Norton, Andre - Novel 08 (14 page)

 
          
 
While he was trying to decide, he examined the
small cabin and its contents curiously. In size and shape it was twin to the
one he shared with Biggs, but he had never seen its interior. The Virginian who
had bunked with Ninnes at the beginning of the voyage had gone off as captain
of a prize, and Fitz's terms with the lieutenant were not such as led to the
paying of visits. It was scrupulously neat with that painful neatness produced
in a man who has only a very limited space in which to live most of his life.
And it was bare, save for a rack of books above Ninnes' sea chest. Fitz read
the titles: A Caesar, so well thumbed that it must have passed through the
hands of more than one unwilling scholar; three fat volumes of Robinson Crusoe,
one with a broken back inexpertly mended; a single volume of Hume's history;
one of Roderick Random; and last of all, a backless, tattered book which
surprised Fitz mightily—Milton. He wondered what Ninnes made of that poet.

 
          
 
The lieutenant turned and then moaned as he
pressed against his bandaged side. Fitz made up his mind.
Watts
should see him. He started out and ran into
Matthews.

 
          
 
"Where's Ninnes? Th' Cap'n wants t'
see
him."

 
          
 
Fitz jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
"He's in his hammock and I don't like the look of him. I'm going to get
Watts
."

 
          
 
The New Englander hesitated before he turned.
"I'll report t' th' Cap'n. An' then you come along. He wants t' see you
too."

 
          
 
Fitz had no pleasure in the thought of
visiting Crofts.

 
          
 
And he found the young Captain in anything but
the best of tempers when he arrived before him.

 
          
 
"No brawling!" Fist met table top
with more than a little emphasis. "I have said that again and again.
And now, not the men, but my officers get themselves knifed and
bring, like as not, half the town down around our ears tomorrow.
I am
prepared to find you all under arrest in the morning. And I ought to leave you
to rot in the dungeons here if you are! Well, Mr. Lyon, and how is the
instigator of this night's work?"

 
          
 
"Dr. Watts is with him now, sir. He says
that there is some degree of fever."

 
          
 
"Ninnes is lucky he is not dead!"
exploded Crofts. "Mr. Matthews, you will rouse out the watch and start
loading."

 
          
 
"At this hour?"

 
          
 
"At this hour!
We'll get those supplies on board before we have the authorities down on us. I
want to be able to sail as soon as possible in the morning. Maybe after we have
been out on a cruise for a while they will forget our sins and let us back to
revictual. That is all we can hope for—thanks to the common sense of my
officers!"

 
          
 
So the Retaliation came alive and supplies
began to move on board by lantern light, a process which brought forth no small
amount of swearing and grumbling from the crew. The marines were pressed into
duty, and Fitz found himself yawning over tally sheets and checking boxes of
ammunition and supplies as they were being carried to their proper storage
places. He was glad to be released at last and make his way below. But before
he went to his own cabin, he looked in on Ninnes.

 
          
 
One of the ship's boys nodded on the sea
chest. He jumped to his feet and put on as much of an air of alertness as he
could manage when he saw the marine officer appear in the doorway.

 
          
 
"How is he?"

 
          
 
"Doctor Watts says tolerable, sir,"
the lad whispered. "He gave Mister Ninnes a soothin' draft an* he has
slept
th
' night through without turnin' none. I'm to
call Dr. Watts if he wakes."

 
          
 
The lieutenant's flushed face showed dusky
against the blanket which had been pulled over him, but his breathing sounded
even, and he was no longer muttering. Fitz nodded to the boy and went on to his
own cubby, getting into his hammock with a profound sigh of weariness and
relief.

 
          
 
When he awakened he knew from the swing of the
ship that they must be once more at sea. For a second or two he stretched, as
well as the hammock would allow, and wished that he did not have to tumble out.

 
          
 
Channel cruising was not for sluggards, as he
speedily discovered, and Biggs took pleasure in riding his men, drilling long
and demanding a high standard of efficiency. The broom some wag had made fast
to the mast was
symbol
enough of the temper of the
crew.

           
 
Like a certain Dutch admiral some generations
before them, they had hoisted it as a sign of their intention to sweep the
enemy from the sea.

 
          
 
Watch on and watch off, they were ready for
instant action, though Crofts passed up the fishing smacks or luggers which
rode the night waters. His indifference surprised Fitz until Matthews explained
that these were the craft of the "gentlemen" and not to be stopped by
an honest privateer, especially since they might later want information or
assistance from that network of intelligence which the smuggling fraternity
maintained in
England
and on the continent.

 
          
 
"Many an escaped prisoner has been
ferried over by them," the New Englander pointed out. "We don't
bother them an' they don't peach on us—'less th' reward gets a leetle too high
an' temptin'. If we make Lloyd's anxious-like an' th' insurance goes up, then
some o' th' merchants who have their heads screwed on right may get together
an' let it be known in th' proper places that there is a price on us. Then
someone may talk. But we don't have t' worry us about that yet. We're new t'
these huntin' grounds."

