XI
THE Bell-in-Hand Tavern in Boston was never a cheerful place. It was on a dark, narrow alley and the sunlight never peeped into its dingy tap-room. But when the lamps were lighted at night, its customers, used to its twilight atmosphere, blinked in the unusual glare, and called for some liquids to brighten themselves up so that they might be in more harmony with the new state of things. There were very few of these melancholy loungers seated about the dingy bar on the evening of May 27, 1813; for the town was agog with the preparations for the fitting out of the frigate Chesapeake to fight H. M. S. Shannon.
The British ship had been standing on and off outside the harbor mouth for some days, and it was known that Captain James Lawrence of the Chesapeake meant to give him battle. The usual customers of the Bell-in-Hand were down at the wharves, grave with the responsibility so willingly adopted by self-constituted sidewalk committees of inspection; and only one applied for a mug of ale when the landlord had finished the illumination of his dingy hostelry.
“In a moment, Mr. Marks,” said the landlord. “The usual, I suppose?”
“No, I shall have some Medford to-night; I wish to drink good luck to the Chesapeake in right Yankee liquor.”
“Surely, Mr. Marks, and I will join you in that. In fact, I don’t mind standing the drinks myself, considering the subject of the toast.”
“Don’t ruin yourself, Tenney,” said Marks, with a smile; for the landlord was celebrated for his close-fistedness.
“Help yourself, Captain Marks,” was the reply; “drink hearty. Here’s to brave Lawrence and his crew.”
“And a precious mixed lot they are, Isaac; forty British sailors and a gang of Portuguese, though, to be sure, there are some of the Constitution’s old crew, and some of the men who were on the Chesapeake on her last voyage. Four of the officers are sick ashore, and young Ludlow is first lieutenant.”
“But they’ll give a good account of themselves, don’t you fear,” answered Isaac, draining his glass of rum.
“Lawrence is as brave a man as ever trod a deck,” said Marks. “My bargain’s off with Vickery and I settled up accounts with him to-day. I’ve a mind to ship on the Chesapeake and have a crack against John Bull on a man-of-war.”
“Settled up with Vickery, have you?” inquired the landlord. “You must have made a good thing out of your year’s work.”
“’Tisn’t as good a trade as selling rum, Isaac, I’ll bet a dollar! The ocean is not as easy to navigate as Pie Alley, and your customers come in and beg to be robbed, and at times mine make a hard fight before they give up their cash. I cleaned up a good sum for the year and sold out my interest in the privateer, and the whole sum is deposited to my name in the Suffolk Bank. Now, you keep the bank-book for me, will you?” He produced the pass-book from his inner pocket, and at the same time took out a sealed envelope.
“There’s the book and there’s an envelope in which I sealed up my own will. I went to a lawyer Mason to-day and had it drawn. It’s short, but I guess it’s good, like your rum, Isaac.”
The publican took the book and envelope.
“Why, this says Thomas Cheever?” he said, as he examined them.
“I’m Tom Marks on the privateer, and Tom Cheever on shore. It suits me. When you go to your home up at the North End, you read prayers and go to church o’ Sundays, though you are destroying human beings with rum all the week. Take good care of these papers, Isaac, and if anything happens to me, you must write to my sole heir, Mr. James Woodbury, Hollis Hall, Harvard College, Cambridge, and tell him that if he comes to the Bell-in-Hand he will hear of something to his advantage. I’ve made you executor, and if anything happens to me on shore, where folks leave their bodies to be an expense to all hands, don’t you forget that I have a lot and a ready-carved gravestone in the burying-ground at Oldbury. Don’t stare, old fellow, I was killed in Venezuela years ago. That is, Tom Cheever was, and Tom Marks arose from his ashes like the fabled Phœnix. But when it comes to making wills or putting money in the bank, it saves a lot of trouble to do it in your right name. D’ye see?”
Marks, after this long address, settled in a chair and looked vacantly in the corner. The landlord put the book and envelope in his strong box and came back to the bar.
“What on earth, Mr. Cheever, do you want to go to risk your life fighting with that madcap Lawrence, when you are so well off?”
“The world is divided, my dear Isaac, into two classes; the first, a very large part of the human race, those who would rather eat than fight; the saving minority, of which I am one, would rather fight than eat. You see how sparely built I am? I never have had an ounce of superfluous flesh. Then, too, it’s like the days of chivalry. The Shannon hovers outside the port. Broke is spoiling for a fight. Lawrence is not half ready, worse luck, but he is not the man to baulk a gentleman of an affair of honor because he is not prepared to the last cartridge. It’s grand, my good Isaac; it stirs one’s blood, and it would be better to fall on the bloody deck than to keep out of such a noble contest when you have a chance. What does it matter whether I have the opportunity of coming in to drink rum in your dirty old tap-room for twenty years more, or whether I pass in my prize checks to-morrow or the day after? Take the chances of war, Isaac, that’s my motto.”
