Winds of rebellion
Date: 2026-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

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Title: Winds of rebellion

In the dungeon of the prison ship

Author: Ernest Haycox

Release date: August 6, 2026 [eBook #79284]

Language: English

Original publication: New York, NY: The Butterick Publishing Company, 1927

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79284

Credits: Prepared by volunteers at BookCove (bookcove.net)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WINDS OF REBELLION ***

Winds of Rebellion

In the Dungeon of the Prison Ship

By Ernest Haycox

Contents

I — THE BLACK FRIGATE TAVERN

II — OVER THE RIVER

III — A CAPTAIN OF THE KING’S OWN

IV — THE PRISON SHIP

V — ESCAPE

VI — A LIGHT IN THE STORM

VII — BLIND MAN’S BUFF

VIII — BLADE AND BLADE

I — THE BLACK FRIGATE TAVERN

There was a roar and a rush of wind outside the hut and a tattoo of rain on the window panes. Loose shakes on the roof slatted at every gust. The insecure door strained against the lock, shivered and groaned and threatened to burst open at each thrust of the tempest. It was not a particularly well constructed hut, for a dozen cold cross-currents of air swept in between the logs where the chinking was thin, plucked at the lantern’s light and congealed the blood of young Jeffry Peale who sat patiently before an open copy of Grotius and at intervals annotated certain persuasive passages. It was early 1777, with Washington’s army resting on arms amid the Morristown hills. Spring broke gustily over the winter-bound brigades and glutted the streams that poured into a British-infested valley below.

Jeffry Peale wrapped the cloak tighter about his neck and tried to sustain his interest in the volume. It took a man of persistent studiousness or strong ambition to keep at such labor in this dreary, frigid cell and, though Peale had more than the usual share of those qualities, the blood ran too strongly in him to make a monkish penance of it. He had done well enough for one bitter night and it was time to hasten toward that haven of warmth and cheer where his brother officers long had been—the Black Frigate Tavern—and thaw the marrow in his bones.

Through the window he saw a light advancing toward the hut, blurred to a vague oval in the turbulent night. An officer of the guard, no doubt, making the rounds. He rose to stamp over the boards and clap on his hat. Life had about gone out of his limbs, and his fingers were as stiff as those of a marble statue. That came, he said to himself in a moment of self-derision, of coveting too much glory and advancement.

Sometimes it seemed better to drift good naturedly, as did the rest of the subalterns, making the most of a disagreeable campaign, drinking to the tavern keeper’s daughter in between the sudden raids on the low country. But, even as he thus abjured himself, his mind, clear and retentive, was conning the passages on military law which he had just finished reading. It was an acquisitive, pushing habit that no amount of depression or discouragement could shake off.

“As long as you are Jeffry Peale,” he murmured, striving to tie the cloak, “you’ll be wanting to march on. So make the most of it, my lad.”

The long threatening door swept open and slammed violently against the inner wall; at the same time an orderly wrapped in a blanket and showing only two bleak eyes above the folds, was thrust across the threshold.

“L’tenant Peale, the brigadier wishes your comp’ny at his quarters as soon’s possible.”

The orderly accepted the other’s nod and, pulling the door shut after him, vanished into the darkness.

Peale tarried a minute, essaying to fathom the meaning of the summons. His conscience, however, was clear, and with a small excitement rising in his breast he left the hut and forged his way across an uneven, stumpy parade ground. The wind attacked him viciously, first on one quarter, then on the other. The rain sluiced out of the sky and stung his face like so many darts, and it was with real relief that he passed between a row of huts and entered a grove of trees where the storm was slightly broken. Just beyond was the brigadier’s quarters. He clapped one hand to his hat and knocked at the door. In a moment it was opened slightly and an urgent voice said:

“Make it quick, man! This —— place is stone cold.”

Peale slipped quickly through. The door banged shut and began a steady rat-a-tat against its loose hinges, leaving the lieutenant confronting the lone occupant of the room, the general of the brigade. The young man stood silent, astonished at the situation. It was not often that general officers of the Continental Line rose to admit subalterns.

This swart, medium-sized man with the frank, bold face, had a reputation for dispensing with formality between himself and his men. Once a private soldier himself, he knew how to command affection and respect at the same time. Other generals might insist on their personal guard, but no sentry stood outside of Maxwell’s door to suffer in the wind. And doubtless he had sent his aide off to the Black Frigate to get warm. It was the measure of an officer who was beginning to command a reputation as a heady fighter in vanguard skirmishes.

“Come to the light,” said the general, stepping behind his camp desk.

Peale did as ordered and felt himself sharply studied from the half shadows.

“You come well recommended,” continued the older officer. “It is a fine body you carry around. Where did you get that sweep of shoulders?”

“My father put me to the forge as soon as I could hold a hammer,” said Peale.

“Aye, I know that type. One of those yeomen who insists on every keg standing on its own bottom. I could wish for more of that brand of independence. The war would sooner end. Tell me, have you traveled much around the city of New York?”

“I spent some months there in ’78.”

“D’ye know the country between here and the Hudson shore?”

Peale thought a moment.

“I made but one trip, but I have studied the maps at quite some length.”

“Enough to make the trip by dark?”

Peale was not certain of that, but he was not the man to lag behind opportunity. So he answered boldly—

“Yes, sir.”

The general was silent for some time. When he spoke it was as if to himself.

“Good muscle, good limb. Apparently sound of wind. A swordsman of parts, so your captain said, and with the address of a gentleman. ’Tis those things that matter in a tight situation. A little boldness goes far. Tell me, can you swim—I mean well?”

“My home is on a sound, sir. I believe I hold some records for outdistancing men of the district.”

The general moved to his desk and nodded.

“That’s all. I suppose you’ll be going down to the tavern to thaw. I wish I could.”

Jeffry Peale turned away, grievously disappointed. Some signal duty had hovered over him and vanished; the mark of that disappointment must have showed on his ruddy cheeks, for the general’s eyes flashed in a friendly manner.

“Tut, sir. If you knew the trouble ahead you’d not be so hard after the mission. Go drink your porto and be thankful for a moment or two of warmth in this infernally bleak world.”

“I could wish the honor of any service the general might trust me with,” said Peale, tarrying at the door.

“It may yet fall to you when other eggs are broken,” replied Maxwell cryptically. “If you see my aide at the tavern send him to me.”

Peale embarked across the stormy parade with a heavy heart.

“Whatever the duty,” he muttered, “it will go to another. Some Southern macaroni, no doubt, with the air of a cavalier.”

What good of studying Grotius when promotion came to the man who looked like a fighter and talked like a fighter? He struggled against the elements, bearing off on a very muddy road that led beyond the lines. Earth and sky melted into one vast orbit of tumult as he traveled, eyes fixed on the light from the guard-house.

He did himself great injustice when he marked himself so low in appearance. But that was the pessimistic Puritan strain which had conspired for many generations to keep his folk humble. Independent they might be, and greatly set on their rights, but when it came to personal valuation they were strangely diffident, disparaging.

He met the guard’s challenge and passed through the lines. The highway was a sea of slush that came high around his boots. Once he heard the splash of hoofs and stepped aside to let a cavalcade pass him. Another scouting party returned from the lowlands. There were more of these detachments out lately, Peale decided, as he picked up the glimmer of the tavern, directly ahead. The army was waking from its long slumber and now was fencing and feinting with small parties. Feeling greatly dispirited, Peale shook the water from his cloak and let himself into the thick and warm air of the tavern.

It was such a tavern as might have been found on any road in any State—a long, low-ceilinged room with a few tables scattered about. Obviously it had been built for modest traffic and modest profits, for it fairly bulged under the score or more of officers now within. They were of all uniforms and all ages and illustrated perfectly the tremendous sectional difference of the thirteen States.

Some were neat and dapper and carried their regimentals with pride; others wore the clothes like so much draping. Connecticut and Maryland rubbed elbows with civility and kept company each with its own kind. Through the fog of tobacco smoke Jeffry Peale saw a familiar face and crowded his way past several groups to one small corner where a brother officer, Priam Lafferty, sat alone.

The man cast an irritated glance at Peale—a glance that fell just short of the latter’s eyes—and spoke in a brusk, clipped voice.

“Thought your books held you home this night, Jeff?”

There was one vacant chair beside Lafferty and Peale dropped into it.

“Frozen out. ’Tis bitter weather, Priam. Look at the mud on my boots.”

Lafferty nodded, eyes traveling across the crowded room as if seeking some one in particular. Peale caught the tavern keeper’s glance and raised a crooked finger, deciding that Lafferty must again be in one of his frequent moods of sulky moroseness. There was no accounting for the man’s swift changing of humor, and Peale who had known him from boyhood shrugged his shoulders and dismissed it from his mind.

The two of them face to face made a great contrast. Peale kept himself groomed and though not far advanced in his twenties his face already was beginning to settle in steadfast lines; he had apparently passed the period of turbulence and had found himself. Perhaps his hazel eyes were not very happy, for he shared his father’s oft-expressed belief that happiness was a thing people spent too much time in seeking, but they were most certainly direct and level and when his interest was strongly aroused they contracted slightly and gave the effect of tremendous penetrative power.

They were of about the same age, but Lafferty had gone more to bone and bulk. His was one of those bodies that are lumpy and disproportionate enough to make any suit of clothes look shoddy. When he slouched in the chair, a slack-lipped, rebellious-eyed creature whose face was a playground for every passing emotion, his waistcoat bulged untidily. His chin needed shaving and the coarse jet hair of his head, here and there streaked with white, was untrimmed. There seemed to be a magnet in the far corner of the room that irresistibly drew his somber attention.

Peale caught sight of the tavern keeper’s daughter flirting outrageously with a Jersey captain and chuckled a little. Priam Lafferty was in a murderous mood just then, he knew.

“The girl treats you badly, Priam. But ’tis nothing to nurse a broken heart over.”

Lafferty’s murky eyes rolled.

“If she’s wishin’ to introduce that gentleman to a duel—”

“Chut! Y’ve led yourself into this tap-room love affair, Priam. D’ye think she’s the kind to be led by any single man? Trim yards and square into the wind. ’Tis money in her father’s pocket to be engaging to all.”

Lafferty underwent one of his characteristic shifts of temper and grinned sourly.

“Oh, I know I’m a bigger fool than most. You may talk of ridin’ on an even keel, for that’s in your very marrow. I’ve yet to see the event that’ll shiver you. But you sh’d know I’m not the one to live that way.”

“No,” agreed Peale, “you’re not. ’Tis the whole jug of rum for you or not a drop. Sometimes I could wish myself a little like that.”

He took the glass of wine brought by the tavern keeper, exchanged a sober word with the man and began to sip deliberately. He felt the warmth come back into his body; a little drowsy, he watched figures shifting through the tobacco smoke and heard the rise and fall of voices. Such words as came intelligibly to him dwelt entirely with home affairs. How easily men slipped away from martial ardor when the chance came.

He looked for General Maxwell’s aide in vain and found himself smiling at sight of an ancient uncle sprawled before the fireplace, legs widespread and a mug of mulled cider in his fist. He was all of forty-five and yet but a subaltern. Only a New Englander, Peale decided, could make such a picture of fireside contentment. Coat and waistcoat were thrown wide open and hat was laid aside. A nutcracker face with a pair of bright, mellow eyes stared into the amber flames. Peale felt ashamed of his mirth. There was unquenchable spirit in a man like that who would forsake comfort for the field.

He let the wine trickle past his tongue and put the glass against the light. Purple rays shot through the liquid. Then he heard Priam Lafferty speaking staccato phrases—

“Lieutenant Jeffry Peale—Mr. Otto Trevoris — a friend of mine passing through on business.”

Drowsiness deserted Peale. He looked up to find a man of middle age bowing ceremoniously; an attentive, unsmiling man dressed in severe civilian’s black and leaning slightly on a cane. Peale rose and offered his place gravely, but the other had spied an empty chair at a near table and drew it over, taking seat between the two and resting both hands on the table. Peale looked sharply at the cane and made certain mental reservations; he had seen such cleverly contrived things before and usually they sheathed swords. When his eyes raised they came in conflict with those of Trevoris, and for a moment a singular and studious exchange of glances took place.

Priam Lafferty broke this duel with a short laugh, fist smashing on the table top.

“Strike me, I’ve waited five minutes for a drink. Hi, Benedick! Advance with the wine gourds!”

“It is dev’lish cold out,” said the stranger, Trevoris, shaking his shoulders. They were not broad shoulders but Peale was struck by their precise erectness.

“I pity any man who must travel abroad in it,” rejoined Peale.

“Then pity me,” said Trevoris. He watched the inn keeper bearing up with bottle and glass and poured himself a drink which, after raising it to both men, he tossed down with a gulp. “’Tis rank stuff to be calling port,” he muttered, “but will serve to keep the cold out. I’ve yet five miles ahead of me to the Star and Crescent.”

“You have traveled from a distance?” asked Peale, mildly curious.

Priam Lafferty’s saturnine face turned toward him, scowling from some new dissatisfaction. Trevoris helped himself to fresh wine and played with the glass stem.

“From Spanish New Orleans,” said he, surveying the smoke and the crowd with an air of ill-concealed scorn.

Peale’s interest was instantly aroused.

“That’s a trip I could wish to take. Tell me, how do you find the country between here and the Mississippi? It must be dev’lish hard going. ’Tis a land for a man with a good rifle eye, is it not?”

Trevoris shrugged those erect shoulders and seemed bored.

“If a gentleman likes hardships I would commend it. As for me, it seems like God’s own wilderness.”

“Nevertheless,” insisted Peale, “it is the place for the common soldier when this war is won. Cheap land and plenty of elbow room. The seaboard is crowded and the South belongs to the nabobs. Give all us old soldiers a hundred acres on the Ohio and we’ll fashion a new State for you. But, tell me of New Orleans. How large a place is it?”

Trevoris took another drink and seemed amused. Priam Lafferty broke in impatiently.

“Oh, —— the catechism, Jeff! Who cares about New Orleans? Choke off the inquisition. Never have I seen the like of such a man to ask questions. Anything from awls to elephants will command your attention. Here’s a toast to the pot-gutted Benedick and his fair daughter.”

Peale smiled a little and drank. Trevoris put down his glass and looked to his watch.

“I dislike most infernally to start off, but I must reach Albany Monday, a sennight. Gentlemen, I give you one to his Excellency General Washington and the next campaign. May the army win its just desserts.”

“With all my heart,” said Peale, bowing.

Trevoris’ face was satiric; Priam Lafferty stared at him, somber-eyed, half unwilling to drink. In the end he swallowed the liquor and began a tapping on the table with his nails.

“Well, the army must win somethin’,” he grumbled. “We’re a starved, frozed lot now.”

“In New York, I hear,” said Trevoris, “they eat, dance and are merry.” He rose and threw a silver piece on the table. “I must be going, disagreeable as it is. Mr. Peale, it has been a pleasure. I trust I will see more of you.”

Priam Lafferty passed a hand across his rumpled hair, frowning heavily.

“Enough of this cursed babble for me. I’ll see you to your horse and then go home.”

