Isaac Biddlecomb was exhausted, but he knew sleep would not come, so he did not even try. He sat at his table in the great cabin for some time, a candle flickering in the cold drafts coming in from a dozen places, a half-finished letter to Virginia spread out in front of him. He had managed to scrawl a part of a sentence over the course of the previous forty-five minutes, some ridiculous and barely coherent nonsense, and now he was trying to work up the energy to scratch it out.
Damn it all, damn it… he thought. It was maddening, infuriating, beyond endurance, the situation he was in. He felt helpless, immobilized, and there was no feeling, none, that he despised more than that.
They were trapped. Stalemate. As long as Barnett stayed where he was, as long as the Gloucester County Militia refused to act, then there was nothing he, Biddlecomb, could do. If he could speak to Somers he felt certain he could cajole, browbeat, threaten, or bribe the man into acting in concert with the men of Falmouth to drive Barnett away. But he could not speak to Somers. Because Barnett was where he was.
There was no getting to town by way of the wharf, that was clear, and there was no way to get there by water, either. A ship such as Falmouth would normally carry a minimum of five boats, but the partially built frigate had none. The only boat they had had been aboard Sparrowhawk. And that had disappeared with Angus McGinty.
So, it was not a fight they had there at Great Egg Harbor, it was an endurance contest. It was a race to see if Barnett’s men would get fed up with bivouacking in the cold and leave before Biddlecomb’s men ran out of food. The Lord alone knew how long it would take to find that out.
Biddlecomb felt suddenly that he would explode if he stayed in that cabin for a moment more. He stood quickly, nearly knocking his chair over as he did, pulled on his heavy watch coat, pushed his hat down on his head, and made his way up the ladder to the quarterdeck above.
Midshipman Gerrish had the watch, but by the time Biddlecomb reached the deck, he had retreated to the seaward side. From there, he touched his hat and said, “Evening, Captain,” as Biddlecomb stepped through the scuttle, and said no more.
Biddlecomb nodded his reply. He stepped over to the rail on the landward side and looked out into the night. He was grateful, at least, that Gerrish had the good sense not to engage him in conversation or ask him why he was still awake at that hour.
He put his hands on the rail and stared out at the dark town beyond the far end of the wharf. Behind the scattering of tents he could make out the glow of several small cook fires and he pictured Barnett’s rag and tag troops huddled around them as they kept some sort of watch. During the first few days of the siege, the nights had been filled with the sound of drunken revelry—shouting, laughing, guns firing at random—as the pine robbers tried to maintain the lifestyle they had come to enjoy while living in the tavern.
But that had dropped away quickly. Tents on the frozen ground were not conducive to revelry, and if the men were still drinking, which they likely were, then it seemed to be making them silent and morose rather than elevating their spirits. And that was good. Men who were silent and morose were men who would be slinking away soon. The only question was, would it be soon enough.
What Biddlecomb really wanted to do, of course, was to lead an attack against Barnett’s camp. It was what Faircloth wanted to do as well, and Gerrish, and all the men aboard Falmouth. But they were too outnumbered to risk it, and that was made worse by the absence of Rumstick and his band of woodcutters.
Rumstick…Biddlecomb thought. Barnett could not have caught him yet. If he had, he would have paraded him and the other prisoners down the wharf already, eager to trade their lives for the ship. Since he hadn’t, it had to mean that Rumstick and his men were still free. Or had indeed been taken prisoner and were on their way to Great Egg Harbor. Or were dead.
Biddlecomb thumped his hand against the rail in frustration and relished the pain of the hard wood against his half-frozen flesh. He did not know what was going on beyond those wooden walls, and he had no way of knowing, or of effecting any meaningful change in their circumstance.
“Rum,” he muttered to himself. “A cup of rum, that’s what I need.” He pictured the half-empty bottle in his cabinet below. Even if he could do nothing else, he could at least have a drink. It would help him sleep, he figured, and that was excuse enough.
He straightened, turned, and had taken one step toward the scuttle when he heard the gunshot. It had come from somewhere behind him, somewhere ashore. He spun back quick, looking out into the night. Nothing had changed that he could see. If there had been a muzzle flash, then he had missed it, and in its absence, he was not entirely certain it was in fact a gunshot that he had heard.
Gerrish was stepping quickly across the deck, his shoes making a staccato sound on the planks, and a second later he appeared at Biddlecomb’s side.
“You heard that?” Biddlecomb asked.
