The Captain from Connecticut

Chapter VIII

PEABODY sat pen in hand bending over the ship's log. "Encountered French government sloop Tigresse, Captain Dupon, having on board . . ."

This was hard work. The name Tigresse came easily, because Peabody had read it cut into the ship's bell. He was fairly sure about the "Dupon," too, having heard the captain enunciate it clearly enough, although with his odd French accent. But it was not so easy to describe the Tigresse. He was not at all anxious to write "His Most Christian Majesty's," or "The French King's," because he was by no means sure that the American Government had recognized that potentate, and it had called for a little thought to devise a way round the difficulty. And now that he had come to the point of saying who else was on board he was quite at a loss. There was a Marquis, he knew — he had caught the word during the introduc­tions — but what he was Marquis of, Peabody had not the least recollection, even if he had ever really heard the cumbrous title. Somehow he had formed an accurate idea as to what were to be the Marquis's official duties, but the actual words used by Dupont in his presentation quite escaped him. Peabody scratched his nose with the end of the quill, pondered, and went on writing —"having on board the new Governor of Martinique and his family."

That solved the difficulty. She had blue eyes (Peabody's thoughts went off at an abrupt tangent) and very black hair whose curls were in the most vivid contrast to her white forehead. Her given name was Anne, but what the rest of it was he could not tell, not for the life of him. Anne de Something-or-other. That did not describe her in the least — she was somebody much more definite than that. Into those blue eyes there sometimes came a twinkle which was one of the most exciting things he had ever seen. But for the rest of her . . . Peabody tried methodically to piece his memories of her together. Tall? Short? Peabody forced himself, with rigid self-control, to remember what he had noticed about her before he had met her eyes; he tried to call up before his mental vision his glimpse of her on the quarter-deck when his only reaction to the sight of her had been surprise at the presence of females. The carronade beside her had been a twelve-pounder, and that came up as far as — Yes, of course, she was short. The Marquis was not a tall man, and she had appeared small beside him. She had been wearing some sort of veil which she had put back to twinkle at him. What else she was wearing he could not remember at all, not at all. But the black curls and the blue eyes and the pink-and-white skin he could remember more vividly than he had ever remembered anything. Jonathan had called her "the young'un," and spoke of her as a "peach." Jonathan was a young fool who was not fit to approach any young woman.

Peabody put the log on one side, rose from his desk, and walked up on deck; before his eyes, in the dark alleyway, there floated the vision of Anne, which only faded — just as a ghost would — as he entered the strong sunshine of the deck. Atwell uncovered to him, and he paced rapidly up and down the quarter-deck for a few turns while he looked over the ship. Everything there was just as it should be; the sails were drawing well, the ship was exactly on her course, the watch was at work in a quiet and orderly fashion. Peabody contrasted his own happy lot with that of the British captains. The mainten­ance of American ships of war — what few of them there were — was a mere fleabite compared with the enormous resources available; there had been no need for niggardliness in any respect whatever, while the British, maintaining the largest fleet possible, during twenty continuous years of war, were compelled to skimp and scrape to make the supplies go round. When he had commissioned the Delaware he had been able to pick his crew from a number of applicants three times as great as he needed — every man on board was a seasoned seaman, every specialist had spent a lifetime in his trade, while the British officers had to man their ships by force and train their crews while actually on service. He was a fortunate man.

His eye caught sight of a midshipman forward in charge of a party setting up the lee foremast shrouds. He was lounging against a gun in a manner which no young officer should use when supervising hard work done by older men. It was Jonathan.

"Mr. Peabody!" roared Peabody.

A little stir ran round the ship, unnoticed by him alone; Jonathan looked up.

"Mr. Peabody!" roared Peabody again.

Jonathan came walking aft, a faint look of surprise on his face.

"Move quicker than that when I call you!" snapped Peabody. "Pull yourself up straight and stand at at­tention!"

The look of faint surprise on Jonathan's face changed to one of deep, pained surprise.

"Take that look off your face!" said Peabody, but the surprise merely became genuine.

"I don't like to see you squatting about, Mr. Peabody, when your division is at work."

"But my arm — " said Jonathan.

"Damn your arm!" said Peabody; not so much be­cause Downing had declared Jonathan fit for duty yesterday as because he was irritated that a member of his ship's company should plead bodily weakness when there was work to be done.

