“Twenty-six nautical miles,” Captain Andrew Barkley answered briskly, “and there,” he pointed over the starboard bow and past the lion-crested cathead from which one of the frigate’s anchors was suspended, “is your new home.”
McLean borrowed the captain’s glass and, using his awkward right arm as a rest for the tubes, trained the telescope forrard. For a moment the small motions of the ship defeated him so that all he glimpsed was a blur of gray clouds, dark land and sullen water, but he steadied himself to see that the Penobscot River widened to make the great lake that Captain Barkley called Penobscot Bay. The bay, McLean thought, was really a great sea loch, which he knew from his study of Barkley’s charts was some eight miles from east to west and three miles from north to south. A harbor opened from the bay’s eastern shore. The mouth of the harbor was edged by rocks, while on its northern side was a hill crowned thick with trees. A settlement stood on the southern slope of that hill; over a score of wooden homes and barns were set among patches of corn, plots of vegetables, and piles of timber. A handful of fishing boats was anchored in the harbor, along with one small brig that McLean assumed was a trading vessel. “So that’s Majabigwaduce,” he said softly.
“Back topsails!” the captain called, “order the fleet to heave to. I shall trouble you to signal for a pilot, Mister Fennel!”
“Aye aye, sir!”
The frigate suddenly seethed with men running to release sheets. “That’s Majabigwaduce,” Barkley said in a tone that suggested the name was as risible as the place.
“Number one gun!” Lieutenant Fennel shouted, provoking another rush of men who ran to the forward starboard cannon.
“Do you have any idea,” McLean asked the captain, “what Majabigwaduce signifies?”
“Signifies?”
“Does the name mean anything?”
“No idea, no idea,” Barkley said, apparently irritated by the question. “Now, Mister Fennel!”
The gun, charged and wadded, but without any shot, was fired. The recoil was slight, but the sound of the gun seemed hugely loud and the cloud of smoke enveloped half the Blonde’s deck. The gunshot faded, then was echoed back from the shore before fading a second time.
“We shall discover something now, won’t we?” Barkley said.
“What is that?” McLean inquired.
“Whether they’re loyal, General, whether they’re loyal. If they’ve been infected by rebellion then they’ll hardly supply a pilot, will they?”
“I suppose not,” McLean said, though he suspected a disloyal pilot could well serve his rebellious cause by guiding HMS Blonde onto a rock. There were plenty of those breaking the bay’s surface. On one, not fifty paces from the frigate’s port gunwales, a cormorant spread its dark wings to dry.
They waited. The gun had been fired, the customary signal requesting a pilot, but the smoke prevented anyone aboard from seeing whether the settlement of Majabigwaduce would respond. The five transport ships, four sloops, and frigate drifted upriver on the tide. The loudest noise was the groan, wheeze, and splashing from the pump aboard one of the sloops, HMS North. The water spurted and gushed rhythmically from an elm spigot set into her hull as sailors pumped her bilge. “She should have been broken up for firewood,” Captain Barkley said sourly.
“There’s no patching her?” McLean asked.
“Her timbers are rotten. She’s a sieve,” Barkley said dismissively. Small waves slapped the Blonde’s hull, and the blue ensign at her stern stirred slow in the fitful wind. Still no boat appeared and so Barkley ordered the signal gun fired a second time. The sound echoed and faded again and, just when Barkley was considering taking the flotilla into the harbor without the benefit of a pilot, a seaman hailed from the foremast top. “Boat coming, sir!”
When the powder smoke cleared, the men on Blonde saw a small open boat was indeed tacking out from the harbor. The southwest breeze was so light that the tan-colored sails hardly gave the boat any headway against the tide, and so a young man was pulling on two long oars. Once in the wide bay he shipped the oars and sheeted his sails hard so that the small boat beat slowly up to the flotilla. A girl sat at the tiller and she steered the little craft against the Blonde’s starboard flank where the young man leaped nimbly onto the boarding steps that climbed the tumblehome. He was tall, fair-haired, with hands calloused and blackened from handling tarred rigging and fishing nets. He wore homespun breeches and a canvas jacket, had clumsy boots and a knitted hat. He climbed to the deck, then called down to the girl. “You take good care of her, Beth!”
“Stop gawping, you puddin’-headed bastards!” the bosun roared at the seamen staring at the fair-haired girl who was using an oar to push her small craft away from the frigate’s hull. “You’re the pilot?” the bosun asked the young man.
“James Fletcher,” the young man said, “and I guess I am, but you don’t need no pilot anyways.” He grinned as he walked towards the officers at the Blonde’s stern. “Any of you gentlemen have tobacco?” he asked as he climbed the companionway to the poop deck. He was rewarded with silence until General McLean reached into a pocket and extracted a short clay pipe, its bowl already stuffed with tobacco.
“Will that do?” the general asked.
“That’ll do just perfect,” Fletcher said appreciatively, then prised the plug from the bowl and crammed it into his mouth. He handed the empty pipe back to the general. “Haven’t had tobacco in two months,” he said in explanation, then nodded familiarly to Barkley. “Ain’t no real dangers in Bagaduce, Captain, just so long as you stand off Dyce’s Head, see?” He pointed to the tree-crowned bluff on the northern side of the harbor entrance. “Rocks there. And more rocks off Cross Island on the other side. Hold her in the channel’s center and you’ll be safe as safe.”
“Bagaduce?” General McLean asked.
“That’s what we call it, your honor. Bagaduce. Easier on the tongue than Majabigwaduce.” The pilot grinned, then spat tobacco juice that splattered across the Blonde’s holy-stoned planking. There was silence on the quarterdeck as the officers regarded the dark stain.
“Majabigwaduce,” McLean broke the silence, “does it mean anything?”
“Big bay with big tides,” Fletcher said, “or so my father always said. ’Course it’s an Indian name so it could mean anything.” The young man looked around the frigate’s deck with an evident appreciation. “Day of excitement, this,” he remarked genially.
“Excitement?” General McLean asked.
“Phoebe Perkins is expecting. We all thought the baby would have dropped from her by now, but it ain’t. And it’ll be a girl!”
“You know that?” General McLean asked, amused.
“Phoebe’s had six babes already and every last one of them a girl. You should fire another gun, Captain, startle this new one out of her!”