IN BRIGHT SUNLIGHT THE BLUE CUTTER, WITH MISTER MIDSHIPMAN WAINWRIGHT as boat officer, pushed over the last set of lashed-together barrels; he was assisted in this responsibility by Padeen Hoyle, steady at the tiller as coxswain. As Petty Office Hoyle was a few decades older than his nominal commander, he served also as his sea daddy. Under the old salt’s minute supervision Mister Wainwright had been sent to undertake the routine task of laying targets. The blue cutter had crossed Enterprise’s wake and worked to leeward, placing in the water five rafts made of beef casks and barrel staves. These now wallowed easily on the swell, appearing on the crests and dipping into the troughs, a perfect game of peek-a-boo. On the last target, Wainwright had made a special effort; a broken piece of stretcher was pointed up among the barrels, and to this was lashed the shattered collar of an oar, making a rude cross. This contraption was crowned by a rotten melon and swathed in a piece of frilly petticoat. A short plank had been nailed to the target on which Wainwright had daubed the words “Maggie’s Drawers.”
Padeen worked the cutter back to the ship, handling both tiller and sheet so Wainwright had time to admire his nautical scarecrow. “It’s just the thing, Padeen. Don’t you think?”
“It is, sir,” answered Padeen, winking to the stroke oar, Sean Michael Hoyle, his very own cousin from County Sligo. How Wainwright had come by a set of lady’s undergarments was a deep and abiding mystery.
The cutter’s crew came up the side and the boat was veered astern. A clean sweep had been made of the decks, the lesser cabins dismantled, mess tables slung up, and the garlands and shot racks made full. As Enterprise wore round in a broad, easy half circle, the smell of slow match streamed across the deck. Powder was served out to the guns below and those on the spar deck. The lower courses were sheeted, the ship was stripped to her fighting sails, and on deck the sun was brilliant.
Curran stood with his division by their section of guns, 32-pound carronades just forward of the quarterdeck break. Not considered equal to the 24-pounders for range, the carronades were nevertheless called “smashers,” and for close-in work they were deadly. Curran’s division was known in the ship as Bastard’s Alley. Lieutenant Varney had previously commanded this section, but on Curran’s coming aboard, that nimble officer had availed himself of the opportunity to take over a less visible section of long 24s on the gun deck below. Bastard’s Alley got its name because it was right under the conn, and therefore under the unblinking gaze of the captain. Working guns under Pelles’ knowing eye called for nothing less than strict attention to duty, and even perfection. The standard of gunnery on Enterprise was very high indeed; the captain placed the ability to load, aim, and fire three broadsides in three and half minutes as the very apex of naval virtue, equaled only by godliness and love of country.
Curran called together his charges: gun captains, loaders, swabbers, rammers, firemen, and those who would be sail trimmers. Padeen had rejoined after his excursion and took his place as captain of number eight. After consulting with Padeen, Curran had shifted a few of the men; he had inherited, in addition to Mister Wainwright, Kungkunhan Sulawesi and his mate Lembeh, both Bugis from faraway Sumatra. The pair were ferocious and eager, but neither possessed much English beyond the words “fire,” “swab,” “heave,” “fuck,” and “shit.” On the pretext that they could understand each other even if they could understand no one else, Curran assigned them as loader and fireman under Wainwright, thinking that no two jobs could be more obvious than feeding a cannonball into an empty gun or splashing water on a burning shipmate.
“Gentlemen,” Curran said to those who could understand him, “I have just come from USS Epevier, where I had the privilege of learning the craft of gunnery under Master Gunner James Morell. Mister Morell more than once put a boot up a midshipman’s ass to make a point. I will tell you, gentlemen, aboard Epevier I learned fast.”
There were smiles among the older hands. Most of them had seen a midshipman lifted vertically by the seat of his pants. Curran went on. “It is my intention that you will be the finest gunnery division on Enterprise. I will expect you to load, lay, aim, fire, and engage targets beyond six hundred yards.”
Only the Bugis were not amazed. Wainwright blurted, “You mean with carronades, sir? That far?”
