The Noank's Log Part 35

CHAPTER XIX.

THE SPENT SHOT.

The first few hours after a sea-fight are apt to have a great deal in them. There was not a moment of time wasted on board the _Noank_, for the spare spars taken from the _Arran_ were just the right things to be sent up in place of the sticks which had been shattered by the fire of the _Lynx_. Not until they should be in place could the swift schooner show her paces, and they had been going up even while the ocean burials were attended to.

"This is awful news to carry home to poor Mrs. Avery," groaned Guert, as he lay in his bunk. "I don't care much for my hurts, but I wish I could be on deck. I'm almost glad I'm wounded. I know how Nathan Hale would feel about it. He'd say it was little enough for a fellow to suffer for his country and for liberty. I'll never forget him."

Away off there on the ocean, therefore, in a schooner bunk, in the dark, the memory of America's hero was doing its beautiful work, as it has been doing ever since, a bright example set, as a star that will not go down.

Many hands make light work, and the spars were all right by the next sunrise. There was only one sail in sight when Captain Morgan came on deck from a visit below to all his wounded men.

"That's the _Lynx_," he thought. "We must get within hail of her and find out how Taber's gettin' on. I don't even know what her cargo is.

The way Lyme Avery carried her's a wonder!"

So Captain Taber was thinking at that very hour, as he went from gun to gun of the old Indiaman's batteries.

"All she wanted was men," he said, "and she'd ha' beaten us, easy. We must have that thirty-two pounder pivot-gun in order, first thing.

I'll make a strong cruiser of her. I've a gang overhaulin' the cargo.

It promises well, and there's more'n thirty thousand dollars in cash.--Oh! but ain't I sick about Lyme! Best kind o' feller! Best neighbor! Best sailor, too. He and I sailed three long v'yages together, and we never had an ill word on sea or land."

Every other man of the dead captain's crew was saying or thinking something of the sort, and it was a blue time in spite of the victory.

The excitement was all over now, and even the most reckless could calculate somewhat the dangers which still remained between them and home.

Captain Ellis himself came up to the deck of the ship which he had ceased to command, for there was no reason for confining him below. He found that more than half his crew had volunteered to do ordinary ship-duty, at regular pay, rather than be shut up under hatches. The remainder, however, were stubborn Britons, and refused to handle so much as a rope under a rebel flag.

"They can't do us any harm," Captain Taber had said of the volunteers.

"I'll trust 'em. Besides, every man of 'em's Irish, and there's mighty little love o' King George that side o' the Channel."

At all events, all of these sailor sons of Erin went to their messes cheerfully that morning.

"Captain Taber," said Ellis, when they came together, "I never saw anything like it! Look, yonder! Your schooner's refitted! She's as taut and trim as ever!"

"She has half a dozen good ship carpenters on board," laughed Taber.

"They could build her over again. Our shipyards are goin' to bring out some new p'ints on ship-buildin'."

"I wish they would," said Ellis. "Our shipwrights are half asleep. Do you s'pose you can repair that pivot-gun? We hadn't a smith worth his salt."

"She'll swing like new, before long," said Taber. "The man that's filing away at her could invent a better gearing than that is. He could make a watch."

Right there was one important difference, then and afterward, between American sailors and European. It was a difference which was to be ill.u.s.trated on land as well, in the records of the Patent Office at Washington, and in the wonderful development of all imaginable varieties of mechanism.

"There she comes, the beauty!" was Taber's next remark, as the _Noank_ neared them. "She can outsail anything of her size that I know of."

"She must keep out o' the way of heavy cruisers, though," said Ellis, a little savagely. "I'd ha' beat her, myself, if I hadn't been caught weak as I was."

A hail from Captain Morgan prevented Taber from answering, and in a minute more the two American crews were cheering each other l.u.s.tily.

"What cargo do you find?" asked Morgan through his trumpet, after he had learned that all else was well.

"All sorts!" responded Taber. "Picked up from prizes. Plenty o'

water, provisions, ammunition. I can't guess where they pulled in some o' the stuff. Woollen cloths, and crockery crates, and tobacco. It looks as if they'd taken some Hamburg trader for an American. You can't say what a privateer'll do, well away at sea."

Ellis heard, and there came a queer, half-anxious grin upon his deeply lined, hardened face. He did not, in fact, look like a man who would hesitate long over any small moral questions of mere flags and ownerships. He was a privateersman in preference to any other occupation, without need for the patriotic spirit which was sending into it the seafaring veterans of America.

"All right!" was the hearty reply from the _Noank_. "Now, Taber, we must keep company if we can for two or three days, at least. Our two batteries, worked together, 'd be an over match for any o' the lighter king's cruisers. We could knock one o' their ten-gun brigs all to flinders."

"I a'most hope we'll come across one," said Taber, "soon as that there thirty-two yonder'll swing on its pivot."

Two armed vessels may not make what is called a "squadron." Captain Morgan, therefore, had not suddenly risen from the rank of first mate to that of commodore, but both the old East Indiaman and the schooner were undoubtedly safer because of their ability and readiness to help each other.