They crossed the room and stopped momentarily by the door while the stable boy slipped out for Trevoris’ mount. Peale saw Priam Lafferty glowering blackly at the captain who had usurped the interest of the tavern keeper’s daughter. Trevoris stood with his greatcoat covering him and even through the swirling smoke Peale could see his eyes sweep the room. Then the door opened and the stable boy beckoned. The two went out and a heavy draught of air set all the lights to guttering. Certainly, decided Peale, the storm had not abated. It took an urgent kind of business to force a merchant to brave five miles of mud road on a pitch-black night. He settled in the chair and was grateful for the warmth.

Outside, Trevoris dismissed the boy and sprang into the saddle. Priam Lafferty put a hand to a stirrup and together the pair moved a few rods down the obscure highway.

“Ticklish business this,” he grumbled. “I can’t say it’s the best way of meetin’.”

Trevoris spoke coldly, through the dark.

“’Tis my policy to meet in as public place as possible. There’s more spying ears and eyes in this road than back at the tavern. Rest easy.”

“Easy!” grumbled Lafferty, almost shouting to make himself heard above the storm. “Little ye know my temper. This shilly-shally ill suits me. Don’t be surprized if I see you in the city before so very long.”

“You can do us better service where you are,” replied Trevoris.

“And expose myself to more danger. ’Tis an uneasy life. Well, you’ve got the packet. Avoid the next village as you would the plague. ’Tis full of suspicious fellows.”

“Au revoir. Should you find anything important in the next two weeks, remember to warn our certain friend.”

With that Lafferty released his grip on the saddle and stopped, listening to the slosh of Trevoris’ horse’s hoofs until the tempo of the wind overwhelmed the small echoes. He traveled back to the tavern and on the threshold debated going in.

“No, ’tis best I leave Jeff and his questions alone. —— the fellow for his curiosity.” He gripped the folds of his cloak tightly and, leaning against the wind, entered the picket lines of the camp.

Jeffry Peale had drunk his gentleman’s quart and was overhearing the hot debate of a Massachusetts and a Virginia man on slavery when a finger tapped him on the arm. General Maxwell’s aide, bearing the marks of the storm, spoke briefly.

“To headquarters with me, Jeffry. And you’d do well to tuck a bottle of rum under your arm.”

Peale stood up suddenly.

“’Quarters?” said he, excitement coming over him.

He wrapped the cloak around him and clapped on his hat, striding to the door at a gait that left the aide well to the rear. Somewhere in the half-gale the officer caught up, complaining bitterly.

“Such an infernal racket abroad. I’ve not been warm for forty hours. D’ye have an inkling of your job?”

“Something,” said Peale, picking a course for the brigadier’s hut. They passed the pickets and slipped heavily in the mud.

“And yet you hurry,” said the aide. He swore again. “Did anything ever beat a soldier’s idea of glory? Rushing through this tempest to be sent on a wretchedly cold and hungry affair. Was there ever such a perversion—” he ran out of breath and had to stop. But at the brigadier’s door he burst out, “Nevertheless, I’d give my right arm to be in your place, you lucky devil! Go in!”

General Maxwell was busy with the quill when Jeffry Peale entered, slamming the door behind him. The brigadier looked up, stared a moment with his bold, frank eyes and then motioned to another chair.

“Draw to the table. You’ve got business to do. Come here where you can see the map.”

They were closeted thus, head to head, for the better part of a half-hour. In the end Peale said—

“Yes, sir, and where will I find the horse?”

“’Twill be at the door of your hut when you are ready. I give you but a few minutes. ’Tis late now and prudence demands you reach the river by day. Mind you, this is not an affair to be spread amongst your cronies.”

Peale let himself out of the hut and trudged across the parade ground to his own quarters. The trees groaned beneath the impact of the wind’s frenzy; all the world seemed a-quiver. In this black, uneasy universe there was nothing to distinguish between earth and infinity, yet Peale thought he saw a lone star breaking through the pall—his own star. It was an illusion, of course, he decided. Such was the fabric on which life was built. It took but a word and a gesture to change the course of a career, to lift a man from plodding obscurity to the blood-stirring path of adventure which now lay before him.

No more the student for Jeffry Peale. Now the clash of saber, the night ride and the softly spoken password. This was all that a soldier could ask. He plunged into his hut and went to his own corner, oblivious of the presence of Priam Lafferty in the opposite bunk. He belted on his sword, inspected his pistols and threw over his shoulder a cartridge pouch, ranging impatiently around the room.

Lafferty sat up and spoke sullenly.

“Patrol?”

Peale shook his head.

“Off on a private excursion.”

“What, man? On a night like this? Tut, ye’re out on duty or y’d not be out at all. I smell a mission. Where away, Jeff?”

“If you can smell the mission,” returned Peale, grinning, “try to smell the destination.”

Lafferty got up with an oath, his jowls turned scarlet.

“So I’m told to mind my own affairs, eh? What fine gentleman are you turnin’ into? You aspire high, but let me not have airs from you. I’ll not stand them.”

It was Lafferty in his ugly mood, brow furrowed and lips twisted in a line at once sardonic and contemptuous. Peale squared off, speaking shortly.

“If you mean to rag me, it’s best to forget it. A secret once told is a secret twice told and none should know it as well as you. Drop your bad humor and bid me luck. Be a good wife, Priam, to my property while I’m away.”

The door rattled under a fist and Peale put a hand to the latch. Lafferty cursed.

“Mind your own property—I’ll not! If you see me again—”

The rest of the phrase was snatched from his mouth when Peale opened the door and the wind burst through. A lantern glinted, an orderly held out the reins of a mount. Peale got into the saddle and swung away. He passed the pickets, the tavern and embarked on that road which Trevoris not long before had chosen.

He traveled fast and he traveled far, with always the elements shrilling in his ears and the rain soaking him to the skin. Past one sleeping village and another; across a creek, with the board bridge rumbling beneath him; up hill and down and at intervals a beacon-light shining across meadows to reassure him.

He forded the Passaic at flood, turned out at the hint of a night party scurrying down the black highway, crossed the treacherous slough of the Hackensack, and at last came upon a broad pike that led straight east. And just as day was breaking on the horizon he stopped his jaded horse at a silent house and knocked on the door. Long after, the bolt was shot and a voice challenged him.

“Well?”

“Franklin and Deane.”

“Come in.”

II — OVER THE RIVER

He followed shuffling footsteps down an interminably long hall, with the smell of stale furnishings in his nostrils and his drums cracking from the surcease of the storm. He could hear it battering furiously at every shutter and door as if trying to break through the habitation and surround him again with its ice-like fingers. Relieved from that frigid embrace he began to feel uncomfortably warm; his ears and fingers burned and his eyes stung. His guide turned a corner and opened a door, leaving him poised in the darkness with an admonitory whisper.

“Wait till I throw a blanket over the win’ow. Pryin’ eyes—”

The fellow moved away, shuffling. Boards creaked and something fluttered; another door opened and presently the man returned with a guttering candle and set it on a table.

“I wish ye hadna come,” he growled. “Aye, I wish it infernally strong ye hadna come. The countryside is a nest o’ traitorous dogs that ’ud sell a neighbor to the gallows fer a shillin’.”

By the feeble beam of light Peale saw him to be a thin, undersized man with a narrow face and a crooked nose, dressed like some slovenly servant. Furtive eyes met him and glanced away as if afraid of the contact.

“’Tis beyant me why I’m served up with so many night birds. Three in the last month. Too many, too many. I’m suspected now. Lud, I c’n feel the halter on my neck every blessed hour. I suppose,” he said, averting his face, “ye’ll be wantin’ to cross ower?”

“That’s the idea,” replied Peale, settling into a chair. “Day’s about come, though, so I’ll have to lay by until night. Y’ve got a plain citizen’s suit for me—and a cot I can catch a bit of sleep on?”

The man wrung his bony fingers.

“So I’ve got to harbor ye in the house twelve hours? ——, why didna ye come sooner? I could’ve put ye across an’ washed my hands of ye. ’Tis bad—bad. D’ye unnerstand? There was a file of redjackets in the neighborhood this very mornin’!”

“’Tis a risk we must run,” returned Peale wearily.

“Ye mean a risk I run, young man.” The fellow stared gloomily at the table. “Well, ye’re hankerin’ fer a bit o’ somethin’ to eat, I’ll vow.”

“I could manage it.”

“’Twon’t be much. Sit still.”

The man rose and slipped through the door. In another part of the house Peale heard him throwing wood on the fire. He leaned back in his chair, on the point of falling asleep. By and by the man called softly through the hall.

“Asa, Asa, come down an’ take a horse to the barn. Hurry now, there’s a crack o’ light comin’ ower the eastern line. Ye’ll bury saddle an’ bridle beneath the hay.”

Peale shook his head, feeling sorry for these people. They lived a life of extreme uncertainty, never sure but that the British might not pack them off for summary punishment or, on the other hand, that overzealous patriots, enraged by their apparent Toryism, would harry them out of house and home. It was not so much the actual danger, great though that was, but the suspense hanging over them. The furtive, suspicious look on the man’s face was plain enough evidence of the strain. Peale opened his eyes suddenly, hearing a voice at his side.

“’Tis scant fare, friend, but the tea’s hot an’ plentiful. I keep the fireplace burnin’ all the night fer visits like this. Say yer grace an’ eat.”

Peale fell to without ceremony. A pot of cheese, sour bread and bitter tea made his meal, with his host brooding over him.

“Ye’ll take my bed. ’Tis time I was up. In my closet is a fine suit with a fawnskin waistcoat fit for any gentleman. I save it fer such occasions. Ye’ll wear that well, though I doubt not it’ll be a mite strict on yer shoulders. They shouldna send men with such unusual carriage on a mission, for when a man commands attention he’s cramped in his business.”

“There’s a tavern somewhere across the stream?”

“A place fer every villain in the county —a scant mile above the English picket lines. The Red Boar, they call it. Aye, a precious pack of scoundrels infest it. It’s direct across the river from me, beyant the shore a quarter mile, on the Albany Post Road.”

Peale reached into his pocket and brought out five gold pieces which he shoved across the table without explanation. His host took them each between his fingers, rubbing the surface in a half-greedy manner.

“Well, ’tis some consolation. Now, come. Ye’d better sleep while ye may. At dark tonight we’ll row across. My boat’s floatin’ on the tide in the bushes at foot o’ the cliff.”

Peale followed the man through the hall and into a frowsy bedroom. He was tremendously tired and promptly sat on the mattress and shed his boots. His host muttered something about “pryin’ eyes” again and snuffed out the candle, retreating. There was a gray light slipping through the shutters as Peale drew the blankets over him. Next moment he was profoundly asleep.

Somewhere during the afternoon Peale woke from his heavy sleep. The storm seemed to have lost its vigor and now only shook the house with occasional gusts. Daylight penetrated the shutters, and he rolled over, knowing that it would do no good to rise before dusk and that an extra hour’s rest would give him that much more power of body for whatever befell during the coming night. So he slept again.

When he woke the second time it was with a vague feeling of apprehension. There was no one in the semi-dark room and no sound in the cold house. Outside, evening was settling and the storm had subsided, leaving a silence over the countryside that seemed to Peale to contain a threat. Under the propulsion of this inexplicable feeling he got up, pulled on his boots and gained the malodorous hallway.

Across the way was the kitchen with a fire burning brightly on the stones and something of savory smell steaming in a kettle on the crane. But of his host, nothing could be seen or heard. He moved through the kitchen to another room, and thence to the funereal parlor he had first sat in, before dawn. Going back to the hall, he came to the stairway and called, softly—

“What’s up, friend?”

The hollow echo of his voice trembled in the air and evoked no reply. Now, thoroughly roused, he started for the front door and was on the point of opening it and going out to the barn when a sense of caution stayed his hand. Instead, he turned to the nearest window and peered through the curtains.

It was the last of a gray, bleak day, but there was enough of light for Peale to see through a lane of trees to the dull black surface of the North River. Beyond, masked in the settling fog, was Manhattan Isle. Peale’s sharply scanning eyes made out a dim beam of light from the farther shore—some farmer’s lantern, no doubt, bobbing across a meadow. Farther down the Isle and shut from his view by the intervening trees was New York town, headquarters of the British forces in America—his destination.

A dog barked, shattering the unnatural stillness of the darkening night and Peale turned his attention to the immediate foreground. At the extreme right of his vision was the barn, and around its edges wound a path that he judged must lead down the bluff to the river’s edge. Then he caught sight of a figure moving out of the trees, so slowly as to seem prompted by stealth. As long as he was in the deeper shadows, Peale could make nothing of his countenance or costume, but within a dozen strides the man got to clear ground and then the young officer had a vague outline of British accouterments and a trailing musket. Almost at the same instant he saw others breaking from the thicket at the other extremity of his vision.

He left his vantage point and ran to the door, shooting the bolt into the catch. Retreating to the bedroom, he swept his arm through the closet and brought out a handful of clothes from which he had to choose his suit almost by sense of touch. Ripping off his uniform he donned the civilian garments. Beneath his coat he buckled securely the brace of pistols.

Clapping on hat and cloak, he rolled up his own uniform, thrust it under the bed and hurried back to the window. In the fast-thickening fog the four or five advancing Englishmen were hardly more than silhouettes against the darker mass of woods. Even as he turned a last glance at them, some one mounted the flagstone steps and resolutely knocked at the door, saying in a bold, ringing voice—

“Open, farmer, ’tis king’s soldiers.”

Peale ran back through the hall on his toes. A rear door promised exit somewhere in the darkness, but it seemed to him probable that it might be guarded. He swayed on his toes, debating courses, while the front portal shivered under the butt of a gun and the challenging voice rose to a more irate pitch.

“Open or I’ll break this cursed thing from its hinges!”

At that Peale made up his mind. Drawing pistol, he raised the latch of the rear door very cautiously and then flung it open at one sudden, unexpected movement. A figure twisted around to meet him, growling:

“Oh, no ye don’t! Stand fast or I’ll stick ye somethin’ ’orrible!”

His pistol went in a true arc and struck the sentry on the head; the man fell with a small, expiring breath, sloshing in the muddy earth. Peale looked about him, half expecting other opposition. None developed. He ran behind a stone house, passed another intervening stretch to a shed and thence across twenty yards to the thicket.

It had all been accomplished without commotion or general discovery. But he could hear the man at the back door groaning and knew it would be but a moment before the unconscious sentry would be discovered. He turned riverward and, parting the sodden brush before him, skirted the house and barn. Scrambling down a rather sharp slope, he reached a path that descended still more abruptly over the face of a rock palisade. As he lowered himself, loose rocks shot away from his feet, crashed through brush and reached the river’s surface with a plunking sound.

Here in the gorge a small wintry wind scoured upward and numbed his exposed members. He groped along the dark stairs with all the speed possible, leaving the sound of the British soldiery behind and at last putting his feet on level ground. Before him water rippled against the stony beach and bushes rustled lightly in the breeze.

The farmer had mentioned his boat tied to bushes, and Peale, on exploring forward, found it so.

“Oars, bailing pot and rope,” said he, untying the skiff and shoving off. “Having been so unceremoniously left, I shall have to be my own guide. ’Tis the gentleman’s own loss that he’s not here to bring his boat back from the other shore. I strongly suspect he deserted the house at the very first smell of a trap and left me to meet the amiable hirelings of Hanover. Ah, well, I should not too strongly condemn the poor devil. Now let’s try our luck.”

