Читать книгу The Captain from Connecticut - Cecil Louis Troughton Smith - Страница 4

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Lieutenant George Hubbard was officer of the morning watch. The glass had just been turned for the last time, and seven bells had been duly struck, and Hubbard was beginning to look forward to his relief and to wonder whether he would find any time for sleep during the day, when his captain loomed up beside him. With the cessation of the snow there was enough light now for details to be clearly distinguished.

“You can wear ship now, Mr. Hubbard,” said Peabody. “Course sou’-west by south.”

“Sou’-west by south, sir,” echoed Hubbard.

“And take those men out of the chains. We won’t need the lead again.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“See that they have something hot to drink.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

The wind had moderated as it veered, but now that they were in the open sea they were encountering the full force of the waves. Close hauled, the Delaware had been climbing wave after wave, heeling over to them, soaring upward with her bowsprit pointing at the sky, and then, as she reached the crest, rolling into the wind with her stern heaving upwards in a mad corkscrew roll with the spray bursting over her deck. Now she came round before the wind, and her motion changed. There was not so much feeling of battling with gigantic forces; much more was there an uneasy sensation of yielding to them. The following sea threw her about as if she had no will of her own. Standing by the wheel, Hubbard was conscious of a feeling of relief from the penetrating torture of the wind—so, undoubtedly, were the men at the wheel—but the feeling was counteracted by a sensation of uneasiness as the Delaware lurched along before the big grey-bearded waves which came sweeping after her. There was an even chance of her being pooped—Hubbard could tell, by the feel of the deck under his feet, how each of those grey mountains in its turn blanketed the close-reefed topsails, and robbed the ship of a trifle of her way. He could tell it, too, by the way the quartermasters had to saw back and forth at the wheel to meet the Delaware’s unhappy falling off as each wave passed under her counter. If she once broached-to, then good-bye, to the Delaware.

“Steer small,” he growled at the quartermasters.

It was unsafe to run before this wind and sea. A cautious captain would have kept the Delaware upon the wind for a while longer, or would even heave-to until the sea moderated—provided, that is to say, that a cautious captain would have left port at all on such a night, which was quite inconceivable. As first lieutenant of the ship, and responsible to his captain for her material welfare, Hubbard could never quite reconcile in his mind the jarring claims of military necessity and common sense. He looked with something like dismay about the ship in the growing daylight, at the snow which covered her deck, and the ice which glittered on her standing rigging. The quarterdeck carronades beside him were mere rounded heaps of snow on their forward sides. When the forenoon watch was called he would have to set the hands at work shovelling the stuff away—queer work for a sailorman. The tradition of centuries was that the first work in the morning was washing down decks, not shovelling snow off them.

The captain was still prowling about the deck; Hubbard heard him lift up his voice in a hail.

“Masthead, there! Keep your wits about you.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

The poor devil of a lookout up there was the most uncomfortable man in the whole ship, Hubbard supposed, without much sympathy for him. It was interesting to note that the captain was apparently a little uneasy still about the possible appearance of British ships. Peabody had brilliantly brought the Delaware out to sea—the first United States ship to run the blockade for six months—as Hubbard grudgingly admitted to himself, yet with the open Atlantic about him he was still nervous. Hubbard shrugged his shoulders. He was glad that it was not his responsibility.

Here came that pesky young brother of the captain’s. During the four weeks that the Delaware had lain at Brooklyn, Hubbard had come most heartily to dislike the boy. Captain’s clerk, indeed, and he was hardly able to read or write! It was a pity that the Delaware’s midshipmen were all young boys. Jonathan Peabody was by several years the oldest of the gunroom mess, and in physique he was as tough as his elder brother, so that there was small chance of his being taught much sense there. He was sly, too; otherwise, as Hubbard was well aware, he would never have contrived for four weeks to avoid trouble in a ship whose First Lieutenant was anxious to make trouble for him.

“Take off your hat to the quarterdeck, you young cub,” snapped Hubbard.

“Aye aye, sir,” said Jonathan Peabody, and obeyed instantly. Yet there was a touch of elaboration about his gesture which conveyed exactly enough contempt both for the ceremony and for the First Lieutenant to annoy the latter intensely, and yet too little to make him liable to punishment under the Naval Regulations issued by command of the President of the United States of America—not even under that all-embracing regulation which decided that ‘all other faults, disorders and misdemeanours not herein mentioned shall be punished according to the laws and customs in such cases at sea.’ The young cub flaunted his excellent clothes with a swagger which smacked of insolence, clothes which, as Hubbard knew, his captain had bought for him only four weeks ago. Until then Jonathan Peabody had been a barefooted follower of the plough, and presumably the furtive Lothario of some Connecticut village. Hubbard disliked him quite as much as he admired his grim elder brother; possibly the dislike and the admiration had some bearing on each other.