“That and farther. With shell and canister too.”
Curran noticed a few wry expressions. Enthusiasm from young officers was something they were used to, but Curran knew what he was about, and expected fully for his crews to perform to the standard he expressed. “Our nation built this ship. And the guns are the reason this ship is at sea. We serve the guns. You have used carronades for only close-up work, but on Epevier we used them for long bowls and made them stick. For this first exercise,” Curran went on, “I will lay and aim at the far targets, and I’ll teach each gun captain to do the same. We will do this together, as a team.”
“On deck!” Pelles barked. “Fore and aft, by divisions, make ready your guns!”
“The far targets, Mister Curran?” Padeen whispered, “them to starboard?”
Curran nodded. “Lay hold.”
Padeen spat on his hands. “All right, you swabs! Out tompions! Lay hold and heave! Load powder and ball! Ram home!”
The word “ready” relayed down the deck. Then silence.
On the quarterdeck, Pybus was at the wheel, nursing the ship parallel with the first line of floating barrels, two hundred yards to leeward. Beyond them, barely visible, was the second set, barrels marked with staves and strips of canvas.
Pelles’ voice carried across the deck. “The exercise shall be undertaken by divisions. Long guns, the far targets, carronades and chasers the closer sets. From forward to aft, lay fire on your individual targets, and reload and fire until they are destroyed.”
Curran saw Nolan standing with the captain by the quarterdeck rail. Pelles reached into his vest and removed his watch. “First division!” Pelles shouted. “Fire as they bear!”
In the bow, Kerr’s division opened fire. The first gun, a long 24, went off with a thundering crash. A white cloud gushed out across the water, stabbed through its center with an orange tongue of fire. Another gun a second later, and then two in the same instant; merged into the crashing was the whirr of the outgoing shot. At the first raft the balls struck up twenty-foot splashes of water, the first wide and the second just over. The last fell short, then jagged directly over the barrels, shaving off a foot-long splinter before caroming off the top of a swell and tearing up a rooster tail of foam—a fearsome and beautiful sight. There was a length of silence, seventy or eighty seconds, and the firing resumed; blast after blast, the shattered target hit again and again.
The standard of gunnery was excellent, as good as Curran had ever seen. A muffled cheer could be heard below and forward, but Pelles’ expression was blank.
“Silence on deck!” the captain boomed. “Apes, sir! Gibraltar’s own apes can chatter when they throw a rock.” The captain’s voice could be heard through two feet of oak. He yelled, “Second division, fire as they bear.”
Directly below his feet Curran felt the thud of the after battery. Smoke boiled out from the ports, and a shock passed up through the deck, making the sails shiver. By the targets solid columns of water went skyward; a loud slapping sound was followed by a howl as another 24-pound ball slammed into the surface and wobbled off into the sky. The guns fired one after another. The period of silence between the salvos seemed shorter, and the target was soon battered and sinking.
Pelles came down the ladder from the quarterdeck, his fist twisted up in his lapel. He walked past Curran’s division without a glance and stopped at the mainmast. The guns below were quickly run in and loaded. Forward, Wainwright stood by, almost trembling. His men spat on their hands in anticipation.
“Fire, Mister Wainwright.”
Wainwright barked the command, or did his best, but his voice cracked somewhere in the middle of the second consonant. The roar of the guns blotted out his embarrassment. Water went up on both sides of the target, framing it like gateposts. A cannonball punctured and swept away one of the barrels on raft number two, the glory of a direct hit undone by a voice below saying, “Jaysus, they hit the wrong fookin’ target.”
Varney’s division had made the error, and the entire ship knew it. On the last raft, the scarecrow still bobbed defiantly, the petticoat waving in the breeze. Pelles walked back from the mainmast to the quarterdeck ladder, his sea boots thumping on the deck. Curran’s ears were ringing, but the silence behind him was even more unsettling.
The captain moved aft to the quarterdeck ladder and said quietly, “Well, Mister Curran. I leave it to you to complete this comedy. You may fire as you bear.”
Coming up to the beam was the rippling petticoat, now more than five hundred yards away, opening diagonally and dipping slightly in the swell. Padeen glanced at Curran; the closer set of targets beckoned.