It seemed no great matter to keep abreast the current and land on the opposite shore somewhere in the latitude of the tavern. He pulled steadily, muffling his stroke as much as possible; water gurgled gently against the skiff’s snout. From the river he looked upward along the Jersey Palisades, trying to distinguish his recent shelter, but that area was swathed in the same darkness that fell about the river.

In midstream or beyond—he had no way of knowing just where—he heard the knock of oars and the boiling of water. He rested, trying to fathom the whereabouts of the other craft. Of a sudden it slid within pistol’s range, so near that he could hear a man’s heavy breathing. Some one spoke with a gibing inflection:

“Wot did ye say ’er name was? Amaryllis, hey? Aye, I know the trull. Lad, ye didn’t think to be the only man—”

The sentence was muffled by the fog; the boat passed beyond a heavy wall of it and Peale heard only a heavy coughing and a rough expletive. Then silence.

He took up his course again and redoubled his efforts to regain lost headway in the stream. Ten minutes later the bottom of the boat grated on gravel and stopped. He climbed out and, as a precaution, shoved the craft again into the stream. The farmer was out one stout skiff; that was the fortune of war.

“Now if I’ve held with the current, I should be in a straight line with that tavern,” he murmured.

He moved forward, crossing a rocky strip of beach and coming against a line of bushes. A bank appeared to hedge him from the rolling land of the island. It was useless to seek a path in the darkness, so he worked himself between the thicket and climbed straight forward. It was stout labor, but presently he left the slope behind him and stood erect on the edge of some kind of field. For the first time he saw lights glimmering dimly in the southward—lights of New York town.

“Straight eastward, my lad,” he cautioned himself. “The road should be hard by.”

A creek splashed along its course on his left, and against the metal-black sky he saw the faint tracery of tree branches. Passing onward, he arrived at a fence, surmounted it and became engaged in heavy woods. At almost the same time he heard, from the immediate foreground, the creaking of a carriage and the urging of a driver’s voice. This was the reassurance he needed.

Stumbling from one abrupt depression to another, he fought his way from the trees, well soaked, and embarked upon the highway, sinking deep in the mud. It was villainous stuff that laid a score of traps for him, yet within a hundred yards he was rewarded by the sight of a dim, diffused light ahead.

It was a feeble beacon, nor did it become much brighter as he progressed. When he stood within a few yards of the place he found a smudged window winking at him; from within the place came a bawling voice. It was a tavern, and undoubtedly that unsavory hostelry known as the Red Boar. Peale stood a moment at the door, listing to the groan of the tavern shingle in the fitful wind. Then, drawing a pistol, he pushed through the door with the abrupt haste of a man seeking trouble.

It was an evil-smelling place, with furniture scarred by many brawls and the floor littered with straw. A dozen candles gave it but half enough light and a fire smoked dismally on the hearth. In the far corner were two men who had kicked back their chairs at his entrance and looked about to fall upon him. In all his travels he had never entered an inn more charged with the atmosphere of illicit trade and violence. He had no doubt that it was the rendezvous of every renegade in the countryside and, since it was so close to the British pickets, that scores of deserters had made it their stopping place. He waved the weapon at the two glowering fellows and spoke crisply.

“Sit down, you rascals and stop that infernal staring at a gentleman. Where’s the master of this inn?”

Hardly had he finished the question when an inner door flew open and a tremendously fat creature with a perspiring brow entered.

“Eh, eh?” he grumbled, “that be no way to talk to my customers, sir. ’Tis an honest trade I have.”

“Honest?” cried Peale angrily. “—— of an honest place! Not a quarter mile back I was set upon by a brace of ruffians and lost a sound horse and saddlebags! I had the voice of one and, by Godfrey, if I hear him again I’ll know him well enough to send a ball through his cowardly body! You—” pointing to the nearest of the men at the table, “—speak a word! Let’s have your voice.”

“D’ye take me fer—”

“Enough,” broke in Peale. “Now your partner!”

“I’m minded to break yer face, my fine—”

The inn keeper clapped his hands together.

“No, no, Job! Hold yer tongue! The gentleman’s well roused and apt to do violence. Sir, ye’ve come to the wrong place, I do swear. D’ye think I’d harbor birds of that feather?”

“I have your reputation,” said Peale somberly. “’Tis none too savory. A pity to me the general doesn’t sweep this island clean o’ such rascals. Dash me, I’ll take it out on some one for that miserable half-mile I walked!”

“’Tis but a like distance to the pickets,” assured the inn keeper in a soothing voice.

“An’ d’ye think I’d go another step in this mud on foot? I’ve got a better way. Tell me, d’ye know any of those pickets?”

“I know half the royal army,” boasted the tavern keeper. “They favor me with their trade—when a little innocent fun is wanted.”

“You’ll make a fine guide. Bring around a couple horses and guide me through the lines.”

“Oh, no, sirrah,” objected the tavern keeper. “A gentleman couldn’t ask that much. Perhaps one of these boys—”

“Cursed if I want either of the rascals!” broke in Peale, blowing through his nose. “I want a man to explain my lookin’ like a cursed rebel spy! Ye’ll go if I’ve got to drag you by the queue. Come, don’t purse your lips at me. If it’s a sweetener ye want—here.”

He took a crown from his pocket and tossed it at the fat one’s outstretched hand. The latter caught it with astonishing agility and a change came over his face. The two at the table exchanged a significant glance, which Peale observed.

“If ye’ve thought to waylay me, ye’ll do well to think of safer robbery. I’m not a man to tamper with. Come, Benedick, get your horses out, and bring a lantern. I dislike waiting.”

The tavern keeper bowed.

“If the gentleman puts it that way, I’m bound to give. A moment, sir, while I saddle up. Ye’ll have a drink?”

“Y’ve made your profit off me,” said Peale. “Now go along. I don’t drink such bilge-water as ye’d likely serve.”

The tavern keeper took the insolence without protest. He had dealt with many great gentlemen with tongues just as sharp as this one owned. In particular, he had been favored with the company of some of the British officers when they were sweeping the island for deserters, and he knew the quality of their scorn only too well. So he ducked his head and left the room, while Peale stood wrathfully in the center of the place, eyeing the two at the table.

They remained silent, cowed by his steady gaze. In a short while the tavern keeper hallooed from the road, and Peale went out to find the man in the saddle, holding a spare horse by the reins and carrying a lantern. Peale swung up; they pressed forward.

“I hope ye won’t be sayin’ too much about the rascals that set upon you,” offered the tavern keeper humbly. “At least ’twould be kind if ye didn’t say it was close to my place. The high gentleman officers in town look queerly my way. Any excuse would be good enough for them to harry me out. Oh, I’ll not say I don’t treat the boys well and mebbe there’s a bit of mischief that goes on. But ye’ll allow it would be injustice in this case.”

“It’s a —— outrage that a gentleman can’t travel from Philip’s Manor to New York without being took by a pack o’ brigands,” growled Peale.

Whereupon the tavern keeper fell silent.

The scattered lights of the city grew closer and the road turned to another quarter. Quite before Peale was aware of it they were being challenged, and the tavern keeper had slipped from his saddle and was advancing, lantern swinging from side to side. Peale heard him speaking in a low, amiable tone.

“—a misfortune to the gentleman. ’Tis you, Rob? Gad, that’s luck! Ye’ll pass him out o’ favor? Should he be kept till daylight I fear he’d tell the general. Then I’d suffer. A matter o’ favor.”

The guard muttered a half inaudible phrase.

“’Tis after enterin’ hours. But let him come on. It’s a raw, cold night, ye old rascal.”

By the light, Peale saw a bottle pass. The innkeeper returned, chuckling.

“Go right on, sir. About the horse, now—”

“Come with me till we strike the cobblestones,” said Peale, “and you shall have your horse back.”

Thus they passed through and were enveloped in momentary darkness. Without further conversation they traveled until the houses began to scatter along the way, some dark and some with lights a-twinkle in their windows. In another twenty minutes they reached a street lamp and here Peale drew up and dropped from the saddle.

“Y’re an amiable villain,” he said, handing over the reins. “I shall say nothing about the affair.”

“Thanks to ye, sir. ’Tis not every gentleman— There’s a patrol, by ——! I’d best be goin’.”

He turned and made off, leaving Peale in the street. Somewhere in another block came the steady tread of feet. In the silence of this outer section Peale heard a brief command and then the challenging of guards. Without listening further, he swung down an alley and passed from the radius of the light.

“So far luck has run strong with me,” he murmured, “but, when it comes time to leave—ah, that may be another story.”

He had been well coached as to his destination, and within another ten minutes he stood at the door of an imposing stone house through the windows of which came a cheerful light. He tapped on the knocker, and by the glow emanating from the interior began to survey his muddy boots and soaked apparel. The door opened suddenly and a girl with corn-colored hair and a grave white face stood silhouetted by the rays of a hall light. She spoke with a slow, rising inflection—

“Yes?”

“I have been told, madam,” said he, after a sharp inspection of her face, “that I might find lodging here. I’ve traveled a great distance this day and had the misfortune to lose my horse.”

She was silent for a long interval, the wind blowing the folds of a voluminous skirt about her. One hand rose toward her face as if to fend off a stray lock of hair.

“I’m sorry, but the house is full,” she replied at last.

“The river is deep,” said he, making a gesture with his arm.

“Ah! Come in.”

III — A CAPTAIN OF THE KING’S OWN

Sunlight invaded the room—the vagrant sunlight of a wintry, overcast day. Some time ago the fifes and drums had sounded reveille throughout the town; but it was a summons that had not found Jeffry Peale lagging in bed. Quite a long while before he had been stationed at the clothes closet with his ear pressed against the wall. In the room adjoining, two officers had spent their dressing period in a rather acrimonious argument concerning military policy, during the course of which Peale had picked up a few helpful fragments relating to conditions within the city. And after their departure for breakfast he set thoughtfully to work brushing his clothes and knocking the caked mud from his shoes.

It was while doing this that there sounded a tapping on his door. Adjusting his coat and moving a little nearer to the pistols on the lowboy, he said, “Come,” and then was sorry for his aloofness. The portal opened quickly and the girl with the corn-colored hair slipped through with one swift glance behind her.

“It was the very first moment I could get away,” said she. “The last of the gentlemen just now left the table.”

“I had thought to come down earlier,” he answered, “but decided it wisdom to wait until I saw you.” He smiled, becoming on the instant a fine and engaging gentleman. “’Tis not my custom, I assure you—to let others wait on me.”

There was no answering smile.

“You had not meant to mix with the English officers?” she asked. “I thought you were to remain under cover, like the rest, until I had given you information.”

“My orders are a little broader. I am to take what you have for me and spend the day walking about.”

She seemed to be looking through and beyond him, her eyes troubled by visions. Jeffry Peale thought he had never seen a woman so soberly introspective and yet so plainly made for gaiety and high humor. Once, the sun thrust a long beam across the room to become entangled in her hair, and under that light it glowed like metal at white heat, sending color to her face.

“Why,” she demanded, “are you all so gay and reckless—all you who come on these dangerous missions? Is it because you love danger more than others—or is it a mask?”

“All men love life,” said he, “and certainly none love it more than I. I think we like to play a game. The game is to flirt as near death as possible and yet come away with honor. In my imaginings I have done it many times in many ways.”

“But when you flirt—and lose? When you see death as surely yours—then what?”

“’Tis in the game not to consider losing. But if we do lose, then it’s to be played out and the forfeit given. What else?”

“Like Captain Hale,” said she, nodding. “Sometimes I see them—all that have passed through here—standing in a rank. They were brave and gallant fellows. And in the ranks there’s sometimes a gap, and then my heart aches terribly all night.”

“Look to yourself. Do you never think of your own danger?”

“Danger? There is none. Look: My boarding house is always full of British officers. Some are very loyal—and—and complimentary. The first one to whisper treason about me would have a duel on his hands instantly. I am utterly safe. But come, is it not foolish to spend good time this way? I brought with me a list kept for two weeks now. It is yours. You had better memorize the figures and destroy it.”

A slip of paper came from some mysterious source. Peale took it, bowing slightly.

“I should be flattered to know your name,” he said. “Mine is Jeffry Peale, of Maxwell’s brigade.”

“Jane Welch. When will you have breakfast?”

“Give me a half-hour with this,” he replied, pointing to the paper. “I should like to get it in mind before going abroad.”

She inclined her head and left the room. Peale took a chair by the window and began a studious perusal of the finely shaded writing. For a while he saw nothing of the figures or words. Jane Welch’s face was indelibly outlined on the paper, somber-eyed, the sun shining in golden yellow hair.

“’Tis like looking at the sun and seeing the reflection long after,” he mused.

He found himself comparing the courage in her eyes with the same quality he had seen in those officer ladies who followed the army from campaign to campaign, creating makeshift homes in tents or huts, that the men might have some moments of homely cheer. Women like Dame Washington, Greene’s charming wife or the jolly Mrs. Knox.

He turned resolutely to the list of regiments in and around the city, memorizing. Interspersed among the figures were items overheard, such as:

“The Fourth Foot is well talked of by officers for discipline, but the men are considered undersized and the regiment only half strength.”

“’Tis known that Admiral Howe wishes to see the Colonies conciliated and that his brother, the general, has a great regard for American rifles.”

“Cornwallis is considered the strongest fighting general of all the English.”

He went through the paper carefully, and then a second time, laying it aside with a comment.

“This evening I shall commit it more carefully. ’Tis time now to take my tour.”

Slipping the paper beneath the mattress, he finished dressing, took his cloak and hat and went down. In the hall the girl met him and pointed through an inner door to where a table still was set with breakfast dishes.

“Take the head chair. Probably you will have company. There’s an officer or two who usually sleep right up to parade and roll-call and have to come back later to eat. What,” she asked, in a much lower tone, “shall I name you?”

“My own,” said he. “The less of deception, the less of stumbling.”

“But a moment ago,” she remarked, “I remembered I had not yet eaten. So if you do not mind—”

He was before her, pulling back a chair.

“Many strange things befall a man in the course of war, but I should not have believed yesterday that in twenty hours I would be tipping coffee cups with so pleasant a partner. ’Twill brighten the camp-fire many days to come.”

She gave him a glance that for the moment was free from the usual soberness. It left her face strangely soft and, in a measure, beautiful.

“I do believe war makes all men gallant.”

He took his seat, saying gravely:

“No doubt you hear many pretty speeches. I did not mean it to sound so.”

“I did not take it—so,” she replied and turned her eyes to the silver pot. “Your cup, Jeffry Peale.”

The front door opened and slammed violently. A youth in a subaltern’s uniform came bouncing in.

“By all that’s sublime, Miss Jane—” he began in a loud voice, then stopped short and put on his professional dignity. “Oh, I do beg pardon for the racket. Silly of me.”

“Lieutenant Consolven,” said the girl with a slow gesture of her white hand, “we have a temporary guest at our table. This is Jeffry Peale.”

The Englishman bowed with his head and shoulders as Peale rose.