There came a yell from the maintopmast crosstrees.

“Sail, ho! Sail to wind’ard, sir.”

The captain appeared from nowhere upon the quarterdeck, leaping on the weather rail, and staring over the heaving sea into the wind over the quarter. Apparently he could see nothing from there, for he hailed the masthead again.

“What d’ye make of her?”

“She’s a ship, sir, under tops’ls. Same course as us, sir, or pretty nigh.”

The captain took Hubbard’s glass and swung himself into the mizzen rigging, running up the ratlines with the quite surprising agility of a big man. He was back again on deck shortly after, sliding down the backstay despite the handicap of his heavy clothing. Hubbard was not used to captains as athletic as that. The captain’s hard face was set like a stone mask.

“That’s the two-decker we passed last night, Mr. Hubbard,” he said. “Turn up the hands. I’ll have a reef out of those tops’ls, if you please. Set the jib and mizzen stays’l, too.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

All hands came pouring on deck as Hubbard shouted his orders, while Peabody walked aft to the taffrail and stared astern. The fresh canvas as it was spread crackled loudly behind him, and the Delaware plunged madly under the increased pressure. Peabody swung round to watch his ship’s behaviour. In a full gale like this he was exposing more canvas than he should do in prudence. There was a risk that something might give way, that some portion of the rigging might part—leaving out of all account the possibility that he might run the Delaware bodily under. But if he did not take that risk the British ship would overhaul him. It was only under present conditions that a British ship of the line stood any chance in a race with an American frigate. The bigger ship, with her immensely strong gear, could make more sail than he dared, and her bluff bows and lofty freeboard which made her so clumsy on a wind were a huge advantage when running before a gale on a rough sea. By ensuring her appearance nearly dead to windward Providence had secured all these advantages for the British ship. But then, on the other hand, if she had appeared to leeward, although the Delaware could escape from her easily enough close-hauled, close-hauled she would be headed back for Montauk Point, back to the confinement of blockade—possibly straight into the waiting arms of the blockading squadron. What Providence took away in one fashion she restored in another, keeping an even balance so that a man’s success or failure depended entirely on himself, as it should be.

Hubbard was looking up at the straining topmasts. There was a distinct sign of a whip there—they were bending, very slightly, but perceptibly to the naked eye. What the strain was upon backstays and preventer braces could only be imagined; the tautness of the rigging had driven the perennial Aeolian harping of the wind quite a semitone up the scale. Hubbard turned to meet his captain’s eye, and went as far in protest as to open his mouth, and then thought better of it, and shut his mouth and resumed his pacing of the deck, where the hands were at work shovelling away the snow. Peabody watched the antics of his ship for a moment longer, noting how low she lay in the water when the pressure of the wind forced her downwards in certain combinations of waves, noticing how the water boiled away from her bows, and then turned back to stare over the taffrail again. The Delaware rose upon a wave, heaving up her stern above the mad flurry of grey water, climbing higher and higher as she pitched, and in the very instant of her stern’s highest ascent Peabody saw, far astern, on the very limit of the grey horizon, a tiny square of white. It was gone in a flash as the Delaware plunged down the farther slope, but Peabody knew it for what it was—the foretopsail of the British ship hoisted above the horizon for a moment. He had seen that foretopsail for a moment the night before; he had stared at it through his glass for two full minutes this morning, and he would recognize it again at any time in any part of the world. The sight of it from the deck meant that it was nearer, that his pursuer was overhauling him.

“Set the mizzen tops’l, Mr. Hubbard, with two reefs.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Have the relieving tackles manned, if you please.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Mr. Crane, take charge of them.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Peabody had noticed the difficulty the quartermasters had in holding the Delaware on her course with the following sea—it was partly to help them that he had had the jib set. Now the pressure of the big mizzen topsail would add to their difficulties, countering the steadying effect of the headsails. Six men below at the relieving tackles, applied direct to the tiller ropes, would not only be of assistance in turning the rudder, but would also damp down the rudder’s sudden movements. And Mr. Crane, the sailing master, with his lifetime of experience—he had commanded in twenty voyages to the Levant out of Boston—would be the best man for the difficult task of correlating the work of wheel and relieving tackles; standing on the grating with his eyes on wheel and sails and sea, he would shout his warnings down to the tiller ropes.

Peabody watched warily as the mizzen topsail was sheeted home. The Delaware reacted to the added pressure instantly. There was nothing light or graceful about her movements now. She was crashing from wave to wave like a rock down a hillside. Even with the wind well abaft the beam as it was she was leaning over to it, the white foam creaming along her lee side to join her boiling wake.

