It was a most peculiar scene that greeted Matthew Roving’s eyes as he stood on the deck of the Falmouth packet: the weather was sunny, the wind fair, the sea a scintillating mirror of the sky—and all around him men were lying on their backs, writhing, moaning, clawing their bodies with fevered hands. Even Master John Paul and Captain Jones had fallen at Matthew’s feet and were babbling deliriously. Every man was laid low, not because of a battle, but because he’d caught the measles—the same measles every kid back home had got over in third grade with the help of a diet of 7-Up floats and TV.
Meanwhile, the ship was adrift, and Matthew was discovering that a sailing vessel without a hand on the helm is an aimless, spooky, chattering presence. Waves slapped the hull around with impunity, winds whipped the sails to and fro as if to get even for all the hours they’d spent working without pay. It was so creepy he felt like diving over the side and just swimming away.
Someone had to take charge, and it sure wasn’t going to be any of the adults. But he did have Abby, asleep below decks—Abby would know what to do!
He found her, limp and sweating, obviously sick, curled up on the blankets that had been sent aboard by the mysterious cloaked stranger in Bridgetown. Angry, he threw the blankets overboard—Master John Paul had said something about their being infected—and went to work getting the ship under control.
It wasn’t easy. He had to fight the crazily spinning wheel for half an hour (it knocked him down a half-dozen times). Then, just when he got the bow pointed in the right direction, and the sails drawing cleanly, the deck had tilted and all the sick men slid downhill to the rail. They would’ve gone over the side if he hadn’t put the helm over hard.
Letting the ship go back to its aimless wallowing, Matthew sat with his head in his hands, thinking hard. What he needed was rope—a lot of rope. Looping a heavy coil over his shoulder, he ran from man to man, tying them to whatever rail or stanchion came to hand. Next, taking a fresh coil, he ran it from one quarterdeck rail to the opposite, level with the wheel, leaving just enough slack to loop around the wheel’s top and bottom spokes. Then, after turning the wheel to hold the bow two points off the wind, Matthew tightened the rope with a twist of a belaying pin.
He stepped back, took his hands off the wheel, and hooked his thumbs in his belt. Creaking slowly, the ship strained against the helm as the sails ceased to flap and began to fill with air. The sickening motion vanished. The bow sliced cleanly through an advancing swell. They were under way. And Matthew had invented the autopilot.
On the morning of the following day Matthew rose from the deck, feeling the aches and bruises in his legs, arms, and back. This sure wasn’t the same as sailing his Optimist Pram. But the ship was making slow and easy passage.
"Matty," a voice whispered. "Bring water." Master John Paul’s eyes were red glints, lips cracked and parched, face dotted with red sores. Matthew fetched a wooden ladle of water from the barrel lashed to the mast. John Paul took a sip and nearly threw up. But a moment later he’d drunk it all down.
"Now . . . give some to . . . all. Or they shall . . . die."
"It’s just measles," Matthew said quickly. "Nobody dies from measles—I mean, unless you didn’t get vaccinated, or something."
At John Paul’s uncomprehending look, Matthew could have slapped himself on the forehead. Dummy! Of course he was the only one vaccinated on this ship—heck, in the entire 18th century! Wow, he thought, I guess I’m invincible. He laughed. "Like the Terminator," he said aloud.
He went around the deck, forcing a few mouthfuls down the throats of every man but one whose teeth were clenched too tight. John Paul was patting the deck feebly when he returned. "Check bilge. Ship . . . leaks." Matthew skipped below, checked on Abby (sweating, sleeping), pried up a grating—and found himself face to face with a dozen red-eyed rats swimming in the sloshing seawater that filled the bilges. Yikes!
John Paul had passed out when he ran back to report, but Matthew had watched sailors taking turns on the pump, so he went down and began pushing and pulling its long handle. Not ten minutes later, he was exhausted. But while he was resting, he found himself eyeing the pump’s canvas hose: why waste energy pumping if you could start a siphon? He wiped off the hose’s slimy end, gingerly put his lips around it and sucked, nearly gagging, until the water was flowing. Then he jammed it into the bunghole of an empty barrel. When it was full he’d figure something out—maybe use the block-and-tackle to hoist it on deck and empty it over the side.
