The Kingdom on the Waves Page 28

  The Army have removed themselves — one hundred and seventy ships fleeing from the harbor — and the King’s power there is no more. The rebels have swept in through the empty streets, the abandoned barracks.

  For more than a month, my town was lost, and I knew it not.

  They flee as we flee; and everywhere, order is vanquished.

  I wonder at the fate there of Mr. Turner, whether he is fled; and whether Sip of the orchestra was removed with the Army and the Tories. The frugal Mrs. Platt, if she still inhabits her sallow rooms, will not be displeased. It will mean meat assured and resumption of commerce.

  I think on the Collegians, returned to their gaunt house, which hath, I suppose, been barbarously used lately by His Majesty’s troops, and is like to be in no excellent state of repair. I see Mr. Gitney step into his dim habitation, head inclined to take in the broken staircase, the slitting of the Claudian pastoral hung upon the landing, nymphs on the green now darkling and sprawled near gashed fissures and abysses.

  The last time thou stoodst there, sir, I stood by thy side; and my mother was with us, and alive. She ran to fetch her mantilla.

  ’Tis more than a year since then. Mr. Sharpe, Mr. Gitney — stand there upon that threshold. Meditate upon what you have done. Look you well into that brown gloom.

  We all flee, in hopes of finding some ground of security.

  May 27th, 1776

  Awoke this morning to discover that some hours before dawn, a landing party of Marines had conducted an assault upon the island, which is called Gwynn’s Isle. They met with no resistance.

  We were piped awake at sunrise and mustered in preparation for disembarkation. When we were brought up upon the deck, we saw in ruddy first light the motion of countless launches all around us proceeding to the shore of the island. We shortly followed, rowing the broad avenues through the fleet.

  We passing the Dunmore, there was a general commotion upon our launch, and hands pointed to the aft of that vessel; where, upon examination, we could perceive His Lordship standing in the windows of his cabin, candles lit around him, gazing out upon the dawn and his assault. He appeared no more than a specter, features indistinct, a white face held gently in darkness.

  We grounded our craft upon the western bank of the island. There were, by the time of our arrival, hundreds of men upon the shore, with our drummers beating to form us into companies.

  Our Company proceeded north along the shore, a woodland upon our right; then marched along a road that led into the interior of the island, past a sizeable pond and several prosperous farms. At these generous habitations, we halted briefly, that an ensign might deliver word to the inhabitants of our securing the island in the name of His Majesty.

  We having marched and delivered fine shew of arms throughout the northwestern quadrant of the island, we returned to our point of disembarkation and commenced our breakfast. Hardly had we begun to eat when we were ordered south to begin work on building a fortification and barracks.

  I little relish the thought of more construction.

  We set out to dig latrines, while others of our Regiment were put to raising redoubts.

  We could see the enemy upon the shore. They were separated from our island by but two hundred yards of water — a channel scarcely sufficient to splash through as refreshment on a summer’s day. Their proximity was intolerable. Still, we set to our digging.

  ’Twas not yet eight when they opened fire upon us.

  The Quartermaster-Serjeant who strolled along our lines held up his hand and commanded, “Dig, boys. Pray don’t give no mind to the rebel scoundrel.”

  Nothing concealed our antagonists; they crouched in rustic garb, armed with rifle and musket, in the ferns across the narrows, firing and reloading without haste or concern.

  Slant, laboring beside me, ceased to dig and glared across the river at these impertinent curs, a look I had not seen inhabit his features previous: the look of one pressed by continual harassment to abandon good nature for extreme hatred.

  We labored on. The fire, however, grew so troublesome and quick that after but a few minutes, the Quartermaster-Serjeant, having demanded we stand firm, called out orders for us to pull back.

  We could not proceed with our work until the sloop-of-war Otter and her tenders assembled themselves near us in the channel, and began fire from their cannons, which sharp bombardment convinced the rebels to flee from the shore.

  The Otter remained at anchor near the point where we labored; thus covered, we returned to our duties.

