Ocean City Racer
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The wind had swung about to the northwest, and as I watched from the deck of his Majesty’s sloop-of-war Bon Homme Richard we could see our ship slowly sinking in the distance. The sails were down; there was not even a puff on them—the wind had blown her out to sea like an old piece of paper fluttering to the ground.
There she lay, at last, after the great battle that had taken place before us: a sad wreck. She had fired more cannons than any other ship, and it seemed as though she would have sunk with all the others, except that one of the French ships had run alongside her and towed her away.
Now that ship itself was also lying on the bottom, but I did not think it was much worse for wear than the Bon Homme Richard. I saw a number of our men come up the beach and go aboard the French ship; then they began boarding those ships farther off.
We waited for several hours until it grew dark; then we set sail ourselves and went along toward the land. Our captain, who was an American, told us that the battle had been very exciting to watch; but he said that no one had ever fought so long a fight before and never got hurt or killed. As far as I could tell the battle had lasted over five hours.
When morning came we were still some distance from shore; and when the sun rose it shone into my eyes, making me feel quite sleepy and stupid. I thought I had better go below to lie down, and when I had been there awhile a man came up from below carrying what looked like a large bottle.
He put it on the table by the side where I sat; then he opened his coat, showing me his chest. “Here’s something for you,” he said, “and here is something for the boy.”
There was a gold ring in the neck of the bottle. It was a good thing that there was no wind, for otherwise, I should certainly have heard a great splash if this bottle had broken open and let all its contents go overboard. When I reached the ship and found Captain Cook there, I showed him what I had brought back for the boy.
“That will do splendidly well,” he said, taking the ring; but he seemed disappointed when I handed him the little package containing the money.
I had forgotten that I had hidden that money under my shirt before I left my cabin. My father would have called it a foolish risk; but I was glad now that I had risked it, since the French officer had paid me a dollar more than was in the bottle.
The only thing wrong about it was that there was not enough left to buy any new clothes with. I must have worn most of mine out during the voyage. I was glad I had done without new ones. It made me feel as though I was going home again.
When the day wore on we began getting ready to take on board some stores from some of the ships. A large number of people came running up from the beach; they had been sent there to bring food and fresh water.
Some of them were armed, too, with muskets; I noticed that they kept their hands behind their backs and stared fixedly forward; evidently, they were soldiers, and they must have been the men who had boarded the Bon Homme Richard.
One of these men came up to Captain Cook and talked to him in a low voice; then he turned to another man, who seemed to know more about the matter than the first. They both seemed angry. When they finished talking Captain Cook gave me a piece of bread and told me to look out for the boat that would be coming for us.
It was the same boat that had brought us out here; and the moment it came alongside we all got aboard it, leaving the Bon Homme Richard to sink in the ocean. It would never float again, anyway, since half the masts and spars and all the guns and cannons were gone.
When we landed at Fort Tilden we found everything ready for us. The fort had been built many years before, and there were only two buildings inside its walls, which stood near the shore. They were large, strong-looking stone houses; and outside the wall, there was a large parade ground, with tents standing around it.
In front of the tents were long lines of wagons, loaded with provisions and other things; and between each wagon and tent were a number of soldiers, holding rifles or muskets. All these men came over and saluted Captain Cook as soon as he landed, and when I came ashore too they shouted out “Hooray!” and gave me a cheer.
This cheered me considerably, especially when Captain Cook told me how welcome I was. He did not seem quite so friendly to me as he used to be; probably because he knew he would see me no more after this visit.
I felt sure that he would never send any message back to America; and even if he did, no one would ever write me a reply, since we did not even know the names of the towns in that part of the world.
I asked Captain Cook why all these soldiers were standing around. He told me that they were waiting to hear what Captain William Hull (who was Governor of New York) had ordered them to do next. I thought the name “William Hull” sounded queer; it seemed like a name from another country. Then I remembered that Captain William Hull was the captain of our own ship.
Governor William Hull’s orders were for the whole fleet to sail away from the coast, and head for the islands north of Brazil, where we could pick up more supplies of food, gunpowder, and other things that we might want before returning to the United States.
But Captain Cook said that we would have to wait till nighttime before sailing, as he wanted to see how much damage the French had done before he decided on our course of action. While we were waiting I went into a large house near the fort, where there were tables laid out on the floor, and men sitting around drinking tea and eating cakes and talking in whispers together.
There was something familiar about all this, and just as I began wondering whether I had ever seen such a place before, I heard someone call out, “Well, well! Here is old Jack!” I looked around but saw nothing in the room except a couple of women and several men, who were sitting around one of the tables, talking quietly together.
