I could make no reply to this except to whistle, which I did; and we had a drink on it.
“Well,” I said, “I’ve had fair luck, but I hope to have better. There’s a convoy of thirty-two sail bound for England under the sloop-of-war Turnstone.”
“A convoy!” Boyle exclaimed, and his eyes, velvety brown eyes, seemed to glow with yellow lights. “A convoy! And only one sloop-of-war to guard it!”
We sipped our Madeira silently. I knew he was thinking longingly, as was I, of that diversity of vessels with the sloop-of-war fussing around them like a hen with a family of addle-pated chicks.
Finally Boyle shook his head. “I should be off about my business. I’ve taken nine prizes on this cruise and manned out six for American ports. My crew’s reduced to forty-two men instead of the hundred and twenty with which I started; and I’ve a swarm of prisoners aboard, eating me out of house and home.”
I asked him whether many privateers were putting to sea.
“Lord!” he said, chuckling a rich Southern chuckle, “the sea’s full of ’em!” He threw himself back in his chair, hung a fawn-colored leg over its arm, looked up at the scuttle, and checked them off on his fingers. “Out of Baltimore alone there’s Barney in the Rossie with a hundred and twenty men and fourteen guns, Grant in the High Flyer, Richardson in the America, Miller in the Revenge with sixteen guns and a hundred and forty men, Dooley in the Rolla, Wilson in the Tom. That’s six. There’s the Dolphin, the Nonsuch, the Globe, the Wasp, the Hornet, the Liberty: twelve. There’s the Sparrow, thirteen, and the Sarah Ann, fourteen, all out of Baltimore. There must be three thousand Baltimore men at sea in privateers and letters-of-marque: all fast vessels, sir; fast and well armed; commanded by able men. Speaking of able men, Dominique Diron’s out of Charleston in the Decatur. He’s a Frenchman and a pirate, but he’s able! There’s some out of New York that you’ll hear from, too: fast and dangerous—the Governor Tompkins, and the General Armstrong—by jolly, Captain Nason, there’s a brig, the General Armstrong, with nineteen guns and a hundred and forty men, that would make trouble for any British sloop-of-war! There’s the Yorktown and the Holkar and the Anaconda, each with a hundred and sixty men: there’s the Saratoga and the Orders in Council and the Benjamin Franklin—and over a dozen more I’ll call to mind in a minute. Why, they’re coming out of the Chesapeake like a swarm of bees and pouring out of New York; and I’ve heard, Captain Nason, that New England’s not being backward in the matter.”
“They must be coming out of Salem and Boston almost as fast,” I told him, “and they’ll be out of Portsmouth and Newburyport in fair numbers, if they haven’t started already.”
He nodded. “If I knew how to do it, I’d bet a thousand dollars to a pipe of old Madeira that American privateers will capture or destroy five hundred British merchantmen in a year’s time, and do more than a hundred million dollars’ worth of damage.”
“Don’t you ever bet?” I asked him.
“Whenever I get the chance,” Captain Boyle replied politely, “but I can’t find anyone to take me up on that one.”
“This convoy, now,” I reminded him: “It would be an education to watch you in chase of it.”
“That’s very kind of you, sir: very kind,” Captain Boyle said. “Not only kind, but gracefully expressed.” He meditatively touched his small black mustache with his finger tips. “I should be getting home with my prisoners and refitting for another cruise.” He stared at me thoughtfully. “But it would be mighty pleasant,” he added, “to keep company with you against that flight of doves.”
“I must get rid of my prisoners, too,” I reminded him, “and I’ll refit from one of the convoy if my luck holds.” At this both of us rapped the table top with our knuckles.
He sighed gently. “I don’t like to sail short-handed. It’s an uncomfortable feeling if you have a sudden need to fight. Still, we may find a few Britishers who’ll prefer our service to their own. It has been known to happen—” he smiled at me gaily—“so I’ll go along with you a little way, though we can’t expect to do much unless we get a bit of dirty weather.”
I knew that here was a rare piece of good fortune, running into a seaman like Boyle and finding him willing to keep company with me against a convoy; for while it’s not overdifficult to harry a convoy alone, provided you have luck, it’s easier and surer when two together make the attack. None the less, I didn’t begin to know how fortunate I was; for all I knew of Boyle was that he was a good seaman.