“Mr. Murray, go aloft, and keep your eye on the strange sail.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Peabody looked aft again, and at one of the Delaware’s extravagant plunges he once more caught that fleeting glimpse of the British topsail above the horizon. He did not need Murray’s hail from above.

“Deck, there! If you please, sir, I think she’s nearer.”

Peabody’s expression did not change. The Delaware was showing all the canvas she could possibly carry, and he had done all he could for the moment. If the wind would only drop a little, or the sea moderate, she would walk away from that tub of a two-decker. If not, it would only be by the aid of special measures that she would be able to escape, and those measures, which involved considerable sacrifice, he would not take until the necessity was proved.

“Why don’t we fight her, Jos?” asked Jonathan—when the crew were at quarters his station was on the quarterdeck at the captain’s orders, so that he was in his right place, but Josiah wondered sadly how long it would take the boy to learn the other details of naval life.

“You must take your hat off when you speak to me, Jonathan,” he said, “and you call me ‘sir,’ and you take your hand out of your pocket, too,” he repeated patiently—he had said it all before.

“Sorry, Jos—I mean sir,” said Jonathan, lifting his hat with the hand from his pocket. “But why don’t we fight her?”

He jerked his thumb over the taffrail to indicate the pursuing enemy.

“Because she’s twice as strong as we are,” said Josiah. “And with this sea running she’s three times as strong—we could never open our main-deck ports. And besides——“

Josiah checked himself. Anxious though he was for Jonathan to learn, this was not the time for a long disquisition on tactics and strategy. The two-decker had twice the guns the Delaware had, some of them heavier than the Delaware’s heaviest. She had scantlings twice as thick, too—half the Delaware’s shot would never pierce her sides. However heavy a sea was running she would always be able to work her upper deck guns as well as her quarterdeck and forecastle carronades, and her clumsy bulk made her a far steadier gun platform, too. From a tactical point of view it would be madness to fight her; and from a strategical point of view it would be worse than that. Here he was on the point of escaping into the open sea. Once let him get free, and he would exhaust England’s strength far more effectively than by any battle with a ship of the line. He could harass her fleet of merchantmen so that twenty frigates each as big as the Delaware would be engaged in convoy duty. He could be here to-day and there to-morrow, threatening a dozen places at once. The brigs and the sloops with which England guarded her convoys from privateers would be useless against a powerful frigate. If anything could force England into peace it would be the sort of pressure the Delaware could apply. There was nothing whatever to be gained by an immediate encounter with a superior force—such an encounter could only end in his having to put back for repairs and submitting once more to blockade.

Josiah felt all this strongly. To think strategically was as much part of his ordinary processes as breathing was; but he was not a man of words—it was not easy for him to put these ideas into phrases which could be readily understood, and he knew it, although he was not conscious of the other disadvantage under which he laboured, that of being a man of wildcat fighting blood forced to play a cautious part. But at the same time some explanation must be made to Jonathan, so that the boy would appreciate what was going on. He fell back on a more homely argument.

“That fellow there,” he said, with his thumb repeating Jonathan’s gesture, “wants us to fight him. Nothing would please him better than to see us heave-to and wait for him to come up. Look how he’s cracking on to overtake us. D’ye see any sense in doing what your enemy wants you to do?”

“P’raps not,” said Jonathan.

Josiah was glad to get even this grudging agreement, for Jonathan’s good opinion meant much to him. He had grown fond of the youngest brother of his, whom he had never known before. His first action on his promotion to captain and appointment to the Delaware had been to use his one bit of patronage in the boy’s favour, and nominate him as his clerk; to his mind it was a way of repaying Providence for Uncle Josiah’s kindnesses to himself, and buying clothes for the boy and introducing him to naval life had somehow endeared the boy to him.

The Delaware was leaping and lurching under his feet, and he could hear Crane beside the wheel shouting instructions through the grating to the men at the relieving tackles. He looked up at the straining rigging but the Navy Yard at Brooklyn had done its work well. He looked aft. It was not on rare occasions now, but every time the Delaware heaved her stern over a wave, that he could see that ominous little square of white on the horizon. The two-decker was still overtaking them, despite the aid of the mizzen topsail and the shaken-out reefs. He could set no more canvas—the Delaware would not bear another stitch without driving bodily under. He thought about knocking out the wedges in the steps of the masts to give the masts more play; sluggish sailors often benefited by that, but the Delaware would not. During the four weeks she was lying in the East River he had seen to it personally that everything had been done to give her every inch of speed. She was trimmed exactly right, he knew.

But she was low in the water. He had crammed her with all the stores she would hold before setting out in his determination to make her as independent as possible. There were six months’ stores on board. There were fifty tons of shot, and twenty of powder. There were fifteen tons of water—he could relieve the Delaware of that fifteen tons in a few minutes by merely starting the hogsheads and setting the hands to work at the pumps. On the spar deck there were eighteen carronades weighing a ton and a half each, and it would not be difficult with tackles to heave them over the side. But powder and shot, guns and drinking water were what gave the Delaware her usefulness in war. Without them he would be forced into port as surely as if he had been crippled in action.

