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  Silence fell between them. Gordon sensed he’d stepped over an invisible line. The American captain had no need to argue this point, for the answer shone in every face among his crew. There was no shame among them, but only freshening defiance. Gordon understood that he would be in peril here too, were it not for the captain’s restraint.

  The physical condition of the Americans made him nervous. Bronzed and well-fed, these men glowed with a tale of short supply lines and friendly ports. Americans were welcomed in these barbarous Caribbe colonies for daring to trade right through the British restrictions. Only a few days of sailing would bring them to ports along the American eastern coast, while Gordon and his crew were months from succor.

  He saw resistance in their eyes. They knew why he was here. He could seize the schooner. He could, but Parliament did not want such obvious problems with the United States. If he seized the ship and the act was deemed unjustified, the gesture could backfire. No, he would do something else. Something more precedented.

  And that captain … he was a medley. Gordon sensed the light of hazard in the other man’s eyes. This man reveled in riding the dark horse.

  Unsettled, Gordon searched for a good voice. This next duty was distasteful and he was not of a mind to enjoy it, yet desperation drove him on.

  “It befalls me,” he began, “to remove English sailors from American ships and call them to duty in the Royal Navy against the forces of Napoleon Bonaparte on the European continent. Ye who will be chosen, rejoice in your being relieved of this vulgar service under that ridiculous ensign.”

  He cast a gesture at the stern, where the flag of the young United States snapped its hem at the sandbar.

  But for hardened glares and knotted fists, the American crewmen were laudably restrained. To these men the prospect of changing service was sour. The Royal Navy remained the strongest, most far-reaching naval force in history, the quintessence of dominion, pride of the Empire, yet none of these men wanted part of it. How had the Crown’s supreme force come to such poor repute? The Royal Navy, famed since antiquity, reviled by this rabble?

  Yet they all wanted a life at sea. All were here voluntarily.

  “We have no English sailors here,” their captain said. For the first time there was true acrimony in the American’s voice. The blue neckerchief fluttered as if he had a pet bird.

  At least Gordon had prepared for this moment. “America has eighty thousand seamen. One quarter of them are, in fact, British. Most are deserters, greedy for the better pay in the American merchant trade. A British citizen aboard your ship is considered contraband, the same is if you were carrying gunpowder to Napoleon. Will you tell me this schooner is exempt from such a population? That your ship alone has avoided boarding a single English seaman?”

  A pause, then the captain insisted, “All here are American citizens.”

  “Your country allows any foreigner to become American after only five years of residency and a few paltry requirements. Being ‘American’ means nothing more than that. You are a nation of knaves and deserters.”

  The captain was clearly livid now. His restraint was admirable, given that his eyes were hot enough to broil cod.

  Gordon had to move, had to get away from him. He found his feet and walked forward along the line of Americans. He found a blue-eyed red-haired man with pale skin and blond eyebrows, and noted that the man was a few inches shorter than most of the others.

  “What is your name?”

  “Bristow.”

  “An English name.”

  The American captain protested, “English names are common in the United States. You know that.”

  “Ironic, for so ungoverned a people. Mr. Hennessy, take custody of this deserter.”

  “I’m not English, sir,” Bristow insisted. “I’m from Connecticut!”

  Gordon challenged, “What is your given name?”

  The man shifted a glance to his captain. Finding no alternative there, he furnished, “Ian.”

  “Ian Bristow. English with Scottish influence.”

  “Mr. Gordon,” their captain interrupted, “half of all Americans are of English descent. If that is your criterion, then take us all.”

  Under the muskets of the Royal Marines and the frigate’s heavy guns, the American could be only a barrister, not a soldier, and he did it well. Gordon felt his face turn hot, his lips pale. How many could be seized without causing an international incident? Two? Three?

  Having no response, Gordon faced the man named Bristow and played his best card. Feeling as if his shoulders were too narrow, he squared and looked him in the eye. “Tell me on your word of honor that you were not born on British soil.”