 
          
 
"Yes," Sergeant Fogler added, half
to himself, "just a killer shark out in a whale pack, that's us. Easy
pickin's, easy pickin's."

 
          
 
However more than one killer
shark had been drawn to the Channel, to say nothing of the watchdog frigates
out to patrol against just such depredations.
And for the first week of
her cruising the Retaliation had little luck, except to escape with ease the
attentions of an overly ambitious sloop-of-war.

 
          
 
Then Fortune smiled indeed. A convoy, homeward
bound from the
Indies
and deeply laden, had fallen afoul of a
French detachment and the resultant spat had left one of the
guardians
demasted and the other pumping against sprung seams. The Retaliation calmly
took her pick, one or two ships tried to show their teeth in a despairing
fashion which gained them no freedom. But a third actually outfought and then
outsailed the American to gain the safety which lay under the
Plymouth
forts. The Retaliation had to be content
with three prizes sent back to St. Malo under American crews.

 
          
 
"If we keep on in this pleasant fashion,
gentlemen,"
Watts
said at mess that
noon
, "we'll be sending back prizes under
the command of our cabin boys. Faith, we no longer number a quorum here.
Matthews gone, I note, and the next will be under your orders, Ninnes, since
you have managed to survive my tinkering."

 
          
 
Ninnes forked a piece of meat out of the
half-cold stew the steward had slapped down before him. "Crofts could take
us in by himself if he wished," he returned when his mouth was once more
empty.

 
          
 
"Well, we've three more captures yet to
go, by all the rules of luck. And here're two able-bodied marines and a
navigating officer to captain them. I absolve myself, you will notice, being by
the cannons of war a neutral."

 
          
 
Fitz turned to his superior officer. "We
won't
be ,
given prizes to take in, will we?"
Having no knowledge of navigation he foresaw difficulties to come if
Watts
was now speaking the truth.

 
          
 
Ninnes laughed shortly. "Not if we want
to sight them again. There're a brace of gun captains on board who know enough
to raise sail and follow the leader home." Having so dealt with the
presumption of a seagoing soldier, he went back to close investigation of a
portion of ship's biscuit, detecting in it the well-known signs of active
weevils.

 
          
 
"If we go on like this," Fitz mused,
"we won't be able to man more than half the guns."

 
          
 
"And there you have put finger on the
core of danger in privateering,"
Watts
pushed aside his stew plate.

 
          
 
"With every prize we take and man, we
severely cripple ourselves. Those men who sailed back to American ports with
the prizes we took in the south cannot rejoin us. We shall hope that our
Channel captures reach Saint Malo safely and the men will be waiting us
there—that is, if they are not snapped up by a Britisher before they get to
port. But when you batten down a crew of prisoners you can only hope for the
best. Too many cases have happened where they've escaped to retake the ship.
For my part, I'd be well suited if we put about tonight and not push our luck
too far."

 
          
 
Ninnes frowned. "The Captain knows his
business. He aren't nigh as undermanned as was the Experience on her last
voyage, and she brought in almost forty thousand pounds in prizes during an
eight months' cruise. Her crew is rich for life!"

 
          
 
"Forty thousand
pounds!"
Fitz was startled by the mere mention of such an amount.
As an ex-planter who had seen very little hard cash from one year's end to the
next he found such sums astounding.

 
          
 
"For each voyage such as that of the
Experience," commented Biggs a bit sourly, "mark up five which don't
take in six pounds apiece—or whose crews end up in th' hulks or in Mill. You
hear a mighty lot about
th
' lucky ones. Th' unlucky
ones ain't so widely talked about. An' I ain't minded t' go shippin' foreigners
in th' crew like some done. They don't mix well with our boys an' there's
trouble!"

 
          
 
The little marine lieutenant had settled down
to his favorite subject. "It's agin nature t' mix 'em
up
"

 
          
 
"But," Fitz dared to interrupt,
"we're mixed already, aren't we? What about Jones—he's a free Negro, and
there're two Indians in the crew of the bow chaser. Then D'Arnot's
French "

 
          
 
"American French,"
Watts
corrected him. "His people are
Huguenots who settled in the
Carolinas
after they escaped
Nantes
. Yes, we're a rare mixture right enough, the Lobsters would call us a
mongrel crew. But you've overlooked one point,
Lyon
,
we're all Americans sailing on an American
ship. So we pull together, even if most of us may be fighting for the money
rather than for the hollow honors of war. We know each other and rub along
without too many prickles. But you drop a Malouin, or a dyed-in-the-wool
Britisher, or any other European into our little crowd and see what will
happen. As Biggs says—
it's
better not to recruit in a
foreign port less one is driven to it."