“Cock your weapons,” Curran said softly. Locks went back one after another like a series of doors latching. Curran squinted out at the far line of targets. As they rose in the swell, he quietly said to one of the Bannon brothers, “Engage the second line. Left, handsome does it. Three inches. An inch more.”
The aimers worked their crows under the carriage and the carronade yawed over.
“The whole battery now, at your crows, the muzzles left. Another inch . . .”
All of the guns were heaved and the trucks squealed in protest. The ship seemed to hold its breath, and it was Pelles who exhaled: “Jesus and everyone else! Before Christmas, Mister Curran!”
Out of the corner of his eye Curran saw Wainwright twisting his hands, but he still did not fire. He whispered to Padeen, “Steady. Wait for the roll . . . up now . . . fire!”
Padeen jerked the lanyard, the flintlock snapped, and number fifteen went off with a thud. Curran moved quickly down the line, taking but half a second to check the lay of each gun before shouting, “Fire!”
Round shot whirred past the close targets. Traveling low and close to the surface, they seemed to hang in the air. Every man who had expected the nearest row to be struck now blinked in disbelief; a splash came down in front of the most distant target, skipped once, and then struck square. On the raft, the melon atop Wainwright’s scarecrow was swept away in a green-yellow puff. A second ball hit the target on the fly. The oar shaft splintered into a thousand tiny bits and dashed up the water like gravel thrown into a pond. The third ball went home: a direct hit. The barrels exploded, splinters and cooper’s hoops caterwauling up into the air. Each of the remaining four shots struck the same spot, one huge splash on top of another six hundred yards out—twice as far as any hand on board had seen a carronade brought to bear. The target barrels disintegrated, and the petticoat was sent twenty feet into the air, slinging water in crazy circles. The pillars of water came down with the sound of a rainstorm, hissing and buzzing, and then a blasted tatter of underskirt floated to leeward and was swept behind a wave without a sound.
“Cease fire,” Pelles said, his eyes gleaming.
From below and then above came cheering, whoops, and yahoos. Men stuck their heads out of gun ports, craning their necks to look up and see what magic had laid the guns.
“Mister Curran, I have hope for our country yet. You may secure your guns, sir. Well done.” Pelles raised his voice. “For the rest of you, an example has been set. By divisions, make ready your guns. It will be a long day for the awkward!”
The Bannon brothers congratulated each other, and the Bugis embraced and then salaamed. Padeen stepped forward. “Better shootin’ I never saw, sir. Never in me life have I seen the equal. Not to be impertinent, like.”
As the other guns were run out, Curran’s men swabbed out theirs, reloaded, returned the tompions, and bowsed them fast. Curran looked up as the captain mounted the ladder. Nolan was standing near the railing at the quarterdeck break. As Curran watched, Nolan looked down at Bastard’s Alley, smiled, and lifted his hat.
IN HIS FIRST WEEKS ON BOARD NOLAN WORE A MASK EVERY MOMENT HE WAS not alone, assuming the part of a quiet, cheerful, observant man. He asked no favors of the men charged with his custody, and he took no liberties. He ate what he was served, kept his cabin immaculate, and took his daily turn on deck. When he appeared on the quarterdeck, Nolan took pains to do so in his best clothing, always wearing his round hat and a plain black cockade. He did not interfere with the officers or men at their duty, neither initiating conversation nor avoiding it if it were offered. He never declined when asked to help a sailor with a task of reading or adding sums. He was touchingly grateful for scraps of canvas, broken needles, or bits of thread from the sailmaker. To all hands, Nolan was unfailingly polite and graciously thankful for even the smallest courtesy. Not quite a member of the ship’s company but familiar, ever respectful to them all, Nolan was now treated as part of the ship, if not as a member of her crew.
Curran began to feel himself more of a fixture in the watch schedule and in the wardroom. In particular, Doctor Darby was good company—slightly eccentric, very widely read, and occasionally even witty. Leslie and Kerr showed themselves every day to be hardworking, optimistic, and well respected, even loved, by their men. MacQuarrie too was a fine shipmate. His Marines were crisp in their green wool and leather jackets, pipe-clayed and shined to perfection, and were run like a clock by Sergeant Lachat.