We arranged that the first to sight the convoy should run down to the other so that plans might be made, and that if the convoy should be sighted by one while we were separated, the discoverer should hang astern of it for three days before attacking, in the hope that the other would come up.
So we cruised off to the northwest, being already on the trade route; and I was almost discouraged at the manner in which the Comet outsailed us, even though we cracked on all we had. Yet we hung together by dint of Boyle making long reaches to windward and to leeward, and so worked up in the general direction of the Azores.
The bright blue sky that had favored us so long was filmed with a loose gray veil on the second or third day, and the wind had started to pick the tops from the waves, shake them to pieces and toss them against our mainsail, when Pomp, riding high and darksome at the masthead, shouted that the Comet had put about. We made her out shortly, bearing down on us like a distant gull; and ten minutes later, when she had taken on size, Pomp went to shouting, “Sail ho! Sail ho! Sail ho!” until I thought he had lost his mind.
But the men in the bow moved excitedly and looked back at us, so I knew we had sighted the convoy. With that I put the sloop into the wind, hoping we had escaped their notice; and in the southwest I saw, faint and far off, a small gray dot that came and went, and then another, and then two more close together. I didn’t bother to hunt for others, for they couldn’t be far away, I knew, and it was a pleasant thought that within our reach were more than thirty West Indiamen laden with millions of dollars’ worth of rum and sugar and India goods, and God knows how many kegs of specie.
The Comet came slipping up under our lee as easy and graceful as a seal, and Boyle waved his gray beaver to me, affable and polite and anxious to please.
The men crowded up to look at him when he came aboard; and I could tell from this how they felt toward him; for our Maine men won’t stir two feet to see a person like the Dey of Algiers, who has nothing but wealth and position to his credit.
He glanced around at them and smiled a bashful smile, very friendly. “Well, Captain,” he said, bowing a quick little bow to me, but speaking, I was sure, for the benefit of the crew, “it looks as though England might find herself somewhat poorer by dawn to-morrow.”
XIII
WHEN we had made our plans, we payed off to the southward till dusk; then turned to the northeast in the track of the convoy. It was a night of pale darkness with a smart wind from the east; yet it was not bad, for the stars shone, and the sea was nothing to cause us inconvenience, though the decks were wet with scud, and there was a moaning in our top-hamper that foretold heavier weather.
The Comet stood along within half pistol shot of us under a reefed mainsail and jib, so we might hang together. We could make her out clearly, skimming along as easily as the deep-sea birds that follow craft for days in mid-ocean, remaining always a foot above the waves. She was as silent as though she sailed without a crew, with no figure showing on her decks except that of the helmsman. Not a sound could I hear from her above the complaining of our mast, the screaking of the boom and the gun carriages, and the gushing rush of the waves along our sides. Yet I knew her people were on deck, as were our own, armed with cutlasses and boarding axes, the sharpshooters ready with their muskets, and all of them lying under the bulwarks or sprawled around the long guns.
When we had held our course for two hours, there was a hoarse half shout of “Sail ho!” from the bow. In the same instant I heard the same half-stifled call
from the deck of the Comet, and as if she had been nothing more substantial than a fog she sheered away and was gone in the gloom.
I saw the bulk of a smallish vessel on our lee bow. We came up on her fast. I caught sight of the light from her binnacle and made her out to be a small brig. We hauled a little away; then ranged alongside. There was a shout from the man at the helm of the brig. With that Jeddy clapped his hands, and our boarders came out from under the bulwarks and went over the brig’s side and into her waist, fast and silently.
There were four men on the brig’s deck, unarmed and with no thought of attack, so when Jeddy led a boarding party of ten toward the stem and Rowlandson led another ten toward the bow, all with cutlasses swinging, there was no opposition and no noise save another shout or two and a little thudding of feet on the deck.
In five minutes Rowlandson’s ten boarders were back again. The brig came about, according to plan, and the two of us bore off to the southwest, all without a shot being fired or a flare kindled to give the alarm.
