"Tack after the brigs, please, Mr. Hubbard."
The brigs had won for themselves no more than an extra two hours of freedom; the Delaware caught up to them hot-foot. It was a little pitiful to see their flags come fluttering down — Peabody felt an odd twinge as he stood in the hot sunlight and watched his prizes come clustering together, obedient to his orders. He listened a little gloomily to the reports sent over by his prize-masters — Barquentine Richmond, three hundred and twenty tons, Kingston to London, cargo of sugar, twenty-nine of a crew; Barquentine Faithful Wife, three hundred and forty tons, Kingston to Liverpool . . . and so on. They were all bulk cargoes — no valuable specie for him to take under his special charge. Murray and Hubbard were eagerly turning over the pages of the prizes' logs, in search of possible hints as to the whereabouts of any other survivors of the convoy.
"Twenty-five sail took the Caicos Passage, sir," announced Murray. "The others must still be ahead."
A laughing working party were swaying up a miscellaneous collection of livestock from the longboat of one of the barquentines: chickens and pigs and a score of big turtles; the city of London aldermen would go short of their favorite dish this coming winter, and the crew of the Delaware would have a brief taste of fresh food again. The four captured captains stood in a sullen group on the other side of the deck, saying nothing to each other, and trying to display no emotion while their captor decided on their fate; they might as well have been Mohegans awaiting the stake.
"Mr. Hubbard!"
"Sir!"
"I'll have those two longboats hoisted on board. They'll serve instead of the boats we lost."
"Aye aye, sir."
"Which of you gentlemen is captain of the Laura Trougbton?"
"I am."
The captain of the smaller of the two brigs came with a rolling gait across to Peabody, to listen sullenly to what Peabody had to say.
"I'm setting your brig free after my prize crew has thrown those guns of yours overboard. You will take on board the officers and crews of the other three vessels."
"But Holy Peter! That'll make a hundred souls on board or more."
"Yes."
"The water won't last, sir. I've only ten tons on board."
"You've a fair wind for the Cuban coast. Four days and you'll be in Havana." Peabody turned to the other three captains. "I'll give you twenty minutes to get your property transferred to the Laura Troughton. At four bells I shall set fire to your ships."
It was the best thing to do. Releasing the prisoners meant a loss of ten thousand dollars in prize money; burning the ships meant a loss of ten times as much; but the Delaware had few men to spare for prize crews, and they must be reserved to take in really valuable captures — if there was any chance of evading the blockade. And sending the Laura Troughton in to Havana — the water shortage would ensure that she went nowhere else — would deprive England of her services and those of her crew for some time to come.
Peabody looked aft as the Delaware bore up to the northward again. The Laura Troughton was heading south with all the sail she could set, and the hot sun glared down on the other three vessels drifting aimlessly on the blue water. Each of the three was enshrouded in a faint mist, rendering their outlines vague and shimmering. As he watched, he saw the sails of the Richmond suddenly whisk away into nothing as the flames, invisible in the bright sun, ran up her masts. The Faithful Wife's mainmast suddenly lurched drunkenly to one side, and a dense volume of black smoke poured out from her gaping decks, drifting to leeward in an ugly cloud. Sugar and rum made a fine blaze. A sudden hard explosion from the Richmond told how the flames had reached her small powder store — only a hundred weight or two, but enough to send a column of smoke shooting upwards. He could see that the whole of her stern had been blown away, and as the misshapen wreck drifted on the surface the billows of smoke told how the invading sea was battling with the roaring flames. The Faithful Wife's masts had fallen now, and so had the brig's, and the two blazing hulks had drifted together and were wrapped, side by side, in the clouds of murky smoke. It was a horrible sight, and Peabody could hardly bear to look at it. But he made himself do so, for a strange mixture of reasons which he himself made no attempt to analyze. Under the influence of the New England conscience he was mortifying himself, making himself pay in person for his country's weakness, rubbing his own nose in the dirty fact that he was here as a skulking commerce destroyer and not as the fighting man which all his instincts guided him to be.
Chapter VII
By the time that Peabody decided to turn back from the pursuit of the convoy, the Delaware had overtaken and destroyed fourteen sail of merchant shipping. Another small brig had been released, laden with the crews, and the ship Three Sisters had been dispatched with a prize crew in the attempt to run the blockade into an American port. The Three Sisters' cargo of mahogany and logwood was not specially valuable, but she was armed with no less than twelve beautiful long brass nine-pounders, and it was for this reason that Peabody had sent her in. There was a terrible shortage of cannon in the United States, as he well knew; there were privateers waiting in harbor fully equipped save for their guns. America was still laughing over the story of the privateer captain — a Connecticut man at that — who sold one of his prizes, as she lay at the quay, for a greatly enhanced price because she carried guns, and it was only later that the purchaser discovered that the guns for which he had paid so dearly were merely wooden "Quaker" guns. It was an amusing story — especially amusing in the Wooden Nutmeg State — but it abundantly illustrated the shortage of weapons which was hampering the United States. These twelve guns would serve to arm another Emulation or Oliver, while if the British retook them before they reached American shores it would be small gain to Britain, glutted as she was with the guns taken from a hundred thousand prizes.
Three of the ships overhauled were Spaniards, and Peabody had to let them go. Spain was an ally of England against France, and those cargoes, consigned to Passages, were almost certainly destined for the use of Wellington's army; but still, the United States was neither at war with Spain nor in alliance with France. Peabody's instructions were explicit — he read them through carefully again — and he had to let them go, sadly realizing, for by no means the first time, that Mr. Madison had not the least idea of how to fight a war. There was the comforting thought that perhaps, now that he had crippled the convoy escort, some French privateer or other might snap those Spaniards up when they reached European waters. It was a ridiculous political situation; Mr. Madison's polished hairsplitting might perhaps make it sound logical, but Peabody, the man who had to implement the policy at the risk of his life and liberty, was acutely aware of its practical fallacies.
And now he knew the convoy was scattered over the breadth of the Atlantic, with each ship laying its own course for home — what ships were left of it — and it would be an unprofitable use of the Delaware to proceed farther into that waste of waters in the hope of further captures. It was at focal points that he wished to strike; he thought for the moment of crossing the ocean and appearing in the mouth of the Channel, but decided against it. Those waters would be thick with British ships of war, and the arguments which had in the first place directed the Delaware to the West Indies still held good. The day they let the last of the Spaniards go Peabody gave the order which turned the Delaware's bow to the southward again. Presumably the Emulation and the Oliver had taken every prize they could find a crew for, and had headed for Savannah days ago, so that there would be need of the Delaware's presence.