Produced by Al Haines
[Illustration: Cover art]
_The_ NOANK'S LOG
A PRIVATEER OF THE REVOLUTION
BY W. O. STODDARD
Author of "Guert Ten Eyck," "Gid Granger," etc.
ILLUSTRATED BY WILL CRAWFORD
BOSTON
LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1900,
BY LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
Norwood, Mass. U.S.A.
PREFACE.
The latter half of the year 1776 and the whole of the year 1777 have
been vaguely and erroneously described as "the dark hour" of the war
for American independence. It is true that our armies, hastily
gathered and imperfectly equipped, had been outnumbered and defeated in
several important engagements. Beyond that purely military fact there
was no real darkness. Upon the sea the success of the Americans had
been phenomenal. Before the end of the year 1777, the commerce of
Great Britain had suffered losses which dismayed her merchants. As
early as the 6th of February, 1778, Mr. Woodbridge, alderman of London,
testified at the bar of the House of Lords that the number of British
ships taken by American cruisers already reached the startling number
of seven hundred and thirty-three. Of these many had been retaken, but
the Americans had succeeded in carrying into port, as prizes, five
hundred and fifty-nine. The value of these and their cargoes was
declared to be moderately estimated at over ten millions of dollars.
Only a few of the American cruisers were public vessels, sent out
either by individual states or by the United States. All the others
were private armed ships, "letters of marque and reprisal" privateers.
Something of their character and cruising is set forth in this story of
the old whaler _Noank_, of New London.
Something is also told of the condition and feeling of the people on
the land during the misunderstood gloomy days. The years of the
Revolutionary War were not altogether years of disaster, devastation,
and depression. They were rather years of development and prosperity.
The war was fought and its victory won not only for political, but for
social, industrial, and financial freedom. All the energies of the
American people had been fettered. As the war went on, and without
waiting for its close, all these energies became free to work out the
great results at which the world now wonders.
We are justly proud of our navy. It was founded by our sailors
themselves, without the help of any Navy Department, or Treasury
Department, or national shipyards, or naval academies. There were,
however, very good admirals, commodores, and captains among the
self-taught heroes who went out then in ships in which, ton for ton and
gun for gun, they were able to outsail and outfight any other cruisers
then afloat.
CONTENTS.
I. A Wounded Nation at Bay
II. More Powder
III. The Unforgotten Hero
IV. The News from Trenton
V. The Brig and the Schooner
VI. The British Fleet
VII. Hunting the _Noank_
VIII. Contraband Goods
IX. The Picaroon
X. The Black Transport
XI. A Dangerous Neighborhood
XII. A Prize for the _Noank_
XIII. The Bermuda Trader
XIV. The Neutral Port
XV. A Coming Storm
XVI. Irish Loyalty
XVII. Very Sharp Shooting
XVIII. Down the British Channel
XIX. The Spent Shot
XX. Anchored in the Harbor
THE NOANK'S LOG.
CHAPTER I.
A WOUNDED NATION AT BAY.
It is well to fix the date of the beginning of a narrative.
Through the mist and the icy rain, with fixed bayonets and steadfast
hearts, up the main street of Trenton town dashed the iron men from the
frost and famine camp on the opposite bank of the Delaware.
Among their foremost files, leading them in person, rode their
commander-in-chief. Beyond, at the central street crossing, a party of
Hessian soldiers were half frantically getting a brace of field-pieces
to bear upon the advancing American column. They were loading with
grape, and if they had been permitted to fire at that short range,
George Washington and all the men around him would have been swept away.
Young Captain William Washington and a mere boy-officer named James
Monroe, with a few Virginians and Marylanders, rushed in ahead of their
main column. Nearly every man went down, killed or wounded, but they
prevented the firing of those two guns. Just before their rush, the
cause of American liberty was in great peril. Just after it, the
victory of Trenton was secure.
So it is set down in written history, and there are a great many
curious statements made by historians.
This was a sort of midnight, it is said,--the dark hour of the
Revolutionary War.
Manhattan Island, with its harbor and its important military and naval
features, had been definitely lost to the Americans and occupied by the
British. Its defences had been so developed that it was now
practically unassailable by any force which the patriots could bring
against it. From this time forward its harbor and bay were to be the
safe refuge and rendezvous of the fleets of the king of England. Here
were to land and from hence were to march, with only one important
exception, the armies sent over to crush the rebellious colonies.