  Bristow turned purple in the face and neck. He struggled, his mouth twisting. Several times he glanced at his captain. In the end, truth choked him silent and he bitterly lowered his eyes to the deck.

  Gordon felt justified and deeply threatened. He raised his voice so all could hear, and hoped it would not crack.

  “Ian Bristow, you were born under the protection of the Crown. For the rest of your life you have certain specific rights. To say, ‘I am a British citizen’ carries privilege around the globe. Wherever you are in the world, we will protect you and you have reciprocal obligations. Anyone born under the Crown has a duty to the Crown. England did not ask for war with Napoleon, but we have it. Escaping to another country does not get you out of it. Only in our hour of need do we call upon you to fulfill your duty. Be glad you’re not a recaptured deserter, else you would be hanged.”

  “A net gain of zero,” the other captain commented drably, in a voice just barely to be heard—but to be heard for certain.

  Gordon stiffened his lips and jaw, lest the insult show to have stung him. He looked at the captain. “God will settle the score, sir, not you.”

  While he had reason to be angry, the America smirked and his blue eyes twinkled. “Watch me.”

  Those boiling eyes were hard to meet. The Yankee men grumbled with satisfaction.

  Gordon spoke up quickly to kill it. “There is another Briton aboard.”

  The American captain’s demeanor shifted slightly. “Only one more?”

  Around them the thirty-odd men in the crew watched tensely. Which of them would be next impressed into the British ship’s crew? How random was Gordon’s logic? He had chosen a man because of his hair, his name, and his stature, knowing that Americans tended to be a few inches taller than most Britons because of the abundance and variety of foodstuffs on their continent. Bristow had no trace of Britain in his speech, yet had all but admitted his British birth. The truth had been teased out. Would fortune favor Gordon a second time?

  Over the water, from only three hundred feet, his own crew watched, waited. Many of them had also been pressed, some from other ships, some from the docks, some from the streets while going about their business. He had neither a willing crew nor a loyal one, and they all spied the glitter of islands with fruit and fresh water. Danger lurked on all fronts in these waters.

  Danger, and a pestilential smell he choked when a breeze brought the putrid odor to him again. He cupped his hand over his nose, relieved to see the other men also gag and grimace. Was it coming from an island? A flock of dead waterfowl, perhaps? A slaughterhouse?

  No. As before, it came from the open sea to the south.

  His eyes began to water. His stomach rolled. Had it not been a gesture of weakness, he might’ve clutched this main halyard to steady himself.

  “Dead whale,” he postulated, just to hear a voice, and to sound wise and experienced.

  “Whale?” The American captain squinted at the sea. “Mr. Gordon, that is a slave ship.”

  Gordon looked up. The captain only gazed out over the misty water.

  Hennessy, Bristow, the American crew, the Britons in the boat—all now gazed out at the horizon, taking through their nostrils information to startle their souls. It was the odor of life, of death, in chains. Urine, defecation, vomit, and corpse rot.<
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  They saw nothing but the gray ocean. A moment later, to their ears came a single strain, the thin distant cry of a human soul in torment.

  Then the sea went silent again. The wind changed. The odor of pitiable humanity faded as if caught back by a giant hand that meant to hide it.

  Gordon looked at the men who had a moment ago seemed so strong, so harsh, and discovered a flock of soggy-eyed boys, many holding their noses.

  Feeling as if he were about to explode, Gordon stepped to the nearest reasonable candidate, an ordinary-looking fellow with hair as black as Gordon’s and a complexion as fair. If he could not look in a crystal ball, he would look in a mirror.

  “You appear Irish to me,” he said. “What is your name?”

  The man uttered a most piteous, “Oh, no.”

  The sincerity caused Gordon to hesitate, then suddenly to shake off his hesitation. Weakness shown here and now before Hennessy and the Americans could be fatal later.

  “Your name,” he insisted.

  “Moore.”

  “Was it O’More before you changed it?”