“Pleasure,” he grunted and without further ceremony made for a seat across from the girl. He had a high color and a long, horsey jaw; there was about him the external boisterousness and rudeness of the country squire’s son. When he sat down it was with vigor and when he began to eat it was with enthusiasm.

“Hungry—lud! Made that parade one leap ahead of the old martinet. No more!” He swallowed a quantity of cakes and coffee and turned a frank, unsuppressed curiosity on Peale. “Peale? A Surrey Peale?”

“Kent, a hundred years ago. At present a New York Peale, and an infernally roused one. Why d’ye allow brigands to invest the roads around this city? I was set upon last night and in the scuffle lost a good horse and saddlebags. Seems a pity this army can’t suppress such nonsense.”

The subaltern threw back his head and laughed noisily.

“Sounds to be the very same tale the ‘martinet’ tells, doesn’t it, Miss Jane?”

The girl explained to Peale.

“That’s Lieutenant Consolven’s captain—a very strict gentleman.”

“A ripper! A fire-eatin’, gimlet-eyed monster with the heart of a provost marshal,” broke in the subaltern, mouth full.

“—and he’s forever outraged by the lawlessness outside the lines,” she finished.

“Must run,” said the subaltern, swallowing his coffee. “Infernal racket abroad. Would appear there’s a certain rebel spy in the city. So the report comes from headquarters. Now they’ve got details scourin’ every low dive in town. Cursed life, this. Always some overturnin’ or uproar.”

“And do they know the gentleman by sight or substance?” asked Peale.

“Not that I’m aware. ’Tis just a smell they have. Troop across the river flushed him from a suspect’s house. Found a uniform. Now we’re turnin’ out the low dives. If he’s about we’ll find him there. Always find spies in such filthy dens,” he explained with finality, kicking back his chair.

Peale rose at the same time.

“If you’ve no objection I’ll walk down the street with you.”

“Come along then.”

Peale followed the subaltern out, meeting the girl’s sober glance as he closed the door. There was a deep concern in those eyes and, though he wanted to believe that concern was for his safety, he was too humble to suppose it so. Rather it was for the success of his mission and for the cause he represented. So thinking, he passed into the windy street, with the sun showing fitfully, half up in the heavens and toward the south the black clouds of a coming storm.

He had to walk lively to keep up with the Englishman who muttered a fear of the Martinet.

“A sly devil,” said he. “I’m supposed to be on tour now—worse luck. The man’s eyes are in the back o’ his neck, I fully believe. By gad, ’tis a sad state when the son of a Surrey gentleman must fetch and carry to a Lunnon weaver rose from the ranks. This principle of equality of classes—was there ever a more pernicious, damnable doctrine?”

“Many men hold with it,” observed Peale gravely.

“’Twill be the ruination of all such,” grumbled the subaltern. “Let each bottle keep to its own shelf.”

His eyes darted down the street and suddenly, without apology, he bolted into an alley, leaving his companion alone.

Peale continued his walk, keenly observant. It had been some years since he last had trod these streets, and the change of the town was shockingly visible. It had the air of being down at the heels, of sadly needing paint and repairs. The streets were littered with débris and, though by reputation it bore the name of a city very gay and voluptuous under the British régime, Peale could not but notice the shabbiness of the passers-by and the air of uncertainty in too many faces. Here were concentrated thousands of troops and refugees, a great part of the latter living only on the hope of a speedy success of the royal arms, subsisting on the last of their incomes.

Fine ladies and gentlemen passed him in coaches, holding their heads properly high; tradesmen peeped from their doors at this parade, none too cheerful, and here and there lounged rough characters who viewed all with insolence. British occupancy had brought untidiness to an orderly provincial town. And always there was a passing and repassing of soldiers led by stony-faced officers.

It was upon these that Peale bent the closest scrutiny, sometimes with professional admiration, sometimes with ill-concealed scorn. The British Empire could buy them fine uniforms and new accoutrements and drill them until they stepped as one and carried their arms neatly; even so, the home government could not conceal the poverty of the recent regiments.

The veterans Peale could tell at a glance by their carriage—men who had been trained in the hard school of lifetime enlistments. Peale had met them on the battlefield and could testify to their stubbornness under fire; but at intervals he saw groups from the new, high-numbered regiments—undersized, shoddy men from the docks and gutters of England. The very sight of them gave him courage, and he turned toward the North River slips, where the spars showed high above the houses, with a lightened heart. The Elijahs and Elnathans and Samuels who stood parade on the bleak Morristown hills need have nothing to fear from them.

He came to the lowlier part of town, where were lodging houses for sailors and barracks for soldiers—a quarter smelling of salt air and tar, and traditionally boisterous. Beside him was an apothecary shop and on impulse he ducked through the small door and stood in a semi-lighted cell, hearing some one growl at him from a dark corner.

“Well, what d’ye want here?”

“A shilling’s worth of horehound,” answered Peale, making out the shadow of the fellow, “and a little civility, my friend.”

“If y’ve come from gin’rals headquarters to spy on an honest man’s business, gentleman, ye can go back. Wirra, ’tis a poor excuse ye offer—a shillin’s of horehound, eh? Bah!”

“You talk, friend, strangely like a rebel. Doesn’t his Majesty’s gracious government suit you?”

The apothecary moved reluctantly to his shelves.

“I’ll have me rights,” he grumbled. “D’ye think it’s politic to be sendin’ agents forever around to snoop? Y’d think th’ blessed army was afeerd o’ its shadow. Day an’ night—day an’ night! Between rogues and thieves an’ spies I’m fair sick o’ it!”

Here was a malcontent, certainly. Peale threw his shilling on the case and waited for the apothecary.

“Some day, friend, you may be rid of the trouble,” said he, and took up the horehound.

The cobblestones resounded with those incessant files marching by. He bent beneath the door’s shortness and faced the daylight again. And immediately every muscle and every nerve in his body sprang to that defensive state which rises in great danger.

For, advancing upon him, not a rod distant, was that thin-lipped, severe-eyed gentleman whom he had met in Priam Lafferty’s company at the Black Frigate tavern—Trevoris. He was no longer the merchant in civilian’s black but a captain wearing the bright red, blue and buff of the King’s own regiment.

He stopped, even as Peale stopped, and his hand went up to halt the dozen soldiers behind him. The severe eyes contracted and the rather swart face screwed into an unlovely, predatory mask. Thus he stood for an instant, studying the man before him with a terribly sharp gaze. Then his sword came flashing out and he moved forward, saying coolly:

“So, my dear Mr. Peale, you have favored us with a brief visit? Stand fast, sir, or I’ll run you through!”

It was such an instant as Jeffry Peale had often visioned over his books. On those occasions past he was often troubled about his slowness of mind, for he never rated himself highly as a quick thinker; but now, as the grim, dour-faced captain advanced, blade foremost, and the soldiers and bystanders began to crowd around, he saw every avenue of escape in one swift glance; understanding, too, that if he were to live at all he had to put himself to the gauntlet.

He whirled, threw a man aside with his arm and dashed down the street, unhooking his cloak and letting it fall.

There was an alley hard by that angled toward the river and this he took, with a motley pack pursuing in full cry and every house disgorging men at his heels. Not a hundred yards off he saw the black hull of a ship sidling in the water, and beside it a warehouse. It was for that he made his break; once inside that shelter, piled high with London merchandise, he might temporarily hide, and while the pursuers diffused themselves, drop silently into the river and start for the Jersey shore.

He calculated he would have made some progress across before they followed him in boats. After that, he depended on his strength to carry him safely over. At any rate, it was the lone means of escape open to him.

But, as the alley narrowed down, a slatternly woman stepped out of a near-by hovel and stood, arms akimbo, gaping at him. She was rolling in fat, frowsy-haired and seemingly dazed by the unexpected uproar. The voice of the pack, however, was something that stirred her animal shrewdness. A human being was being hunted down, the rarest of all sports. So, when Peale was but a few yards away she stepped directly into his path and spread out her immense arms, cackling.

“No ye don’t laddie! Come here.”

Peale, never expecting this turn of affairs, was unable to halt his course. He swerved a little, plunged into an outstretched arm. It threw him and he went down, with the slattern on top, clawing his cheeks with her nails. Then those fat arms gripped him relentlessly, and before he could fight away the mob was around, striking him with boot and cudgel, shouting their curses. Dimly, he heard the curt voice of the captain lashing at them as at a pack of dogs.

“Back, ye scurvy animals, before I send a volley into ye! Sergeant, knock ’em aside! I want that man alive for the gallows!”

The crowd gave way and Peale, rising to a knee, felt the captain’s sword at his breast. The man’s face was unmoved and he spoke with cold courtesy.

“I could wish that courage expended for a more worthy cause,” said he. “Stand, Mr. Peale.”

The game was played out. Peale rose and faced a file of redcoats.

“Your victory, Mr. Trevoris. Or was that a convenient title for your recent expedition?”

“My name, Mr. Peale, is Captain Tremble,” said the officer. And he added, with a certain grim satisfaction, “My men call me the Martinet an’ ’tis certain I shall be on the court martial that sentences ye to hang.”

The slattern elbowed her way through the circle, shouting:

“An’ here’s the one who got the laddie, Cap’n! Ye’ll not forget the reward, wull ye?”

The captain favored her with a most contemptuous glance and spoke to the soldiers; but there was yet another fellow to have his brief say. Some one bellowed like a bull and Peale, turning his eyes, saw the apothecary standing near, shaking his finger.

“So, ’twas a rebel spy, eh? An’ ye guyed me about loyalty to the king? Wirra, I’ll show’ee my measure!”

He ducked from sight and put a shoulder to the spectators in front. Before Peale could dodge, the apothecary’s arms carried forward a bucket of slops and all the filthy contents splashed in the prisoner’s face. The crowd yelled gleefully; Captain Tremble swung and his sword struck the apothecary on the head once, then again and again until the latter swayed and fell within the circle, a bloody spectacle.

“I’ll teach ye respect of the king’s arms!” he growled, blowing through his nose. “Y’re no better than a rebel.” Then, hearing the undertone of hostility to the act, he flashed his weapon around at them. “No more of it! Disperse! If any wish to taste Provost Cunningham’s hospitality I’ll soon enough clap him in the first sugar house on the street. Disperse now!”

The citizens fell back and made a lane, through which Peale marched, flanked by the captain and followed by the file of soldiers. From behind sounded the loud and sustained vilification of the slattern. It accompanied them out of the alley and well up the street. Even as they turned a corner they could hear her voice rising and falling, expending all the well learned curses of a lurid life.

The captain was speaking, but to deaf ears. Peale had plunged himself into a stern inquiry, that sort of self-distrusting examination which had been his dower from earliest youth. There never was a time when he had not belittled his mind and his courage, and never so much as now. Another more resolutely forthright man would not have been taken. A more subtle man never would have fallen into the snare, never would have left a trail behind for British authorities to trace.

And yet, as he argued the other side of the case, he found himself cheered. For, after all, the moves of the game had been against him. It mattered not how shrewd his might have been—the sharp eyes of Trevoris, or Captain Tremble, had fallen athwart his path. That was a contingency he could not have foreseen, nor could any decently discreet mind have foreseen it. A fortune of war.

For one brief instant he experienced a stealthy fear that Priam Lafferty was involved; he immediately stamped this fear as a disloyalty on his part and banished it from his mind. Had he not known Priam the best part of his life? Priam had been duped, imposed upon by the pseudo-merchant from Spanish New Orleans. Nothing more.

And so, by the time they had traversed the street, a spectacle for all eyes, he had restored his self-respect and regained the philosophy that seemed to him to represent all that was best in a soldier’s life—to resign oneself in mind to any fate that might befall, but in action never to give up so long as a single living impulse animated muscle and mind.

The detail stopped; he was pushed into a door by Tremble. At the end of a hall they turned into a room and confronted a seated general who wore an order on his coat. Captain Tremble explained the affair in a dozen words. Peale saw the general’s face turn stormy.

“I can not understand it,” said the general. “Blessed if I can! What more could you provincials wish than the beneficent kindness of his majesty? What real, just grievances have you that could not have been settled peacefully? ’Tis upon your head—all this bloodletting and misery. I have said a thousand times and I say it again, that to all disaffected who accept his majesty’s gracious pardon should be shown every courtesy—as if they had never erred. But to you, my fine young man—to you who have broken every regard, violated the king’s peace and gone so far as to engage in the abominable, insidious act of spying—to you I shall not show an ounce of mercy! There will be a court for you before night and by daybreak you shall die!”

“’Tis such a sermon as I might have expected,” replied Peale sedately. “I do not expect you to see on both sides of the wall. But if you should wish to find me cringing for pardon, I must disappoint you. I can die as well as any man.”

“Captain, send him to the provost!”

Peale bowed himself out and, followed by Tremble, rejoined the file of soldiers and set rapidly off down another street. The storm in the south had moved closer; shutters were slapping on the house walls and a gust of rain sprinkled the cobblestones. Peale drew a deep breath, unconscious of all the eyes upon him, and began to feel a strange exhilaration of spirit. The reason for it he could not determine, yet it was there, a strong, buoyant current that flowed out of some remote reservoir. And, prompted by it, he raised his head, to find himself looking directly at the house of Jane Welch and to see Jane Welch herself staring down from the stoop at him, her hair blowing heedlessly across her white face and her eyes mirroring an emotion Jeffry Peale had never before seen in a woman’s face.

It was all too brief; one moment he met that glance and the next had passed on, seeing Captain Tremble bowing at the girl and hearing the guard behind gruffly ordering him to move faster.

Somewhere beyond they stopped at a sugar house. Tremble advanced toward the guard. There was a passage of words and another officer turned into sight, beginning an immediate protest.

“No, no, Captain. I can not permit another man in this place. ’Tis loaded so now there’s not room for all to sleep. Another few treacherous dogs and they’ll burst the walls. Try the next.”

And so they went on, while the wind burst over the town with redoubled force. Peale, entirely disinterested, took little note of his surroundings. Presently they came to another sugar house, stopped and waited. Tremble motioned Peale inward. He passed on to a hall and thence into a semi-dark, dismally cold area, hearing a lock click behind him. Footsteps clattered away and presently he was left alone.

He had no idea how long he waited in this cheerless, draughty place; it seemed an endless length of time. He heard the guard changed and the occasional rattling of a cart. The day waned swiftly and of a sudden the storm roared in all fury about them. It was then that he heard the inner door open and was dazzled by the rays of a lantern. A thick booming voice challenged him:

“What the —— you doin’ here? ——, there’s rats like you scattered all over the town. How in —— do they expect the provost to keep account? Guard, who’s this rebel?”

“I be’nt told, sir. The last relief said nawthink about ’im.”

He was another officer, the lantern bearer, and slightly drunk. At a peremptory order Peale moved into the hall, to find guards resting on their arms. Propelled by a rough arm, he stepped into the rain-drenched street and was put into a column of prisoners who huddled miserably together. The lantern bearer coughed and said gruffly:

“Off to the prison ship, the whole pack o’ ye. There’s a new set o’ rascals comin’ to the city an’ we need room. Forward!”

Bending his head against the tempest, Peale followed obediently. They trudged from street to street and at last came to the river’s edge, where a barge waited. One by one they were herded in. The guards crowded after and then, with a prisoner at each oar, they embarked across the twisted currents of the East River.