“Mr. Hubbard!”

“Sir!”

“Rig the tackles. I want the longboat and cutter hove overside.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Longboat and cutter were on chocks amidships. Whips had to be rove at the fore and main yardarms at either side, and Peabody watched four hands running out along the yards to do so, bending to their work perched fifty feet up above the tormented sea. If any man of them lost his hold, that man was dead as surely as if he had been shot—the Delaware would not stop to pick him up even if he survived the fall into the icy sea. But the lines were passed without accident, and fifty men tailed on to them under the direction of Mr. Rodgers, the boatswain. Tackles and boats were his particular province; even when boats were being thrown away it was his duty to attend to the matter at the First Lieutenant’s orders. At the last moment there was a hitch—young Midshipman Wallingford came running aft to his captain.

“What about the hogs, sir?” he asked breathlessly. “And the chickens? Are they to go overside, too?”

“I’ll give Mr. Rodgers one minute to get them out,” said Peabody harshly.

Hogs and chickens lived in the longboat and cutter; they were the only source of fresh meat on board, and important in consequence. Peabody was annoyed with himself for having forgotten about them, with having let his head get full of advanced warlike ideas to the exclusion of matters like hogs and chickens. He watched the livestock being herded aft to where a temporary pen was hurriedly designed among the spare spars. The longboat rose, cradled in its slings, and hung half a dozen feet above the deck. Then the men began to heave in on the leeside tackles, and let go on the weather side, and the longboat slowly swung towards the leeside bulwarks. The Delaware felt the very considerable transference of weight, listing in a manner which was a trifle dangerous in that gale. But the business was ticklish enough, for she still rolled and plunged, and the vast deadweight of the longboat swung about madly as far as the four suspensory ropes allowed. Peabody walked slowly forward; he had no intention of interfering with Rodgers’ execution of his task—Rodgers’ technical knowledge probably matched his own—but instinct drew him there.

Rodgers looked warily to windward, and studied the send of the sea, watching for his moment.

“Heave!” he shouted to the leeside men.

The longboat went out with a run, hanging from the lee yardarms exclusively while the Delaware listed more sharply still.

“Let go,” shouted Rodgers to the men at the lee main yardarm tackles. When they were let go the boat would hang vertically down in the slings until she slid down out of them, and the men obeyed promptly enough. But the line ran only for a second in the sheaves and then jammed. The longboat hung at too small an angle to slide out of the slings, and remained dangling from the yardarms, imperilling the very life of the ship.

“God damn the thing to hell,” said Rodgers.

A couple of hands sprang into the rigging with the idea of getting out to the block and clearing it.

“Let go, there, you men!” roared Peabody suddenly at the men holding the lee fore yardarm line. With a start of surprise they did so. The other end of the boat fell; she tipped up more and more, and then fell from the slings into the sea while the Delaware righted herself. Rodgers had been caught off his guard by the jammed line. He had been intending all along to drop the longboat stern first, and did not possess the flexibility of mind to reverse his plans instantly when the hitch came.

“Let’s see that line!” he said irritably. “Who made this long splice? God damn it, any soldier could make a better long splice than this. I’ll find out if it takes me a month o’ Sundays.”

“Get the cutter overside, Mr. Rodgers,” interrupted Peabody.

He walked aft again; the incident had made little impression on him save to confirm to him his already formed estimate of Rodgers’ capacity. The gig which had been nested in the cutter was swayed out and deposited on the chocks of the longboat, and the cutter next rose in its slings from the Delaware’s deck, traversed slowly across to leeward, and then fell into the sea. Peabody watched it as it went astern, broken backed and full of water, white among the grey of the waves, a depressing sight, and he turned back again to study the Delaware’s behaviour now that she was relieved of six tons of deadweight. Peabody was not of the type to feel easy optimism. He approached the problem ready to see no appreciable difference, and yet, despite this discounting, he was forced to admit that the Delaware was moving a tiny bit more easily—the tiniest, tiniest bit. In that rough water it would give the Delaware no added speed, but it was the most he could do to ease her in her labours and still retain her efficiency. The deadweight had been taken from the point where it had most effect on the ship’s behaviour—from the upper deck and forward. He glanced astern, and saw the fateful topsail on the horizon again.

