"Cornwallis'll catch him, then," was the confident rejoinder. "The old Virginia fox can hole away among his Jersey hills for a few weeks longer. Then Cornwallis promises to dig him out."
"Oh, he'll do that, fast enough," said Watts. "I s'pose, if I ever git back, I may find him a prisoner in New York. My first business, though, is to git this craft across the Atlantic. I'm to have a thin crew and no guns, and I've to depend on my sails altogether. There are risks."
"Can't help it," said the lieutenant, "and you mustn't lose her."
"You may tell the admiral," answered Watts, a little sharply, "that if I don't, he may have me shot."
"I'll tell him so."
"It's Liverpool or my neck!" said Watts, emphatically. "Tell him I'll take the northerly course, weather or no weather, out o' the way o' pirates, and he needn't be uneasy."
The carrying of that report to the captain of the port yet more firmly established the confidence which was reposed in the loyalty of Captain Watts. He was to be allowed to use his own judgment very freely, and he was likely to have continuous employment as a Tory commander of British ships.
There was hardly any cargo worth speaking of in the hold of the Termagant. She was going home in ballast. British commerce with the colonies was entirely cut off, and this of itself was a severe war blow to the mother country, equivalent to many defeats of her armies in the field. American commerce itself, however, although terribly assailed, was all the while on the increase. Up to the outbreak of the war, everything produced for export in the colonies had to go out under British restriction, whether directly to England or otherwise. All that did not do so escaped by adventurous processes of a smuggling description, and the amount of it was limited. Now, for instance, the tobacco of Virginia and the Carolinas, when it could get out at all, could be sold in any port of Europe which it might reach. The West India Islands, also, were ready to take wheat to any amount, paying for it in sugar, molasses, rum, cash, tobacco, or fruits. The war laws of nations and the existing treaties, even if these were strictly adhered to, were not in such a shape as to hinder France or Holland or Spain from opening trade relations, hardly concealed, with the revolted colonies of Great Britain. All the politics of Europe were in a dreadfully mixed, uncertain condition, and what was called peace was very like a war in the bud that promised to become full blown before a great while.
The greatest of all hinderances to American prosperity did not belong to the war at all. It was the absence of good facilities for inland transportation. The roads were bad, and little was doing to make them better. The natural watercourses, rivers, bays, and sounds, were of great value, but they did not exist in many places where they were needed. Washington's army almost starved to death, simply because there were no railways, not even macadamized roads, by means of which he could receive the abundant supplies which his fellow-patriots in numberless localities were eagerly ready to send him. Large amounts of produce, year after year, rotted on the ground among the up-country farms of all the states, because the cost of wagoning was too great, or the roads were impassable, or the markets did not exist.
While this was the condition of things on the land, not only in America, but in all other countries, there was a scourge of the sea that was almost as hurtful to commerce as was privateering itself. Piracy had been fought out of large parts of the ocean, only making an occasional appearance, but in other parts it held an only half-disputed sway. One consequence was that the mere dread of the black flag kept out commercial enterprise almost altogether from a large number of promising fields. The fact was, that every case of a vessel lost at sea and not heard from, and of these there were many, was sure to be charged over to the account of piracy, so that the actual evil was made to appear much greater than its reality.