Nevertheless, Great Britain had won back just so much of American land,
and no more, as her troops could continuously control with forts and
camps. Upon all of her land, everywhere beyond the range of British
cannon and the visitation of British bayonets and sabres, the colonists
were as firm as ever. It is an exceedingly remarkable fact that
probably not one county in any colony south of the Canadas contained a
numerical majority of royalists, or "Tories." Still, however, these
were numerous, sincere, zealous, and they fully doubled the effective
strength of the varied forces sent over from beyond the sea.
The tide of disaster to the American arms had hardly been checked at
any point in the north. Fort Washington had bloodily fallen; Fort Lee
had been abandoned; the battle of White Plains had been fought, with
sharp losses upon both sides. After vainly striving to keep together a
dissolving army, General Washington, with a small but utterly devoted
remnant, had retreated to contend with cold and starvation in their
desolate winter quarters beyond the Delaware.
For a time, the red-cross flag of England seemed to be floating
triumphantly over land and sea. All Europe regarded the American cause
as hopelessly lost. The American character and the actual condition of
the colonies was but little understood on the other side of the
Atlantic. The truth of the situation was that the men who had wrested
the wilderness from the hard-fighting red men, and who had been
steadily building up a new, free country, during several generations,
were unaware of any really crushing disaster. At a few points, which
most of them had never seen, they had been driven back a little from
the sea-coast, and that was about all. Among their snow-clad hills and
valleys they were sensibly calculating the actual importance of their
military reverses, and were preparing to try those battles again, or
others like them. A bitter, revengeful, implacable feeling was
everywhere increasing, for several aggravating causes. In the winter
days of 1776-77, wounded America was dangerously AT BAY.
It was on Christmas morning, at the hour when the Hessians of Colonel
Rahl were giving up their arms and military stores in Trenton town. At
that very hour, a group of people, who would have gone wild with
delight over such news as was to come from Trenton, sat down to a
plentiful breakfast in a Connecticut farm-house. It was a house in the
outskirts of New London, near the bank of the Thames River, and in view
of the splendid harbor. As yet there were several vacant chairs at the
table.
"Guert Ten Eyck," said a tall, noble-looking old woman, as she turned
away from one of the frosted windows, "of what good is thy schooner and
her fine French guns? Thee has not fired a shot with one of them. How
does thee know that thee can hit anything?"
"Yes, we did, Rachel Tarns," was very cheerfully responded from across
the table. "We blazed away at that brig. We hit her, too. Good
Quakers ought not to want us to hurt people."
"Guert," she tartly replied, "thee has done no harm, I will instruct
thee. If thee is thyself a Friend, thee must not use carnal weapons,
but if thee is one of the world's people thee may do what is in thee
for the ships and armies of thy good King George. Do I not love him
exceedingly? Hath he not seized my dwelling for a barracks, and hath
he not driven me and mine out of my own city of New York, for what his
servants call treasonable utterances?"
"Rachel!" came with much energy from the head of the table. "I can't
fight, any more'n you can. You love him just the way you do for pretty
good reasons. So do I, for 'pressing my husband and sons into his
navy. Thank God! they've all escaped now, and they're ready to sink
such ships as they were flogged in--"
"Mother Avery," interrupted a stalwart young man at her side, "that's
what we mean to do if we can. British men-o'-war are not easy to sink,
though. We've something to think of just now. If our harbor batteries
aren't strengthened the British could clean out New London any day.
Their cruisers steer out o' range of Ledyard's long thirty-twos, but
there's not enough of 'em. We haven't powder enough, either."
"Vine," said Rachel Tarns, "does thee not see the peaceful nature of
thy long cannon? They keep thy foes at a distance, and they prevent
the unnecessary shedding of blood. I am glad they are on thy fort."
"Rachel Tarns," said Guert, "you gave Aleck Hamilton the first powder
he ever had for his field-pieces. You're a real good Quaker. I wish
you'd come on board the _Noank_, though, and see how we've armed her.
She's all ready for sea."
"What we're waiting for," said Vine Avery, "is a chance to do
something. Father won't say just what his next notion's goin' to be."
"He says he won't wait much longer," said Guert. "Mother, you said I
might go with him?"
"You may!" she answered firmly, and then her face grew shadowy.
He was a well-built, wiry looking young fellow, with dark and piercing
eyes. His face wore at this moment a look that was not only
courageous, but older than his apparent years seemed to call for. It
was a look that well might grow in the face of an American boy of that
day, whether sailor or soldier.
Others had now come in to fill the chairs at the table. At the end of
it, opposite Mrs. Avery, sat a strong looking, squarely built man whom
nobody need have mistaken for anything else than a first-rate Yankee
sea-captain.
