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
illustrated 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 lustily.
"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, nobody 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 cutlass 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 passed 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 brass music on
the after deck began to play "God 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 glass.
"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_.
"One such dose is just as good as two," remarked Captain Morgan. "I'm
glad Taber has good sense. We don't want to be crippled jest now. We
can't afford to risk a stick. We'll get away out o' range, quickest
kind!"
So he did, and so did Taber. But they would by no means have done so
if it had not been for a reason that was getting an explanation in the
furiously angry exclamations of the British sailor in command of that
pugnacious troop-ship. He had rapidly grown red in the face, and now
he seemed ready to burst.
"Lost 'em! Missed 'em!" he roared, as he stamped up and down the deck.
"I had 'em both trapped! I let 'em come near enough before I fired a
gun. I'd ha' sunk 'em or sent 'em in. It's the fault o' that rascally
thief at the navy-yard. He supplied us with that worthless, condemned
contract powder. It won't pitch a shot worth tuppence. He ought to be
hung! I'll report him!"
The mystery of so many cannon-shot being practically spent at a fair
practice distance was completely explained. No doubt he was wrong in
declaring that his ammunition was no better than so much sea-sand, but
it was not the stuff to send twelve-pound balls of iron through oak or
teak bulwarks, and his cunning trap to catch the two American
privateers was a lamentable failure.
It was an hour of their best running before these were again within
hail of each other. Then their two commanders held a brief
speaking-trumpet conversation, congratulating each other upon having
gotten out of so serious a scrape without injury.
"Morgan," said Taber, at last, "the far northerly course, if it suits
you. I think we'd better shape it as if we were bound for Halifax, and
keep well away from every sail we sight."
"That'll do," replied Morgan. "That there Nova Scotia garrison needs
supplies, you know. We're jest the boats to bring 'em all they want.
If we come up with another supply ship, though, and if she hasn't quite
so many guns, we may persuade her to go as far as Boston with us."
"No, sir! I'd say not!" called back Taber. "I feel uneasy 'bout
Boston jest now. I'd ruther not try any home port but New London, and
we'd better make our run in there by night."
"All right!" said Captain Morgan. "Home it is! Heave ahead!"
Guert Ten Eyck, in his bunk, received from his friends a full account
of that day's curious adventure. The port of his cabin was quickly
mended, and he could once more lie quiet and wait for his own mending.
On deck there was especial matter for general discussion arising from
the fact that all had seen a troop-ship.
"More soldiers to conquer America," they said. "It looks bad for us.
The king is sending over British and Hessians, army after army. They
are all well armed, well clothed, well fed, and there are more to
follow. What can our own used up, half-armed, half-starved, badly
beaten Continentals do against such awful odds? The truth is, we may
not find a safe port to run into."
"They can't have taken everything so soon as this," was the conclusion
of Captain Morgan. "We'll feel our way in, when we get there. If all
things have gone wrong we can sail away somewhere, or we can beach the
ships and burn 'em, and take to the woods."