But Curran found a few of his messmates to be less than genial company. There was Fentress, who was always brusque and perhaps even inconsiderate; what others weighed before they spoke, he fired double-shotted into conversation. He was incompletely informed on some matters but held his opinions firmly. If he was corrected or contradicted at table, he would look the matter up in Doctor Darby’s copy of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. To his credit, when he was wrong, Fentress would quickly come over to the truth. Though he would readily cede his former opinions, when armed with fresh information Fentress would hold forth with the evangelism of a convert, a cardinal, or even a pope. Varney was another to be wary of. Curran learned he had a habit of demanding satisfaction over small insults. A stiff-necked, belligerent appreciation of his own self-worth made the Marine too vain by half. Varney had shot dead a midshipman in Syracuse and wounded a brother Marine officer ashore in Beyrut. Affairs of honor had quite gone into the past, and were strongly condemned by the Navy Department. It might have occurred to Varney that his interviews were among the several reasons he was still a lieutenant.
Yet by and large, the ship was good-natured; taut but not overly strict. The tone set by Erskine in the wardroom was collegial. The officers, to a man, knew the ship and their duty. It was only Piggen and Varney who seemed to have formed any sort of clique. As Curran came to appreciate this he joined the rest of the mess in patiently humoring them.
Nolan’s second wardroom supper passed without incident, but it was also without much joy. Varney, of course, absented himself, and Leslie was on deck; any meal without Mister Leslie was likely to be less witty. Fentress, still smarting from Erskine’s stern rebuke, also asked to be excused, and the empty chairs made everyone careful in speech and precise in etiquette. Nolan arrived in the wardroom as he had before, exactly at the stroke of six bells. Curran noticed that he wore the better of his two jackets, a swallowtail no longer exactly Prussian blue, with lapels and facings more rose colored than crimson. On deck, Nolan wore duck trousers and a thin linen shirt without a waistcoat. His buttons were of unadorned brass, and though Nolan did his best to polish them with ash from the stove, they did not glitter. His stock was leather, the same sort that the Marines wore, a bit old-fashioned but durable, and it was tied precisely.
Curran welcomed Nolan, as did Kerr, Erskine, and Doctor Darby. Nolan came into the wardroom carrying two books: the Enchiridion by Epictetus and a thin volume of Sappho, half of the library Curran had seen in his cabin.
“I have come to do some horse-trading,” Nolan said. “I have two books to loan and would be thankful for anything you might have to read.”
There was an awkward pause. Erskine considered what might be offered in exchange, what in the wardroom cases might be safe, but Curran took the books from Nolan and covered bravely. “I have books,” he said, and he went to the case and took out a copy of Shakespeare’s plays and a novel by Maria Edgeworth; Curran knew both to be safe enough. Shakespeare never once wrote the word “America,” and Edgeworth cared for Britain more than any other place. Curran could tell at once that Nolan had often had the Bard palmed off on him, but the Edgeworth was new.
“I am an old hand at Shakespeare,” Nolan smiled. “But thank you for the novel. I will return it directly.”
Erskine was glad the incident had been handled and was anxious to start the meal. Mouths stuffed with supper were less likely to make mischief. Nolan again took a seat across from Curran, acknowledging the several empty chairs and taking their message. As pumpkin soup was served out, Nolan was polite but slightly reserved. The conversation at this second meal was generally very tepid, dealing first very completely with the weather, and Nolan had as much to add as any man who had been so many years at sea. He agreed that dawn in these waters was probably the most spectacular any human could ever witness, and even though the glass had been rising, the high, ragged clouds above promised continued fair sailing.
The soup bowls were taken up and supper was brought in from the pantry: colcannon, as hot as it could be made. It was not as pleasing to the eye as paella, but it was a much-loved sea dish and put to good use the remains of the fine loin of veal that had been served at dinner. As is often the case in ship’s messes, the conversation drifted into a technical discussion of naval architecture, the state of the rigging, and the relative merits of different sail plans and the rigs of warships that the members had sailed in. Nolan ate quietly, knowing that any comments he might make would be taken, per force, as those of an amateur.
