"There won't be any," said Tom. "I'm going ahead, if they do hang me.

I'm running Nathan Hale's risk, all the while."

"G.o.d protect you!" she said. "Do you feel sure you can creep through?"

"I've done it before," he replied. "What I'm thinking of, the worst thing for me, is the new line of pickets along the river bank. I shall be fired at, pretty sure, before I can paddle on into the Hudson Narrows. There'll be some risk from our own pickets above Anthony's Nose. I guess they'll all miss me. I've one package, though; that's all weighted, ready to drop into the water if I'm exhausted. I'd make out to sink it, if I was dying. Now, give me some supper."

"Oh, Tom!" she said, "G.o.d keep us!"

CHAPTER IX.

THE PICAROON.

"Guert," said Vine Avery, as they stood together, with their backs against the main boom of the _Noank_, "what do you think of this?"

"Think?" said Guert. "Well! It's the first time I ever saw summer in winter."

"They're having good sleighing in New London," said Vine. "Skating, too."

"Guess so," said Guert. "I wish my mother were here, and Rachel Tarns with her. They'd enjoy this."

"My mother's made two West India trips," replied Vine. "She knows all about it. Likes it, too."

"It's the laziest kind of cruising, though," said Guert. "We've dodged away from some sails, and we've run after some, but we haven't taken anything."

"Our chances'll come, boys," put in Captain Avery himself, as he came strolling along the deck. "Not just 'bout here, maybe. Yonder on the easterly Bahamas. Not many British traders are likely to be met hereaway."

"What are we here for, then, father?" asked Vine. "What's your notions?"

"We had to," said the captain. "The Frenchman we spoke, told me the Florida Channel's alive with British cruisers. We sighted two of 'em, you know, and had to run for it."

"Where next?" asked Vine.

"We'll take a course toward Porto Rico," said his father; "then up the coast of Cuba. We'll try the Bahama Channel, and the Santaren, and the Nicholas. I want to send home some prizes, pretty soon, on British account."

Day after day, the _Noank_ had been hunting, hunting, farther and farther into the southern sea, through good weather and bad. All the while Guert Ten Eyck had been at school. Up-na-tan had laboriously tried to teach him whatever he himself knew about guns, large and small. The other sailors had done their duty by him, concerning ropes and sails and points of seamanship. Captain Avery had driven him hard at his books on navigation. Therefore, if the cruising had been more or less lazy business for others, it had contained a good deal of hard work for the young sea apprentice. He was in a fair way to be made a good sailor of, and to be ready in due season to handle a ship.

"What you want most," Captain Avery had said, "is a long v'y'ge on a square-rigged vessel, under a hard captain. I'll find a chance for you one o' these days. You can't learn everything on board a schooner."

That idea was growing steadily in Guert's mind, and he now and then found himself dreaming of all sorts of perilous cruises in great American three-masters. By these splendid ships of his imagination, all of which were as yet unlaunched from any shipyard, the best keels of England were to be met and beaten. He was to command one of them, and was to become a captain first, and then a commodore. It was all an entirely natural young sailor's ambition, but it was looking far away into the future of his country. All it was good for now was the help it gave him in his pretty severe schooling.

Just at this present hour, leaning against the boom and gazing at the low coast line of the islands, he was calling to mind the many yarns he had heard concerning them. He had read about them, a little. He knew how they had been discovered by the Spaniards, and then taken from them, part of them, by the English and the French. He knew how the Carib natives had been slaughtered, and he had heard, from Coco in particular, of the horrible manner in which the tobacco and sugar plantations had been provided with African slaves.

Vine, too, was thinking, but of a very different matter.

"Guert," he said, "away out yonder, easterly, there's the queerest patch in all the Atlantic. It's where all the loose seaweed and driftwood and wreckage float together. There are currents that whirl in there and make a centre of it. More and more seaweed and other plants grow on that stuff year after year, and it's all a kind of swamp on the surface, with deep water under it. They call it the Sarga.s.so Sea. We were swept into the edges of it, once, and it took a fresh breeze to pull us out. I don't just know if a craft like this could plow her way across it."

"I guess she could," said Guert, "but I don't want to try. What I want to see is Cuba and Porto Rico."

Away beyond them, hardly visible in the distance, was a tree-covered point of land. Captain Avery was studying it through his telescope, and they heard him mutter to himself:--

"I don't know whether or not that is Watling's Island. If it is, we've made a better run on this tack than I thought we had. One good, long reach beyond that and we'll begin to be in the track of the traders."

"Whoo-oop!" suddenly rang out the war-cry of Up-na-tan, from somewhere up the mainmast.

"Where away?" shouted the captain. "What do you see?"

"No see!" came down from the redskin. "Hark! Hear gun! Hark ahead!

See point! More gun!"

His ears had been better than theirs, but, after a moment of intense listening, the entire ship's company of the _Noank_ felt sure that they heard the dull boom of far-away cannon.

Every sail was already set to take so fair and fresh a wind, and the swift schooner was eating up the distance rapidly.

"All hands make ready for action!" shouted the captain. "Risk or no risk, I'm goin' to see what it is."

His orders went out fast, but they went to the ears of men who had sprung away without them. All the guns had been manned instantly.

Coco and Guert and half a dozen more were at the pivot-gun, but Up-na-tan did not come down at once. The captain's order kept him aloft as the best lookout and listener he had. Louder, now, at intervals, came the ominous sound of the distant guns.

"No big gun yet," called down the keen-eared Indian. "No big war-ship.

_Noank_ run right along."

"The chief is worth his weight in gold!" exclaimed the captain.

"That's jest what I wanted to know, before roundin' that there p'int.

I don't care to run under the guns of a British cruiser."

Ships which are running toward each other under full sail cut every mile in two in the middle. For instance, they need to run only two miles instead of four to get together. There was a dense forest growth on the point of Watling's Island, if that were indeed the land to windward, for the breeze was westerly. Everything beyond was hidden from view until the _Noank_ pa.s.sed the outer reef and tacked seaward, running almost wing and wing.

"Whoo-oop!" came fiercely down from the red man's perch. "'Panish flag. Three-master. Trader. Not many gun. Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!

Kidd! Kidd! Black flag schooner! Pirate! Not so big as _Noank_.

Small gun! Take her quick! Kill 'em all! Whoo-oop!"

"Hurrah!" arose in a general roar from the crew of the _Noank_, more than one voice adding, vociferously, the desire that was felt to smash the picaroon.

"Ready, all, now!" sang out Captain Avery. "The American flag is against the black flag, the world over. We'll fight it, every time!"

Fierce shouts of eagerness replied to him, and the men were stripping themselves for a hard fight. The very most of clothing that was actually needed under that hot sun, by men who were to handle cannon, was a shirt and trousers, and many of the brawny backs were even bare.

Muskets, pikes, pistols, cutla.s.ses, were bringing up from below.

Ammunition, plenty of it, was serving out to all the guns, and now, as the point of land was left to starboard, all eyes could see what kind of work had been cut out for the privateer.

The Spaniard, as her flag declared her, was a three-master of, probably, not more than six hundred tons. She was crowding all sail, but she was evidently heavily laden.

"She has too much cargo for good runnin'," growled Sam Prentice. "That buccaneer has the heels of her."

"What's worse'n that," said the captain, "she has nothin' but popguns to fight him with. He won't sink her, though. What he wants is to run along side and board her."