CHAPTER XXIII
“Say, Bill, if this brig gets into blue water without a tussle I miss my reckonin’,” dryly remarked one of the old sea-dogs to his companion, as the two leaned on the ship’s rail next to the cat-head. “The coast is swarming these days with lime-juicers and if we fall into their net, we’d wish to have our grog sent down to Davy Jones’ locker, where we’ll all be if Sammy Risk has a thing to do with it. He’d blow us all up before he’d strike.”
“Look a’ here, Hank, you old growler, if Sammy Risk can’t show as clear a pair of heels to them Britishers as ever vanished out of a spying-glass,” replied old Bill Weathergage, “then I’ll take all the jobs of slushin’ and swabbin’ that the boys ought’er do for a for’night on the cruise.”
“Mind what ye’re sayin’, Bill.”
“I’ll do it, you old figger-head.”
The privateersmen were discussing probabilities as the Holker lay in the stream below Philadelphia awaiting Captain Risk to fill out his complement of sixty-five men. Roderick Barclugh had started on his journey and the flour was all on board. The Holker stood up like a church steeple with her cargo stowed away in her hold and hatches all battened down, waiting for a passage outside the capes. Her armament was three short six-pounders forward, and three long nine-pounders aft, being the batteries on port and starboard; a long twelve-pounder bow chaser and a long eighteen-pound quarter-deck stern chaser. A heavy eighteen-pound swivel amidships completed the ship’s metal.
She was equal to many of the King’s cruisers in armament, and excelled two-thirds of them in sailing qualities.
Word came up the river that a brace of the King’s cruisers were standing off Cape May, ready to pounce upon any Yankee that chanced to run the blockade.