It could not have been more than four o’clock, but it was so dark that nothing could be seen twenty yards ahead of the pitching craft. The slightly drunken officer cursed them in a dozen ribald ways and once cuffed the ear of one of his own men who manipulated the sweep.

“Look, rebels!” he shouted. “There’s your future home! Many’ve rotted there before you and many will rot after y’ve been sewed up and tossed over!”

Peale raised his head and gazed eastward. A phantom ship rose out of the fog and towered over the barge—a battered, stripped hulk that rode uneasily in the swells. Not a glimmer of light came from it, not a sound of cheer. It floated, a sinister, foul thing—the grave of all hope, a living death for thousands of American soldiers.

As the barge passed around the stern, Peale made out the faded name, Whitby. But on a thousand tongues it was already known as the “hell-ship.”

IV — THE PRISON SHIP

The barge, thrust by the current, sheered in toward the hull of this ship of death. Peale saw a porthole, strongly barred, a few feet above his head and, as they came abreast, a vagary of the wind carried down to him an indescribable stench. Nor was he the only one to experience it, for there was a general mutter among the prisoners and the slightly drunk officer began to lash at them with his tongue.

“Pull out—pull out! Y’ll swamp the barge shortly!”

From the porthole issued a hollow, frenzied voice.

“Better drowned than sech mis’ry! Lads, for God’s sake stay clear of this cesspool! ’Tis easier to die in clean air!”

The officer raged and drew his pistol, threatening instant death to the unknown speaker, but a sweep of the oars took the barge away and the darkness blotted out voice and stench alike. A dozen strokes brought them on the lee side of the ship; the officer issued a great shout that presently was answered by a sentry’s grumbling voice.

“Aye.”

“Throw over the ladder! Prisoners comin’ up.”

“’Tis after receivin’ hours.”

“Stand there, jackanapes, and refuse an officer’s direct order! Throw over the ladder, or by gad, I’ll give you a ball! After hours, indeed! Who are you to balk a provost guard? Make it fast now before we stave in our sides!”

After considerable delay in which the barge was flung violently back and forth, always threatening to hurl itself against the ship’s side and splinter into a hundred pieces, the ladder rolled down upon them and the prisoners climbed up, one by one.

Peale, being in the rear of the barge, was the last to step on the decks of the hulk, with the uncomplimentary farewell of the English subaltern behind him. The rest of the unfortunates were huddled in front with the solitary guard hovering indistinctly three yards away. There still was time to take a step back and hurl himself over into the turbulent water; in the darkness none could find him nor trace his route shoreward. Precisely at that instant the guard advanced and a bayonet touched his chest.

“For’d, rebel and down into the hole!”

Other guards, warned, came running up. Peale went on, seeing those ahead stoop and disappear into the bowels of the hulk. Presently he was beside the trap-door that led below and, when he likewise bent over, the fetid, miasmatic air billowed up and struck him fully in the face.

It was a smell unlike any he had ever experienced. Barnyard and abattoir stenches were perfume compared to it. That first full breath threw him back, gagging, his vitals revolting at so horrible a destination. Then the guard’s steel blade again touched him ungently and, half falling through the aperture, he grasped the rungs of the ladder and descended. The door of the trap fell into place, sealing this foulness in.

Reaching the bottom, he stood at the center of a whispering group, blinded by the utter darkness and wrestling with the revolt of his senses. It seemed impossible that men could live at all in such atmosphere, or that any authority would permit it. Yet it was so; here below was half a brigade of men—the Whitby had the reputation of holding better than a thousand—sleeping, or trying to sleep.

The group dissolved, fellows stumbling to right and left, seeking a place on the floor. Peale’s ears began to pick up a subdued mournful chorus which, when he traced out individual threads of it, proved to be men groaning, sighing, choking—every conceivable lament of the human spirit. What made it all the more pitiable was the hopeless quality of their plaint. To Peale, vigorous and strong and with a memory of the fresh, stormy air outside, it was at first unbelievable that so many of them would endure this misery when only a trap-door and a skeleton crew stood between them and freedom; it was but two or three hundred yards to the Long Island shore, and there were boards a-plenty to rig up a raft that would carry them across in the darkness.

The answer was too apparent: These men were not in their full vigor and never again, probably, would be. Their bodies had begun to rot and their spirits were at the last, stubborn level, below which is death. The tyranny of one trap-door and one solitary guard was enough to quell them.

He saw the gray bull’s-eye of a port across from him and started toward it, only to stop, gesturing futilely in the dark. That looked to be the sole air vent in all the extent of the ship, and to reach it he knew he would have to cross a solid carpet of men. He turned another way. It was very slow travel; always he felt bodies in his path and he had to reach down with his hand to find space enough to place his feet.

They were like the dead, unprotesting, and with only some small sound or twitching to indicate they still lived. Once he lost his balance and stepped on an arm, and drew back, expecting protest. None came, and he arrived at last at a vacant strip between two silent figures and laid himself in it, marveling.

He told himself that he would have a night-long vigil. Never in this dungeon of hopelessness could he find rest, and so he rolled face to the floor. He knew not how long he was awake; but at last the poisonous vapor drugged him and he fell into a state that was neither sleeping or waking. Sometime, when the small bull’s-eye of light shone dimmest, a great agonized cry rang through the hulk from bow to stern—the death cry of a mortal. After that, profound silence settled over all.

He was roused at last by a cold draught of air pouring on his body and by a ringing cry repeated again and again.

“Rebels, bring up your dead! Rebels, bring up your dead!”

Rising from his confined position, he found a foggy light billowing through the open trap-door and the full, ruddy face of an English officer peering down. Looking about, he saw the sad spectacle of better than a thousand men waking to face another dreary day of confinement. They were packed together like sticks of wood, with here and there figures sprawling across others, at right angles.

One by one they rose and made their way uncertainly toward the ladder, stooping at places to pinch and examine certain bodies who did not move. They wore a ghastly color and their faces were drawn and sagged—an illusion, he thought, of the early morning light. The man immediately behind stirred, put a shaking hand to Peale’s shoulder and with that support rose. He had not seen Peale’s countenance, but his finger tapped slowly on the civilian suit and he spoke in a dead-level voice:

“’Tis a new man come to crowd this hell. I can see it by the neat fixin’s on yer coat.”

When Peale swung about he knew that it was not the gray light that made prisoner’s faces so; it was not an illusion but the pallor of disintegrating flesh.

This one was nothing but a parcel of bones wrapped indifferently in parchment. Something in the eyes told of youth; elsewhere was the sign age. His hair was gray, his teeth hung loosely in white gums. Once he had been a powerful fellow, for the shoulder joints were far apart and his ribs, each of which was outlined through the cotton shirt, were well sprung. But the muscles that once he had flexed and felt pride in were shrunk to nothing. He must have seen the flaring compassion in Peale’s face for he observed, mournfully:

“Well, friend, look on one betwixt earth an’ purgatory. I kin straddle both regions mighty easy, I tell you.”

Peale felt the need of liquor then.

“Often have I heard tales of this place but never did they match the living truth. Who are you, man, and how long have you been here?”

“Sharon Eastman—Haslet’s regiment. I was took with Stirling at the skirmish on Long Island, August last.”

“And not exchanged yet?”

“Not a bit of news have I heard about exchange. But ’tain’t likely I would. When I was still strong I tried to escape. See fer yourself how far down I come since then. Oh, no, they ain’t no exchange fer me.”

The guard’s warning issued again.

“Bring up your dead, rebels!”

Men worked sluggishly sewing blankets around several figures. A party of six spent their feeble effort lugging one such mournful burden to the upper deck. Sharon Eastman pointed with his thumb.

“This be a sickly ship. Ten die each blessed night. ’Tain’t long before I’ll pass up them stairs like that. ’Ud gone sooner, but I come o’ tough stock. Y’ve got no mess, yet, o’course? Well, stick by me for a time. ’Tis our first turn at the kettle.”

An officer, followed by four stolid, heavily armed mercenaries, descended and went toward the center of the hold, where a big copper kettle swung from the beams. Beneath it was a pit of earth on which a fire was now blazing. The officer raised his voice.

“Bring y’r rations up, rebels! Mess by mess. No tarryin’, now, or I’ll see to ’t ye lose y’r proper turn.”

Several fellows grouped about Sharon Eastman who seemed to act in the capacity of a non-commissioned officer for his mess. From some place along the dark crannies of the ship’s hulk he fetched a shank of beef and a bucket of moldy peas. Peale looked upon the meat with a fresh disgust of senses. It was raw and in a state hard to describe—a stinking, maggoty piece of provender unfit for human consumption.

The group followed Eastman hungrily toward the kettle. Some one had already bailed water into the kettle; green-scummed bilge-water, nothing more. Without ceremony Eastman dropped the meat into this steaming brine and stepped back, eyes cocked on the officer.

“I assure you,” said Peale, “I want none of that. I’ve long felt the need of a fast and now’s the opportunity to take it.”

“Such squeamishness will pass,” observed the officer coldly.

Boots tramped across the deck above them and a tackle squealed under burdens being lowered over the side. Peale saw a blanketed body pass down across a porthole and heard the shouted directions of a guard. Back of him clustered a line of men, waiting their turn at the kettle. The officer took his watch and, after a period that could not have been more than five minutes, raised his hand to Eastman.

“Pull your meat out. ’Tis done.”

“Done?” spoke up Peale angrily. “The filthy stuff’s not even warmed.”

“Take it out and give way.”

“D’ye require men to be cannibals on this cursed ship?” demanded Peale.

His fist went into the tub and emerged with the meat; this stringy whitish stuff he thrust under the officer’s nose. The latter stepped back with a wry face, at the same time plucking at his sword hilt.

“Fine filth for human bein’s is it not?” asked the irate Peale. “If you think it’s done, taste it.”

“None of this —— sedition or I’ll run y’ through!” exclaimed the officer. Sharon Eastman grabbed at Peale’s coat and pulled him away, whispering:

“None o’ that. ’Twill serve no good. He’d spit you quicker’n a wink.”

Peale surrendered the meat and watched the mess divide it, he himself refusing a share. Eastman poured into the hand of each a small measure of the peas, and thus they made their meal. Groups collected elsewhere going through the same mockery. At places he saw some of the newcomers like himself, standing aside and being jeered for their lack of appetite.

The trap-door was open and a few of the prisoners were crawling to fresh air. With undisguised eagerness he followed and soon stood at the rail, looking off through the fog to the city. Guards strode behind him—high-helmeted Anspachers whose pigtails and dour faces indicated a savagery of heart that they really did not possess. Toward the stern, part of the deck had been penned off, and in it Peale saw a half dozen pigs and a cow which now was being milked. Forward, another burying detail clambered up the ship’s ladder, back from their sad work on the Wallabout beaches.

But a scant five hundred yards separated him from Manhattan’s shore; he had breasted twice the distance in waters no less dangerous. But to accomplish this in daylight was almost impossible, and before night came the trap-door would again bar him below decks. He cudgeled his brain for a way out. Certainly he could not stay long without embarking on that decline of flesh and spirit which so marked the other poor devils.

If he meant to break, he must break shortly. Through fire, sword or water—any chance was preferable to rotting away. Moreover, Captain Tremble must soon be looking for his prisoner and, failing to find him in the sugar-houses, would surely come to search the ship and march him back before a summary court. Therefore, if the man did not come during this day, the first darkness was time to move on his contemplated course. Somewhere on deck, in the pigsty or in a shadow of the guards’ housing, he might hide. Or, failing that, a crown in an itching palm might help. These Germans had an unholy lust for plunder and felt no particular pride in the war they waged.

Anything to reach mainland, see Jane Welch once more and take that dossier he had put under the bed; then regain the Jerseys. The thought of the girl brought forward a fear that had been with him since the first moment of capture. Had he implicated her in any way by his presence at the house? Had Tremble’s sharp glances pierced her secret? Peale, moving uneasily, believed not. She had said she was above suspicion and that the Englishmen residents in her house were too loyal to countenance the thought. For that matter, she had a plausible explanation; she might say Peale had looked like just another of the many traveling provincial squires who applied at her door for lodging.

In the fog he seemed to vision her as she had been on the hour of his capture—a tense figure, whipped by the wind, one white hand to her breast and her eyes filled with an emotion such as he had never seen before. Where could another woman be found like her?

Sharon Eastman stepped beside him, mumbling. There was a sly look on his face and he pointed furtively toward the pen of hogs.

“They’re a-feedin’ the porks. If y’ll come quiet we’ll steal some o’ the bran.”

“From where?”

“Why, out o’ the trough. ’Tis not so hard to do an’ it makes great porridge. When the Hessian turns his back—”

Peale shook his head. Eastman grumbled disapprovingly.

“Better take hold o’ that p’ticklar appetite, friend. Y’ve got to eat.”

“Where,” asked Peale, “do they bury the dead?”

Eastman’s bony finger swept the mud flats of Wallabout Basin. “There. But it’s no great rest the dead get. When the tide washes out y’ll see white bones from Rapelje’s Mill to Remsen Point.”

Peale ground his foot into the deck, swearing roundly.

“Is there no spark of decency in their —— hearts? Gad! It makes a man want to break them between his fist! Oh, I’ll call some of their proud officers to account!”

“Not for a while, friend,” was the dispirited answer. “If it’s escape ye think about, better put the idea away. It’s been tried many a time and but once do I know of a man succeedin’. And if ye fail it’s outright death or suthin’ worse. There’s a dark hole for’d they use fer proud devils—half awash with bilge an’ squealin’ with rats the size o’ your arm. Think twice, friend.”

“I am done with thinking,” replied Peale, gustily. “Did you ever hear of a guard bein’ bribed?”

“I’ve considered it,” said Eastman wistfully. “If I was the strong lad of another day an’ had a gold piece I’d be tempted to try that method. These Hessians, they’d sell their mothers fer a bit o’ plunder.”

“Once the trap-door was left open—after dark I mean—and a dozen stout fellows got to the deck—”

“No, no!” said Eastman with as much emphasis as his frail body would admit. “I tried that. ’Twon’t work. Y’ll only make a fury that’ll bring down the guards. And the new lads like yerself—there ain’t enough o’ them to push through by force. If ye mean to escape, do it by yerself. The poor boys below are beneath movin’. The last example was a-plenty to put fear o’ God in ’em. Five slaughtered outright, friend, and two more in the dark hole till the rats bit ’em and they died o’ plague, ravin’ mad. Look to yerself only. Can ye swim?”

“Better than most.”

“Then it’s a fair chance ye have. But, mind me, if y’ fail, carry right through till ye fall stone dead. Never let ’em pinion ye down alive.”

An officer saw them together, talking thus earnestly, and came over with a sharp warning.

“No sedition on board! Separate!”

Eastman slid away. Peale stared at the shoreline, mind filling with the hope of release from the leprous hulk that swayed uneasily in the water. Once overboard, he would have no fear. Even in darkness he would have a few glimmering lights from the town to guide him on. Ashore, he would again be a free agent. Free enough at least to fight for himself. Here on the prison ship he could only watch disaster overtake him. And there was Maxwell waiting in the Morristown hut for his reply; there was Jane Welch—

This new-found turbulence of spirit caused the day to drag on interminably, made doubly dull by the lack of sun. Not once did the heavy fog disperse, or a clear sky appear. Occasionally rain fell and drove some of the feebler ones below. Toward midday there was a general movement toward the hold, but though Peale got as far as the trap, his freshened sense of smell rebelled at the sickening stench and so he returned to his post and began a study of the guards.

