Eastport, Maine

March 1809

CHAPTER V

* * *

There was ice in her sails as the ancient American merchantman Mona turned southwest into the channel between Deer Island and Campobello Island in the Canadian waters of New Brunswick, not far south of the forty-eighth parallel that separated the British Dominion from the United States. Under lead-colored morning skies, a strong, freezing, northerly March wind held the stiff canvas sheets tight, while the seamen, bundled in woolens and oil-skins, worked the ice-slick ropes with hands that were raw and teeth that chattered. The morning wore on with the heavy, blunt-nosed, graceless ship, riding heavy and low, slowly plowing on through gray-black waters that were laced with two-ton chunks of ice, while the seaman in the crow’s nest seventy feet up the mainmast hunched his back against the wind and kept his eyes moving, searching for the harbor of the small village of Eastport on the east coast of tiny Moose Island.

The crew had finished their midday meal of hot mutton stew and hardtack down in the relative warmth of the small galley, and were wiping at their dripping red noses as they reluctantly made their way to the steep stairs leading up to the slick deck, when the shout came down from the crow’s nest, “Landfall. Eastport! Dead ahead.”

It was midafternoon when the pilot boat left the Mona and she furled her sails and dropped anchor in Eastport Bay, and settled, rocking in the choppy water with the wind whistling in her rigging, to wait her turn among the gather of ships bobbing in the harbor. Dusk was falling when she thumped against the massive black timbers, and her crew cast the heavy hawsers to waiting hands on the nearly deserted wharf.

Captain Aubrey Tillotson, stocky, swarthy, square-jawed, impatient, waited while his crew lowered the gangplank. He marched down to the dock with the wind blowing his cape and whipping the vapor from his breath and continued directly to the old, unpainted, weathered line of buildings that formed the waterfront, to a small, unpainted one with a single grimy window and a battered sign above the door, BRISTOL LINES, and pushed through the front door. Inside, in the dull yellow light and misshapen shadows cast by two lanterns, a lone man seated at a desk raised his head. He was tall, slender, with a small wooden sign on his desk that read “Philip Driscoll.” He stood and walked past the black, pot-bellied stove that showed dull red and fronted Tillotson. There was no greeting between the two men.

“Trouble?” Driscoll asked. “You’re two days late.”

Tillotson wiped at the ice in his beard. “Lost two days tacking into that north wind. Bad.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder, and there was deep concern in his voice. “I didn’t see the Liverpool at the docks. Any news of her?”

Driscoll shook his head. “No. She’s two days overdue, just like you. She’ll likely be in tomorrow morning.”

Tillotson paused to consider. “She’s coming from Passamaquoddy. Running with the wind, not against it. She should have been here waiting.” He took a deep breath, then went on. “There’s no dockhands out there. When can we unload?”

“Couldn’t get the dockhands to stay any longer in this weather. Tomorrow morning, unless it gets worse.” Driscoll paused for a moment. “Any damage to your load?”

Tillotson saw the concern in Driscoll’s eyes and shook his head. “No damage. I’ll have my crew ready at daylight.” He turned on his heel and walked back out into the deep twilight where he wrapped his cape tight and raised one hand to clamp his tricorn onto his bowed head. He marched back to his ship and up the gangplank where his first officer, Eustus Keel, stood hunched against the wind. Tillotson gestured to Keel and led the way to his small, cramped quarters and tossed his tricorn onto his desk, working with the clasp on his cape as he spoke.

“We can’t unload until morning. Raise the gangplank now and keep the regular rotation of deck watch through the night.”

Keel remained silent and Tillotson continued, words measured, voice raised against the sound of the wind at the tiny windows. “If anyone comes in the night asking permission to come on board, make them wait. Awaken me at once. I’ll handle them.”

The first officer neither spoke nor moved. Tillotson tossed his cape onto his bunk and dropped into the plain, worn chair behind his desk. He gestured, and Keel pulled the only other chair to the desk front and sat down, waiting. Tillotson leaned forward on his forearms and began rubbing his hands together to warm them. Seconds passed before he spoke.

“I need to know more about one of our crew. Dulcey. Didn’t he sign on at Philadelphia?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve noticed him. Not the average seaman. Too polished. Too accomplished. How does he get on with the others?”

Keel shrugged. “Well enough. Seldom speaks. Keeps to himself. Watches everything. Does his duty. A natural leader. No trouble.”

“What age?”

“I’ve never asked. I’d guess in his early twenties.”

“Full name?”

“Robert. He signed on as Robert Dulcey.”

Tillotson lowered his face and for a time concentrated on his hands, still rubbing them together. “Do I remember that name from something that happened in Philadelphia? Or was it Norfolk?”

“I’ve not heard of it.”

A look of irritation flitted across Tillotson’s face. “There’s something . . . it bothers me. It’ll come back.”

Keel said, “Maybe someone in the crew knows. I’ll ask.”

Tillotson straightened. “Do that.” He took a deep breath and went on. “We’re here for the night. Arm the men on watch. Muskets and pistols. If anyone attempts to get on board by grappling hook or climbing the dock hawsers, shoot them. Do you understand?”

Keel’s eyes narrowed. “Aye, sir.”

“And bring me some hot soup. That’s all.”

Keel nodded and ducked to exit through the small door while Tillotson fed split white-pine kindling into a small stove. Keel brought the mug of hot chicken broth, and Tillotson wrapped it in his hands for the warmth, sipped at it until it was gone, then turned to his bed.

* * * * *

It was shortly past three o’clock in the black of night when Tillotson opened his eyes. It took him ten seconds to understand what had awakened him. It was the silence, and the lack of the rocking of the ship. The wind had died. He closed his eyes and within seconds was breathing slowly and deeply.

It was just past six o’clock when the crew of the Mona climbed the steep, narrow stairs from the galley to the main deck and stepped out into a world nine degrees below freezing beneath clear skies and no wind, with the first arc of the morning sun rising on the eastern horizon. Thin, ragged ice reached thirty feet from the rocky shores of Eastport harbor, and sea birds, heavy with their thick winter plumage, argued and fought over the dead fish and carrion left from the night. Bundled in worn and ragged coats, with tattered scarves wrapped tight and with their breath billowing in vapors, part of the crew released the locks on the hatches and lifted off the covers. Others swung the yardarms about and settled the loops of the heavy freight nets onto the hooks of the four-inch hawsers dangling from the yardarms to lift the cargo from the blackness of the hold and set it on the frozen dock. Down on the dock, bearded men with numb fingers were waiting to open the nets and move the heavy crates thirty yards further down the dock to the waiting freight nets of the Liverpool, and return with the crates from the Liverpool to the waiting nets of the Mona. The noise and bustle of a seaport grew as Eastport came alive.

Captain Tillotson, wrapped in his cape, vapor rising from his face, marched from his quarters onto the deck, and with Keel at his side stopped at the largest of the three hatches. Beneath his arm were three separate manifests attached to hardbacks. He glanced at the four men working with the hatch cover, then at Keel.

“Where’s Dulcey?”

Keel pointed. “Over on hatch number one.” Keel turned and called and motioned, and Dulcey came trotting, placing his feet carefully on the slick deck. He stopped and spoke to Keel. “You wanted me, sir?”

He was a little above average in height, well built, strong in the shoulders, brown hair, clean-shaven, prominent nose, regular features.

Keel said, “Cap’n Tillotson asked for you.”

Dulcey’s face was a mask, his eyes flat, noncommittal as he turned to Tillotson. For a few moments Tilllotson studied him before he spoke, vaguely sensing much was going on behind those calm, dead eyes.

“Mister Dulcey, can you write?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you ever recorded the inventory manifest of cargo coming from the hold of a ship?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know the standard form? It must be accurate. You must sign off on it and if there are errors, you’ll have to either explain them or perhaps pay for them.”

“I know that, sir.”

“We’re exchanging our load of gypsum for the cargo in the hold of the Liverpool. That requires you to be responsible for what comes out of this hatch, and what goes into it. Am I clear?”

Dulcey raised one eyebrow. “Unloading and loading at the same time? Isn’t that a bit unusual, sir? What if we find damage in our hold? Do we ignore it? No time for repairs?”

Tillotson’s brows turned down. “There will be no damage. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

Tillotson handed him one of the cargo manifest boards. “Make the record. Everything coming out, everything going in. Any questions?”

“Only one, sir. Why me?”

For an instant, surprise flashed in Tillotson’s face at the impertinence of a common deckhand questioning his direct order. His answer came blunt, harsh.

“That’s not for you to ask!”

There was no change in Dulcey’s face as he nodded.

Tillotson continued, voice still raised, hard. “Where have you learned your seamanship?”