“Yes, sir,” Gerrish said, staring out into the dark as Biddlecomb was. They could hear shouting now from Barnett’s camp, and could see the shadows of a few men rushing about. “Are they drunk, do you reckon?” Gerrish asked. “Just firing off guns?”
“Perhaps…” Biddlecomb said. It seemed the most likely explanation, but it did not feel like the correct one. “Or perhaps…” he began when two more shots were fired. He saw the muzzle flashes that time, and they did not come from the camp, but rather from some place across the open ground that bordered the waterfront. He could hear more shouting among Barnett’s people, the pitch and volume rising.
“Sir, I think…” Gerrish began and then suddenly the night seemed to be torn apart by sound. A church bell began to ring, loud and insistent, and more guns blinked in the dark, priming and charge making their double flash and bang. Men, barely visible, were stumbling around Barnett’s camp, and now some of them were firing was well, shooting back at the dark place from where the shots had come.
“Turn out the marines, Mr. Gerrish. All hands to arms! Down on the wharf, now!” Biddlecomb shouted. He was moving as he spoke, stepping quickly to the scuttle, his feet on the ladder even as the last words left his lips.
He reached the great cabin and threw off his coat, grabbed his sword belt and buckled it around his waist. He slipped his coat back on and took his fine brace of pistols—a present from Virginia on his thirty-first birthday—from their polished mahogany box and slipped them into the pockets of his coat. He did not have to load them. He had kept them loaded since Barnett arrived at the wharf, kept them ready for this exact moment.
Up the ladder and out onto the quarterdeck, the cold air like salt spray in the face. The gangplank had been removed to make boarding the ship less convenient for potential attackers, but men were already swarming down the boarding steps and onto the dock, Faircloth’s marines in their green regimental coats leading the way.
Son of a bitch…he must order them to sleep in those things, Biddlecomb mused. He could see no other way that the men had turned out in full uniform so quickly. Nor would it surprise him that Faircloth would do such a thing. For the lieutenant, being ready to go in an instant would mean being ready to go in all respects, and that meant full and proper uniforms.
Biddlecomb came down the quarterdeck ladder at a quick but dignified pace. There was no reason to hurry. There was still a crowd of men waiting to get through the gangway and down to the wharf: the rest Falmouth’s crew, who, with their blue jackets and short, heavy coats, and knitted caps pulled down over their heads looked decidedly less uniform than the marines.
But they, too, had done an admiral job of turning out quickly. Biddlecomb could see they wore cutlasses and carried boarding axes and pistols jammed in their belts and muskets in their hands. They were a lethal bunch. He just wished there were more of them.
“Make way! Make way for the captain!” Mr. Sprout shouted when he noticed Biddlecomb coming down the ladder. “Come along, make way!” Biddlecomb stepped into the waist and like the Red Sea, the men parted. He hurried through the gangway, turned to face inboard, and then went down the boarding steps and onto the wharf.
Lieutenant Faircloth was there to meet him, and like his troops, he did not look like a man who had just turned out of his bed. In the light of the single lantern on the wharf, Biddlecomb could see a hint of a smile on his face, half-hidden by his improbable mustache.
“Sir, some excitement, it seems,” he said. “Do you know what’s acting?”
“No, I don’t,” Biddlecomb said, looking down the wharf. He could see muzzle flashes like fireflies on a summer night, hear the cracking sound of muskets firing. “Perhaps the militia have finally worked up the courage to fight. That’s my best guess. So we better go help them.”
“Indeed, sir,” Faircloth said. He turned and barked a few orders to the marines who fell into a line with muskets held at an angle across their chests. The sailors were on the wharf now as well, and Gerrish was getting them formed up as best as he could, though just on principle, they would never stand in as perfect order as the marines.
“Sir…” Faircloth said, taking a step closer to Biddlecomb and speaking in a low voice, “It occurs to me…if this bastard Barnett wanted to lure us into a trap, this would be a fine way to do it…”
Biddlecomb frowned. Excited as he was at the prospect of ending this stalemate it had not occurred to him that it might be a trick. He would not have credited Barnett with being that clever, but he had had lessons a’ plenty in underestimating one’s opponent.
“You make a good point, Mr. Faircloth,” Biddlecomb said. He looked toward the town but he could not see much of what was going on, not nearly as much as he had been able to see from the vantage of the quarterdeck. “But there’s naught we can do,” he continued. “We have to go to the sound of the guns.”
“I agree, sir, of course,” Faircloth said. “But I beg, let me lead my marines in the vanguard. If it’s a trap, we can bear the brunt.”
