Chapter One: Captain Israel Daniel Dickenson The Sloop-of-War Enterprise
"In every revolution, there's one man with a vision...." Captain James T. Kirk, Star Trek
Diane Carey
Diane knows a little more than most of her colleagues about ships and the rigors of command. In addition to being an accomplished author of science fiction and historical fiction, she is also a seafaring type, preferring older vessels. In fact, Diane braved the lash of early winter, crewing aboard the 1893 Schooner Lettie G. Howard and arriving at New York City's docks. She stopped rigging and cooking just long enough to complete the following story.
This summer, Diane adds her own vision to the Star Trek universe with a new series of novels, starting with Wagon Train to the Stars and introducing one and all to the U.S.S. Challenger.
Diane's contributions to Star Trek extend back more than a decade, including the giant novel Final Frontier, which gave readers a glimpse at George Kirk, father to James. She has written six Original Series novels, four novels set during The Next Generation (including the first original story), six adaptations and one original Deep Space Nine story, and two Voyager novelizations.
With her husband, Greg Brodeur, Diane continues to whip up exciting stories, and shrewd readers will detect the loving attention paid to the starships, making them vital characters along with their crew.
Diane adds:
Special thanks to Captain Austin Becker and the Sloop-of-war Providence of Rhode Island, replica of John Paul Jones's fighting ship, for their help and good works in preserving Revolutionary War history.
My admiration and gratitude also go to Captain Erick Tichonuk, First Mate Len Ruth, and all the crew at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum of Basin Harbor, Vermont, for their hospitality and advice, and their faithful tending of the replica Gunboat Philadelphia. The original Philadelphia resides at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Another of Benedict Arnold's gunboats, believed to be the Spitfire, has recently been found at the bottom of Lake Champlain. As a sailor of historic ships, I convey my applause to the team recovering this national treasure, and hope she soon rises to receive the tribute she deserves.
The Veil at Valcour
"Are the Americans all asleep and tamely giving up their liberties?" Benedict Arnold, 1775
Dawn, October 11, 1776
"That's the signal gun! Row for it, men! Royal Navy in sight! Heave! Heave!"
Frosted orange leaves roared across the chop. Wind snatched away the coxun's orders. Beneath me a dirty bateau clawed upward, punching through whitecaps against a bitter wind. An hour ago the wind had been at my back. Now, scratching down the Adirondack hemlocks and spruces, it chipped at my nose and cheeks and froze the moisture in my eyes.
"How near are we? Will we see the Continental Navy soon?"
"Heave! Few minutes. Hard over, larboard! Heave!"
Black lake, black land -- the large double-ended bateau muscled up on its right side as if hauled by a winch! I let out a strangled shout and became intimate with the gnawing water at my left elbow. Everything was so black, so dark, that I entertained a brief crazed fear that the men in this boat were the only Americans here and we would face the British ships all alone.
The coxun's fingers dug at my collar as he pulled me back to my seat. "Keep a grip on them fascines there, your honor."
"What happened?"
"Tiller's over. We're coming into the strait."
"It's the devil's own dark! How could you know to turn?"
"Wind dropped. We're in the lee of Valcour Island. We'll meet up with the American navy any minute."
While the boat hurled itself vertical on the unhappy chop, then skated sickeningly downward, I sat upon a prickle of hardwood saplings, twice as long as I was tall, stripped of every branch and tightly bound into nine- or ten-inch bundles so that they were almost tree trunks again. Five of these bundles, a great weight indeed at nearly two hundred pounds each, were strapped across the bateau's wide beam, and caused the boat to wobble and struggle horridly. Along with those, piles of evergreen boughs with warty bark and needles assaulted my legs with every shiver. What could a navy want with trees?
I strained to see into the darkness, but might as well have had a mask over my eyes. The shore of New York, on our left until now, remained invisible. Around us, Lake Champlain was deeply cloaked.
Then, out of the night, came a voice blasting on the wind. "Hands to the tops'l sheets and braces! Bring the tops'l yard abeam! Don't worry, boys, we possess the caution of youth! Other words, none!"
A huge dark mass surged out of the night, angling over my head as if I'd stepped onto a porch. Swinging in a wide arch came a thirty-foot wooden spear with four enormous triangular sails lancing the sky like great teeth. A ship's bowsprit, inches away!
"Oh!" I dropped back and kissed the water again.
Moonless night had hidden an entire ship!
