“Thank you, sir. I’ll pass that along as well. Oh, sir?”
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
“I heard Inconstant was at the naval station, sir.” Wake thought the moment opportune and decided to press it. “I was hoping to see her but the excise cutter told us not to enter and to come to St. John’s instead. I hope she’s all right and not in need of serious repairs.”
Warner looked him in the eyes and said, “No, she’s not there, Lieutenant. Your information is incorrect. You were asked to go to St. John’s because the dock water at the station is fouled with a sunken barge. I hope to see you tomorrow evening. Now I must beg your leave.”
He walked out of the room leaving Wake standing there perplexed. Five minutes later a steward delivered the official invitation, addressed to Gardiner.
***
As he sat in his easy chair in the great cabin looking out over the anchorage at St. John’s, Gardiner’s curiosity was piqued. Maybe the Brits—past masters at subterfuge—really were developing some new type of engine. What better place to work on it than in a sleepy backwater of the West Indies.
“Well, Peter, I admit this whole thing is getting curiouser and curiouser. Go tonight and take Laporte and an ensign with you. According to the invite, they are arranging lodging, so stay there and return tomorrow morning. I want a full report of all you learn in writing by noon. We’ll send it off in Williams’ diplo’ pouch.”
“Aye, aye, sir. But this Williams fellow worries me. He seems unstable. I’m not convinced his information is true and not sure what his motive is.”
“But what if it’s true? If they have a ship that can go that fast, Washington will want to know. See what you can find by just quietly asking around.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“And Lieutenant Wake . . .”
“Be careful.”
4
A Moonlight Stroll
The ride was long and bumpy. Wake, Laporte, and Ensign Kevin Brogan sat crammed together in a carriage that had seen far better days, apparently in the seventeen-hundreds. The driver proudly explained that it had been the carriage Admiral Lord Nelson used on the island eighty-six years earlier when he was a young captain commanding a frigate. Brogan, a fresh-faced young man of Irish descent, quipped that he hoped the springs weren’t as bad then, “for the sake of Nelson’s sainted arse.” Laporte, the ship’s gunnery officer and resident ladies’ man, brushed a brown curl of hair back in place and retorted he couldn’t care less about Nelson’s arse, he was worried about his own.
After a two-hour ride through the interior hill country they arrived at the village of All Saints, in the geographic center of the island where each of the pie-shaped parishes joined. A change of horses later they were once again on their way, arriving at Falmouth on the south coast at mid-afternoon. The driver pointed out sights along the way, but the dust and jarring dampened the passengers’ enthusiasm for such tourist chatter. Then the driver swung left off the road onto a path that went straight up a high hill, saying that he had a sight to show them they would appreciate and they would return to the main road later.
Horses exhaling loudly with the strain, the carriage made its way past Clarence House, where the Duke of Clarence once stayed, and onto the rounded top of Shirley Hill, near a decayed fortification. There the driver stopped the carriage and suggested that the Americans might want to disembark and stretch their legs, taking a moment to walk to the edge and look down to the west at a little cove.
Laporte was the first to do so and whistled in surprise. Wake and Brogan joined him afterward, standing there stunned as the driver sauntered over and said he thought they would enjoy the view.
Spread out four hundred eighty feet below them was a hidden cove, off the main bay of English Harbour. At the entrance were three forts and around the cove was clustered the famous naval station of Antigua, commonly called Nelson’s Dockyard ever since that icon of the Royal Navy was stationed there. It was an unexpected, startling, and magnificent sight.
“Perfect defensive position. Look at the interlocking gun bearings,” observed Laporte.
“And completely hidden from seaward,” observed Wake as he scanned the cove and English Harbour for any sign of Inconstant or any other large warship. All he saw was the excise cutter and a small gunboat.
The driver described the various forts and villages in view, adding that there were even more defensive positions that couldn’t be seen and that Antigua had never been captured. He also added that most forts had not been manned since 1850, and that only a small remnant of the 29th Worchester Infantry Regiment was still on the island. Most had been shipped home the year before.
Wake thought about what he was seeing. And not seeing. The driver was a civilian employee of the naval station who had taken them out of the way to get a bird’s eye view of the station. No large warship was in sight. If there was anything to be hidden the man wouldn’t have taken them there. He scanned again, paying close attention to the docks.
Evidently nothing was there, he decided, then paused, wondering if it was all part of an elaborate ruse and the speed ship was there, simply camouflaged?
***
Wake bowed slightly to Captain Warner as diffused late afternoon sunlight came through the open doors of the dining room from the verandah. “Thank you again, sir, for the very kind invitation. Captain Gardiner sends his most sincere regrets that he cannot attend.”
“It is we who regret that Captain Gardiner was not able to come, Lieutenant. We were looking forward to making his acquaintance,” said Warner smoothly. His executive officer, Commander Stark, stood next to him with a grim face that Wake realized was apparently his usual appearance. Stark, like, Warner, was an older man and didn’t
