The longboat was only half a cable away now. Biddlecomb could see the midshipman clearly, tall and gangly like a boy who has grown quickly. He stood beckoning the approaching party with a wave of his arm, an absurd and useless gesture. They ran on in a hail of rocks and abuse, the crowd behind them keeping pace, their anger tangible.
Biddlecomb ran faster, urged on by Norton. He knew that the marines were on the verge of breaking into an open, panicked run for the boat.
"Marines! Form up!" shouted the sergeant, and the pounding of the marines' boots stopped, and Norton, Biddlecomb, and Rumstick ran on alone. Biddlecomb slowed his pace, and Norton, gasping, did the same. They turned to watch the rearguard action. The marines had formed into double lines, six of them dropping to one knee, all twelve muskets leveled at the Americans. The mob came to a ragged halt in the face of the weapons, some men caught with arms in the air, pausing in the act of hurling a stone. They fell silent, the marines and the colonials facing off on the dark road. Someone threw a stone, but it missed the motionless soldiers.
Then with a synchronization like a ballet, four of the marines peeled off from the line and retreated to covering positions, then the others broke off as well, retreated beyond the pickets and in turn covering them. The colonials moved quickly over the ground yielded by the marines, gaining momentum as they charged.
Biddlecomb and Rumstick were shoved into the longboat. Biddlecomb made his way to the bow. Behind him he could hear Rumstick struggling and grunting. He turned to help. Rumstick fell hard against one of the seamen.
"Watch it, mate," the sailor admonished.
"I'm in bloody handcuffs! What do you expect?" yelled Rumstick. Biddlecomb grabbed his friend under the arm and helped him forward.
The first group of marines had made it to the quay as well. "Get in the boat! Get in the boat!" shouted Norton, who stood, sword in hand, on the cobbled street. The marines began to pile in as the pickets fell back.
The colonials flung themselves on the escaping British, who broke into a run under a hail of rocks and insane shouting. The Americans had closed the gap to ten feet when the sergeant gave the order.
"Fire!" he shouted, and four muskets went off as one. In the muzzle flash Biddlecomb could see a man's face explode as his body jerked backward. Two others fell and a fourth screamed and clutched his arm, which now hung like a broken branch. The colonials stopped, shocked by the flash and the noise, and in that instant the British turned and flung themselves into the longboat.
"Give way! Give way, all!" shouted Norton as he leapt into the stern sheets, the last of the party to board. The banks of oars came down and swept the water, and the longboat moved forward. The Americans ran down to the water's edge, but twenty feet of water was already between them and the receding boat. One by one the Americans left off their shouting until all stood silently, and Biddlecomb, facing aft, saw them turn and walk back up the hill as the longboat disappear downriver.
The night was quiet as they pulled away from the shore, the only sound the rhythmic grinding of the oars in the tholes and the splash of the blades in the river. Biddlecomb's eyes were quite adjusted to the dark, and with the full moon above he was able to see a great deal. The seamen at the oars lined the sides of the longboat, and the marines sat between them, erect, muskets held upright in a symmetrical line. In the stern sheets the sergeant sat erect as well, facing the marines. The midshipman held the tiller, and beside him Lieutenant Norton slouched on the gunwale.
Biddlecomb looked outboard of the longboat to the anchorage that was slipping past. Half a dozen merchantmen lay at anchor, and he was able to pick out the William B. Adams from the others. No lights were aboard her, only the anchor light hanging from the forestay, and there was no movement on her decks. He turned and looked at Rumstick, but Rumstick was staring at the bottom of the boat, his face expressionless.
Biddlecomb turned his attention back to the merchant fleet. The jibbooms of the ships all pointed due north now, like needles on a compass, and Biddlecomb saw that the tide had turned and was ebbing fast. He could see the water curling around the stems of the ships and streaming down their sides. An old piling came into view and the longboat rushed past it, and in a few seconds it was lost to Biddlecomb's view. The current was moving even faster than he had originally thought. The men at the oars would be grateful.
"You seem to have come without your frigate, Lieutenant," Biddlecomb called out pleasantly, hoping to gauge Norton's mood and break the funeral silence.
"The Rose is at anchor off Prudence Island", replied Norton, who then, in a harsh tone, added, "The prisoners will remain silent!"
It was as fine a night as one could hope for in January in Rhode Island. It was cold, but not unbearably so, and there was little wind. Soon they had left the lights of Providence behind, and as they slipped down the river, their way was lit only by the moon. Occasionally they heard the rustle of an animal that had come to the river to drink and was startled by the boat. Near Fields' Point a deer suddenly thrashed its way to the shore, only ten yards from the bow, and a startled oarsman missed his stroke, fouling the man astern of him. Norton issued a terse and superfluous order, and the oars fell into rhytm again.
With each mile they made downriver Biddlecomb felt increasingly unwell. He had no delusions about the fate that awaited him, and he was staggered at how quickly his fortune had changed. He had always been lucky, things had always worked out for him. It was as if, in two days, he was being made to balance the account for the previous sixteen years of good fortune. He tried to ignore his growing nausea by making mental note of each spit of land, each navigational hazards on the familiar Providence River. He had navigated this stretch of water by nights as often as by day, and every turn, every bar, was familiar to him.
But landmarks could not distract him for long, and soon his thoughts were back on his legal predicament. The facts were undeniable. He had run the Judea aground with a full cargo of illegal molasses. He had participated in the cannoning of a British frigate. Norton knew it. Wallace knew it. He knew it. There would be no convincing a judge otherwise.
And that was not the end of the problem. Biddlecomb did not know where he would be put on trial, but he imagined that it would not be in Rhode Island. It could be Boston, or even England, where the possibility of angering the local population with a stern sentence would matter not a whit. His sentence would most likely be death. That at least was better than festering for years in some hellish prison, growing mad by degrees.
Biddlecomb turned and looked at Rumstick again, wanting desperately to see a sign of hope in his friend's face, but Rumstick was still staring impassively at the bottom of the boat. Biddlecomb turned his gaze outboard again, noting the familiar landmarks as the swift-moving longboat slid past. He ticked off Pomham Rocks, Sabin Point, and Bullock Neck as they were lost in the dark astern. He knew that Namquit Point now lay off the starboard beam, and on it the charred remains of the schooner Gaspee. He resisted his temptation to turn and look, instead watching Norton for some reaction, but Norton did not move from his slumped position in the stern sheets.
The longboat sailed past and the wreck came into Biddlecomb's view over the starboard quarter. The frames of the vessel were visible above the falling tide. They reached out of the sand, a giant black claw appealing to the heavens, the river boiling around them. The frames and the lower part of the foremast, which lay off the larboard side of the wreck, were all that remained of Lieutenant Dudingston's command. Biddlecomb glanced at Rumstick again, but even the sight of his previous action failed to arouse his interest.