The wind was still howling round his ears—it certainly ought to moderate soon, now that the glass had begun to move upward. But there was no sign of it at present. On the contrary—or was he mistaken—those topmasts were whipping badly. He was conscious as he stood that the wind had increased, and he felt in his bones that it was going to increase further. It was natural in a storm like this—he had seen the phenomenon a hundred times. The dying flurries of a storm were often more intense than anything that had preceded it. He felt a sudden wave of bitterness surge up within him. If he had to shorten sail the two-decker would come romping up to him, and the voyage of the Delaware would come to an end. This was his first command, and he had been at sea less than twenty-four hours. The flurry of the gale might last no more than half an hour, and then the wind might die away to a gentle breeze, but that half hour would be enough to do his business for him. God—he was on the point of stupid blasphemy when he mastered himself sternly.

A big grey wave hit the Delaware a shuddering blow, and she lurched uncertainly as the water creamed over the spar deck. The high-pitched note of the wind in the rigging screamed a warning to him, and Hubbard was looking round at him anxiously for orders.

“Get the mizzen tops’l in, Mr. Hubbard,” said Peabody. “And the jib.”

A dismasted ship would be of less use than a ship still under control, even if a two-decker were overhauling her. The hands raced aloft, shuffling along the footropes of the mizzen topsail yard, and bending forward over the yard to wrestle with the obstinate canvas. The wind shrieked down at them all the harder—it was in the very nick of time that they had shortened sail, and there was a grim satisfaction in that. The men poured down the shrouds again, and one of them after he had leaped to the deck paused for a moment to examine his right forefinger. The nail had been torn almost completely off, and was hanging by a shred from the bloody fingertip—some sudden jerk of the mad canvas aloft had done that for him. He took the dangling nail between his teeth and jerked it off, spat out the nail, and shook the blood from his hand and then ran forward after his fellows without a tremor. The crew was tough enough, thought Peabody grimly.

Murray was beside him, descended from his chilly post aloft.

“She’s coming down on us fast, sir,” he said. He had a notable tendency to gesticulate with his hands when he spoke.

Hubbard was at his captain’s other shoulder now, tall and saturnine, a master of his profession, and yet in this unhappy moment feeling the need for company and conversation.

“Those damned two-deckers,” he said. “They need a gale of wind to move ’em, and that one has it. Standing rigging like chain cable, sir, and canvas as thick as this pea-jacket of mine.”

The two of them looked sidelong at their captain, in need of reassurance. Hubbard was older than Peabody, Murray hardly younger, and yet he felt paternal towards them.

“D’you think he went through Plum Gut, sir?” asked Murray.

“No doubt about it,” said Hubbard, but Murray still looked to his captain for confirmation.

“Yes,” said Peabody.

The implications were manifold. A captain who had the nerve to take a two-decker through Plum Gut had nerve enough for anything else whatever, and he had brains as well, and the ability to use them.

“They’ve had two years to learn in,” said Hubbard, his thin lips twisted into a bitter smile. For two years British ships had been studying American waters at first hand.

The wind shrieked down upon them with renewed force. The Delaware was labouring frightfully in the waves; even on deck, and despite the noise of the wind, they could hear the groans of the woodwork as she writhed in their grip.

“If you were down below, sir,” said Murray, “and he wasn’t behind us, I’d send down to you for permission to heave-to, sir.”

“And I’d give it,” said Peabody. He could smile at that, just as he could always smile in the midst of a struggle.

“Can we lighten the ship any more, sir?” asked Hubbard, with the extreme deference necessary at a moment when he might be suspected of offering advice to his captain.

“No,” said Peabody. Pitching the spar deck carronades overside might ease her a little, but would give her no increase in speed in this rough water—only in smooth water with a faint wind would decrease in draft benefit them there, and he had already flung overboard the only weights which were not essential to the Delaware’s efficiency as a fighting force. The nod which Hubbard gave indicated his argument with Peabody’s unvoiced argument, and as if with one mind they turned to look back at the two-decker. Something more than her topsails were in sight now—as the Delaware rose on a wave they could catch a glimpse of her black hull lifting menacingly above the horizon.

“She’ll be within gunshot soon,” said Murray with despair in his voice, and Peabody looked at him searchingly. He wanted no cowards in his ship, nor men who would not fight a losing battle to the end. Yet Murray had come to him with the Commodore’s enthusiastic recommendation, as the man who, in command of a gunboat flotilla in the Rappahannock, had beaten off the boats of the British fleet in the Chesapeake.

“Yes,” said Peabody. “And I want these two twelve-pounders cleared for action. Rig double tackles on them, Mr. Murray, if you please, so that they won’t come adrift.”

“Aye aye, sir,” said Murray. Peabody could see the change in him now that he had something to do—so that was the kind of man he was. Peabody had no definite labels for human beings, and no vocabulary with which to express his thoughts about them, but he could estimate a character pretty closely.