“Of course,” Biddlecomb said. He could hear the shouting getting louder, the firing more frequent and intense. “But we must go. Now.”
With a few more shouts, the marines began to move, Faircloth at their head, Sergeant Dawes jogging alongside the first soldier. They would have looked intimidating indeed, advancing in good order, if only there had been a few more of them. Once the last of the marines passed, Biddlecomb turned to the rest and shouted, “Falmouths, with me! Listen for my orders! No one is to do a damned thing without my orders!”
He headed off at a jog to match the pace set by Faircloth in the lead, and he tried to imagine what they would encounter at the far end of the wharf: who was fighting, how they were fighting. If they were really fighting at all, or if it was all just play-acting designed to lure them away from his ship.
We’ll know directly…he thought. They had no choice but to take the risk, to join the fight. If the militia had finally decided to go after Barnett, then this was their best chance at being rid of him. The son of a bitch had them trapped like fish in a weir, and now was their opportunity to break free.
Over the stamp of sixty shoes racing down the wooden wharf, Biddlecomb could hear the shouts, the call of orders, the gunfire, the scream of wounded men. It sounded like a real fight, he had to admit it. Two years of war had at least taught him what battle sounded like. If Barnett was staging this whole thing, he was doing a more than admirable job.
They were still moving fast as they came up with the camp and the haphazardly pitched tents. Faircloth’s marines did not slacken their pace as they spread out at Sergeant Dawes’s command, moving from column to rank and advancing with muskets leveled, bayonets fixed. They slowed as they moved through the tents, matching Faircloth’s pace, muskets sweeping side to side as they looked for their enemy but found nothing.
Biddlecomb hurried forward, pushed his way through the line of marines and up to Faircloth’s side. They had reached the far end of the camp now and come up with the cook fires burning in their stone rings. They had encountered none of Barnett’s men. But they could see them, a couple hundred feet away. They could see them in the muzzle flashes of their muskets, and those of whoever was shooting at them. The banditti had crossed halfway over the open ground toward what Biddlecomb recalled was a blacksmith’s shop, and now they were advancing slowly, exchanging fire as they did.
“Halt!” Biddlecomb shouted, as Midshipman Gerrish came hurrying up to join them. “Everyone, halt!” He turned to Faircloth. “I don’t think this is a trap,” he said.
“Nor do I, sir,” Faircloth said.
“Nor me,” Gerrish said.
“Right at them?” Biddlecomb asked.
“Right at them, sir!” Faircloth said, and now he was definitely smiling. “Marines, forward!” he continued, half turning toward his men. “Advance and fire, one volley!”
The line of marines moved ahead, ten paces, then on Sergeant Dawes’s orders they stopped and shouldered their weapons. “Take care to fire by division!” Dawes called.
“Hold up, hold up!” Biddlecomb shouted. “The sailors have muskets, too! You men, get up there with the marines!”
With a haphazard cheer, the sailors came racing past Biddlecomb on either side and joined the marines’ line, extended it in ragged order. Sergeant Dawes looked left and right at them and he did not try to hide his disgust.
“Make ready!” the sergeant shouted, and the sailors shouldered their muskets as the marines were doing. “Take aim! Fire!”
Two dozen muskets went off at once. The flash of light lit up the ground and the backs of the men in the distance, but it was gone before Biddlecomb could see any reaction from Barnett’s men, or see any of them fall. He heard the reaction, however: an instant of stunned silence at the shock of the unexpected volley from behind, and then, seconds later, the screams, the shouting, the panicked orders.
Faircloth was up with his marines once more, stepping in front of them, sword raised. “Bayonet charge!” he shouted and began to move forward, the marines following in their neatly dressed line. It was good to see that orderly advance, but it was irritating as well to have Faircloth lead the attack in that manner. It was only proper that the marines should go first, of course, and Biddlecomb was not proud of the petty annoyance he felt, but there it was.
“Falmouths! To me!” he shouted, rushing forward to get ahead of his men and drawing his sword as he did. The familiar wire-bound grip felt good in his hand, the finely balanced blade light and nimble. “Look to your bayonets! Take position either side of the marines!”
He turned again and hurried after Faircloth. He pulled one of the pistols with his left hand, cocked the lock with his other hand, and held the weapon low as he jogged on. Every bit of him wanted to break into a run, to get at the enemy in their front, but Faircloth was only walking fast, no more, and Biddlecomb forced himself to show the same degree of discipline.