  “Please,” the man quietly implored. Immediately he clamped his lips, torn between his fate aboard the Royal Navy ship and the plain fact that were he rejected, another of his shipmates would pay the price.

  “Where were you born?” Gordon asked.

  Moore glanced at his own captain. “Don’t rightly know that … never knew the mother.”

  “Yet your accent is English, is it not?”

  In desperation, Moore stammered, “Gloucester, Massachusetts, sir! Not England. Please—”

  “Hennessy, this one as well, if you will.” Gordon backed up almost to the rail. “You two men are British. Your king needs you and you will go.”

  The other men around Moore gave him silent hands in comfort for his obvious misery. Wisely, Hennessy pulled the man away before their sympathy turned to resolve.

  “Wait!” the American captain interrupted. “Wait, I beg you.” His tone was different, even conciliatory as he stepped toward Gordon. “I’m sure you’ve made an error. Moore here has recently become the father of twins. His wife failed to survive, leaving a daughter of eleven years to raise the infants. If he disappears into the Royal Navy—”

  “Am I to falter before this dirge?” Gordon challenged. “Of years absent and babes orphaned?”

  “Not at all, but … you do want to get your ship back to open water.”

  Gordon stared at him. How could he know—?

  The other captain was scouring him with a special glare, adding factors in his head that others could not cipher. The tilt of an eyebrow. The dip of a shoulder. Gauging Gordon’s nerve as if this were a game of poker.

  The American tucked his chin a bit. You’re lost. Let us parlay.

  Gordon, humiliated, despised the American captain in that moment. Could all the other Americans see what was going on?

  The American captain saw in Gordon’s face that his hook had been taken. He dropped his defiance and spoke man to man, in a plea for decency and lenience. “I’m certain you know twins are rarely born to Englishmen with American wives.”

  For a fleeting moment they understood each other. As a thread through a needle, empathy stole into James Gordon. He thought of his own mother.

  “Especially Englishmen with eleven-year-old daughters, I suppose,” he said.

  Damn. His humanity was showing. So was his mistake.

  Trembling, Moore whispered, “Thank you, sir, thank you, thank you—”

  “Shut up!” Gordon understood now the true nature of the man’s fear of impressment. This was not cowardice. “Then who is the other deserter aboard?” he asked. Now that he had declared a goal of pressing two men, he could not back down.

  The captain scanned his crew. His gaze settled upon a blond-haired young man in a tweed touring-cap, no taller than Gordon. He had a thin beard running like a pen line around his cheeks and an admirable physique, with a chest hard as rock pressing at his red cotton shirt. The schooner’s captain approached this man and for a moment they communed in silence.

  The sailor clearly comprehended the captain’s wordless plea and digested the implications. An uneasy moment passed as the captain offered his hand to the man and they exchanged a solemnity reserved only to friends. They turned together, side by side, each burying personal anguish. Over those few steps, perhaps three, four, the blond man in the red shirt bravely accepted his sacrifice.

  Gordon scowled, knowing he was being made the fool. Dismally he asked, “Your name?”

  “Victor Tarkio.”

  There was no “sir,” no “Lieutenant,” no recognition of office or respect for the uniform.

  A nub formed in Gordon’s stomach. “Of the Sussex Tarkios, I suppose.”

  “Suppose so,” Tarkio passively said.

  Shoulders knotted with exhaustion, Gordon uttered, “Welcome to the Royal Navy.”

  He had just taken on another man who would happily kill him.

  “From now on, you men will address me as ‘sir’ or ‘Mr. Gordon,’” he instructed.

  “Yes, sir,” Ian Bristow mumbled.

  Tarkio said nothing, but only gripped Gordon by the throat with his glare.

  Gordon tried to return the glare without breaking. “Do you know what British Navy discipline is like? I can have the skin flayed from your back for such defiance.”

  Tarkio nodded now, as if he and Gordon had known each other for years. “Flay away. I’ll never say it. You’re not my better.”

