Angus McGinty wore a cheerful aspect, generally. It disarmed people, he found, and was an excellent blanket under which to hide his true feelings. It worked well when playing cards, for instance. But now he had reached the limit of his patience.
He snatched his hat off his head and threw it to the deck and then stamped it with his foot, over and over, until it was all but flat. He was breathing hard when he looked up, and he imagined that his face was as red as his hair.
“There’s not but two score ropes on this whole damned ship!” he shouted at the confused men forward. “And they’re the same to larboard and starboard, so you don’t have to learn but twenty of them! Is that too bloody much for you motherless simpletons?”
Overhead, the sloop Sparrowhawk’s square topsail was flat aback, the wind pressing on the wrong side of the sail, and the jibs and the mainsail were flogging even louder than McGinty was shouting. Over and over McGinty had drilled the men at what he himself considered the utterly simple task of putting the small ship about, and again and again, his crew of ham-fisted farmers made a complete hash of it.
“When I say, ‘cast off the bowlines and haul away the weather brace’, what the bloody hell do you think that means?” McGinty shouted, looking for some clarification.
Ten feet forward, Corporal Nathaniel Freeman, oldest of the men and least intimidated by McGinty, stood holding the limp brace in his hands, with three others backing him up. Freemen turned his head and spit a line of brown tobacco juice across the deck, which irritated McGinty at least as much as the bungled sail evolution.
“It don’t means nothing to us, McGinty,” Freeman said. “All that tarry, Irish burgoo comes spilling out of your mouth, it don’t mean nothing to us.”
McGinty gave a sigh, loud and dramatic. He bent over and snatched up his flattened hat and made a show of punching it back into some semblance of its former shape. He took his time, letting his anger settle, letting his sense of reason and fairness reestablish itself.
They’re soldiers, boy-o, and they were farmers afore that, and you can’t expect too damned much of them…
Angus McGinty had been a soldier as well, and many things besides. A fisherman out of his native town of Wicklow on Ireland’s east coast; a private in the grenadier company of the Fourth Regiment of Foot, the King’s Own; a sergeant in the Third Company, Fifth Pennsylvania, Continental Line. His occupations tended to be as fluid as his loyalties. But it was his time at sea, on a fishing boat or boatswain on a privateer (British or American, he had sailed aboard both) or a stint as fore topman aboard His Majesty’s ship Preston that he truly loved. He had forgotten, after all the soldiering, how much he loved the sea, but he was remembering it now.
And that rekindled love was making this crew of farmers all that much harder to bear.
“Very well, lads,” he said, forcing calm and good humor into his voice. “We’ll go over it again, we will, and I’m sure you’ll smoke it this time. If I was to use different words, would that help, at all? Say, if I was to call the topsail a ‘heifer’, or the main sheet a ‘hayrick’?”
The men forward continued to stare aft. Often they did not know how to respond to McGinty because they did not know when McGinty was joking. Half the time McGinty himself did not know when he was joking.
He looked aloft at the flogging mess of canvas. His first job was to get that under control. He looked forward toward the bow, where three more of his men held the headsail sheets in their hands, the thick ropes twisting and thrashing with the sails. It looked as if the men were trying to keep hold of angry snakes.
McGinty opened his mouth. He meant to tell the men to take a turn around a pin and haul the headsails out to weather, but before he uttered a sound, he realized the pointlessness of that, the frustration he would invite by saying such a thing.
“Bellows, Foster, Asquith, take those ropes and pull them to…” he choked on the word ‘weather’ and then choked on the word ‘starboard’, afraid that either of those would be too much. “Pull them to the right side, there!” he called instead, pointing as he did. “Yes, like that! Hold ‘em now, and don’t you let go until I tell you!”
The men obeyed. What they lacked in seamanship they made up in strength, and so were able to hold the sails, back-winded, against the press of the breeze. Slowly Sparrowhawk’s bow began to pay off to larboard as the sails pushed the ship around.
“Good!” McGinty called. “Now, Corporal Freemen, you may pull on your rope, which we call a ‘brace’. Foster, you may slack away as our good corporal pulls.”