The house they were in was of somewhat irregular construction. Its
main part, the doorstep of which was not many yards from the road
fence, was a square frame building. At the right of its wide central
passage, or hall, was the ample dining room. Opening into this at the
rear was a room almost equally large that was evidently much older.
Its walls were not made of sawed lumber, nor were they even plastered.
They were of huge, rudely squared logs and these had been cut from the
primeval forest when the first white settlers landed on that coast.
They had made their houses as strong as so many small forts. In the
outer doors of this room, and here and there in its thick sides, were
cut loopholes, now covered over, through which the earlier Averys could
have thrust their gun muzzles to defend their scalps from assaults of
their unpleasant Pequot neighbors. There were legends in the family of
sharp skirmishes in the dooryard. All of that region had been the
battle-ground of white and red men and this was one reason why such
captains as Putnam, and Knowlton, and Nathan Hale had been able to
rally such remarkably stubborn fighters to march to Breed's Hill and to
the New York and New Jersey battlefields.
"What's that, Rachel Tarns, about getting news from New York?" at last
inquired Captain Avery, laying down his knife and fork. "I'd ruther
git good news from Washington's army. I'm not givin' 'em up, yet, by
any manner o' means."
"That's all right, father," said his son Vine, "but I do wish we knew
of a supply ship, inward bound. I'd like to strike for ammunition for
the _Noank_ and for the batteries. We're not fixed out for a long
voyage till we can fire more rounds than we could now."
There was a Yankee drawl in his speech, a kind of twang, but there was
nothing coarse in the manners or appearance of young Avery, and his
sailor father had an intelligent face, not at all destitute of what is
called refinement.
"I wish thee might have thy will," responded Rachel, earnestly.
"Vine!" exclaimed his mother. "Hark! Somebody's coming. Rachel,
didn't you hear that?"
"I did!" said Rachel, rising. "That was Coco's voice and Up-na-tan's.
The old redskin's talking louder than he is used to about something."
"He can screech loud enough," said Guert. "I've heard him give the
Manhattan warwhoop. Coco can almost outyell him, too."
At that moment, the front door swung open unceremoniously, and a pair
of very extraordinary human forms came stalking in.
"Up-na-tan!" shouted Guert, with boyish eagerness. "Coco! All loaded
down with muskets! What have they been up to?"
"Heap more, out on sled," replied a deep, mellow, African voice. "Ole
chief an' Coco been among lobsters. 'Tole a heap."
"Thee bad black man!" said Rachel Tarns. "Up-na-tan, has thee been
wicked, too? What has thee been stealing?"
"Ole woman no talk," came half humorously from the very tall shape
which had now halted in front of her. "Up-na-tan been all over own
island. See King George army. See church prison. Ship prison. See
many prisoners. All die, soon. Ole chief say he kill redcoat for kill
prisoner. Coco say, too. Good black man. Good Indian."
He might be good, but he was ferociously ugly. The only Indian
features discernible about his dress were his moccasons and an old but
hidden buckskin shirt. Over this he now had on a tremendous military
cloak of dark cloth. On his head was a 'coonskin cap, such as any
Connecticut farmer boy might wear. He now put down on the floor no
less than six good-looking muskets, all duly fitted with bayonets.
Coco did the same, and he, for looks, was equally distinguished. His
tall, gaunt figure was surmounted by an undipped mop of white wool,
over a face that was a marvel of deeply wrinkled African features. He
also wore a military cloak, and both garments were such as might have
been lost in some way by petty officers of a Hessian battalion. They
were not British, at all events.
Guert glanced at the muskets on the floor and then sprang out of the
door to discover what else this brace of uncommon foragers had brought
home with them. Just outside the gate there was quite enough to
astonish him. It was not a mere hand-sled, but what the country people
called a "jumper." It was rudely but strongly made of split saplings,
its parts being held together mostly by wooden pins. It had no better
floor than could be made of split shingles, and on this lay, now, a
closely packed collection of muskets, with several swords, pistols, and
a miscellaneous lot of belts, cartridge-boxes, and knapsacks. Coco and
Up-na-tan had plainly been borrowing liberally, somewhere or other, and
Guert hastened back into the house to get an explanation. Curiously
enough, however, both of the foragers had refused to give anything of
the kind to the assembly in the Avery dining room.
"Where has thee been, chief?" had been asked by Rachel Tarns. "Tell us
what thee and Coco have been doing. We all wish to hear."
"No, no!" interrupted the Indian; "Coco shut mouth. Ole chief tell
Guert mother. Where ole woman gone? Want see her!"