The Delaware’s spar deck carried eighteen thirty-two-pounder carronades, nine a side, but forward and aft at the end of each row was mounted a long twelve-pounder. The Commodore at the Navy Yard had argued with Peabody about those long guns, pointing out how carronades instead would give the ship an additional forty pounds of broadside, but Peabody had been sure of what he wanted. On this raiding voyage he would either be running away or pursuing, and he wanted long guns on her upper deck to aid him in either of those tasks. He had even had the aftermost and foremost ports enlarged so as to allow these long guns to be trained fully round.

“By George, sir!” said Hubbard suddenly, as he watched the work. “Do you remember what the Commodore said about these guns? You were right, sir. You were right.”

Peabody did not need Hubbard’s approval; he needed no approval save his own.

Murray knew his business. He brought up a double crew—fourteen men—to each of the stern chasers. Cautious, they slacked away the breachings until the gun muzzles were free from the lintels of the ports, and even so, with the mad leaping of the Delaware, they careered up and down in the inch or two of slack in the breachings in a fashion which boded ill if they should take charge. Ten men tailed on to the tackles as the breachings were slacked away, keeping the guns steady against the breachings. As the ports were opened showers of spray came in through them, washing over the deck ankle deep. The gun captains took out the tompions, and tested with the rammers to see that the guns were loaded. One of them watched the spray bursting over the gun and shook his head. Despite its tarpaulin cover, the flintlock mechanism could not be expected to work in those conditions, at least, not until the gun was thoroughly hot with use. The powder boys sped forward and came running aft again each with a long coil of slow-match in a tub, the ends smouldering and spluttering.

“Run ’em up, boys!” said Murray, and the men threw their weight on the tackles and ran the guns out.

“Ready to open fire, sir!” said Murray, lifting his hat to his captain.

“She’s beyond cannon shot yet,” replied Peabody, looking over the grey-flecked sea, with the wind howling round his ears. The two-decker was clearly in sight now, all the same, leaping and plunging over the mad sea. “Mr. Hubbard, hoist the colours, if you please.”

The flag went up to the peak and streamed forward in the wind, its eighteen stripes rippling wildly. There had been a discussion about that, too, with the Commodore; an Act of Congress had given the flag fifteen stars and stripes, and yet—as Peabody had seen with his own eyes—the flag that flew over the Hall of Congress bore no more than thirteen, while the Commodore had maintained that there should be a star and a stripe for every state in the union, as Congress had also laid down. It was the Commodore who had decided upon eighteen stripes and stars in the end—Peabody would have preferred the fifteen under which he had sailed into Tripoli harbour. He wondered if the two-decker would ever be able to get near enough to count them for herself.

“You can try a shot now, Mr. Murray,” said Peabody.

The gun captains already had their guns elevated to the last degree. Each snatched a priming quill from a powder boy, and thrust it in the vent of his gun. They took their matches in their hands, and peered once more along the sights. Then they stood back, watching the ship’s motion, and each chose the same moment for firing. They waved their hands at the men at the train tackles to release their grip, and plunged the lighted matches into the quills. One gun hung fire for a moment, the quill sizzling and spluttering, and only exploded after the other gun had boomed out and recoiled to the limit of the breachings. The wind whirled the smoke forward in a flash, and that was all. There was nothing else to be seen; the sea was far too rough for the splash of a twelve-pounder ball to be seen at extreme range. The two-decker came plunging along after them unhurt, as far as could be told, the spray still flying from her bluff bows. The hands had crept aft to see the sport, and a sort of groan of disappointment went up from them, even though they were all experienced men who ought to have known better than to expect anything.

“Try again, Mr. Murray,” said Peabody—the guns were already being wiped and the powder charges rammed in.

He climbed up on the bulwark close behind the starboard, balancing with his hand on the mizzen rigging. The gun went off with a bang, while Peabody’s keen eyes searched the line of flight. There it was! Like a momentary pencil mark—come and gone in a flash—upon the seascape, he could see the ball rise to the top of its trajectory, and drop again to the sea, where a minute white spot marked its fall.

“Half a mile short,” called Peabody. “But the aim was good. Try again.”

The captain of the other gun had badly misjudged the roll of the ship—his shot plunged into the side of a wave not two cables’ lengths away, in plain sight of everyone. Impatiently Murray thrust him on one side, and bent over the breech of the gun himself. Peabody watched the firing from his point of vantage; he was able to mark the fall of about half the shot fired, and nothing went nearer than a hundred yards from the target, as far as he could see, and he expected little else on that heaving sea, and with that gale blowing. But the firing was warming up the guns, so that they would soon be shooting with more power and so that the lock mechanisms would soon begin to function—no one could be expected to judge the roll of the ship accurately when firing with a match, so that at least two seconds elapsed between the intention to fire and the explosion.

