"Run 'em up, boys!" said Murray, and the men threw their weight on the tackles and ran the guns out.
"Ready to open fire, sir!" said Murray, lifting his hat to his captain.
"She's beyond cannon shot yet," replied Peabody, looking over the gray-flecked sea with the wind howling round his ears. The twodecker was clearly in sight now, all the same, leaping and plunging over the mad sea. "Mr. Hubbard, hoist the colors, if you please."
The flag went up to the peak and streamed forward in the wind; its eighteen stripes rippling wildly. There had been a discussion about that too, with the Commodore; an Act of Congress had given the flag fifteen stars and stripes, and yet — as Peabody had seen with his own eyes — the flag that flew over the Hall of Congress bore no more than thirteen, while the Commodore had maintained that there should be a star and a stripe for every state in the Union, as Congress had also laid down. It was the Commodore who had decided upon eighteen stripes and stars in the end — Peabody would have preferred the fifteen under which he had sailed into Tripoli harbor. He wondered if the two-decker would ever be able to get near enough to count them for herself.
"You can try a shot now, Mr. Murray," said Peabody.
The gun captains already had their guns elevated to the last degree. Each snatched a priming quill from a powder boy and thrust it in the vent of his gun. They took the matches in their hands and peered once more along the sights. Then they stood back, watching the ship's motion, and each chose the same moment for firing. They waved their hands at the men at the train tackles to release their grip, and plunged the lighted matches into the quills. One gun hung fire for a moment, the quill sizzling and spluttering, and exploded only after the other gun had boomed out and recoiled to the limit of the breechings. The wind whirled the smoke forward in a flash, and that was all. There was nothing else to be seen; the sea was far too rough for the splash of a twelve-pounder ball to be seen at extreme range. The twodecker came plunging along after them unhurt as far as could be told, the spray still flying from her bluff bows. The hands had crept aft to see the sport, and a sort of groan of disappointment went up from them, even though they were all experienced men who ought to have known better than to expect anything.
"Try again, Mr. Murray," said Peabody — the guns were already being wiped and the powder charges rammed in.
He climbed up on the bulwark close behind the starboard, balancing with his hand on the mizzen rigging. The gun went off with a bang, while Peabody's keen eyes searched the line of flight. There it was! Like a momentary pencil mark — come and gone in a flash — upon the seascape; he could see the ball rise to the top of its trajectory and drop again to the sea where a minute white spot marked its fall.
"Half a mile short," called Peabody. "But the aim was good. Try again."
The captain of the other gun had badly misjudged the roll of the ship — his shot plunged into the side of a wave not two cable-lengths away, in plain sight of everyone. Impatiently Murray thrust him on one side and bent over the breech of the gun himself. Peabody watched the firing from his point of vantage; he was able to mark the fall of about half the shot fired, and nothing went nearer than a hundred yards from the target, as far as he could see, and he expected little else on that heaving sea and with that gale blowing. But the firing was warming up the guns, so that they would soon be shooting with more power and so that the lock mechanisms would soon begin to function. No one could be expected to judge the roll of the ship accurate when firing with a match, so that at least two seconds elapsed between the intention to fire and the explosion.
The range was down to a mile — to less than that. Peabody suddenly saw the twodecker's main-topsail emerge beside her fore-topsail, and the mizzen beside that. Her bluff bows lengthened and her bowsprit showed in profile as she turned. She was yawing to present her broadside to the Delaware— Peabody could see her yellow streak and her checkered side as she rolled madly in the trough of the sea. Next came a brief wave of smoke, blown instantly to nothing by the gale, and next came — nothing at all. A hoot of derision went up from the watching sailors at Peabody's back.
"Missed! Clean missed!" said somebody, dancing with joy. "A whole broadside, and we didn't see where a single shot fell!"
Probably the twodecker had fired the long guns on her upper, gun deck — sixteen or seventeen, if she were the seventy-four Peabody estimated her to be. To him there was nothing surprising about the broadside's missing, considering the difficulties under which it was discharged. The Delaware had fired a dozen shots so far, under better conditions, and not one had gone near the target — the men did not stop to think about that.
The twodecker had come before the wind again, and was plunging after them, her bowsprit pointed straight at the Delaware. But she had lost a good half-mile by yawing to fire her broadside; Peabody doubted if her captain would waste valuable distance again in that fashion. Most probably he would reserve his fire until the two ships were yardarm to yardarm; and when that moment would come depended on the wind. He turned his attention once more to scanning first the sky and then the Delaware's behavior under her storm canvas. He wanted, most desperately, the wind to moderate, or to back, or to veer — wanted it to do anything rather than blow as it was doing, straight from the twodecker to him. Perhaps his life, certainly the success of his voyage, possibly the good opinion of his brother captains and certainly the good opinion of the American public, depended on that wind. The Columbian Centinel would have some scathing remarks in its columns if the Delaware were captured, even by a ship of the line — not that he cared, save for the depressing effect on the people. His whole power to do anything at all in this war depended on the wind; it was the wind which would settle whether he was to range the Atlantic a free man or rot as a prisoner, and the wind was still blowing its hardest. Peabody had the feeling that it was as well that it was the wind upon which all this depended. If it were some human agency he might be inclined to fret and chafe, possibly even to swear and blaspheme, but as it was he could await the decision of Providence calmly.
For some time he had been subconsciously noting the fall of the shot as the stern chasers banged away, and now suddenly his attention was called to the business with a jerk. The brief vision of the flying ball coincided with the twodecker a mile astern, and terminated there.
"Good shot, Mr. Murray!" he called. "You hit her fair!"
Murray turned a smiling face back to him, unconscious that the fumes from the vent of the gun had stained his face as black as a Negro s. One of the hands was leaping about on the quarter-deck shaking his fists above his head. Peabody's hope that the hit might goad the twodecker into yawing again to use her broadside proved ill-founded; the twodecker held on her course inexorably, driven by the gale. In half an hour she had gained a quarter of a mile, and in an hour she was no more than half a mile astern. Peabody sent the crew by watches to have their dinners — he did not want the men to have empty stomachs while they fought, although he himself felt not the slightest need for food. He walked round the spar deck to see that every carronade was properly manned. With no chance of employing the main deck guns he could have fifteen men at every carronade, quite enough to ensure that no carronade would get loose during the battle. And at every carronade there was a good gunlayer — most of them had learned their duty in the British fleet — and still Hubbard had a hundred men under his orders to attend to the working of the ship.