The Captain from Connecticut

Chapter IX

The Cutter was only a small vessel — the mulatto captain had only two colored hands to help him handle her — but she was all he owned. He squatted on the deck of the Delaware with his face in his hands, sobbing, while she burned; and Peabody and the other officers whose business brought them past him cast sympathetic glances at his unconscious back. They liked this callous destruc­tion no better than he did, and she was the thirtieth vessel which had burned since the Delaware had come bursting into the Lesser Antilles. Sloops and cutters, and the little island schooners — the Delaware had inter­cepted and burned every one she had been able to catch from Antigua to Santa Cruz. The Leeward Islands must be in an uproar of consternation. Peabody walked the deck as the Delaware bore away from the scene; in these narrow waters where instant decision had to be taken he did not care to be even a few seconds removed from the position of control.

To windward lay St. Kitts, green and lovely, towering out of the sea with its jagged outline climbing up to the summit of Mount Misery, and on the port bow lay Nevis, sharply triangular, the narrow channel between its base and St. Kitts not yet opened up by the Delaware's progress along the land. Over there in Basseterre people must be wringing their hands and shaking their fists in helpless anger at the sight of the American frigate sail­ing insolently past, Stars and Stripes flying. The soldiers in the batteries there must be impotently looking along their guns, measuring the impossible range, and praying, without hope, for some chance which might bring the enemy within range. There were strange feelings in Peabody's heart as he gazed. It was here, in this identi­cal bit of sea, that the Constellation had fought the Vengeance. Peabody had been a lieutenant, then, in charge of eight spar-deck guns. He remembered the battle in the wild sea, then destruction and ruin, and Truxtun on the quarter-deck with his long hair blowing.

Out here today in the lee of St. Kitts the wind was un­certain and fluky. Every now and again the sails would flap thunderously as a puff came from an unexpected quarter, for it was at this time of day that the sea breeze might be counted upon to spring up and overmaster the perpetual breath of the trades.

"There's shipping there, sir," said Hubbard, stabbing the air with a long forefinger. Against the white of the surf could be seen three or four small cutters creep­ing along on the opposite course to the Delaware's, hoping to reach the shelter of the batteries at Basseterre.

"I see them," said Peabody.

"They'll catch the sea breeze before we do out here, sir," went on Hubbard warningly.

"That's likely," said Peabody. He swept his glass in a minute search of the shoreline beyond Basseterre; there was no recent information at his disposal regarding the coastal defense of these islands, and he had no wish to incur a bloody repulse. But the most painstaking ex­amination failed to reveal any battery hidden among the lush green of the island's steep sides.

"I'll have the boats ready to put over the side, Mr. Hubbard, if you please," said Peabody with the glass still at his side. "Arm the boat's crews."

"Aye aye, sir."

The orders were briefly given, and the boats' crews bustled into their stations, excitedly buckling cutlasses about them and thrusting pistols into their belts.

"Uncock that pistol, damn you!" bawled Hubbard suddenly.

In the privateer in which Hubbard had served before joining the Delaware a landsman had once let off a pistol by accident, and the bullet, flying into the arms chest, had discharged a loaded musket which in turn had set off every weapon in the chest and caused a dozen casualties.

"Starboard a little," said Peabody to the helmsman. "Keep her at that!"

"Keep her at that, sir!" echoed the helmsman.

The Delaware edged in towards the shore, skirting the extreme range of the Basseterre batteries, so as to give the boats the shortest pull necessary. The tiny airs of wind sent her through the water with hardly a ripple. She crept along over the mat blue amid a breathless silence.

"Boats away, Mr. Hubbard, if you please."

"Boats away! Boats away-ay!"

Hubbard began to shout the order as soon as the first two words had left Peabody's lips; the polite remaining five were drowned in his yell. A hundred hands who had been awaiting the order went away on the run with the hoists. The two big boats rose and fell simultaneously into the water and their crews tumbled down into them, Murray commanding one and Atwell the other. They thrust clear and then flung their weight upon the oars, making the stout ash bend as they drove the big craft through the water, dashing for the shore.

"We might be a whaler, sir," grinned Hubbard to Peabody as he watched their progress.

