It was not until they were safely in Peabody's cabin and the skylight was shut that Hunningford allowed himself to relax. He ran his finger round inside his collar.
"That feels better," he said. "Whenever I am on board a King's ship I feel a peculiar sense of constriction in the neighborhood of my larynx."
"What the devil were you doing there?" demanded Peabody.
"It is part of my duty to be where there's trouble," said Hunningford. "Naturally I paid my respects to the British Commodore in the hope of acquiring information which might be useful to the United States Navy in the person of yourself. But I must admit I did not anticipate all the subsequent developments."
"Is it true about the pirate?"
"Yes, curiously enough it is. I made my little adventure with the Susanna the pretext for my visit to the Calypso. I was naturally going to wait for a dark night on shore before I saw you next. I had not made sufficient allowance for the excitement a mention of piracy rouses in the British Navy. I wish I could take all the credit for this present admirable arrangement, but, much to my regret, I cannot. My native honesty forbids."
"And now you're here, what's the news?"
"Plenty. And some of it's bad. Decatur's gone."
"Decatur? Is he —dead?"
Hunningford shook his head.
"No. He tried to escape from New York in the President. They caught him off Sandy Hook, and he had to haul down his colors."
"Good God!" Peabody thought of Decatur eating his heart out in Dartmoor Prison. It was a horrible mental picture. "What else?"
"The Argus is lost, too. I don't know how, yet, except that she was taken in British waters."
With the President and the Argus gone the same way as the Chesapeake, the United States Navy was diminishing to minute proportions. There were only the Essex, somewhere in the Pacific, and the Delaware left to display the Stars and Stripes at sea.
"What else?"
"A British force took Washington. The militia ran, and the Capitol's been burned, and the last I heard they were moving on Baltimore."
Peabody had nothing to say now. He had no words left at all.
"But there's good news as well. You knew of Perry's victory on Lake Erie? Yes. That was before you sailed. Now MacDonough's won a battle on Lake Champlain. The Canadian frontier's safe."
Tom MacDonough was Peabody's immediate junior on the captains' list — Peabody remembered him at Tripoli under Decatur's command. Peabody called up before his mind's eye the map of the Canadian frontier. With the American flag triumphant on Champlain and Erie there was nothing more to be feared from the north, as Hunningford had remarked. Perry and MacDonough could both of them be relied upon not to allow the local command they had attained to slip through their fingers again, and the strongest sea power in the world would for once be balked on water.
"That puts a different complexion on it," he said.
The long Atlantic seaboard was exposed to British attack, it was true, but it was hardly possible that the British would attempt serious conquest. The raid on Washington assumed smaller proportions immediately.
"And one more thing," said Hunningford. "Mr. Madison has sent to Europe to discuss peace." Hunningford's voice as well as his face was quite expressionless as he said this.
"Well?" said Peabody, drily. "That makes no difference to my position here."
He was right. If he did his best to fight a war he would be doing his best to influence an advantageous peace, and if the peace discussions proved inconclusive he would not be found to have wasted any opportunity.
"It is my business to tell you all there is to know," said Hunningford. "Thank God I don't have to instruct you on how to act on the information as well. To say nothing of the fact that you'd see me damned before you allowed me to."
Peabody grinned his agreement.
"I'd see you worse than that," he said.
"What are you going to do about this proposal of Davenant's?"
"Nothing, I fancy," said Peabody. "I'm not going to let him out of here, because of a pirate, on better terms than Fd give him at any other time."
"You're right," said Hunningford. "Not that you mind what I think, of course. But it's irksome, all the same, to think of that black devil Lerouge raising hell in the Caribbean."
"I have the United States to think of first," said Peabody.
"When honest men fall out," said Hunningford, "rogues come by other people's property. The world is at peace except for us. The Americas are open for trade for the first time since the world began. Every merchant in the world wants to start business again — I hope, Captain, that you will not take too violent objection if I inject a little treason into what I say. There's no reason on earth left why we should go on fighting. Trade with Europe is open again — or would be, if the British Navy was not in the way. They don't want to press our men any more. They don't want to search our ships. And yet you and Davenant sit in Martinique watching each other like dogs across a bone. What is more, you allow gentlemen like Lerouge to run off with the bone while you watch each other. And I, who flatter myself that I might be a useful member of society, spend my days with a rope round my neck facing the imminent possibility that at any moment it may grow much tighter than is convenient. Please don't for a moment think I am complaining, Captain. I am merely commenting at large upon the inconsistencies of the situation. From my reading of history, I would rather continue to court the end I have just mentioned than the usually much more unpleasant one of the man who sets out to put the world to rights."
Chapter XIX
MRS.JOSIAH PEABODY was at work with her needle in the candlelit drawing room of the little house on the hill. Beside her stood her empty coffeecup, and opposite sat her husband. For once in a way his usually clear-thinking mind was in an extraordinary muddle. He had thought about the string of events which had helped to change the unpronounceable Mademoiselle Anne de Villebois into Mrs. Josiah Peabody. He had thought about the coincidence that those same events enabled him to sit here watching her, under the monotonous swaying of the fan, secure in the knowledge that the British squadron, restrained by its senior officer's pledged word, would make no attempt to steal a march on him for two more days. Naturally he had thought about the Delaware, for he was never awake five minutes consecutively without thinking about her. She was fully stored with provisions and water again, her crew rested, her rigging newly set-up — ready for a six months' campaign. The gold which he had taken from the Princess Augusta had paid for everything — the fresh provisions, the fruit which had got his men back into health, the shore leave which had utterly reconciled them to a fresh voyage. He was a lucky man, and what he could see of Anne's cheek and neck as she bent over her needlework was lovelier than the set of the Delaware's foretopsail. And Lerouge was hanging about off Cape St. Martin, paralyzing shipping, and what his duty really was regarding him . . .
Anne looked up as Peabody stirred in his chair.
"Father told me about the pirate," she said. Already it had ceased to be a surprise to Peabody when Anne's remarks exactly chimed in with his own thoughts.
"Yes, dear," he said. There was still a pleasant novelty about using the endearment.
"And Aunt Sophie told me about what Captain Davenant wants to do," went on Anne.
"Oh, did she?" said Peabody.
He felt a slight shrinking of the flesh at the words. This was a hint of something he had feared, deep down within him. Women were interfering in man's business, and that meant trouble. The phrase "petticoat government" drifted into his mind; much as he loved his wife he would never give her the smallest opportunity of discussing — which meant diverting him from — his duty.