The ship's sides were mounted with bundles of cut evergreens, a shaggy fence making the vessel into a giant bottlebrush. What an otherworldly sight! Camouflage?
"Hard over, Henry!" the voice again came as our bateau rowed abreast of the massive shuddering object. If the boat and the ship came together on the same wave, we'd be crushed. "Port brace, haul away! Lavengood, Thorsby, Barrette, man the bunts and clews. LaMay, show them the lines, quick, man! Barclay and Rochon, lend Hardie a hand! McCrae, your brace is fouled in the spruces. Don't hurt your hands. McCrae, do you hear me? Stephen!"
Black hull planks bumped the bateau. Bracketing his mouth, the coxun shouted up. "On deck! Heave us a painter!"
High above, a wall of angular gray sail snapped in anger. Then, flap, flap...crack! -- the wind filled it! The ship heeled hard, bit the water, and leaped beyond us.
"Sheet her in and stand by! Larboard, slack your sheet! Clew the tops'l! McCrae, what do you think you're doing? Rochon, I said stand by on that sheet!"
That wind-muffled voice -- did I recognize it? Or was it wishfulness after three cargo boats and two fishing smacks?
Just above me, a lantern flickered to life, dancing on the night. Its fiendish glow changed everything. Hemp ropes veined a hundred feet into the sky. Two great wooden strakes carried a huge sail that swung like a swan's wing.
From an unseen hand, a rope snaked out to the bateau, falling a foot from me. The coxun snatched it up, and twisted it to a cleat, and thus we wheeled sidewise toward the surging wooden wall.
"Is this the right ship?" I called. "I'm seeking Israel Daniel Dickenson, aboard the Betsy. Or is it the George? I've got conflicting information on the ship's name."
"We don't call our ships that way." The coxun grasped a spruce bow fixed to the ship and with superhuman power dragged the bateau close, and we skated an inch from disaster. "Get up there, man, before we're beat to splinters!"
As the bateau heaved upward, I stood and put one foot on the bateau's rail. "I'll break my neck!"
"Jump!" the coxun bellowed, "or you'll have seventy ton of sloop in your gullet!"
With one toe I pushed upward, hands scratching for a grip. Boughs rustled, my cloak and tricorn hat disappeared, and I was carried up and away, a fly clinging to a mule's black belly!
"Fend off!" the coxun called. Oars blunted the ship's sides. The boat roached away.
"Heaven help me!" With me riding her wet flank, the ship clawed forward and defied New York's western shore with her long bowsprit. Over me the hostile sail whistled. Above it, a smaller square sail crawled into a bundle and screamed on its yards. I saw all this in an instant -- lines snapped, blocks creaked, water sprayed, boughs whipped, and the yard squawked like an enraged pelican trying to snap me up.
Again, that voice. "Hands to the larboard side, for God's sake!"
A force grabbed me from above. I lost my legs. My body went straight outward on the wind. Headfirst I plunged through the bundled branches and flopped face-first upon a tilted deck. Pressing my hands to the planks, I twisted to look up.
Above me, a narrow man-shaped shadow loomed. "Get those fascines over to Philadelphia and mounted on. Should've been well done by midnight. Give them to Blake, he's the mate. Or Captain Rue himself. Tell them to rig their canopy and hurry! The wind's from the north!"
I rolled over and choked, "Daniel! Thank Heaven!"
The shadow's shoulders lowered some, arms out at his sides. His head tipped forward. Against the bleak sky, shoulder-length unbound hair flew wildly. "Adam Ghent, that's not you on my deck."
He offered no hand to help me up. His unglazed anger was visible even in the dark.
But wait -- the sky had lightened. As I drew to my feet and braced my legs, I could make out men around me doing feverish work, sawing, tying, hauling lines in a clutter of iron tools, round shot, wadding, tackles, blocks, piles of rope, and sponge rammers. A boy of about ten years used a bellows to keep a stone hearth glowing inside a formation of bricks. There were no uniforms. The men wore anything from muslin to buckskin, some with wool vests and tricorns or any manner of hat they could construct, and buff or black breeches. They didn't look like a navy.
I stood upon a deck that took up the front half of the ship. On my left was a snarly-looking black cannon. On my right stood a set of ladder steps leading up to another deck, a higher one, which scooped back to the stern. I could just make out more men up there, minding a huge tiller.
Through the shaggy fence of branches, I saw another ship on the water, almost as large as this one, with two quill-shaped yard...
