Light Looks Back

A revolutionary war story set on Lake Champlain in October 1776, told as a short story. The Tub, the Deacon, Sprout and the crew are made up. However, the Battle of Valcour Island was real, and so was the foggy night the little American fleet rowed away from it. The gunboat Philadelphia also sank that day. She was raised in 1935, and in her 250th year the Smithsonian is still cleaning and studying her. This story imagines a young rower from a New Hampshire farm on one of her sister boats.

Forty Yards

The British ship was so close that I could smell her supper.

Salt pork. Wood smoke. Wet wool. Meanwhile our oars dipped and rose with rags tied around them, and the fog sat on Lake Champlain like a wet sheep on a fence. In fact, I could not see the end of my own oar. Still, I could hear two men on that ship talking above us.

"Cold as a church," one said.

"Go to sleep, Billy. At first light we finish them."

In the stern of our gondola, the Deacon kept one hand on the tiller and the other on the lantern. The tin hood was down. Only a thin line of yellow light leaked out the back, low on the water, for the boat behind us to follow. Ahead of us, I could see the same thin line on the boat in front. Besides those two lines, nothing in the world was lit.

"Hood stays down, Sprout," the Deacon breathed. "Light looks back. Never forward."

I did not understand him that night. However, I understood him three days later, at Crown Point, in a long line of men outside a surgeon's tent.

Why I Tell This Revolutionary War Story

I came from a hill farm near Concord, New Hampshire. We had eleven sheep, a thousand rocks, and a roof that leaked over the bed. Pa died of a fever two winters before. After that, Ma ran the farm with her jaw set, and my brother Eli and I ran after her.

In the spring of 1776, Eli's name went up on the town list for the militia. Eli could plow a line so straight the neighbors came to look at it. He could also fix a roof and calm a cow. I could not plow straight to save my life. On the other hand, I could row a boat across Turkey Pond faster than any boy in town, and I could hit a squirrel at forty paces.

So one of us went. The night before, Ma cut my hair with the sheep shears, and she cried harder than she did at Pa's burying.

Most folks want a revolutionary war story full of generals and fine speeches. Of course those stories matter. This one is smaller. It is about a flat boat, a hooded light, and a quiet man who knew exactly what to show and what to hide.

The Boat Like a Bread Pan

We built the boats at Skenesborough, down at the bottom of the lake. That summer was hot, and the black flies ate us alive. Carpenters came up from the coast because the pay was big. Next to them, soldiers who had never built a chicken coop sawed and hammered all day.

Our gondola went up in a little over two weeks. She was flat on the bottom like a bread pan, about fifty feet long, with one mast and two square sails. When the wind was wrong, which was often, we rowed. She carried a big gun in the bow and two smaller ones in the middle, plus little swivel guns on the rails. In fact, a man could almost step from the water onto her deck.

"She floats like a washtub," said Ox, who was the biggest man on the boat. So from then on, we called her the Tub.

One nail in her floor went in crooked and missed the beam below. Still, nobody had time to pull it. Instead, we all learned to step around it in the dark.

The Deacon

Our captain was the Deacon. Back in Connecticut, he had been a carpenter and a deacon of his church. He was tall and gray, with big careful hands, and he read the Psalms at night by the lantern. Besides that, he gave every one of us a nickname on the first day, because he said a crew remembers short names better in a fight.

Ox was Ox. Hatch, the mate, was Hatch because he was always shutting things: doors, lids, other people's mouths. Hatch was sharp and quick and wanted to be a captain more than he wanted to eat.

The Deacon looked at me for a long time that first day. Then he said, "Sprout. You'll sleep in the stern, by the lantern."

After that, nobody else touched the lantern. It was a dark lantern, tin, with a horn window and a hood that slid down over it. The Deacon also hung a square of old sail beside my bed in the stern. He said it kept the wind off the flame.

"Light talks," he told me while I trimmed the wick. "It tells the whole lake where you are. So you only show it to the one who needs it."

Hatch heard that and laughed. "Church talk," he said. "Lanterns are for seeing, Deacon."

"Some are," said the Deacon. Then he went back to his Psalms.

