He was a well-built, wiry looking young fellow, with dark and piercing eyes. His face wore at this moment a look that was not only courageous, but older than his apparent years seemed to call for. It was a look that well might grow in the face of an American boy of that day, whether sailor or soldier.
Others had now come in to fill the chairs at the table. At the end of it, opposite Mrs. Avery, sat a strong looking, squarely built man whom nobody need have mistaken for anything else than a first-rate Yankee sea-captain.
The house they were in was of somewhat irregular construction. Its main part, the doorstep of which was not many yards from the road fence, was a square frame building. At the right of its wide central passage, or hall, was the ample dining room. Opening into this at the rear was a room almost equally large that was evidently much older. Its walls were not made of sawed lumber, nor were they even plastered. They were of huge, rudely squared logs and these had been cut from the primeval forest when the first white settlers landed on that coast. They had made their houses as strong as so many small forts. In the outer doors of this room, and here and there in its thick sides, were cut loopholes, now covered over, through which the earlier Averys could have thrust their gun muzzles to defend their scalps from assaults of their unpleasant Pequot neighbors. There were legends in the family of sharp skirmishes in the dooryard. All of that region had been the battle-ground of white and red men and this was one reason why such captains as Putnam, and Knowlton, and Nathan Hale had been able to rally such remarkably stubborn fighters to march to Breed's Hill and to the New York and New Jersey battlefields.
"What's that, Rachel Tarns, about getting news from New York?" at last inquired Captain Avery, laying down his knife and fork. "I'd ruther git good news from Washington's army. I'm not givin' 'em up, yet, by any manner o' means."
"That's all right, father," said his son Vine, "but I do wish we knew of a supply ship, inward bound. I'd like to strike for ammunition for the Noank and for the batteries. We're not fixed out for a long voyage till we can fire more rounds than we could now."
There was a Yankee drawl in his speech, a kind of twang, but there was nothing coarse in the manners or appearance of young Avery, and his sailor father had an intelligent face, not at all destitute of what is called refinement.
"I wish thee might have thy will," responded Rachel, earnestly.
"Vine!" exclaimed his mother. "Hark! Somebody's coming. Rachel, didn't you hear that?"
"I did!" said Rachel, rising. "That was Coco's voice and Up-na-tan's. The old redskin's talking louder than he is used to about something."
"He can screech loud enough," said Guert. "I've heard him give the Manhattan warwhoop. Coco can almost outyell him, too."