“At sea. And from my father.”

“When did you go to sea?”

“I was fourteen, sir.”

For a moment the three men stood in silence, vapor rising from their faces to disappear in the morning sunlight, and then Tillotson said, “I will need that cargo record tonight. I’ll send someone. Understood?”

“Aye, sir.”

Tillotson turned on his heel and strode to hatch number one to make the cargo manifest assignment to the waiting crew, then on to hatch number three. When he finished, he spoke briefly to Keel, then ordered the gangplank lowered, and descended to the dock. Five minutes later he was inside the small offices of Bristol Lines, facing Philip Driscoll across his desk.

“I haven’t seen the Liverpool. Any news?”

Driscoll shook his head. “Nothing.”

Tillotson thumped his fist on the desktop and exclaimed, “Three days overdue. We’ve got to have her cargo!”

Driscoll remained silent, and Tillotson continued, voice hot, angry. “Well, I have no choice. We’re going to put our load on the dock. We’ll wait one more day, and then we leave. We have loads scheduled from—”

The door swung open and the foreman of a dock crew, face white from the cold called, “The pilot boat’s bringing the Liverpool into the bay right now. Be at the docks in less than an hour. Thought you’d want to know.”

Driscoll raised a hand in thanks and the man walked back out into the bright, cold sunlight.

Tillotson rounded his mouth and blew air, then gave orders to Driscoll. “Have her tie up next to the Mona. We get her cargo and she gets ours. You handle it.”

Driscoll nodded, and Tillotson walked back out into the freezing sunlight, where the yardarms were making their first lifts of the freight nets from the bowels of the Mona. At the large hatch, Dulcey stood back as the load cleared, and the crew began the slow swing of the net out over the dock, tight with twenty strong wooden crates, each with four-inch letters stenciled on the sides, TWO HUNDRED WEIGHT. GYPSUM. TERRANCE, LTD. VERMONT. USA. The net was lowered, and the waiting dockhands cast the heavy loops aside, worked to stack the twenty crates to one side, then waited for the first load of freight from the Liverpool, thirty yards up the dock. Dulcey stepped to the rail to study what they were bringing. He counted fifteen medium-sized wooden barrels, sealed at both ends, girdled by three broad iron bands each. On the side of each barrel were large stenciled letters: ONE HUNDRED FIFTY WEIGHT. PRODUCE. BARTOLO, S. A. BARCELONA. SPAIN. There was a bung in the sealed top of each barrel. The crew loaded the barrels into the waiting net, dropped the loops onto the hook, signaled, and watched as the crew on the Mona raised the yardarm and lifted the cargo off the dock, over the rail, and to the open hatch, then slowly lowered it into the dim light inside the hold. Dulcey peered over the hatch railing to count the barrels again as the crew unloaded the net. He entered the figure, then counted the next twenty crates of gypsum that were loaded onto the net, and recorded the gypsum load as they raised it from out of the hold. All the while his thoughts were running.

Spanish produce in barrels? Spanish produce isn’t shipped in barrels! Bungs in the barrel lids? Bungs for what? Produce doesn’t require bungs!

The crews of the two ships settled into a routine of load, wait, and unload. By midmorning the sun had slightly warmed the still air, and the men had removed their scarves and unbuttoned their heavy woolen coats. At noon they sat in the ships’ galleys to eat their thick beef stew and hard brown bread and drink from their steaming mugs. They shrugged out of their heavy coats before they climbed the stairs back onto the deck and set a pace for the afternoon work. At six o’clock, in deep dusk, with lanterns on the docks and on the decks of the ships, they emptied the last of the nets for the day and went to the galleys for their supper of halibut and boiled potatoes.

With the toil of the day behind them, the small room was filled with rough humor and tall tales and estimates of how many tons of cargo they had unloaded and loaded. Dulcey said little, and kept the manifest with his tally of what had come out of the hold of the Mona, and what had gone back in. He finished his supper, delivered his plate and utensils to the evening mess crew, and climbed the stairs back to the main deck.

He was halfway to the small door that led down to the sleeping quarters of the crew when he sensed movement to his right, near the quarterdeck. He slowed, and in the darkness saw two huddled figures and recognized the voice of Keel speaking softly. The words were muffled, and Dulcey understood but two of them. “ . . . anything . . . Dulcey.” Dulcey stopped in his tracks and strained to hear the response and recognized the voice of the ship’s bos’n, a burly, thick man who went by the single name Peck, with a nose that had been badly broken long ago and a puckered scar prominent in the heavy, dark brow above his right eye. Only a few of Peck’s words were discernible.

“ . . . New Haven . . . eight, ten weeks . . . killing . . .”

The two indistinct figures had little else to say and separated, each to his quarters. Dulcey stood still for a time, frantically working with his thoughts while the remainder of the crew went to their small quarters below decks, with the hammocks strung between the pillars that divided the bunks, and settled in for the night. He was the last to descend the stairs and went to his hammock unnoticed. He stretched out full length, fully dressed, hands clasped behind his head, and waited. Twenty minutes passed before Keel descended the steps. All eyes turned to him as he gave a head signal to Dulcey, and Dulcey followed him back out onto the deck under the black velvet of the night sky.

“Cap’n wants to see you,” was all Keel said.

Carrying the completed manifests, Dulcey followed him, aware that Peck had fallen in behind them. Keel ducked to enter the captain’s quarters and held the door while Dulcey and then Peck followed. Tillotson was seated at his desk facing the door. Two lanterns were hung on hooks set in the ceiling, casting a dull yellow light and misshapen shadows. Keel stepped to one side of the desk, Peck to the other. For several seconds Dulcey stood facing Tillotson, still seated, and staring back at Dulcey with narrowed eyes. Tillotson’s voice penetrated like a knife.

“A man named Robert Dulcey is wanted in New Haven for killing a man about eight or ten weeks ago. I will ask you once. Are you that man?”

Instantly Dulcey tensed, and he glanced first at Keel, then Peck, and moved one foot slightly backwards. Keel quickly moved toward the door and Peck moved toward Dulcey, and Dulcey stopped. Then he answered Tillotson.

“Yes.”

Dulcey masked his worst fears. He’s bound by law to arrest me—will he?—will he?—I had to gamble—if he arrests me I’ve lost—lost it all.

Tillotson sat up straight, staring down at his hands, and for a time the only sound in the room was the ticking of the clock on the tiny chest of drawers against one wall. The tension was becoming unbearable when Tillotson broke the thick silence.

“You said you are a navigator. Trained where?”

Dulcey’s breathing started again. “Harvard College. Cambridge. Massachusetts.”

Tillotson’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “Harvard!” he exclaimed.

“Yes, sir.”

Tillotson settled back in his chair, staring, saying nothing, and Dulcey spoke.

“Was there anything else, sir?”

Tillotson’s eyes bored in. “Yes. What happened? Why the killing?”

Dulcey took a deep breath. “The man made unwanted advances to my fiancée. I warned him. He had a knife. He’s dead.”

Tillotson started, then settled and asked, “Self defense? You chose not to explain that to the New Haven constable?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I was with the crew of a ship from Philadelphia. The man was a member of the New Haven City Council. I thought it prudent to not find out how sympathetic a New Haven constable and jury would be toward a stranger who had killed one of their own.”

Tillotson clamped his jaw closed for a moment, leaned forward on his forearms, and moved on. His voice resumed its blunt, domineering tone.

“So much for that. I will need those manifest forms you’re carrying. Lay them on the desk when you leave. You will remain in your quarters for the night. I want you back here in the morning directly following mess. Do you understand?”

The thought flashed in Dulcey’s mind—Now I find out. He cleared his throat.

“Am I under arrest, sir?”

For a time Tillotson looked into his face. “No.”

“I’m certain you know, sir, that with my confession before you, maritime law requires you to place me under arrest and turn me over to the nearest law enforcement officers you can find.”

There was anger and a cutting edge in Tillotson’s voice. “I know that. I don’t need instruction from the likes of you.” He thumped a finger on the desktop. “I will expect you here in the morning.”

“Yes, sir. Will I be under guard during the night?”

“No. Go to your quarters and remain there. Now. Mister Peck, accompany him, then return to your quarters.”

“Yes, sir.”

Dulcey laid the manifest forms on the desk, turned on his heel, and ducked to walk through the small door into the night, with Peck following. Behind them, in his quarters, Tillotson spoke to Keel.

“Warn the men who stand watch tonight. Watch for Dulcey. If he tries to leave the ship, they are not to challenge him. They are to shoot him on sight. Any questions?”

Keel shook his head. “None.”

“You are dismissed.”

