with a sudden wrench to port. ‘Jesus!’ the Choptank man said.

The only sailor who actually relished the chase was Spratley, who remained at his gun as if action were imminent, staring back in the darkness to catch sight of the
Dartmoor.
When dawn broke under scudding clouds, and the sun appeared for a brief moment, throwing the
pursuers into golden relief, he shouted, ‘We still have ’em!’ as if he were a fisherman teasing an important catch closer to the rowboat so that a net could be dropped. When Captain Turlock passed, inspecting the deck, Spratley winked at him and said, ‘This day we’ll take him,’ and Matt nodded.

All that day the chase continued, and whenever it looked as if the
Ariel
might spring clear, through the excellent management of its sails, Turlock dropped off the wind a point or two, enabling the
Dartmoor
to catch up. One of the sailors complained, ‘Damn it, we should be half a day ahead of them,’ but Spratley corrected him, ‘We don’t want to be ahead. We’re sucking that bastard into the jaws of hell.’ And he stayed by his gun.

During the third night Captain Turlock had to catch some sleep, so he turned the
Ariel
over to Mr. Goodbarn, telling him, ‘I think you know what to do,’ and the mate nodded. At dawn the
Dartmoor
had moved closer, and when Turlock saw this he was pleased. All that day he sailed through the growing storm in such a way as to keep the British schooner in a position from which she might want to use her guns, but since he did not lower his sails, Captain Gatch could not lower his, either.

At noon Captain Turlock studied the
Dartmoor
through his glass and asked Mr. Goodbarn, ‘Has she moved her cannon forward?’

‘Two of them. The rest are fixed.’

‘But they are forward?’

‘They are, sir.’

‘Good. Does she seem a mite heavy in the bow?’

‘She always has been, since the British captured her.’

‘You can see it, too?’

‘She’s heavy, sir.’

‘I thought so. Gatch is a fool.’ And he ordered Spratley’s movable gun to be shifted far aft. Then he swung his clipper slightly so that it made maximum speed.

A ship, like a human being, moves best when it is slightly athwart the wind, when it has to keep its sails tight and attend its course. Ships, like men, do poorly when the wind is directly behind, pushing them sloppily on their way so that no care is required in steering or in the management of sails; the wind seems favorable, for it blows in the direction one is heading, but actually it is destructive because it induces a relaxation in tension and skill. What is needed is a wind slightly opposed to the ship, for then tension can be maintained, and juices can flow and ideas can germinate, for ships, like men, respond to challenge.

At three that afternoon Captain Turlock, ignoring the signs of fierce wind about to sweep the South Atlantic, had his maximum sails aloft, his course laid so that the wind came at them from two points forward of the starboard quarter. He maintained a port tack, for like every other
ship that sailed, the
Ariel
performed slightly better on one tack than the other, and her greatest speed came on the port. From his long acquaintance with the
Whisper,
he suspected that the
Dartmoor
sailed best on her port tack, too. So the two ships were now in a posture of maximum performance.

The duel began. No gun was fired, because Captain Turlock kept tantalizingly just out of range, but from the manner in which he sailed, it must have seemed on the
Dartmoor
that he was about to fall behind, so that the eight heavy guns could riddle him. At any rate, the
Dartmoor
maintained pursuit, and as Captain Turlock watched her plow into the growing waves, bow down, he told Mr. Goodbarn, ‘Before sundown.’

At four the wind started to blow in gusts so strong that the mate said, with some urgency, ‘We’ve got to lower the topsails.’

‘They stay,’ Turlock said.

‘You’re placing our ship in great danger, sir.’

‘And his,’ Turlock said.

At five the sky began to darken and by five-thirty it was as foul a day as the
Ariel
had seen. Spratley, convinced that the two ships must close before dark, had ordered his helper to bring six more cannonballs on deck, and the two other gunners had done the same, but when Turlock saw this he was aghast. ‘All extra cannonballs to the bottom of the hold! And everything else of weight!’ For the next fifteen minutes the crew stowed everything movable belowdeck, with Captain Turlock yelling into the hold, ‘Place it all aft! Everything aft!’ And as the men did this, he told Mr. Goodbarn, ‘We’ll stay stern-heavy. Let him have the bow.’

It wasn’t enough. Turlock, testing the deck with his feet, sensed that his ship was in peril, so he shouted, ‘Spratley’s gun! Overboard!’

‘Oh, sir?’ the little Englishman protested, but Mr. Goodbarn and his men edged the heavy gun to the rail and pushed it over. As it sank unused, Spratley groaned.

Just before darkness set in with that incredible speed it shows in the tropics—daylight one moment, night the next—the sun broke out beneath the cloud cover and illuminated the
Dartmoor
as if she were a golden ship painted upon a porcelain plate used by a queen, her spars, her sails, her decks aglistening. Only for a moment did the light prevail; then, as it began to fade and great winds roared across the ocean, the lovely schooner began to bury her heavy nose in a towering wave, digging deeper and deeper, until she had buried herself completely.

