SEVEN

JUST BEFORE CHRISTMAS IN 1613 AN IMPOVERISHED BUT BRILLIANT young man named Robert Norwood set foot on the Somers Isles, before they were called Bermuda, and decided to seek his fortune diving on the many wrecks that littered the shoals. He had lately been a pirate, but found the pay lacking, from bad luck, perhaps, or lack of industry. So he was casting about for a new profession.

Salvaging seemed just the thing. His inventive mind devised a method of diving that was a first in the New World: he inverted and converted a wine barrel into a diving bell, hung weights about it and, with some help from a crew on the surface, descended upon the wrecks, breathing the air trapped inside the barrel. Thus, the Bermuda Bell was born. No written or oral history survived as to Norwood’s success, but wags did say he failed at piracy when piracy was in full bloom, so there.

Over the next hundred plus years the Bermuda Bell was more or less continually put to use salvaging wrecks; albeit there were improvements made over time. The bell was enlarged, sheathed in lead, and a glass window installed. But the biggest improvement was the foot pump on the surface that continually pumped fresh air through a hose to the bell to replenish what the diver breathed. This latest incarnation of the bell was to be found in Tucker’s Town, on the south coast of the island, in a salvager’s barn.

So it was that Ezra Somers, Caleb Visser, and the ever present Little Eddy set out in a carriage the next day for Tucker’s Town. Little Eddy seemed to have a particular liking for Visser, or at least felt badly for having found the letter “J” that sent the American into despair and thence to the pub.

The constant bumping and jerking over the rutted road was certainly doing Visser’s headache no good. Fallon’s father had finally put him to bed well after midnight in Fallon’s old room, having heard the fisherman’s tale several times over several hours at the bar. The senior Fallon wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t heard from his son last night; Elinore was first in line.

It was almost eight miles to Tucker’s Town and it was the forenoon before they found the salvager’s barn. He was a man in his sixties named Walker, a dour man who did not smile as he introduced himself. He led them into the barn and pulled a tarp off the bell and there it sat, a leaden mushroom that seemed to have grown out of the straw and dirt. After inspecting it, though no one knew what they were looking for, Somers asked when the thing might be delivered to North Rock.

“I have a contract at Bird Rock next week,” said Walker. “Then the week after I could get the bell to you. Weather taken into account, of course.”

Well, that was the best they were going to do, it seemed, but still it caused Visser to fret. Somers arranged a fee for Walker to bring the bell to the beach at North Rock in two weeks’ time. He would be bringing it by wagon, along with the pump, of course. Somers would have to arrange for a barge to be at the beach with a mast and boom for raising and lowering the bell into the water.

“Tell me, sir,” said Visser, rubbing his temples, “who will be diving on the wreck?”

“Well, not me for sure,” said Walker. “You can dive on it yourself, of course. But it will go faster if you use someone who’s done it before. You tell ’em what you’re after, like money or jewels, and where in the wreck it is, or was, and it will go much better.”

“Who would that be?” asked Somers, wondering whom he knew who had ever been in the bell. No one came to mind.

“Why, I would hire Indigo, of course,” answered Walker, referring to one of his slaves. “But you’ll have to pay him. He’ll expect what I always let him have.”

“And what is that, sir?” asked Somers.

“Whatever he can fit in his mouth and hands,” said Walker, and for the first time he smiled, revealing he had no teeth.

Fallon spent his morning with his father, the best time to catch up before the pub opened, and thanked him for taking in Caleb Visser.

“He’s a good man in a bad spot,” said Fallon. “I can’t imagine what I would do or how I would feel in his shoes.”

“Yes,” said the senior Fallon, kindly, “he’s lost his brother and the gold they needed to free his father and he feels helpless. He’s very grateful to you, I must say. Told me so over and over. And to Beauty; my God, how in the hell did she handle that ship?”

“I could never have done it,” Fallon said modestly, but his father knew better. “It was a near thing; I could have reached out and touched Liberty’s bowsprit, I think.”