Down in the second deck, in the cramped quarters of the crew, Dulcey sought his hammock and for a long time lay on his back, hands clasped behind his head, locked in deep thought. It was past nine o’clock when the seaman nearest the stairs blew out the last lantern, and their quarters were cast in total blackness. For a long while, Dulcey continued to lie on his back beneath his blanket, staring into the darkness, until he finally drifted into a restless sleep.

The morning mess was steaming oatmeal, and Dulcey was the first to finish. He rose from the crowded table with his empty bowl, delivered it to the morning mess crew, and made his way up the stairs to the deck. A breeze was stirring the flags on the ships in the harbor, and the tall masts were dancing with the rocking of the ships while gulls and terns and grebes hovered, bickering. Dulcey rapped on the door into Tillotson’s quarters and waited until he heard the familiar voice.

“Enter.”

He pushed the door open and stepped inside the small room to face Tillotson, seated across the desk. There was a tray with a pewter plate and mug and the remains of Tillotson’s breakfast. Dulcey waited.

Tillotson gestured. “Sit down.”

Dulcey drew a chair to the front of the desk and slowly settled, still silent, still waiting. He was surprised at the subdued sound in Tillotson’s voice.

“With your education and experience, you know of the . . . ahhh . . . peculiar . . . predicament in which you now find yourself.”

Dulcey did not move nor speak. Tillotson went on.

“You are wanted for murder. I hold your life in my hands.”

Dulcey made no indication he had even heard.

“If we can . . ahh . . make the proper . . . arrangements, it is possible you can be much more useful here than stretching a rope in New Haven.” Tillotson stopped and slowly leaned forward, forearms on his desk, voice soft, eyes points of light. “Do you understand?”

Dulcey said quietly, “I can guess.”

Tillotson continued. “I have substantial business holdings here. And elsewhere nearby. Substantial. I have need of a man with your education and experience. There are business records—critical records—that must be kept, correspondence, agreements, contracts. And there is money—large amounts of money passing through these businesses.” He paused for several seconds, then continued. “It is all controlled by the office I keep here in Eastport. Am I making myself clear, Mister Dulcey?”

Dulcey nodded. “You are.”

“The office is small. Insignificant. It draws little attention. I will continue using it until someone takes notice of the . . . ahh . . . traffic that comes and goes, and makes an inquiry. When that happens I will simply close this office and move my affairs to any one of half a dozen other offices I have in other ports. Passamaquoddy—Lake Champlain—Lake Ontario—and as far west as Lake Erie. Do you grasp the breadth of my . . . ah . . . affairs?”

Dulcey cleared his throat. “I believe so, sir. Sizeable.”

“There are certain elements in my business that must be handled very . . . delicately. Cargo manifests—contracts—money—governments involved—all must be handled discreetly. A man with your education could be useful. Does this interest you?”

Dulcey looked down at his hands for several seconds. “Are you threatening me, sir? Either I do your bidding, or you turn me over to the local constable for trial at New Haven?”

Tillotson straightened in his chair, and there was mock surprise in his face. “Have I said anything about New Haven?”

“Not directly.”

“Nor do I intend to,” Tillotson exclaimed. He settled, and his tone became conciliatory. “Of course, you can see that if I have no need for you, I will have to surrender you to the local authorities. What I’m offering you is a chance to avoid the . . . ahh . . . unpleasant probabilities that might otherwise await you, and at the same time opening an opportunity for wealth and position. I see that as a decent, Christian thing to do for you. Do you agree?”

The thoughts flickered in Dulcey’s mind—Now—now—we make it or break it—now. His voice was even, his words spaced. “What is your proposal?”

Dulcey saw the spark come into Tillotson’s eyes as Tillotson answered.

“Take a position here in my Eastport office. Learn the business. Mister Driscoll will help train you. I will pay you full first-officer wages until you are competent. After that, there are other . . . compensations . . . we will discuss. Are you interested?”

Dulcey stared at the manifests on the desktop for a time with his mind racing—Do it right, do it right, do it right. He cleared his throat and spoke. “I will have to think on it.”

Tillotson drew and exhaled a great breath before he answered. “You have until this afternoon, when we finish exchanging cargoes with the Liverpool.”

By seven o’clock, with the morning sun risen, Dulcey was back at the main hatch counting crates coming out and barrels going in. The crews broke the steady rhythm of handling the cargo nets for their midday meal, then returned to the established routine. At four o’clock the last net of crates came from the dimness of the hold into the sunlight, and swung over the side to be lowered to the dock. Dulcey entered the number of crates on the manifest, added the figures for the two days of work, wrote down the total, and checked it against the number of crates that had been counted into the hold at Philadelphia. They matched. He signed and dated his entries and waited for the last net of barrels from the Liverpool. He counted them into the hold of the Mona, entered the figure, added the load, and signed and dated it. Then he walked down the gangplank and made his way to the Liverpool. He walked the gangplank up to her main deck, to her large center hatch, and had begun to descend into the hold when the voice of a bearded seaman came loud and challenging from behind.

“Stop where you are! You got no business down there. Who are you?”

Dulcey turned to face him. “Dulcey. From the Mona. I handled the count at her main hatch.” He held the manifests out before him, and the man took them. For several seconds he studied the figures, the totals, the signature, and handed them back.

“You still got no business down there.” He pointed to the hatch into the hold.

“Who are you?” Dulcey asked.

“Bos’n.”

Dulcey continued. “I want to see if any of our cases were damaged. Insurance. I need to know. For Tillotson.”

“No damage,” the man growled. “I watched.”

“Then you won’t mind if I go down. Come down with me if you wish. Won’t take five minutes. That, or I’ll have to tell Tillotson that you have refused me entrance.”

The man stared for a moment. “Tillotson’s orders? He never done that before.”

Dulcey shrugged. “All I can tell you is this is the first time I’ve kept the manifests for him, and I intend letting him know I checked both cargoes for damage. Insurance.”

Dulcey saw the reluctance in the man’s face as he said, “Follow me. Five minutes.”

Down in the hold, Dulcey quickly walked the narrow aisles between the stacked crates, jerked on some of the tie ropes that held them in place, counted rows and crates, made some mental calculations, and nodded to the bos’n, who was right behind him.

“Well done. Tillotson will hear about it.”

The man bobbed his head and started back toward the stairs leading up to the main deck when Dulcey paused for one moment and turned. He drew a slow breath, eyes closed, while he tested the air in the hold for the last time. The scent of rum was unmistakable. He followed the bos’n out onto the deck, nodded to him, then walked down the gangplank and on to the Mona. On deck, he approached Tillotson’s quarters, rapped on the door, and waited.

“Enter.”

Dulcey ducked to pass through the small doorframe and stopped before Tillotson’s desk.

“We’re finished. Here’s the record for the Mona. I checked the hold of the Liverpool. The gypsum we delivered was undamaged and well secured. I thought you would want to know. Insurance.”  He laid the manifest on the desktop, and for a time Tillotson studied it.

“Very good. Very good.” He laid the manifest on his desk and leaned forward, eyes alive as he asked, “I need your answer. Are you interested in my proposition of this morning?”

Dulcey rounded his mouth and blew air. “Yes. I am.”

Tillotson stood and reached for his cape. “Shall we go visit Mister Driscoll at his office?”

It was not yet half past five when Tillotson opened the door to the small, austere, worn office of Bristol Lines, and the two men entered. There was a front counter, two desks, a potbellied stove against the wall on the left, an old, scarred, black safe in one of the back corners, and four filing cabinets against the wall on the right, all of them locked. The walls were bare except for an ancient, yellowed map of the coastline of Maine on the wall behind the stove. Driscoll rose from his desk to meet them at the counter, eyes searching for the manifests. Tillotson handed them to him and was unbuckling his cape as he spoke.

“This is Robert Dulcey,” he said. “He’ll be with us for a time.”

Driscoll reached to shake Dulcey’s hand while the two exchanged perfunctory greetings, and Driscoll made a noticeable appraisal of Dulcey. Tillotson went on.

“Mister Dulcey is a Harvard-trained navigator. Knows ships and commercial shipping. He’ll be here in this office while he learns the business. You will train him.”

Driscoll’s mind was running—Harvard—navigator—what’s he doing here?—what are they not telling me?

Driscoll turned to Tillotson. “All of it? The entire business?”

Dulcey did not miss the implication, nor did he miss the fact that one wall was lined with four large cabinets, each under lock. It ran in his mind—too many cabinets—all locked.

Tillotson went on. “Start with the contracts and the various businesses we deal with. Later we’ll open the financial records. Am I clear?”

“Yes,” Driscoll answered.

