The Captain from Connecticut

Chapter X

A COURT-MARTIAL had not been possible. Not until her voyage was completed — not until the war should be over — could the Delaware hope to be in a place where it would be possible to assemble the imposing array of officers who could try such an offense. But three lieu­tenants were able to compose a Court of Inquiry who could listen to Lieutenant Atwell's evidence and make recommendations to the captain. Seaman and Marine had no defense to offer, and could only throw themselves on the captain's mercy. They stood white-faced while they listened to Lieutenant Hubbard's formal report to the captain, studying the lean features and hard eyes of the man who could send them to their deaths in the next five minutes. Punishment in this little speck of a ship, encompassed by enemies and friendless through the oceans of the world, could be terrible and must be swift. Death, or such less penalty . . .

It was torment for Peabody. Far within him the devil was tempting him. He had two drunkards in his power, and he could repay on their persons the misery he had endured from a drunken father, the agonizing distress caused him by a drunken mother, the torture he him­self had gone through in his battle with the enemy.

Deep down inside him a little well of bloodthirsty lust brought up into his mind the prospect of repayment. He submerged the hideous temptation and turned an expressionless face to the two wretched men.

This was a happy ship which he commanded; there had been punishments when she was lying at Brooklyn, but not a single one since she had escaped to sea. He felt a dull resentment towards these two who had imperiled the frail structure of happiness. If he should pardon them, he would be running the risk of unsettling the crew; there were some members — he knew it so well! — who would resent the pardoning of a crime which they had been tempted to commit. Yet punishment would not reform drunkards, would not make better men of them. But they had disobeyed orders, that was their worst crime. On this desperate venture every man on board must be shown that disobedience was instantly visited with punishment, and for men steeped in the tradition of the sea there was only one form of punish­ment besides death. Peabody passed sentence with a face set like stone.

The Marine was bovine, phlegmatic, and suffered his flogging in stolid silence, but the seaman screamed under the lash. It was a horrible sound, which rent the fair beauty of the multicolored morning.

Montserrat lay in the distance, its jagged peaks purple and green against the sky; from Soufriere at its southern end a cloud of white steam merged with the clouds which hung over it. In the opposite direction the low sun had waked a rainbow from the rainstorm which had just driven by. Its brilliant arch dipped to the sea at either end, and above it the reverse rainbow was visible, not as brilliant but still beautiful. The sea was of such a vivid color that it was hard to think of it as a lively liquid; with that deep color it was more logical to think of it as of a creamy consistency through which the Delaware was cutting her way, leaving behind her a white wake lovely on the blue. It was Peabody's plan to spread desola­tion and misery and lamentation throughout this peace­ful scene, to burn and harry and destroy, to sweep through the Lesser Antilles like a hurricane of destruc­tion from end to end.

Here lay Montserrat; beyond lay Guadeloupe, French again now, but worth investigation on the chance of finding British shipping; beyond that Dominica, and then, after French Martinique, a whole series of British possessions: St. Vincent, Barbados, Grenada, Trinidad, Guiana, stretching nearly to the Line. There might be convoys with which he would be unable to interfere, ships of war from which he might have to run, but there would be plenty of weak points — joints in the British armor — at which he could thrust. The Dela­ware was capable of keeping the sea for three months more at least — much longer if he could find the op­portunity to reprovision from his prizes; and during that time he would do damage costing a hundred, a thousand, times as much as the Federal Government had expended on the ship. He refused to let his mind dwell again on what might have been the result if only Mr. Jefferson had decided to build a squadron of ships of the line. With his glass leveled at Montserrat, he gave the orders which set the Delaware to work again on the task she had begun.

