Liquid fire coursing down his throat jolted Matthew back to life. Through ice-crusted eyelashes he stared at the sailor lowering the grog ladle from his lips, barely able to feel the rough blankets that wrapped his naked body. Then a burly seaman hoisted him on his shoulder and carried him forward, propping him up before a figure who stood with his back to him.
Without turning, the captain of the blockade runner rapped on the railing for Matthew's attention. "The crew says ye claim to be American," he rasped in a pronounced Scots brogue. "Though it seemed to me ye pulled hard enough at His Majesty's oar."
Now he turned, and Matthew gasped: it was John Paul Jones, sharp-eyed and unsmiling. Teeth chattering so badly he couldn't get the words out, Matthew shook his head. "P-P-Pressed," he said. "A whole year I've been at sea!"
"While I have been stuck near the same time on land," Jones replied, "being sweet-talked by the finest-mannered Virginia lawyers you'd ever want to meet—swindled right out of my poor brother's estate." At Matthew's shocked glance, he nodded. "After 12 years apart we missed rendezvous by a month. Fever. I never laid eyes on him, only the grass o'er his grave."
"I'm sorry."
"It does make ye wonder," Jones sighed, "whose side is time on." Deep lines creased his forehead. "Any news of your father?" At Matthew's shake of his head, the little captain's expression did not change. He turned back to face the open ocean. "We'll stand offshore until midnight, then steer for Cape Ann. We have a rendezvous to make—one that may help make up for your loss, if only a little." He smiled bleakly.
At eight bells of the morning watch Matthew was roused by a change in the ship's motion: heaving to, he could tell. He threw off the wool blanket and padded barefoot on deck, hardly noticing the snow that covered the boards. Captain Jones and the watch clustered at the rail peered at a faint light winking in the grayish murk to the east. "There's the signal, a second light abaft," muttered a sailor.
"Or she may be the Rose, playing games," Jones replied.
A large full-rigged merchant ship scudded out of the snow squall. In minutes, the two ships were alongside, the sea smooth enough to allow them to raft up. Without a spare word being exchanged, the merchant ship's crew began to hoist crates on block and tackle and shift them out on the yards, over the side, and into the sloop's hold.
"What's our cargo?" Matthew asked after a couple hours, in which several dozen crates had been secured. Captain Jones started to speak, then paused; a black iron snout had appeared over the merchant's railing. As sailors carefully guided the cannon over and down, he replied, "The balance of power. Muskets, bayonets, ball and powder. Field pieces. We are going to run them up the Merrimack River to Concord. By spring ye shall be in a position to break Boston's blockade."
"Won't that mean war?"
"Oh, I think not. This is a dispute of boundaries, in which America must emulate the porcupine." Jones nodded at the cannon inching its way into the hold. "We are simply sharpening our quills. Once England has been stung, she will back away and show a proper respect for liberty."
"You say 'we' now," said Matthew.
Jones, surprisingly, blushed. "Habit of association," he replied. "It's complicated—we Scots are never entirely easy being British, never less so when other's liberties are trampled. We tend to feel the insult as if it were our own."
When the last cannon hung in mid-air Jones cupped his hands. "A word with your captain, if you please." After the request was relayed all the way aft, a tall cloaked figure detached himself from the ship's wheel, handing it over to a waiting helmsman. He descended the short ladder to the ship's waist, where only the extravagant feather at the top of his tricorn hat was visible, bobbing along until he was abreast of them. Then, placing his arms on the railing, he thrust his head over so that Matthew and Jones were staring directly up into his face at a distance of no more than six feet.
Matthew did a double take. "By your leave, sir," he sputtered, the Royal Navy discipline impossible to shed at such short notice; then he shouted. "I mean—Father!"
Rance Roving's expression had hardly changed, except for a new brightness in his eyes, when a lookout cried, "Sail to weather, starboard bow!" Followed by: "Ten guns a broadside!"
"Has she raised her colors?" asked John Paul Jones.
"No, sir. But she looks like a John Bull—and very like the Glasgow."
"I'm sure she is," said Matthew's father. "But if she won't show her colors the law allows me to assume she is a pirate. We shall dally with her while you dodge away, Mister Jones."
"Very much obliged," Jones said. "But allow me to tease Glasgow a bit, to bring her nose into the wind; then you may take your best shot, and still have room to maneuver."
Matthew couldn't believe what he was hearing—a merchant brig and a smuggler's sloop taking on a 20-gun ship of war, when no war had been declared? He turned halfway between Jones and Rance. "I can handle a gun, sir," he said. "Was rated on the Rose herself."
