24
coach. He was the last passenger to board it. The doors slammed, the coach lurched a little, and they were off.
He was dressed in the height of fashion. From measurements penciled on a torn scrap of brow^n paper, delivered to the Reverend Winslow, had come these fine clothes, the cocked hat, the shining boots. Barney crossed these boots and leaned back in the dimness of the coach. So far everything had proceeded well. He had known of the Reverend Winslow—all Americans knew a few names in England of American sympathizers, who would help. But it had been a stroke of luck that Dr. Hindman of New Jersey had been with the Reverend when Willie had crept into the house. These were one of Dr. Hindman's pairs of boots.
The coach gathered speed. The driver, nicely fat, rolled on his hips as he cracked the long whip, from his high perch. The trip should be easy, for all his passengers were men, and a highwayman would find himself overwhelmed. Up ahead the coachman saw two swinging lanterns. He blasted forth a long oath, and began to shout at his eight horses. The coach came to a lumbering stop.
Two soldiers came at him, one from each side. They opened each door of the coach, one of the pair holding the lantern high to look into the interior. The other began to read aloud.
"Wanted, Benjamin Barney, American prisoner, rebel and privateer, escaped from Mill Prison." The soldier looked at the faces of the men within. Barney assumed the expression Willie had laughed at and looked straight back as he heard his description read off. The soldier looked, and looked away. Anyway, there was no one in this coach wearing a naval uniform. He sniffed, slammed the door, and yelled to the coachman that he could proceed.
The coachman's voice was heavy with sarcasm. "Thank you so much." Again the whip cracked, and the Exeter coach moved on and out of Plymouth. Barney remembered to hold his expression; he dug his chin deep in his collar. The journey had begun.
The other men had already begun to talk. It was odd, Barney thought, to sit and listen to people talk about oneself. He remembered to keep his mouth drawn down to larboard, as he had phrased it to Willie, and he remembered to keep the faint squint in his eyes. He listened.
The coach was dimly lighted. Two men sat beside him and two opposite. The one directly opposite was young, bareheaded, and muffled in a coat. The tips of his shoes touched Barney's calfhigh
25
black boots. He was saying very little too. Almost an hour passed, while the coach lurched on through the night.
"I thought it a most perfunctory search," one man said for the fifth time.
At this the man opposite Barney spoke. "Since I am a naval lieutenant, I did also," he said. He opened his coat to show his uniform, while the others stared and Barney watched him carefully.
"I doubt if he is armed," said one.
The lieutenant spoke again: "I would say he was, by this time." His voice was quiet, and he was right. Barney began to like him. Then the lieutenant addressed him. "You say nothing, sir," he remarked to Barney.
Barney snapped, "No, Lieutenant."
He was given a brief smile. Barney did not smile back. He could feel the tension rising within; he forced himself to relax when the lieutenant suddenly said, "No, sirs." He broke into a conversation Barney had not really heard; but now he heard. The lieutenant said, "I was there." He leaned forward. "Listen, gentlemen," he said, his eyes going to the three men opposite him. There was a brief silence, then his voice went on.
"It was an afternoon last winter. The weather was foul. The winds were almost gale force; it was snowing. Do any of you gentlemen know the North Atlantic in weather like that?" He did not wait for an answer; he didn't look at Barney.
"I was serving aboard the 'Intrepid,' 74. We were out of New York. I was a midshipman last year; one rises fast in the service in wartime. Anyway, through the snow we saw a disabled sloop of war; we knew who she was, one of ours. We set as much sail as possible, and after a while we bore down close enough to hail. Captain Mallory suspected something was amiss; we ran out a few guns; we couldn't open any lower ports, of course, and came up to windward of her. You can imagine our surprise, sirs, when she fired on us."
Barney looked down at his boots. He could feel the steady beat of his heart. The lieutenant continued.
"Remember, sirs, the 'Intrepid' is a ship of the line, 74 cannon. We blasted a few shots into the sloop, and she was sinking. We threw over some irons and boarded her. There was a man still at one of the waist guns. We came up to him, in the beating snow, the deck slanting to starboard. He surrendered our own sinking ship back to us, sirs, and told us his name was Barney."
26
"Go on, sir," one man exclaimed, leaning forward.
"Well, you see, we hardly expected that name. He was wearing the uniform of the Navy of the United States, and he was a prize officer. I'll tell you now that another cruiser captured his captain, Talbot, that same day. But he, Barney, had joined his Navy about a month previously. Well, we took him aboard. This was the story that our own seamen told us.
"The sloop had been captured three days before, just before the bad weather broke. Barney and ten men were the prize crew. During the first day of the storm they thought she was going to sink, meaning thus certain death for all of them. You aren't seamen, so I won't explain too much. But Barney ordered the men into the tops, for the seas were washing across the decks in such a way no man could stand on them. They spent the night there, our crew having given parole. In any event, Barney saved the ship. The sea anchors held; after the wind abated a bit, next morning, he decided to make a run for it. And when one of our paroled men refused to obey the order to make sail, Barney shot him.
"Now I must make the scene clear to you. We were listening to this story, told by one of our men, on the quarterdeck of the 'Intrepid.' Barney was standing there, unarmed, of course. And when one of our officers heard that he had shot a British sailor, he turned and hit Barney. By God, sirs, I've never seen anything happen so fast as what happened then." He stopped, and he grinned, remembering.
"The Yankee acted like a coiled spring at the insult. He struck out so fast that with all of us there we didn't have time to stop it. He hit that officer so hard that he went sliding all the way to the weather rail, and then Barney leaped after him, jerked him to his feet, and sent him crashing into the hatchway. We thought he was dead. He lay there. But then he came to and when he did he was ordered by the captain to apologize to Barney. This he did, in front of all of us.
"The end of the story is short. We handed our famous prisoner to Admiral Rodney. I didn't see Barney again—and he never saw me, probably never noticed me—until I saw him in Plymouth. I heard later that he and fifty-three other prisoners had been kept five decks below the main deck in a sloping room scarcely three feet high. When they were hauled out after the ocean crossing, they could not stand, any of them. Eleven of them had died in delirium. They were
27
sent to Mill Prison. I'm saying now, sirs, since you don't know my name, that I don't know whether I'd turn Barney in or not, if I saw him."
There was silence in the coach. There was a little muttering. "This bloody war," one man said, and rubbed his chin, and nodded at the lieutenant.
The lieutenant nodded back. He dug in his pocket and produced his watch, "Almost midnight," he said.
Barney said slowly, "Yes. We should fetch Exeter soon."
The lieutenant said, "Fetch?"
Barney looked back at him. "I'm a sailor, too, sir."
"Yes, sir," said the lieutenant. "Aye aye, sir." He smiled and put the watch back in his pocket.
The man next to Barney said suddenly, "But there's a lot of bitterness in this war, too, sir."