THE END.
[A LOYAL TRAITOR.]
A STORY OF THE WAR OF 1812 BETWEEN AMERICA AND ENGLAND.
BY JAMES BARNES.
CHAPTER XVII.
WHEREIN I BECOME AN OFFICER.
suppose if I were writing a tale of invention, I could imagine no stranger happenings than those I have recorded in the last few pages of this old ledger. But as almost everything has an explanation and can be sifted down to the why and wherefore, when we keep off the subject of religion and beliefs, I can make plain in a few words the situation. If "a ship without a captain is a man without a soul," truly a ship without a compass is a man without an eye. And that was what was the matter with the topsail schooner Yankee, of New Bedford. Four days before I had come on board she had had an encounter with an English ship that had offered resistance. During the course of the action the binnacle of the Yankee had been shot away, and the compass smashed to flinders. But the English ship had been taken, and was the Yankee's seventh prize in a cruise of less than four months. Captain Gorham had manned her and sent her home. The only compass left on board the Yankee was a small-boat's needle in a wooden box. But, as Plummer told me, it was all out of kilter, and as useless to steer by as a twirled sheath-knife. Now for three days after the last capture there had been such thick weather that they had not been able to get a sight of the sun, moon, or stars, and had sailed not by dead-reckoning, as the wind had blown from all quarters, but by sheer guesswork and the lead.