Freemen and the three men with him hauled on the brace while Foster, to starboard, eased away. Overhead the yards swung around until the wind was at last on the right side of the sails. Sparrowhawk heeled a bit and plunged as her speed built and the wallowing, dead-in-the-water motion gave way to forward momentum.
“That’s well! Make fast!” McGinty cried. “By which I mean, tie your ropes off, figure eight around the pins, like I shown you!”
To larboard and starboard, the men made the lines fast, taking care to get them on the correct pins, which McGinty was at least gratified to see. Their sail evolutions were chaotic enough; if the lines were all misplaced, it would be a descent into madness.
“Hold her there, Pip,” he said to the young man on the tiller. Charles Pippinger, youngest of the men who had come with McGinty aboard Sparrowhawk, had fished cod out of Marblehead for a few seasons and knew his way around boats. That was a great relief to McGinty, who would otherwise have had to steer along with doing every other thing onboard that required at least a passing knowledge of seamanship.
“Hold her there, aye,” Pip said.
McGinty walked up to the windward rail and leaned against the bulwark, looking down the length of the deck, past the taut black shrouds and the long, elegant bowsprit and jibboom. Sparrowhawk was a lovely little ship, there was no doubt, and with her ten four-pounder guns arrayed along her sides, she could deliver a sharp peck if she wanted to.
He felt his irritation start to ebb. The sight of the handy little sloop, the feel of her steady rise and plunge as she plowed along, close-hauled, never failed to lighten his mood.
They had been underway for three days now, three days since they had towed the frigate Falmouth into Great Egg Harbor and then bid adieu to the officious Captain Isaac Biddlecomb and that great beast Rumstick. McGinty recalled the sight of Master Biddlecomb fuming and stamping and shouting from the frigate’s quarterdeck as they sailed. The memory always put a smile on his lips.
Biddlecomb, no doubt, thought that absconding with the sloop had been McGinty’s plan all along, but that was not the case. He had not put much thought into it at all, which was true of most things that Angus McGinty had done over the course of his wandering life.
They had been a couple leagues shy of the inlet to Great Egg Harbor when the notion of sailing off first began to stir. McGinty played with the idea, batting at it like a cat with a mouse, letting it run off and then catching it again. By the time they had come into the harbor and eased the frigate up to the warping posts, the plan was as fully formed in McGinty’s head as any plan ever was, which was not to say very well formed at all. But enough, anyway, to act on. And what happened after that, well, he reckoned he would figure it out in due time.
Privateering…
That was what he had said to Biddlecomb, and it was still the main thing he had in mind. Privateering combined all the elements of everything that McGinty desired. It involved being at sea, but in the time and manner of his own choosing. Fighting when he wanted to, running when he didn’t. A man could get rich, damned rich, in privateering. And on top of all that, the work even had a whiff of patriotism about it, for any who cared about such things.
Yes, privateering was just the medicine. And he had a good ship for it, at least, if not exactly the crew one might wish. A privateer wanted a large company of prime seamen, and most were able to get just that. Sparrowhawk, however, was manned by ten farmers and a nineteen-year-old cod fisherman. And that was a problem.
Well, there’s time yet, McGinty thought. The lads may be a parcel of plow hands, but they’re not fools. They can learn. And besides, they each of them know how to fight, and they ain’t shy about it. If I have but a wee bit more time…
“McGinty, there! I see a sail!”
Ah, damnation! McGinty thought.
He had sent one of the former soldiers, a young man named Bobby Ireland, whose name alone inclined McGinty to liking him, aloft, up to the crosstrees, to keep an eye on the horizon. Sparrowhawk had problems enough without an enemy cruiser taking them by surprise. And as it stood, every ship on the American coast was their enemy.
“Where away?” McGinty shouted up to the man aloft.
“Over there!” Ireland replied, lubberly and unhelpful.
Over there? You bloody half-wit, what sort of damned… McGinty took a deep breath and smothered the reply that was forming in his throat. He looked up. The look-out was pointing to some place just abaft the larboard beam. McGinty turned and looked in that direction but he could see nothing but water. The ship was still below the horizon from deck level, which meant the look-out had seen it early.