Isaac gave no enthusiastic assent to this view of life. The Falstaffian theory of honor is one much approved by most citizens who have never ventured from their shops. The greasy publican was quite willing to await his appointed time, in a daily round of drawing ale and measuring out spirits, as was the court jester, who, when allowed to choose his form of execution, chose a natural death.
“Well, Captain,” drawled Isaac, “I’ll give up all my share of the fighting to you. I have no fancy for a cutlass-slash on the head, or the gripe of a boarding-pike in my insides. This quarrelsome world doesn’t seem to get tired of fighting. Boney keeps them all at it in Europe, and even we Yankees can’t keep out of the squabble, and precious little good it will do us, that I can see. Of course, if a man isn’t happy unless he leaves a comfortable house ashore to go out to plunge about in a sea-fight, there’s no holding him.”
“You are right, Isaac,” said Cheever. “There’s as much difference between you and me as there is between the moon and green cheese, and each of us must go his own way. Maybe there’s a cutlass in some English boatswain’s scabbard which will cleave my cocoanut before the week’s out. But, on the other hand, it may be fated that my cutlass shall do the cleaving. In either event, friend Isaac, I drink your health and prosperity to you; may your pew in church not lack your bodily presence for many a year, and may the trade in rum be good. By the way, have you done anything in the black ivory business of late?”
Isaac’s solemn face grew graver still. “I have long since given up that business,” he replied.
“You made a good thing out of the triangular trade while it lasted, old weasel,” said Cheever. “Niggers from Africa, bought with molasses and rum, sold for sugar in Cuba, the return cargo distilled into raw liquid salvation for the Africans. ’Twas a good trade while it lasted—Lord, the money we made! but the ‘middle passage’ was hard for any man to run who had any milk of human kindness in his blood.”
“But the Africans are brought out of savagery to civilization and religion,” said Isaac.
“You are right, Isaac,” replied Cheever. “We all went into the business for its civilizing effects upon the niggers! But it’s a heavy load on my soul, Friend Isaac, and not all your long prayers will wipe out your black score up above, I reckon.”
With this Parthian shot at the publican, Cheever sallied out of the dingy tap-room into Pie Alley, a narrow, ill-smelling way leading into Washington Street; and down that street to the Exchange Coffee House in State Street, where Captain James Lawrence of the United States Navy had his headquarters.
He had been ordered in from New York, where he had expected to be put into command of the frigate Constitution, and had much against his will been given the command of the Chesapeake.
That frigate, ever since the insult which she had received from the British frigate Leopard, had been regarded by sailors as an unlucky ship—a cruise which she had just completed had been barren of prizes and thus added to her unpopularity, so that it was very hard to recruit a crew for her.
Lawrence was a gallant officer, who had felt that he had been somewhat badly treated by the Navy department; for he had claimed the command of the Constitution almost as a right and had been refused. When he reached Boston to take his new command, he found everything at sixes and sevens.
It was very hard to get sailors; most of the seafaring men preferring to ship in some of the numerous privateers, where the discipline was less strict and the chance of prize-money much greater. It was necessary to ship many foreigners in the Chesapeake, and forty British sailors were on the ship’s books, engaged to fight their own flag; besides these, a number of Portuguese seamen had been shipped. These last were very troublesome. But a few of the Constitution’s old crew came aboard, and these, together with some of the men who had been on the Chesapeake during her former voyage, made an excellent nucleus.
Captain Lawrence and his first officer, Mr. Ludlow, were in consultation in the Captain’s quarters at the Exchange Coffee House. The Captain was thirty-two years old, a remarkably tall and handsome man, distinguished for his charming manners and great gallantry. He was by no means serene in mind as he talked with his subordinate, and he brought his hand down rather sharply on the table as he said:
“Commodore Bainbridge doesn’t wish me to engage the Shannon. He says that is a rash and unnecessary risk. But hang it, man, I can’t avoid a fight, after having challenged the Bonne Citoyenne last year and having waited for her as Broke is waiting for me now in the Shannon off Boston harbor. How can I decline the fight? It would be to show that I was a vain braggart before.”
“If we only had had time to train our crew,” replied Ludlow, “I should not fear but that we should give a good account of ourselves. But the new hands are green at their work, and it is hard to make a crew work together, when most of them have just put their hammocks aboard.”
