"It's a kind of lie!" muttered Guert Ten Eyck. "They say all is fair in war, but I don't want to run up anything but an American flag. I don't half like to go ashore, either."
Nobody else on board, perhaps, was in sympathy with that part of his prejudices, but then his "going ashore" might mean a longer stay than that of any other sailor. The more he thought of it, the less he liked it.
"Father," said Vine Avery, after hearing the Spanish captain, "let Guert and me take a boat now, and pull in behind 'em. If we see any danger, we can streak it back at once."
"Good!" said the captain. "Take the small cutter and Coco and the Indian. They speak Spanish."
Off went Vine, and in a few minutes more a small and sharp-nosed boat manned by four rowers was dancing along into the harbor mouth.
"Splendid!" exclaimed Guert, staring this way and that way, landward, as he pulled. "This all beats anything I ever heard of it. Hullo!"
"Lobster!" growled Coco.
"One, two, three, four sugar-boat," came from Up-na-tan. "Noank get some of 'em. Big frigate no good."
That may have been his opinion, but she looked as if she would be of some account in a naval combat, that splendid British frigate, so taut and trim, lying there at her anchor. The sails now furled along her yards could be opened quickly enough, and there would then be no other ship of her size, of any other nation on earth, that she need fear to meet.
"Forty guns," said Up-na-tan. "Knock hole in Noank. Wait, now. See what ole Spaniard do."