He had heard of fearless men, of men who longed for combat, who seemed to never contemplate their own mortality. He was not one of those. Naval battles tended to provide ample time beforehand to consider what might happen when the iron started to fly, and his thoughts at those times had never been very comforting. His bravest act, he always thought, was not being unafraid, but appearing to be unafraid.
But this time, he was genuinely not afraid, this time he was simply eager to be at them, the damned pine robbers, Barnett and the rest. Maybe it was the wild frustration he had endured, the helplessness. Maybe it was how quickly this fight had come about. He did not know, did not care. He just wanted to drive his sword through someone’s gut, put a bullet through a banditti skull.
And then he was on them, face to face, men turning to fight, men sprawled on the ground where they had been shot down. In the half a minute or so it had taken to close with the pine robbers over the open ground, part of Barnett’s men and managed to turn and make ready for this new attack. Biddlecomb saw muskets go up, saw the blaze of gunfire, so close he could feel the heat from the discharge.
A bullet passed by his head with a deafening buzz. The marine to Biddlecomb’s right was hit and flung back, arms going wide, musket flying off behind him. One of the sailors stumbled, staggered on for a few steps and went down, face-first. And then the two lines connected, and the time for long guns was over.
It was a strange fight in the darkness. The men in front of Biddlecomb seemed like moving shadows, seen and not seen as the wavering light fell on them—the light from the small cook fires some distance back, and a couple of lanterns that had come from somewhere and had been set on the ground.
Biddlecomb raised his pistol and pointed it at the man directly in front of him. He had a series of fleeting impressions: big man, several day’s growth of beard, filthy Monmouth cap pulled down on his head, a tear in his homespun coat that showed the lighter cloth of his waistcoat below.
He was coming at Biddlecomb with a cutlass raised and appeared unaware of the pistol pointed in his direction. He was scowling, shouting, and his expression did not change, even when Biddlecomb moved the gun level with his head and pulled the trigger. The muzzle flash seemed to freeze the man in place: his scowl, his growth of beard, the hole blown through the front of his Monmouth cap, the back of his head bursting apart.
Biddlecomb shoved the gun back in his pocket—it was not a sea-service pistol to be flung aside—and stepped up with sword raised. To his left, one of Barnett’s men was turning and bringing a pistol up as he did. His eyes, invisible in the dark, seemed to be fixed on Biddlecomb’s. Too close to get the tip of his blade on the man, Biddlecomb took another step closer, wound up and drove the sword’s metal hand guard with its three steel bands hard into his left temple.
The man’s head snapped around and he stumbled back. The gun in his hand went off and Biddlecomb felt the bullet pluck the sleeve of his coat. The banditti would have gone down if he had not slammed into the man behind him, who was also trying to get into the fight. Biddlecomb thrust, felt the point of his sword drive through the man’s flesh just below his shoulder, felt it deflect off bone as the man shrieked and spun away.
You’re done, Biddlecomb thought. The man might live, would likely live, if the wound did not turn septic, but he was done with fighting and that was what mattered here.
Biddlecomb turned to his right. A cutlass was coming at his belly, straight and low and thrust with force, if not finesse. Biddlecomb swept his blade down and to the right and caught the cutlass a fraction of a second before it bit. He knocked it aside and once again struck with the handguard, struck straight up into the man’s face, driving up from below.
He felt the man’s nose crumble under the impact. A gun went off and in the flash, Biddlecomb saw the blood come pouring out. The man dropped the cutlass and doubled over, hands on his face. Biddlecomb brought his knee up hard, made a solid connection with the man’s forehead that snapped him upright and sent him reeling back.
Biddlecomb swung left and slashed and felt his blade bite something. He slashed right and found air, then slashed again. There were men around him, and though he could not see much, he had the impression they were not his men. The marines, of course, were the most conspicuous of the lot, but Biddlecomb could see none of them nearby. He slashed again and struck something hard—a musket barrel or a cutlass blade—then took a step back.
Damn it, what’s happening? he thought. It felt as if his men were being pushed back, overwhelmed by the weight of Barnett’s numbers. He took another step back. He could see one of the marines now to his right. He had his musket leveled and he was slashing side to side with his bayonet.
Biddlecomb saw one of his sailors—Woodberry, he thought—also driving with his bayonet, hard-pressed and fighting three of Barnett’s men. Woodberry raised his musket and trust it forward, but one of pine robbers grabbed hold of the barrel and wrenched the gun from his hands as another swung down with an axe. Woodberry twisted sideways, dodged the axe, and pulled his cutlass in one fluid motion, but then he was lost to Biddlecomb’s sight by the press of men.