The days that followed were monotonous only in their sameness — ships destroyed and anchorages raided, West India planters ruined and West Indian merchants bank­rupted. The smoke of the fires which the Delaware lighted drifted over the blue sea and up the green hill­sides, while Peabody could only guess at the terror and the uncertainty he was spreading, at the paralyzing of commerce and at the shocked outcry in London. And through it all there was the constant dribble-dribble of casualties; two men killed by a round shot from the battery at Plymouth, three wounded by the single desperate broadside fired by the trading brig intercepted off Basseterre, one drowned when the Delaware was caught under full canvas by a sudden squall near the Saintes. It was not want of food and water which was likely to put a period to the Delaware's career, nor even shortage of powder and shot, but the loss of mortal men. Of every six men who had come aboard in the East River one man was now dead or useless. When the hands were at divisions Peabody used to find himself looking along the lines of sunburned faces and wondering who would be the next to go. British ships of war could find recruits whenever they met a British merchant ship, but the Delaware was alone.

It was off Roseau that they saw the big schooner. Hubbard himself announced the sighting of her to Peabody.

"Right to windward, sir, but she's bearing down on us fast."

So fast, indeed, that when Peabody came on deck she was already nearly hull-up. The enormous extent of her fore and aft sails, the pronounced rake of her masts, her beautifully cut square topsails, were obvious at a glance, and as she came nearer Peabody could see the sharp lines of her bows and the beauty of her hull. Peabody took the glass from his eye and looked at Hubbard.

"Baltimore privateer," said Hubbard; and then, slowly: "Well, I don't know."

Peabody had the same doubts. At first glance those bows and that canvas seemed eloquent of Baltimore, and yet at second glance they seemed nothing of the kind. If ever a ship had a foreign accent it was this one.

"What d'you make of her, Mr. Murray?"

"Baltimore schooner, rerigged in some foreign port, I reckon, sir."

Murray's home was in Baltimore; his earliest recollec­tions were of the white wings of the schooners on the Patapsco; his judgment ought to be correct if any was.

"Privateer dismasted in action and refitted at Port-au-Prince, most likely," said Hubbard.

That was by far the most probable explanation.

"She's carrying heavy metal, sir," commented Murray.

So much the better. Peabody had been hoping that chance would bring him in contact with a privateer; not only did he need news and information, but he wanted to concoct fresh plans of attack. There ought to be a convoy due soon from Port-of-Spain, and Peabody would be glad to deal with the escort if only there were a privateer at hand to snap up prizes.

"Hoist the colors, Mr. Hubbard."

"She's rounding to!" exclaimed Murray.

Much more than that. She had spun round on her heel, hauled in her sheets, and was beating her way back to windward as hard as she could go.

"Thought we were a merchantman until she saw our teeth," chuckled Murray. "Now she's having the fright of her life. I guess she'll be glad to see the Stars and Stripes."

If the sight of the American flag brought any comfort to the schooner, she showed no sign of it, for she went on clawing up to windward in a desperate hurry.

"Fire a gun to leeward," said Peabody testily.

But the gun brought no reply from the schooner.

"Nobody'd think we're trying to make the damned fools' fortune for 'em," grumbled Hubbard, watching her go.

"Stand by to go about," snapped Peabody. "We'll look into this."

The Delaware went on the other tack, and, hauled as close as she would lie, started in pursuit. The schooner was right to windward, two gunshots away, and heading for the open Atlantic with Dominica on her larboard beam. Far away to starboard the stark bald peak of Mont Pelee showed above the horizon.

"Queer," said Hubbard.

The schooner was heading neither for the active as­sistance of the British Dominica, nor for the neutral protection of French Martinique.

"If she was British you'd expect her to run for Roseau," said Murray.

"And if she were anything else she wouldn't run at all," said Hubbard.

"Maybe she's a Yankee with a British license," sug­gested Murray, sagely.

The same thought had already passed through Peabody's mind. The New England merchants had not taken very seriously this war which Mr. Madison had decided upon, and they had certainly resented the loss of their profitable trade with Britain. Massachusetts had come within an ace of declaring herself neutral, and a good many Yankee ships had continued in British service, supplying the British forces, under license issued by British admirals. If this schooner were one of those, Peabody had every intention of making her a prize of war, and the schooner probably knew it.

Peabody looked up aloft. Every stitch that the Dela­ware could carry was set, and every sail was drawing its best. He looked through his telescope at the schooner.

"She's forereaching on us, damn her," said Hubbard.

"I guess she's weathering on us, too," supplemented Murray.

