"Haven't had the chance to congratulate you on your marriage, sir," said Fane, stepping into the breach. "Devilish lovely wife you've got."
"Thank you, sir."
"Here's to the bride," said Maitland, and everyone sipped again, and then sat silent. Peabody was enjoying himself. He felt he had a position well up to windward, and had no intention of running down to meet the others. Let them beat up to him. Davenant cleared his throat.
"The fact is, Captain Peabody," he began, "we are all wondering how long this damned ridiculous situation is going to last."
"Yes?" said Peabody. He could not have said less without being rude.
"Our armistice — if that is what you are pleased to call it — comes to an end shortly. And then what happens?"
"We each have ideas on that point," said Peabody.
"You get up sail. I get up sail, just as we did before. We start out of the bay together, and that Jack-in-office of a French Governor — I beg your pardon, sir. I was forgetting he was your father-in-law, but all the same he threatens to turn the guns on us. Back we go and try again. You see what I mean?"
"Yes," said Peabody. He had followed the same line of thought himself — so, for that matter, had everyone in Martinique with any ideas in his head at all.
"So we sit and look at each other until we all go aground on our own damned beef-bones?"
"My men like pork better," said Peabody drily.
Something was coming of this interview, and he was prepared to wait indefinitely for it. His frivolous reply drew a gesture of impatience from Davenant.
"I might have guessed what your attitude would be, sir," he said.
Peabody nearly said "Then why did you ask me to come?" — but he kept his mouth shut and preserved his tactical advantage. He looked round at the three sullen British faces and the enigmatical expression of Hunningford, and it was the last-named who broke the silence.
"Perhaps," he began deferentially, with a glance at Davenant, "if I told Captain Peabody my news it might influence him?"
"I want you to tell him," said Davenant, and Hunningford addressed himself directly to Peabody.
"There are pirates at work in the Caribbean," he said.
"Indeed?" said Peabody politely. "I've never known the time when there weren't."
That was true; minor piracy had flourished in the Caribbean from the days of Drake.
"Yes," said Hunningford, "but never on the scale of today. Now that peace has come half the privateersmen in the world are out of employment. Spaniards — Negroes from Haiti — Frenchmen — "
"I can understand that," said Peabody.
"Losses are heavy already and will be heavier still. The Cartagena packet was taken last week."
"Oh, tell him what happened to you, Hunningford," said Davenant impatiently.
"Yesterday my cutter was chased by a pirate schooner. It was only by the mercy of Providence that I got into St. Pierre."
"I'm glad you escaped," said Peabody, politely.
"I've been chased by pirates before. Big rowboats putting out from San Domingo, and Guarda Costa luggers whose crews have been starved into piracy by the Spanish Government. One expects that. But when it comes to a big schooner, ten guns on a side, and heavy metal at that — "
"I know the schooner you mean," said Peabody, surprised into his first helpful remark.
"You've seen her?"
"Yes. I chased her off Dominica. She looked Baltimore-built to me, and French-rigged. I thought she was an American privateer."
"Baltimore-built and French-rigged is nearly right. She was the Susanna of Baltimore, dismasted in a hurricane two years back and put into Port-au-Prince. A French syndicate bought her there. They put Lerouge in command — he's a Haitian Negro who served in Boney's navy — and manned her with blacks."
"What else do you expect of Frogs?" interposed Davenant bitterly.
"They'll never see a penny of their money, if that's any satisfaction," said Hunningford. "Lerouge has been nothing more than a pirate for months back. And now with all the Americas on the move against Spain he'll have plenty of plunder and plenty of chance to dispose of it, which is just as important to him. God knows how much he took out of the Cartagena packet. But there were three women on board — two of 'em young."
"He'd look well at a yardarm," said Davenant.
"But what has all this to do with me?" asked Peabody.
"How can I catch him and hang him when I'm tied up here in Fort-de-France with all these French neutrality laws and harbor rules and God-knows-what?" asked Davenant in reply. "Let me get my ships out and he'll hang in a week."
"D'ye think you'd catch him?" said Peabody.
"Catch him? Catch him? Why —why —What do you mean, sir?"
"The Susanna was one of the fastest schooners which ever left Baltimore, sir," said Hunningford.
"She got to windward of the Delaware and was hull-down in half a day," said Peabody.
"The Delaware! He'd never get away from Calypso on a bowline," said Davenant, but even as he said it the lofty confidence in his tone ebbed away. He had not commanded British frigates for eighteen years without learning something of the deficiencies of the vessels, and he was quite enough of a realist to be able to allow for them. It was a wrench to have to admit their existence to an American captain and a civilian, all the same.
"I take it, then," said Peabody, keeping the argument on a practical plane, "that what you want me to do is to give you a free passage out of the bay to deal with this pirate?"
"That is correct, sir," said Davenant. He had known beforehand that his plea would not have one chance in a hundred of being granted, which was probably why he had deferred stating it in plain words.
Peabody thought for a full minute, twisting his glass in his fingers and paying careful attention to the powdered nutmeg afloat on the surface.
"I think it is quite impossible," he said, slowly. "I will give you my definite decision later."
"But see here, sir," expostulated Davenant, and then he changed his tone. "It's what I might have expected of a Yankee skipper. You fellows can't see farther than your noses. Here's all America in a flame, as Hunningford has said. That fellow Bolivar's on the rampage through Venezuela — he licked the dagoes at Carabobo last spring. These waters will be swarming with letters of marque and privateers with commissions from Bolivar and Morelos, flying the flags of Venezuela and New Granada and Mexico and God knows what next. Pirates? How long will it take a Venezuelan privateer to become a pirate? Give 'em a lesson now, and it'll save two dozen next year."
"Your country's trade with these islands is nearly as big as ours," said Fane.
"Yes," said Peabody, rising to his feet. He was not going to be rushed into a hasty decision by any eloquent Englishman. "I'll think about it."
He turned to Davenant and repeated the formula he had heard Preble use after an official reception at Valletta.
"I must thank you, sir, for a delightful entertainment."
As he turned to bow to the others Hunningford was catching Davenant's eye.
"Take Mr. Hunningford with you, sir," pleaded Davenant. "His business connections with the United States should enable him to put the case clearer than I have done, perhaps. You will be able to question him freely in private."
Peabody made himself hesitate while he counted ten inside himself before he spoke.
"I really don't see the use of it," he said. "But if Mr. — er — Hunningford would accompany me in my gig ... ?"
"I'll come gladly," said Hunningford.
Down in the gig Hunningford looked up at the sun.
"Devilish hot even for this time of year," he said.
"So I thought," said Peabody politely.