  “I am your captain,” Gordon snapped.

  “I have a captain. You’re not his better either.”

  A rumble of sour approval rolled through the American crew as they stood spread out behind their own commanding officer.

  Affected, the American captain had lost his flippancy. Holding back obvious heartache, he extended a hand in silence to the man called Tarkio, who took that hand in both of his. Gordon battled to ignore the pain of devotion in the two men’s faces as they looked at each other for probably the last time. The same anguish creased every American face. They were here because they wanted to be here. Not like the Helen’s crew, who had been dragged kicking from dark wharves, wrenched from their families, and forced to serve. There was no such warmth in the Royal Navy.

  Gordon pretended not to see. “Hennessy, take this man.”

  Tarkio was hustled over the side into the gig. The American captain seemed to weaken for a moment or two.

  As though alone, he murmured, “What will I tell Mary?”

  The question hung in the air.

  “Now, Captain,” Gordon began, but did not finish.

  The other man waved some of his men forward, so that he and Gordon might speak more privately. Then he looked out over the water. He spoke without pointing or gesturing.

  “Starboard of your ship you can see the prevailing swell. Now look for the counter-swell.” He did not point at it.

  “I … see it,” Gordon said, a few seconds earlier than actually seeing it.

  “It runs through the lee side at a right angle to the main swell.”

  “Yes …”

  “That is the swell line. You see that island there—”

  “Of course.”

  “The swell running over the top of the oncoming swell is reflected off another island that we can’t see. We can tell where it is by the swells. We are between the two. Go east along the counter-swell, follow the water of the deepest blue and you shall find open sea, but not run afoul of coral heads.”

  Moving away from him sharply, Gordon said, “Very good. Now, you will suffer your flags to be brought to my gig, Captain.”

  Shocked, the captain raised his voice. “Mr. Gordon, you wouldn’t confiscate my flags!”

  “What better way to discourage you from engaging in piracy and smuggling than to deprive you of communication? Warn your fellow schooner masters.”

  Anger ran under Boyle’s forced restraint. “You leave us crippled, sir.”
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br />   But he was honorable in some way, Gordon knew, for the other man did not mention their bargain, or that it was satisfied, or that Gordon was returning favor for injury. Their bargain had been made and was over now. On with business.

  “I will send a prize crew to transfer your cargo to our hold,” Gordon struggled on. “The reduced weight will free you to ride off this shoal.”

  The American captain’s blue eyes iced over. “You leave us with no revenue from this voyage. Will you also force us to turn back and sail north without ballast?”

  Gordon got a feeling it was good luck that he wasn’t standing closer. “Take on water, then. Or sand. You schooner men fancy yourselves wizards of the wind. Let your talent be your ballast.”

  “How shall I appeal this insult?”

  “There is no appeal. My judgment is irrevocable.”

  “Impressment of my crewmen strains the laws between our nations.”

  “I am enforcing international law, sir!” Gordon snapped as he might to an errant dog. His fears came together into a pique. “Who protects America? You call yourselves ‘independent,’ but who pays your extortion against pirates in the Bay of Tunis and the Caribbean? The Royal Navy protects you. The Navy of King George III, and no one else. Once again Great Britain stands alone against aggressors and America does nothing to help, but only manipulates the tension. Do you understand what will happen to freedom of the seas if Napoleon conquers Britain? While America whines its ungrateful song, Napoleon will take Russia. He will have the French Navy, the Russian Navy, the Spanish and Dutch Navies, he will regroup, he will blockade, he will aggress, and what will happen to you? Your fledgling United States should stand fast beside the King against this maniac!”

  The American captain dropped all pretense of cooperation and proclaimed, “One tyrant is like another.”

  Gordon stared at him, unable to cloak the fury, the insult boiling in his mind. With a slight shudder, he said, “You will be driven down.”

  The captain’s countenance hardened before Gordon’s eyes. “Go whistle up a rope.”