As the ship had entered warmer waters there had been many flying fish about, and Curran was relieved when Darby turned the conversation to them.
“I have noticed that several of the less unintelligent species of flying fish were in the rigging this morning,” Darby said, helping himself to a bowl of peas.
“Which ones are the smart ones, Doctor?” asked MacQuarrie with a smirk. Darby often expounded on intelligence as the principal force that animated nature, and MacQuarrie knew how to goad his friend.
Darby returned archly, “I am sure that even the Marines have noticed that it is far less likely to find a four-winged fish aboard a vessel at daylight, stranded, than it is to find a two-winged fish. This obviously says something about their native state of wariness.”
“You speak of Cypselurys heterurus, sir?” asked Nolan. “The Atlantic four wing?”
“Yes, precisely,” smiled Darby. “I am surprised you are conversant in the Linnaean nomenclature, sir.”
“There was a copy of Linnaeus’ Systema Naturae on my last cruise. I had time to read it from cover to cover,” Nolan said.
Curran smiled. “I find the pictures more edifying than the Latin.”
“It’s only a matter of practice, I think, Mister Curran,” said Nolan. “My tutors made it very clear to me that my skull was thicker than a Roman milestone.”
“Linnaeus does not say much of the genus Cypeslurus, though there is, I understand, a separate species, equally intelligent, that inhabits the Pacific Ocean.” Darby said this as he elbowed Mister Piggen and pointed to the jug of cider.
“Off the coast of Alta California, Doctor, I have seen the four wing.”
“You’ve sailed in the Pacific, Mister Nolan?” asked Ward.
“I have sir, aboard Essex and Holyoke.”
Curran saw Erskine pass a look to Mister Leslie—Holyoke’s rakish sail plan had been a topic of discussion at a previous meal—and it was Captain Pelles himself who had once been her first lieutenant. Nolan had not mentioned either ship when the officers had argued about their studding sails.
Doctor Darby returned to his fish. “Have you found, Mister Nolan, that the fish most likely to come aboard are Cypselurus melanurus, the two-winged variety?”
“I have seen both come aboard, sir.”
“One more than the other?”
“In roughly equal numbers, I reckon, though I could not say precisely.”
“It’s my opinion that the four wing is the more intelligent of the two. Fewer seem to come through gun ports or come to grief in the hammock netting come morning.”
“Might they be less blind or merely less stupid?” Kerr grinned.
“Maybe them four wings just fly better,” said Piggen.
Nolan smiled. “Admirable hypotheses, gentlemen.” He raised his glass, sipped, and then said to Doctor Darby, “I’m not a trained anatomist, Doctor, as you are, but I have observed that both species are much alike in their eyes and what little there is of their brains.”
“Have you dissected them, sir?”
“Well, after a fashion, and only with my pen knife. But I have eaten probably thousands of them, of both species. I’ve become familiar with their organs and such.”
Silence jolted across the table. If Nolan had said he had eaten musket balls it might have been less of a shock.
“I have heard they are eaten in the Leeward Isles,” said Curran. He did not add the words “because people were starving.”
“It was in the Leewards that necessity forced on me the experiment,” said Nolan. “But I had also the encouragement of the cook on Hornet, who assured me I would not perish from the attempt. He was a Barbadian, a wonderful artisan with the camboose.”
“A liberated Negro, no doubt,” said Piggen.
“He was a white man, sir. Jemmy Witherspoon, one of the distressed class of the island who are called Red Legs on account of their sunburns. Irishmen they are, in the main. Witherspoon told me he had eaten them as a child, and I was persuaded one morning to eat a freshly caught specimen.”
“How are they eaten, Mister Nolan?” asked MacQuarrie. “The fish, I mean; are they any good?”
“An old one is not very savory. But a fresh one is very delicate, especially if you are lucky enough to have a lime in your pocket. As I said, I have had occasion to dine on flying fish, both intelligent and unintelligent, for the last several years.”
