The Noank's Log Part 12

"Ay, ay, sir! There she goes! They're gettin' hold of her," responded Captain Avery.

For at that moment another gun from another man-of-war sounded well to leeward. It was accompanied by more rocket signals that went up to be read by all the fleet.

"Captain," sang out Guert, as he tried to read them, "green rocket bursting into red. It means 'Pirate in chase of merchantman.'"

"All right," said the captain, "it's some other feller. We're not in chase of anybody. Up-na-tan! Vine! swing out that biggest blue lantern. I'll send up a blue rocket burstin' yeller and green. Then douse the lanterns."

"What does that mean, father?" inquired Vine, raising the blue lights.

"Mean?" uproariously responded the captain. "Why! it means 'Mutiny on board ship. Send help to quell mutiny.'"

The British admiral saw that rare and exceedingly annoying signal with intense indignation.

"That's it!" he stormed, "another 'cursed mutiny! That comes of crowding the king's ships with the off-scourings of the merchant service, and jail-birds, and slaves, and picaroons, and 'pressed Yankee rebels. Not one of 'em's fit to be trusted. The king'll lose ships by it! They'd better be all hung!"

Meantime, under an almost perilous press of sail for such a wind and so rough a sea, the stanch, swift _Noank_ was dashing along her course.

Every minute carried her oceanward, but not all her dangers were behind her.

Rapid signalling went on between the British war-ships and their now frightened convoy. The unarmed vessels were hurrying toward their protectors like so many chickens toward a clucking hen. No other incident or accident of any importance occurred to any of them. As hour after hour went by in the darkness of the night, and then in the very chilly morning that followed, an eager, angry, discomforting process of inquiry went forward from ship to ship. Upon which of them had been the mutiny? Had it succeeded? Had it been put down? Did the mutineers take the boats and get away?

"Not on this ship, sir," was the altogether uniform response, and all the vessels known to be in company had been accounted for.

Not only was it that not one solitary mutineer could be discovered: it also appeared that no such ship as the _Kraken_, of Liverpool, had at any time joined herself to that convoy.

"'Pon my soul!" exclaimed the astonished admiral, at last, "this is great! Ponsonby, my dear fellow, the chap that hailed you in the dark must have been the Yankee pirate himself. What do you think?"

"I think he got away, sir," calmly replied Captain Ponsonby, of the _Amphitrite_, forty-four. "The rebel rascal has slipped through our fingers in the most audacious manner. Showed pluck, too."

"He did!" groaned the admiral.

CHAPTER VII.

HUNTING THE NOANK.

An army in garrison will surely spend money, officers and men. So will a fleet in port. The British camps, upon and near Manhattan Island contained thousands of soldiers, and the warships on the station, or arriving and departing, were numerous. There was sure to be, upon almost any day, enough of "sh.o.r.e leave" or camp leave given, and the streets of New York City were often even brilliant with uniforms. The burnt district could already show many new buildings, mostly shops and warehouses, and the streets were clear of rubbish. The merchants and shopkeepers were said to be doing very well; some of them were making fortunes out of the needs of the king's forces. In the social life of the town there had been a notable change. Rich loyalists from the interior had fled to New York for safety. All the old houses were occupied, in one way and another. Some new ones were built or building. There was a great deal of dinner giving and the like. On the whole, therefore, the ruined city was beginning a new and very peculiar era of prosperity. This was to continue, during the years of the war, to such a degree that upon the return of peace all things would be in readiness for rapid commercial development.

The harbor, with so many ships in it that were all at anchor, wore a frosty, sleepy look, one winter morning. Boats were pulling here and there, from ship to ship, or between the ships and the sh.o.r.e. The morning gun had long since sounded, and the reveilles at the forts and camps. All the flags and pennants were drooping upon their staffs in the still, cold air, and nowhere did any sails appear to be spreading.

Upon the after deck of one elderly looking three-master stood a man who was evidently taking a thoughtful survey of her.

"Levtenant," he said, to a British naval officer standing near him, "this 'ere craft is ready for sea."

"I've brought your sailing orders, then," said the officer. "The sooner you're off, the better."

"Jest so!" said Captain Luke Watts. "They all tell me she isn't a bad one to go. I'm goin' to give her all the chances that are in her. I ain't in any hurry for a return cargo, though. I've had one lesson."

"Pretty narrow escape, they say," said the lieutenant. "It wasn't your fault, though. You'll be taking return cargoes from New York to Liverpool, before long. This war's nearly over."

"Guess it is," said Watts, "but it'll be spring before anything more can be done with Mr. Washington."

"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 a.s.sailed, 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, mola.s.ses, 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 impa.s.sable, 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.

A severe check had been given to the slave trade at first by the closing of its North American market, only a few human cargoes, if any, being delivered among the colonies during the Revolutionary War. On the other hand, the dealers in black labor were encouraged by a steadily increasing demand from the British and Spanish islands, and from South America.

So entirely different was the ocean world, therefore, from what it is to-day, and so easy does it become to form wrong ideas concerning old-time war and peace on sea and land.

The Yankee privateer, the _Noank_, Captain Lyme Avery commanding, had indeed left a large British fleet behind her, and all the sea was before her. Conversations between her commander and his very free-spoken subordinates, however, revealed the fact that what might be called her commission as a ship of war was exceedingly roving. Even that very next morning, as he and his mate stood forward, anxiously scanning the horizon, the latter inquired:--

"Lyme,--I say! How'd it do to tack back and try to cut out one o' them supply ships?"

"Too risky, altogether," replied the captain. "South! South! I say.

We mustn't hang 'round here. There are more ships runnin' between Cuby and Liverpool than there ever was before."

"Fact!" said Sam. "The British can't git their tobacker from the colonies any more. They git a first-rate article from the Spaniards, though, and they have to pay tall prices for it."

"That's it," said Avery. "I want to run one o' those fine-leaf cargoes into New London. Good as gold and silver to trade with. I'd a leetle ruther have sugar, though, full cargo, ship and all, with plenty o'

mola.s.ses."

Others of the schooner's company chimed in, agreeing generally with the captain, and it looked more and more as if the immediate errand of the _Noank_ might be considered settled. She herself was going ahead very well, and was in fine condition.

Away forward, at the heel of the bowsprit, with no sailor duty pressing him just now, loafed Guert Ten Eyck. He had borrowed a telescope from Vine Avery, and he had been using it until he grew tired of searching the horizon in vain, and he had shut it up. He was feeling just a little homesick, perhaps, after the over-excitement of the previous days. He was thinking of his mother rather than of stunning successes as a young privateersman.

"Wouldn't I like to see her this morning!" he was thinking. "I'd like to tell her and the rest how we beat that British fleet--"

"Ugh!" exclaimed a voice at his elbow. "Boy no lookout! Go to sleep!

Wake up! Up-na-tan take gla.s.s!"