"Come aboard, then," his father replied. "Take the aft 9-pounder, and shot her with chain. We'll shorten Glasgow's sail for her." He reached a hand down to Jones, who took it. "Very much obliged to you, sir." Once Matthew scrambled up the side of the brig, his father clasped his shoulder and squeezed it hard. "We shall talk later, but remember: don't raise your port until you hear my word. Surprise is our best card."
The sloop under Jones cast loose and wallowed in the lee of the brig, falling behind and into the path of the slowly advancing Glasgow. Outwardly the three ships seemed calm, as if they had just happened to meet here, in this empty snowy space. But below decks sailors hustled to cast loose and load the brig's four guns—one in the bow, two on each side, one to stern—as well as set out buckets of sand and water. There was a long lulling wait, then a faint bang of the Glasgow's bow chaser: "Bring her off the wind," his father said.
"Yes sir, Mister Roving," answered a mate, and the brig fell away, as if heaving to.
"Raise the Dutch pennant," said his father. "Keep your heads down. We are meek and mild Dutchmen, for all they know."
Matthew and his crew took turns peering through the cracked gun-port. The Glasgow, having seen the brig heave to, concentrated first on the sloop, which seemed almost comically confused as her crew struggled to raise her jib and get her under control. Yet her drift would soon take her out of their lee and into fresh wind.
Rance raised his voice. "Boys, at my call haul up your ports and fire on the upward roll as she bears. Aim for the stays, the yards, and the trees."
"You, Master there—lower your sails and prepare to be boarded," called a voice from the Glasgow. Jones's reply was tart: "Under whose flag?" At that moment, he made a sharp motion with one hand, and the sloop turned smartly into the wind; her jib filled, and the once-confused sailors rapidly hauled her mainsheet.
"Helmsman, let her fall off two points," said Matthew's father. "Boys? Make 'em count."
With a great heave on the ropes, the gun crews raised the ports. Light poured in on a slant, blinding Matthew temporarily as he squinted. But there was the dark silhouetted ship, to his right as they began to cross her bow. And their own bow gun banged, sounding faraway, and then the waist gun, a good bit louder; and then they were pointing up into the wind and Matthew was taking a last look before stepping back with the lanyard in his hand, feeling the deck heave up under his feet—just so: a snap, a whiff of nitrites, and the loudest boom he'd ever heard shaking every bone in his body.
As the smoke streamed away with the breeze, Matthew stuck his head out the gun-port. The Glasgow's foremast hung drunkenly to one side, suspended by a single clump of stays; her jib was gone, crushed under the bow, dragging like a sea-anchor.
The smoke dissipated and the brig showed her heels to the disabled enemy. A half an hour later the two vessels parted company, heading off on opposite tacks. Jones would try to slip inshore with the Gloucester cod fleet and head upriver with the tide; Matthew's father put the helm over, out to sea again.
For a day and a night, they headed offshore. And, for a day and a night, Matthew and his father talked. Or tried to—for there are shoals and sands in conversation, and Rance kept shaking his head at Matthew's weather-toughened appearance, his pigtail, and the salty epithets that escaped his lips. For his part, Matthew felt equally awkward. Every time he wanted to throw his arms around his father, Rance's formal and somewhat brooding manner made him pause, draw back, and only then let his fingers graze the sleeve of his coat.
Looming over everything was one question: was this his 18th-century father? If he was, then Matthew had to be careful not to shock him with wild stories of the Log. If, however, this was his modern Dad, hiding his modern self behind a mask—just as Matthew was doing—how would Matthew ever know it? Matthew realized he must be on the lookout for a sign or clue, as well as throw out a hint or two himself.
A first opportunity came when Rance explained his mysterious disappearance: the Vineland had been stopped by the Gaspee en route to Boston and seized, her crew impressed, including Rance. "A clever young Lieutenant—Nicholas Blunt—evidently hit upon a way to feather his nest by arranging contraband to be placed onboard without my knowledge. I suspect we were betrayed by a sailor, a new hand who signed on just before we embarked," he added. "I blame myself: his very aspect, tall and gaunt and furtive, with a posture quite literally bent and an obsequiousness that is not at all American, ought to have aroused my immediate suspicion."
Matthew stifled a gasp. This was such a description of Wydontia Gaway that he was tempted to blurt it out. "What was the sailor's name?" he asked. Rance shook his head. "I never knew."
