“No; I’ve had orders to hold the schooner ready to take on twenty men of Major Simcoe’s troop.”
“You have no idea when they’ll come aboard?”
“No more’n a cat with six blind kittens.”
“You are a good sailor and a daring one. Captain Elijah Sprigg, and the Nancy Jane is not afraid of any weather that blows; so much I know of you and your ship. Could you get to sea in spite of the gale, the guard ships, and the fleet, if it were needful?”
“Not in daylight, with women-folks aboard. And you wouldn’t want me to try it, neither, Captain Page.”
“No,” I agreed thoughtfully. “A chance shot might make me poorer than any beggar that lives, Captain Sprigg. We must not take that risk.”
“I thought ye wouldn’t want to. But if them soldiers ever get aboard of me, Miss Leigh’s charter goes glimmering, and so does her daddy’s tobacco, I guess.”
Again I studied the awkward situation and a possible solution of it began to take some shape in my mind.
“You could get under way after dark and crawl out of the harbor, do you think, Captain Sprigg?” I asked; “even if the weather does chance to be pretty bad?”
“The weather will be no worse to-night than it is now,” he asserted. “But the frigate has come back, and the fleet will most likely get sailing orders. That means that my redcoat passengers will be atop of me sometime to-day.”