Atwell looked back again to Peabody, and his expression hardened.
"And I have two men under arrest, sir — those two."
He pointed to a couple of helpless figures, one of them a Marine, hanging in the slings before they reached the deck. Atwell swallowed for a moment; what he was about to say was going to put those two men in peril of their lives, and he went on with the grimmest formality.
"They are charged with looting and being drunk on duty, sir. They swilled neat rum from the casks we were setting on fire."
The two accused men were dumped roughly on the deck, and Peabody looked down on them. The Marine was conscious enough to wave his arms slowly across his face while gurgling some drunken nonsense; the seaman was as motionless and helpless as if he had been stunned with a club, and pale under the mahogany skin. He must have filled his stomach with neat rum at a single draught.
Peabody knew that passionate yearning for liquor, that wild desire for oblivion.
"Put them in irons in the peak," he said, harshly. "I'll deal with them tomorrow. Ask the surgeon to look at this man after he has attended to the wounded."
He turned away; the setting sun was gleaming across the bay at Charlestown, but it could not penetrate the vast cloud of smoke which engulfed the town, where a million dollars' worth of property was burning.
Chapter X
A COURT-MARTIAL had not been possible. Not until her voyage was completed — not until the war should be over — could the Delaware hope to be in a place where it would be possible to assemble the imposing array of officers who could try such an offense. But three lieutenants were able to compose a Court of Inquiry who could listen to Lieutenant Atwell's evidence and make recommendations to the captain. Seaman and Marine had no defense to offer, and could only throw themselves on the captain's mercy. They stood white-faced while they listened to Lieutenant Hubbard's formal report to the captain, studying the lean features and hard eyes of the man who could send them to their deaths in the next five minutes. Punishment in this little speck of a ship, encompassed by enemies and friendless through the oceans of the world, could be terrible and must be swift. Death, or such less penalty . . .
It was torment for Peabody. Far within him the devil was tempting him. He had two drunkards in his power, and he could repay on their persons the misery he had endured from a drunken father, the agonizing distress caused him by a drunken mother, the torture he himself had gone through in his battle with the enemy.
Deep down inside him a little well of bloodthirsty lust brought up into his mind the prospect of repayment. He submerged the hideous temptation and turned an expressionless face to the two wretched men.
This was a happy ship which he commanded; there had been punishments when she was lying at Brooklyn, but not a single one since she had escaped to sea. He felt a dull resentment towards these two who had imperiled the frail structure of happiness. If he should pardon them, he would be running the risk of unsettling the crew; there were some members — he knew it so well! — who would resent the pardoning of a crime which they had been tempted to commit. Yet punishment would not reform drunkards, would not make better men of them. But they had disobeyed orders, that was their worst crime. On this desperate venture every man on board must be shown that disobedience was instantly visited with punishment, and for men steeped in the tradition of the sea there was only one form of punishment besides death. Peabody passed sentence with a face set like stone.
The Marine was bovine, phlegmatic, and suffered his flogging in stolid silence, but the seaman screamed under the lash. It was a horrible sound, which rent the fair beauty of the multicolored morning.
Montserrat lay in the distance, its jagged peaks purple and green against the sky; from Soufriere at its southern end a cloud of white steam merged with the clouds which hung over it. In the opposite direction the low sun had waked a rainbow from the rainstorm which had just driven by. Its brilliant arch dipped to the sea at either end, and above it the reverse rainbow was visible, not as brilliant but still beautiful. The sea was of such a vivid color that it was hard to think of it as a lively liquid; with that deep color it was more logical to think of it as of a creamy consistency through which the Delaware was cutting her way, leaving behind her a white wake lovely on the blue. It was Peabody's plan to spread desolation and misery and lamentation throughout this peaceful scene, to burn and harry and destroy, to sweep through the Lesser Antilles like a hurricane of destruction from end to end.
Here lay Montserrat; beyond lay Guadeloupe, French again now, but worth investigation on the chance of finding British shipping; beyond that Dominica, and then, after French Martinique, a whole series of British possessions: St. Vincent, Barbados, Grenada, Trinidad, Guiana, stretching nearly to the Line. There might be convoys with which he would be unable to interfere, ships of war from which he might have to run, but there would be plenty of weak points — joints in the British armor — at which he could thrust. The Delaware was capable of keeping the sea for three months more at least — much longer if he could find the opportunity to reprovision from his prizes; and during that time he would do damage costing a hundred, a thousand, times as much as the Federal Government had expended on the ship. He refused to let his mind dwell again on what might have been the result if only Mr. Jefferson had decided to build a squadron of ships of the line. With his glass leveled at Montserrat, he gave the orders which set the Delaware to work again on the task she had begun.
The days that followed were monotonous only in their sameness — ships destroyed and anchorages raided, West India planters ruined and West Indian merchants bankrupted. The smoke of the fires which the Delaware lighted drifted over the blue sea and up the green hillsides, while Peabody could only guess at the terror and the uncertainty he was spreading, at the paralyzing of commerce and at the shocked outcry in London. And through it all there was the constant dribble-dribble of casualties; two men killed by a round shot from the battery at Plymouth, three wounded by the single desperate broadside fired by the trading brig intercepted off Basseterre, one drowned when the Delaware was caught under full canvas by a sudden squall near the Saintes. It was not want of food and water which was likely to put a period to the Delaware's career, nor even shortage of powder and shot, but the loss of mortal men. Of every six men who had come aboard in the East River one man was now dead or useless. When the hands were at divisions Peabody used to find himself looking along the lines of sunburned faces and wondering who would be the next to go. British ships of war could find recruits whenever they met a British merchant ship, but the Delaware was alone.
It was off Roseau that they saw the big schooner. Hubbard himself announced the sighting of her to Peabody.
"Right to windward, sir, but she's bearing down on us fast."
So fast, indeed, that when Peabody came on deck she was already nearly hull-up. The enormous extent of her fore and aft sails, the pronounced rake of her masts, her beautifully cut square topsails, were obvious at a glance, and as she came nearer Peabody could see the sharp lines of her bows and the beauty of her hull. Peabody took the glass from his eye and looked at Hubbard.
"Baltimore privateer," said Hubbard; and then, slowly: "Well, I don't know."
Peabody had the same doubts. At first glance those bows and that canvas seemed eloquent of Baltimore, and yet at second glance they seemed nothing of the kind. If ever a ship had a foreign accent it was this one.