"Ugh!" exclaimed a voice at his elbow. "Boy no lookout! Go to sleep! Wake up! Up-na-tan take glass!"
Guert's dulness vanished, and he at once straightened up, for the contemptuous tone of the old Manhattan stung him a little. He had not been stationed there by any order, as a responsible watchman, but the old redskin was unable to understand how any fellow on a warpath, whether in the woods or upon the water, could at any moment be otherwise than looking out for his enemies. His own keen eyes were continually busy without any mental effort or any official instructions. He now took the telescope and began to use it methodically. Around the circle of the sea it slowly turned, until it suddenly became fixed in a north-westerly direction.
"Sail O!" he sang out. "Where cap'n?"
"Here I am!" came up the forward hatchway. "Where away? What do you make her out?"
"Nor-nor-west!" called back the Indian. "Square tops'l. No see 'em good, yet. Man-o'-war come."
"Jest as like as not," said Captain Avery. "Shouldn't wonder if they'd sent a cruiser after us. Hurrah, boys! A stern chase is a long chase, but that isn't the first thing on hand. Sam! I was down at the barometer. There's a blow comin'! Worst kind! All hands to shorten sail! Lower those topsails!"
It was a somewhat unexpected order for a crew to receive if an enemy's cruiser were indeed so close upon their heels, and there was hardly a cloud in the steel-blue winter sky. It was obeyed, however, the men passing from one to another the discovery of Up-na-tan while they tugged at their ropes and canvas.
Guert sprang away aloft, for this was a part of his seamanship, in which the captain was compelling him to take pretty severe lessons.
"You'll have to be on a square-rigged ship, one of these days," he had told him. "I want you to know 'bout a schooner before you get away from her. But you'll find there's an awful difference 'twixt the handlin' o' the Noank and a full-rigged three-master. You'll need heaps and heaps o' sea schoolin'."
Guert was very well aware of that, from more tongues than one, and Sam Prentice was also beginning to put him through a mathematical course of the study of navigation. This, in fact, had begun during the long months of inactivity at New London, and he had been much helped in it by his Quaker friend, Rachel Tarns. He was to be of some use, one of these days, she had told him; and a fellow who did not know how to navigate could never become a sea-captain. An ignorant chap, a mere sailor, must serve before the mast all his life.