"Starboard a little," said Peabody to the helmsman. "Keep her at that!"
"Keep her at that, sir!" echoed the helmsman.
The Delaware edged in towards the shore, skirting the extreme range of the Basseterre batteries, so as to give the boats the shortest pull necessary. The tiny airs of wind sent her through the water with hardly a ripple. She crept along over the mat blue amid a breathless silence.
"Boats away, Mr. Hubbard, if you please."
"Boats away! Boats away-ay!"
Hubbard began to shout the order as soon as the first two words had left Peabody's lips; the polite remaining five were drowned in his yell. A hundred hands who had been awaiting the order went away on the run with the hoists. The two big boats rose and fell simultaneously into the water and their crews tumbled down into them, Murray commanding one and Atwell the other. They thrust clear and then flung their weight upon the oars, making the stout ash bend as they drove the big craft through the water, dashing for the shore.
"We might be a whaler, sir," grinned Hubbard to Peabody as he watched their progress.
The cutters saw their doom hurtling at them. The leading one manned four sweeps in a desperate effort to gain the shelter of the batteries; Peabody saw the long black blades begin their slow pulling, but the other three incontinently went about and headed for the shore. Atwell's longboat altered course for the cutter under sweeps, Peabody following her with his glass. A white pillar of water emerged suddenly from the surface of the blue sea a cable's-length ahead of the longboat; the big guns at Basseterre were chancing their aim. But a minute later Atwell was alongside, and not long after that he was pulling away again. A crowded dinghy was taking the cutter's crew to the land, and a black cloud of smoke was slowly rising from the cutter and spreading over the surface of the sea.
Peabody swung his glass towards the other vessels. They had reached the shore, and their crews tumbled out into the surf in a wild rush for safety. Peabody watched Murray steady his boat on the edge of the surf for a moment and then dash in after them; it was interesting to see whether Murray would keep his head during his tenure of independent command. A little group of white-shirted men ran up the narrow beach as a guard against surprise, and another group moved along to the beached boats, while the longboat waited in the surf with oars out ready for instant departure. Murray was acting with perfect correctness, decided Peabody. His glass caught a glint of steel in the sunshine — someone was wielding an ax to stove-in the cutters. Directly afterwards came the smoke as first one boat and then another was set afire; by the time Atwell's boat reached the scene all the cutters were on fire and blazing fiercely.
Something impelled Peabody to traverse his glass along the shore towards Basseterre. He saw a big red dot, the twinkle of steel — a detachment of the garrison was pelting hot-foot along the coastal path to try to save the boats. But Murray still had ten minutes in hand, and he coolly made the most of them. Probably all three of the cutters had stove their bottoms running ashore, and certainly ten minutes' ax-work upon them damaged them beyond repair, while the fire had time to take a good hold and sweep the upper works. The infantry detachment was a quarter of a mile away when Murray recalled his picket, and by the time the sweating soldiers had reached the scene of action the longboat had shoved off and was just out of musket range beside Atwell. It was a neat piece of work, as Peabody ungrudgingly told Murray when he reached the ship again.
"Thank'ee, sir," said Murray. His eyes were still bright with excitement and his chest was still heaving in sympathy with his quickened pulse. "Those sojers were black. Their facings were blue an' they had a white officer. West India Regiment, I reckon, sir."
Another good mark for Murray, seeing that during the excitement of the retreat he had kept his head clear enough to identify his pursuers. The information was of trifling importance, but all information was of some potential value. Murray looked back at the beach, where the red-coated soldiers and white-clad inhabitants were trying to salve something of the wrecks.
"We didn't leave much for 'em, sir," said Murray, grinning, but Peabody was no longer paying him attention. He was looking at Nevis, which was slowly growing more defined as the Delaware made her leisurely way along the coast. Already the two-mile-wide channel between Nevis and St. Kitts was fully opened up from where he stood.
"Bring in the captain of the cutter we've got on board," he said.
They brought him the mulatto, who stood sullenly in front of him in his ragged shirt and trousers. His bare feet were seemingly too hard to feel the hot planking under them.
"John O'Hara?" said Peabody, and the mulatto nodded. "Your boat was registered at Charlestown, Nevis."
Another nod.
"What soldiers are there?"
O'Hara said nothing.
"Did you hear me speak to you?"
"Yessir. I don't know nothin', sir."
The mulatto's speech was accented like no other on earth. It was only with difficulty that Peabody could understand him.
"You know the answer to that question," said Peabody.
"No sir."
Even if patriotism did not motivate him, O'Hara owed a grudge against this captain who had just destroyed his all. Peabody looked at the sullen face, and then away, at the blue sky and the blue sea, and the steep green slopes of Nevis. War was a merciless business.
"Listen to me, O'Hara," he said. "Tell me what I want to know, and I'll set you free. I'll give you fifty golden guineas as well."
He kept his hard blue eyes on O'Hara's face, but he could detect no sign of weakening at the offer of the reward. So it was time for threats.
"If you don't tell me, I'll sell you at New Orleans. I promise you that, and you know what it means."
Peabody saw the expression on the mulatto's face change, he saw the melancholy black eyes with the yellow whites wander round the horizon, just as his own had done a moment before. The wretched man was thinking of his present life, free, in this blue-and-green paradise, and comparing it with the prospect offered him — the canebrake and the cotton field and the taskmaster's lash.
"I'll get eight hundred dollars for you," said Peabody. "Somebody'll get eight hundred dollars' worth out of you, and a profit besides."
The mulatto shuddered as he emerged from his bad dream.
"I'll tell you," he said.
Bit by bit Peabody drew the facts from him, halting every now and then to make sure he understood O'Hara's patois. No, there were no red-coated soldiers in Nevis, although there were plenty in St. Kitts. There was a white militia, perhaps a thousand in the whole island, perhaps two hundred in Charlestown itself. They drilled once a month on Sunday afternoons. The colored people, even the free ones, were not allowed arms except for the men enlisted in the West India Regiment. Yes, there were some guns mounted at Charlestown — two big ones, in a battery at the north end of the bay. There were two old white soldiers who looked after them all the time, and some of the white militia were supposed to be trained by them. Yes, that was the battery, there. Yes, those warehouses round the jetty were full. Sugar and molasses and coffee.
"Right," said Peabody. "If this is the truth, I'll set you free tonight. Take him away, and bring me the other two."
The two Negroes who had constituted the crew of the burned cutter were more easily frightened, though their speech was even more unintelligible than their captain's. Peabody did not have to use threats towards them; it sufficed for him merely to repeat his question once, with his eyes narrowed, for them to pour out their answers in their gobbling speech. They were silly with fright, and they knew little enough, but all they said went to confirm the information wrung from O'Hara. It was worth while to take the risk.