One of the men got up and walked toward me, with an air of importance that seemed to indicate that he was the person in authority here. He bowed to me as he came closer, and said, “So you’re back again, Jack! How did you manage to make your way across?”
I wondered what he meant by that; but before I could ask him anything he asked me a question himself: “Did you succeed in carrying out our orders? Did you get away from the French?”
“Yes,” I said, “we did, though it was hard work.”
The man was looking straight at me as he spoke. He was rather tall and thin, with a very pale face. He did not seem to be ill, but his skin was so white it almost made me think that he must have been a ghost. He had long fair hair, which he pulled back from his forehead with a ribbon; and he put on a black silk hat that covered half of his face.
On either side of him, there was a young fellow with black curly hair, a big dark mustache, and a small, round, clean-shaved chin. He looked just like a man who might be playing cards, except that he always kept one hand behind him and held it up in the air, as though he was thinking about what to play next.
Both these fellows were talking to each other while they talked to me, but their voices were so soft that I could not understand what they were saying; they sounded like two men whispering in a garden, and then suddenly raising their voices in anger, just as a dog barks twice at a crow in the distance.
As I was listening to them I noticed that some of the men who had come to meet me had gone off and left us alone together; and the people at the table with the man called the governor were all keeping still and silent, and pretending to be busy doing nothing.
As soon as I had spoken to this man, they had gone away; and now he stood before me with his arms folded across his breast, and waited for me to speak. The two young men with him also stood close by him, ready to help him if need be.
I did not quite know how to begin. It did not seem quite right to talk to anyone who was only pretending to be ordinary. So I said: “You are the man in command here?”
He nodded.
“Then tell me,” I said, “what has happened to all the rest of you; have you met with no accidents?”
“We have met with a great many accidents,” he said. “But we have had no serious loss among ourselves, thank God!”
“That is very good,” I said.
He smiled.
“And what about our prisoners?” I said. “Have you treated them all fairly?”
“They have suffered greatly,” he said; “but I hope they will forgive us after a little while.”
“Will you pardon them?” I said. “I should think they are very likely to be angry about having been captured, and about being kept, prisoners.”
“They may be angry when they see us again,” the Governor answered.
“Do you mean that you are going to try and take them again? That would be bad enough; but if you do they are sure to make another fight for it.”
The young men standing behind him gave a low laugh that was like the barking of dogs.
“There is no reason why we should trouble them anymore,” the Governor said. “What they do or do not say cannot alter the fact that we have taken them, prisoner.”
“Perhaps,” I said, “they will be grateful to you and to those with you; and I should imagine that they will give you a good account of themselves, as soon as they can make their escape.”
“I am sure that they will give a good account of themselves,” he said. “But I want nothing more than that they should keep quiet and behave properly until we send them home. I want them all to behave well, so that you may go and tell the King’s people that everything went according to plan and without difficulty.”
“It seems to me that that is a very odd sort of thing to say,” I said. “You don’t expect them to tell you that you were mistaken in taking them, prisoners? Or does it happen to be one of the rules that they must be allowed to praise their captors, or to say that they were sorry to lose them?”
The Governor took his hand from his chest and placed it on my shoulder. He was so near me that I could feel the warmth of his body. His breath came quick and hot into my ear. He looked down upon me out of one eye.
“Why, Mr. Maturin, I hardly expected you to make so much fuss over a few prisoners. Don’t you know that there is a war on? Don’t you see that every man must stand or fall by himself?”
“No doubt there is,” I said; “but I don’t think there is a single man in the whole fleet who doesn’t know that or care about it. And if it were not for that, I should have been afraid that the men with you might get the worst of it if you let them go again—if you don’t take care of yourselves!”
“We shall not lose,” he said. “Don’t you see that we are going to carry out what our King has set us to do? We are going to take Jamaica.”
His eyes were bright with excitement. But when I looked at his face closely, I saw that although he seemed strong and healthy, there was something strange and unnatural about it; his features were too regular, and though he held himself erect and straight, I thought he was trembling.
The young men standing behind him made the same sort of low noise. They were all talking together as quietly as if they had known one another for years, but each one was talking with someone else.
“Well then,” I said, “you can count on me, and if you want any help I’ll be ready to offer it. You are sure we shan’t have any trouble in getting clear away once you have got your prisoners safely ashore?”
He smiled. “We shall not need you, sir,” he said; “and besides, we shall only stay here long enough to take up the cannon, which I believe has already begun to arrive. I am told that it will come in ships’ boats, which are small boats with sails; but even when it is all in place we shall not need more than two hundred men to guard it, because they are all sworn to obey me.
There shall be no fighting on the island, and I promise you that neither man nor beast shall suffer for the taking of it. I have told them that I will reward them for keeping order. As for you, sir, I will tell my friend Captain Aubrey, who commands the squadron, that we shall pay you whatever he thinks you are worth, and he will give you an order for the payment.
