Tom laughed in spite of himself as he remembered the thin old voice quavering excitedly, “Stop, thief, stop!”
“Maybe I’ll just go along with you, when you do go,” he said. “What’s your name now? Eben, was it?”
“Eben! No! You’re thinking of Eben Poore. He’s naught but a foolish little lad. I be Johnny Pettengall.”
“So,” said Tom. In the river ahead of him he could see two low green islands getting plainer every minute as the mist cleared away. “Well, Johnny, for old times’ sake then, tell me what’s afoot and what are we down here for?”
Johnny’s face brightened and his voice grew eager, now that he was intent again on the business in hand.
“Likely, being a New Hampshire man, you come in with Stark’s reserves last night.”
“No. I wasn’t detailed to go—nor to stay, either. Couldn’t sleep, and long in the night sometime, I thought I’d just wander this way.”
“I been here all along. We was sent over to Noddle’s Island yesterday to drive the cattle off. Farmers who pasture there have been selling beef to the British. We’d cleared off Noddle, burned the house of one man who resisted, and was on our way back across Hog Island, when a sloop and a schooner sailed close in. Fired on us, they did, and o’ course we answered back.”
“O’ course,” agreed Tom.
“Been firing ever since, except for the schooner—the Diana, she is, one of our men said who recognized her. She’s run aground and been abandoned. It’s her we’re going out to burn.”