"I'm not feeling good," said Jonathan, "and you wouldn't neither."

It may have been surprise which had deprived Jonathan of his usual tact; he ought to have guessed that his brother was in an unusual mood, and he ought to have modeled his bearing for the moment on the slavish deference of the other officers which so excited his derision. Peabody for a couple of seconds could only gobble at him before he was able to find words for his indignation.

"Call me 'sir'!" he roared. "I don't like your damned impertinence, Mr. Peabody."

Jonathan, still amazingly obtuse, pushed out his lower lip, hunched his shoulders, and sulked.

"Fore-topgallant masthead! Wait there for further orders," snapped Peabody. "Run, you — you whipper-snapper."

He was in a towering passion, and Jonathan, looking at him for the first time with seeing eyes, suddenly realized it and was afraid. He turned and ran, with every eye in the ship following him. Halfway up the foremast shrouds he paused for a moment and looked down, saw Peabody take an impatient step, and pelted up again. Peabody watched him to the masthead, and turned abruptly to continue pacing the deck while his fury subsided. He was actually trembling a little with emo­tion. He had been overindulgent to the boy, and he knew it now. The realization that he had actually had a favorite on board since the voyage began was a shock to him.

He was by no means self-analytical enough to know that he had been indulgent to Jonathan merely because he had already been indulgent to him — that he felt the natural fondness for him which was only to be ex­pected after his kindness to him. And fortunately, for the sake of his own peace of mind, he most certainly was unaware of the reason for his new perspicacity, which was Jonathan's ill-advised remark about the two women on board the Tigresse. He was angry with him­self, not with Jonathan, although no one save himself knew it. Atwell turned and looked away to leeward, over the blue water, so as to hide a smile; the hands at work on deck were grinning secretly to each other; below deck already the excited whisper was going round that the Captain had parted brass rags with that cub of a young brother of his. And at the fore-topgallant mast­head, on his uncomfortable perch with his arm linked through the fore-royal halyards, Jonathan sat and shed tears as he bemoaned the fate which had dragged him into this unsympathetic service with its unyielding discipline and soulless self-centeredness, which denied to his per­sonality any play at all. Jonathan did not accept gladly the function of being a cog in a machine. He did not even bother to look up when the lookout began bellow­ing "Land-ho!"

In his present mood he cared for no land that was not his native Connecticut, where he could find sport in dodging the ire of his terrible father, who was at least a known hazard with human foibles as compared with this hard unknown brother of his. The romantic blue outline, dark against the bright sky and the silvered surface of the distant sea, had no appeal at all for him.

Down on deck Hubbard, whom the cry of land had brought up from below, was exhibiting the modest complacency natural after an exact landfall following thirty days at sea.

"Antigua, sir," he said to his captain, fingering his telescope.

"Yes," said Peabody, without much expression.

Now they were putting their heads into the lion's mouth. The chain of islands was one of the richest possessions of England — in sterling value hardly smaller than the whole extent of India. It was the most sensitive of all the spots in which he could deliver a pin prick. From the Virgins down to Trinidad wealth came seep­ing towards London. A myriad small island boats crept from island to island with the products that made Eng­land rich, accumulating them in the major ports until the time should come for a convoy to start for Europe.

For several years the British had been undisputed masters here, conquering island after island — the Danish Virgins, the Dutch St. Martin, the French Martinique — in their determination to allow no enemy to imperil their possessions.

The American privateers had effected little enough in this region; the small island vessels were not tempting as prizes, for they called for a disproportionate number of men as prize crews in relation to their size, while the distances between protected harbors were so short as to give them a fair chance of evading capture. Privateers fought for money; there were shareholders in Baltimore who demanded dividends, and mere destruc­tion— especially when that destruction was bound, sooner or later, to call down upon them the undesirable attention of British ships of war — made no appeal to them. Peabody could foresee a rich harvest awaiting the Delaware's reaping for a while, and perhaps ruin and perhaps death at the end of it. No one was expecting him here, for he had last been reported in the Windward Passage six hundred miles away. It was his business to wring every drop of advantage out of the surprise of his arrival, to ravage and destroy to the utmost before counter measures could be taken against him. He looked through his glass at the steep outline of Antigua. His thin mobile lips were compressed, and the two lines which ran from the sides of his nose to the corners of his mouth showed deep in his face.