The previous night, on coming aboard, an English voice had assailed him, and even in the shadows he had seen the guard’s stubborn English face. But, during the early hours there had been a change. Hessians now lounged at particular posts on deck, arms carelessly ready, their taciturn visages made all the more gloomy by their fashion of pigtailing their hair and by their tall, helmeted hats. Not one who did not wear an extraordinarily thick mustache. A child would have been frightened at the first glimpse of them; and indeed America had trembled when first they arrived.

Trenton had dissipated their false ferocity, and the towns and farms along the route of their march knew them now as greedy, lustful marauders more set on stealing the lead weights out of a clock than on fighting. They kept their places stolidly, watching like so many lazy mastiffs. Once Peale saw a prisoner sway and rub the elbow of such a Hessian. The man spoke a word of jargon and pushed the weak one away with his hand, not ungently.

He still had a few precious gold crowns in his pockets, saved from confiscation by his swift changing of prisons. Now, as his ideas of escape expanded, the money seemed the chosen instrument of salvation. From hour to hour he watched, until time came to change reliefs and another took post over the trap-door. They appeared to stand the regular two-hour shift and Peale calculated that the following relief would come on some short time before darkness; that guard was the one to approach with the offer of money.

He moved restlessly around the pigsty to starboard. The path from the trap-door to the ship’s side was not an open one. Several kegs of molasses were piled between and a kind of alley led through them: Once past the guard he had to thread this and throw himself over the bulwark. He visualized every step of it. All he asked was but a moment’s forgetfulness on the part of the Hessian sentry; a moment in which the trap-door might be left unbolted. So thinking, he watched the East River grow darker and more turbulent.

A cautious voice spoke into his ear.

“Come below, sir. There’s a council goin’ on.”

Before he could turn his head one of the newer prisoners walked past, took a tour of the deck and descended. Peale tarried some moments, feeling conscious of an overseeing eye. Casually looking about, he saw no one watching and so followed down the trap and ladder to the hold.

Already dusk settled in the place and men were assuming attitudes around the portholes. Some of the messes were fixing for the night meal. There seemed to be a sly expectancy in the faces he passed; faces that explored his stature as he walked along the dim alleys. News, he decided, traveled quickly among prisoners.

Toward a far corner he saw the messenger who had summoned him and pursued his way with a certain air of disinterest. Yet his intuition told him what was abroad half-way toward the stern, and therefore he was in a measure prepared when Sharon Eastman rose from a blanket and intercepted him, whispering rapidly:

“Remember what I told ye, friend. Play a lone fiddle. Have nothin’ to do with gen’ral mutiny. That’s beyant hope!”

Peale nodded and went on. Beyond a square oak post, green with mold, he came upon six of those with whom he had ridden on the barge. All were resolute fellows, though ragged and dirty, and all turned on him a singular glance of hope that the messenger presently undertook to explain in a subdued voice:

“We got our bearin’s on this ship, sir. ’Tis the opinion of six of us—all that’s got spirit—that if we ever wish to see liberty again it would be better to make the attempt now. And since I knew you to be one of Maxwell’s officers—seen you on parade one day—I made it plain to the rest you should take the lead and give us some encouragement.”

“What had you thought?”

“Ah, that’s the infernally hard question to answer. We’d thought to force the trap-door after dark and scatter. Once the passage was open the rest of the poor devils might take heart and follow after. That would simplify things. ’Twould be no task then to disarm the Hessians and control the ship.”

“But if not?” asked Peale.

“Well, if we must count on only ourselves, it’s a matter o’ reaching the bulwarks and divin’ for it.”

“Can all swim?” persisted Peale.

The spokesman was interrupted in his answer by another, more forthright.

“No, but —— all tories, I’ll take my chance on sinkin’ ruther’n fester here! Besides, half them molasses kegs are empty, an’ bunged up. Good support fer a bad swimmer. I’ll chance it!”

“You’ll give us a lead?” persisted the first speaker anxiously. “’Twas in the mind of some that maybe we’d be bringin’ trouble down on the heads of the helpless. ’Twas the reason we should like your direction in case o’ trouble.”

Peale harked to Sharon Eastman’s warning and dismissed it. If there were men to make the effort at liberty his was the privilege of throwing in his lot with them.

“I had thought of a plan,” he said, scanning the circle of anxious faces. “It’s fair dark now. Make no undue move together, but slip toward the foot of the ladder, after it’s beyond being seen, and wait for my word. Once on deck, quiet is the word and every man to his own resources.”

He left them and made his way back through the thickening gloom. Overhead was the tread of sentries, and when he reached the deck again and expelled the cloying air from his lungs he found a new guard had been posted at the trap—another dour creature, hardly distinguishable from his brethren. Peale, glancing about him, thought each and every one of these mercenaries possessed the same avidity of plunder in their eyes.

There were, at the moment, no inquisitive faces bent his way and the fog of the coming dusk had begun to foreshorten distance on the ship. So, mustering his resources, he caught the Hessian’s attention by a nod of his head.

“Do you understand English, friend?”

The mercenary stood at ease, arm thrown around his bayoneted weapon. His features were cast in one unblinking, taurine expression. Peale felt a degree of helplessness.

“I could wish for a knowledge of languages now,” he murmured. “I doubt if he’ll comprehend signs and it would draw attention. But there is one tongue he’ll understand, I vow.”

Taking a crown from his pocket, he bent as if to look at the buckle of his shoe and slipped the crown beneath his heel. Rising, he moved away, exposing the money.

The guard’s eyes fastened instantly upon it and remained there for an indefinite period. Peale stepped back on the piece to recover the man’s attention and then looked at the cloudy sky. The mercenary’s bold features lost their rigidity when the prisoner moved his attention to the trap-door and rather pointedly crossed glances with him. Deserting the coin a second time, Peale walked to the aperture and kicked his toe against the iron bolt which, at night, held the trap down. Again he commanded the Hessian’s face with a steady glance, and ended by passing between the kegs and leaning on the bulwark of the ship.

The Hessian looked about to find whether he were unobserved, and then in a swift motion retrieved the crown. Peale nodded and flirted one finger not too conspicuously out toward the river. The Hessian seemed to nod his head—Peale could not be sure of that, but the sign looked favorable—and resumed his stolid posture, one arm wrapped around the bayonet.

An officer came from aft, calling out.

“Below rebels! Get below to your blankets!”

Not many had elected to stay above until the last moment of grace. Enfeebled, lack-luster creatures, they preferred stench and a little warmth to the chilly draughts of the harbor wind. Peale, almost the last one to duck through the trap, turned to catch the Hessian’s eye. As he passed below, closely followed by another straggler or two, the trap slammed and the iron bolt clanked. The English officer spoke a word and marched away, his boots making a small, mincing echo in the hold. They were trapped once more for the night.

Of a sudden it was dark with no more than a grayish beam shooting through the ports. Peale, standing at the ladder, began to make out once more the rising chorus of human misery. Here were the hours when courage ebbed. Men, shut in upon themselves by the lack of vision, began to be aware of their proximity to death and to bewail the fact in slow and measured groans. Peale shook his head compassionately at the sound, hardly able to master a torrential anger. These creatures were going through purgatory before their time.

A hand touched his elbow.

“Is there a flaw in the guards? Did you coax one?”

“I think so,” murmured Peale. “If you hear the bolt—”

A musket butt grounded on the trap, and they were aware that the bolt was being worked from its slot, inch at a time, faintly protesting. Peale touched his neighbor and felt the man reach out to signal another. Advancing up the rungs, he stationed himself with his arms ready to raise the door. The protesting iron became silent and the musket butt tapped again, this time with less of noise. Peale was aware of his followers clustering behind and, reaching down to communicate a word of caution, he put his weight against the door and shoved, a little at a time.

Waist high to the deck, he looked around to reassure himself. The guard had slipped into the outer ring of darkness, apparently. There was no living sound from fore or aft and nothing but the small sough of wind and sigh of the East River current. Between the molasses barrels Peale saw the glimmering lights of New York town.

Reassured, he got to the deck, laid the trap soundlessly down, and stood silent, checking his following one by one as they emerged, breathing as if from great physical exertion. There was an even half dozen of them and he wanted all to be assembled at the ship’s railing before breaking the silence. As for a general uprising, he had banished it from his thoughts long ago. The bulk of the prisoners had ostentatiously rolled themselves into blankets before dusk, as if washing their hands of all trouble. It was for the chosen six to run the gauntlet.

His senses were preternaturally sharpened by suspicion, and he had not taken a step forward before he knew that the worst of his fears was about to be realized. They were ambushed, trapped, betrayed by the Hessian who had taken his crown. He could see nothing or hear nothing to justify this belief, yet he knew that they were ringed around by guards and that the next pace toward the molasses barrels would loose a bitter, bloody encounter.

It was one of those impalpable shutter-like warnings that rise from utter blackness; all stalking animals know these, and sometimes men, fighting for their existence, are pitched to a condition where they, too, become aware. Poised on the balls of his feet, he was at the necessity of making a decision, with Sharon Eastman’s warning rising to guide him: “If y’re caught, go down fightin’. Don’t let ’em take ye alive!” And were it not far better for men to die instantly than to suffer decay? In the encounter they might score something for their imprisonment; the gods willing, they might come out on even terms.

“Break!”

It was a signal. From the molasses barrels came a driving storm of lead. A bullet fanned his cheek and his nearest companion sobbed like a broken-hearted child and fell at his very feet. The kegs rolled away and they were hemmed in. The silence of the river was riven by lusty cries.

Peale knew, even as he crouched low and came up beneath a guard’s weapon, that he and the rest were utterly lost. The attack was too vicious and too sudden; there was too much weight behind it. If a single man escaped over the side that tragic night, he might account himself lucky. So thinking, he got his arm around a mercenary’s fat throat and brought him down.

The both of them were trampled on and kicked as others passed and repassed the piece of deck over which they fought. The Hessian, greatly overbalancing Peale by his bulk, sought to bring his rifle to bear. Peale felt the bayonet gouge his chest; he ran his hand down the length of the blade and found a good grip.

His knee knocked the Hessian’s wind from the paunchy stomach. A twist and a solid blow and the trick was done; the Hessian lay still. Rising, he dashed toward the ship’s side.

A lantern flared in his face and a sword flashed before his eyes. His bayonet averted a disastrous swipe of the blade; but at the same time he heard the alarm go out and resistance crumble behind and knew that the freed guards were swarming toward him.

“Rally! Here’s the malcontent! Steady! Spit him if ye must, but try to bag the devil alive!”

That officer’s very back was to the ship’s bulwark. But a distance of five feet was between Jeffry Peale and liberty—a five feet that he could not cut his way through.

Lunging and smashing, he saw faces drop before him while the lantern’s glow took on a bloody color. He felt blows on his body, innumerable blows, and his ears rang. Still he fought, trying to reach the elusive officer who held the treacherous light upon him and made him a fair target for all the surrounding mercenaries.

Barbaric oaths rang in his ears; he saw the point of his bayonet plunge through a tunic and come out with a jet of blood behind it. After that his vision reeled. Something thundered against his head and he heard, as from a remote distance, the officer saying curtly:

“Don’t kill the devil! Take him for’d to the lazarette and throw him in. We’ll give the rats company for a while. Ah! Well done! He’s down!”

Vivid shells burst in his brain and a cannon roared and reverberated. After that salute all was dark. His last flash of thought was—

“Jeffry Peale, you are dead!”

V — ESCAPE

Jane Welch’s house was a very comfortable place to be that blustery night, for the east wind, which all week long had whipped the coast with its sly temper, was making a final grand tour of the city. It swept the streets with malevolent intent, sending all pedestrians to the nearest shelter, fingertips stinging cold and eyelashes burdened with frost particles.

More than once officers of the guard had stamped in for a moment’s stolen warmth and crawled reluctantly out again, enviously leaving Ensigns Bunch and Osbaldeston to attend the flaming pyre of oak on the andirons. These two were off duty this night and each in his own manner was trying to impress the lady of the house as she sat in the rocker and fashioned something with cloth and needle.

Both were rather desperately in love with Jane Welch, and showed it. With Bunch it was the sighing breath and languorous eye that begged for response; in short, every such artifice as the fashionable manuals on love-making indicated as proper for gentlemen. Osbaldeston, no less smitten, was severely handicapped by nature, for he scarcely uttered a word in the course of an hour and the least attention from the girl caused him to blush to the crown of his ungainly head and pucker his lips to hide a most painful self-consciousness.

Bunch was very scornful of his comrade and by every token considered his case as the farther advanced; but when she rose and put four mugs of cider in the ashes to mull Osbaldeston well nigh fainted; in passing she accidentally touched his boot and this, according to the manuals, was a secret sign of young love coyly advancing to meet the gentleman’s humor. Bunch noted it with thunderous brow and stabbed his brother officer with a killing glance, receiving in return a more or less ribald snoot.

All of this, of course, behind poor Jane Welch’s back. The ardent ensigns considered that she had never seemed more beautiful or more reserved; but in truth she was torn by every sound of the storm and when she ventured to raise her eyes to the men it was with a fear that they would read the truth in her eyes. This was the penalty of dissembling. They might harry Jeffry Peale throughout the miserably bitter-cold countryside or already have sent a stray shot into his heart; it made no difference. She must smile and politely respond to their small conceits.

Very fervently she thanked God there was sewing to bend over that they might not see printed on her face a question that would not leave her. Where—and why could not a kind Lord tell her?—was Jeffry Peale? Sleeping and waking, through three long days and nights, she had asked herself that. The provost guards had searched their dungeons and the irate Captain Tremble had inspected the hulks in the bay, all to no avail. Innumerable parties had gone out and more than one tavern—the Red Boar among them—had been wrathfully wrecked in the search.

And two court martials had sat as a result of the spy’s disappearance. Perhaps no such uproar would have been caused had it not been for Tremble. But he, of all men, was not one to rest.

There was not an officer in New York more devoted to the royal cause, nor one more bitterly opposed to those who had rebelled against it. The man was a zealot, a humorless martinet who seemed incapable of pity. It was on record that he favored war without quarter; and the higher officers were well aware that if the result of the struggle depended on the sacrifice of a single life, Captain Tremble would be just the sort to step out and offer himself as the martyr. His was not a temper to cross lightly and his men detested him, at the same time carrying a discipline few other companies of the royal army could boast. All in all, he was an implacable, shrewd sort of character and perhaps the only one in the city Jane Welch feared. His eyes were too cold, too penetrating.

She woke from her thoughts to find Bunch speaking in his affected manner:

“Do you not think, lady, it would be jolly in Old England now? Sewing in a fine English hall before just such a fire and, mayhap, a few hounds snoozin’ at hand?”

Osbaldeston looked worried, and started to speak. Then, remembering his shortcomings, he shut his mouth like a trout on a fly and watched the girl.

“Indeed it would be pleasant,” she said. “But you must remember, gentlemen, I love New York, too. We provincials are stubborn people about leaving this land.”

