Date: Mon, 16 May 2005 15:21:33 -0400
From: edcwriter@yahoo.com
Subject: FOR GOD & COUNTRY - 1

FOR GOD & COUNTRY - 1

Copyright 2005 by Carl Mason and Ed Collins

All rights reserved.  Other than downloading one copy for strictly personal
enjoyment, no part of this story may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, except for reviews, without
the written permission of the authors.  However based on real events and
places, "For God & Country" is strictly fictional.  Any resemblance to
actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.  As in real life, however, the sexual themes unfold
gradually.  If you would like to read other Mason-Collins stories, you
might turn to "Out of the Rubble," "Castle Margarethen," "The Priest and
the Pauper," and "High Plains Doctor" which are archived in Nifty's
"Historical" section.  Comments on the story are appreciated and may be
addressed to the authors at edcwriter@yahoo.com.

"For God and Country" is much indebted to a long out-of-print work titled
"Ask No Quarter" by George Marsh (Sun Dial Press, 1946).  In many ways, it
is an "alternative" retelling of parts of that grand story.  To be sure,
most of the content is unique to this yarn.

This story contains descriptions of sexual contact between males, both
adults and teenagers.  As such, it is homoerotic fiction designed for the
personal enjoyment of legal, hopefully mature, adults.  If you are not of
legal age to read such material, if those in power and/or those whom you
trust treat it as illegal, or if it would create unresolvable moral
dilemmas in your life, please leave.  Finally, remember that maturity
generally demands that anything other than safe sex is sheer insanity!


CHAPTER 1

(Newport, Rhode Island, 1775)

A sturdy young lad sat of the end of a wharf watching the last rays of the
setting sun over the fort on Goat Island and Conanicut beyond.  Only
sixteen, he was already built like an eighteen year-old - and a brawny one
at that.  Eyes as blue as the deep water ocean that stretched just beyond
the town gazed over Narragansett Bay, his home.  Long golden hair fell down
over a tattered lockram shirt.  Beyond it and worn canvas shorts, he wore
nothing.  He sat quietly in the warm air, taking in the beauty, his thick
thighs drawn up under him, his heavy, muscular arms hooked around his
calves.

However handsome, however conscious of the great beauty around him, the
youth was desperately lonely and increasingly frustrated.  He remembered
his loving young parents who were torn from him by smallpox when he was but
eight years old.  His foster parents were good people, but they were also
simple folk whose energies were fully consumed in surviving.  Hugh received
adequate food and shelter, but they were able to do little to feed his deep
need for warm, expressive love - or the need of an extremely bright lad to
learn more about the world beyond his immediate horizons.  Actually, his
poverty separated him from some of his peers, for those children in Newport
who had educational opportunities were, by and large, well-to-do.  His
poverty also separated him from other peers, for his life involved rising
with the sun, working, and retiring near exhaustion on most nights.
Moreover, he was reaching that point in life where he was aware that little
more awaited him.  In truth, he didn't know exactly what he wanted.  He
just knew that it wasn't limited to a life that focused on mere survival.
At 16, his heart and his mind already stretched beyond the little frame
shack on the Cove with its diamond-shaped windowpanes and the fireplace at
the end of the main room.  Mother Patience's fish and vegetable stews, her
chowders, and her rye and Injun bread, fed his body, but more -
considerably more - was needed to feed his soul.

Hugh sat alone - most of the boys he knew sitting with their girls on other
wharves.  Since he was 14 or so, the unlettered lad had known, albeit
intuitively, that he didn't share ALL of their interests, but it hadn't
torn him apart.  His one close buddy, Jeremy Stuart, whom he known since
coming to Newport at age eight, respected his physical prowess, especially
when it came to swimming.  Nor could another Newport youth spear a
swordfish with his skill or bring down a goose out of a leaden autumnal sky
with such accuracy.  The others were too engaged in their own young lives,
especially in their new obsession, to give his absence much heed.  No, as
yet it hadn't torn him apart, though it hadn't left him unscathed either.
He had his moments - moments, for instance, when he wondered why he felt
nothing in the presence of the town's girls.  His buddies right slobbered
in their presence, blushing, shuffling their feet, competing to see what
they could do for Prudence or Content or Becky.  As the girls became aware
of Hugh's muscular body and good looks, as they saw the sunny smiles he
bestowed on Jeremy - as they stood near him after a race when he climbed
victoriously out of the Bay clad in nothing but his shorts - it was obvious
enough that they WANTED those deep blue eyes to notice them.  Other than
for courtesy's sake, however, they never did.  Yes, he had moments.  He
felt the devil's hot breath, for instance, as his eyes stripped those
shorts off Jeremy after a race and, in his mind's eye, he reached out and
touched a heavy brown arm or, even bolder, rested his hand on his buddy's
muscular buttocks.  And sometimes at night when lying on his pallet, he
imagined Jeremy - or some other lad - lying beside him and went
further... much further...before his cum exploded between straining
fingers.