Tillotson continued. “The Mona and the Liverpool will take on provisions tomorrow and sail the next day. Start Mister Dulcey with the contracts for those two loads. He can draw up the new manifests. Acquaint him with the customers who’ll be receiving those loads. Show him the records of some of our other customers. I’ll check on progress in about twelve days when I return. Do you have any questions?”

“No, sir.”

Tillotson turned to Dulcey. “Any questions?”

“What hours am I expected to be here?”

Driscoll answered. “Eight o’clock in the morning until six o’clock in the evening, except for emergencies.”

Dulcey asked, “Anything wrong with me being here evenings, after hours? Shouldn’t take long to understand your office practices if I can get some uninterrupted time.”

Tillotson looked at Driscoll, and Driscoll answered. “I don’t see anything wrong with it. I’ll give you some business records. Confine yourself to them.”

It flashed in Dulcey’s mind—There are some records you don’t want me to see? He spoke to Tillotson. “Do you want me to stay with the crew on the Mona while she provisions?”

“No. Report here to Driscoll at eight o’clock in the morning. For now, go back to the Mona for the night. Tomorrow morning after mess you come here.”

“Yes, sir.”

Tillotson watched him close the door and listened until his footsteps faded before he turned to Driscoll. “He’s wanted for murder in New Haven. You watch him while I’m gone. If he tries to get into any of the money records or the names of the people we’re dealing with, don’t ask any questions. Shoot him. Then get the local constable and tell him you’ve killed a felon who was burglarizing this office, and he’s wanted for a murder in New Haven.” He paused for a moment, then spoke forcefully. “If he gets those records, there’s no end to what he could do. Extortion—bring in the authorities. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“Watch like a hawk. If this all goes wrong, you’ll answer to me.”

Driscoll nodded, and Tillotson turned on his heel and walked out.

Lamps and lanterns were winking on when Dulcey arrived at the Mona. He went down into the galley to take evening mess with the crew, then sought his hammock to lay quietly, lost in thought until a seaman blew out the last of the lamps. More than an hour later he pulled off his trousers and shirt, reached for his blanket, and closed his eyes.

Dawn was breaking when Dulcey finished the morning mess of fried sowbelly and scrambled eggs, swallowed the last of his hard brown bread, and returned to his place in the hold. In minutes he had all his belongings stuffed into a seaman’s bag and had it slung over his shoulder. He climbed the stairs into the full sunshine of a clear, cold day. Five minutes later he pushed open the door of Bristol Lines and found Driscoll at his desk, quill in hand, hunched over a great ledger, making entries from an open file. The two exchanged brief, sterile formalities of a greeting, and Driscoll hooked a thumb over his shoulder.

“Put your bag back there behind the cabinets.” He tapped papers on his desktop. “There’s the forms and numbers and the names of customers you’ll need for the manifests Captain Tillotson needs before we close tonight.”

Dulcey stowed his seaman’s bag behind the filing cabinets and returned to Driscoll’s desk. He picked up the papers, recognized his own accounting from the Mona, checked the figures from the Liverpool accounting, glanced at blank forms waiting to be filled out, and gestured toward the other desk near the stove.

“Can I use that desk?”

Driscoll shrugged and said nothing as he continued transferring information from an open file to the great ledger. Dulcey sat down at the desk, separated the papers, studied them briefly, and reached for the quill and inkwell to his right. He checked the papers once more before he began the task of preparing the two new manifests that could be required at the port of destination, and as he methodically entered numbers and weights on the papers, he was carefully memorizing the names of customers, the ports where they maintained offices, and how much of the cargo was to be delivered to each.

Andrews Ltd.—New York—eighty barrels Spanish produce—Stearns & Stearns—Philadelphia—Two hundred twenty barrels Spanish produce—LeBlanc Corporation—Quebec—two hundred cases gypsum—Dearborn Ltd.—Montreal—one hundred sixty cases of gypsum—gypsum going north on the Liverpool—Spanish produce going south on the Mona—Spanish produce in barrels with bungs?—coming from a ship that reeks of rum?—Spanish produce doesn’t come in barrels, it comes in crates.

At noon Dulcey walked out of the office and west on the waterfront to a tavern with a sign declaring it to be the White Gull. He ate his midday meal of baked cod and potato and paid one week’s rent for a small room on the second floor, then returned to the office. It was midafternoon when Dulcey leaned back, rubbed tired eyes with the heels of his hands, stood, and took the papers to Driscoll’s desk.

“Here’s the new manifests for both ships. Mona and Liverpool. Should I deliver them to Captain Tillotson?”

Driscoll took the documents and placed them in a file on his desk. “He’s coming here later. He’ll pick them up.”

“Anything else I can do?”

Driscoll pointed. “Take those files. The ships should be here sometime tomorrow. They’ll exchange loads. You prepare the new manifests.”

Dulcey nodded, picked up the two files, and returned to his desk. He had just sat down when the front door opened and a small man dressed in a worn woolen coat walked in, glanced at Dulcey, and delivered a sealed envelope to Driscoll. Driscoll opened it and laid the enclosed papers on his desk, and the man turned on his heel and walked back out the door. Dulcey looked at Driscoll, waiting for an explanation, but Driscoll remained silent and continued work on his ledger. Dulcey went to work on the two new files, and half an hour later he laid the second file down and leaned back in deep thought.

Gypsum again? Going north? India tea? In barrels? Going south?

He flinched at the sound of the door abruptly opening and turned to see Tillotson close it and walk rapidly to Driscoll’s desk.

“Are the manifests for tomorrow ready?”

Dulcey stood and walked to the side of Driscoll’s desk and watched Driscoll hand the two prepared files to Tillotson. “Here they are. Ready.”

Tillotson studied them for a time, then closed them and turned to Dulcey. “Do you know about the next two ships coming in? Two days?”

“I’ve seen the files.”

“You’ll have them ready?”

“Yes.”

“Any questions?” Tillotson’s eyes were focused, intent.

Dulcey shrugged casually. “None yet.”

“I’ll be back in about twelve days. Driscoll will give you what you need.”

Dulcey stood beside the desk, arms folded, as he watched Tillotson march out the front door and disappear into the jostle of men and cargoes on the dock. He turned to Driscoll.

“Any more papers I can work on?”

“I’ll get some.” Driscoll went to the filing cabinets and drew a ring of keys from his pocket to unlock one of the drawers and draw out four files. “Here,” he said, “study these. They are some of our regular customers. Get familiar with them. There are more.” Dulcey took the files and turned to his desk, glancing back only to watch Driscoll thrust the keys back into his pocket and take his seat at his own desk.

Dulcey sat down, opened the first of the four files, and began the task of analyzing the papers. One hour later he laid the last of the four files on his desk and for a moment organized his thoughts.

Four separate companies, four different names—Peterson, O’Neil, Hoffman, Schaffer—all operating out of this office. India tea, Spanish produce, dried French fruit, Moroccan dates—all packed in medium-sized barrels with bungs in the lids—all being shipped south of here—New York—Philadelphia—Yorktown—Charleston.

He drew a deep breath and considered.

Pennsylvania gypsum. New York gypsum. Vermont gypsum. Packed in crates that vary from eighty pounds to one hundred eighty pounds. All going north. St. Andrews—on up to Quebec—Montreal—as far west as Kingston.

He stretched and settled, then glanced at Driscoll. He was hunched over an open file with one finger tracking information, while his other hand was making entries in the thick ledger. Dulcey gathered the files and walked to Driscoll’s desk.

“Any others I should see?”

Driscoll started at the interruption, grunted, and pointed. “Right there.”

They both turned their heads to look as the door swung open, and a hunch-shouldered man bundled in the garb of a seaman entered. He walked directly to the two men and stared at Dulcey while he laid a sealed document on Driscoll’s desk. Insantly Driscoll picked it up, but not before Dulcey saw the name scrawled on the envelope. “M’sieu A. Tillotson.”

Dulcey’s thoughts ran. Second one today—French—who are these men?

Driscoll pointed to the two files on the corner of his desk. “Don’t forget those files you asked for.”

Dulcey nodded, picked them up, and walked back to his chair and settled in once again. For more than forty minutes the only sound was pages turning, the tick of the ancient clock on top of the nearest filing cabinet, and the muffled sounds of the traffic on the Eastport docks. Dulcey flinched when the clock struck six, stood, stretched, closed the file he was working on, and spoke to Driscoll.

“Think I’ll go to the tavern for supper. I’d like to come back and work on more files afterwards.”

Driscoll answered, “I’ll wait until you’re back from supper. I’ll have to lock you in and let you out.”