“Ah,” muttered Osbaldeston in satisfaction, and then turned ruddy as she looked his way.

“Nevertheless,” said Bunch gloomily, “I could wish for a stall at a Lunnon coffee house this night.”

“And now,” said she, “you have changed your desire. Which is it you would be? The squire or the townsman—”

The wind whipped into the room and the front door slammed. The girl’s grave eyes turned quickly and then dropped. Captain Tremble stood in the hall, throwing off his cloak and hat. He turned, unsmiling, and bowed with a precise kind of courtesy toward her. As for the ensigns, he dismissed them at one glance and left them sitting silent and uncomfortable, constrained by his sternness. Taking a chair betwixt the fire and the girl, he rubbed his hands in dour silence for some minutes—the nearest he ever came to permitting himself luxury.

Either Osbaldeston or Bunch would have topped him by a head, for he was not a large man nor big-boned. And doubtless the combined age of the ensigns was not greater than his, for his temples were graying and fine lines showed in his face. But for all that, he bore himself like a fighting man; and he was known as a dangerous sword.

“Very cold,” said he to the girl.

“Yes. I am glad I don’t stand a guard tour.”

“My belief is you’d stand it better than some of the nincompoops this army is now cluttered with.” He snapped a finger at the ensigns. “One of you fetch some sticks for the fire.”

Osbaldeston excused himself and went back through the house. Bunch endeavored to make conversation.

“Have they got a smell yet of the spy, sir?”

“D’ye think I’d be tarryin’ here if they had?” demanded Tremble sharply.

“Three days since he appeared at this house,” mused the girl, head bent over the sewing. “What do you think happened to him, Captain?”

It was a question perhaps not wise, but it had to be uttered. She could not see Tremble’s face, but she was very certain his gimlet eyes were fixed on her.

“And what do you think happened to him?” asked Tremble.

Jane Welch raised her head, startled.

“Me? La, what could you expect me to know, sir? He has vanished and—” here was a gentle gibe at him “—not all the king’s gallant soldiers ensembled can find him.”

Bunch spoke reassuringly.

“Be assured he’ll never put his scurvy foot in these premises again. ’Tis nothing for you to worry about.”

“Perhaps she’d not be worried.”

It was a cryptic sentence, with the implication of more than one meaning. When Jane Welch caught Tremble’s eyes she saw a faint malice in them and of a sudden she put her hands together and collected her courage. Bunch moved uneasily and blurted out a protest—

“Oh, now, I must protest—”

“Be quiet!” was Tremble’s sharp rejoinder. He bowed a little at the girl. “’Twas not a charitable or Christian remark. I do beg your pardon.”

But the malice, the slight doubt persisted. It was the first word of doubt ever directed at her and it came like a direct challenge. She had always feared him for his penetration, his animal-like intuition. Now she knew she had him for a critic, an enemy. Without answer, she dropped her head and, quite unannounced, the picture of Jeffry Peale was before her, as it had often been the past eventful hours.

He was like many others who had traveled the dangerous path before him; and yet he was like none. Those others were gallant fellows from every State and every rank; they were gay and, like gentlemen, they paid her brief court as an appreciation of her own courage. Then they were gone and in time their faces merged, one into the other, until she could not remember them as individuals.

But she knew she would never forget the sight of Jeffry Peale, even if ten thousand others came after. The secret of Jeffry Peale was in his eyes. There his strength and weakness rested side by side. She had never seen this wistfulness of a hungry man, this mild distrust of self, this shining light of ambition so twisted and entwined before. A brave soldier he might be, but first and always he was like a boy looking at some far-off star. Quite clear, quite humble.

Tremble’s dry, brittle voice broke athwart her communing.

“If the lady would be so kind as to give us her society a moment—”

She smiled.

“You must excuse me. I often fall into a dreaming.”

Bunch smirked, as if he quite well knew what this dreaming was about. Osbaldeston came tramping back with the wood and, greatly to Tremble’s irritation, threw it a-clatter on the floor.

“Quite a few of these provincial women keep secret company with themselves,” announced Tremble. “I sometimes wonder if they are so Tory as they profess to be.”

Osbaldeston, behind Tremble’s back, drew one finger across his throat and swiftly pointed to the captain, grimacing. But Jane Welch knew she was being fenced with and, on her guard, answered evenly enough:

“You have no great regard for a people of these provinces, have you, Captain Tremble? Neither for rebels or Tories or women or children.”

“I could wish,” said Tremble with a quietness that chilled the girl’s blood, “that everything pertaining to the provinces had never existed. I could wish to see it all in ashes—a desert—back to the red Indian.” He bowed again, without offering pardon, and pointed toward the fire. “I had wondered if that cider—”

“It is quite ready,” said she, putting her sewing aside and rising. She drew out a mug and handed it to Tremble. “I offer this to you, Captain, with better grace than to return your compliments.”

His thin lips pressed to an even finer line.

“I never dissemble my feelings,” said he and blew into the hot drink.

He was not destined to taste it. The door burst open again and a very frozen aide came into the room, speaking to Tremble!

“The colonel’s wish, sir, is that you will turn out your company and scour the city. The spy has come to life—bursting out of a dungeon on the Whitby and leaping into the river.”

Tremble set the mug on the floor, transfixed the courier with a steely gaze and thundered:

“On the Whitby? Ye mean to stand there and tell me they’ve kept the rascal concealed from the gallows? I inspected that ship two days ago!”

“You know the commander of this ship, sir. And the quality of the dungeon.”

“Thought to kill him by a more eventful way, eh? By gad, there is too much of private vengeance going on in this army! And now he’s loose once more! Well, I’ll find him if I must wreck every house in the town. And when that’s accomplished I’ll see to it the fine gentleman in charge of the Whitby is kicked out of the king’s service! Bunch—Osbaldeston—come with me!”

He stalked into the hallway with something very near predatory joy on his face. Bunch, cowed by the captain’s manner, followed humbly after, casting a last beseeching glance at the girl who sat still, unmindful of her needlework. But Osbaldeston kept his place, turned dogged. Tremble, ready to go, found him tarrying and sent a more peremptory challenge at the young man.

“Osbaldeston! D’ye hear my command?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Osbaldeston, “but I’m not of your company and therefore not under your immediate command.”

“D’ye mean to disobey?” shouted Tremble, advancing a step.

“I obey such as have direct authority over me,” replied Osbaldeston stubbornly. “But y’re not my company commander and this is my free night. I’m within my rights, sir, and you well know it.”

Tremble’s hand went to his sword and it seemed as if he meant to force the subaltern from the room at the point of the blade; then his features resumed their noncommittal cast and he retreated, flinging a warning over his shoulder:

“Very well, sir. I shall see you properly scorched, when this affair is over. Bunch? Why’re you rooted there, a-gaping? Out, man!”

The door slammed and Osbaldeston was left alone with Jane Welch, a great deal disturbed, but sticking manfully to his contention.

“He’s a born devil,” muttered the ensign. “Maybe I’d gone without a fuss if he’d not played the boor to you.”

“You have upset the will of a dangerous man,” warned the girl. “He will give you trouble.”

“I’m not sure. My captain bears a vile hate toward the martinet; if it’s to be a court, I’m bound to have plenty of friends.”

She returned to her work and, thus screened of countenance, asked a question—

“When the messenger spoke of the dungeon—of private vengeance—what did he mean?”

Osbaldeston squirmed.

“Some things are better unsaid.”

“And as long as I have been here I have not heard about it. It must be a silent conspiracy among you. I should like to know.”

Osbaldeston scowled.

“You’ll find some officers who don’t approve—and I’m of that party. The simple fact is, Miss Jane, there’s some foul holes on the Whitby where a man can be put in solitary until he dies. ’Tis at the discretion of the prison ship commander. Perhaps this spy was unruly—he did seem a stubborn fellow—and they chucked him down in such. I wouldn’t doubt but what he had a hand in the last prisoners’ break.”

“Ah,” said the girl, and began to sew furiously.

Osbaldeston, having spoken more in the preceding quarter hour than during a whole week, subsided, staring into the flames. Outside, the wind began to carry toward them sounds of the freshened pursuit. A section went by at the double, boots making a great deal of racket in the night. A rifle sounded elsewhere, the first false alarm of several to follow as the evening went on. And at each such shot the girl flinched until at last she had to get up and move toward the window. A troop of horse passed the street on the gallop.

“What are they doing?” she demanded impatiently. “Do they need to send the whole army to scout for a single man? La, it seems ridiculous.”

Osbaldeston looked surprized.

“Now, Miss Jane, I shouldn’t let your sympathy carry you away. He’s but a spy and he knew the odds when he took up the game.” Then, with a quiet boyish frankness he added, “Perhaps it ain’t fair, exactly, to harry a creature—but would you ever call war fair? Oh, I’m no fire-eater and, between you and me, I’d as soon they’d give the rebels terms and call it quits.”

She made a great effort at controlling herself and resumed her seat. Hardly had she done so when an elderly housemaid came through from the kitchen. She knelt at the fire and put on a fresh log; then, taking up the mug of cider so recently abandoned by Captain Tremble, she shot a glance at Osbaldeston, who was turned a little away with his face to the flames and his mind somewhere in merry England, then with a swift motion of her finger, caught the attention of Jane Welch. She was a dark, sharp-faced woman and at this particular moment her eyes rolled with unwonted agitation, rising and falling to convey a wordless message. Her head bobbed forward, indicating the rear of the house, after which she went back through the door and closed it with a telltale slam.

Jane Welch’s needle poised, and of a sudden she uttered a small, disappointed “La!” and turned a vexed brow on Osbaldeston, who emerged from his reverie.

“What?” he asked.

“I had meant to get three yards of good sagathy cloth this very afternoon from the mercer—and I forgot. Well, the evening’s wasted now. If I but had it—”

Osbaldeston was instantly on his feet. “’Twould be only pleasure for me to get it, Miss Jane. The mercer at the corner?”

“No, the mercer farther down—on Beaver Street. I am ashamed to send you on such a night and mayhap the shop will be closed.”

He was already struggling into his cloak and half-way to the door, a pathetically eager young man scarcely beyond the school age—a subaltern who found little to please him in the swashbuckle of the military.

“If the fellow’s not open I’ll soon enough bring him ’round,” he assured her and ducked into the turbulent night.

The girl sprang up as the latch of the door fell and hurried to the kitchen where the housemaid awaited, out of breath, eyes wide with excitement.

“Oh, laws—laws! Missy Jane, he’s in the shed, half dead and the clothes on him no less’n so much ice! Laws, what will we do?”

She wrung her hands and plucked at the younger girl’s shawl. Jane Welch drew in her breath.

“He lives then? Oh, how kind is life! Sally, don’t wring your hands so! Bolt the front door and close the hall door. Hurry! I’ll help him in while you watch! He must go in my room—’tis the safest! Don’t stand there so cravenly—run!”

She pushed the woman away with both hands and then, pulling the shawl about her, went through the back door, crossing a windy yard and coming to a stone house. It was very dark and very cold and when she got into the shed she heard the short, uneven breathing of a man badly shaken. She struck his foot and instantly she was crouched beside him, her white hands crossing his face and feeling his body tremble uncontrollably. It was as the maid had said; his clothing was like so much ice armor and his hair was beginning to freeze together. Water dripped from every part of his clothing.

“Oh, my poor boy! Come, can you raise yourself a little? Here’s my arm. You are shaking terribly! Make one effort—Jeffry. One big effort. Are you past it?”

“In—in the house? No. Bad for you. Get me a blanket—and—let me lie!”

“And perish! Come up!”

He made the effort and fell back; but it served to send the blood into chilled members and with her arm beneath him he finally got to his feet. Steadying him, she led the way out of the shed and to the house. Once in the kitchen it was easier, but when the light fell on his haggard, bloodless countenance she checked a cry.

It looked as if he had been cruelly beaten. Long welts lay across his cheeks and blood was still caked in his hair, even though he had crossed a river. He looked tired, tired beyond the power to tell, and there were lines on his face that had never been there a short three days ago. The prison ship had left its mark.

But it passed belief that he had succeeded in coming away at all.

The girl, guiding his feet upstairs, could hear his heart beating slow and hard. Coming to her bedroom door, she threw it open and as quickly shut it.

Peale swayed a little and then without any great expense of effort, walked to the bed and sank down. The maid put her head in the room and was dispatched on an errand.

“The wine, Sally, and a plate of that fowl we had for supper. Bring hot water. Leave the door bolted. If the ensign must knock we’ll say we had become afraid.”

Peale looked up at her, speaking easier.

“My lady, they had about run me down. ’Tis strange how a man’s mind will stay clear while muscles grow dead and the heart falters. I saw myself die, tonight—and yet here I am. ’Tis not so bad as I had thought, for I feel a little life coming back.”

“You have gone through more than you can forget,” said she. “The mark is on you.”

He moved his hand.

“Oh, that will fade. In another hour I shall be fit. Where a man is sound, his muscles soon come back.”

She went over and knelt by the fire, stirring it up with fresh wood.

“I have heard rumors about the prison ship—all unpleasant. They spoke of a dungeon. Were you in it? How did you get out?”

“The ship’s commander,” replied Peale, with a very faint trace of humor, “had his own notions of torture. I failed of one escape and so was put away with the rats, knee high in bilge-water and nothing but bran and water once a day. They thought they had me broke, but the guard who fed me tonight at dusk was a careless rascal and I surprized him and hauled him into the hold after me. A simple thing then to dive over and swim.

“I had not figured the water to be so cold. It cuts like a knife. Once ashore I was hemmed in and this was the only shelter I knew. I thought to get that list from you and make my way out. But the candle must have been rather low, for when I knocked on your back door and regained the shed it seemed to flicker.”

She had remained crouched by the fire, hands interlaced.

“So easy to say—and still—with all the black world about you and your marrow frozen—oh, Jeffry Peale, why is it you still remain doubtful of yourself?”

“Eh? And how could you know that?”

“Plain—so very plain.”

She meant to say more, but the maid slipped into the room with a tray of food. Peale rose from the bed and walked unsteadily to the fire, choosing a chair. The girl went out, without comment, and after quite some interval returned with an arm freighted with a man’s suit.

“Your own must be gotten off quickly. Here is what my father once wore. ’Twill be small, but it’s only makeshift until your own dries.”

“Give me an hour,” said he, “and I will be gone.”

Jane Welch looked troubled.

“I could wish to believe it. But you don’t know Captain Tremble. He has raised half the army in search. La! That’s Ensign Osbaldeston rattling at the door, Sally. Go down and let him in. I shall be there in one moment.”

“Come,” grumbled Peale, “I’ll not be caught here. ’Twould mean your betrayal.”

“Rest awhile and I’ll hear what’s being said. As for betrayal—I fear but one man.”

“Who is that?” demanded Peale with a show of concern.

Jane Welch noted his manner and dropped her eyes.

“Captain Tremble. But never mind. Eat and change your suit and rest. I’ll be back after a bit and tell you the news.”

He turned in his chair and watched her. As she closed the door she met his glance and saw there again the recurrence of that wistfulness which had so strongly marked him out from all others. She treaded the stairs and came upon Osbaldeston holding a package.

