The Noank's Log: A Privateer of the Revolution

In New York as in New London, it was currently reported that a number of the more active business men were actually making fortunes by the war. Not a great many rebel vessels had been brought into New York harbor as prizes, but all that did come in, and that were condemned and sold, offered opportunities for speculation. The best of the town trade came from the army and navy, but there were still a few small driblets coming in from the interior. It was worthy of note, perhaps, that furs, for instance, should sometimes reach New York from the north, from regions beyond Albany. These were smuggled down the Hudson River, nobody knew how. It had been suggested, of course, by sharp people, that American commanders might be willing to shut their eyes while a fur trader went in, provided they were to have a talk with him on his return.

In like manner, it was said, the British generals had no objections whatever to the arrival of fellows who were certified to them as "well-known Tories," who could give them abundant information concerning the ragged, starving, worthless condition of the rebel forces in and above the Hudson highlands.

No doubt, too, it was encouraging to the military and other servants of the king to hear, from honest and loyal fur traders, how the rebels of the Mohawk Valley were dispirited by the defeats of Washington's army, and how they were preparing to turn against the Continental Congress. Best of all, perhaps, was the assurance thus brought that all the Six Nations and the Hurons of the woods were ready to take the war-path in the spring as the allies of England.

If there were sailors ashore on leave that morning, from many of the other ships in the harbor, there were none from the Termagant, for she was under orders to sail. Captain Luke Watts himself had a call of ceremony to make, at an early hour, relating to those very orders, for he was to give in his last report of the condition of his ship and crew. The "port captain," to whom his report was to be made, was the commander of a lordly seventy-four. In the absence of any admiral he was the "commodore" of all the naval forces in and about the harbor.

Captain Watts was kept on deck in waiting for a few minutes only, and when he was summoned to the cabin he found the commodore by no means alone. The mere skipper of a transport was not asked to take a seat in such a presence, and Luke stood, hat in hand, respectfully, while his presented papers were read and approved.

"Now, Watts," said the commodore, "what course do you take, homeward bound?"

"As far no'th as I can get, sir," replied Luke, "for good reasons."

"Give your reasons."

"Well, sir, from what I heard at New London, the rebel pirates are aimin' at our West Injy trade. They'll hang 'round the reg'lar course, too, the southern track. I jest mean to steer out o' their way."

"Good!" said the commodore. "What else did you hear among the Yankees?"

"Well, sir," replied the Tory sailor, "they said, and they seemed to know, that our cruisers off the Havana are mostly heavy craft that can't chase 'em through the channels and over the shoals and 'mong the lagoons. What we need, sir, is a lot o' light draft vessels there, and well armed, too."

"Make a note of all this, lieutenant," exclaimed the commodore. "This man Watts has brought in good advice before this. Whatever he brings is said to be of practical value. Go on, man! What next?"

"Well, sir," said Watts, "before I left Liverpool the last time, I heard a p'int. I must look sharp after I get over and want to run in. I must say it, sir, the Irish and English coast is only half guarded. We haven't half enough ships on duty there. Next we know, we'll hear of Yankee pirates in St. George's Channel."

"Note it! note it!" exclaimed the commodore, loudly. "It's just so! What with so many of our best cruisers ordered to America and the Antilles and the Mediterranean, and to the China seas, our own home coasts are left to be defended by old hulks and mere revenue cutters. The Yankees can run away from the heavy tubs, and they can smash all the smuggler catchers. We shall hear bad news, next. Watts, take your own course. Get in how you can. You're a man we can rely on. Go, now, sir."

"My ship'll get in, sir," said Luke, almost too sturdily. "I wish I was as sure 'bout some others. I'm afraid they're going to crack our traders 'mong the islands."

"That'll do! Go!" he was told, and he went out, leaving behind him a very capable naval officer in a decidedly uncomfortable state of mind.

"Gentlemen," he said to his officers, "all that he says is only too true. I am sorry it is, but I am intending to embody it in my report to the Admiralty. The unpleasant thing for us is, however, that we can't spare anything or send anything, from this fleet and station, to prevent the mischief that's threatened among the Antilles."

They all agreed with him. All of them considered, also, that the man Luke Watts had given valuable information and suggestions. He had done so, doubtless, but he had not thereby done anything to hinder the future operations of any Yankee privateer.