Nolan had a greater familiarity with both species than he admitted. On several of his voyages, flying fish had been a principal source of his food. He was used to gathering them up from the decks at dawn, and when the ship’s cook was sympathetic, having them fried for his breakfast. On Hornet, where he had been denied ship’s rations, he had occasionally resorted to eating them raw, which he found was possible if sliced very thin and dusted with a pinch of powdered mustard.
Another somewhat embarrassed silence followed, and Nolan was gracious enough to staunch it. He stood and placed his napkin on the table. “Gentlemen, I thank you for supper and for the books. The meal and your company were first rate.” He bowed to Mister Erskine. “May I have permission to leave the mess, sir?”
“Of course, Mister Nolan. A good evening to you.”
As Nolan took his leave, Curran and the others felt a small jolt of pity but a more pronounced feeling of relief. Even though the conversation had ultimately taken some interesting turns, talk at supper had to be kept away from the most natural topics—letters from family and home.
“An interesting gentleman,” said Darby. “He is very well informed.”
Erskine narrowed his eyes, thinking. “Mister Curran, you were in the Atlantic Squadron—who commanded Hornet in 1815? Was it Biddle?”
“Sir, it was. It was him that took HMS Penguin.”
Darby huffed, “Penguins and peacocks. And HMS Peacock became USS Peacock.”
“And USS Peacock took HMS Epevier, which became USS Epevier,” smiled MacQuarrie, who’d had a hand in that dashing action.
Curran raised his glass to MacQuarrie. “A fine afternoon’s work, sir.”
“Damn me if it don’t seem we should just rent ships from the British,” said Darby. “For now they sail HMS Chesapeake and HMS President. It is a right merry-go-round.”
“Chesapeake and President, bah. Let us not mention those vile, unhappy ships, sir,” tutted Piggen. “It is bad luck. Worse than whistling on deck.”
Erskine was still considering Hornet. “Did you know Captain Biddle, Mister Curran? Was he a bit of a hard horse?”
“I met him several times. He was very cordial, sir, very accommodating. An ardent officer, though.”
“I wonder that Nolan had to eat flying fish while aboard, and not Christian food. I wonder if he was not treated harshly.”
Curran wondered too, for like the others he’d heard that only the Spanish—the cruel Spanish—and sailors starving and adrift in lifeboats ate flying fish.
“I think I know the reason,” MacQuarrie said. His rank entitled him to express his opinion freely. “It did not occur to me until just now, but when I was in the Atlantic Squadron I heard it from scuttlebutt that Hornet had a prisoner aboard, some sort of traitor. I am certain now that person was Nolan. Hornet’s first lieutenant was a man named Hansen.”
Erskine nodded; he had served with Hansen on a previous commission. “John Hansen?” he asked.
“The same,” MacQuarrie said. “His family had been killed and his house burned at Hampton when the British came up past Norfolk in 1812. It was, as you might remember, on their way to burn Washington City. It was a very, very ugly affair.”
No one at the table had forgotten: “Remember Hampton” had been a rallying cry during the War of 1812. After being repulsed from Norfolk the British had shelled and rocketed the town of Hampton, brushing aside a company of local militia. They landed forty boats of troops; a regular British regiment, the 102nd Foot, murdered American prisoners of war and then ran riot in the town, raping and burning.
Erskine said quietly, “Knowing what I do of Hansen—he was a very zealous cove, a right tartar—I am ready to believe that when he had custody of Nolan, flying fish was all that Nolan had to eat.”
“Sure, there is a reason Nolan is treated so,” Piggen said. The purser was particular friends with Lieutenant Varney and had absorbed his prejudices. “The man is an enemy to our nation. A traitor who should have been hanged. It shows how merciful is the government that he was not hung up on a gibbet.”
Curran said nothing to Piggen, but he was coming to the opinion that Nolan had not been shown mercy, but quite the opposite.
