CHAPTER VII.
HUNTING THE NOANK.
An army in garrison will surely spend money, officers and men. So will a fleet in port. The British camps, upon and near Manhattan Island contained thousands of soldiers, and the warships on the station, or arriving and departing, were numerous. There was sure to be, upon almost any day, enough of "shore leave" or camp leave given, and the streets of New York City were often even brilliant with uniforms. The burnt district could already show many new buildings, mostly shops and warehouses, and the streets were clear of rubbish. The merchants and shopkeepers were said to be doing very well; some of them were making fortunes out of the needs of the king's forces. In the social life of the town there had been a notable change. Rich loyalists from the interior had fled to New York for safety. All the old houses were occupied, in one way and another. Some new ones were built or building. There was a great deal of dinner giving and the like. On the whole, therefore, the ruined city was beginning a new and very peculiar era of prosperity. This was to continue, during the years of the war, to such a degree that upon the return of peace all things would be in readiness for rapid commercial development.
The harbor, with so many ships in it that were all at anchor, wore a frosty, sleepy look, one winter morning. Boats were pulling here and there, from ship to ship, or between the ships and the shore. The morning gun had long since sounded, and the reveilles at the forts and camps. All the flags and pennants were drooping upon their staffs in the still, cold air, and nowhere did any sails appear to be spreading.
Upon the after deck of one elderly looking three-master stood a man who was evidently taking a thoughtful survey of her.
"Levtenant," he said, to a British naval officer standing near him, "this 'ere craft is ready for sea."
"I've brought your sailing orders, then," said the officer. "The sooner you're off, the better."
"Jest so!" said Captain Luke Watts. "They all tell me she isn't a bad one to go. I'm goin' to give her all the chances that are in her. I ain't in any hurry for a return cargo, though. I've had one lesson."
"Pretty narrow escape, they say," said the lieutenant. "It wasn't your fault, though. You'll be taking return cargoes from New York to Liverpool, before long. This war's nearly over."
"Guess it is," said Watts, "but it'll be spring before anything more can be done with Mr. Washington."
"Cornwallis'll catch him, then," was the confident rejoinder. "The old Virginia fox can hole away among his Jersey hills for a few weeks longer. Then Cornwallis promises to dig him out."
"Oh, he'll do that, fast enough," said Watts. "I s'pose, if I ever git back, I may find him a prisoner in New York. My first business, though, is to git this craft across the Atlantic. I'm to have a thin crew and no guns, and I've to depend on my sails altogether. There are risks."
"Can't help it," said the lieutenant, "and you mustn't lose her."
"You may tell the admiral," answered Watts, a little sharply, "that if I don't, he may have me shot."
"I'll tell him so."
"It's Liverpool or my neck!" said Watts, emphatically. "Tell him I'll take the northerly course, weather or no weather, out o' the way o' pirates, and he needn't be uneasy."
The carrying of that report to the captain of the port yet more firmly established the confidence which was reposed in the loyalty of Captain Watts. He was to be allowed to use his own judgment very freely, and he was likely to have continuous employment as a Tory commander of British ships.
There was hardly any cargo worth speaking of in the hold of the Termagant. She was going home in ballast. British commerce with the colonies was entirely cut off, and this of itself was a severe war blow to the mother country, equivalent to many defeats of her armies in the field. American commerce itself, however, although terribly assailed, was all the while on the increase. Up to the outbreak of the war, everything produced for export in the colonies had to go out under British restriction, whether directly to England or otherwise. All that did not do so escaped by adventurous processes of a smuggling description, and the amount of it was limited. Now, for instance, the tobacco of Virginia and the Carolinas, when it could get out at all, could be sold in any port of Europe which it might reach. The West India Islands, also, were ready to take wheat to any amount, paying for it in sugar, molasses, rum, cash, tobacco, or fruits. The war laws of nations and the existing treaties, even if these were strictly adhered to, were not in such a shape as to hinder France or Holland or Spain from opening trade relations, hardly concealed, with the revolted colonies of Great Britain. All the politics of Europe were in a dreadfully mixed, uncertain condition, and what was called peace was very like a war in the bud that promised to become full blown before a great while.
The greatest of all hinderances to American prosperity did not belong to the war at all. It was the absence of good facilities for inland transportation. The roads were bad, and little was doing to make them better. The natural watercourses, rivers, bays, and sounds, were of great value, but they did not exist in many places where they were needed. Washington's army almost starved to death, simply because there were no railways, not even macadamized roads, by means of which he could receive the abundant supplies which his fellow-patriots in numberless localities were eagerly ready to send him. Large amounts of produce, year after year, rotted on the ground among the up-country farms of all the states, because the cost of wagoning was too great, or the roads were impassable, or the markets did not exist.
