Captain Caution

by Kenneth Roberts

  "What?" she cried. "You'd slander him?"

  "Slander! Do you think it's never going to be proved how he sold the Olive Branch to the English?"

  Corunna looked at him with the bitterest scorn. "He? Ah, that's your way out of it, is it? To try to put it upon himl Wasn't it Captain

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  Slade who led the men when they retook the Beetle? And where were you when it happened? The last man out of the holdl And weren't you in charge of the Olive Branch when the British cut her out? Don't you suppose everybody knew you could have run her ashore and saved her for me?"

  Marvin's face was white. "Slade sold you outl He went to England and traveled the country with a common bull. He sold you out, I tell you, and divided the sale money of the Olive Branch with the English; then blackmailed merchants into giving him a shipl"

  "Indeed! And how would it be possible for you to learn any such cock-and-bull story as this unless you'd had it from the English themselves? And why do you stop with blackmail? Why don't you tell me the poor man murdered little children?"

  Marvin tugged at his neckeloth as though it oppressed him. "You've got to listen to reasonl What chance do you think you'll have with a man like Slade?"

  She laughed contemptuously. "You're all alike, you menl Each one of you pretends he's perfect, and that every other man is a monster! You slander Captain Slade, and at the very moment you do it there's a woman waiting for youl Who is she? And haven't I as much chance with Captain Slade as she has with you? I think I travel Oh, yes, I think I travel"

  "Corunna," Marvin said slowly, "there's nothing I could do or say, ever, that would influence you. There never has been. Sometimes it seems to me you've always done and said the things that would make me feel most miserable. A thousand times I've wanted to take you by the shoulders and shake you for being so contrary, but I know now there's no use trying to make you do something you don't choose to do. When they put us in the hulks, Corunna, it seemed to me I'd have to pull up the decks with my bare hands to get back to you. Well, I've lost you. I could go to the Minister now with what I know about Slade, but I won't do it, any more than you'd go to him with what you think you know about me. I want to protect you, but I won't do it by force."

  He waited vainly for her to speak. Then he said: "If you feel you've got to go on with Slade, go ahead. I've got one thing to ask that you think it over for a few minutes right now. Either he's a traitor and a liar, or I am. Well, you've known me a long while, and him a short while, but he's fascinated you. I'll ask you to think it over and decide which you'll believe him or me. That's all. I'm going into that room for the commission this lady's helping me to get. If you're here when I come out, I'll know you've changed your mind about Slade."

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  He looked at her expectantly, but since she made no answer, he walked past her, tapped lightly on the Minister's door and went in without a backward glance.

  It was only a short time later that he came out with the blackhaired girl, carrying with him a commission authorising. Daniel Marvin of the private armed brig True-Hearted Yankee to take, burn, sink and destroy all enemy vessels.

  There was no one anywhere in the two outer offices except the green-eyed young woman, who was staring at the dirty windows.

  XXIX

  10M SOUV=LE, hunched over the table in the barren cabin of the Renard, counted a sheaf of bank notes; then looked up at Marvin and Argandeau and moved his small, pointed mustache so that he had the appearance of an astounded squirrel. "It is correct!" he exclaimed. "Correct! You have done ill It is bizarre a coup de thedtrel You Americansl I have heard of nothing like it, everl You say you will do a thing, and almost immediately it is as good as donel'7

  "Not always," Marvin said.

  "But I say yesl" Souville exclaimed, jumping up and clasping his hands beneath his coat tails. "We have received, just now, an account of the privateering success of the Americans. It is something exoticl Something fantastic! The Rossie privateer took and destroyed fifteen British merchantmen in forty-five days; the Decatur took eleven in the same time; the Saratoga has taken eight; the Comet twelve; the Paul Jones eighteen; the Mars nine; the Benjamin Franklin six. The English, they are having a crisis of nerves!"

  "My friend," Marvin said, "tell us the one thing we want to know."

  Souville nodded. "I have found him. He is where you cannot get at him. He is in Dublin."