Dulcey lifted his coat from the hook next to the entrance and was putting it on when the door burst open and a corpulent man stalked in. He wore the hat of a sea captain. His hair was long, his beard full, and he paid no attention to Dulcey as he marched past him, straight to Driscoll’s desk where he stopped and slapped the desktop with the flat of his hand. Driscoll jumped, and his chair moved back.

“I expected my pay yesterday,” the man growled. “You didn’t come.”

“I couldn’t leave here,” Driscoll stammered. “Tillotson’s gone, and I have a new man to train. I couldn’t leave him here alone.”

The man did not turn to look at Dulcey. “Then send him with the money! I have a ship loaded to leave in the morning. The policy is that I’m to be aboard that ship at all times, once she’s loaded.”

“I can’t send the new man with the money. Tillotson’s orders. I’ll pay you now. You’ll have to sign.”

“Be quick about it.”

Driscoll spun the dial on the heavy, black safe in the corner and removed a sizeable metal box. He set it on Dulcey’s desk, used a key to open the lock, and quickly counted out sixty pounds, British sterling, in gold coins. He locked the box, replaced it in the safe, closed the door, and spun the combination dial. With the money on the desk, he unlocked the bottom drawer of the nearest filing cabinet behind his chair and removed a second huge ledger to set it thumping on the desk beside the money. Quickly he opened the old, worn, canvas-covered book, seized his quill, made a hurried entry, then spun the ledger and handed the quill to the man across the desk.

“Sign.”

The man scanned the entry, hastily scrawled his name, picked up the stack of gold coins, and turned on his heel. For a silent moment he studied Dulcey, then stalked back out the door into the twilight of early evening.

Dulcey saw Driscoll’s shoulders slump in relief before he looked at the signature, closed the ledger, and shoved it back into the drawer. He used his foot to push the drawer closed, then leaned forward to close the lock. Driscoll returned to his chair as Dulcey buttoned his coat and spoke.

“That happen often?”

There was a mix of fear and anger in Driscoll’s voice, and his face flushed red as he answered. “With him? He’s a part owner. A very small part. Thinks he runs it all.”

Dulcey started for the door. “I’ll be back as soon as I finish supper. What’s his name?”

Driscoll shook his head. “It’s not important. Get back soon. I’ll be waiting.”

Supper at the White Gull Tavern was roast mutton and boiled turnips. Dulcey ate thoughtfully, mechanically, paid at the desk, and walked back to the small office of Bristol Lines with the light of a lantern showing dull in the grime of a small window. Driscoll rose as he entered and shrugged into his coat.

“All cabinets and drawers are to be left alone. Don’t touch the safe. There’s some files on your desk to work on. I’ll be back at ten o’clock to let you out.”

Dulcey watched through the window until Driscoll was lost in the muddle of men and cargo still on the docks, then stepped to the yellowed map tacked to the wall behind the stove. For twenty minutes he traced the shoreline of Moose Island, then shifted north to Passamaquoddy Bay that was British territory, then back down to Cobscook Bay west of Moose Island. He held a lantern close to find the roads on the mainland, and carefully traced a winding line leading west from the coastline, then angling southwest and finally due south, down to Machias Bay. He traced the line again with his finger until he was satisfied he had it committed to memory.

Back at his desk, he noted that all the files he had worked on previously were gone—back into the locked filing cabinets. He went back to his desk and took quill and paper in hand. With the lamp turned low, he carefully wrote down the names of all the companies, all the men, the cargoes and destinations that he had committed to memory, and for a long time studied the list, trying to force an explanation that would answer all the questions that defied reason. He folded the paper and tucked it inside his shirt, then drew and released a great breath and settled into the four new files. At nine-thirty he closed the last file, stood and stretched, and was startled at the sound of the key rattling in the door. The door swung open and Driscoll entered, and without a word walked to the filing cabinets, where he inspected each lock.

Dulcey showed no emotion as his mind ran. Returned early to see if he could catch me breaking into the files.

Satisfied the filing cabinets were intact, Driscoll turned to Dulcey.

“We need to be out by ten o’clock. If the night watchman sees the light he’ll stop.”

Dulcey pulled his coat on and stepped out into the cold night air and waited while Driscoll locked the door.

“See you in the morning.”

Driscoll nodded but said nothing and walked away.

In his room, Dulcey drew the paper from his shirt, and for a time carefully read the names and dates and cargoes, making mental notes of the companies he had known previously. It was close to eleven o’clock when he put out the lamp and went to bed. He awoke once in the night to the hum of wind and the steady drumming of rain on the roof.

Morning broke in a wet, gray world with a raw northerly wind snapping the flags on the mainmasts of the ships rocking in Eastport harbor. At eight o’clock Dulcey waited while Driscoll worked the key in the office lock, and the freezing wind came through the door with the two men to ruffle papers on both desks before they could turn and slam it shut. The two took off their coats and hung them on the wall pegs, and Dulcey kindled a fire in the stove while Driscoll opened one cabinet to select eight large files and drop them on Dulcey’s desk.

“Start with these,” he said, and returned to his own chair.

At noon, Dulcey clamped his tricorn on his head, turned up his collar, and hurried to the tavern for sausage and brown bread, then returned to continue reading the files Driscoll laid on his desk from time to time. Twice the work was interrupted by seamen who walked through the door, past the counter, to Driscoll’s desk to leave documents. Both times the man making the delivery spent a moment studying Dulcey but asked no questions. By late afternoon, Dulcey was in a state of stunned disbelief.

Burlington—Plattsburgh—Cornwall—Crysler’s Farm—Prescott Ogdensburg— Sacketts Harbour—Oswego—Charlotte—Buffalo—Fort Erie—Fort George—Presque Isle—Amherstburg—Detroit. Buyers in towns on the Canadian side of the lakes—towns that weren’t there five years ago—built by Americans who left the United States to buy cheap Canadian land and get into this business of smuggling? Cargoes moving both directions from as far west as Detroit? Amherstburg? From Vermont, New York, Michigan, and Canada? Nineteen separate companies? British, French, American? Thirteen thousand tons of gypsum in twelve days, all traveling north? Gypsum? Enough gypsum to plaster every wall in Quebec and Montreal combined? Lumber—nine hundred tons of cured pine and oak going to England—enough to build a fleet of ships. Potatoes, wheat, flour, beef, pork, all coming from American ports to Canadian buyers? Spanish produce—India tea—Oriental ginseng root—all packed in barrels with bungs? Twenty-two hundred tons in sixteen days? All moving south? And the paperwork all crosses these desks in this office at Eastport?

At six o’clock Dulcey carefully closed the files on his desk, and Driscoll followed him to the front door. Dulcey paused.

“See you in the morning.”

Driscoll grunted an answer, and Dulcey heard the key turn in the lock as he walked away toward the White Gull with the wind cutting through his coat. The small tavern was filling with seamen with white faces who wiped at dripping red noses with their coat sleeves. Dulcey took a small table in one corner to order roast ham and potatoes and a piece of apple pie. A thin woman with gray hair and sad eyes brought it on a tray and Dulcey picked up the knife and fork. The ham was dry and the potatoes overboiled, but it made a supper. He was starting on the pie, paying little attention to the rough talk of seamen at the tables nursing their steaming mugs of hot buttered rum, when he heard the words “. . . New Haven . . .” He slowed and glanced at four men, all in heavy coats and knitted caps, two tables to his right. He took the first bite of the pie and began to slowly chew, sorting out what he could of the conversation among the four sailors.

The youngest of them was talking too loud, gesturing, face twisted in loathing at a remembrance. “ . . . caught him four weeks ago . . . trial . . . murdered a city alderman . . . hung him the next day . . . I saw it . . . worst thing ever . . . ever see a man hang? . . . worst thing ever.”

For a moment Dulcey stopped breathing, then took the next forkful of pie and listened. A burly seaman snorted, sipped gingerly at his steaming rum, wiped his beard on his coat sleeve, and spoke. “. . . name . . .”

The younger man tossed a hand upward. “ . . . Dorsey . . . Dulcey . . . don’t remember.” He shuddered. “ . . . remember his eyes when they hung him . . popped wide open . . worst thing ever.”

Dulcey’s expression did not change as he finished his pie. He laid down his fork, paid at the desk, and casually walked down the dim hall to his room. Inside he turned the lamp wheel and sat down on his bed, leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped, as he battled to organize his fragmented thoughts.

If that man knows, who else knows?—how much time do I have?—must leave now—tonight—got to get into the hold of the Patrice before I go—got to know what’s down there.

With calm deliberation he packed his seaman’s bag and drew the strings but did not tie them. Then he sat down on his bed and forced himself to wait for more than one hour before he walked back downstairs and out the front door onto the nearly deserted wharf. He stopped with his shoulders hunched against the freezing wind, and for several moments studied the ships that were tied to the docks. He glanced at the heavens, where the moon and stars were hidden by thick, low, billowing clouds, while the first wet snowflakes came stinging, slanting on the wind.