Captain Taber's cruiser, when he came to examine her, was a curious affair, according to later ideas of ship-building. She had been constructed solidly, and had a large carrying capacity. Her sides "tumbled home," or slanted inward, n.o.body knows what for. Her stern was very high, as if a kind of fort were needed, rising to hold up her quarter-deck. In this, on either side, were her nine-pounders, and it might account for their shot flying above the _Noank's_ hull. She was lower in the waist, and she piled up again, forward. Her tops were cups like those of a man-of-war, and might hold sharp-shooters in a close fight. It is the rule to laugh, at that old style of naval architecture, but when the _Lynx_ had been the _Burrumpootra_ she had battled well with the terrible gales and seas of the Indian Ocean, and there were legends of the way in which she had beaten off Chinese and Malay pirates. There were not only good ships but good seamen as well in the old-fashioned days, and all the world was discovered and opened by them to commerce and civilization.

Up-na-tan considered himself the surgeon of the _Noank_, and he was a good one, so far as cuts and bruises were concerned. He and Coco held consultations over Guert, and there was no danger but what he would be well attended to. He was a general favorite with the sailors, and their opinion of him had been lifted tremendously by his conduct at the taking of the _Lynx_. They all declared that he had in him the making of a good sea-captain,--as good, it might possibly be, as Lyme Avery himself, although that was a great deal to say.

That day went by, and the next, and the next, and all in vain did either Captain Ellis or his captors scan the horizon for any speck that looked like war. There were distant sails, truly, but this pair of privateers was inclined to let well enough alone. The fourth day found them well away upon the Atlantic before a ten-knot breeze, slipping along finely, with all the wounded doing well. Guert's pike-thrust in the leg was his worst hurt. It caused him much pain at intervals, and a great deal of fever. The cutla.s.s blow at his shoulder had been broken of its force by the handle of his pike. The wooden shaft had been cut in two as he parried with it, while drawing it back from his successful thrust at Captain Avery's antagonist. The English swordsman had been a strong one, for his blade went on down to make a gash which might be slow in healing. It would probably have been a death stroke but for the tough pikestaff.

"You'll be out on deck, my boy, in a week or two," he had been told by Captain Morgan, "and you're lucky it's no worse."

There was no use in fretting over it. He could lie there and dream of old times in New York, and of ships and fleets and armies. There was no book on board for him to read, however, unless he should wish to take up his study of navigation. There he was lying in the afternoon of the fourth day, not tossing around much, for fear of hurting his wounded leg or shoulder. He was feeling lonely, sick, impatient, discontented.

"Hullo!" he suddenly exclaimed. "What's that? Are we in a fight? I want to go on deck!--There! I guess that was pretty nearly a spent shot!"

It was too bad, altogether. Right through the port-hole window of the cabin had pa.s.sed a round shot from so far away, apparently, that it hardly shattered the door-post upon which it then struck. It had been well aimed, it had hit the schooner, but it had not done any harm.

"There goes Up-na-tan's gun," said Guert, the next instant. "I don't hear the broadside guns. I guess that other firing is from the _Lynx_.

She was close by us, they said. This is awful!"

He could now hear the distant, dull roar of other guns, and he said:--

"That's the British! It sounds as if we were fighting a man-of-war.

Can it be we are going to be captured by 'em this time?"

He might well be nervous about it, but his guesses and fears were only about halfway correct. Not many minutes earlier, the _Noank_ and the _Lynx_ had drawn toward each other, into long hailing distance, for a sort of council of war. Questions and answers had gone hurriedly back and forth, until Captain Morgan had shouted:--

"We'll take her, Taber. We can spare men enough for one more prize crew. She's a big one."

So she was, that tall three-master, floating the British flag, and she was evidently not a frigate of King George. Most likely, they said, she was a supply ship on her way to his armies in his rebellious colonies.

About went the two eager privateers, and there seemed to be no reason to doubt their ability to outsail and outfight their victim. She was carrying a cargo so full and heavy that it pulled her down, and she was logging along clumsily. Both of the American vessels were flying the stars and stripes. The _Lynx_ was somewhat nearer to the Englishman, and Captain Taber deemed it time to fire a shot across her bows as a signal to heave to.

The sound of that first gun was what had really awakened Guert, but he had not at once understood it. Captain Morgan was on the point of following Captain Taber's example, when the big, peaceful-seeming British ship swung around a few points, and a lot of hitherto closed ports along her side sprang open. Every one of these ports had an ugly, metallic nose in it, and from each of these jumped a sheet of fire, followed by thunder. At the same moment a band of bra.s.s music on the after deck began to play "G.o.d save the King," while a long procession of men in red uniforms streamed up from below to join a lot of others like them who were already on deck.

"Eight ports!" exclaimed Captain Morgan, staring through his gla.s.s.

"She may carry more guns than that! She's a British merchant ship of the largest size, turned into a troop-ship, and armed, I'd say, with long twelves. Thunder! We haven't anything to do with her! Starboard your helm, there! I'll signal Taber to keep away."

There was no need of that at all. The first heavy broadside of the stranger had hurtled toward the _Lynx_, and several of the half-spent shot had struck her. Her commander had taken warning instantly, and was already wheeling away, so to speak, when the second British broadside went so dangerously well toward the _Noank_.