Wake sat down on one of the immense roots and leaned back against the base of the tree as Newton emerged from his home with a broad smile on his face and a brown and gray jug in his hand.
Groaning, the old man sat down next to Wake and handed him the jug.
“These tired bones are needin’ to taste some of that ol’ Cuban rotgut rum, Peter Wake, so don’t be taking it all.”
Wake took a swig and handed it over to Newton, who tilted it back over his head and swallowed hard. Newton sounded anything but frail when he had finished. “Now I’m ready to hear what’s been doin’ in the war! Speak onward, Captain Peter Wake!”
Wake looked at the Gulf of Mexico in the far distance past Lacosta Island and reveled as the breeze, cool under the tree, cleansed his soul. He turned to see Newton regarding him intently, waiting. In a way, it was as if his father was there with him, now finally an equal, and waiting to hear a good story from the younger man for a change.
“Well, it was a good sea breeze like this one today, Mr. Newton. We were sailing in company with some other navy schooners north along the coast. Let’s see, you may know them, there was the . . . ”
Wake’s story continued on its course as the afternoon turned into the evening, and the jug eventually emptied.
13
Honor
It had been a bittersweet time at Useppa Island for Wake. He stayed ashore at Sofira’s Thomaston’s dwelling for two days, mainly watching over Linda as she lay in the cot, alternately sweating and shivering. He was grateful that she was getting stronger but anguished that he would soon have to leave her again. There was no other alternative—he would have to do his duty as a naval officer, though it angered him that he was unable to stay and protect her.
While Wake was ashore, Rork handled the routine of the schooner’s crew and their interaction with the other inhabitants of the islands in the area. Fresh fish and some fruit from the locals were a welcome addition to the sailors’ provisions, which had long been exhausted of anything tasting better than rancid and sinewy salt pork and beef.
Finally, at a humid sunrise on a Sunday in the third week of September, the crew weighed anchor and sailed away on the morning land breeze. The men on deck were silent as they went through the evolutions of getting the ship under way, watching their captain and slowly shaking their heads in sympathy with him as he grimly obeyed his duty and left his sick wife to recover without him. The breeze was light that day and the St. James ghosted away slowly, taking what seemed like an eternity for the jungle-clad island to drop out of sight behind them.
Wake stood at the stern railing and watched the crude thatched hut on the top of the hill until it was indistinguishable from the green trees around it. His mind was focused on those last moments with Linda, when he had knelt beside her cot, holding her to him as close as he dared in her frail condition.
“You’d better go now, Peter. It’s getting light outside.”
“I hate the thought of leaving you.”
“I know that, dear. Believe me that I know that. But your staying here won’t accomplish anything. I’m recovering my strength faster now. I’ll be fine in a few days. Sofira’ll take care of me. Don’t worry. You need to concentrate on St. James and her crew now.”
“I love you so much, Linda. I know there’ll come a day when we won’t have to say good-bye to each other like this anymore.”
“I know, darling. I love you too. Enough to let you do your duty. You need to go, Peter. Please don’t drag this out. I just don’t have the strength to handle that.”
So he left her in the half-gloom and dripping dew of the early morning, more because of her insistence than from his own volition. The scene passed through his mind over and over again as the schooner slid farther away from her on the ebb tide. Not a man in the crew said a word during the time the island was still in sight. It was if they all shared his grief and could not trust themselves to speak, fearing that doing so would lose their precarious grip on self-control. Yellow fever could reach out and take any of them at any time during the season. It was with a sense of quiet relief that Boca Grande was passed to starboard and the open sea was entered. The endless horizon symbolized a freedom from the travails left behind ashore, and the sailors of the naval schooner St. James literally breathed easier once they saw it.
***
Two weeks later, the St. James swung on her hook three miles offshore of Key West, waiting for the yellow fever quarantine to be lifted and the yellow jack signal flag to descend from the mast at the naval wharf in the harbor. Water and provisions were running very short, even with the half rations Wake had ordered, and all hands watched the shore every day for any sign they could return.
Wake’s report of the action at the Timucuahatchee River had been taken into the squadron offices by the harbor guard cutter, handed over to it by boathook as they lay to windward of the schooner. Receipt of the report was acknowledged by the squadron chief yeoman in a memorandum, which also included an advisement that the quarantine would probably be lifted in a few days and the admiral wanted St. James to stay where she was