The range was down to a mile—to less than that. Peabody suddenly saw the two-decker’s maintopsail emerge beside her foretopsail, and the mizzen beside that. Her bluff bows lengthened and her bowsprit showed in profile as she turned. She was yawing to present her broadside to the Delaware—Peabody could see her yellow streak and her checkered side as she rolled madly in the trough of the sea. Next came a brief wave of smoke, blown instantly to nothing by the gale, and next came—nothing at all. A hoot of derision went up from the watching sailors at Peabody’s back.

“Missed! Clean missed!” said somebody, dancing with joy. “A whole broadside, and we didn’t see where a single shot fell!”

Probably the two-decker had fired the long guns on her upper gun deck—sixteen or seventeen, if she were the seventy-four Peabody estimated her to be. To him there was nothing surprising about the broadside missing, considering the difficulties under which it was discharged. The Delaware had fired a dozen shots so far, under better conditions, and not one had gone near the target—the men did not stop to think about that.

The two-decker had come before the wind again, and was plunging after them, her bowsprit pointed straight at the Delaware. But she had lost a good half mile by yawing to fire her broadside; Peabody doubted if her captain would waste valuable distance again in that fashion. Most probably he would reserve his fire until the two ships were yardarm to yardarm, and when that moment would come depended on the wind. He turned his attention once more to scanning first the sky and then the Delaware’s behaviour under her storm canvas. He wanted most desperately for the wind to moderate, or to back, or to veer, for it to do anything rather than blow as it was doing, straight from the two-decker to him. Perhaps his life, certainly the success of his voyage, possibly the good opinion of his brother captains, and certainly the good opinion of the American public, depended on that wind. The Columbian Centinel would have some scathing remarks in its columns if the Delaware were captured, even by a ship of the line—not that he cared, save for the depressing effect on the people. His whole power to do anything at all in this war depended on the wind; it was the wind which would settle whether he was to range the Atlantic a free man or rot as a prisoner, and the wind was still blowing its hardest. Peabody had the feeling that it was as well that it was the wind upon which all this depended. If it were some human agency he might be inclined to fret and chafe, possibly even to swear and blaspheme, but as it was he could await the decision of Providence calmly.

For some time he had been subconsciously noting the fall of the shot as the stern chasers banged away, and now suddenly his attention was called to the business with a jerk. The brief vision of the flying ball coincided with the two-decker a mile astern, and terminated there.

“Good shot, Mr. Murray!” he called. “You hit her fair!”

Murray turned a smiling face back to him, unconscious that the fumes from the vent of the gun had stained his face as black as a negro’s. One of the hands was leaping about on the quarterdeck shaking his fists above his head. Peabody’s hope that the hit might goad the two-decker into yawing again to use her broadside proved ill-founded; the two-decker held on her course inexorably, driven by the gale. In half an hour she had gained a quarter of a mile, and in an hour she was no more than half a mile astern. Peabody sent the crew by watches to have their dinners—he did not want the men to have empty stomachs while they fought, although he himself felt not the slightest need for food. He walked round the spar deck to see that every carronade was properly manned. With no chance of employing the main-deck guns he could have fifteen men at every carronade, quite enough to ensure that no carronade would get loose during the battle. And at every carronade there was a good gunlayer—most of them had learned their duty in the British Fleet—and still Hubbard had a hundred men under his orders to attend to the working of the ship.

It was a comforting sensation to have an ample crew, with every man an able seaman, and even the ship’s boys seventeen years old and upward; there had been no difficulty whatever in enlisting a crew in New York when the Delaware commissioned. And yet the captain of the two-decker, if he knew his business, would be able to nullify all these arrangements at his will. He could lie three cables’ lengths from the Delaware, beyond the effective range of her carronades, and pound her to pieces with the long guns on his upper deck. Probably that English captain knew his business, too—he had proved it by bringing his big ship through Plum Gut in the night and guessing the Delaware’s future course. Peabody allowed the hatred he felt for his implacable foe to well up freely within him.

He went back to where the stern chasers were still banging away. “We’ve hit her eight times, sir,” said Murray, in a sort of ecstasy. Powder smoke and the din of the guns were like drink to him.

“Aim high and try to wing him,” said Peabody.

“Aye aye, sir,” said Murray, and then, respectfully, “I’ve been trying to, sir.”

He bent to squint along the gun again, gave a couple of twirls to the elevating screw, and then stood aside and jerked the lanyard. The gun roared out and recoiled; it was so hot now that it leaped in its carriage at the discharge.

“That went close,” said Peabody. “Try again.”