And now,” he added, putting his hand on my shoulder again and smiling down at me, “let us go and talk with the other captains who are with me.”
I followed him through a door that opened out of the hall to a room where there was light from several windows high up on the wall, and there were three other gentlemen sitting around a table covered with maps and writing cases: the Governor of Jamaica, Lieutenant Haddock, and a tall, thin man with a great red beard.
They stood up as we entered. Lieutenant Haddock gave me his hand and said that we were both fortunate and proud to find ourselves in the same command under the same Captain. I told him that I was proud of the opportunity of serving under such a brave man as the Captain, and I wished them Godspeed in their enterprise.
Then the Captain came forward and put his hand on my shoulder again, just like before, but this time it felt colder. The Governor introduced me and the other captains. I did not know their names or anything about them beyond the fact that the Captain spoke of them as good men.
We sat down at the table and the Captain began to talk. He had a fine voice and a pleasant smile; he talked of the plans and hopes of their expedition, and of the cannon, they would use on the beach.
Then I noticed for the first time how pale his skin was, how the white of his teeth showed when he smiled; how his eyes gleamed in the firelight, and how they were always moving towards the others so that they never met my own.
When he stopped to take a drink of water he leaned back in his chair as if exhausted, but he did not leave off looking at the others. When we rose to go he pressed my arm and said that if I liked I should be welcome to stay in Jamaica for the winter, which would enable me to enjoy myself while waiting for the next cruise.
I thanked him, but as I walked away, the young men behind him were still talking excitedly together, and the one who seemed to be leading the conversation was pointing at me and laughing.
It was late by the time I reached Mr. Bass’s house, but when I went upstairs I found that my wife and daughter were already asleep; so I undressed quickly and climbed into bed without bothering to read or turn over my accounts.
The night was very quiet, almost silent. I could hear the wind in the trees outside, and sometimes I could make out the sound of voices talking softly in the garden below. All sorts of noises came from the kitchen, but when I listened I could hear nothing of what they said. It made me feel lonely and afraid. I had no idea why these thoughts should come over me.
As I lay there wondering whether the men in the garden below were talking about me, the wind blew a little stronger; I could hear it rasping among the leaves and making an odd rattling noise on the shutters. I do not know what it was that woke me up, but I knew that someone was speaking to me.
At first, I thought that my mind was playing tricks on me. The voice sounded so close—almost like a whisper—and yet I knew that I must be lying alone in my bed. I opened my eyes to find that the night was dark and silent, and I saw in the darkness the shadow of a man standing at the foot of the bed, holding something against his breast that glowed faintly.
I sat up and looked at him, hardly daring to move for fear of frightening him away. He seemed quite still. The shadows were so thick that I could scarcely see his face, but I had a vague impression that he was smiling.
‘Who are you?’ I asked. ‘What do you want? You cannot be real.’
But the words died away on my lips because then I suddenly realized that I could not remember ever having seen this man before.
‘How can this be?’ I whispered. ‘Where have I seen you? Where am I?’
The shadow did not answer, but he stepped closer to me. His cloak brushed across my feet as he moved, and I heard a rustling noise from it that was not altogether unpleasant.
I wanted to call out, but I found that I could not. And all at once, I knew that he was going to strike me. I tried to raise my hand to stop him, but I could not move. The figure drew back its hood slightly and raised its arms above its head.
As I stared in terror, it seemed to me that a mist of blood began to gather in front of it. A long thin knife appeared between two fingers—it flashed like silver in the moonlight.
I tried to scream as it plunged downwards towards me. I felt the point touch my throat, then drag slowly upwards. Something seemed to go wrong, for there was a momentary pause, as though he hesitated over whether he had done right—then the blade sank into my chest, and as I fell back I saw it rise up out of my body and drop to the ground.
For a few moments, I lay staring up at the ceiling, unable to feel or think. Then I realized that I was still breathing, and I forced myself to sit up and look around me. The room was empty, and yet somehow familiar. But there was something strange about the air, and even now that I knew that I was safe I felt an irresistible impulse to draw back from it.
There was no sound from downstairs; so I dressed hurriedly and went down the stairs. My wife and daughter were both still in their beds, and neither of them looked as though they had been disturbed by anything. They were both sleeping peacefully, and I wondered how they could be so calm after such a nightmare. I kissed them good night and left them.
As soon as I was outside the door, I went straight round to the corner shop to ask them to send for the constable. When he arrived he took one glance at the knife lying on the floor beside the bed and swore under his breath.
‘This has happened to someone,’ he said. ‘But where is he?’
The End