  "Where I cannot get at him?" Marvin asked. "That depends! That depends! He hasn't bought a house there, has he? He isn't going to settle down, I take it." Thoughtfully he studied Souville's eager face. "If you should keep company with me in your Renard, don't you think it probable that in time we might find some rich prizes in unexpected places?"

  "And I can have the use of your pendulum?" Souville asked.

  "You're laughing at met" Marvin said gravely. "You don't want my pendulum. Your Renard might be mistaken for a clockl"

  "No, not" Souville exclaimed. "I want ill I will try, once, doing things in the American manner. You let me use your pendulum, and I will keep company with you. I will do more; I will find you a crew of Americans, very fine; not drunkards or vagabonds, but strong men from jails, captured in prizes. In four days I find them, and that is none too soon; for this man you want to see, who is now in Dublin, I hear he will sail in eight days."

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  "Eight daysl" Marvin breathed.

  "Eight days," Souville repeated. "Look, you let me use that pendulum and I cancel your dock charges one thousand francs."

  "What else?" Marvin whispered.

  'What else?" Souville demanded. "What else? Nothing else should be needed between two brothers in arms. It is for the glory of France, and so it should be given freely, eh? Ah, well; I will act as your agent here, free of charge, making sure that our thieves of officials do not strip you to the bone when you send in a prize."

  "No, not" Marvin said. "What else about Slade? Where is he going and what will he do?"

  "What is it that you decide about the pendulum?" Souville persisted.

  Marvin nodded. "I'll rig one for you. We'll sail together."

  Souville sighed comfortably, seated himself on his chest and folded his plump hands across his melon-like stomach. "What else about Slade? Well, there is this about Slade: In Bristol he got the Blue Swan brig, an old slaver, very fast. Four long nines she carries, and eight twelve-pound carronades. She went out from Bristol at night, showing no papers before she left; and as she went, she collided with two merchantmen at anchor. Yet the whole affair was hushed at once, and the port authorities were like little children about it, wholly innocent and undisturbed." He raised his eyebrows. "That can have only one meaning, my friend. There is British official connivance in whatever this Blue Swan brig is doing." He nodded wisely, and Marvin stared bleakly from the stern windows.

  "On the following day," Souville continued, "the Blue Swan appears in Dublin. There is scarcely one of these Irish ports where American privateers are not welcome. It is widely known, and with some reason, that so far as England is concerned, they are foreign ports; that if opportunity is given to their citizens, they would take joy in burning any English frigate and crucifying her crew. I think your Slade has gone to Dublin, therefore, to be joined by a friend to whom he does not wish to appear an English sympathiser." He twisted the points of his small mustache and stared at Marvin, who returned his stare with expressionless eyes.

  "In fact," Souville went on, "I have heard from Middleburg, the port from which smugglers run to Dublin. Yesterday a diligence arrived in Middleburg from Paris, and the passengers embarked in a Dublin cutter two females, one of them a - "

  "I wish to hear nothing of thatl" Marvin said.

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  "One of them a very fierce female, very large, who swears terribly in four languages; but the other, her mistress, a "

  "Nothing!" Marvin repeated.

  Souville shrugged his shoulders and manipulated h
is mustache. "Of course," he resumed at length, "this obtaining of intelligence is less simple than is generally believed. It is thought that one man can put on false whiskers and find out everything in the world, but this is not so. No one man can find out more than a little about anything; so when we wish to find out about something, we take fragments of information from a man here, and fragments from a man there, and fragments from a woman elsewhere, and then we fit the fragments together in a picture, eh? Sometimes the picture is wrong, but more often it is right."

  Marvin nodded. "I understand."

  "Yes," Souville said, "and I think we have put together the fragments of the picture of this Slade. The English, as I have told you, are in a crisis of nerves over the exploits of American privateers, who are doing more outrageous things to British merchantmen than have ever been done. Not long ago they were saying that if America dared to fight England, there would be no American flag on any ocean in six months' time. And now behold! Throughout England there are terrible cries of agony at the incessant successes of these damned Yankeesl"

  Argandeau coughed. "We do what we can, we Yankees," he said.

