"For a surety! Jimmy, I despise slavery. Yet, an honest man is forced to trust the evidence of this sense. I admit it: wage labor does demean far too many men. To my mind, the wild frontier represents the best possible compromise. A man doesn't mind brutal hard labor when he imposes it on himself, when the fruits of his labor grow on trees he owns."
"Tell the truth and shame the devil, lad. But I've been minding another man's fruit trees too long now. The frontier is for youth, not the bone-weary."
"No, it's not," Evan assured him. His teal eyes glittered with mischief. "Every man needs to go west, at least in his soul."(92)
...The destructive power of the blast surpassed anything Charbonnet had envisioned or ever witnessed. The explosion opened a huge hole in the bow, and the sea immediately rushed into this jagged maw. One skiff, just ahead of Charbonnet on the left, had edged in too close: He watched a flaming chunk of hull slam into a man's chest and kill him instantly.
The Dauntless Lady had been taken completely by surprise - even now it didn't appear that the skiffs had drawn very much attention from the panicked crew. Bright little fireflies appeard all around Charbonnet - his men striking lucifer matches. Moments later the little pinpoints of light gave way to orange spear tips of wind-whipped flame as their guncotton torches - green wood wrapped with nitrocellulose - ignited.
The ship's gunnels were low enough that the Partisan Rangers could easily throw their guncotton up onto the deck. A few hearty souls, emboldened by a generous ration of blackstrap, scaled up on dangling lines and tossed their torches higher up into the vulnerable rigging. Because the floundering ship was almost fully rigged, all three masts flying six sails in addition to extra jibs and a spanker at the stern, the fire spread with stunning rapidity, consuming masts, sails, lines, cables, ropes, spars, blocks, and tackles. Charbonnet saw one man plunge screaming from the ratlines, his clothing ablaze.
Soon enough came the gruesome part, the part Charbonnet found distasteful but unavoidable. The circling skiffs moved in on the rapidly sinking ship like sharks to a feeding frenzy. One by one, as the dazed survivors hit the water or worked to lower lifeboats, the crew of the Dauntless Lady were slaughtered.
The flaming ship abruptly rolled over on its starboard side, then went under with a huge, sucking roar and a surge of boiling foam. In the unnatural stillness that followed, broken only by an isolated shout or musket shot, Charbonnet watched the dark shapes of the skiffs, still circling like predators.
He knew this was a great victory for the Golden Circle plotters. With gold reserves for the new Federal paper currency critically short, this sinking would ensure near panic on Wall Street. It further threatened the financial stability and overall authority of the legitimate government.
But even caught flush in the elation of this coup, Charbonnet was struck by the sight of the huge torches turning the sea into an eerie, glassy, fire-sheening surface like molten lava - almost as if, he couldn't help thinking someone had opened up the earth and provided a glimpse into hell(171).
- John Edward Ames - The Golden Circle
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