Forced into the Royal Navy as a common seaman, Rance had been transferred to a frigate patrolling the Caribbean. Close to a year had passed, in toil and brutality—as Matthew knew only too well—and no chance to escape.
At this point in the story, his father fell silent. Then he asked Matthew for his story, which Matthew summarized. Even so, it was satisfying to see his father blanch at the tale of weathering the hurricane with Abby, and smile to hear of their part in the burning of the Gaspee. But when it came to hinting about the 21st century and the Log, Matthew was at a loss.
That evening, they walked the deck for an hour in silence. After his father inspected the sails and rigging, and sniffed the sharp air, he announced a new course: due west, a beam reach. They were heading home to Newport.
The ship's boy, no more than eight or nine years old, stepped up to the ship's bell and rang the end of the first dog watch: one-two, three-four. Matthew looked at his left wrist: where once a wristwatch had been, there were now only freckles and moles against dark-tanned skin. Old habits die hard, he thought, even habits that can't exist for another 150 years. Glancing at his father, he saw him looking at his bare left wrist, too.
Matthew cleared his throat. "So," he said, "whatever happened to the Star Trek watch I bought you for your birthday?"
His father stiffened, peering at Matthew out of the corner of his eyes. "It didn't make the trip," he said, finally.
They came ghosting in at dawn on a light breeze, slipping past the foaming shoals and black rocks that protected Newport as well as the guns of her batteries. Matthew and his father stood side by side, watching the outlines of a church steeple emerge from a frigid mist. "So, you found this Log in the attic of a boarding house?" his father asked again. "What makes you think it's still there?"
Matthew restrained a sigh of exasperation: adults could be so thick sometimes! When Rance had told his story—a group of desperados had boarded the modern Vineland, holding the ship and crew captive—it was obvious to Matthew what had happened. The swords the men were armed with was a dead giveaway, and their ringleader's description fit Wydontia Gaway, who'd forced Rance and the ship's technicians to use the ship's side-view sonar rig and new ultra-low frequency magnetic resonance image detector to scan several coral islands. "Obviously she was looking for the Log," Matthew had said, while his father just shook his head in bewilderment. Then Wydontia Gaway had spotted an intriguing shape on the screens, and ordered Rance to take the ship into a tiny lagoon and anchor in a cliffside grotto. "The old bat was looking for the Log. She must have used it to get herself out of a tight spot in the past," Matthew surmised, "and had ended up in the future—only she then lost track of it."
His father hesitated. "All I know is, we took an inflatable through a crevice in the grotto and then had to swim for it, into a cave. When we set off a flare we found a really old sailing vessel—amazing it was still intact—covered with stalagmites and stalactites." Gaway rushed aboard, and when she returned ordered Rance and his men to be blindfolded. "I asked her, jokingly, of course, if she was going to make us walk the plank. And she said, 'In a manner of speaking, yes.'" He heard the rustling of paper, like the pages of a book turning. The sounds from his crew grew fewer and fewer, until there was only silence. Then it was his turn. "I asked her if she had killed my men. She said no, she'd sent them away. When I asked where, she said, 'Another time, another place.' Then she said, 'I have someplace special in mind for you,' and told me to take a step back. Next thing I knew I was on the Gaspee all trussed up like a roast chicken."
Now the brig approached wharves and quays crowded with ships and boats, in comparison with blockaded Boston. It was easy to slip in unnoticed, drop anchor, and take a shore boat. The two strode side by side up the dirty cobbled streets, their hats pulled low and their coat collars turned up to hide their faces. They took an alley shortcut, turned the last corner—Matthew stopped short. It was the same house, nothing had changed, except—a sign had been added, swinging with a sour creak in the wind:
Quaint Misbehavin Home For Wayward Salts. Wydontia Gaway, Prop.
"Mom had to sell the house," Matthew said. "And look who got it!"
"Well, I imagine it won't be difficult to find her, and Abby," his father said. "We can ask around."
But Matthew grabbed his arm and pulled him back into the alley, because the front door had opened. A tall, familiar, teetering-to-one-side figured emerged, looked left and right, then scuttled down the street. Matthew glanced at his father. "Are you ready to go home?"
Rance looked around him. "What will happen to the family here? To the—"
"The Revolution?" Matthew finished. "I think it's on track now. And the family, too. Of course, we can't be sure of anything with Wydontia and Nicky out there."
"We can always go back," his father said.
"Yes," Matthew replied, adding silently: and we will. But that was for future discussion. He reached out and tugged at his father's coat. "Let's go," he said. "You never know when you-know-who will come back."
They started across the cobbled street, Matthew leading the way.