Captain Caution (30 page)

"In fact," Souville went on, "I have heard from Middleburg, the port from which smugglers run to Dublin. Yesterday a diligence arrived in Middleburg from Paris, and the passengers embarked in a Dublin cutter two females, one of them a - "

"I wish to hear nothing of thatl" Marvin said.

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"One of them a very fierce female, very large, who swears terribly in four languages; but the other, her mistress, a "

"Nothing!" Marvin repeated.

Souville shrugged his shoulders and manipulated his mustache. "Of course," he resumed at length, "this obtaining of intelligence is less simple than is generally believed. It is thought that one man can put on false whiskers and find out everything in the world, but this is not so. No one man can find out more than a little about anything; so when we wish to find out about something, we take fragments of information from a man here, and fragments from a man there, and fragments from a woman elsewhere, and then we fit the fragments together in a picture, eh? Sometimes the picture is wrong, but more often it is right."

Marvin nodded. "I understand."

"Yes," Souville said, "and I think we have put together the fragments of the picture of this Slade. The English, as I have told you, are in a crisis of nerves over the exploits of American privateers, who are doing more outrageous things to British merchantmen than have ever been done. Not long ago they were saying that if America dared to fight England, there would be no American flag on any ocean in six months' time. And now behold! Throughout England there are terrible cries of agony at the incessant successes of these damned Yankeesl"

Argandeau coughed. "We do what we can, we Yankees," he said.

Souville eyed him severely; then continued: "Already the British have persuaded some of your Yankee captains to carry information to Halifax concerning the movements of American privateers, but this is not enough. The process is too slow. What they need above all else are a few fast cruisers to work in company with a blockading squadron cruisers that would seem to be American, you understand, and so would not be annoyed by other Americans they might encounter."

"Cruisers that would seem to be AmericanI" Marvin exclaimed.

"There would be several good points to such a service," Souville continued placidly. "Such vessels would be under the protection of the English, and they could hoodwink the Americans; yet, if they saw fit, they could disguise themselves and pick up vessels here and there from either side provided their captains were blackguards, quite regardless of honor; men desirous only of obtaining money, no matter by what means."

Marvin stared silently at him, his lips pressed tight together. Argandeau whistled softly.

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"Yes," Souville sighed, "I think so. In eight days this brig of Slade's this Blue Susan will be victualed and ready for sea. Her departure from Bristol was connived at by the government, so she will somehow be on government service. She has a crew of seventy men which is too small a crew, as you know, to enable a vessel of her size to man out prizes; and she has no coppers or leg irons aboard, so that she is not going back into the slave trade. What is more, a movement of government vessels has been ordered: A ship-of-theline from Plymouth to Dublin with orders for Havana by way of Fayal; a frigate from Portsmouth to Dublin with the same orders; and a sloop-of-war from Sheerness to Dublin, also for Fayal and Havana. There is no reason at all for these vessels to proceed to Dublin no reason except to make the acquaintance of your Slade and his Blue Susan. Therefore, I say that he goes with the squadron to assist in the control of your privateers. I say that, in addition to some of the things we already know about him, he is a traitor! That, gentlemen, is the picture we have pieced together."

Marvin wet his lips and clenched and unclenched his hands as though he felt a numbness in his fingers. "FayalI" he murmured. "Fayall A neutral portl"

He got to his feet and looked from the stern windows at his narrow brig.

She was emerging, amid hoarse shouting, from a confused tangle of men, gear and guns. New, slender and taunt royal and skysail masts had been swayed up, fidded and stayed; and garrulous Frenchmen clung to ratlines, crosstrees and yardarms, reeving new rigging and seizing on chafing gear under Newton's quick eye.

The prolongation of her masts had given her a new look a look of alertness. She was narrow still, and seemed, because of the absence of spring or rise in her deck, to lie as flat as a log in the water; but she was clumsy no longer, for she rode with a new balance, having the look of being caught in a swift current and of straining at the hawsers that held her to the slimy dock. Yet there was something innocent about her a look of helpless smallness and although Marvin knew her to be three hundred tons and more, she seemed less than a hundred.

Content at what he saw, he turned to Souville. "Find me the men you spoke of," he said. "We've got to get to sea."