For fifteen minutes we drove back on this course, keeping the brig close under our lee; then, having put five miles between ourselves and the convoy, we hove to once more and settled the business.
The brig proved to be the Star of the Indies, Fagin, master, two six-pounders and a crew of nine, from Jamaica for Liverpool, laden with rum, sugar, and fresh fruits. Also she had two thousand dollars in specie, which we promptly seized. Having no time to waste, I proposed to the captain that if he would put his men to work transferring a part of his fresh fruit to the Lively Lady, receive on board our prisoners, and engage to sail northwest for two days, so that he would be in no likelihood of picking up the convoy again, I would transfer one third of the brig to him and one third to Captain Lubbock, who had told me of the convoy, and one third to the remainder of the prisoners and his crew and set them all free. Otherwise, I told him, I would take him and his men prisoners and scuttle his brig to boot.
I thought, when I was done speaking, that the captain would jump down my throat in his eagerness to accept; and two hours later we were once more on our way to the northeast, free of prisoners and keeping a sharp lookout for the Comet.
A little after half-past ten we made out a sail on our weather beam and were sure we had again come up with the convoy. When we found this craft to be another small brig, we fell away from her, wishing bigger game. We were soon rewarded by sighting a large ship, and without more ado ran under her lee and ordered her to wear immediately and head southeast, or we’d sink her. This was the plan made between Captain Boyle and myself—that I should run my second prize off to the southeast while he ran off to the northwest. Thus if one of us should be pursued by the convoying sloop, the other would have time to strip his prize.
Instead of obeying our order, the ship held on her way, firing a gun. We heard no wail from the shot; so she may have fired it to warn the others. At this ’Lisha Lord rapped out a quick order to the musket men, as we had agreed. A crackling of small arms sent pale flashes against her sails and the smoke wisps that still clung to them. There was a crying-out on her deck, indicating that Moody Haley and Moses Burnham had poured their fire into the helmsman.
“Wear ship!” I shouted again, “or I’ll blow you to pieces.”
She came about slowly. Ahead of her a blue flare blazed in a ship’s bows, revealing faintly luminous mainsails, topsails, and topgallant sails against a wavering background of blue light. Two miles to leeward another blue flare shone out; and then a third, almost a mile away. There was no way of telling whether they had been set off out of fright at hearing the gun, or whether Boyle had swooped down on another of the convoy and so put all of them into the tremors.
Now a strange thing happened when we had run this ship five miles to the southeastward and hove her to; for when I boarded her I found a person I had known before; and though I had no thought of meeting an acquaintance, I felt no surprise at the encounter any more than as though I had expected it.
The ship was the Lord Startham, James Houie, master, from Kingston to Falmouth, 407 tons, 10 guns and eighteen men—or what had been eighteen men; for our musketry fire had killed the helmsman and wounded the first mate. She was laden with sugar, rum and indigo, and carried 8,250 English pounds in specie. Not liking the groans of the first mate, poor man, who had been shot through the lungs, I sent back the boat to bring aboard our doctor, Jotham Carr, ordered the indigo to be swayed up from the hold for transfer to the Lively Lady, and rapidly proceeded to an examination of the ship’s papers, knowing the sloop-of-war might come down on us at any moment.
I discovered there were three passengers aboard, one of them a Mr. Sanderson, manager of a sugar plantation in Jamaica, and the others his wife and her maid. I had no liking for this; for there was no place on our sloop for women, nor had I any desire to encumber myself with prisoners.
“Have these people brought here,” I said to the captain, for whom I had little sympathy because he had kept on his course when I hailed him. “I think they should have something to say concerning their disposition.”
Sanderson proved to be a young man with a pleasant dignity about him and a look that struck me as vaguely familiar. With him came his wife, a pretty blonde girl of a washed-out appearance, as though she had stood too long in tropical rainstorms, and behind her a maid whom I could see but dimly in the light of the whale-oil lamp, which swung in figure eights with the uneasy rolling of the ship.