While this was the condition of things on the land, not only in America, but in all other countries, there was a scourge of the sea that was almost as hurtful to commerce as was privateering itself. Piracy had been fought out of large parts of the ocean, only making an occasional appearance, but in other parts it held an only half-disputed sway. One consequence was that the mere dread of the black flag kept out commercial enterprise almost altogether from a large number of promising fields. The fact was, that every case of a vessel lost at sea and not heard from, and of these there were many, was sure to be charged over to the account of piracy, so that the actual evil was made to appear much greater than its reality.
A severe check had been given to the slave trade at first by the closing of its North American market, only a few human cargoes, if any, being delivered among the colonies during the Revolutionary War. On the other hand, the dealers in black labor were encouraged by a steadily increasing demand from the British and Spanish islands, and from South America.
So entirely different was the ocean world, therefore, from what it is to-day, and so easy does it become to form wrong ideas concerning old-time war and peace on sea and land.
The Yankee privateer, the Noank, Captain Lyme Avery commanding, had indeed left a large British fleet behind her, and all the sea was before her. Conversations between her commander and his very free-spoken subordinates, however, revealed the fact that what might be called her commission as a ship of war was exceedingly roving. Even that very next morning, as he and his mate stood forward, anxiously scanning the horizon, the latter inquired:—
"Lyme,—I say! How'd it do to tack back and try to cut out one o' them supply ships?"
"Too risky, altogether," replied the captain. "South! South! I say. We mustn't hang 'round here. There are more ships runnin' between Cuby and Liverpool than there ever was before."
"Fact!" said Sam. "The British can't git their tobacker from the colonies any more. They git a first-rate article from the Spaniards, though, and they have to pay tall prices for it."
"That's it," said Avery. "I want to run one o' those fine-leaf cargoes into New London. Good as gold and silver to trade with. I'd a leetle ruther have sugar, though, full cargo, ship and all, with plenty o' molasses."
Others of the schooner's company chimed in, agreeing generally with the captain, and it looked more and more as if the immediate errand of the Noank might be considered settled. She herself was going ahead very well, and was in fine condition.
Away forward, at the heel of the bowsprit, with no sailor duty pressing him just now, loafed Guert Ten Eyck. He had borrowed a telescope from Vine Avery, and he had been using it until he grew tired of searching the horizon in vain, and he had shut it up. He was feeling just a little homesick, perhaps, after the over-excitement of the previous days. He was thinking of his mother rather than of stunning successes as a young privateersman.
"Wouldn't I like to see her this morning!" he was thinking. "I'd like to tell her and the rest how we beat that British fleet—"
"Ugh!" exclaimed a voice at his elbow. "Boy no lookout! Go to sleep! Wake up! Up-na-tan take glass!"
Guert's dulness vanished, and he at once straightened up, for the contemptuous tone of the old Manhattan stung him a little. He had not been stationed there by any order, as a responsible watchman, but the old redskin was unable to understand how any fellow on a warpath, whether in the woods or upon the water, could at any moment be otherwise than looking out for his enemies. His own keen eyes were continually busy without any mental effort or any official instructions. He now took the telescope and began to use it methodically. Around the circle of the sea it slowly turned, until it suddenly became fixed in a north-westerly direction.
"Sail O!" he sang out. "Where cap'n?"
"Here I am!" came up the forward hatchway. "Where away? What do you make her out?"
"Nor-nor-west!" called back the Indian. "Square tops'l. No see 'em good, yet. Man-o'-war come."
"Jest as like as not," said Captain Avery. "Shouldn't wonder if they'd sent a cruiser after us. Hurrah, boys! A stern chase is a long chase, but that isn't the first thing on hand. Sam! I was down at the barometer. There's a blow comin'! Worst kind! All hands to shorten sail! Lower those topsails!"
It was a somewhat unexpected order for a crew to receive if an enemy's cruiser were indeed so close upon their heels, and there was hardly a cloud in the steel-blue winter sky. It was obeyed, however, the men passing from one to another the discovery of Up-na-tan while they tugged at their ropes and canvas.
Guert sprang away aloft, for this was a part of his seamanship, in which the captain was compelling him to take pretty severe lessons.
"You'll have to be on a square-rigged ship, one of these days," he had told him. "I want you to know 'bout a schooner before you get away from her. But you'll find there's an awful difference 'twixt the handlin' o' the Noank and a full-rigged three-master. You'll need heaps and heaps o' sea schoolin'."