Dulcey walked back to his room, put on his heavy coat, pulled his knitted cap low, slung his seaman’s bag over his shoulder, blew out the lamp, and walked out into the hall. He did not go back into the tavern; rather, he walked to the door at the end of the hall, out onto the landing and down the stairs into the blackness of the alley. He backed up against the building and waited, eyes closed, listening for any sound that he did not understand, and there was none. He walked steadily down to the slick, black timbers of the waterfront, and again stopped to listen, and to peer intently into the sleet and the darkness, broken only by the dim light of lanterns swinging in the wind from the bow and stern of ships tied to the docks. The only sounds were the whistling of the storm in the rigging of ships and the heavy thump of the hulls as they rose and fell against the dock with the wind-driven waves. There was no one in sight. He moved quickly to the second ship.

The gangplank had been raised and was up on the deck. He hunched down where the big hawser held the stern of the Patrice against the dock and waited for the seaman on the first deck-watch of the night, to judge the time it took him to make one round. The lantern came past about each six minutes. On the third round, Dulcey watched it come, waited until it was past, then seized the hawser and climbed to the railing and over onto the deck of the ship. He crouched behind the main hatch and waited until the deck-watchman passed on his next round, and two minutes later had the hatch open far enough to slip inside and lower the cover back into place. He stood on the steep stairs in utter blackness for half a minute, eyes clenched shut while he waited for them to adjust to the darkness. He had just opened them and started down the steps when the scent registered, and he froze.

Sulphur! Two hundred tons of sulphur!

There was no need to go farther. Quickly he shouldered the hatch cover upward, stepped clear, and was crouched down behind the hatch when the deck-watch passed. He moved silently to the stern, slid down the hawser to the dock, scooped up his seaman’s bag, and trotted, hunched forward, head ducked into the stinging wind and snow, to the office of Bristol Lines. He stopped to peer up and down the waterfront, and there was no one. He bowed one shoulder and rammed the door with all his weight, and the jamb splintered, and the door flew open. He quickly pushed it closed, and instantly the room was locked in blackness. By feel, he moved quickly to the file drawer where Driscoll kept the ledger that controlled the money and felt the lock. He worked his way to the stove, still warm, seized the soot-covered poker, rammed the point through the arch of the lock, and heaved upward. The poker bent, but held, and the hasp of the lock released. Dulcey grabbed the ledger and moved to the middle drawer of the second locked file. Again he drove the poker through the arch, heaved up, and again the poker bent, but the lock clicked and opened. He grabbed the big, heavy ledger with the names of customers, loads, dates, arrivals, and destinations and strode back to his seaman’s bag. Two minutes later he was at the front door with the two ledgers inside the heavy canvas bag, the strings tied tight. He opened the door and stepped out into the howling wind and sleet, stood still for half a minute to be certain no one had seen him come, and then closed the door.

He did not go to the docks to stow away on a ship or take a longboat. Rather, he headed northwest at a steady trot, toward the tip of the small island. He was gasping for breath when he stopped and waited in the darkness, watching for a lantern following and listening for a shout, but there was nothing. He ran on, stopping when he must, listening, watching, until he reached the wild coastline with the great granite rocks, where longboats danced at a small dock on the three hundred yards of choppy black water that separated the island from the mainland. He threw his seaman’s bag into the nearest longboat, jerked the tie rope free, and dropped into it. He heaved on the right oar to turn the boat, then bowed his back and dug both oars deep to drive the bucking craft into the wind and the churning water. He took a heading due north, based on instinct and dead reckoning, with the map on the office wall bright in his mind. He missed the mainland docks by thirty yards, leaped into freezing water above his knees, and dragged the boat up into the rocks of the rugged Maine shore. With the seaman’s bag over his shoulder, he took his bearings and started northwest once more, working his way through the scatter of granite boulders, searching for the winding dirt road he had traced on the map. In the storm and the darkness, he passed it and had to turn back fifty yards, searching. He found it and turned west, following it slowly, carefully, with the wind and sleet quartering in from his right. He trudged on in the night, peering downward, feeling his way in the freezing mud and slush of the road.

Twice in the night he saw the dull glow of lights just north of the road but did not stop. With dawn separating the gray overhead from the gray of the world, he followed the road southwest, clothes dripping, teeth chattering. Midmorning, the wind slackened and the sleet slowed. By noon there were patches of blue overhead, and an hour later the heavens cleared and the winds calmed. He walked on in chill sunshine, shivering, covered with mud to his knees, clothes soaked, listening to the drip of melting snow falling from trees and undergrowth to turn the world into rising steam and brown puddles and ponds.

The sun was casting long shadows eastward when he left the road to walk a quarter mile north on a path toward a plain, weathered farmhouse. In the farmyard, he paused at a slab-sided building connected to a pen with three Jersey cows grinding their cuds and two draft horses with their muzzles buried in dry grass hay. There was a second pen with a large black-and-white sow and nine weaner pigs. Beyond, there was a chicken coop with chickens clucking while their heads darted up and down as they snatched grain or insects from the ground. He stopped at the door of the building and rapped at the door, then opened it on creaking hinges. A hollow-cheeked old man with a week’s growth of gray beard and one glassy eye sat on a one-legged milking stool, finishing the milking of a fourth Jersey cow into a wooden bucket. The man raised his head in surprise. His voice was high, raspy.

“Who are you?”

“Sir,” Dulcey began, “I need a meal and a place to sleep for the night. I can sleep in this milking shed. I’ll expect to pay.”

The old man turned and buried his forehead in the flank of the cow for a time while he stripped the udder. Then he stood, pushed the milking stool back with his foot, and picked up the milk bucket by the rope handle.

“I asked, who are you?”

“Robert Dulcey. I’ve been walking since yesterday evening. From Eastport. I have to get to Port Machias.”

The old man considered for a moment. “You in trouble?”

“Trouble? With the law? No, I’m not.”

“Then why did you walk all night and all day, in the storm?”

“I have to be in Port Machias as soon as I can, sir.”

The old man shook his head. “No, you’re in trouble. When did you eat last?”

“Yesterday evening.”

“How much?”

Dulcey’s forehead wrinkled in question. “How much did I eat?”

“No. How much can you pay?”

“Whatever is reasonable.”

“You said Port Machias?”

“Yes.”

The old man scratched his beard with his free hand. “I’ve got the winter’s cheeses in a root cellar. Got them sold in Port Machias. Got to get them loaded tomorrow and leave. Should be there in three days. Make you a deal.”

Dulcey stood silent, waiting, and the old man went on.

“You help me load the cheeses tomorrow and deliver them in Port Machias, I’ll give you lodging tonight. A hot supper of beef and turnip stew. Sleep in the bed in my son’s room. He got married and left four years ago. My wife died last December. Buried just north of the house. Been hard, doin’ everything around here alone. Hard.”

“I’ll help with your load of cheese,” Dulcey said, and the old man bobbed his head once as he walked out of the milk shed with the bucket of milk, toward the low, log house. He stopped at a root cellar and set the warm milk to cool, then went on into the weathered log house with Dulcey following.

“Your clothes still wet?” the old man asked.

Dulcey set his seaman’s bag against one wall. “No. They dried this afternoon.”

“Supper’s on in five minutes.”

Dulcey could not remember anything tasting better than steaming beef stew that was too salty, with brown bread hardened by spending two weeks in a drawer, and a steaming mug of apple cider. With the meal finished and the table cleared, the old man gestured to the stone fireplace that dominated one wall and spoke.

“Set a spell and talk, if you’ve a mind. Name’s Angus. Call me Angus.”

Dulcey saw the need in the old face and sat down on a straight-backed chair while the old man settled into a battered rocking chair. He rocked back and forth with the old chair quietly groaning, hands clasped on his paunch, staring into the dancing flames of the fire. Minutes passed while the only sound was the popping of knots in Maine hardwood in the fire and the tick of the old clock on the plain mantle. Finally the old man spoke.

“Spring storm we had. Put some moisture in the ground. Good for the crops.”

Dulcey nodded. “You grow crops?”

“Potatoes. Turnips. Cabbage sometimes. Apples. Maple syrup. Goin’ to be hard this year, without Phoebe. Doin’ all that.”

Dulcey could not find the right words to say and remained silent, staring into the fire while the old man continued. “Might have to sell out. Go to a town somewhere.” He shook his head. “Things is getting crowded around here. Towns growin’. People comin’.”

Again he fell silent, and Dulcey did not interfere with his thoughts while the fire popped and sparks danced, and the dusty old clock continued to tick.

