Jan Vlachos Westcott
Captain Barney
A Novel
Westcott, Jan Vlachos, 1912 – 2011
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PART ONE
Chapter 1 …………… 7
Chapter 2 ………….. 15
Chapter 3 ………….. 18
Chapter 4 ………….. 22
Chapter 5 ………….. 28
Chapter 6 ………….. 32
Chapter 7 ………….. 38
Chapter 8 ………….. 43
Chapter 9 ………….. 46
Chapter 10 ………… 58
Chapter 11 ………… 65
PART TWO
Chapter 12 ………… 73
Chapter 13 ………… 81
Chapter 14 ………… 89
Chapter 15 ……….. 103
Chapter 16 ……….. 109
Chapter 17 ……….. 112
Chapter 18 ……….. 117
Chapter 19 ……….. 120
Chapter 20 ……….. 127
PART THREE
Chapter 21 ………. 132
Chapter 22 ………. 137
Chapter 23 ………. 144
Chapter 24 ………. 150
Chapter 25 ………. 155
Chapter 26 ………. 158
Chapter 27 ………. 162
Chapter 28 ………. 175
Chapter 29 ………. 183
Chapter 30 ………. 186
Chapter 31 ………. 190
Chapter 32 ………. 196
Chapter 33 ………. 204
PART FOUR
Chapter 34 ………. 210
Chapter 35 ………. 213
Chapter 36 ………. 216
Chapter 37 ………. 222
Chapter 38 ………. 224
Chapter 39 ………. 228
Chapter 40 ………. 237
Chapter 41 ………. 244
Chapter 42 ………. 252
About Author …… 255
CAPTAIN BARNEY is fiction. But the daring and vigor of Captain Joshua Barney, American privateer and United States Naval officer, have come down through the years so generously to quicken my invention and to augment the action of this novel that I must acknowledge my great debt to him. He lived his life in the finest tradition of the romantic hero.
PART ONE
Chapter 1
AT TEN o'clock ON THE NIGHT OF AUGUST 24, 1780, the commandant of Mill Prison scribbled his initials on the last paper on his desk. They were all routine matters. The prison was overcrowded and understaffed, and there was hardly hope for a betterment of conditions while the war went on.
The commandant looked down at the top paper—tomorrow's guard duty. Idly, sleepily, his eyes wandered up the list. When they reached Thomas Browne, south gate, he wondered why the devil he was reading the list. He picked up the papers and handed them to his weary adjutant.
"Goodnight," he said.
Outside the summer moon rose. The night was still. The town of Plymouth and its harbor and inlets were bathed in moonlight. It was not till five in the morning that the fog began to roll in.
In the solitary cell, Benjamin Barney slept, sprawled out on his narrow cot, one hand dangling over the side; he slept the light sleep of a very hungry man. He was dreaming of food, then abruptly the dream changed and he was lying flat in the water drain, his big hands fastened in the grating, trying to shake it loose with the remainder of his strength. It wouldn't come loose, and he swore slowly and with deep venom; he muttered aloud in his sleep and this wakened him. He opened his eyes.
It was still dark. For a moment the blackness made him think he was still imprisoned in the black hole of a dungeon; they had kept him down there for forty days after they had caught him trying to escape through the dank water tunnel. But his hands were not manacled and now he was fully awake, and he knew where he was. He stood slowly. He went to the window.
8
He could smell the fog. It came off the sea and smelled of salt. It was like a breath of freedom and the image it conjured of the rolling vastness that lay murmuring so near these stone walls was a sudden sharp thrust of pain. But it was cold and damp too, so he took his blue service greatcoat off the nail and lay down again, spreading it over his long length carefully, so as not to muss it. He lay looking up at the blackness, rubbing his wrists, for they still ached, even though the wounds had healed and only the telltale scars of the manacles remained. Lying there, sleepless now, he went over again in his mind the details of his new plan of escape. He knew very well the consequences if he were caught; he did not permit himself to dwell on them, but only on the essentials of the scheme. Last time he had attempted to take six other men with him through the tunnel. This time he must try alone.
An hour passed. The fog was still thick. Gradually the walls of the cell took shape; he could see the crutches leaning against the stone walls, the barred door. With the passing minutes his hunger grew, the familiar gnawing pain; this was a kind of clock, always worst in the hour preceding the scanty meal. He reckoned it was almost six and—proving him right—the sound of the first bell came within seconds. He rose, hung up the greatcoat and opened his sea chest.
He began to strop his razor in long even strokes. By the time he had finished, he heard the guard's footsteps. His morning meal was bread and water; there was water for washing. The guard said, "Morning, Captain," and the door swung shut again. Barney couldn't resist wolfing the bread. With the basin of water still in one hand, he tore off a big hunk of the bread with his teeth and swallowed it too fast. He should eat slowly; all the men had told him that. He sat down on the edge of his cot and began to chew methodically, restraining his eagerness to swallow, and taking frequent sips of water.
He was finished too soon. He drank most of the water. Then he fished his tiny piece of soap out of its oilskin and began to soap his face. When he had finished shaving, the post-breakfast lassitude had settled over the prison again though he could hear the voices of the men in the big barracks down the hall. Roll call would begin soon. Impatience gripped him; he longed for the moment when roll call would be completed and his door would be unlocked and he would be allowed out into the courtyard for the rest of the morning. As was
9
his frequent practice, he began to pace the small cell, back and forth, back and forth, trying to ease the terrible restlessness that drove him. Perhaps today—
He answered as his name was called, his voice clipped and almost contemptuous. Then he stood at his barred door, towering there behind the iron, his dark face taut with unleashed anger. This morning the guards did not speak. After they had had a look at his face, they went on by.
Now he would be left alone for about thirty minutes. No one would pass his door. So he set himself his usual morning task. Methodically he began to remove the faded uniform of the Continental Navy of the United States of America; the gold braid was tarnished. He stripped it off and laid it carefully under his mattress, at the same time taking from the mattress another uniform, with the blue undress coat of the Royal Navy, smuggled to him by a guard named Thomas Browne, who had served in America. He had not even demanded a high price for this precious uniform, bought from a pawnshop where a lieutenant of the Royal Navy had left it and never returned to redeem it. Probably by now he never would.