After the cloth was drawn, Curran went on deck to take the evening’s observation. It was one of the rare nights when an officer’s watch schedule allowed a full night’s sleep, and after the sight had been reduced and the chart pricked, Curran stretched out on his berth. He found Nolan’s copy of Epictetus and pulled it into the circle of lamplight. A similar volume had been Curran’s grammar when he was a boy, Latin on one page and English opposite, four slender books out of eight of the philosopher’s famous Discourses. Alive in the second century AD, Epictetus had been a Roman slave banished to Greece for speaking of self-reliance. The great man himself wrote nothing, and might even have been illiterate. What there was of his work had been compiled by one of his students. Curran recalled that even the philosopher’s name was suspect, epiktetos in Greek meaning “acquired”—less likely a man’s name than a line from a slave dealer’s ledger.
Nolan’s copy of the Enchiridion was worn and obviously treasured. Betrayed by the binding, the book fell open to a place where the ink seemed eye-worn. “You are exiled. You must die—but must you die groaning too? What hinders you, then, but that you may go smiling, and cheerful, and serene?” Sixteen hundred years ago these were the philosopher’s words—a man unbroken though deprived of his liberty, made a slave, and cast on a foreign shore. Curran turned the pages of the familiar text and found another passage marked in pencil: “For our country and friends we ought to be ready to perform or undergo the greatest difficulties.” At that place Nolan had written in the margin, “What is one man but an atom of his nation?”
Curran turned a few pages and read: “When you are insulted, or provoked by taunts, remember that it is your own judgment that goads you. Be not quick to answer. For if you gain time and respite, you will more easily command yourself.”
Tucked into the end of the book was a small scrap of newspaper, an old tatter long ago gone yellow. It was from the topmost portion of the Columbia Centennial, a Boston paper frequently sent to sea with the packet boats. The name of the city, the date, as well as the Federalist eagle on the paper’s masthead had been cut away with scissors. Curran lifted the scrap and read a column under a short black border:
DIED—In the Osage country, WHITECHAIR, the principal Chief of the Osage Tribe of Indians: After an illness of short duration. Upward of 100 Osages have gathered since July and are of the opinion that something supernatural caused his death. Word is about that they must kill one of the Pawnee nation to appease his ghost—
The piece ended in mid-sentence. Almost expecting the obituary to continue, Curran glanced at the reverse of the page. There, the torn paper neatly bordered a short item in single column:
VISITORS OF DISTINCTION—Doctor Andrew Graff and his bride have arrived in Town of yesterday. Doctor Graff will speak at the Harvard University Medical School. On Saturday morning last, Doctor Graff was married to Miss Lorina Rutledge, in the city of [the word “Philadelphia” was inked out]. After lectures, the couple will take ship to Lisbon and the Continent for an extended tour.
The scrap had been placed among the final fragments of the Enchiridion, the newsprint putting down a yellow smudge that spilled into the gutter between pages. Curran could not imagine that the death of an Osage chieftain or a lecture at Harvard could have been of much interest to Nolan. There was no date visible on the scrap of newsprint, rendering it timeless. If Miss Rutledge had been a sweetheart, it was a cruel bit of paper for Nolan to have read—and much stranger for him to have kept. On the page marked by this sad tatter Curran read:
A man needs but little, and no chains are heavier than those wrought by frustrated desire.
The ship was quiet, and Curran could hear the steady creaking of falls and blocks in the tiller room as the helmsman made a thousand small corrections to steady the ship. He replaced the sad piece of newspaper, carefully aligning it to the stain. Curran turned to the front of the book and opened the flyleaf. There, in blue ink, a jagged hand had written: “Illae stellae, docebit vos.”
There is something about a language taken up in childhood that puts words so close to thought that translation is no longer necessary. Curran had been reading Nolan’s book now for most of the last watch, and his Latin grammar had returned in full gallop. The words written on the flyleaf burst fully and directly into comprehension—not Latin or English, but a voiceless, emotive language pitched directly into his heart: “These stars will guide you.”
On the facing page, the same pen had scratched a dedication:
Given to Philip Nolan,
aboard USS Holyoke off Valparaiso, Chile,
February 6, 1814
with friendship, Arthur Pelles.