Waiting in the Bay

All of September, we waited. We rowed out, rowed back, and drilled on the guns until Ox could load the bow gun in his sleep. Meanwhile the nights got longer and the pay did not come.

"Four months," Hatch said one evening, counting on his fingers. "Not a shilling since July. Congress builds boats fast enough. Paying for them is slower."

"Congress has a war to pay for," the Deacon said.

"So do I. I've got a wife in Exeter and a landlord with a long memory."

Most nights, the Deacon wrote letters for the men who could not write. He wrote to wives and mothers and one girl in Salem who never wrote back. Then he read each letter aloud, so the man could hear his own words. Nobody laughed at anybody during letters. That was the Deacon's other rule.

I never asked him to write to Ma. Instead, I wrote my own, short and plain, and I signed every one of them Eli.

The Eleventh of October

By October, the leaves on the shore were red and gold, and the water had turned cold enough to hurt your hands. We waited in a half circle behind Valcour Island, between the island and the New York shore. Our little fleet was ready. At least, we told ourselves that.

On the morning of October 11, the British came down the lake on a north wind. They also had bigger ships, more guns, and real sailors. Still, they had to turn and beat back up into the wind to reach us. That was the whole plan. Make them come the hard way.

I cannot tell the fight well. Then again, nobody who was in it can. Every revolutionary war story I have heard since makes it sound neat. However, it was not neat. Mostly, I remember noise so loud it came up through my feet. Smoke rolled over the water until the sun went brown. I carried powder. Then I rowed when the Deacon needed to swing the bow. Meanwhile Ox sang hymns, very badly and very loud, because he said it kept his hands steady.

The schooner Royal Savage ran aground and burned. Later, the gondola Philadelphia was hit low near her bow. She did not sink at once. Instead, she settled slowly, like a tired horse lying down. About an hour after the guns stopped, she went under. Before that, boats took off her men. We pulled two of them onto the Tub, soaked and shaking, and the Deacon gave one of them his own coat.

The Gap in the Line

At dark the British pulled back and made a line across the south end of the bay. They meant to finish us at first light. Everybody knew it, including us.

The officers met on the General's galley. When Hatch came back, his face looked like a plate somebody had dropped.

"We're leaving," he said. "Tonight. Through their line, in the fog. Single file. Every boat shows one hooded lantern at the stern, so the boat behind can follow. No talking. Rags on the oars."

"Through them?" Ox said. "Not around?"

"There's a gap by the shore," Hatch said. "Moreover, the fog is our friend tonight. That's the only friend we've got."

So we tore our spare shirts into strips and wrapped the oars where they rubbed. Even the two Philadelphia men helped, though their hands shook. At seven o'clock, the galley Trumbull went first. The gondolas followed her. Our Tub was near the back, with the bigger galleys behind us.

The Deacon slid the hood down until only a hair of light showed astern.

"That's too thin," Hatch whispered. "They'll lose us back there."

"It's enough," the Deacon said.

"It's not your choice alone."

"Tonight it is," the Deacon said. Hatch went quiet, but I saw his jaw work in the dark.

Voices on the Water

We passed so close to the British ships that their talk came down on us like rain.

"My mum thinks I'm in Portsmouth," a young voice said. "Safe as houses."

"Then write and tell her you're on a lake. Go to sleep, Billy."

They sounded like Ox and Hatch. Honestly, they sounded like boys from home. After all, nobody on that ship was looking for us. They were tired, too, and they were cold, and they thought the night was already over.

I held my breath for so long my chest hurt. Beside me, Ox pulled his oar so gently that it barely made a ripple. Behind me, the Deacon did not move at all, except his thumb on the lantern hood. Twice he pushed it down a little more.

Then, slowly, the voices were behind us. Somewhere off to our left, the burning Royal Savage made an orange smear in the fog. Ahead, there was only the thin yellow line of the boat in front. So we followed it, stroke after stroke, all night long.

Schuyler Island

By morning, the wind had turned against us. We rowed until our hands bled, and finally we crawled up to Schuyler Island to rest and patch. By then, the Tub was leaking at three seams. Therefore we bailed with buckets, hats and a cooking pot, and Ox plugged the worst hole with a blanket.

Around noon, I slipped behind the rocks to be alone for a minute. That was when I heard the Major.