Dulcey cleared his throat. “Who takes care of your livestock while you’re gone? Milks the cows? Feeds the sow? Collects the eggs?”

The old man raised one hand in gesture. “Neighbor up the road. Name’s MacIver. We trade. I take care of his when he goes, he takes care of mine when I go. He’ll be here day after tomorrow, early.”

The fire dwindled and left the room in twilight before the old man stood. “I’ll show you my boy’s room. Name’s Albert.” He shook his head as he crossed the parlor and opened a door. “In here. I get up at five o’clock. I’ll have hot water to wash. Breakfast before six. Outhouse is in back. Got morning chores and then fifty-two rungs of cheese to load. Thirty-six pounds each. Eighteen-hundred-seventy-two pounds. Near a ton.”

That the old man kept such figures in his head surprised Dulcey. He said, “I can help with the morning chores. Where’s the root cellar?”

“West side of the house. I’ll show you in the morning. I’ll bank the fire while you get the lamp goin’ in Albert’s room. Then I’ll turn out the lamps in here. If you need the outhouse you better go now.”

The old man returned to the fireplace and reached for the small shovel and poker to bank the fire while Dulcey closed the bedroom door and dropped his seaman’s bag beside the bed and lighted the lamp on the simple dresser. He waited until he heard the footsteps fade and the soft closing of a door before he lifted the bag onto the bed and drew out the two ledgers. For nearly half an hour he studied the entries of each. In the larger one were the names of more than sixty-five companies, with a registry of dates of contracts, cargoes, points of origin, and points of delivery. The cargoes were generally gypsum going north and produce or tea going south. The ports of origin and destination ranged from the West Indies northward to Quebec, and west to Amherstburg, on the western tip of Lake Eric, in British Canada. The second ledger, the smaller one, was a line-by-line accounting of money; where it originated, and where it went.

Dulcey’s breathing slowed. Here it is! The names of all the men connected with this scheme! Half of them are representatives of governments—ours and Britain’s! Millions! Millions of dollars changing hands to keep them quiet!

His brow wrinkled in puzzlement. Gypsum. Gypsum that smells like sulphur. Why sulphur going north?

Bone-weary, he closed the two ledgers and replaced them in his seaman’s bag and tied the strings. Slowly he dropped his shoes, changed to his nightshirt, and got into the bed, mind still puzzling. Gypsum? Sulphur. Why sulphur? These were his last thoughts as he drifted off to sleep.

* * * * *

They ate steaming oatmeal porridge and drank thick Jersey buttermilk for breakfast and walked to the milking shed in the gray of dawn. They finished morning chores a little after nine o’clock, and the two of them moved a great cart with seven-foot wheels to the root cellar. They stopped loading the large, yellow, wax-coated rounds of cheese at noon and ate hot ham and boiled potatoes, and the old man lay down before the fireplace and snored for twenty minutes before they went back outside in the chill sunlight to finish loading the cheese. By dusk they had finished with the livestock and carried the milk and eggs into the root cellar. They were in bed before eight o’clock.

Frost came in the night to turn the world into a sparkling wonderland in the first arc of the rising sun. MacIver came rumbling up in his wagon, pulled by a single horse, while they were gathering eggs and emptying a bucket of whey mixed with grain into the pig trough, where the old sow grunted and nosed her nine weaner pigs aside to bury her snout in the thick mix.

MacIver walked to meet Angus. “Loaded?”

“Yep.”

“Go on. I’ll take over here.”

Angus and Dulcey loaded their personal gear into the big-wheeled old cart and climbed up to the driver’s seat. Angus slapped the reins on the rumps of the two horses, called “Giddap,” and the wagon lurched into motion. The morning passed with the cart rumbling and lurching on the rutted road steadily southwest. With the sun high overhead, they stopped near a clear stream where the horses dropped their muzzles to drink, and the two men silently ate dried fish and cold, boiled potatoes, and drank from the stream while the horses pulled dried grass. Talk between the two was sparse as the afternoon passed. In early dusk, Angus pulled the team off the road to a small grove of maple and white pine trees. While Angus kindled a small fire, Dulcey unhitched the horses and led them to the stream to drink, then hobbled them in the trees, where they began pulling the high, dry, brittle grass. There was little said as the two men ate ham warmed on a spit, and potatoes sliced and fried in a cast-iron frying pan that was blackened by fifty years of hard use. They broke evergreen boughs to sleep on, and sought their blankets beneath unnumbered stars in the black heavens.

They broke camp and had the cart back on the narrow, rock-strewn, winding dirt road before the first arc of the sun cleared the eastern horizon. They nooned near a large lake to the east of the road, then pressed on. When Angus stopped the cart for evening camp, Dulcey caught the scent of the sea, far to the south, and at daybreak the following morning they were once again rolling, this time due south. Before ten o’clock they crested a gentle rise and there before them, far in the distance, was Port Machias, on the rocky northwest shores of Machias Bay. It was two o’clock before they reached the northern end of the small village and Angus clucked the horses down to the docks.

Dulcey waited with the wagon while Angus went to an office on the waterfront with a faded sign that read O’BRIEN & O’BRIEN. Minutes later he returned with a short, heavy man dressed in winter clothes, with the stub of an unlit cigar clenched between his teeth. The man climbed onto the back of the cart, jerked the knots from the ropes, and threw back the tarp that covered the cheeses. He examined half a dozen of them before he turned to Angus.

“Unload. Come to the office and I’ll pay.”

Angus moved the wagon to a warehouse at the west end of the waterfront and dropped the tailgate, and the two men began transferring the cheeses, one at a time, inside the cavernous room, while an agent of O’Brien and company counted them. At five o’clock, Dulcey placed the last one onto the carefully arranged stacks, the warehouseman made his receipt, and Angus and Dulcey walked back to the big cart, where Dulcey unloaded his seaman’s bag and helped Angus raise and lock the tailgate.

Dulcey faced the old man.

“I think that finishes it.” He saw the sense of sadness in the old, gray eyes, but there was nothing he could do. “Will you be staying here in town tonight?”

Angus shook his head. “Still good daylight. I’ll make two, three hours yet today.”

Dulcey didn’t know what to say, and felt his face flush, embarrassed.

Angus broke the awkward silence. “Want to tell me the trouble you’re in before I go?”

Dulcey shook his head. “No trouble.”

Angus accepted it. “You be careful. You get up my way again, you come visit. Nice to have someone to talk to.”

Dulcey was astonished. The old man had not spoken more than a hundred words in three days!

“I’ll do that,” Dulcey said. “Good luck to you.”

There was nothing else to be said, and the two men parted, Angus to the driver’s seat of his old cart, and Dulcey to the nearest tavern that had rooms for rent. The sign hanging on the wrought-iron arm above the door said RED DAWN TAVERN. Dulcey rented a small room on the ground floor for one night, locked his seaman’s bag inside, and hurried back out onto the waterfront, down to the ships that were tied to the docks and loading.

The second ship, a two-masted schooner with the name Martha on her bow, flying an American flag, was finished loading, and her captain said he intended sailing for Boston harbor at high tide, which was four o’clock the next morning. And he had space for one paying passenger. Dulcey paid him in advance and returned to his room. He took his supper at the tavern and returned to his room to dig into his seaman’s bag for the two large ledgers. It was close to ten o’clock when he closed them, mind reeling with the scope of what they told him.

For a time he sat still, concentrating on the single question—Why the smell of sulphur in the hold of a ship carrying gypsum?

Suddenly he sat bolt upright, eyes wide, the hair on his arms standing straight up.

Gunpowder! Gunpowder is made with sulphur and saltpeter and charcoal! They’re shipping sulphur north to make gunpowder, in crates marked GYPSUM! He jerked to his feet and smacked one fist into the palm of his other hand. “Of course!” he exclaimed. “The British are making gunpowder up north! They’re getting ready for war!”

Sleep did not come easy for Dulsey, and he awakened twice in the night, mind racing with the sure conviction that he had stumbled into a massive, hidden plot by the British to attack and destroy the entire northern American frontier. How far west did it reach? Detroit? How far north? Lake Superior? How many of the American forts on the southern shores of Lake Ontario? Fort Niagara? Sacketts Harbour? Oswego? Buffalo?

Dulcey was at the gangplank of the Martha in the four o’clock am darkness and was admitted to his tiny quarters. The northerly winds held, and the little schooner was fairly flying as she took her heading due south out of Machias Bay into the Atlantic Ocean. Dulcey spent hours in his tiny cabin, poring over the ledgers, mentally marking the companies involved, the tonnage shipped both directions, and the names of the persons who had signed receipts for money. He came onto the deck for a little while in the morning and again in the afternoon, to clear his head and feel once more the gentle roll of the deck of a solid ship running with the wind. But he took his meals in his quarters and spoke little to any of the crew.