On Sunday, he sat next to Mother Patience on the benches given over to the
poor at the Second Baptist Church and listened to the minister preach
against the sins of the flesh...and he knew he was a sinner.  Would that
the sermons have ever answered one question...just one of the many
questions that plagued his soul, but they never did.  Nor did Father John.
What his foster father did give Hugh was stability, time to grow, and a
hard physical life that drained his budding sexual energies before they
could tear him apart.  For years, it had been enough.

As if he heard something behind him, Hugh Allen suddenly turned and looked
back at the town that in 1775 was at one of its several historical high
points - some would say its zenith.  Along with Boston, New York,
Philadelphia, and Charleston, Newport was one of the American Colonies five
great ports, a noted center of art and commerce.  Its trade with the West
Indies, for instance, brought untold wealth to its docks and the great
merchants who owned the warehouses and ships.  In turn, the merchants
supported artists and craftsmen who filled their homes with treasures that
are still among the most valued possessions of American museums.  The rays
of the setting sun still glinted on the great homes that stretched north
along the water and on the docks and town that lined the cove and the
harbor to the south and stretched up towards a ridge behind.  Candles were
already lit in the homes of the rich.  Other than the many taverns,
however, the town was growing dark as its inhabitants prepared for sleep,
not to rise until the skies lightened again.

Hugh rose, stretched, headed back to his fisherman foster father's simple
shack on the Cove, and climbed the ladder to his pallet in the attic.
Tomorrow would be a busy day.  They were all busy days - filled with
fishing and lobstering in the Sakonnet River and along the shore over
towards the Vineyard.  Nor was their sloop a stranger to the Massachusetts
islands or to Block Island.  As the winter closed in, they scoured the sea
for late fish and hunted goose and swan until they left the coast.  During
the other seasons, the water was ALIVE with fish - cod, halibut, haddock,
herring, mackerel, swordfish, shad, sturgeon, blackfish, and striped bass.
The lobsters were so large that their giant claws often exceeded the size
of the youth's hand.  When prices dropped on the Newport wharves, farmers
in King's County on the western shore or in Providence at the head of the
Bay were always happy to trade corn and rye as well as dried pumpkin and
apples for a taste of fresh fish.  It was a hard life, but an honest one -
and Hugh absorbed the simple virtues of his New England heritage.

On the morrow, Hugh and his father had fished the Sakonnet, bring a good
catch into Newport harbor in late afternoon.  After he had helped Father
John at the wharves, he wandered over to the Parade Ground where he stood
on the edge of a pack of youths who were jostling each other and loudly
arguing.  The bitterness had a familiar root - loyalty to the King or
loyalty to Rhode Island. British efforts to recoup their expenditures
during the French and Indian War had cut heavily into the town's commercial
profits.  Though a smaller percentage of the total population than in other
major American cities, save Boston, there was a significant body of
Newporters who retained their loyalty to the British Crown.  Drawn from
officials in the civil and military establishments and their immediate
families, the professional classes, and the wealthiest business men who
felt their possessions and wide interests would be consumed in the fires of
war, they preached moderation throughout the town and among the Colony's
political leaders.  Most had no desire to see armed suppression of the
unrest - indeed, many echoed colonial outcries against unjust treatment -
but the Revolutionary firebrands of Newport gave them little peace.  Their
rising fears and familial comments, of course, were reflected in the
attitude of their young on the Parade Ground - young who would fight for
the King in the forthcoming war.

Their families would slowly be leaving Newport from 1775 onward to return
to England or, perchance, to New York that was more firmly in loyalist
hands.  Even with the British occupation of Newport from 1776 to 1779 that
saw an influx of Tory refugees, social and commercial ostracism would
gradually force many to emigrate to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Quebec,
as well as to England and to British possessions in the Caribbean.  When
the British removed their troops from Newport in 1779, the ever increasing
trickle would become a flood.  The third of the former loyalist colony that
remained received little sympathy from the victorious Americans.

(War Comes to Rhode Island)

In truth, war did not come to Rhode Island on May 4, 1776, when the Colony
formally declared its independence.  Rather, it had been effectively at war
for at least a year...since the battles at Lexington and Concord in April
of 1775.  During that time, the boat of a British ship impressing sailors
in Newport harbor had been captured, dragged through the streets, and
burned on the Parade Ground.  British revenue vessels had been burned in
the Bay - and the British had retaliated by using its fleet to choke
Newport's commerce and harass its fishermen.  Unable to venture safely out
onto the deep water, Newport's fisherman and sailors turned to equipping,
provisioning, and manning several privateers designed to raid British
merchant shipping, particularly in the West Indies.