The sponge on its flexible handle was thrust up the gun, and the water with which it was soaked hissed against the hot metal. Someone whipped a paper cartridge of powder from out of the bucket which guarded it from spray, ripped it open and pushed it into the muzzle. The rammer thrust it further in, and then the big felt wad was thrust in in its turn, the rammer packing the charge hard up into the breech; slovenly packing might diminish the power of the shot by as much as a quarter. Then the ball went rolling down on top of the charge, and another wad was rammed down upon it to hold everything secure. Murray stood aside with the lanyard in his hand, watching the motion of the ship. Suddenly he jerked the lanyard and the gun came leaping back upon its breachings while the wind whisked the smoke round the gun-crew’s faces for a second before heaving it forward.

Peabody looked for the flight of the ball, but this time he missed it. And then, as he stared, he saw the two-decker’s foretopsail suddenly shut down upon itself. From a clear-cut oblong it changed into a vague strip cock-eyed across the foremast and shaking in the wind. Someone started to cheer, and the cheering spread along the deck, but it had not reached its full volume before the two-decker, deprived of the balancing pressure of her foretopsail, came round abruptly into the wind.

“That’s her foretopsail tie gone, sir,” said Hubbard, standing at his side. His lean face with its high arched nose showed more animation than usual.

“More likely the slings,” said Peabody. He had whipped his glass to his eye, and through it he saw the fore rigging of the two-decker black with men struggling with the wreckage. “That was a good shot, Mr. Murray.”

But Murray did not hear; he was already sighting his gun again, absorbed in the business of doing as much damage as possible. As Peabody put his glass to his eye again he saw the two-decker’s broadside momentarily shrouded in smoke, and directly afterwards he was conscious of a tremendous crash beside him. A shot from the two-decker had smashed a hole in the bulwark and ploughed its way along the quarterdeck; splinters hummed round him and two men serving the other stern chaser lay mangled in pools of blood. There were other men staring stupidly at wounds inflicted by the splinters, and when he looked forward he saw other men lying dead on the deck, while two severed mainmast shrouds on the starboard side showed where the ball had found its way out of the ship again.

“Get those shrouds spliced and set up again, Mr. Hubbard,” said Peabody.

Crippled the two-decker might be, but she was determined on inflicting the utmost possible damage before her antagonist escaped out of range. The two stern chasers roared out their defiance; the surgeon’s crew were already carrying the wounded below in their canvas chairs and dragging the dead out of the way. Again the two-decker was wreathed in smoke, and Peabody found time to feel a momentary misgiving lest this broadside should do more damage than merely parting a couple of shrouds. But even as the thought came into his head he saw two jets of water rise from a wave top a cable’s length astern—the danger was past, and although two guns had been well pointed they had not been given sufficient elevation.

“She’s out of range, sir,” said Murray, turning back to him from his gun.

“Yes, Mr. Murray, thanks to you,” said Peabody.

Murray showed a gleam of white teeth in his smoke-blackened face.

“Thank you, sir,” he said.

Peabody remembered Stephen Decatur’s words of thanks to him when they met, sword in hand, on the deck of the captured Khaided-Din in Tripoli harbour, and how he himself had stood flushed and tongue-tied and unable to reply.

“I’ll remember this in my report to the Commodore,” said Peabody. “Now get those guns secured.”

He realised now that he and everyone else on the quarterdeck were soaked to the skin by the spray which had come in through the gunports, and he was shuddering with cold and lack of exercise. His heavy pea-jacket was wet as a soaked sponge and hung like lead from his shoulders. Looking through his glass he could see men still hard at work on the two-decker’s foretopsail yard; they looked like ants on a twig. It would be fully ten minutes before the two-decker got before the wind again; in ten minutes they would be a mile farther away; to regain that mile would take the two-decker at least two hours, if not more; and in less than four hours it would be dark. They were almost safe—as safe as any United States ship could be on a sea whose length and breadth was searched and scanned by the British fleet.

Hubbard had the hands at the braces trimming the sails, and Peabody looked sharply up at the commission pennant fluttering from the maintopmast. The wind had backed noticeably, and, just as important, it was moderating.

“Set the mizzen tops’l and jib again, Mr. Hubbard,” said Peabody.

“Aye aye, sir.”

Hubbard stood beside his captain with his eyes on the men casting off the gaskets and a wry smile on his long face.

“We can just walk away from that old tub now, sir,” he said. “It would ha’ saved us a bit of trouble if the wind had made up its mind sooner.”

Peabody stared at him. The dead men were lying by the spars, forward; their lives would have been saved, undoubtedly, but apart from that—Providence helps those who help themselves. Peabody’s philosophy was such—illogical though he would have admitted it to be if he had happened to analyse his feelings—that to him it was the most natural thing in the world for the wind to shift and moderate after his own efforts had made the change almost unnecessary. To grumble at the whims of uncontrolled natural forces—at the dictates of Providence—was a little absurd to him, like a heathen beating his god for not responding to prayer. He was growing a little set in his ways of thought.