CHAPTER VI.
JACK BELL’S SECRET.
Three more trips did Dicky make to Tiverton, and each time, under the cover of a transaction in beef cattle, carried important news. He was rather puzzled, though, to know what the news was, as Squire Stavers did not tell him the contents of any letters but the first. Neither the Squire nor Mr. Barton ever mentioned General Prescott’s name before him. Dicky rashly concluded that the scheme to capture the British general had been abandoned.
He had never seen General Prescott to know him in his life. There were crowds of British officers dashing about the town with orderlies trotting after them; but which was the general he did not know. In fact, after a while Dicky begun to suspect that his trips were for the sole purpose of conveying news about the cattle after all, and felt a distinct decrease in his own importance.
Jack Bell, too, seeing that everything appeared quiet and that the British had lately had successes, especially in having captured Major-General Henry Lee,—“Light Horse Harry,”—began to be very much depressed. He and Dicky discussed affairs very often, and both of them came to the melancholy conclusion that Newport would remain in the hands of the British until the end of the war and that nothing would be attempted in the way of a capture.
The Americans were anxious to make an exchange for General Lee, but had no officer of rank high enough to offer for him. This was a mortifying fact, and Jack Bell, commenting on it, wondered why the plan to kidnap General Prescott had fallen through.
One night, though, Squire Stavers sent for him, and Jack came away from the Squire’s house wearing a look of delighted expectancy.
About a week after that, one morning as soon as he wakened—which was late, as he was out all night—he called Dicky, and the two strolled together toward a lonely point of rocks some distance from any house and where they were not likely to be disturbed by anyone.
The sun shone brightly, while a sharp wind ruffled the waters of Narragansett Bay and gave a kick to the sterns of several vessels that were rounding Point Judith.
It fluttered the pennants of a great British fleet that lay off Block Island and dashed the steel blue water fiercely against the rocky shores upon which the town of Newport is perched. So blue was the sky and so blue was the sea that they came together invisibly on the far horizon, and a fine English frigate which was sailing in under a huge spread of canvas seemed to be suspended between the sky and the sea.
Among the fleet there was the usual activity and business of the morning. A great line-of-battle ship, with the red pennant flying at her fore, indicating that she was taking on powder, lay out in the foreground. An admiral’s barge at the gangway of a handsome black frigate showed that she had distinguished company on board, and the sound of the band playing on the quarterdeck and the noise made by the parading of the marine guard was distinctly borne ashore by the wind. On every ship something was going on in the way of the orderly bustle of a man-of-war.