“Well done, lad, well done!” McGinty shouted up. On any other ship he would have asked what the man could make of the strange sail: ship-rigged or otherwise? Larboard tack, starboard tack, running with the wind betwixt two sheets? Was she altering course? But he knew it was pointless to ask those questions now.
He stepped over to the binnacle box, pulled a telescope from the compartment there, tucked it into his coat, and swung himself up into the shrouds. He had spent the past half year in the Continental Army, marching back and forth across New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and he was about as lean and fit as he had ever been, which was admittedly not terribly lean. But he managed the shrouds with little difficulty and pulled himself up onto the crosstrees as easily as mounting a short flight of steps.
With the ease of long practice, he slipped his arm around the topmast shroud and pulled the telescope from his coat. He could see it now, the strange sail to leeward. A brig, he guessed, sailing on a southerly course. He put the eyepiece to his eye and twisted the tube.
Brig, sure enough…he thought. Or a snow, perhaps. They were running south under all plain sail, holding steady, not spreading more canvas or changing course at all. Either they had not seen Sparrowhawk or they had and she did not concern them.
What, do you think we’re too small to do you any great hurt? McGinty thought. He found that a bit insulting.
He shifted his gaze to the west, but there was nothing in view but the gray-blue ocean. By his dead reckoning, they were somewhere off the coast of New Jersey, two or three leagues south of Sandy Hook and about fifteen leagues out to sea. It had been McGinty’s intention to keep clear of the land and as much shipping as he could while he turned his men into prime seamen. The first part of that plan had worked out well enough, at least until now.
McGinty sighed. It was a blessing that this brig, whoever it was, seemed to have no interest in Sparrowhawk. A smart man would accept that gift, avoid any trouble, and continue on, leaving the strange ship alone. But McGinty knew full well that he was not going to do that.
“You keep an eye on her, lad,” he said to the look-out. “She seems to change course, set more sail, take down sail, you let me know, hear?”
“Yes, Sargent,” Bobby Ireland said.
“That’s ‘Aye, Captain,’” McGinty corrected.
“Oh, yes,” the look-out said. “Aye, Captain. Sargent.”
McGinty nodded. “Good lad,” he said, then climbed back down to the deck. He stepped off the rail and walked aft, calling out to the men as he did.
“All right, lads, listen to your darlin’ McGinty, now. I want you all to go and stand by them ropes you was standing by before, and get ready to do as I say with them. We’re going the change course now, just a wee bit.”
He took his place by the tiller and watched as the men sorted themselves out. “Very well, now, my dear Pip,” he said, “put her head down if you would.”
“Head down, aye,” Pip said. He pushed the tiller away and Sparrowhawk’s bow began to swing away down wind. McGinty shouted his directions forward as he handled the mainsheet himself, and after a short but acceptable period of confusion, the sloop’s stern passed through the wind and the vessel settled down on her new course, south by west, with the breeze over her larboard quarter.
“Well done, lads, well done, they couldn’t have done better on Black Dick’s flagship, I’ll warrant!” McGinty lied, but he was content for now with their seamanship. “Bobby, what do you see of yonder sail?” he called aloft.
“Right in front of us, Sargent, and about two or three miles away,” Ireland called down. “Nothing’s changed about her that I can see.”
“Very well!” McGinty shouted. “Keep your eye on her. But don’t you fail to look around as well, keep a sharp look-out!”
“Yes, Sargent!” Bobby Ireland called down.
Freeman came ambling up and stood beside McGinty and the two of them stared off toward the horizon, which hid the brig from their view. Freeman leaned over and spit a stream of tobacco juice on the deck.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” McGinty said. “You’re not in some pox-ridden encampment, you know, you’re on a bloody ship. You could have some respect, man!”
Freeman nodded but said nothing, just continued to work the wad of tobacco in his mouth and stare out at the horizon.
“So…what do you plan to do?” he said at last.
“Ah, I plan to get a nice, plump wife and a fine estate in the country and live out my life as lord of the manor, hunting foxes and such,” McGinty said. “What about you?”
“Dumb arse,” Freeman said. “You know what I mean. What do you plan to do about yonder ship?”
“Oh, yonder ship… Well, we know nothing of it, do we? So I figured we’d best go have a look, do you see?”