Souville stepped to the cabin door and shouted shrill orders into the companionway; then turned questioningly to Marvin. "And when we are at sea," he asked, "what then? For where?"

"Why," Marvin said, "we're for Fayal; but as a matter of precaution, we'll look in first at Dublin."

xxx

A SMART breeze from the northwest whipped the True-Hearted Yankee fast through a warm ocean in which floated clots of yellow weed, and from which skittered shimmering fish that curved to left and right as if the threatening rush of her passing had given them wings.

Wedge-like, she sliced through the watery hillocks, urged onward by a press of canvas that towered upward into royals and distant skysails and spread outward into studding sails, so that the hull beneath seemed ludicrously small and helpless.

Yet there was no helplessness on her narrow deck; for the tall Indian, Steven, resplendent in the blue jacket and the crossed yellow belts of an officer of marines, drove two sweating gun crews at the laborious task of exercising long eighteen-pound traversing pieces. With the precision of machines the heavy cannon rumbled forward to the weather bow ports, the crews as silent at their hauling as the men of any king's cruiser. Boys ran beside them to place sponges, rammers and water buckets in neat piles abreast the trunnions. The two knots of men boiled around the carriages; to the eyes of the officers on the quarter-deck, they seemed to scramble like ants on sugar. Tackles were made fast to eyebolts; breechings were adjusted. With a rattle of chains the ports were triced up; the two long tome lurched forward, their muzzles disappearing through the bulwarks; quoins were rapped sharply into place. Smoothly the crews reformed in orderly alignment beside the guns.

The Indian struck an iron triangle. At the clang the gunners, squinting at their sights, shouted, "One! Twol" There was no count of "Three!" but in its place the linstocks of the gunners' mates slapped hard against the touchholes of the guns. "Booml" bawled the gunners' mates. The gun crews made swift movements with rammers and imaginary shot; then snapped to attention. The Indian walked around the rigid crews, staring hard at them. Then he nodded. "GoodI" he said. "You'll draw a gill extra, next mess. Count two after the pendulum strikes; then let 'em have it; and there ain't anything in reason between here and Fayal that we can't blow out of waterl"

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On the quarter-deck, Newton, scratching busily on a scrap of paper held against the triangular cover of a sextant box, whistled softly; then looked up at Argandeau, who leaned against the weather rail, scanning his features in a pocket mirror. "Twelve knotsl" he exclaimed. "Twelve knots for twenty-four hoursl Two hundred and eighty-eight miles in one dayl That's sailing, misterl Two more days of that, mister, and we'll raise Fayall"

Argandeau smoothed an eyebrow and returned his mirror to his pocket. "We will raise what?" he asked politely. "This place you mention what was the name again?"

Newton looked at him coldly. "Fayal was what I said. You may have heard us speak of Fayal."

"Have I ever heard you speak of anything elsel" Argandeau cried. "Fayall Fayall Fayall Fayal might be heaven, it is so much in your hearts and on your tongues to be therel I have had Fayal with breakfast, dinner and supper since God knows wheel I would like to think a little of the two well-laden Britishers that we took in the Channel, thanks to our pendulum, and sent back to Calais by Tom Souville, to add to our fortunes and the coffers of that beautiful rabbit, Madame de Perigord, but I cannot, no! I cannot hear myself think because of your clack, clack, clack about Fayall I would like to meditate on the way this cautious Old Man of ours, this Captain Caution, of Arundel, took us into the very harbor of Dublin and removed an Indiaman from under the guns of the fort itself. Hahl There is something to think about, that, as well as how my dear Marvin ever earned the name of Captain Cautionl But to you and the rest of you, all these things are nothing. 'Fayall' you scream. 'Fayall Fayall Fayall' You are like uncivilized people, or infants, taking pleasure only in anticipation." He sighed heavily, as if in despair.

The door of the companionway slammed shut behind them. The two men turned to see Marvin staring upward with a frown at the brig's upper sails. Argandeau lifted an eyebrow and softly withdrew to the lee rail.

"Two hundred and eighty-eight miles, Dan," Newton said. "That means Fayal day after tomorrowI"

Marvin rapped the bulwark with his knuckles. "And so to get us there," he said, and his accusing glance included Argandeau, "you pile muslin on her till she looks like a feather bedl Get in those studding sails and skysails! Can't you feel her dragging?"

