For this voyage, the Fox would also carry Arnold and Danforth as the swift but diminutive warships could sail rings around the barges.
Each sailing barge would have a crew of a dozen, which meant they could row if becalmed by the wind and defend the crafts if necessary. It was planned that they would take about two months to reach their destination, where, it was hoped, Burgoyne’s army would await them. Since it was equally possible that the barges would arrive first, the plans also required them to stay offshore until the army appeared. It was hoped that neither the army nor the fleet would have a long wait.
“We sail tomorrow,” Danforth said. “Shall we celebrate tonight?”
“Do you want to be on a small boat with a hangover?”
“Either way, I’ll be sick as a dog, so I might as well enjoy myself this evening.”
Later, they were well into their second bottle of brandy and preparing for their third, when Danforth turned and looked grimly at Fitzroy. “James, have we been sent on a fool’s errand? Are we being set up to fail? Are these damned barges the equivalent of the Spanish Armada?”
Fitzroy sighed. He had been thinking the very same thing. “You ask too damned many questions.”
* * *
Lieutenant Owen Wells looked at the strange contraption in his hand. Had he been more educated and traveled, he might have recognized it. Still, he saw it as a weapon from the past and wondered about it. They were outdoors and in the same place where Will Drake had used an earlier invention to fire at a target. A straw-filled dummy of a man was at the end of the range. A half-rotten pumpkin was the skull.
“Doctor Franklin,” he said, “I know you’re a man of great wisdom, but surely this is a joke.”
Franklin nodded tolerantly. “Lieutenant Wells, I assure you it is not. The crossbow was an effective weapon against knights in armor several hundred years ago. Indeed, it was so effective, that it almost destroyed the armored and mounted knight as a military class.”
“But we fight Redcoats, not knights in armor.”
“True,” said Franklin.
“And the last I checked, Doctor, none of the red-coated turds were wearing armor, even though they weren’t knights.”
Franklin nodded. “But the bolt from a crossbow will just as easily penetrate cloth and flesh. It is accurate to well over a hundred yards, which is at least as good as a musket and can be reloaded at least as fast thanks to my clever innovations to an otherwise awkward device.”
Owen grinned inwardly. The good doctor was getting exasperated with his questions. “But if you wanted a better weapon, why not give us longbows like my ancestors used to use against the English? From what I’ve heard, they raised holy hell with King Edward’s men.”
“Because, my incessantly questioning young friend, longbows take forever to make and take an eternity to learn how to use, or didn’t you know that?”
“Oh, I did. I just wanted to see if you did.”
“Lieutenant Wells, you are a devil.”
“I’ve been called worse, good doctor. But since you compare me with Satan, let me tell you how I plan to use these crossbows that you are forcing me and my men to use.”
Owen cocked the weapon. The motion was blessedly silent, barely a whisper, thanks to some padding and oiling the doctor had added. He placed it snugly into his shoulder and fired. The only sound was a soft thwack as the bolt released and a slight thud as it impacted into a dummy made of straw.
“Excellent shot,” Franklin said.
Wells was also impressed. “I can do better and so can my men. What I want to do is fire these quietly at night and into their camps so they don’t know what’s hitting them and from where. If I have to lose sleep firing these things, then everyone does.
“Then I plan to have my men lie in wait along the trail and watch for stragglers or someone out of line having to piss or shit. There’s nothing worse than getting an arrow up your ass while taking a shit.”
“Indeed,” said Franklin happily. Tallmadge had suggested Lieutenant Wells as someone who would respond favorably to the idea of using a medieval crossbow in this, the late eighteenth century. Wells was Welsh and the Welsh were romantics when it came to killing. It was ironic. In the very early days of the war, Franklin had actually proposed arming the American army besieging the British at Boston with bows and arrows, but had been laughed at. Now he would have a degree of vindication. He hoped.
Owen smiled and fondled the crossbow. “Then we shall simply wait for other targets of opportunity. I dare say we will have plenty of them. We won’t win the war with these ancient weapons, Doctor Franklin, but we will make the damned Redcoats miserable and cost them plenty.”
Wells armed his crossbow with another bolt, cocked, aimed, and fired. Benjamin Franklin couldn’t hide a gasp as the bolt penetrated and shattered the pumpkin, the skull of the dummy.
* * *
Lord Charles Cornwallis climbed the observation tower at the base of Manhattan Island and looked across the harbor at the assembled ships of the Royal Navy. Three giant ships of the line, seven frigates and a gaggle of sloops and merchantmen lay at anchor and rocked gently. On the tower, Cornwallis was almost as high in the air as a lookout in the rigging and crow’s nests of the fleet. As an army man he firmly believed that no sane man would ever go up to such a fragile place on a ship, especially when the world beneath you rolled and pitched. At least his newly constructed tower on the battlements of Fort George had the decency to stand still; except, of course, when it was windy and stormy.
He thought it was an almost peaceful and tranquil perch in the sky. The dark of night hid so many of the world’s scars and this was no exception. He could have turned and looked landward at the ruined city of New York but chose not to. Jammed with more people then it could safely handle-some estimated more than fifty thousand-the city had become a diseased and running sore.
Cornwallis heard footsteps and nodded warmly as his brother. Commodore Billy Cornwallis climbed up and joined him. He was gratified that his young brother was huffing slightly; thereby proving that he hadn’t been climbing any of his ship’s rigging for quite some time.
“Excellent view,” William Cornwallis said, also looking over the harbor and ignoring the city.
Governor General Charles Cornwallis agreed. “Your ships look like predators that are poised to pounce on an unseen and unsuspecting enemy.”
“If only that were true,” his brother said ruefully. His ships were shorthanded and low on supplies. Their warlike visage was a facade. “How go things in the fair city of New York?”
Both men turned to take in the view of Manhattan Island. Neither was surprised to see a couple of fires burning as more dwellings fell to accidents caused by overcrowding. Of course, the loss of the buildings would make the overcrowding more acute with still more accidents occurring, and so on. Life in the city of New York was a spiral descending into hell. Bells began to clang as people gathered to put out the fires.
The wind shifted and the stench of the city swept over them. Each man looked at the other. Was it possible to catch the pox from the air as some scientists seemed to think?
“Does the situation improve?” the younger Cornwallis asked.
“As we speak, hundreds in the city are dying of smallpox,” his brother answered. “So far I’ve kept the disease from the garrison but only by sealing off the military in the fort. I can’t keep them there forever. I must begin to send out patrols and try to regain the countryside so these damned people will leave New York and go back to their homes. I would also like for Burgoyne to get off his arse and win his battles, and return my army to me.”