“I’m sorry for all this,” I said to them, wondering where I had seen Sanderson before, “but I hold a commission to take, bum, sink, or destroy all enemy craft, and this ship must be sunk. Now, I can do either of two things, and because of Mrs. Sanderson I’ll let you say which it shall be. Either I can take all of you as prisoners to my sloop, which is small and uncomfortable, and destroy this ship; or I can stand by you till morning, run you within sight of the convoy, and set you afire. Then the sloop-of-war will take you off, or you can go in your boats to one of the other vessels. There’s some danger in the first course, for nobody can tell when we’ll be fired on ourselves. As for the second course, if you go aboard a merchantman, she may quickly be captured herself, so you’ll have it all to do over again.”
When I said this my eye caught a movement of the maid behind Mrs. Sanderson. I stared hard at her and saw she had a gray, reminiscent look. Her face seemed to soften a little from its grimness, as though she wished to smile but couldn’t quite decide on it. I knew then I had seen this grim gray woman in a field near Saco. Her name, I remembered, was Annie; she had given Jeddy and me a glass of wine at the behest of Lady Emily Ransome. It seemed a queer thing, the thought that flashed through my head when I recognized her; for it was the thought that this was quite right and proper: that the whole affair had happened this way before, which of course it hadn’t.
Having glanced at me, she looked quickly down at the cabin floor again. It occurred to me it might be well to wait before seeming to recognize her, lest the Sandersons annoy us with questions and make it more difficult for me to do what I had to do. Also she put other thoughts in my head: thoughts of Lady Ransome’s hoity-toityness: of how she had looked with my knife clasped tight in her hands, cutting her initials on the old beech tree: of my miniature of her, which, as it happened, I had in my breast pocket even now. It happened, too, that I had a thought to speak to Annie alone.
Before the Sandersons could answer my question, young Jotham Carr came in at the cabin door. “Captain,” he said, “the mate’s dead.”
“Well,” I said, looking at Houie, “I’m sorry to hear it. It would never have happened if you hadn’t been so injudicious as to run from an armed vessel at night.”
“Captain,” said Sanderson, “we’d be obliged to you if you’d let us remain on board this ship to-night. I’d prefer not to trust my wife to a small boat in a choppy sea.”
“Very good,” I told him; “and how’ll you feel if it comes on to blow a gale and you have to get off in it to-morrow?”
He stared at me without speaking. I strove hard to fix my mind on the colting I had received aboard the Gorgon, for I had no more love for the business than Sanderson had.
“My wife has been ill,” Sanderson said. “I’m taking her home in the hope she’ll recover.”
There it was: what I had dreaded. If I have learned anything about war in the little I have seen of it, it’s that you mustn’t think of the enemy as human beings, like yourself, but as some sort of devouring monsters capable of doing any wicked deed: that you must think of everyone as nothing more than worthless playing cards or chessmen, to be tossed away or crushed or destroyed so long as advantages are gained and battles won; otherwise there seems to be nothing worth fighting about. Yet in spite of knowing all this I had let Sanderson mention his wife’s illness; and on top of everything I had been such a fool as to listen to him.
“Well,” I said, thinking hard of how I could learn more about Annie without seeming to ask, “your wife will probably be all right, with the sea voyage and all. She’s fortunate to have a woman to look out for her. I should think it would be hard to get such a woman in the Indies.”
“Oh, we’d never have got her in the Indies,” he said. “I wrote to my sister in England, and she sent her out to me.”
“Oh, did she!” I said weakly, for his mention of his sister in England, coupled with Annie’s presence, had made it plain to me at last why I had found a familiar look about him. It was because his sister had married Sir Arthur Ransome.
I strove to decide what should be done, and the more I strove, the more I regretted my misfortune in encountering such people as Sanderson and his blue-eyed ailing wife. For a moment I considered sending for Jeddy, knowing he held himself merciless where Britishers were concerned; but I could see it was a matter I must settle myself.
“Well,” I said at length, watching Sanderson carefully to see whether he might not give me reason to be harsh with him, “I’ve heard that turn about is fair play, and if this is so, I must remind myself that a few weeks before this war broke out I was taken from my brig by a press gang from the crew of the Gorgon sloop-of-war and whipped for nothing except to gratify the spleen of her captain, and be damned to him.”
The Lively Lady Page 12