Freeman frowned. He leaned over to spit again, paused, then lifted his head and directed the stream over the side of the ship, easily clearing the bulwark.
“Well done, lad,” McGinty said. “If you Yankee soldiers could fire your muskets half so well you’d have sent old Howe running back to England by now.”
“The ship?” Freeman asked. “Kind of a risk, ain’t it, just running right down on it? We ain’t particularly well-armed or manned, and we don’t have a lot of friends out here, in case you ain’t noticed.”
“Not so much of a risk, my dear,” McGinty said. “You see, we have what sailors call the ‘weather gauge.’ That means we’re upwind of this fellow. And the wind, well, it’s like this wondrous invisible rampart. This fellow would have to climb up the rampart to get to us, you see, whilst we can just scamper away. We can fight or we can run, but either way the choice is ours.”
“I see,” Freeman said. “And if the wind shifts?”
“Ah, well, that can be a bit of a problem. But it’s holding steady now, and promises to keep on that way.”
And the wind did indeed keep on that way, to McGinty’s great relief, blowing an easy twelve knots from the northeast, giving Sparrowhawk a point of sail that she liked very much. Two glasses turned and by then the brig was visible from the deck, her course and the set of her sails unchanged. McGinty stood on the bulwark, one arm around the shrouds, and studied her through his glass.
Fat bloody thing, he thought. Everything about her seemed to proclaim her a merchantman. And not just a merchantman, but a slow and fully laden merchantman. If Sparrowhawk was a shark, then here was an overstuffed, lumbering seal.
“Say, Foster, we still have that British flag aboard, don’t we?” McGinty called to one of the men taking his ease on the main hatch. “The one we flew when sailing through Black Dick’s fleet?”
“Yeah, Sargent, we do,” Foster said.
“Well, pray, fetch it out and run it up the halyard there.” He pointed to the thin line that ran up to the peak of the mainsail gaff. Foster nodded and pushed himself to his feet and ambled aft. He found a canvas bag by the taffrail and began to fish around in it.
“Say, Foster,” McGinty called, “is that other flag in there as well? The Continental flag? With the stripes and the stars?” Once they had cleared the Delaware, Biddlecomb had sent the flag over, in case they met up with an American man-of-war—Continental Navy, State Navy, or privateer—and wished to display their true allegiance.
“Yeah, Sargent, it’s here,” Foster called. “You want me to run that up, too? One over the other?”
“No, no, just the British flag. For now.”
A minute later it was set, streaming forward, Sparrowhawk’s ruse de guerre complete, though McGinty doubted they could see the colors aboard the distant brig. Nor could McGinty see any flag the brig might be flying; if they had one raised, then the wind was blowing it straight away from Sparrowhawk. But McGinty felt quite certain she was a merchantman, and quite certain she was British, a supply ship loaded with matériel of some sort, bound for Lord Admiral Howe’s fleet or General Richard Howe’s army.
McGinty collapsed his telescope and hopped down to the deck. Freeman was leaning on the bulwark a few feet forward. “Your invisible rampart still standing strong?” he asked.
“Can’t you feel it, boy-o?” McGinty asked. “Wind’s held steady as you might wish, just as I said it would.”
“We’re still just going to have a look at yonder ship?” Freeman asked.
“Just a wee look, to be sure,” McGinty said. “Nothing more. Still, it’s a wise man who’s ready for whatever might come, be it misfortune or opportunity.” He said nothing more, letting the words hang.
“Very well, you damned Irish rascal, what are you thinking?” Freeman said at last.
“Well, just that we would do well to load those guns now,” McGinty said, gesturing toward the line of four-pounders along the rail, “while we have our leisure. And maybe have the boys fetch up their muskets and load those as well.”
“So we can just have a look?” Freeman asked.
“Right, boy-o, just so we can have a look.”
He and Freeman had soldiered together for eight months, not a long acquaintance in the rational world, but a near-lifetime in the crucible of combat. Freeman was not stupid, McGinty knew that, and he was not so young as the others. They were likely of an age, he and McGinty, and unlike the boys under their command, Freeman was not easily taken in by what McGinty said.
But that did not matter. Because McGinty had already decided on what he would do next, and there was no one, least of all Corporal Nathaniel Freeman, who was going to stop him.