The cutters saw their doom hurtling at them. The leading one manned four sweeps in a desperate effort to gain the shelter of the batteries; Peabody saw the long black blades begin their slow pulling, but the other three incontinently went about and headed for the shore. Atwell's longboat altered course for the cutter under sweeps, Peabody following her with his glass. A white pillar of water emerged suddenly from the surface of the blue sea a cable's-length ahead of the longboat; the big guns at Basseterre were chancing their aim. But a minute later Atwell was alongside, and not long after that he was pulling away again. A crowded dinghy was taking the cutter's crew to the land, and a black cloud of smoke was slowly rising from the cutter and spreading over the surface of the sea.

Peabody swung his glass towards the other vessels. They had reached the shore, and their crews tumbled out into the surf in a wild rush for safety. Peabody watched Murray steady his boat on the edge of the surf for a moment and then dash in after them; it was interesting to see whether Murray would keep his head during his tenure of independent command. A little group of white-shirted men ran up the narrow beach as a guard against surprise, and another group moved along to the beached boats, while the longboat waited in the surf with oars out ready for instant departure. Murray was acting with perfect correctness, decided Peabody. His glass caught a glint of steel in the sunshine — someone was wielding an ax to stove-in the cutters. Directly afterwards came the smoke as first one boat and then another was set afire; by the time Atwell's boat reached the scene all the cutters were on fire and blazing fiercely.

Something impelled Peabody to traverse his glass along the shore towards Basseterre. He saw a big red dot, the twinkle of steel — a detachment of the garrison was pelting hot-foot along the coastal path to try to save the boats. But Murray still had ten minutes in hand, and he coolly made the most of them. Probably all three of the cutters had stove their bottoms running ashore, and certainly ten minutes' ax-work upon them damaged them beyond repair, while the fire had time to take a good hold and sweep the upper works. The infantry de­tachment was a quarter of a mile away when Murray recalled his picket, and by the time the sweating soldiers had reached the scene of action the longboat had shoved off and was just out of musket range beside Atwell. It was a neat piece of work, as Peabody ungrudgingly told Murray when he reached the ship again.

"Thank'ee, sir," said Murray. His eyes were still bright with excitement and his chest was still heaving in sym­pathy with his quickened pulse. "Those sojers were black. Their facings were blue an' they had a white officer. West India Regiment, I reckon, sir."

Another good mark for Murray, seeing that during the excitement of the retreat he had kept his head clear enough to identify his pursuers. The information was of trifling importance, but all information was of some potential value. Murray looked back at the beach, where the red-coated soldiers and white-clad inhabitants were trying to salve something of the wrecks.

"We didn't leave much for 'em, sir," said Murray, grinning, but Peabody was no longer paying him at­tention. He was looking at Nevis, which was slowly growing more defined as the Delaware made her leisurely way along the coast. Already the two-mile-wide channel between Nevis and St. Kitts was fully opened up from where he stood.

"Bring in the captain of the cutter we've got on board," he said.

They brought him the mulatto, who stood sullenly in front of him in his ragged shirt and trousers. His bare feet were seemingly too hard to feel the hot planking under them.

"John O'Hara?" said Peabody, and the mulatto nod­ded. "Your boat was registered at Charlestown, Nevis."

Another nod.

"What soldiers are there?"

O'Hara said nothing.

"Did you hear me speak to you?"

"Yessir. I don't know nothin', sir."

The mulatto's speech was accented like no other on earth. It was only with difficulty that Peabody could understand him.

"You know the answer to that question," said Peabody.

"No sir."

Even if patriotism did not motivate him, O'Hara owed a grudge against this captain who had just destroyed his all. Peabody looked at the sullen face, and then away, at the blue sky and the blue sea, and the steep green slopes of Nevis. War was a merciless business.

"Listen to me, O'Hara," he said. "Tell me what I want to know, and I'll set you free. I'll give you fifty golden guineas as well."

He kept his hard blue eyes on O'Hara's face, but he could detect no sign of weakening at the offer of the reward. So it was time for threats.

"If you don't tell me, I'll sell you at New Orleans. I promise you that, and you know what it means."

Peabody saw the expression on the mulatto's face change, he saw the melancholy black eyes with the yellow whites wander round the horizon, just as his own had done a moment before. The wretched man was thinking of his present life, free, in this blue-and-green paradise, and comparing it with the prospect offered him — the canebrake and the cotton field and the task­master's lash.

"I'll get eight hundred dollars for you," said Peabody. "Somebody'll get eight hundred dollars' worth out of you, and a profit besides."

The mulatto shuddered as he emerged from his bad dream.

"I'll tell you," he said.