The Major came from one of the galleys. He had a good coat and a bad cough, and he carried the General's orders like hot coals.

"Hatch says you kept your light too dark last night," the Major said. "He says the boat behind nearly ran onto the rocks."

"I showed the boat behind what it needed," the Deacon said. "We were forty yards from a British ship. Any more, and the whole line goes."

"Hatch wants your boat."

"Hatch has wanted my boat since August."

The Major coughed. "Listen to me. The General is sinking any boat that can't keep up. If yours slows us down, she goes to the bottom, and you answer for her guns. There's more. At Crown Point there'll be a muster. Congress pays for men it can count. The surgeon looks at every man for the pox, stripped to the waist, before pay and before anybody signs on again. Every man on your roll stands in that line, or nobody on your boat sees a penny."

After that, there was a long quiet. Water slapped the rocks.

"They'll stand," the Deacon said at last. "Every man who is on my roll."

I did not know then why that sentence scared me. Even so, I stayed behind those rocks until my legs went numb.

Split Rock

On the thirteenth the wind swung around and filled the British sails. Soon they were coming down the lake fast, and we were crawling.

Near Split Rock they caught the back of our fleet. The galley Washington was too slow and too broken, and she had to give up. The rest of us ran for the Vermont shore. Finally, the General led the small boats into a shallow bay where the big British ships could not follow.

We ran the Tub up on the gravel. After that, we carried off the muskets, the powder, the two Philadelphia men, and anything else we could lift. Then the Deacon stood on the beach with a torch and set fire to the boat he had built with his own careful hands.

He saved only one thing. The lantern.

That night we walked through the woods to Crown Point. Ox carried one of the Philadelphia men on his back the whole way and sang to him, badly. Meanwhile Hatch walked up front, close to the officers, as if he were already a captain.

"Don't fret about Hatch," Ox told me somewhere in the dark. "A man who wants a boat that bad ought to build one. Besides, the Deacon has answered to worse than Hatch."

"Who?"

"His own wife, for one." Ox laughed so softly that the man on his back did not wake. "And God, every Sunday. Hatch is small change after that."

The Muster

At Crown Point, the muster came the next morning, just as the Major had said.

The men stood in a long line outside the surgeon's tent. One by one, they pulled off their shirts. The surgeon, a short man with ink on his fingers, looked at each chest and each back. Then a clerk read each name off the roll. The sun was weak, and the wind off the lake was cold. Still, I was sweating.

Hatch stood two men ahead of me. He already had his shirt half off.

"Come on, boy," he said over his shoulder. "Nothing you've got that we haven't seen."

My fingers went to my top button. I could not make them move. Suddenly the whole summer felt like a story I had told too long. At the same time, my face was burning. All I could think about was Ma's sheep shears and Eli's straight furrow and how far it was to Concord.

Then a big careful hand closed on my arm.

"This one is mine," the Deacon said to the surgeon. "Going home today with my letters. Strike the name."

The surgeon shrugged, since one boy more or less made no difference to him. Afterward, the clerk drew a line through something on the roll, and the Deacon walked me away from the tent without a word.

Light Looks Back

He stopped where the road bent south, behind a pile of cut logs. There, he took a folded paper out of his coat and pressed it into my hand.

Eli Webb, of Concord, New Hampshire, discharged. His time served. Sent home with letters.

"You're not on my roll, Sprout," he said quietly. "Eli is. And Eli is going home."

My mouth would not work. Finally, I asked, "How long have you known?"

"Since the first day at Skenesborough." The Deacon almost smiled. "You told me your name was Eli in your mother's voice. Why do you think I hung that sail by your bed? It was never for the flame."

He handed me the lantern. The hood was down, the same as on the lake. Only a thin line of light leaked out of the back.

"Light looks back," he said. "Never forward. You show it only to the one who needs it to get home. Now go home, Ellie."

Nobody had called me Ellie since June, when Ma cut off my braid with the sheep shears. I had almost forgotten the name was mine.

So I walked south and then east, toward the hills and the eleven sheep and the roof that leaked over the bed. When I looked back from the top of the first rise, the Deacon was still standing by the logs.

He lifted one hand. Then he turned around and walked back toward the line of men, where he still had to answer for a burned boat.