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It was a hot summer day, and the air was heavy, the nights full of screaming and the stench of death.
Alexander had seen enough death during the war, particularly during the battle of Monmouth to know the smell of a body that was rotting. Even from the bars of his window of the cell he occupied in the ship, he could smell the death from the other prisoner. It kept him awake and churned his stomach enough that he couldn't each much.
The night air was worse; a heavy, like a blanket, and his clothes were sticking to his skin with the sweat. He couldn't stand it any longer and stood to pace his small cell. There was not much room, the small area between the door and the back wall. There was straw strewn on the floor for his comfort, but not enough to counter the painful wood boards he had for a bed.
Alexander couldn't keep his mind from the last thing he had seen before he had been taken. He surely thought the soldiers with him, along with Washington, Lafayette and Meade would search for him when he returned to America, if only there was a way to get a message to them. A knock came on his door, and he jumped. He hadn't even realized there was anyone outside. The bottom door slid open and a metal tray of half-cooked gruel and hardtack. Alexander looked at it with some revulsion and tried to keep his stomach down.
He took a step to the door and knelt down. "Is there no water?" he asked.
"You're lucky to have any food, and you know it," the guard said and shut the door, not even giving Alexander a chance to argue. He glanced over to the food, knowing that it would be the only thing he'd be getting today. Picking up the bowl of gruel gingerly, he brought it to his mouth and sipped. The taste was bland, the gruel chunky and cold, but it was something at least. He managed a few mouthfuls, and then moved to the hardtack. He could not imagine anything tasting worse, and he knew that the lack of food would make him weaker, his stomach was growling, and he needed the energy. His hands had been tied together with rope for nearly twelve days by the number of passing days Alexander counted, the burns already searing into his wrists to leave deep red marks and welts. It would be at least another month if not slightly more to return to America. There, he would face death at the hands of the British. He had no doubt of that.
His hands still tied, Alexander went to the corner of his cell where the bucket he had used as a chamber pot was located and pushed it aside, revealing a piece of paper that he had been writing his last thoughts upon. When he was at the Tower, Alexander had asked the priest who had visited if he might have a pen and paper to write down his final thoughts to be delivered to Washington upon his death. The priest had brought the paper and ink but left him with both alone.
Alexander had taken the quill, sharpening it on the edge of a metal bar and used the ink and quill into it, He scribbled notes about his private papers (plans for the future in terms of the financial building of their country), his goodbyes to his friends and fellow aides, and his last requests of the Continental Army, particularly of Washington. When he had finished, Alexander had torn off a strip from the hem of his pants making a tiny point and dipped it in the remaining ink. Then, he hid the note in his coat pocket. He wondered how he could send this paper to the Continental Army, and pondered if they would as soldiers and gentlemen. He was unsure if the British would follow through, but he hoped.
There was a sudden thump outside his door and Alexander turned, his heart leaping into his throat. The sound had not come from his cell, but perhaps the one across from him. He heard grunting, and that putrid smell invaded his nostrils to make him feel sick again. He was sure the poor dead soul would be thrown into the sea, or wherever they had put him without any funeral rites.
The wafting smell was overwhelming, staying in the air for minutes before fading away. He sat on his small bed of hay, his placed his hand behind his head, his thoughts whirling. God, he was going to either die here in this wretched little cell or by a hangman's noose back in New York and neither appealed to him.
He'd rather die with honor on the battlefield, not in an enemy prison, not with his wrists and neck burned by a rope.