Bit by bit Peabody drew the facts from him, halting every now and then to make sure he understood O'Hara's patois. No, there were no red-coated soldiers in Nevis, although there were plenty in St. Kitts. There was a white militia, perhaps a thousand in the whole island, perhaps two hundred in Charlestown itself. They drilled once a month on Sunday afternoons. The colored people, even the free ones, were not allowed arms except for the men enlisted in the West India Regiment. Yes, there were some guns mounted at Charlestown — two big ones, in a battery at the north end of the bay. There were two old white soldiers who looked after them all the time, and some of the white militia were supposed to be trained by them. Yes, that was the battery, there. Yes, those ware­houses round the jetty were full. Sugar and molasses and coffee.

"Right," said Peabody. "If this is the truth, I'll set you free tonight. Take him away, and bring me the other two."

The two Negroes who had constituted the crew of the burned cutter were more easily frightened, though their speech was even more unintelligible than their captain's. Peabody did not have to use threats towards them; it sufficed for him merely to repeat his question once, with his eyes narrowed, for them to pour out their answers in their gobbling speech. They were silly with fright, and they knew little enough, but all they said went to confirm the information wrung from O'Hara. It was worth while to take the risk.

"I shall want the two quarter boats manned as well as the longboats," said Peabody to his officers, and they stood in a semicircle before him as he gave them his orders.

They looked at each other as they listened, exchanging glances, and then looked back at him. His hard blue eyes had a light in them, and the firm compression of his lips seemed to make his thin nose more pronounced than ever in the frame of the deep lines beside it.

Two leadsmen in the chains chanted the depth as the Delaware glided round; steep-to as these West India islands all were, there were soundings and a dangerous shoal in the shallow channel between these two islands. Peabody looked over at Nevis, at the white houses of Charlestown broadcast over the green slopes like cubes of sugar, at the shallow crescent of the bay with its gleaming beach, and then back at St. Kitts. The guns rumbled out as the ports were opened, and with a scampering of feet the men at the weather braces backed the main-topsail.

"You can go now, Mr. Hubbard," said Peabody.

There was a cheer from the crew as the four boats dropped into the sea, and the men at the oars needed no urging as they drove the blades foaming through the water. This was an expedition whose daring was obvious to everyone, and which appealed to everyone. It was pay­ing back in her own coin the thousand mortifying in­sults which Britain had dealt out to American shores. British squadrons might lord it in the Chesapeake and in Long Island Sound, but they could not guard the West Indies against reprisals. Peabody walked slowly back and forth across the quarter-deck, keeping wary watch upon all the three points of stress, on Nevis and on the battery and upon the Mole at Charlestown. Murray was leading the two fast gigs against the battery, the most vital point; Atwell with the two longboats was heading straight for the Mole. There were a hundred and fifty men in those boats, every single one which the Delaware could spare and still remain a fighting entity; Peabody watched their progress with an anxiety which he found it hard to conceal.

A movement over on the St. Kitts shore caught his at­tention.

"Mr. Shepherd," he said to the midshipman command­ing the port-side quarter-deck guns. "Try a shot with that twelve-pounder at those boats."

The gun roared out and a spout of water in the smooth shallow sea showed where it had pitched; the rowboats which had crept out from shore manned by red-coated West Indians promptly turned back. There was no hope of crossing in rowboats two miles of open water swept by the guns of the Delaware. The garrison of St. Kitts would have to stand by impotently and watch the attack upon Nevis. Over in the battery appeared first one jet of smoke and then another; it was not until a quarter of a minute later that the sound of the shots, flat in the heated air, reached Peabody's ears. Peabody could see no sign of the fall of the shot; perhaps the gunners were using grape — at twice the effective range of grapeshot — or perhaps they had utterly misjudged the range, or perhaps they had forgotten to put in any shot at all. Militia gunners were capable of anything, especially when taken by surprise, and there could hardly be a greater surprise for them than the arrival of a powerful enemy in the same week that everyone was drawing a long breath at the conclusion of a war twenty years old.

Murray's men were running up the beach; at three miles the flash of the sun on the cutlass blades was still reflected clearly back. There was no need to worry then any more, and Peabody turned his attention to the Mole. He could see the longboats coming alongside, but he had to guess at the sequence of events — the blue Marines marching methodically forward while the white-clad sailors set about the work of destruction. Even through his glass the drowsy town still seemed eminently peaceful.

