The French Prize by James L. Nelson Page A

Rumstick had discovered, to his surprise. Questions of how much power a federal government would wield in relation to the states, whether the Federalists wished for an American monarchy or the Democratic-Republicans following in Jefferson’s wake would bring the nation down in chaos were not topics for effeminate debate in some salon, but issues that would genuinely determine what sort of a nation rose from the ashes.
    There was a place for Ezra Rumstick, and it was not arguing in the fancy halls where the tables were covered in green baize and laid with silver writing sets. And just as he was coming to understand that, the French burst into a revolution of their own, to the near universal delight of all Americans, their former compagnon d’armes . Rumstick, like most citoyens of the United States, had cheered them on at first, seeing, correctly, that the French Revolution was a continuation of the spirit born in America.
    But soon the glorious revolution in France devolved into a bloody, chaotic affair, and Rumstick, like many of his countrymen, felt his enthusiasm turn to wariness and disgust. His support for the revolutionaries of France fell by degrees with each head that dropped into a wicker basket.
    Could the heads start rolling down Market Street in Philadelphia? To most it seemed impossible, but Ezra Rumstick had seen quite a bit of the true nature of men, even Americans, and he was not so sure. There had already been rioting a’plenty in America, with Jefferson and his followers standing in unwavering support of the Frenchies no matter how deplorable and bloody their behavior. So when his particular friend Isaac Biddlecomb was elected to the House of Representatives as a delegate from Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Ezra understood where his place would be. On the streets. In the alleys. In the shadows. Making certain that the heads did not roll.
    Keeping young Jack Biddlecomb alive and out of prison had become something of a sideline to his main concern.
    â€œI don’t care for this, Tillinghast, I tell you, I don’t,” Ezra said at last. “This business with Oxnard’s promoting Jack never did smell right. And now you throw Bolingbroke into the pot.”
    â€œJack’s a damnably fine seaman,” Tillinghast said. “Oxnard promotes him, he gets a good shipmaster, and gets to stick Isaac Biddlecomb’s nose in it. And some of that will splash onto Adams as well.”
    â€œI know,” Ezra said. “But it still don’t smell right. I think we better have a word with Master Bolingbroke.”
    Tillinghast smiled and stood. “Aye, aye, Captain,” he said, then turned and was gone. Bolingbroke, of course, would not come willingly. That was what accounted for Tillinghast’s smile, and his genuine enthusiasm for the task.

 
    7
    It had, in fact, been two years since Jack Biddlecomb and Jonah Bolingbroke trod the same deck, and bunked in the same forecastle, and gone at one another with fists and knives. Jack had not been a mate then. He had not even been Jack Biddlecomb then, and that was where the trouble had started, that time, at least.
    Jack had abandoned the name Jack Biddlecomb in Buenos Aires at the same time he had abandoned the leaking, half-rotten, hogging old bucket known as the Queen of the Sea , aboard which he had shipped in Charleston. He had not been overly optimistic about the Queeny , as she was known to those aboard her, based on the sight of her alone, the sagging and crooked ratlines, the white patches on her standing rigging where the cordage had been imperfectly tarred, like exposed bone on some sun-rotten corpse, the strands of oakum hanging like seaweed from her deck seams that all but assured a leaky, miserable time below.
    He was less enthusiastic still after meeting the mate, an inarticulate brute with one good eye and one wandering eye, neither of which would meet Jack’s when they spoke, so that Jack was not