Point of Honor, стр. 50
Wake saw the need instantly and agreed, speaking to the man and a petty officer standing next to him.
“Yes, of course. This petty officer will arrange for your boats to be towed.”
Wake sighed and looked at his pocket watch, surprised to see they had less than an hour before dawn. The tide was now past slack high with no current showing in the river, but that would soon change. They had to get out quickly. The refugees, confused and not certain this was the right choice, were milling about at the dock. Rork could be heard coming down the path with more of them.
A sudden disturbance close by shifted Wake’s attention to a refugee man cursing and assaulting someone. The attacker called out to the men around him.
“That’s the bastard, right there, that led them inta our river! That limey bastard gave us away ta the Yankees an’ caused all o’ this. I’ll kill ya for bringin’ the war to my family here. We came here last year to get away from it, ya greedy bastard.”
Two sailors pulled the fisherman off Young, who cowered on the ground after receiving several blows from the man. The fisherman’s family looked on with blank faces in the lantern glow as he was led away to where the other prisoners sat. When Young saw Wake, he got up and stood in front of him.
“You’ve got to protect me from these people, Lieutenant. These evil miscreants want to kill me.”
“Young, you stay with the sailors on the ships over there. Just remember the danger you felt here tonight and don’t come back.”
Wake got Rork to herd the refugees onto the ships at the docks. While he was doing so, Rork explained that of the forty-two people that lived at the mouth of the river, thirty-five had elected to leave with the navy. The other seven fled up the road to the interior on horses taken from the other homes. Rork said the refugees advised him that there was a militia company stationed ten miles away up the road and that the refugees were now afraid they would be captured as traitors by the militia before they could escape.
Wake’s voice came out grim. “It’s time to depart right now. If they left when we had our first confrontation, then it won’t be long until that militia arrives. All refugees go in the ships’ boats. They can get out then even if the schooners are hard aground. Cast off the vessels at the dock and get ready to fire the depot.”
“Aye aye, sir. We better be quicker than an Anglican through Derry, ’cause I see the first light acomin’ now!”
Dawn was beginning to be seen and heard as the sky took on a grayish tint and the marsh day birds started their calls. The ebb tide could now be identified by the swirling eddies around the pilings of the dock and the small boats trailing off downstream. Cursing rose to the dominant sound as the sailors pushed the sloop and the schooner off from the main structure of the dock, while other bluejackets torched a trail of gunpowder leading to some turpentine and lantern oil that had been splashed over the dock and barn.
A flame rushed up the pine column of the depot barn and ignited the thatch of the roof. The fire spread in all directions, producing billows of black smoke that rolled up and away from the scene. The glare of light reached far out into the river, illuminating the civilians and sailors in a momentary tableau before the light flickered down. The seamen and refugees grew pensive as they watched the crackling of the flames. The sounds of the fire roaring ever louder scared the morning birds into silence. Patches of flaming thatch soared above the flotilla as it drifted down toward the first bend in the river.
The ships’ boats, even though overloaded with the Floridians and their most valued personal belongings, moved faster than the larger vessels as their oars bit into the water and propelled them with the current. The refugees’ small fishing boats were towed three and four in line astern of the ships, like adolescents following their elders away from danger. Sailors aboard the sloop and schooner readied spars to push off the upcoming shoals. Sails were hoisted in an effort to catch the faint zephyrs coming off the swampy shoreline. Everyone in the flotilla watched the northern bank, where the settlement’s dwellings clung along the river—the refugees taking a last look at their homes and the sailors looking out for any signs of the Confederate militia’s arrival.
A boom from the mouth of the river startled the atmosphere. A second boom was followed by gun shots and a yell from around the bend. A staccato rash of pops and bangs came resounding upriver, echoing between the banks as the flotilla of the sloop, the schooner, and the three small boats made their way around the bend. There they saw the gauntlet that lay ahead of them. Wake, on the schooner, took a deep breath and pointed toward the musket flashes among the homes on the bank, yelling to Rork over on the sloop.
“Rebel militia! Get everyone behind cover of some sort. Lay your fire into the Rebels on the bank as soon as you can. We must protect the refugees in the boats! Get the boats on our port sides.”
“Aye, Captain! We’ll be firing now, but the boats are too far ahead!”
A fusillade of musket shots came from the deck of the schooner as another blasted out from the sloop. Sporadic shots came from the boats as sailors and refugees fired over the gunwales to protect the men rowing. Small clouds of gun smoke hung above the vessels in the strengthening light. From close by a hut on shore a volley of shots whizzed around