The proudest of these - at least in Hugh Allen's estimation - was a new
craft being built in a Newport shipyard.  (Hugh and Jeremy themselves spent
long hours at the yard in volunteer labor.)  Large and powerful for a
sloop, she carried three masts and would mount 20 guns.  Sharp-ended to
allow for faster attack, she was fitted with eight pairs of oars (placed
through the gun ports) that allowed for chases when there was no wind.
Built of Rhode Island white oak, her overall appearance was one of speed
and power, her rakish lines adding to the suggestion of danger.  In fact,
she was a fast, heavily gunned commerce raider that would be manned by
Newport and Portsmouth lads who knew the sea and were not at all loathe to
take on the Royal Navy!

At long last - barely a month before the British would occupy Newport - the
"Narragansett Eagle," as she would be known, was ready.  Long lines of
Newport and Portsmouth sailors crowded the dock, seeking to be signed on by
Captain Samuel Coffee and his mate, Jeremiah Arnold.  Only 130 seamen would
join the Captain, his officers, the surgeon, and a small group of
sharpshooters assembled from King's County.  Having bidden farewell to
their families, Jeremy was accepted without question, but Hugh faced a
problem. Papers issued by the Governor, in addition to the Letter of
Marque, provided that no one under 17 was to be accepted as a seaman.  Hugh
was three months short of his 17th birthday!  Looking at the brawny youth,
the mate suggested that they could ill afford to lose the services of a
youth so powerful or so experienced on the water.  Furthermore, the long
hours that he had already spent readying the Eagle suggested that he
shouldn't be relegated to the lowly status of a "ship's boy."  Arnold
proposed that Hugh be added to the ship's roster as his servant and, in
three months time, given full seaman's status - as well as the increased
share of the spoils that would bring.  Captain Coffee nodded, and the
decision was entered into the ship's log.  Touching his tousled forelock,
Hugh joined an exultant Jeremy as they boarded the sloop-of- war and
entered upon a lifelong dream.

There was no time for a shakedown cruise; secrecy was an absolute
necessity.  For some weeks, the master-at arms had established a guard
around the perimeters of the yard.  Each gun crew found that it included at
least one experienced gunner who had spent the better part of his life on
the high seas - sometimes in the service of the King, sometimes on a ship
belonging to one of the great merchants...sometimes in more "private"
pursuits.  Taken to an isolated farm on the Island (known variously as
"Aquidneck" or "Rhode Island"), they were drilled incessantly on operations
that would soon become automatic.  On their return, the men were restricted
to the ship.  Discipline was strict, but fair.  There were, of course,
"moments."  The common practice in the seamen's mess, for instance, called
for a great wooden bowl to be set down in the middle of the table.
Reluctant to use his knife to spear a likely morsel in the rush that
followed, Hugh simply did what came naturally.  That is, he pushed in with
his hands!  After receiving several sharp raps on the knuckles from his
more experienced shipmates, an old salt took mercy on him and loaned him a
wooden spoon until he could come by one.  Needless to say, the sturdy youth
more than held his own from that point onward!

On a dark and foggy night, the Eagle slipped unannounced out of the harbor,
through the East Passage, and into Block Island Sound.  A fisherman who had
braved the dangers of the Sound to bring a catch into the harbor worth
seven or eight times his normal return had given the Captain details on a
British sloop close in to Block Island.  Captain Coffee immediately
determined that this might provide the key to evading the blockade.
Cutting through the water like a greyhound - or, more accurately, like a
ravenous shark - the big sloop approached the island in a heavy fog.  After
ball and power had been brought from below and the guns loaded and run out,
orders were given to show no light and to maintain the strictest silence.
The helm was given to a fisherman who knew the waters like the back of his
hand.  As the men crouched at their guns, the Eagle approached the
last-reported position of the British craft.  Voices were heard ahead,
muffled by the layers of fog.  A mast was spotted for an instant by a
lookout.  Suddenly, the enemy craft appeared before them.  Could it be that
their discipline had relaxed, lulled by lack of action and the thick fog
that had gripped the area for some days?  Could it possibly be that they
had caught her anchored and battened down for the night?  As the Eagle
slipped past the King's ship, Captain Coffee gave the command to unleash a
savage broadside of grape and solid shot.  Despite the smoke and fog, the
cheering Americans could see splinters flying everywhere, a mast and a
tangled mass of ragged sails, shrouds, and spars falling overside, and
fires breaking out.  Coffee brought the Eagle smartly around.  "Gods
blood!" he swore between his teeth.  "She sails like no other craft I've
ever commanded!"  As the American ship approached, the crew could see the
wildest confusion...men pouring onto the decks, attempts being made to cut
the rigging free, man the sloop's guns, and fight a fire that was spreading
rapidly on the quarterdeck.  Again the command to fire was given and again
an overwhelming broadside crashed into the sloop.  The Eagle departed,
leaving a shattered vessel behind in flames and ruin, her decks littered
with the dead, wounded, and wrecked gear.  "I'd have loved to send her to
the bottom," Coffee muttered to his mate, "but she's going nowhere this
night and we have work to do."