Biddlecomb turned to the threat in front of him. Two men, one with a musket held like a club, the other with a long knife, and in their eagerness to be at him they were slammed into one another. Biddlecomb’s blade darted in, caught the man wielding the musket in the gut. He felt that familiar resistance in his arm as the blade parted flesh, heard the roar of the wounded man two feet away.
He pulled the sword free, took a step back, and let the man with the knife slash at the space where he had been a second before. Off-balance, the man was wonderfully positioned for Biddlecomb to give him an upward cut, slashing him right across the midsection. And Biddlecomb did just that, twisting the other way first, winding up to get maximum force behind the blow, letting the well-honed blade do its work.
Another step back and another as the wounded men served as an obstacle of sorts, keeping the men behind from getting at Biddlecomb, giving Biddlecomb a few seconds’ pause to look around. His own men were nowhere to be seen, pushed back by Barnett’s pine robbers, their lack of numbers finally working against them once the advantage of their surprise attack had worn off.
Damn it, damn it… Biddlecomb thought, taking another two steps back. He looked left and right. He could see Woodberry again now, off to his right, and several of the marines. A figure stepped up beside him and he recognized Midshipman Gerrish. His hat was gone and there was a dark mark on his cheek, which Biddlecomb thought was dirt but realized was blood.
“Sir! Sir!” Gerrish shouted. “Thank God! I thought you were…thought they had taken you down!”
“What’s acting?” Biddlecomb shouted, his eyes moving from Gerrish to Barnett’s men, who were advancing on them, bold but wary, men who had learned a lesson.
“There’s too damned many of them, sir!” Gerrish shouted. “The militia…on the other side of Barnett’s line…there’s a handful, it seems, no more! Barnett’s got the men to fight both ways!”
Biddlecomb nodded as he fished the second pistol from his pocket. At first, they had managed to catch Barnett’s men between the militia on one side and the Falmouths on the other, squeezing them, pressing them. Killing them. But Barnett had men enough to fight back, despite all that. Fight back and prevail.
“We have to get back to the ship,” Biddlecomb said. “That’s our chief concern. Get the marines to form a rear guard…”
He was about to turn, to seek out Faircloth, when he heard another sound, another rush of motion, more voices, fresh voices, coming from his right. Barnett’s men heard them, too. Biddlecomb saw heads turning, looks of confusion, the fighting men like dark shades moving here and there.
Then the line of pine robbers seemed to crumble, seemed to fall in on itself, and men were running and shouting, while other men stood and fought and died on the end of bayonets. It was a fresh wave, an attack right on the flank of Barnett’s line, men shouting and driving forward with bayonets. A pistol fired, a flash that lit up the dark, and in that instant Biddlecomb saw a face he recognized, and it was Colonel Richard Somers of the Gloucester County Militia.
Where in hell did you come from? Biddlecomb thought. He had assumed that Somers had been there all along, that it was Somers who had started this fight, but now it looked for all the world as if the man was just now leading his soldiers into the fray.
No matter… Biddlecomb thought next, and in that he was right: it did not matter. What mattered was that they showed up when they did, that they rolled up Barnett’s flank just as Barnett was about to drive Biddlecomb and his men back to the frigate, or worse, overwhelm them before they could reach it.
Men we running now, and guns were firing in the dark. It was chaos, and that could be a problem. In chaos, a man like Barnett might still find opportunity, he might still find a chance to get away, and Biddlecomb did not want that. He wanted an end to this, and that meant seeing Barnett in chains, seeing that he enjoyed his just deserts.
Biddlecomb whirled around and found Faircloth ten feet behind him, sword in hand. “Mr. Faircloth,” he called, “get your men after these banditti, round them up, don’t let them get away!”
“Yes, sir!” Faircloth called, and then waved his sword over his head and called, “Marines! After me!”
Biddlecomb turned to his right. “Mr. Gerrish, collect up some men, help Mr. Faircloth take those bastards prisoner! I want them all!”
“Aye, sir!” Gerrish shouted, and began waving his arms, gathering the sailors to him, as Biddlecomb raced off in the other direction. He could only just make out handfuls of his men, scattered around the open ground, and he called to them as he moved past.
“Mr. Sprout, Burke, Whitman, come with me!” He led his handful of armed men back toward where the line of pine robbers had been overrun. He could see men standing with arms raised, muskets and cutlasses lying at their feet. He could see men sprawled on the ground, some moving, some not.