"That's so," said Guert. "Mother's about the only one that can do
anything with either of them. They used to live a good deal at our
house, you know."
There had all the while been one vacant chair at the table, waiting for
somebody that was expected, and now through the kitchen door came
hurrying in a not very tall but vigorous-looking woman.
"Mother!" said Guert. "So glad you came in! Speak to 'em! Make 'em
tell what they've been doing!"
She proved that she understood them better than he or the rest did by
not asking either of them a question. She stepped quickly forward and
shook hands, with the red man first and then with the black. She
stooped and examined the weapons on the floor.
"Sled outside," said Up-na-tan. "Ole woman go see."
Out she went silently, and the dining room was deserted, for everybody
followed her. In front of the jumper stood a very tired-looking pony,
and she pointed at him inquiringly. He himself was nothing wonderful,
but his harness was at least remarkable. It was made up of ropes and
strips of cloth. Some of the strips were red, some green, and the rest
were blue, the whole being, nevertheless, somewhat otherwise than
ornamental.
"Ole chief find pony in wood," said Up-na-tan. "Hess'n tie him on
tree. Find sled in ole barn. Hess'n go sleep. Drink rum. No wake
up. Ole chief an' Coco load sled. Feel hungry, now. Tell more by and
by."
His way of telling left it a little uncertain as to whether or not
intemperance was the only cause that prevented the soldier sleepers
from awaking to interfere with the taking away of their arms and
accoutrements. He seemed, however, to derive great satisfaction from
the interest and approval manifested by Mrs. Ten Eyck.
"Come in and get your breakfast," she said. "Rachel Tarns and I'll
cook for you while you talk. Rachel, they must have the best we can
give them. I've cooked for Up-na-tan. 'Tisn't the first meal he's had
here, either. He's an old friend of mine and yours."
"Good!" grunted Up-na-tan. "Ole woman give chief coffee, many time."
He appeared, nevertheless, a good deal as if he were giving her
commands rather than requests, so dignified and peremptory was his
manner of speech. No doubt it was the correct fashion, as between any
chief and any kind of squaw, although he followed her into the house as
if he in some way belonged to her, and Coco did the same.
"Guert come," he said. "Lyme Avery, Vine, all rest, 'tay in room.
Tarns woman come."
The door into the kitchen was closed behind them in accordance with his
wishes, and the breakfast-table party was compelled to restrain its
curiosity for the time being.
"We must let the old redskin have his own way," remarked Captain Avery.
"Nobody but Guert's mother knows how to deal with him. The old pirate!"
"That's just what he is, or what he has been," said Vine Avery. "He
hardly makes any secret of it. I believe he has a notion, to this day,
that Captain Kidd sailed under orders from General Washington and the
Continental Congress."
"Captain Kidd wasn't much worse than some o' the British cruisers,"
grumbled his father. "They'll all call us pirates, too, and I guess
we'd better not let ourselves be taken prisoners."
Mrs. Avery's face turned a little paler, at that moment, but she said
to him, courageously:--
"Lyme! Do you and Vine fight to the very last! I'm glad that Robert
is with Washington. I wish they had these muskets there! No, they may
be just what's wanted at our forts here."
"More muskets, more cannon, and more powder," said Vine. "Oh! how I
ache to know how those fellows captured 'em! There isn't any better
scout than an Indian, but both of 'em are reg'lar scalpers."
They might be. They looked like it. They were unsurpassed specimens
of out and out red and black savagery, with the added advantage, or
disadvantage, of paleface piratical training and experience by sea and
land. The very room they were now in was a kind of memorial of
old-time barbarisms, and it might again become a fort--a block-house,
at least--almost any day.
All the farm-houses of Westchester County, New York, not far away, if
not already burned or deserted, had become even as so many
"block-houses," so to speak. They were to be held desperately, now and
then, against the lawless attacks of the Cowboys and Skinners who were
carrying on guerilla warfare over what was sarcastically termed "the
neutral ground" between the British and American outposts.
The huge fireplace, before which Mrs. Ten Eyck and Rachel Tarns began
at once to prepare breakfast for their hungry friends, had an iron bar
crossing it, a few feet up. This was to prevent Pequots,
Narragansetts, or other night visitors from bringing their knives and
tomahawks into the house by way of the chimney. Upon the deerhorn
hooks above the mantel hung no less than three long-barrelled,
bell-mouthed fowling pieces, such as had hurled slugs and buckshot
among the melting columns of the British regulars in front of the
breastwork on Bunker Hill, or, more correctly, Breed's Hill. A sabre
hung beside them, and a long-shafted whaling lance rested in the
nearest corner at the right, with a harpoon for a companion.