He was rowed back to the Termagant, and when he arrived somebody was waiting for him on her deck.

"Feller named Allen," he was told by a sailor at the rail. "He's a kind o' fur pedler, I'd say, with a permit from one o' the generals, I don't know who."

"All right," said Watts. "Fetch him below, packs and all. I'll see if his papers are reg'lar. We don't make any loose work on this ship."

"Ay, ay, sir," said the sailor.

Sharp as was his examination of them a moment later, he seemed to be entirely satisfied with the documents presented to him by the man named Allen. He had obtained the customary authority, as a loyal merchant of the port of New York, to ship by the Termagant to his agent in London, a properly scheduled assortment of valuable furs. All had been officially inspected and approved.

"Come down below," said Captain Watts. "All your packages are down. I'll give these things another overhauling in my cabin."

"Certainly, Captain Watts," replied Mr. Allen. "Whatever you wish."

He was even willing to help carry down the furs, and one of the smaller parcels of them was in his hand when they reached the cabin. He still held it after the door was shut and bolted, leaving him and the captain alone together. Then his entire manner changed somewhat suddenly, and he threw his parcel down upon the table.

"Captain Luke Watts," he said, "that's it. You'd best take out the papers, now, and stow 'em away somewhere. You ain't sure there won't be another look taken at the furs 'fore you git away. I wouldn't risk it. They're getting suspicious, all 'round."

Open came the parcel, as he spoke, and in the very middle of it lay a bundle of such materials as would ordinarily have been sent through a post-office.

"It's about all the cargo I'll have, of any consequence," remarked Luke, staring down at the unexpected mail.

"General Schuyler told me to say," replied Allen, "that all these are of great importance. Some are from him to his friends in England. You'll know how to have 'em delivered. Some are to go to Holland and some to Paris. That last is all the way from the Congress at Philadelphia. It got to me by way of Morristown and one of our Jersey Tories, you know. That's old Ben Franklin's own handwriting."

"I'll see that they go straight through," said Luke, quietly. "I'll put 'em safe away, now, first thing."

"You'll swing at a yard-arm inside o' one day, if you're ketched with 'em," said Allen. "I've been up among the Six Nations, all the way through to Niagara, for my brother's concern on Pearl Street. I went to buy furs for them, you see, and did first-rate. I fetched along packs o' news, too, for the British commanders. It was risky business, working my way through Putnam's lines, though. I came pretty nigh to being shot or hung by the rebels, you know."

"Ye-es, I know," responded Luke. "They came jest about as nigh as that to hangin' me, they did. The bloodthirsty pirates! Get ashore, now, Allen. I'll land your furs for ye. I hope your concern'll make a good thing out of 'em."

"Finest furs you ever saw," laughed Allen. "Look out for spies and searchers. Here's good success to good King George – Washington, and may the glorious flag of England float victoriously – till we pull it down! Luke Watts, I'm the poisonest kind of Tory, I am!"

"Jest like me," said Watts. "I've done all I can to put down this 'ere wicked rebellion."

"I've heard so," said Allen. "We got the news all the way from Connecticut. You delivered a whole ship's cargo of heavy guns and muskets and ammunition to the loyal-hearted Tories of New London. I was born there once, myself. I know just how faithfully they love their king and his blessed Parliament. Good-by, Luke! A successful voyage to you. Keep out o' the way of pirates."

"I must, this time," said Watts. "If I don't, I'll never get another ship to carry furs and things in."

Up on deck they went, and the last words uttered by Allen did not have to be whispered.

"Take good care of your neck, Captain," he called out, from his boat. "If you're caught, this time, you'll never see New York again, or Marblehead, either."

"I guess he's about right," said Mate Brackett, gazing after the boat. "I'd say you seem to be a man that the rebels have set a mark on."

"Never you mind," said Watts. "We won't be ketched by 'em, that's all. The commodore says we may sail our own course. We'll git there."

"All right, sir," said Brackett. "We've a queer lot o' chaps with us this trip, but we'll work 'em."

What he meant by that was that all the prime seamen were needed by the war-ships, and that almost anything on two feet had been deemed good enough for an old transport ship going home in ballast.