Guert was very well aware of that, from more tongues than one, and Sam Prentice was also beginning to put him through a mathematical course of the study of navigation. This, in fact, had begun during the long months of inactivity at New London, and he had been much helped in it by his Quaker friend, Rachel Tarns. He was to be of some use, one of these days, she had told him; and a fellow who did not know how to navigate could never become a sea-captain. An ignorant chap, a mere sailor, must serve before the mast all his life.
In came the clouds of canvas, all but a reefed mainsail and foresail and a jib.
"She's safe, now, I think," said the captain. "I guess I'll go down and take another look at that glass. It kind o' startled me, it was goin' down so. Sam, how's the stranger?"
"Heading for us, I'd say," called back the mate. "She's a three-master, too. She's carryin' all sail, just now. If there's a heavy blow a comin', she may throw away some of her sticks."
"She may do worse'n that," said the captain, "if she cracks on too much canvas. We won't, though."
Down below he hastened, and now Up-na-tan was pointing at something white and hazy well up in the eastern sky. Every old salt on board was quickly watching what appeared to be, at first, a change of color from blue to gray. Some of them were shaking their heads gravely.
"It's the wrong time o' year," said one, "for that sort o' thing. I know 'em. They're jest crushers. Tell ye what. If it's that kind o' norther, it'll drop down awful sudden when it gits here. Lyme Avery hasn't been a mite too kerful. He knows what he's about."
"There's odds in storms," replied a grizzled whaler near him. "I've seen a Hull trader knocked all to ruins in ten minutes by one o' them fellers. Every stick was blown out of her, and she foundered before sundown."
"Look out sharp for all the gun fastenings!" shouted the captain, as he again came hurriedly on deck. "Up-na-tan, you and Coco guy that pivot-gun, hardest kind. This boat's likely to be doin' some pitchin' and rollin' pretty soon. There'll be an awful sea. Where's that Englishman?"
"Wait a bit," said Up-na-tan. "Ole chief give lobster one shot."
"All right," said the captain. "She's in good range now. Have your extra gearings ready to clap on. This schooner has weathered all sorts o' gales, but it won't do to let her git caught nappin'."
There had been more than a little surprise on board King George's fine frigate Clyde, of thirty-six guns. There had been a group of seaman-like officers upon her quarter-deck at about the time she was discovered by Up-na-tan. Marine glasses were at work in the hands of more than one of those gentlemen, and the express reason for it appeared in their conversation.
The Clyde was a cruiser somewhat noted for her speed. She had been of the convoy of the fleet through which the Noank had so cunningly worked her way, and had been at once detailed to chase the saucy privateer. This was decidedly pleasanter than guarding slow merchantmen, and the frigate's commander had congratulated himself heartily.
"If we don't strike her, we may pick up something else," he had remarked, adding: "I think I can make out the course she's most likely to take. Two to one, she's bound for the Havana, to harry our West India trade. We'll keep a sharp lookout."
So he did, and he had been rewarded even sooner than he had expected.
"Right under our noses," he had said, when the discovery of the schooner was announced. "We can outsail her."
"Captain!" interrupted his next in command, excitedly. "If she isn't taking in sail! What can that mean?"
"She may take us for something else," said the captain. "It's a fine breeze. She couldn't think of fighting us."
"Not a bit of it," said the officer; but his commander was an old, experienced sea-captain, and the queer conduct of his intended prize set him to thinking.
He walked up and down the deck during about half a minute, and then he began to look up curiously at the sky.
"That's it!" he shouted, his whole manner changing suddenly. "The Yankees are right! All hands! Shorten sail!"
He poured rapid orders through his trumpet, while his lieutenants and other officers sprang away to their duties, leaving him almost alone upon the quarter-deck.
"It's plain enough what it means," he said aloud. "There's trouble coming; we must in with every rag. This ship's too light, anyhow, for a hurricane. The men don't know it, but they may be working for their lives. All right! Things are coming in fast enough. I'll get that schooner, too, wind or no wind."
As yet, there was only a fresh breeze to take note of, so far as a landsman could have discerned. There was no actual excitement among the sailors of the Clyde, merely because of a change in the color of the sky. Some of them, however, had sailed as many seas as had their captain or the whalers of the Noank, and they were freely expressing to their comrades their approval of his prudence. All were working, therefore, with an uncommon degree of energy. Their ways and their performances would have been, if he could have seen them, a very instructive lesson to Guert Ten Eyck. He would have learned much concerning the differences between a square-rigged three-master and a schooner like the Noank.