  Souville eyed him severely; then continued: "Already the British have persuaded some of your Yankee captains to carry information to Halifax concerning the movements of American privateers, but this is not enough. The process is too slow. What they need above all else are a few fast cruisers to work in company with a blockading squadron cruisers that would seem to be American, you understand, and so would not be annoyed by other Americans they might encounter."

  "Cruisers that would seem to be AmericanI" Marvin exclaimed.

  "There would be several good points to such a service," Souville continued placidly. "Such vessels would be under the protection of the English, and they could hoodwink the Americans; yet, if they saw fit, they could disguise themselves and pick up vessels here and there from either side provided their captains were blackguards, quite regardless of honor; men desirous only of obtaining money, no matter by what means."

  Marvin stared silently at him, his lips pressed tight together. Argandeau whistled softly.

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  "Yes," Souville sighed, "I think so. In eight days this brig of Slade's this Blue Susan will be victualed and ready for sea. Her departure from Bristol was connived at by the government, so she will somehow be on government service. She has a crew of seventy men which is too small a crew, as you know, to enable a vessel of her size to man out prizes; and she has no coppers or leg irons aboard, so that she is not going back into the slave trade. What is more, a movement of government vessels has been ordered: A ship-of-theline from Plymouth to Dublin with orders for Havana by way of Fayal; a frigate from Portsmouth to Dublin with the same orders; and a sloop-of-war from Sheerness to Dublin, also for Fayal and Havana. There is no reason at all for these vessels to proceed to Dublin no reason except to make the acquaintance of your Slade and his Blue Susan. Therefore, I say that he goes with the squadron to assist in the control of your privateers. I say that, in addition to some of the things we already know about him, he is a traitor! That, gentlemen, is the picture we have pieced together."

  Marvin wet his lips and clenched and unclenched his hands as though he felt a numbness in his fingers. "FayalI" he murmured. "Fayall A neutral portl"

  He got to his feet and looked from the stern windows at his narrow brig.

  She was emerging, amid hoarse shouting, from a confused tangle of men, gear and guns. New, slender and taunt royal and skysail masts had been swayed up, fidded and stayed; and garrulous Frenchmen clung to ratlines, crosstrees and yardarms, reeving new rigging and seizing on chafing gear under Newton's quick eye.

  The prolongation of her masts had given her a new look a look of alertness. She was narrow still, and seemed, because of the absence of spring or rise in her deck, to lie as flat as a log in the water; but she was clumsy no longer, for she rode with a new balance, having the look of being caught in a swift current and of straining at the hawsers that held her to the slimy dock. Yet there was something innocent about her a look of helpless smallness and although Marvin knew her to be three hundred tons and more, she seemed less than a hundred.

  Content at what he saw, he turned to Souville. "Find me the men you spoke of," he said. "We've got to get to sea."

  Souville stepped to the cabin door and shouted shrill orders into the companionway; then turned questioningly to Marvin. "And when we are at sea," he asked, "what then? For where?"

  "Why," Marvin said, "we're for Fayal; but as a matter of precaution, we'll look in first at Dublin."

  xxx

  A SMART breeze from the northwest whipped the True-Hearted Yankee fast through a warm ocean in which floated clots of yellow weed, and from which skittered shimmering fish that curved to left and right as if the threatening rush of her passing had given them wings.

  Wedge-like, she sliced through the watery hillocks, urged onward by a press of canvas that towered upward into royals and distant skysails and spread outward into studding sails, so that the hull beneath seemed ludicrously small and helpless.

  Yet there was no helplessness on her narrow deck; for the tall Indian, Steven, resplendent in the blue jacket and the crossed yellow belts of an officer of marines, drove two sweating gun crews at the laborious task of exercising long eighteen-pound traversing pieces. With the precision of machines the heavy cannon rumbled forward to the weather bow ports, the crews as silent at their hauling as the men of any king's cruiser. Boys ran beside them to place sponges, rammers and water buckets in neat piles abreast the trunnions. The two knots of men boiled around the carriages; to the eyes of the officers on the quarter-deck, they seemed to scramble like ants on sugar. Tackles were made fast to eyebolts; breechings were adjusted. With a rattle of chains the ports were triced up; the two long tome lurched forward, their muzzles disappearing through the bulwarks; quoins were rapped sharply into place. Smoothly the crews reformed in orderly alignment beside the guns.