“Oh, well, Ludlow,” said Lawrence, “we might have a better crew, but we’ve a lot of good men aboard. The officers are mostly new to the ship, a gallant lot of youngsters; I’m as new to the ship as any of them, and I have no doubt that every green hand means to do his best, just as I do. I have been here a fortnight trying to get the old sailors to re-enlist. It’s a shame there should be all this row about the prize-money.”
“It’s most unfortunate that their two years’ term was up before we reached Boston last April,” said Ludlow. “Then Uncle Sam made such a mess of our past allowance of prize-money that we couldn’t induce the men to ship in the unlucky old frigate.”
“Unlucky frigate! Never say that, Mr. Ludlow. It’s ill to give a dog a bad name; the animal never has a pleasant ending. We shall do Broke up as easily as the Constitution did the Guerrière, I have no doubt. The Chesapeake is a good ship and a good name.”
“Yes, as good as any. But we had such bad luck with prizes on our last cruise, and sailors are the most superstitious of men.” Lawrence rose from his chair and walked up and down the room; his thoughts were with his young wife in New York, whom he was never to see again. There was a knock at the door and a servant announced that a man waited outside to see Captain Lawrence.
“Show him in,” said Ludlow, noticing that his chief was lost in his reverie. In a few minutes Cheever entered the room, bowing to the gentleman rather obsequiously.
“What is your business, sir?” asked Ludlow.
“I have come to volunteer as one of the crew of the Chesapeake,” replied Cheever. “I have lately served as mate and part owner of the privateer Lion of Marblehead.”
“You are welcome, sir,” said Mr. Ludlow. “Have you served on a man-of-war before?”
“Once, on board of His Majesty’s Ship Tenedos. I was taken off a Yankee ship as a British subject. So I have a few private scores to pay off.”
“We should have little trouble in filling our ship’s company if every man with such a grudge should come with us.”
“So you wish to ship on the Chesapeake,” said Captain Lawrence, coming out of his reverie.
“As an A. B., if you please, sir,” replied Cheever. “I’m qualified for that. Where shall I report for duty?”
“At Battery Wharf,” replied Mr. Ludlow. “What’s your name?”
“Thomas Marks.”
“Report to-morrow morning, and if you can get any of your old ship-mates on the Lion to join with you, why, so much the better. Good night, Marks.”
Cheever left the two officers, and went below to the large coffee room, which he found full of loungers, and all, whatever their condition in life, were eagerly discussing the approaching sea-fight.
The eager crowds in a New York hotel on the eve of a yacht race for the “America’s” cup would be more excited still if the morrow’s contest were to be a duel between a British and a Yankee ship.
The dogs of war had not troubled the good old town of Boston since Washington’s guns on Dorchester Heights had forced the evacuation of the town. The sons of Massachusetts had fought on many a field, but no enemy had menaced the Bay State. It may be in that group of steady old merchants there were some of the famous tea-party; or others who had held their fire at Bunker Hill until they saw the whites of the enemy’s eye. Certainly there were seafaring men enough, and some of these clinked about their money and stood treat, like the genuine article of buccaneer. One of a group of these gentry hailed Marks.
“Come over here, ‘Stuttering Tom,’” he cried; “I was telling these fellows that Captain Broke’s men on the Shannon have been taking a leaf out of our Yankee men-of-war’s books; and that they have been practising gunnery during all this year. It will be a pretty fight between the two frigates. I should like to see it.”
“Why don’t you come along in the Chesapeake? Her deck will be the best point of view. You are not afraid of British guns, are you? Unless you are up aloft, their shot would never reach you.”
“I like British gold better than British iron and lead, Tom. There are more kicks than half-pence in the government service.”
“But, man, think of the sport of a square stand-up fight!”
“And the surgeon waiting for you below the cock-pit, with his knife. No, Friend Marks, have a drink with us to the success of the Chesapeake, but you and I get in our best work under a ‘letter of marque.’”
“It’s a service that pays,” replied Cheever, “but has something of the smack of robbing sleek merchants in an alleyway. Now, under the ‘Jolly Roger’ there are agreeable diversions between man and man, when they make the division of the spoils that kept one’s muscle firm and one’s nerves in condition.”
“You are speaking out of a larger experience than most of us have had, Marks,” said another of the privateersmen.
“Yes, and it will be larger before the week is out, my friend.”
“What are you going to do, Marks, turn parson?”
“I came very near being a sky-pilot once, but I was not built that way. Now I have run down hill until I find myself consorting with roystering sailors in a tavern.”