The wind stayed fair and unvarying, the seas calm, which was a good thing, because Matthew knew he had a very narrow range in which to maneuver. At 60 feet in length, with a mainmast at least 45-feet tall, and heavy canvas sails that required a half-dozen strong backs to raise and lower, the schooner essentially was on a one-way ticket to the west. Fortunately, the island of St. Vincent lay directly on the course Captain Jones had laid before collapsing.
On the third morning Matthew watched as John Paul came to and stared at the sick and fallen men, at the sails, and then at the wheel, still secure in its cats-cradle of rope. He blinked at Matthew, who was standing by the rail with Captain Jones’s telescope clapped to one eye and his broad tricornered hat on his head. "What do you see?"
"St. Vincent, I believe," said Matthew. "Three days’ sail on a course due west—that’s about right, isn’t it?"
John Paul tried to sit up, paled, and closed his eyes. "When you reach harbor," he whispered, "you must make a signal of distress . . . bring help."
Matthew nodded, secretly peeved at John Paul for thinking he would need help to bring her into port. At least he might have complimented Matthew for sailing the ship alone! But as the island drew near, with foaming breakers on coral reefs all along its shore, Matthew had to admit that maybe he couldn’t do it by himself. Still, as the only person fit to command, it was his decision to make.
John Paul perked up when a small whitewashed lighthouse appeared off their bow. "Nice work, captain extemporare," he said.
Master Matthew Roving, captain extemporary of the Falmouth packet, untied his autopilot off the harbor at St. Vincent, hauled down the Union Jack, rehoisted it upside-down in the universal signal of distress, watered his sick men and sister, and took a seat on a box by the prostrate John Paul and a deeply asleep Captain Jones. At length a longboat approached, oars flashing silver in the sea, two red-jacketed soldiers standing tall in the bow. Matthew put his tricornered hat on his head and stepped atop the box for a better view with his telescope.
"I see soldiers," he said.
"Looking for me!" John Paul tried again to rise, but only could prop himself up on an elbow. "A pox on this fever!" He seemed suddenly to understand what he’d said, and smiled at Matthew. "Did you hear that? A pox. That’s funny!" His eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped down.
"Ahoy Falmouth packet," came the hail from the harbormaster in the stern of the longboat. "A word with yer captain, lad."
Matthew drew himself up on his box, touched a hand to the side of his hat the way he’d seen both Captain Jones and Master John Paul do. "Speaking," he said.
"Yer the captain?" the squinty blue-jacketed fellow asked.
"Extemporare," he said, enjoying the grand-sounding word. "We’ve had a spot of trouble—nothing too serious, I assure you."
"Nothing serious—nothing like murder and flight to avoid prosecution?" Matthew shook his head. The harbormaster eyed him. "Nothing like harboring a fugitive, such as one Master Paul, formerly of the Betsy?"
"No, sir. This is the Falmouth packet, Captain Jones."
"You are he?" drawled the bluejacket, giving a nod to the two Marines, who began to scramble up the side of the ship.
"No, as I said, I am captain extemporare." Just as the Marines popped their heads over the railing, inspiration struck. Matthew gestured to the fainting man with the polka-dotted face at his feet: "Captain John Jones, as you can see here, is sick with fever, as is the crew."
"Fever? Krikey! Shove off!" shouted one Marine, falling back into the longboat. "It’s a death ship!" the other cried, throwing himself into the sea.
The longboat backed its oars in a foaming fury, then stopped to take in the swimming Marine. Matthew cupped his hands around his mouth: "I say, hold on—you’ve got mail!"
"John Paul Jones," said the Master, on the fourth day, now sitting up comfortably and eating ship’s biscuit with a hearty appetite. The need for a new name for himself, to help cover his tracks from the unjust charge of murder back in Tobago, had preoccupied the Master since leaving St. Vincent. Captain Jones lay nearby, a dazed expression on his face, but alive. The same could not be said for two sailors who had expired after fits of violent shivering, teeth clenched. Their bodies lay stiffening on the deck. "John Paul Smith—no. John Paul Jones has the advantage of alliteration, don’t you think, Matty?"