“Colonel Somers!” Biddlecomb shouted. The militiaman was standing a dozen yards away, illuminated by a lantern that the man beside him was holding aloft. “Colonel Somers!”
Biddlecomb hurried over the ground as Somers turned to the sound of his name being called. Another man stepped up beside the colonel and Biddlecomb recognized him as Captain Jonathan Mitnick, a more active officer than Somers, certainly. He wondered if perhaps this had all been Mitnick’s doing.
“Colonel,” Biddlecomb said as he approached, hand outstretched. “Well done, here, sir. Boldly done.”
Somers took Biddlecomb’s hand and shook. “Thank you, sir, but we might have been a bit late to the ball,” he said.
“Late?” Biddlecomb said. “But, surely you…” Another figure stepped up out of the dark, a big man, and the lantern light fell on his wool coat and his torn, dirty, blood-stained shirt and his utterly familiar face.
“Ezra?” Biddlecomb said.
Rumstick nodded his greeting. “Captain,” he said, as casually as if he was bumping into Biddlecomb coming out of a tavern, but Biddlecomb could see he was smiling broadly.
“What the devil…damn me, man, it’s good to see you here!” Biddlecomb said. He grabbed Rumstick’s hand and shook, then pulled him closer and threw an arm around him, as best as he could, given Rumstick’s size. It was indeed good to see him, and it was only then that Biddlecomb realized how much he had despaired of Rumstick’s surviving the hunting party that Barnett had sent out after him.
Biddlecomb released his friend and stepped back. “You joined up with the militia, I take it?” he said. “I hope you didn’t sign any articles or such.”
“Not a bit of it,” Rumstick said. “We were hiding out in Captain Mitnick’s barn. Heard all the commotion so we come running down here.”
Biddlecomb turned back to Somers. “So you lead the attack?” he asked. “You started all this?”
“No,” Somers said, and he looked genuinely bewildered. “I…we…we heard the bell ringing, so we came. That’s the alarm, you know. I reckoned Captain Mitnick rung it, but he says he didn’t.”
“Well, that’s a damnable mystery, ain’t it?” Rumstick said.
Biddlecomb tried not to smile. Yes, a damnable mystery, he thought, to all but you. He was eager to get the truth of it, preferably over a bowl of flip in Falmouth’s great cabin.
Lieutenant Faircloth stepped up into the circle of light. “Mr. Rumstick!” he said, and Biddlecomb recognized the same note of surprise and relief on seeing Rumstick that he had heard in his own voice. “Damned good of you to join us, sir!” He turned to Biddlecomb. “We’ve disarmed the rascals and rounded them up, Captain. They await your pleasure.”
My pleasure…Biddlecomb thought. He could think of many things he might do to the prisoners that would give him pleasure, but for the time being he would confine himself to simply inspecting them.
He and Somers and the rest, followed by two militiamen bearing lanterns, crossed over to where the pine robbers stood, a sullen and defeated band of twenty or so men. Biddlecomb stopped fifteen feet away and for a moment the two groups, victors and their conquered foe, stood looking at one another.
“This is all of them?” Biddlecomb said at last.
“Yes, sir, all we could round up,” Faircloth said. “Not counting the ones dead and wounded. And some that must have run off.”
Biddlecomb nodded. By his estimate this was not even half of the vermin.
“Where’s Barnett?” he asked next. “I don’t see him. Is he among the wounded? The dead?” Biddlecomb would be disappointed indeed if Barnett had been killed in the fighting, as he had something more fitting in mind for the man. But his question was greeted with silence.
“I didn’t see him there,” Faircloth said and Biddlecomb could hear the mounting discomfort in the lieutenant’s voice. “Pray, let me check again.” He hurried over to where the wounded and the dead were being attended to by the men of the Gloucester County Militia. There were perhaps a dozen men on the ground: pine robbers, militiamen, Falmouths. Faircloth moved quickly from man to man.
“He’s not here, sir,” Faircloth called as he looked down at the last prone man.
“Damn it!” Biddlecomb said in frustration. If Barnett escaped then it would take the bloom off this whole victory. If the bastard was suffered to live, than there was no reason to think that he would not return to try again. Falmouth had become an obsession for the man, and surely one defeat would not put an end to it.
And then Biddlecomb had another thought, and it made his gut turn over.
“Oh, Dear God, no,” he said. He turned quickly and looked down the length of the dark wharf toward where the frigate lay tied to the pilings. They had left no one onboard, not a single man. But even now, even from that distance, Biddlecomb could see a lantern moving along the quarterdeck rail.