Newton ran forward, shouting orders. Seamen swarmed from nowhere, as if by magic, and scuttled up the shrouds. The studdingsail booms came in; the skysail yards were lowered and their sails

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close-furled by men who seemed, like insects crawling on a ceiling, to defy the laws of gravity. The brig's deck took on less of a cant: the waves through which she sliced seemed suddenly to lift her and press her on.

"Just remember that," Marvin said severely, as Newton returned to the quarter-deck. "Any fool or Englishman can crowd on canvas, so that a vessel looks fast. What we aim to do is keep our lee rails out of water and go faster. Give her all she needs; not all she'll stand."

He took two turns at the weather rail, watching the gun crews housing the long guns amidships. "I've said it fifty times, but it'll bear repeating: This is a war we're in, and risks are the last things we want to take."

Argandeau laughed, and Marvin halted in his pacing to fix him with a questioning glance.

"Yes," Argandeau said. "Certainly yesl There were some of us who had that in mind, Captain Caution, when you ran into Dublin Harbor in daylight, and then snatched away that merchantman in the dark. There was no risk to that, of course; no more than picking up an alligator by the hind foot."

"I tell you there was no risk," Marvin said calmly. "We ran in and anchored with the British ensign set over our American ensign. There was nothing for the British to think except that we were a captured American vessel, running for safety from the French privateer that pursued us to the very mouth of the harbor. Every man in the fort could see Souville's vessel, and not one of them would ever think to look at us. You know yourself that if you do something openly with one hand, you can do anything you like with the other and never be caught at it, provided you do it quietly. To anchor under the guns of the fort was an extra bit of caution."

"Caution!" Argandeau whispered, raising his eyes to the sky.

"Yes, caution," Marvin repeated. "When they saw us do it, they knew beyond any doubt that there was no harm in us, and so gave us no thought whatever. There is no surprise so great as to do something you could not do if you tried to do it in the way you were expected to do it."

Argandeau moved his lips helplessly and shook his head.

"But Fayal," Marvin continued, looking at him thoughtfully; "Fayal is another matter. In Fayal we must be doubly cautious."

Argandeau raised an eyebrow and nodded understandingly. "Now you speak a language that has a meaning. You mean that in Fayal we must pick up two alligators by the hind foot."

XXXI

A NORT~VVEST wind piled dingy clouds against the cone-shaped hills that rimmed the roadstead of Fayal with an amphitheater of green; and from the top-hamper of the Blue Swan brig, riding at anchor in the lee of Espalamaca Point, there came an uneasy moaning that seemed, to the girl who stood at the shoreward rail of the quarter-deck, too dreary and too shrill to be evoked by wind alone.

Despite her many days at sea, she had no eyes for the white houses nestling on the slopes behind her, half hidden im their vines and fruit trees; and she stared with a sort of fascination at the three war vessels that lay to westward, slowly swaying in the long swell from the tumbling waters beyond. Even though her hands were buried in the loose and heavy sleeves of a quilted Chinese jacket, not long out of a shop in the Palais Royal, she seemed to hug herself and shiver at the sight.

On the deck in the lee of the sternmost carronade sat an angular woman, her scow-like feet thrust out before her and her huge brown hands busily wielding knitting needles that seemed the size of boat hooks. As she knitted, she cast quick glances at the restless girl. "You get yourself sick with this worry," she told her at length. "Then you be no good when there is need to worry. What you worry over? Is it the shark that follows us about, looking up at us with one eye, like someone I know? He is like a kitten, merely playing. You are safe here, and soon you will be safe away away from those damned Angles with their goat whiskers. Brrl" She muttered to herself, and her mutterings were unpleasant.

"Yes, but we ought to be away cowl" Corunna said, as if to herself. "Right nowl If he hadn't been so kind if he hadn't got this brig for me I think I'd I'd never stay here for such a_ n

She fell silent, watching the distant group of officers on the high poop of the ship-of-the-line, and into her mind there came again, as there had come a thousand times before, the constant tenderness of Lurman Slade and his forethought in her behalf. It went back this forethought, to the very day when she had arrived with Victorine in Dublin and had been installed by Slade in the captain's cabin of the Blue Swan brig. Victorine, grumbling in her suspicious Breton fash