"Yes sir." With no men to work the sails and an westerly wind, they were forced to go west—the opposite direction from Matthew’s father, if indeed he was on Isla Margarita or the Dry Tortugas, but toward Virginia, where the Master’s brother had emigrated 12 years ago. "John Paul Jones it is," the Master now said. "Won’t my brother be surprised! But a new name goes with a new life in Virginia, where a man can be as free and independent as he has wits about him. Not like Scotland, where as the son of a gardener I had no chance of rising in society. To the English, a Scot is no better than a slave."
John Paul Jones stared at the dead men, still tied by their ropes to hatches and stanchions. "That’s a bitter sight," he sighed at length. "Another reason to leave the sea."
Matthew looked up with a start: he had been thinking of his one trip to Annapolis, when his father had taken the family to the U.S. Naval Academy for a visit. There had been a sort of grand marble vault and the very name—John Paul Jones—inscribed over it. "Leave the sea, sir?"
"Aye! Turn my back on this unfurrowed field of pain and death and sin!" John Paul Jones’s face had turned so pale that the dried scabs of his sores stood out like raisins.
"You, lad," interrupted a faded voice. Matthew turned to see the other Captain Jones listening in. "Are those men dead, then?" Matthew nodded. Captain Jones eyed the circling seagulls. "Put them over the side."
"Me, sir?" Matthew asked, hopelessly. The Captain did not even bother to answer, but closed his eyes in exhaustion. John Paul Jones gave a bitter laugh. "Leave the sea, indeed. Where else do men die shackled to each other, to be pitched into the deep without so much as a prayer for their immortal souls?"
"But you seem born to it, sir. And you do seem to like to, um, fight."
"True," smiled the Master. "Even as a lad, I used to lead expeditions to storm the fort that guarded the harbor at dear Kirkcudbright. The soldiers there indulged me. But"—his expression darkened—"a poor Scot’s boy has no future in England’s navy. No, I shall join my brother in Virginia, become a gentleman farmer, marry a rich plump girl, and ride after the hounds. A proper English squire I shall become!"
On the fifth day, the two Captain Joneses got to talking. The situation required flexibility, said John Paul Jones. "This ship is going west; you want to go east. I have a fine ship in the east, at Barbados, but I must go west. Does that suggest anything to you?"
The real Captain Jones nodded, and asked to see the Betsy’s ownership and cargo papers. After studying them, he questioned John Paul Jones earnestly for an hour about the charge of murder that would seem to be hanging over his head.
"Let’s swap ships," said John Paul Jones, "and you pay me something for my cargo."
The other Captain Jones shook his head, and his eyes got a greedy, cunning look. "You can’t go back, but I can," he said repeatedly. "They’ll hang you."
With Matthew signing as a witness, the deal was done. To Matthew, they had sounded like a couple of kids trading baseball cards.
Near sundown that same day, a sail going east was sighted and intercepted. It was a low-hulled swift barkentine from Norfolk, Virginia, whose impatient Master grudgingly agreed to take Captain Jones as far as St. Vincent, where he was due to exchange his cargo of cotton and tobacco for rum.
"A slave ship," muttered John Paul Jones as Captain Jones waved farewell from its decks. "Off to the Ivory Coast with her devil’s rum, to purchase human souls—no fouler trade than this exists in the whole wide world, Matty. Promise me you’ll never ship on a slaver?"
"Who ever would?" Matthew replied. John Paul Jones just looked at him, before answering: "As a young man desiring a quick rise to fortune, I did. And that’s one debt to humanity I’ve yet to discharge." He sighed. "As well as one more reason to leave the sea for gentle Virginia."
That night, while preparing a bowl of salt pork and biscuit soup for Abby, Matthew mulled over what he should do to save John Paul Jones for his future as the father of the U.S. Navy. Perhaps he could explain that, if it was slavery he was anxious to avoid, then Virginia might not be the best place to become a farmer.
Matthew brought the dripping candle down to shine some light on Abby’s face. What he saw shocked him: her lips were pulled back, her teeth were clenched tight and, although she was shivering convulsively, her body was as stiff as a board. Matthew had seen a person in such awful straits only once before—and that had been the two sailors whose bodies he had committed to the sea only the day before yesterday.
There was no question about it: his sister was dying.