All these things had been taken in at a glance by the two foragers, or
scouts, or spies, or whatever duty they had been performing most of
recently.
"Keep still, Guert," commanded his mother. "Let the chief tell."
Gravely, slowly, in very plain and not badly cut up English, with now
and then a word or so in Dutch, Up-na-tan told his story, aided, or
otherwise, by sundry sharply rebuked interjections from Coco. The
first thing which seemed to be noteworthy was that the British on
Manhattan Island considered the rebel cause hopeless. Its armed
forces, moreover, were so broken up or so far away that the vicinity of
New York was but carelessly patrolled. There had been hardly any
obstacle to hinder the going in or the coming out of a white-headed old
slave and a wandering Indian. The red men of New York, for that
matter, were supposed to be all more or less friendly to their British
Great Father George across the ocean. All black men, too, were
understood to be not unwillingly released from rebel masters, provided
they were not set at work again for anybody else.
Up-na-tan's greatest interest appeared to cling to the forts and to the
cannon in them, but he answered Rachel Tarns quite clearly concerning
the conditions of the American soldiers held as prisoners. All the
large churches were full of them, he said, packed almost to
suffocation. One or more old hulks of warships, anchored in the
harbor, were as horribly crowded. The worst of these was the old
sixty-four gun ship, _Jersey_, lying in Wallabout Bay, near the Long
Island shore. Up-na-tan and Coco had rowed around her in a stolen boat
and had been fired upon by her deck guard, and they had seen a dozen at
least of dead rebels thrown overboard, to be carried out to sea by the
tide.
"Redcoat kill 'em all, some day," said the Indian. "Kill men in ole
church. Bury 'em somewhere." He seemed to have an idea that the
doomed Americans did not perish by disease or suffocation altogether.
He believed that their captors selected about so many of them every
day, to be dealt with after the Iroquois or Algonquin fashion. This
was strictly an Indian notion of the customary usages of war. It did
not stir his sensibilities, if he had any, as it did those of the
warm-hearted Quaker woman and Mrs. Ten Eyck. Guert listened with a
terribly vindictive feeling, such as was sadly increasing among all the
people of the colonies. It was to account for, though not to excuse,
many a deed of ruthless retaliation during the remainder of the war.
In skirmish after skirmish, raid after raid, battle after battle, the
innocent were to suffer for the guilty. Brave and right-minded
servants and soldiers of Great Britain were to perish miserably,
because of these evil dealings with prisoners of war in and about
Manhattan Island.
"Thy scouting among the forts and camps hath small value," said Rachel
Tarns, thoughtfully. "If Washington knew all, he hath not wherewith to
attack the king's forces."
"No, no!" exclaimed the Indian. "Not now. Washington come again, some
day. Kill all lobster. Take back island. Up-na-tan help him. Coco
no talk. Ole chief tell more."
Aided by expressive gestures and by an occasional question from Mrs.
Ten Eyck, he made the remainder of his story both clear and
interesting. He and Coco had crossed the Harlem, homeward bound, in an
old dugout canoe. They had worked their way out through the British
lines by keeping under the cover of woods, to a point not far from the
White Plains battle-field. Here, one evening, they had discovered a
Hessian foraging party in a deserted farm-house. The soldiers were
having a grand carouse, thinking themselves out of all danger.
"Musket all 'tack up in front of house," said Up-na-tan. "One Hess'n
walk up an' down, sentry, till he tumble. Fall on face. Coco find
sled in barn. Find pony. Up-na-tan take all musket. Pile 'em on
sled. Harness pony, all pretty good. Come away."
"Didn't you go into the house?" asked Guert, excitedly. "Didn't any of
'em know what you were doing? How'd you get your cloak?"
"Boy shut mouth," said Up-na-tan. "Ole chief want cloak. Coco, too,
want more musket, pistol, powder. Hate Hess'n. All in house go sleep
hard. No wake up. Lie still. Pony pull sled to New London."
Mrs. Ten Eyck's face was very pale and so was that of Rachel Tarns.
They believed that they understood only too well why the Manhattan
warrior and the grim Ashantee who had been his comrade in this affair,
preferred to say no more concerning the undisturbable slumber of that
unfortunate detail of Hessians.
"Guert," said his mother, "go in and get your breakfast. The chief and
Coco have had theirs. Rachel, you and I must have a talk with Captain
Avery."