  We spent the remainder of the day in constructing fortifications and the rudiments of the camp.

  It appears that this shall be our occupation for some days to come.

  June 1st, 1776

  Last days spent in building fortifications.

  The rebels, so close it seems one could shy pebbles and strike, build their own fortifications across the channel. Their redoubt is upon the slope of a hillside, and thus commands a view some ten or fifteen feet higher than ours; and yet no objection is made to our labor, which is constantly transacted beneath their view.

  Beneath their gaze, upon the point closest to them, we have raised up a breastwork and a stockade, which fort we call Fort Hamond. Beneath their gaze, we have dug a trench to divide our peninsula from the island, that our encampment may be more agreeably defended. Beneath their gaze, we have cut low forest groves and hauled logs. We have raised up gun emplacements. Beneath their sardonic gaze, at the extreme eastern end of the isle, we build a lazaretto which shall receive those afflicted with the smallpox and the flux, which unfortunates have been confined this week aboard the Adonis hospital brig. We fear the enemy shall come to know how many of our number are riddled with disease.

  Our forces being so sickly, the Marines have been landed again and prevailed upon to assist with guard details.

  We are all suffering from our labors. There is no jesting or speech among us. Bono and I labor together, but sit silent at meals. Slant hath an hard, angry look in his eye, which I can little credit when I then see him, returning from our drills, stop to feed the sheep by tearing up grass with his hand, whispering to them with nary a stutter, I’ll be bound.

  All of our drills and our fatigue duties are transacted under the insolent glare of rebel pickets. I cannot abide their scrutiny. At every moment they stand silently observing us, I am sensible of their scorn for our Africk number, as if we merely play in mud like children while they do the work of men to contain us upon this island and wait to taunt us with ruin of our sand-pile. I wish to prove to them that we have not flown here, so much as settled upon a firm place, from which we shall sally forth. From such an isle, we may storm the land.

  I must confess to weariness. How many ditches, in this one year, have I dug? How many revetments and scarps have I raised? And none seem to hold off these devils who wish to belabor us with their tethers and paddles and speeches on the rights of man.

  June 2nd, 1776

  The quarantine camp being sufficiently in readiness, we assisted this morning in the transportation of the victims of pestilence from the Adonis to their huts. Many are in the most advanced agonies, and each motion of the carts increases their suffering. They moan most terribly; their encrustations are awful to behold.

  How strange (I marvel) that a ship named the Adonis should be the place of disfigurement.

  The inoculations of those who have not yet suffered the disease shall commence shortly. Among some, accustomed to this practice by long usage in Africa, there is stoical assent; but the most are struck with horror. Old Better Joe endorses the procedure to all who shall listen, saying it is a tremendous charm against the pox; which leads Charles in his contrariety to mutter to Slant that he should pay that old man no heed, for them gods are left behind, and not to hearken to superstition, for inoculation can lead only to death. Slant is beset upon by all the transports of terror at the prospect. Isaac the Joiner saith that the Lord shall smite down whom He wishes with His pestilential scour
ge; that no such vain practice as introducing fevers shall help a man escape Jehovah’s wrath.

  I spake to Slant of the benefits of inoculation, which hath spared me the full ravages of the disease; to which he said nothing, while Charles replied, “We heard about your mother”; after which, my remonstrance ceased.

  The Marines assisting in removing the sick from the Adonis, we discovered that twelve of our Regiment had died undetected of the pox while the ship lately stood at anchor off Gwynn’s Island. The command was for these bodies simply to be thrown overboard.

  This heartless mandate was protested by my fatigue party, there being a strong belief among my companions — heathen and Christian alike — that when the dead and their burial grounds are abandoned, as in our flight, we condemn the spirits of the deceased to an eternity of oblivious, hungry wandering. The other men desired me, therefore, to write to Major Byrd as an intermediary and ask that he rectify this galling practice.