The schooner was going through the water a trifle faster than the Delaware; she was lying a trifle — half a point, perhaps — nearer the wind; and, as Murray had suggested, she probably was not sagging off bodily to leeward quite as much as the Delaware, although Heaven knew that the Delaware on a bowline was better than most.

"Call all hands," said Peabody. "Put the watch below in the weather shrouds. And I'll have the watch on deck carry the shot up to windward. Keep her up, quarter­master!"

"Keep her up, sir!"

Two hundred men in the weather shrouds, thicker than apples in a tree, meant over ten tons of human ballast, and the mere area of their bodies, exposed to the wind on the weather side, was a help to the Delaware in keeping closer to the wind. The rapid transference of shot from the garlands and lockers on the leeside to the weather side helped to stiffen her as well. The weather braces were hauled in taut, and every sail was as flat as a board and drawing to the utmost; the cast log gave them nearly eight knots.

"Eight knots!" said Murray, surprised.

"She's still forereaching on us, all the same," said Hubbard bitterly.

"Get those men out of the foremast shrouds," said Peabody. "Bring 'em aft. Run out the larboard-side guns, and then bring the watch on deck aft as well."

Running out the guns on the weather side would stiffen her enormously. Bringing the men aft would set her a little by the stern, and Peabody, his mind con­juring up diagrams of the Delaware's underwater form, thought it just possible that she might give a few more yards of speed in that case — possible, but not probable. The guns rumbled out; the foremast men came running aft and scrambled up the mizzen rigging, packing them­selves in among the men already there. The watch on deck came and clustered aft in an eager crowd, herded by the sharp orders of the petty officers.

"Heave the log again!" said Peabody to O'Brien.

O'Brien performed the duty with the utmost care. The seaman with him forced the peg into the log ship and stood holding the reel of line above his head. O'Brien made a level base on the slide of the after carronade for the sandglass. He did not intend to trust to the trans­mission of orders; he took the log himself and cast it, and as the fluttering marker of bunting passed his left hand, with his right he neatly inverted the glass. The spool rattled as the line ran out, so that the sailor's uplifted hands shook as if with the wind. O'Brien kept his eye on the glass during the twenty-eight seconds it took the sand to run out, and as the last grain fell he nipped the line.

"How much?" said Peabody.

"Seven, sir, an' a half. Nearer eight than seven, sir."

No better than before, then, and perhaps a little worse; the wind had kept steady during those twenty-eight seconds. The tension on the seaman's hands ended as the peg was jerked out, and the log towed unresist­ingly. He began to reel in the line.

"She's still forereaching on us, sir," said Murray, gently.

Even a glance showed that; the distance between the schooner and the Delaware had grown perceptibly.

"We'll keep after her, though," said Peabody. "She may carry something away."

That was always the last hope, pursuing or pursued: that the other ship would damage herself in some fashion. It was not a very dignified thing to hope for, and in this case the hope was to bear no fruit. The strange schooner steadily increased her distance. By noon she was hull-down. By four bells, half her big mainsail was below the horizon, and before the first dogwatch was called Pea­body gave the order to wear ship, and laid a course for Santa Lucia.

"But all the same, I'd like to know who the devil she is," said Hubbard with a jerk of his head back to the vanishing topsails of the schooner.

For Peabody it was sufficient to be aware that there was a fast schooner in the vicinity which was not anx­ious for inspection; after that there was no use in regret­ting the hours wasted in pursuit of her. The next job to be done was to continue to exploit the surprise of the Delaware's arrival among the Lesser Antilles, to con­tinue to burn and destroy, even though his heart sick­ened of the wasteful business — even though the tower­ing peak of Martinique looked down upon his exploits, so that Anne on some country picnic may have seen the sails of the Delaware as she passed on her career of destruction. Peabody looked over at the mountains of Martinique; he was not proud at the thought that Anne might be watching him carefully striking down those powerless to strike back at him. And Martinique was now at peace; in that island the open wounds of war were beginning now to close. As a sensible man, Peabody was fully aware of the blessings of peace; the task which lay to his hand made him more aware still. They were very mixed feelings with which he looked over at Martinique.