"We'll have to travel under light canvas, I take it," remarked Brackett, as he looked at his crew. "It'd be all night and part o' next day for them to shorten sail in a hurry."

The boat which carried Mr. Allen, the loyal fur trader, reached the shore. On getting out of it, he walked until he came to a dwelling a short distance easterly from what the fire had left of old Pearl Street. He entered without knocking and passed through the house to the kitchen in the rear, where a comely, middle-aged woman stood before an open fireplace, watching a pot which was hanging on the crane.

"Sally Allen," he said, in a somewhat low and guarded tone, "the captain took the furs. It's all right."

"It is if they don't find him out," she said, gloomily. "I think you are running awful risks, Tom. The sooner you are back again in the Mohawk Valley, the better for you."

"I shall get there," he told her; "that is, if I'm not shot before I pass the Dunderberg. I mustn't stay here, though. I must be in a canoe at Spuyten Duyvil Creek before morning."

"They make short work of spies, Tom," she said. "Think of what they did to Nathan Hale. I used to know him, years ago, in New London."

"Sally," he said, "I want you to mark just one thing. He isn't forgotten! One o' these days there'll be some first-rate British officer captured, a good deal as Hale was, with papers on him, playing spy. Whenever that happens, our side won't show any mercy. The spy'll have to swing!"

"That's all wrong!" she exclaimed. "I hate to think of it. All revenge is wicked. It's awful to think of killing one man because somebody somewhere else killed another."

"Now, Sally, that isn't it exactly," replied Tom. "What we mean is that all the spy hanging isn't to be done on one side o' this war. What's right for them is right for us."

"No!" she said. "It isn't so! It's like so many red savages to talk in that way. We don't take scalps, just because they do, nor kill women and children. I'm a true American woman, and I believe in righting, but I don't want any stain left on our side."

"There won't be any," said Tom. "I'm going ahead, if they do hang me. I'm running Nathan Hale's risk, all the while."

"God protect you!" she said. "Do you feel sure you can creep through?"

"I've done it before," he replied. "What I'm thinking of, the worst thing for me, is the new line of pickets along the river bank. I shall be fired at, pretty sure, before I can paddle on into the Hudson Narrows. There'll be some risk from our own pickets above Anthony's Nose. I guess they'll all miss me. I've one package, though; that's all weighted, ready to drop into the water if I'm exhausted. I'd make out to sink it, if I was dying. Now, give me some supper."

"Oh, Tom!" she said, "God keep us!"

CHAPTER IX

THE PICAROON

"Guert," said Vine Avery, as they stood together, with their backs against the main boom of the Noank, "what do you think of this?"

"Think?" said Guert. "Well! It's the first time I ever saw summer in winter."

"They're having good sleighing in New London," said Vine. "Skating, too."

"Guess so," said Guert. "I wish my mother were here, and Rachel Tarns with her. They'd enjoy this."

"My mother's made two West India trips," replied Vine. "She knows all about it. Likes it, too."

"It's the laziest kind of cruising, though," said Guert. "We've dodged away from some sails, and we've run after some, but we haven't taken anything."

"Our chances'll come, boys," put in Captain Avery himself, as he came strolling along the deck. "Not just 'bout here, maybe. Yonder on the easterly Bahamas. Not many British traders are likely to be met hereaway."

"What are we here for, then, father?" asked Vine. "What's your notions?"

"We had to," said the captain. "The Frenchman we spoke, told me the Florida Channel's alive with British cruisers. We sighted two of 'em, you know, and had to run for it."

"Where next?" asked Vine.

"We'll take a course toward Porto Rico," said his father; "then up the coast of Cuba. We'll try the Bahama Channel, and the Santaren, and the Nicholas. I want to send home some prizes, pretty soon, on British account."

Day after day, the Noank had been hunting, hunting, farther and farther into the southern sea, through good weather and bad. All the while Guert Ten Eyck had been at school. Up-na-tan had laboriously tried to teach him whatever he himself knew about guns, large and small. The other sailors had done their duty by him, concerning ropes and sails and points of seamanship. Captain Avery had driven him hard at his books on navigation. Therefore, if the cruising had been more or less lazy business for others, it had contained a good deal of hard work for the young sea apprentice. He was in a fair way to be made a good sailor of, and to be ready in due season to handle a ship.