  This I did, the black border on my mourning-paper being sadly fitting; I wrote to the Major, requesting as a sign of his beneficence that the bodies of such as die from smallpox be remitted to the charge of the various priests and enthusiasts of the Regiment, who should take care that the dead be disposed of according to the custom nearest their own dispensation.

  Major Byrd replied to us favorably, if somewhat tartly, that we should find little resistance to a claim on the corpse of a dead, disease-riddled Negro, that being an object not universally relished; and that we might bury our dead as we pleased.

  This word the Ensign delivered when we were at our supper. What followed then was debate upon how the bodies should be laid to rest, it being interdicted by ancient African practice that we should bury any victim of smallpox with other dead, and it being impractical to dispose of them as any African custom demands, either by depositing them in a forest or rendering them up to priests of the several smallpox gods. Thus, there gathered a loud convocation of such of our number as claim familiarity with appropriate rites of burial — a meeting of palaver-men, Christian New Lights, obeah priests, and new-made cunning-workers. There was much argument, and those sensations of fraternity and comity which at first brought our Regiment together at our dances gave way, I fear, to anger: “What signifies that?”—“He don’t remember.”—“He god no god at all.” Men muttered in small cabals or threatened one another by the fireside, cutting each other with their eyes and hissing, vaunting superiority in their familiarity with the Unseen. All claimed to recall a better rite, and none would brook the others’.

  I feared there should be violence. Better Joe rose up and, his eyes closed, his arms out, began to cry curses in his own language.

  It is a testament to our confraternity, however, that a curious ground of agreement was eventually reached: the necessity of concealing all mourning at the smallpox burials, and displaying only dancing and festival triumph.

  This agreement struck me at first with astonishment; but when ’twas explained to us by Isaac the Joiner, glowing with compromise, I saw its rectitude, and the confluence was so appropriate in its measures that I was deeply moved: For those of the Regiment who maintain that the disease is spread among us by pestilential spirits, funeral celebrations are necessary to deceive these malicious beings into believing that we think them of no account, that they might pass on and leave the rest of us unharmed. For those who believe the smallpox is but the expression of the Christian God’s will, there is no cause for aught but celebration in a death, which is a liberation from this flesh.

  And so, tomorrow night, we shall hold the first of these grim fêtes to inter the dead and trick the gods.

  June 3rd, 1776

  This day, in the evening, we held our funeral games.

  There was, it seemed, more reason for merriment than the deception of malignant spirits: This day the women were rowed ashore from their ships, and have taken up residence with us. Anxious to be reunited with our friends, I accompanied Pro Bono to the shore, and was treated to a fine sight: the fleet at anchor there, one hundred or two hundred ships, lit red with the sun as it flickered upon the water, as the women were rowed toward us, waving and calling out across the shallows.

  Dr. Trefusis accompanied them ashore, and ’twas my pleasure to escort him through the rough terrain of flat stump and loam we have made of the forest, down to the peninsula and to our tent. He was merry to see us, but his gaiety ceased when he saw our situation. He sat by our fly, casting looks across the channel, up toward the hillside where the hundred cook-fires of the enemy light up the night.

  Come darkness, we took fire-brands and crossed the isle to the far shore, away from the scornful gaze of rebel and Redcoat alike. There we built our bonfire, and Olakunde and the other musicians began to make their music for the dance.

  ’Twas a strange scene, for most were delighted at their reunion with spouse, friend, and child; and others, the grieving, were asked to impersonate mirth to bewitch malign gods.

  We dug pits by the shore and the lapping water, which place was held proper for tainted burials such as these. The corpses of the dead were laid upon the sand, and around them, those who knew the rites began their dances and grinned in simulated mirth. The families of the dead, the friends, were instructed to show no sign of grief, none of the lineaments of sorrow.

  Those who wished merely to drink and embrace were prodigiously discomfited by these uncanny shows, and moped, and glowered, and some moved off a space so as to give the mourners room sufficient for their ghastly levee.