A sudden tremendous roar startled him a little. It came from the battery, which was concealed in a cloud of smoke. Murray must have blown it up, battery, magazine, guns, and all. Peabody hoped that none of the Delaware's men had been hurt, for blowing up magazines was a tricky, chancy business. But there were the gigs pushing off from the beach, so that presumably all was well. They were heading along the arc of the bay towards the Mole, to act as a reserve to Atwell if necessary. Over in St. Kitts rowboats were making their appearance again, far away on the farther side of the channel.

"Shall I try another shot at 'em, sir?" asked Shepherd, looking round at him.

"They're out of range," said Peabody, shaking his head. The St. Kitts garrison was welcome to try and in­terfere as long as they circled round beyond the range of the Delaware's guns — their course would land them on the far side of Nevis. After a four-mile row and a four-mile march they could do what they liked in Charlestown, seeing that the raid would be over long before their arrival.

Shepherd's wound had robbed him of his good looks; his scarred left cheek gave to his sunburned face a lop­sided appearance which was utterly sinister, as he stood there beside his guns. Peabody looked back at Charlestown. There was still no sign of war in the drowsy town; the only things moving were Murray's gigs creeping beetlelike over the blue water towards the Mole, and he took the glass from his aching eye and walked slowly back and forth across the quarter-deck. Providence had decreed that he should be subjected to these long and dreary waits; it was that which robbed them of their sting. There was no break until the sound of another loud report came from the town, sending his glass to his eye again on the instant. It was a cannon shot without doubt, but search as he would with his glass he could see nothing whatever of the source of the sound. Murray had reached the Mole and was landing his men. There were fifty Marines and a hundred seamen there now, and Murray ought to be safe enough.

Yes, that was what he had been looking for. A wisp of black smoke was drifting slowly over the town, coming from the general direction of the warehouses grouped round the Mole. It thickened even as he watched. There would be a maximum of twenty minutes or thereabouts to wait, and he resumed his pacing. The Delaware, with her main-topsail aback, swung idly round in response to a fortuitous puff of wind — apparently the sea breeze was beginning to win its daily victory over the Trades. The black smoke was growing all the time in volume and intensity, and the sea breeze was spreading it like a fog over the slopes of Charlestown. Once those ware­houses with their inflammable contents were well alight no effort whatever on the part of the British could extinguish them.

Here came a little block of white down the Mole to the boats, the first party of retiring seamen. First one longboat and then the other detached itself from the Mole and began to crawl out into the bay, and then the swifter gigs followed.

"Square away, Mr. Hubbard, if you please. "We'll run down to the boats."

On the quarter-deck Murray made his second report of the day.

"We blew the battery up, sir. Dismounted the guns and sent the whole place to glory. They only had time to fire two rounds at us — I guess you saw that, sir. There weren't more than twenty men serving the guns, an' they ran when we arrived. I had two men hurt, sir — Able Seaman Clarke and Seaman Hayes, both badly. They were hit by rocks when the magazine went up."

Atwell took up the tale, with a side glance to where the wounded were being swayed up to the deck.

"I had two men killed, sir — Robinson and Krauss. Some of their militia got an old gun — a six-pounder, sir — hidden in a lane an' fired it slap into my picket. Herbert lost his leg. But we burned everything there — boats, warehouses, everything."

Atwell looked back again to Peabody, and his ex­pression hardened.

"And I have two men under arrest, sir — those two."

He pointed to a couple of helpless figures, one of them a Marine, hanging in the slings before they reached the deck. Atwell swallowed for a moment; what he was about to say was going to put those two men in peril of their lives, and he went on with the grimmest formality.

"They are charged with looting and being drunk on duty, sir. They swilled neat rum from the casks we were setting on fire."

The two accused men were dumped roughly on the deck, and Peabody looked down on them. The Marine was conscious enough to wave his arms slowly across his face while gurgling some drunken nonsense; the seaman was as motionless and helpless as if he had been stunned with a club, and pale under the mahogany skin. He must have filled his stomach with neat rum at a single draught.

Peabody knew that passionate yearning for liquor, that wild desire for oblivion.

"Put them in irons in the peak," he said, harshly. "I'll deal with them tomorrow. Ask the surgeon to look at this man after he has attended to the wounded."

He turned away; the setting sun was gleaming across the bay at Charlestown, but it could not penetrate the vast cloud of smoke which engulfed the town, where a million dollars' worth of property was burning.