But on the other hand the fact that he had been seen at all decided him to take one more risk on his passage to the open sea. It would be high water in Plum Gut in two hours from now, four-and-a-half fathoms at least, and with this wind blowing probably rather more. He would head the Delaware through there and chance all the dangers of Orient Point. Peabody did not think that any British battleship would have the nerve to follow him through.
Peabody studied the compass in the binnacle and occupied his mind with the fresh problem in mental trigonometry as he worked out the conditions arising from the changed situation.
"Bring her two points farther off the wind," he said.
"Two points farther off the wind, sir."
Peabody looked aft into the darkness. The night had most certainly swallowed up the British twodecker. He wondered whether there were any parallel mental processes going on in the British captain's mind. Whether there were or were not he could not tell, and certainly he was not going to stop to see. Daylight might perhaps show, and he was quite capable of waiting till daylight.
Chapter II
LIEUTENANT GEORGE HUBBARD was officer of the morning watch. The glass had just been turned for the last time, and seven bells had been duly struck, and Hubbard was beginning to look forward to his relief and to wonder whether he would find any time for sleep during the day, when his captain loomed up beside him. With the cessation of the snow there was enough light now for details to be clearly distinguished.
"You can wear ship now, Mr. Hubbard," said Peabody. "Course sou'west by south."
"Sou'west by south, sir," echoed Hubbard.
"And take those men out of the chains. We won't need the lead again."
"Aye aye, sir."
"See that they have something hot to drink."
"Aye aye, sir."
The wind had moderated as it veered, but now that they were in the open sea they were encountering the full force of the waves. Close-hauled, the Delaware had been climbing wave after wave, heeling over to them, soaring upward with her bowsprit pointing at the sky, and then, as she reached the crest, rolling into the wind with her stern heaving upwards in a mad corkscrew roll with the spray bursting over her deck. Now she came round before the wind, and her motion changed. There was not so much feeling of battling with gigantic forces; much more was there an uneasy sensation of yielding to them. The following sea threw her about as if she had no will of her own. Standing by the wheel, Hubbard was conscious of a feeling of relief from the penetrating torture of the wind — so, undoubtedly, were the men at the wheel — but the feeling was counteracted by a sensation of uneasiness as the Delaware lurched along before the big gray-bearded waves which came sweeping after her. There was an even chance of her being pooped — Hubbard could tell, by the feel of the deck under his feet, how each of those gray mountains in its turn blanketed the close-reefed topsails and robbed the ship of a trifle of her way. He could tell it, too, by the way the quartermasters had to saw back and forth at the wheel to meet the Delaware's unhappy falling off as each wave passed under her counter. If she once broached to, then good-by to the Delaware.
"Steer small," he growled at the quartermasters.
It was unsafe to run before this wind and sea. A cautious captain would have kept the Delaware upon the wind for a while longer, or would even heave to until the sea moderated — provided, that is to say, that a cautious captain would have left port at all on such a night, which was quite inconceivable. As first lieutenant of the ship, and responsible to his captain for her material welfare, Hubbard could never quite reconcile in his mind the jarring claims of military necessity and common sense. He looked with something like dismay about the ship in the growing daylight, at the snow which covered her deck and the ice which glittered on her standing rigging. The quarter-deck carronades beside him were mere rounded heaps of snow on their forward sides. When the forenoon watch was called he would have to set the hands at work shoveling the stuff away — queer work for a sailorman. The tradition of centuries was that the first work in the morning was washing down decks, not shoveling snow off them.
The captain was still prowling about the deck; Hubbard heard him lift up his voice in a hail.
"Masthead, there! Keep your wits about you."
"Aye aye, sir."
The poor devil of a lookout up there was the most uncomfortable man in the whole ship, Hubbard supposed, without much sympathy for him. It was interesting to note that the captain was apparently a little uneasy still about the possible appearance of British ships. Peabody had brilliantly brought the Delaware out to sea — the first United States ship to run the blockade for six months — as Hubbard grudgingly admitted to himself, yet with the open Atlantic about him he was still nervous. Hubbard shrugged his shoulders. He was glad that it was not his responsibility.
Here came that pesky young brother of the captain's. During the four weeks that the Delaware had lain at Brooklyn, Hubbard had come most heartily to dislike the boy. Captain's clerk, indeed, and he was hardly able to read or write! It was a pity that the Delaware's midshipmen were all young boys. Jonathan Peabody was by several years the oldest of the gunroom mess, and in physique he was as tough as his elder brother, so that there was small chance of his being taught much sense there. He was sly, too; otherwise, as Hubbard was well aware, he would never have contrived for four weeks to avoid trouble in a ship whose first lieutenant was anxious to make trouble for him.
"Take off your hat to the quarter-deck, you young cub," snapped Hubbard.
"Aye aye, sir," said Jonathan Peabody, and obeyed instantly. Yet there was a touch of elaboration about his gesture which conveyed exactly enough contempt both for the ceremony and for the first lieutenant to annoy the latter intensely, and yet too little to make him liable to punishment under the Naval Regulations issued by command of the President of the United States of America — not even under that all-embracing regulation which decided that "All other faults, disorders and misdemeanours not herein mentioned shall be punished according to the laws and customs in such cases at sea." The young cub flaunted his excellent clothes with a swagger which smacked of insolence, clothes which, as Hubbard knew, his captain had bought for him only four weeks ago. Until then Jonathan Peabody had been a barefooted follower of the plow and presumably the furtive Lothario of some Connecticut village. Hubbard disliked him quite as much as he admired his grim elder brother; possibly the dislike and the admiration had some bearing on each other.
There came a yell from the main-topmast crosstrees.
"Sail ho! Sail to wind'ard, sir!"
The captain appeared from nowhere upon the quarter-deck, leaping on the weather rail and staring over the heaving sea into the wind over the quarter. Apparently he could see nothing from there, for he hailed the masthead again.