Hugh sat, his head lying against the big gun the he had helped fire, his
hand resting on the back of a mangled comrade with whom he had played as a
child.  Blood trickled down his face from a small wound on his
forehead. His naked chest and canvas pants were splotched with his friend's
blood and with his vomit that had spewed forth when the life of his buddy
had been erased by a solid shot.  Jeremy knelt beside him, his arms around
Hugh's broad shoulders.  "Here, here, boys, let's have none of that!"
Mr. Arnold said as he strode by.  "Can you stand, Allen?" he inquired.
"Yes, sir," the mortified boy said as he stood, tears mingling with the
blood on his burning cheeks.  "'Tis no matter, lad," the mate said...not
unkindly.  "Someday, I may tell you what happened to me during my first
action.  Get ye below and have the surgeon look at that wound - and get
yourself cleaned up.  Back to work, Stuart!  Cover your friend," he said
firmly before striding off.

Convinced that he would forever be marked as a coward by both the crew and
the officer who had witnessed his disgrace - the man without whose
patronage he wouldn't even be ON the Eagle - the young lad staggered below.
It was but a flesh wound and quickly cauterized and bound up.  Cleaning
himself off as best he could and slipping into his shorts, he slunk back up
onto the deck.  Imagine his surprise when the old tar assigned as his
battery chief greeted him with a great shout, threw a heavily scarred arm
around his shoulders, and loudly proclaimed that he had made it possible to
get off two shots to the one fired by any other crew!  Greeted on every
side by shouts and back slaps - the bloody bandage on his head serving as a
mark of valor - Hugh grinned nervously, felt his stomach return to its
appointed place, and returned to duty.  Jeremiah Arnold who watched from
the quarterdeck smiled softly.  "What an utterly enchanting young man," he
thought.  The battery chief had followed his orders and would receive an
extra ration of rum before the night was out.

Passing Block Island and clearing the coast, the Eagle headed south across
the Gulf Stream.  Minor repairs were made to the ship (for only two British
shots had hit her and but one seaman had been lost).  The days were filled
with drills as routines were set and the large crew was whipped into a
disciplined fighting force.  Captain Coffee was an experienced officer and
knew well that the ordinary seamen, landsmen, and boys had to be instructed
in steering, in heaving the lead to determine the depth of the water, in
knotting and splicing ropes, in rowing, in the use of the palm and needle
to do sewing, and in bending and reefing sails.  Working in teams under the
direction of a bosun's mate, they used sand, brooms, holystones, and
buckets to wash down the decks.  Brass fittings and other bright work were
polished; the metal tracks on which the gun carriages turned were
burnished.  The guns themselves were meticulously cleaned.  The rigging,
halyards, and blocks were checked and maintained.  The watches were set and
mess duties arranged.  Hugh found the regimen exciting and wondered why the
old salts constantly complained of boredom despite the daily activities of
scrubbing, painting, drilling, and target practice.

The sloop-of-war passed through the doldrums of the horse latitudes where
ships were often becalmed and picked up the trade winds.  Giving all major
islands a wide berth, she passed no sails.  Slowly, the gray December skies
of Rhode Island gave way to the hot sun, the warm seas of the Caribbean,
and the bright tropical colors of the southern latitudes.  Occasionally,
Hugh would spot the flashing surf and palm trees of a tiny island or join
his shipmates in catching the wildly colored fish that gave them relief
from weeks of pickled beef and salt cod.  When the Captain anchored for the
night off a little speck of coral that wasn't even on the maps, Hugh joined
many others in stripping down and bathing thoroughly for the first time in
weeks.  The bawdy comments of some of the old salts who lined the gunwale
on their return were...disturbing, but, after all, they'd soon be in action
and that sort of stuff would be forgotten.  Indeed, he forgot them quickly,
for all of the stories that he had heard of warfare between the British,
the French, and the Spaniards - not to mention the pirates who preyed on
everyone - came to mind, and his excitement knew no bounds.


(To Be Continued)