They sat in companionable silence for a while, father and son just feeling good being together. They were in Fallon’s childhood home above the pub, where the family had always lived, and the hall clock near Fallon’s bedroom ticked the time away. It was a remembered sound from his youth, constant and regular, a sound to be counted on to lull a young boy to sleep.

“Where is it for you now, son?” asked his father.

“Boston, it appears,” replied Fallon. “Ezra said a big order for salt has come through, the first in a while. So I am to convoy two ships from Grand Turk to Boston. I saw one of them in the harbor when I came in last night; no doubt her captain will want to be off to Grand Turk as soon as possible to load his salt. There should be no problem getting a convoy through. The problem is that most of our ships aren’t sailing in a convoy, of course, and pirates and privateers are always a problem. All our ships must be protected, and there is only one Rascal. I need a plan I don’t have.”

Fallon’s father nodded. The clock in the hall seemed to tick louder.

“That’s never stopped you before,” he said with a smile.

It was late morning when Fallon climbed back aboard Rascal. There was only a small portion of the crew aboard, for Rascal was in a safe harbor. Beauty was out of the ship, no doubt at home with the woman she loved, and Fallon was greeted at the gangway by his second mate.

“Aja,” said Fallon, “if Cully is aboard please ask him to come to my cabin. And you come too, please.”

Aja went to fetch Cully, who was belowdecks taking stock of powder and shot, for they would need both before Rascal sailed again. Cully was a master gunner, the best shot Fallon had ever seen, in spite of having only one eye. He looked devilish with his black eye patch and wild white hair, but he was Fallon’s right hand at the guns and was as loyal as a retriever. His Irish good humor always cheered the crew, and he was surprisingly well-read. He would scrounge for books in each new port, trading his well-thumbed copies for books from other ships’ crews. Not many tars read, but some did.

In minutes, Aja and Cully stepped into the great cabin and found Fallon staring out the stern windows, deep in thought. He turned and bade them both sit at the desk while he ordered his thoughts.

“Cully, there is a veritable navy of French privateers and pirates who are stepping up the war on our packets, none of which has enough guns or manpower to fight them off. There is only one Rascal, and we can’t protect all of them.”

Cully nodded solemnly, as did Aja, both seeing the problem and turning it over in their minds. No one spoke then, for no good answer presented itself.

“Are the scantlings on the packets strong enough to handle more guns? Or bigger guns?” asked Fallon, getting to the heart of the matter and the reason he’d asked Cully to his cabin.

“Most of those ships are old, Nico,” answered Cully, using the familiar with an old friend. “I’m afraid the big guns would rip the deck out of ’em. Well, anything more than a 6-pounder, say. Maybe you could reinforce the decks but…” And he let the thought drift off while he tried to work out the effort required in his mind.

The problem wasn’t just guns, Fallon knew, but finding and training the crews to handle them. As well, the privateers were mostly sloops and the odd schooner, fore and aft rigged ships that were smaller but handier and quicker than the clumsy salt packets. Their goal was to cripple and board quickly, and they could overtake a salt ship from the rear with no danger of return fire, slipping unharmed under her counter no matter what armament the bigger ship carried.

Protecting all of Somers’ ships seemed impossible, and for the life of him Fallon couldn’t devise a plan to do it. Rascal couldn’t be everywhere at once, but the damned pirates and privateers could, and that was the real problem. When the pirates got close enough to grapple, not even a packet’s 6-pounders could depress enough to fire down into them.

Cully may have been thinking the same thing. May, in fact, have been thinking exactly the same thing, because a wide grin split his face.

“What if we let ’em get alongside, Nico?” he said. “We sure as hell can’t beat ’em away, sounds like.”

Fallon looked at his friend and master gunner a moment, trying to see where he was going with that idea. But Cully just kept grinning, and now nodding, and then he picked up an empty wine bottle from Fallon’s desk, held it up a moment, and dropped it to the floor, where it shattered.

“And then we bomb the bastards!” shouted Cully. Aja jumped, but Fallon laughed out loud.