  And so there were two fêtes tonight, in neighboring groves: in one, mirth; in the other, mirth personated; in one, the transports of delight; in the other, the delights of despond; in one, the celebration of arrival; in the other, the rites of departure.

  For a while, I observed the funeral games. The mourners leaped in the light of the fire and sang. All laughed, as if in jest, but the laughter was without joy; none wept, but the eyes were deranged with sorrow.

  Will, silent Will, stood by my side and stared upon the graves, as if he wished himself therein.

  Looking upon that scene — the full moon above, the flames below, the dancing bodies of the mourners, and behind them, the vast expanse of Chesapeake Bay — there could not be a scene conducing to greater sublimity. We stood there at the edge of land — seeing, beyond the graves, the bay, the distant, invisible sea, dark and yet illumined, profound and yet quiescent — our thoughts turning naturally to that final deep from which none return.

  Beside us, men shaved each other’s heads in grief.

  When I had taken my fill of this strange draught, I made my way through the pines to the other convocation. I urged Will to come with me, believing it did his wounded soul no favor to watch more exertions for the dead. At this second scene of revelry, we found Slant and Pomp sitting silent upon the ground. They both inspected their own hands. I sat by them.

  There was much talking and laughing, and a pleasant music played by an old man upon a hoe with finger-rings of lead. Charles and Pro Bono and their ilk sat about the fire and smoked their pipes, speaking of strategy, Miss Nsia among them; while near us, soldiers played a game, measuring out seeds in divots in the dirt, as others around them squatted and offered advice for leaps and tags, chewing upon sticks, drinking flip.

  Olakunde, his drumming complete for the evening, came to our side. Slant seemed uneasy, and craved diversion; I presumed his melancholy air was occasioned by the inoculation to come and the grisly rites just past. So we sought to enliven our own gloomy wits as we ever do through conversation.

  Watching the sparks and the fireflies, we told tales of flight: Olakunde told us of dead souls flying to freedom; and Pomp told us of live men rising from the fields, light as thistledown upon the wind, hands outstretched, yanking children from the tobacco weeds, lifting them, hauling them up onto shoulders lighter than air, great hordes of them disappearing across the seas. And I told them of Dædalus and his son, slaves imprisoned upon Crete by the walls of the Labyrinth th
at their own labors had built — father and son fleeing bondage on waxen wings.

  In the midst of these tales, Slant wandered away from our number; and I was about to inquire after his sudden departure when Bono, Charles, and Private Harrison came to my side and demanded of me: “Draw the Colonies.”

  As I sketched on the dirt, Bono said, “See, we’re bunged out of Boston. We have New-York still. General Howe sent a force down to tame the Carolinas. And what I say is, they’re fools to fuss with the Carolinas. Faith, Prince O., that ain’t where Maryland goes. You got it spang into Pennsylvania. See, what I’m saying is that whatever species of idiot is commanding this effort should focus his self on Virginia. They take back Virginia with us —”

  “Food for New-York then,” said Charles. “Pork, ham.”

  “Corn,” said Private Harrison. “Plenty of corn.”

  “Wheat and such,” agreed Bono. “Instead of they’re supplied by Halifax or Cork.”

  I opined, “I believe Halifax is closer to New-York than is Virginia. If you’ll excuse me, Slant seems melancholy, and I should —”

  “No one excuses you,” said Bono, who despises correction. “Apply yourself to Delaware. It looks globby. It ain’t that globby in life. Listen, if General Howe stops sending troops down to the damn Carolinas, and sends them here instead, we will conquer Virginia again, and gentlemen, Virginia is the Pope’s nose of colonies. I tell you this: I do love my old Boston-Town, with its fine six shades of black breech, excellent dead fish in the alleys, and a nation of hymnody all Sunday long, but Virginia is the — what’s a gem? — ruby. Virginia is the ruby among governments — first in fashion — where the real genteel come to whip horseflesh and spit. We secure Virginia, and all the rest will drop.”