"What you want most," Captain Avery had said, "is a long v'y'ge on a square-rigged vessel, under a hard captain. I'll find a chance for you one o' these days. You can't learn everything on board a schooner."

That idea was growing steadily in Guert's mind, and he now and then found himself dreaming of all sorts of perilous cruises in great American three-masters. By these splendid ships of his imagination, all of which were as yet unlaunched from any shipyard, the best keels of England were to be met and beaten. He was to command one of them, and was to become a captain first, and then a commodore. It was all an entirely natural young sailor's ambition, but it was looking far away into the future of his country. All it was good for now was the help it gave him in his pretty severe schooling.

Just at this present hour, leaning against the boom and gazing at the low coast line of the islands, he was calling to mind the many yarns he had heard concerning them. He had read about them, a little. He knew how they had been discovered by the Spaniards, and then taken from them, part of them, by the English and the French. He knew how the Carib natives had been slaughtered, and he had heard, from Coco in particular, of the horrible manner in which the tobacco and sugar plantations had been provided with African slaves.

Vine, too, was thinking, but of a very different matter.

"Guert," he said, "away out yonder, easterly, there's the queerest patch in all the Atlantic. It's where all the loose seaweed and driftwood and wreckage float together. There are currents that whirl in there and make a centre of it. More and more seaweed and other plants grow on that stuff year after year, and it's all a kind of swamp on the surface, with deep water under it. They call it the Sargasso Sea. We were swept into the edges of it, once, and it took a fresh breeze to pull us out. I don't just know if a craft like this could plow her way across it."

"I guess she could," said Guert, "but I don't want to try. What I want to see is Cuba and Porto Rico."

Away beyond them, hardly visible in the distance, was a tree-covered point of land. Captain Avery was studying it through his telescope, and they heard him mutter to himself: —

"I don't know whether or not that is Watling's Island. If it is, we've made a better run on this tack than I thought we had. One good, long reach beyond that and we'll begin to be in the track of the traders."

"Whoo-oop!" suddenly rang out the war-cry of Up-na-tan, from somewhere up the mainmast.

"Where away?" shouted the captain. "What do you see?"

"No see!" came down from the redskin. "Hark! Hear gun! Hark ahead! See point! More gun!"

His ears had been better than theirs, but, after a moment of intense listening, the entire ship's company of the Noank felt sure that they heard the dull boom of far-away cannon.

Every sail was already set to take so fair and fresh a wind, and the swift schooner was eating up the distance rapidly.

"All hands make ready for action!" shouted the captain. "Risk or no risk, I'm goin' to see what it is."

His orders went out fast, but they went to the ears of men who had sprung away without them. All the guns had been manned instantly.

Coco and Guert and half a dozen more were at the pivot-gun, but Up-na-tan did not come down at once. The captain's order kept him aloft as the best lookout and listener he had. Louder, now, at intervals, came the ominous sound of the distant guns.

"No big gun yet," called down the keen-eared Indian. "No big war-ship. Noank run right along."

"The chief is worth his weight in gold!" exclaimed the captain. "That's jest what I wanted to know, before roundin' that there p'int. I don't care to run under the guns of a British cruiser."

Ships which are running toward each other under full sail cut every mile in two in the middle. For instance, they need to run only two miles instead of four to get together. There was a dense forest growth on the point of Watling's Island, if that were indeed the land to windward, for the breeze was westerly. Everything beyond was hidden from view until the Noank passed the outer reef and tacked seaward, running almost wing and wing.

"Whoo-oop!" came fiercely down from the red man's perch. "'Panish flag. Three-master. Trader. Not many gun. Whoop! Whoop! Whoop! Kidd! Kidd! Black flag schooner! Pirate! Not so big as Noank. Small gun! Take her quick! Kill 'em all! Whoo-oop!"

"Hurrah!" arose in a general roar from the crew of the Noank, more than one voice adding, vociferously, the desire that was felt to smash the picaroon.

"Ready, all, now!" sang out Captain Avery. "The American flag is against the black flag, the world over. We'll fight it, every time!"