  The Indian struck an iron triangle. At the clang the gunners, squinting at their sights, shouted, "One! Twol" There was no count of "Three!" but in its place the linstocks of the gunners' mates slapped hard against the touchholes of the guns. "Booml" bawled the gunners' mates. The gun crews made swift movements with rammers and imaginary shot; then snapped to attention. The Indian walked around the rigid crews, staring hard at them. Then he nodded. "GoodI" he said. "You'll draw a gill extra, next mess. Count two after the pendulum strikes; then let 'em have it; and there ain't anything in reason between here and Fayal that we can't blow out of waterl"

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  On the quarter-deck, Newton, scratching busily on a scrap of paper held against the triangular cover of a sextant box, whistled softly; then looked up at Argandeau, who leaned against the weather rail, scanning his features in a pocket mirror. "Twelve knotsl" he exclaimed. "Twelve knots for twenty-four hoursl Two hundred and eighty-eight miles in one dayl That's sailing, misterl Two more days of that, mister, and we'll raise Fayall"

  Argandeau smoothed an eyebrow and returned his mirror to his pocket. "We will raise what?" he asked politely. "This place you mention what was the name again?"

  Newton looked at him coldly. "Fayal was what I said. You may have heard us speak of Fayal."

  "Have I ever heard you speak of anything elsel" Argandeau cried. "Fayall Fayall Fayall Fayal might be heaven, it is so much in your hearts and on your tongues to be therel I have had Fayal with breakfast, dinner and supper since God knows wheel I would like to think a little of the two well-laden Britishers that we took in the Channel, thanks to our pendulum, and sent back to Calais by Tom Souville, to add to our fortunes and the coffers of that beautiful rabbit, Madame de Perigord, but I cannot, no! I cannot hear myself think because of your clack, clack, clack about Fayall I would like to meditate on the way this cautious Old Man of ours, this Captain Caution, of Arundel, took us into the very harbor of Dublin and removed an Indiaman from under the guns of the fort itself
. Hahl There is something to think about, that, as well as how my dear Marvin ever earned the name of Captain Cautionl But to you and the rest of you, all these things are nothing. 'Fayall' you scream. 'Fayall Fayall Fayall' You are like uncivilized people, or infants, taking pleasure only in anticipation." He sighed heavily, as if in despair.

  The door of the companionway slammed shut behind them. The two men turned to see Marvin staring upward with a frown at the brig's upper sails. Argandeau lifted an eyebrow and softly withdrew to the lee rail.

  "Two hundred and eighty-eight miles, Dan," Newton said. "That means Fayal day after tomorrowI"

  Marvin rapped the bulwark with his knuckles. "And so to get us there," he said, and his accusing glance included Argandeau, "you pile muslin on her till she looks like a feather bedl Get in those studding sails and skysails! Can't you feel her dragging?"

  Newton ran forward, shouting orders. Seamen swarmed from nowhere, as if by magic, and scuttled up the shrouds. The studdingsail booms came in; the skysail yards were lowered and their sails

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  close-furled by men who seemed, like insects crawling on a ceiling, to defy the laws of gravity. The brig's deck took on less of a cant: the waves through which she sliced seemed suddenly to lift her and press her on.

  "Just remember that," Marvin said severely, as Newton returned to the quarter-deck. "Any fool or Englishman can crowd on canvas, so that a vessel looks fast. What we aim to do is keep our lee rails out of water and go faster. Give her all she needs; not all she'll stand."

  He took two turns at the weather rail, watching the gun crews housing the long guns amidships. "I've said it fifty times, but it'll bear repeating: This is a war we're in, and risks are the last things we want to take."

  Argandeau laughed, and Marvin halted in his pacing to fix him with a questioning glance.

  "Yes," Argandeau said. "Certainly yesl There were some of us who had that in mind, Captain Caution, when you ran into Dublin Harbor in daylight, and then snatched away that merchantman in the dark. There was no risk to that, of course; no more than picking up an alligator by the hind foot."