The second morning he sighted Cape Cod to the south and east and felt the little schooner lean to port as she turned to starboard, toward Boston harbor. By noon she had tied up to the docks, and Dulcey waited with his seaman’s bag over his shoulder while the crew lowered the gangplank. The bos’n checked his name off, and he descended the gangplank in four steps and trotted through the men and cargoes on the docks to the office marked DUNSON & WEEMS, and threw open the door. Inside, three men raised their heads and stood instantly, the tallest of them trotting to seize Dulcey by the shoulders.

“John! Are you all right? We were . . .” Matthew Dunson clasped his son to his breast for a moment, and John threw his arms about his father.

“I’m all right,” John answered. “Fine. Are things all right here?”

Matthew stepped back, checking his son from head to toe. “Yes, but we were worried.”

Billy Weems stepped from behind Matthew and thrust out his hand. John grasped it and then threw his arms about Billy for a moment. “Good to see you. You can’t know how good.”

Captain Pettigrew thrust out his hand from behind Billy, and John shook it warmly.

“Laura?” John asked his father. “The baby?”

“Couldn’t be better. Anxious about you.”

“Mother?”

Matthew clenched his jaw for an instant. “Ailing a little. But fine.”

Billy interrupted. “Any trouble up there?”

John rounded his mouth and blew air. “No real trouble. But you aren’t going to believe what’s going on.”

Matthew sobered. “What is it?”

“Thousands of barrels of rum from the West Indies moving up to British ports and from there back down to American buyers. The barrels are marked as Spanish produce and India tea.”

Matthew was incredulous. “What? Rum in barrels marked Spanish produce and India tea? Ridiculous!”

“That’s not all,” John said. “Thousands of crates of sulphur marked as gypsum going north and staying there with British buyers.”

The office went dead quiet for three seconds before Matthew exclaimed, “Gunpowder! The British are making gunpowder up there! They’re preparing for war!”

John continued with every eye in the room boring into him, waiting. “Thousands of tons of cured white pine and oak. Peeled pine trees for ship masts by the thousand. All going to England. England is getting its navy ready!”

Billy cut in. “All of this in breach of the embargoes? Against the law? President Madison and Congress intend to stop it all with a bill they’re working on. The Macon Bill.”

John shook his head emphatically. “I know, but the Macon Bill isn’t before Congress yet. I know about the embargoes and all the talk of shutting down commerce with Canada—crippling England because she can’t get Canadian lumber to build a fleet. All I’m telling you is that right now, today, there’s at least five times the amount of lumber and other materials flowing into and out of Canada and the northern sections of the United States—as there ever was. Smuggling! Almost no one up there is paying any attention to all the embargo wars between England and France and the United States. Americans have left the United States to buy cheap land on the Canadian side up there. Right now Americans have built at least three hundred new Canadian settlements, and they’re producing lumber and potash and wheat, and making a fortune shipping it to England.”

Matthew interrupted. “How strong is the French presence up there? Bonaparte intends being emperor of the world.”

“Strong. The French stop ships of any nation on the high seas and confiscate whatever they want, just like the British. The only question is who is causing the most trouble, France or England?”

Billy asked, “In what quantities? How much of this is going on?”

John shook his head, eyes lost in disbelief. “At least fifty-two million dollars in the past twelve months.”

Billy gaped. Matthew’s mouth dropped open for a moment before he exclaimed, “What are the port authorities up there doing about it?”

John’s words came slowly, spaced. “Apparently, nothing. Not the British or the Americans. A lot of them—maybe most—are part of it. Getting paid for their silence. A few said no to the bribery and soon found out they had far too few ships or men to stop it. And some of them disappeared. No one knows what happened to them.”

Matthew broke in. “Names? Do you have names?”

“I’ve got two ledgers with most of the names the president will need.”

Matthew’s eyes widened. “How did you get them?”

“Stole them. Broke into the office and stole them.”

“Tillotson’s office?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t he going to have a dozen men out looking for you?”

“I doubt it. Think about it. Once he thinks it through far enough to know where those ledgers are going, do you think he’s going to be very quick to claim them? I doubt it. My best guess is he’s a long way from Eastport by now, headed for the West Indies or maybe England in the fastest schooner he could find.”

Billy said, “You’re probably right. Even if he sends someone to get you, they’ll be looking for a man named Robert Dulcey. So is the law in New Haven.”

John shook his head. “I think you’ll find out the New Haven authorities caught Robert Dulcey and hanged him about a month ago. That’s why I had to leave Eastport. Some seamen were talking about it. If Tillotson heard about that while I was still there, he’d have had me dead overnight. As it is, when he finds out Dulcey is dead, who will he go looking for? He has no idea who I am. ”

Matthew blanched. “It got that close?”

“It got a little tight there for one night.”

“Where are those ledgers?”

“Here in my bag.” He jerked open the strings and laid the two heavy ledgers on the counter. “Take a hard look at these and see if you can believe what’s there. And be sure you don’t lose them. If President Madison wants to know what’s going on up there, he’s got most of it right here.”

“Bad?”

John shook his head. “I doubt you’ll believe it, at least at first. There’s grounds for war in those ledgers. And I need to ask, how is President Madison getting along? I left just about the time he was inaugurated, and I haven’t heard.”

There was a pause before Matthew answered. “He’s in a battle. Political battle. He’s finding out both the French and British have almost no regard for the United States. They see us as a newly arrived nuisance, not a newly arrived nation. They both stop American ships on the high seas for any reason they can think of, and they confiscate American cargoes in most of our ships they find in European ports. President Madison is getting advice from his own people that is contradictory. Some say negotiate, some say go to war and get it over with. No one knows where this will all finally come out.”

For a moment John stared at the ledgers in thought. “I can tell you one thing. I can’t see a way that negotiations will stop what those ledgers tell us.”

Matthew laid his hand on the two books. “Enough of this for now. We’ll lock these in the vault and talk later. You better go on home to Laura. She’s concerned.”

“I will. Let mother know I’m fine. I’ll be over to see her tomorrow.”

John retied his seaman’s bag, swung it over his shoulder, and looked at his father. “Good to see you all again. I’ll be back tomorrow to start a written report. When does President Madison want you there?”

Matthew smiled. “I’ll find out. He wants you with me.”

John Dunson shouldered his seaman’s bag, grinned and nodded at his father, then at Billy and Pettigrew, turned, and hurried out the door.

Notes

As a result of the flood of embargoes and other orders that affected international shipping on the high seas, issued by the Americans, British, French, and Russians, the seaport village of Eastport, Maine, and the British-Canadian seaports in Passamaquoddy Bay, Nova Scotia, became notorious for trafficking in black market commodities from all nations, including but not limited to Britain and the United States. In a statement to Congress in 1811, President James Madison referred to the amount of smuggling as “odious.” Fraudulent bills of lading, or manifests, became commonplace, showing American plaster of paris (gypsum) going north to Canadian-British markets, while Spanish produce was coming south into New England. In fact, the plaster of paris was sulphur, saltpeter, lumber, barrel staves, flour, wheat, and a long list of other products, and the Spanish produce was largely rum, shipped from the West Indies north to Passamaquoddy, then back down to the markets in New England. Between 1805 and 1810, the traffic into and out of these ports had increased five hundred percent, most of it illegal smuggling and black market. Because land was cheap on the Canadian side of the international border and smuggling was reaping astronomical profits, towns and villages had sprung up all along the northern international border where none had been before. In 1807, when America stopped supplying lumber to England, Napoleon induced Russia to close its trade from the Baltic states to England, which cut off that source of wood to maintain the English navy. As a consequence, the lumber trade from Canada to England leaped dramatically. When legal action was taken to prosecute the smugglers and black marketers, nothing could be done because of the “sudden absence of any experts to testify” against the criminal offenders. They were paid by smugglers to refuse to testify, or they disappeared under mysterious conditions. See Stagg, Mister Madison’s War, pp. 22–31, 39–41.

The Macon Bill, as proposed by Congressman Nathaniel Macon, attempted to stop all trade with ships of the foreign powers until they recognized America’s neutral rights, whereupon the United States would resume trade with that power. The bill was drafted and argued but defeated in Congress on March 16, 1810. See Wills, James Madison, pp. 87–88.  

For the geographic locations of Eastport, Passamaquoddy Bay, and Machias Bay, see National Geographic Map of Our Fifty States, National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C., 1978, map of Maine, p. 37.

John Matthew Dunson is a fictional character.