Fierce shouts of eagerness replied to him, and the men were stripping themselves for a hard fight. The very most of clothing that was actually needed under that hot sun, by men who were to handle cannon, was a shirt and trousers, and many of the brawny backs were even bare. Muskets, pikes, pistols, cutlasses, were bringing up from below. Ammunition, plenty of it, was serving out to all the guns, and now, as the point of land was left to starboard, all eyes could see what kind of work had been cut out for the privateer.

The Spaniard, as her flag declared her, was a three-master of, probably, not more than six hundred tons. She was crowding all sail, but she was evidently heavily laden.

"She has too much cargo for good runnin'," growled Sam Prentice. "That buccaneer has the heels of her."

"What's worse'n that," said the captain, "she has nothin' but popguns to fight him with. He won't sink her, though. What he wants is to run along side and board her."

"Then it'll be good-by to every livin' soul that's in her," said the mate. "We'll jest put a stopper on all that!"

"Up-na-tan," shouted the captain, "come down to your gun! We shall be in fair range in three minutes. Then give it to 'em as fast as you can load and fire."

"Ugh!" was all the response they heard, and the Manhattan warrior came down so swiftly that he was at his gun almost before they knew it.

There was a pitiful scene, just then, on board the unlucky Spaniard. She had many passengers as well as much cargo. Women and children were crouching in terror upon her deck, or hiding hopelessly away in her cabins. Fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, were gazing in awful despair at the horrible black flag of murder and ruin, which was so evidently nearing them, minute after minute.

"The Santa Teresa is doomed!" groaned the Spanish captain, and then he raised his voice to shout courageously: "Men! we will fight to the last! We'd better go to the bottom, than to let those devils get on board!"

"We'd better die fighting, than stand still to have our throats cut, or to walk the plank!" came back to him from among the men.

Even the women begged for weapons. There were boys and girls who were fiercely handling firearms, and swords, and pikes. Numerous as might be the buccaneers, they were likely to win a costly victory upon the deck of the Santa Teresa.

"There goes our mizzenmast," called out her mate to the captain. "We've no chance left, now!"

"We never had any, Roderigo," replied the captain. "O God! Here they come!"

"Ho! Captain Velasquez!" came from the man at the wheel. "A sail to larboard! A schooner!"

"A Yankee flag!" said Mate Roderigo. "Captain! She's heading this way!"

"Alas!" mourned the captain. "What can a Yankee sugar-boat do for us?"

A mournful wail went up from his women passengers as they heard him, but a tall gentleman near him touched his elbow.

"Captain!" he said, "look again. That American does not seem to fear the black flag. See! She is coming on full sail. What can it mean?"

"Perhaps she does not yet know what they are, Señor Alvarez," sadly responded the captain. "She will be as hopelessly lost as we are."

So thought the buccaneer captain himself, at that moment, for he and his hideous crew were already rejoicing over two triumphs to come instead of one, and a second feast of bloodshed after taking the Spaniard.

The black flag commander was a short, thin, tiger-faced man. He was gaudily dressed, as were also some who seemed to be his lieutenants. As for his crew, they were of all sorts. They were the offscourings of several nations, including Englishmen, French, Dutch, and Africans. They were at this moment yelling savagely, as they loaded and fired their guns. Not one of these was larger than a short six-pounder, although there was an absurd number of them, considering the size of the vessel. She was schooner-rigged, but she was much more lightly constructed than the Noank. Her breadth of beam was somewhat greater, and she might be speedy. Precisely such craft were sometimes built for the slave trade. They were expected to carry only human cargoes, as a rule, and to make swift runs from African slave barracoons to American markets. Delays in such voyages implied heavy losses of black captives who would surely die in the hold.

"We will take the Yankee schooner first," was the decision of the pirate captain. "We must cripple the Spaniard, so she cannot get away. Two prizes are better than one. We need that schooner yonder, for our own trade."

Loud laughs and jeers replied to him from many scores of throats, for the buccaneer Leon was positively over-thronged with sea-wolves.

"Steady with the helm there!" rang out on board the Noank, as she arose like a duck upon the crest of a long sea.

"Ugh!" said Up-na-tan, as the sheet of flame sprang from the brazen lips of his long eighteen. "Whoop!"