Not a cap floated on the dark Atlantic. The sun vanished. The gold was gone.

From the
Ariel
rose a spontaneous shout, then individual cries of victory, and Spratley danced about the remaining cannon, crying to the captain, ‘Down he goes!’ But Turlock, agitated beyond control, swept his left arm in a violent circle, knocking the gunner to the deck. ‘You weren’t fit to tie his shoe.’

Spratley was not to be denied his victory. Leaping to his feet and ignoring the captain, he set a match to one of the guns, and a cannonball shot out across the turbulent waves, skipped once and sank to join the
Dartmoor
in the vast, dark caverns of the sea.

‘You may drop the canvas, Mr. Goodbarn,’ Turlock said. ‘This night we’ll ride a gale.’

IN THE REMOTE WASTES OF NORTHERN CANADA,
where man was rarely seen except when lost and about to perish, a family of great geese, in the late summer of 1822, made their home on a forlorn stretch of Arctic moorland. Mother, father, six fledglings: because of a freak of nature they had come to a moment of terrifying danger.

The two adult birds, splendid heavy creatures weighing close to fourteen pounds and with wings normally capable of carrying them five thousand miles in flight, could not get off the ground. At a time when they had to feed and protect their offspring, they were powerless to fly. This was no accident, nor the result of any unfortunate experience with wolves; like all their breed they lost their heavy wing feathers every summer and remained earthbound for about six weeks, during which they could only hide from their enemies and walk ineffectively over the moorland, waiting for their feathers to return. It was for this reason that they had laid their eggs in such a remote spot, for during their moulting period they were almost defenseless.

Onk-or, the father in this family, strutted about the bushes seeking seeds, while his mate stayed near the nest to tend the fledglings, whose appetites were insatiable. Occasionally when Onk-or brought food to the younglings, his mate would run long distances as if pleased to escape the drudgery of her brood, but on this day when she reached the top of a grassy mound she ran faster, flapped the wings she had not used for six weeks and flew back toward her nest, uttering loud cries as she did so.

Onk-or looked up, saw the flight and sensed that within a day or two he would be soaring too; always her feathers grew back faster than his. As she flew past he spoke to her.

Maintaining a medium altitude, she headed north to where an arm of
the sea intruded, and there she landed on water, splashing it ahead of her when her feet slammed down to act as brakes. Other geese landed to eat the seeds floating on the waves, and after weeks of loneliness she enjoyed their companionship, but before long she rose on the water, flapped her long wings slowly, gathered speed amidst great splashing, then soared into the air, heading back to her nest. From long habit, she landed short of where her fledglings lay, moved about unconcernedly to deceive any foxes that might be watching, then collected bits of food, which she carried to her children. As soon as she appeared, Onk-or walked away, still unable to fly, to gather more food.

He and his mate were handsome birds, large and sleek. Both they and their children had long necks feathered in jet-black, with a broad snowy white bib under the chin and reaching to the ears. When their wings were folded, as they were most of the time, the heavy body was compact and beautifully proportioned, and they walked with dignity, not waddling from side to side like ducks. Their heads were finely proportioned, with bills pointed but not grotesquely long, and the lines of their bodies, where feathers of differing shades of gray joined, were pleasing. Indeed, their subdued coloring was so appropriate to the Arctic moorland that an observer, had there been one, could have come close to their nest without noticing them.

On this day there was an observer, an Arctic fox who had not eaten for some time and was beginning to feel the urge of hunger. When from a distance he spotted the rough nest on the ground, with the six fledglings tumbling about and obviously not prepared to fly, he took no precipitate action, for he had learned respect for the sharp beaks and powerful wings of full-grown geese like Onk-or.

Instead he retreated and ran in large circles far from the nest, until he roused another fox to make the hunt with him. Together they returned quietly across the tundra, moving from the security of one tussock to the next, scouting the terrain ahead and developing the strategy they would use to pick off these young geese.

During the brightest part of the day they lay in wait, for long ago they had learned that it was easier to attack at night, when they would be less conspicuous against the Arctic grass. Of course, during the nesting season of the geese there was no real night; the sun stayed in the heavens permanently, scudding low in the north but never disappearing. Instead of blackness, which would last interminably during the winter, there came only a diffused grayness in the middle hours, a ghostly penumbra, with geese, young and old, half asleep. That was the time to attack.

So as the sun drifted lower in the west, on a long, sliding trajectory that would never dip below the horizon, and as the bright glare of summer faded to an exquisite gray matching the feathers of the geese, the two foxes moved slowly toward the nest where the six fledglings hid
beneath the capacious wings of their mother. Onk-or, the foxes noted, lay some distance away with his head under his left wing.