The patriot pushed the canoe forward, attempting to board it, but was grabbed around the waist by the Briton, who flailed not only for king and country, but life itself. Like many sailors in His Majesty's navy, the man could barely swim.
Jake smashed his elbow against the man's face twice but could not loosen his grip. The canoe slipped from his hand and the two men plunged downward into ice cold blackness, their arms and legs tangling against each other like a pair of maddened octopuses, each blinded by the other's ink.
The suddenness of the plunge made Jake swallow water into his lungs, and his chest began to explode. The sailor's grip tightened as they sank; though Jake kicked upwards with his feet, the man was as heavy as a howitzer, and about as buoyant. Jake reached his hand toward the sailor's face, trying to jab at his eyes or throat, anything that would provoke him into letting go. The patriot's own right eye was swollen shut; while that was not a handicap at the moment, since the left, open, could see nothing in the pitch darkness of the water, it added to a general feeling that bordered on despair. His lungs were now close to bursting, and his limbs were showing the full effects of fatigue.
Ah Liberty, how swift you are to inspire those in most desperate need of your charms! For how else to explain the suddenness of the idea that knocked on the door of Jake's brain and won ready admission: if you can't get to the surface, sink.
Sink like a stone, and let the other man's instinct for survival take over. Jake ended all effort to escape, curling his legs together and making his arms go flaccid, as if he had given up the will to live.
It took the brute, in his panic, a moment to realize what was happening. In the next, he let go of Jake and kicked desperately upward.
The moment he was freed, Jake coiled himself into a spring and shot to the surface. The air that filled his lungs was as welcome to him as the Greek shore was to Odysseus, and the rain felt like a refreshing warm shower in Circe's cave.
The sailor also had found the surface of the river and was trying with awkward strokes to reach the canoe.
Jake got there first. The boat, though it had taken water, had righted itself and sat high enough on the river to block him from the sailor's view. As the Briton reached his arm for the boat, Jake shoved it away, and kicked his leg forward in the water. Though the blow was not severe, it caught the sailor by surprise.
The spirit Busch had inspired drained with that kick. The man began blubbering and crying that he was going to drown; he prayed for salvation and cursed the king.
Jake took him by the neck and hauled him to the boat, bending his shoulders over it before climbing aboard himself. Dazed but conscious, the sailor clung to the side, the fight gone out of him forever.
As Jake fished a pair of oars from the bottom of the craft, he heard a challenge directly to the west — the whaleboat of Americans rowed up belatedly.
"Take this man," Jake shouted. He slid an oar into the sailor's hands to keep him afloat until they arrived and pushed him off the side. "Then quickly follow me to the chain!"
The Americans' answer was drowned by an enormous peal of thunder as the sky overhead was illuminated by a vast sword-stroke of light.
Chapter Forty-three
The storm clouds vied in a brilliant show of electricity, clattering against each other like oaken ships determined to batter themselves to oblivion. The rain turned to torrents, falling with the stink of burnt air. But Tory Captain John Busch was so focused on his goal that he noticed none of it. He lifted his heavy arms again and again against the fierce river, driving himself as the ancient Irish hero Cuchulain had against the waves. Despite the weight of the bomb before him, despite the force of the water and the wind that kicked spray in his face, he was able to reach the wooden floats that supported the heavy barrier.
Busch found the weak point of the barrier he had spotted the previous night. The thick chain lay nearly two feet below the water here, and if it were not for the alterations and the weight of the front of his craft, he would have been able to pass right over it.
Busch felt the bow of the canoe scrape the top edge of the chain. But he could not ground the canoe on the float as he had initially hoped, and so was forced to fall back to his secondary strategy, tying the bomb boat to a nearby raft.
To do this, he had to first paddle the canoe parallel to a log and hold it there while he grappled with a stiff rope and hook. The river's current turned violently against him, pushing him away while the rain spit in his face. Busch made his first try with one hand on the oar, trying to hold himself in place; the toss was pathetically short.
By now his arms were so weak he could hardly lift them to pull the rope back in. The river sent him too far away for a second try without more paddling. He moved nearly to the tip of the raft before trying and missing again.
The hard flashes of lightning threw distorted shadows to harass and confuse his aim. It was as if all the elements had conspired to stop the Tory, Nature herself taking a hand in saving the Revolution.
"You will not beat me," he shouted when his third toss failed. "I will succeed."
As Busch was battling the will of the elements, Jake struggled with the canoe he had taken from the British sailor. Dug out from an old pine tree, it was too long for one man to handle easily in the river at night, especially in a thunderstorm. The patriot's eye had not reopened, and his arms and legs were badly bruised from the sailor's battering. His lungs wheezed with the river water he had swallowed. The wind blew straight into his face, and the thunder punched at his temples like the sharp blows of angry boys.
When he realized he was moving southwards away from the chain instead of north, he despaired of reaching the barrier in time. He dug into the water harder with the oar and changed direction, worried he would be caught in the explosion and die a useless martyr's death.
Jake had no compunction against giving his life in the name of his Cause, but he wanted it to be a worthwhile sacrifice. And so Death himself drove him onwards, the hoary specter swinging his scythe with abandon at his back, his hot, relentless breath warming Jake's spine.
A particularly wide burst of lightning sparked its jagged insignia but a few yards ahead, and in the short instant of illumination, Jake saw a figure stand in a misshapen canoe not more than ten yards ahead.
Destiny had delivered him to his opponent.
Though it actually struck the side of St. Anthony's mountain, the lightning seemed so close that Busch involuntarily ducked. He caught himself, and with a cry as severe as the archangel will use at the end of the world he gripped the grappling hook with both hands and hurled it forward. Rage renewed his strength, and the forged metal and its rope sailed beyond the barrier and its rafts; with two quick pulls he caught the back of one of the floats and began hauling himself forward.
The canoe twisted with the current; Busch put his feet against the side and tugged at the rope, letting the back of the craft become the front but still moving toward his target. With every pull he gave a loud groan and cursed the rebels, swearing that tonight King George would have his victory sealed.
The chain was no more than three feet away when suddenly the hook slipped and Busch fell back against the bottom of the boat. His head rebounded off the deck with an agonizing smash. His senses returned in the next instant as he was yanked to the side of the canoe — the iron had slipped from the log and grappled on the chain itself, and as he had twisted the rope around his hands, he was literally being pulled out, the canoe trying to run with the river's flow.
He nearly broke his elbow against the side of the boat, but managed to stop himself; then swinging his feet around for leverage he managed two great heaves and crashed onto the deck of the sunken chain support.