Or could he?
“ Now that you’ve calmed yourself,” declared Jake when his captors paused some distance from the crowd, “I demand to be taken to General Howe.”
“ You’re in no position to demand anything,” said the colonel. His eyes were set so deeply in his face that Jake wouldn’t have been surprised to learn he labored each night with a vise to drive them farther into his skull. “We caught you in the act of sedition.”
“ I’m on a mission from General Burgoyne. I demand to see Sir William Howe personally.”
“ Oh you are, are ya?” The speaker was a bulky sergeant who emerged from the knot of redcoats around him. His dress and in particular his hat immediately set him off as a member of the Scottish Black Watch. “There seems to be a run on you fellows today.”
“ Explain yourself,” directed the colonel.
“ I took one of ‘em out there myself this noon. A peculiar fat fellow. Dutch. Never saw such a bad case of sea shivers in all my time — fellow fainted before we were off the pier.”
“ I don’t know about any of that,” said Jake over the snickers. “Just take me to Howe.”
The colonel held a brief conference with the other officers. It was decided the prisoner should be presented to the general, who could sort this out for himself. He was thus led to a whaleboat for the voyage.
Jake’s idea had been to sit by the side of the boat, sneak the bullet out and drop it overboard. He would then be free to deliver a verbal message that echoed the one van Clynne had delivered.
If he ran into anyone who already knew him — or rather, thought they knew him — he would have to explain how he’d come to be in Canada, much less join General Burgoyne’s command. But that tale could be easily invented. In the worse case, he could simply leap overboard and sink down to the bottom of the river, dragged down by his manacles and leg irons, taking his secrets to a watery grave. This was just the brave sort of thing that spies and secret agents are forever doing to encourage Posterity to write their names large in the history books, inspiring generations of schoolboys and picking up the tourist trade.
Lest you think our hero incurably romantic, not that he was much more inclined toward staying alive and living to a quiet old age. But his prospects steadily dimmed as he was tightly bundled for the voyage with thick strips of woolen cloth torn from a blanket, chained to an anchor and placed between four men in the large boat. Hercules himself could not have broken free, not matter how heroic his mood.
Jake had one consolation. Considerable time had transpired since he and van Clynne had parted ways. As he had outlined the plan, van Clynne’s mission aboard ship should have lasted no more than five minutes. He interpreted van Clynne’s aversion both to water and the English as reinforcing those instructions; the Dutchman was not one to linger in disagreeable circumstances, let alone dangerous ones. The fact that a sergeant ashore reported having transported him earlier in the day added to Jake’s ease. He concluded that his compatriot’s phase of the mission had gone well — we will avoid the descriptive “swimmingly” as being in dubious taste. In Jake’s opinion, van Clynne must be halfway to Albany by now.
So consider his surprise when, upon being hauled aboard the Eagle, he looked around the deck for a place to dispose of his bullet and found Claus van Clynne instead.
His mind did not concede immediately what his eyes showed it. No, it took an eternity for these organs to agree that the rotund man walking toward him was indeed his erstwhile assistant. There was much blinking in the meantime. There was also much internal cursing.
“ Jake, it’s about time you got here,” said van Clynne, clapping him on the shoulder. “Why are you chained? Was it the only way to get you into the boat? You’ve got to overcome that fear of water, man; there’s nothing to it.”
Jake tried through certain small head and eye movements to warn van Clynne away.
“ You know the prisoner?” demanded one of the officers.
“ Know him? He’s my fellow agent.”
The guards took a great interest in that.
“ We have been trying to intercept a traitor named Herstraw,” said van Clynne. “We’ve followed him all the way from Quebec.”
“ He told us nothing of that,” said one of the officers. The soldiers who did not have their guns drawn on Jake trained them on van Clynne.
“ Of course not. The Sons of Liberty have disguised themselves as his Majesty’s subjects, and lurk everywhere. Did you capture this Herstraw fellow?”
Van Clynne looked directly at Jake. They were now committed on this path, and Jake knew he would doom not only himself and van Clynne, but the entire mission by trying to change it.
“ He escaped, but I killed one of his men.” Jake displayed a look of disgust that would have soured the milk in a cow. “These buffoons crashed in on me just as I caught him. They were so inept, I thought at first they must be rebels themselves.”
A general commotion ensued, with the various members of Jake’s guard protesting that they had only been doing their duty and why did he run and how did they even know his story was true?
The argument had not progressed very far when Howe returned to the ship. Though relieved by the fact that the rumors of a rebel riot in the city were unfounded, the commander was nonetheless in a foul mood — not only had his day been disrupted, but a quick visit to Mrs. Loring’s house had found her not at home.
Jake and van Clynne soon found themselves at the apex of a large semicircle, delivering their story to the general and his audience. Van Clynne, of course, was constitutionally unable to deliver any speech briefly. His entire recitation of his trip from Montreal (where of course he hadn’t actually been) to Ticonderoga (another place he had not burdened with his presence) took nearly a half hour, not counting all the diversions and stops along the way. In brief, his story was this:
Burgoyne had charged him with bringing the message to Howe, and after much difficulty, he had. Jake, as loyal an assistant as God ever made, thought naturally he might be been even better if he had been born Dutch, accompanied him south. En route, a man named Herstraw had tried to get into their good graces by traveling with them. Thanks to a hastily if much explained stratagem, they were able to deduce that he was a rebel agent working to apprehend them. The pair kept their guard up so that he was forced to accompany them all the way until the city. Thereupon, they split their forces — Jake would endeavor to lead the man astray, pretending to have the bullet, and van Clynne would go aboard and deliver his message. Back on shore they would unite, break up the Sons of Liberty spy ring, and expose the traitorous snakes, much to the joy of all England.
While van Clynne spoke, Jake tried with various signals to ask if he had shown Howe the ruby-hilted knife. But van Clynne ignored or could not correctly interpret his pantomime, and merely increased the volume at which he expounded his tale.
There were more holes in the story than a fisherman’s net. Why, for instance, had van Clynne neglected to mention the plot once he was aboard with the general?
“ Well, Sir William, that is an excellent question, and points up my own inferior nature. Frankly, I was overawed by your august personage. AS you know, your hospitality so overwhelmed me when I first came aboard that I fully forgot my mission and became engrossed in your learned disputation.
“ And how did this Herstraw realize that you were a messenger?” demanded the general, not in the least swayed by van Clynne’s flattery.
“ A good question, Sir William, one that I will defer to my assistant, as he is more familiar with that portion of the case.”
“ Because, General, Major William Herstraw was enrolled as an officer in your messenger service, and thus gained access to the comings and goings of all messengers.”