During this somewhat brief and exceedingly busy time, the two vessels had steadily approached each other. The first officer of the Clyde had attended to his taking in and reefing, and he now stood once more before his captain.
"The prize is within long range, sir."
"All right, Mr. Watson. Give her a gun. We must take her or sink her."
"Best sink her, sir. It's not safe to send off a boat. Most likely she's heavily armed, sir."
"No," said the captain, "no boat. We're short-handed, anyhow. We'll not sink her if we can help it. One thing I'm after is to overhaul her crew."
"You are right, sir," laughed the lieutenant. "A shot may bring her to."
There was more than one element, therefore, in the supposable value of the Noank, considered as the prize of the British frigate, Clyde.
Out ran one of the latter's port guns, shotted. It was well aimed, too, whether or not it was intended mainly as a sharp command to surrender. Its heavy shot went whizzing between the schooner's raking masts, doing no actual damage, but serving as a serious warning.
"A little lower!" exclaimed Captain Avery. "That was closer than I expected. Up-na-tan! Let 'em have it!"
He had but just given the order to go about, and the Noank was almost as good as standing still, while the red man sighted his gun. His marksmanship was a shade better, too, than that of the British gunner.
Such a response, or any at all with a gun, had been utterly unexpected by all on board the Clyde.
"Hit us?" gasped the captain. "We are struck? Was there ever such impudence! See what that is!"
"The port o' th' capt'n's cab'n!" shouted a sailor. "It's mashed, sir! And 'ere comes th' wind, sir!"
There had been a crash of wood and glass at the closed port-hole, and from that the Indian's iron messenger had gone on through the cabin door. All to bits flew a great swinging lantern in the saloon, and a wide gap was made in the woodwork of the state-room opposite. This had been closely packed with dinner-table delicacies, including many cases of wine. Sad work was therefore made of the costly juice of the grape, whether purchased or captured. A small flood of it, as red as blood, but not as horrible, came streaming out to tell of the bottle-breaking.
"'Orrid waste, sir!" groaned the captain's steward, as he gazed upon that crimson rivulet. "'E could ha' dined the fleet on 'alf o' that. I'll not forgive they Yonkees!"
"Give 'em a broadside!" roared the angry lieutenant on deck.
"No!" as loudly commanded the cool and prudent captain, adding to his friend: "Not just now, my boy. Call all hands to quarters. It'll be hold hard, in a few minutes. Ease her! Ease her! Starboard your helm! Steady all! Here it comes!"
He was a prime good seaman, that captain of the Clyde, and he was at that moment looking aloft to see his maintopsail blown to leeward.
"I'm glad it went!" he exclaimed. "Good luck! since they couldn't get it in. That'll relieve the strain on the topmast. It wouldn't ha' stood it."
Other sails threatened to follow, however, and the frigate was beginning to reel and pitch unpleasantly, although no very heavy sea had yet risen. The sky overhead was all one whiteness, but low down, northeasterly, it was blackening. The wind that came was bitterly cold and cutting, as well as resistlessly strong. On board the Noank all had been made ready for its arrival, and the schooner showed at once the excellence of her modelling. She leaned over, under her closely reefed mainsail, with a mere apron of a jib, and sped away southerly at a rate which her square-rigged pursuer was not at all likely to rival.
The captain of the Clyde watched her, as he clung tightly to his lashings at the foot of his mizzenmast, using his telescope as best he could, and making remarks as calmly as if he had been contemplating a horse-race.
"I'll say one thing for the Yankees," he said. "We can take lessons from them in light ship building. That's a good one. I wish I had the sailors that are handling her. They turn out some o' the best seamen afloat. Worth twenty apiece of some that were sent to me."
He was himself a fine specimen of the race of vikings who have made England the queen of the seas. Nowhere have they ever been more highly appreciated than among their cousins of the New World, and their many achievements are a part of our own ancestral inheritance.
For the immediate present, at least, the Noank was safe, so far as the British navy might be concerned.
"Guert!" said Up-na-tan, when their watch below brought them together. "Look ole brack man! Coco no like cole wind. Like 'em warm. Up-na-tan no care! Ugh! Want Noank run south. No freeze hard."
Poor Coco had indeed been shivering pitifully when he came down from the deck. Not all the experiences he had had during many northern winters had prepared his Ashantee constitution to enjoy a norther.
In fact, moreover, there was not an old whale catcher on board who did not now and then congratulate himself that the schooner was steering toward the tropics, and would soon leave behind her that fierce, destructive river of dry, penetrating polar air.