“Terribly long time,” he apologized, “but I had to read the mercer out of bed and lecture him on the duties of a tradesman.”

She took the package with a brilliant smile and reduced him to speechlessness with one short compliment.

“You are a most obliging gentleman.”

There was a commotion outside and a sharp command. Dispersed soldiers ran for barracks and presently Tremble stamped in the house, a glum, bitter-mouthed figure.

“Luck, Captain?” she asked.

He warmed his hands at the blaze.

“He’s in the city—that’s certain. And I’ll wager my commission he’ll never get out after such guards as I’ve posted. The lines are doubled. Oh, I’ll run him down! If day comes and he’s not taken I’ll make very short work of it with other means.”

She folded her hands, smiling gently.

“It is no light matter to cross the power of a captain in his majesty’s army, is it, sir?”

He favored her with a sharp glance and broke out, suddenly—

“Why don’t you ask me what means I intend to use?”

“Why, sir, to what purpose? I am not interested.”

He started for the stairs.

“No? Ah, madam, I doubt that. You are a very clever woman. But then all women are clever.”

And with this shot he climbed upward. Osbaldeston glowered. Jane Welch collected her things and nodded at the clock.

“I shall follow his example. Good night, sir.”

She summoned the maid with a glance. Together they climbed the stairway and passed into the room.

Jeffry Peale had made the change of clothing and was warming himself. Raising a warning finger, the girl moved over and spoke in very low tones.

“You can not go tonight. Captain Tremble has the whole city guarded. It would be death to try. You must sleep in this room.”

Peale shook his head.

“But it’s your room, my lady.”

She pointed toward the other end of the place where a second bed rested in the shadows.

“Sally and I will sleep there. No, you must be quiet. Captain Tremble would see or hear any change we made. Sally, blow out the candles.”

The maid obeyed and the room was plunged in entire darkness, save as the flames in the fireplace made a small yellow pool of light against the wall. At the end of the hall Peale heard a door close cautiously. It was Tremble’s door.

VI — A LIGHT IN THE STORM

He slept deeply, and perhaps that was why he thought he had been in bed but a few minutes when he was awakened by a sound. The room was deserted, a fire burned cheerfully on the hearth and through the windows came a dim light like that of the hour before dawn. Throwing aside a quilt, he crossed the room—still dressed in the misfit suit—and looked out of the curtains. People moved in the street and soldiers filed by; overhead the clouds were particularly dense and momentarily growing blacker. It was so still that he heard quite plainly the voices of children around the corner and the click of feet on the cobbles. On looking at his watch he was astonished to find it almost noon.

His long abused body had taken opportunity to recoup its vitality, and while he slumbered the night and the day had rolled on and the storm had changed tactics, recalling the cavalry of the east wind and massing all the artillery of the sky.

There was a light tapping at the door, and on his summons Jane Welch slid quietly through bearing a tray. There was food in sight and, what excited Peale’s attention, a brace of dueling pistols. The girl put the tray on the bed and lifted a cautioning finger. On coming closer he saw her face had assumed a deep concern.

“The city’s been scoured all day,” she said in a low voice. “You’ve never heard of a wilder search. Five poor people in gaol as suspects and thrice some one shot at, being mistaken for you.”

“And what are the pistols for?” he asked, watching her pour coffee.

“Bring up a chair, Jeffry, and eat. I am beginning to be afraid for you. Last night you couldn’t have gone on. You were dead tired and the guards were double-posted, with every man on the street being stopped to explain himself. Today is your only chance, and it must be soon. Captain Tremble left ten minutes ago to bring back hounds from a farm up the island.”

Peale lowered his cup.

“I’m to be treed with dogs, then?”

“But you have two or three good hours. It will take him that long to fetch them.”

A sense of the danger—which he had before considered—came back to him fourfold.

“My lady, I should not have come. But my memory failed me as to the exact figures in that dossier you gave me to study. I meant to get it and go on. But I must’ve overguessed my strength, for when I reached the shed I could do no more than to make a small noise and give way. I had never considered they would use dogs—had not thought dogs would be available hereabouts.”

“You can’t harm me. They will carry the scent to the stone shed and no farther. Sally spread pepper between there and the house and even now is scrubbing the floor and the hall stairs. I am safe. And it will rain soon.”

“Nevertheless the trail comes into the yard. That will be enough to put a suspicion into men’s minds. Into Tremble’s above all else.”

“They may suspect—but they can prove nothing,” she returned stoutly.

“You are brave—very brave. I sometimes wonder how you manage all the louts who come storming into your house.”

A slight shadow came over her face.

“Sometimes—not often—but sometimes a man of ill-breeding presumes on decency. There is one below now. A friend of Captain Tremble, evidently, for they sat beside the fire, head to head, and spoke very low for better than a half-hour. He dresses like a gentleman but is none.”

“Then he does not keep his place?” demanded Peale, deserting his cakes and standing before her.

Her eyes flashed. She had touched a spark to tinder and the knowledge made the rich color come to her face, visible even in the darkened room.

“La, why do I worry you with my poor affairs? You must put your mind to getting away from here. These pistols may help you. And here in the closet is a sword of my father’s.”

She rummaged among clothes and brought it out, the scabbard gleaming in the fire-light. Peale glanced through the window to the ever blackening sky. One drop of rain splashed on the glass; in the street lights were twinkling, though it was past noon.

“While they look for me in every back alley I shall try a bolder way. What I need is an officer’s suit that will fit and the list of troops you have. Is the house clear?”

“Save for this stranger.”

“Go down and bolt the door and come back.”

He heard her descend and presently, listening through the aperture of the portal, made out the wheedling, strangely familiar voice of a man. Jane Welch answered in curt monosyllables, at which the stranger’s manner grew louder, more persistent. Peale closed the door with a feeling of impotent anger and crossed to the window.

The sky was a mottled black; far off to the north he saw a pale blue streak. Of a sudden lightning flashed and printed a vivid sprawling track across his brain which lasted long after its disappearance. In a moment a clap of thunder shook the town and sent its echoes thunderously back and forth. There was a moment’s lull in which he heard a wind rushing through the street and the first small patter of rain. Then a second, more overwhelming flash lighted the buildings and streets in an intense electric glare and heralded a sound as of the heavens falling in. The windows rattled and the flames shot from the hearth into the room, scattering ashes.

He heard the door open and swung around. There, faintly illumined by the fire, he saw a man’s arm encircling Jane Welch and a man’s face bending forward in a vain effort to catch her evading lips. Her arms flailed at his chest and she spoke with a gusty passionate anger.

“Drop your arms, you swine!”

It was too dark to make out the character of the fellow. Peale seized the sword on the mantel and strode forward, feeling the blood rush toward his head.

“Step away or you are a dead man!”

The intruder sprang back and his hand went to the gentleman’s blade at his side. Peale, peering at the blur of his face, had an uncomfortable memory flash into his head and elude him. Precisely at the moment the whole room was made day-bright by another of those transitory streaks of lightning and he recoiled as a man does from the sight of horror.

The intruder was Priam Lafferty—the same bulky, uneven comrade of the Morristown camp-fires. The same Priam with the lust of pleasure in his eyes. Out of that moment came Jeffry Peale’s cry of detestation—

“Oh, you —— decoy duck!”

“Ha! So here you are! Tremble said ye’d been abroad. Well, my fine lad, your meat is burnt now. I shall have the pleasure—”

“You scurvy traitor!” cried Peale. “D’you stand there and feel like a man? Why, you dog, you should be hiding your face! And to top it y’ pursue a woman! Gad!”

“The trull was not backward about bein’ pleasant—”

“Stop! ’Tis always been your abominable conceit that all women were forward. Another word about it and I’ll slit your heart!”

“Well, cockatoo, d’ye want to test blades?”

Peale turned from flame to ice. Silence fell across the room like a blanket and he saw in one tragic picture the course of his friendship with Priam Lafferty from boyhood up. And where before he had always denied Priam’s weakness he recalled now the odds and ends of pettiness, the bullying spirit, the avid search of pleasure. They led step by step to the present treachery. He bowed toward the girl and said evenly—

“My lady, if you will go outside and close the door.”

In the following flash of lightning he saw her body swaying and her face turned on him, pale and concerned. Then it was dark and she had vanished.

He took a grip on the sword and shook it in his wrist, observing Lafferty’s shoulders loom larger and hearing the man’s mocking voice.

“It irks your straight-laced mind to find me turnin’ politics, don’t it? Why, —— you, Jeff, I’ve played false to the army almost a year! And I’m not ashamed! What’s the use of sufferin’ for nothin’? Bah, I’ll be a man of consequence, drinkin’ my wine long after you’re dead and the army beaten. ’Tis only little intellects that abominate a change o’ side. As for me, I am pliant and to show you how I cherish my new allegiance I shall spit you nicely and render you up to Captain Tremble.”

“That,” replied Peale without emotion, “reveals the heart of a jackal.”

“—— you!” shouted Lafferty. “Up blade! Y’ve always assumed a superior air to me! Gad, but I’ve endured it for the last time! Up blade! At you!”

Peale was silhouetted, his back to the fire; out of the darkness he saw Lafferty’s blade sweep, a flash of yellow running from tip to guard. His own weapon sang gaily and they were at grips.

Lafferty pressed; always he pressed. It was his temper, a temper that fitted well with any kind of conflict, growing hotter, stronger, more violent as the contest endured, with a small core of shrewdness within all this heat to preserve him from that blindness which usually rises of rage.

Peale gave way, feeling the opposite blade slide in and out with gathering strength. This was a tide he did not feel able to stem. Let Priam wear himself out. Parry, lunge, parry! The shuffling of feet across and around the floor. The click and rattle of steel on steel, overborne by the thunder and the fury of the rain just bursting about the house.

In the lightning he saw Priam’s jaws set as they had never been before and the frenzy of combat blazing in his eyes. Darkness again. Parry—lunge! That time the man was halted. Priam who took defeat badly and stooped to conquer by trickery. Trickery! He must watch that.

Priam’s voice taunted across the whining blades.

“You’re strong, Jeff, but I’ll wear ye down! Remember, I’ve done it before!” His own breath rose and fell in great sweeps and when they fought close to the fire-light his cheeks glistened with beads of sweat. Lunge! And this was the Priam so careless of his courtesies with Jane Welch. Power came to Jeffry’s tiring arm. Here was a time to press! His blade ripped into substance and across the small space he heard Priam gasp.

“Done! Oh, by God, I’m done, Jeff!”

Peale halted, blade outstretched, seeing Lafferty’s figure sag; if the man was done, why didn’t that sword arm drop. Treachery! He leaped, hearing Priam’s point penetrate his sleeve. His voice, remote from his body, spoke.

“Now I know I shall kill you, Priam. Stand fast, you dog, and meet my point!”

His arm was made of lead. It was suffocatingly hot and his neck-piece choked him. On blade! Thank God it stormed outside, that men might not hear! He saw the bulky figure shift in front of him and followed. Once more they circled and then he felt the weapon opposed him begin to tremble. Press!

Above the elements that clash of metal sounded and stopped. It was done! Priam Lafferty had got his pay. He stood, an uncertain figure with a face that, in the ensuing flash, was quite disturbed, drenched in sweat. The man’s blade fell with a clatter and he began to sag, going upon his knees as if he meant to pray. Then he collapsed and the floor sounded under his bulk.

“—— you—Jeff—you beat me—this time!”

The door burst open and the girl ran through. Jeffry Peale dashed the perspiration from his brow and relaxed his aching muscles. Into his head came the most pressing thought.

“Now, my lady, your usefulness here is at end! You must come away with me!”

“Thank the Lord—oh, thank the Lord!”

By the light Jeffry saw again that wide-eyed emotion so inexplicable to him. He stepped away and ran an eye down the length of his blade to where the tip showed crimson in the yellow rays. He sheathed it and went to the girl.

“Come, we’ve got to be moving. Yourself and your maid. Is there a shelter you can find outside the lines?”

“My maid need not stir beyond the city. She has particular friends here. Once I give her the word she will disappear as if the earth had swallowed her. ’Tis her own secret.”

“And you?”

She studied him for several moments, speaking at last in a subdued voice.

“I have friends beyond the Passaic.”

“No nearer?” He shook his head. “My dear girl, d’ye mean you must travel back through all this weather with me? ’Twill be a hard trip. Have you no nearer friends?”

“I am sturdy,” said she, almost meekly. “I can stand hard travel.”

“Then we go. Haste! Company may burst in any moment. I must get a uniform.” He caught up a candle and lighted it in the fire.

“Come, Ensign Osbaldeston is nearly as tall. This room—next Captain Tremble’s.”

He stood in the hall and issued swift directions.

“Have the maid get you a coach. Do you have the power to get beyond lines?”

“Oh, yes. It’s been my habit to go into the country every week for fresh vegetables. I have a pass.”

“Good! Then have the maid tell the stableman to bring around a horse. Wrap yourself well, meanwhile.”

He slipped into Osbaldeston’s room and crossed to the clothes closet. There were several uniforms hung on the wall, some of them rather splendid things for parade, even by candlelight. Without much hesitation he picked himself a plainer field-service suit and set about getting into it, speeded by the thought that at any moment officers might return to the house —and that Tremble was probably at this time returning with hounds. The hounds, he told himself, would be of little use after the torrent of rain.

Pulling on boots, he looked for a cloak and hat. With them he returned to the girl’s room, to find her standing ready, holding out a slip of paper to him. It was the list. He thrust on his cloak, buckled on the sword and pocketed the pistols.

“My lady, you are going to share rough fare.”

“I am not afraid—hush!”

She ran to the door and after a bit drew in the maid, dripping wet.

“’Tis ready, ma’am. And the driver bids ye come. The horse, sir, is behint.”

Peale nodded.

“Go ahead, my lady. Pass through the lines and have the coachman drive at a fair rate. I shall be coming behind.”

“If you meet a like officer,” she mused, “or the guard refuses you—”

“’Tis as dark as a cave out, and they would have to peer close. As for the guard—that will take care of itself.”

The girl bent forward and kissed the maid.

“Fend for yourself, Sally. After this war—”

Peale turned away, a little affected by the parting of the two. Presently he heard them go down and not long after the coach rolled away. It was time for his own adventure. With a last look at the dead Lafferty he left the room and passed down to the front door. Holding the cape tightly, he ducked out, to be met by a fierce, driving wind. A hostler stood at the steps, holding a restive horse. Without comment Peale sprang into the wet saddle.

“An’ who, sir, shall I s’y stan’s back o’ this?” asked the hostler.

“Put it to the account of Captain Tremble,” replied Peale and spurred the animal into the gale.

He followed the street for a short distance, seeing here and there a solitary passer-by and once overhauling a file of soldiers who bent their necks against the bitter rain. But he felt safe; the elements conspired to protect him, and with a degree of elation he turned into a side alley and came presently to the guard where he was brought to a halt by a sentry’s sharp challenge. He came abreast the man and leaned down.

“Have you seen a coach roll by the past few minutes?”

The guard, seeing the boots and the binding on the hat, spoke respectfully.

“Yes sir. Not five minutes ago. Your pass—”

“——!” shouted Peale. “Why did you let it get through?”

“The lady showed a pass,” replied the sentry. “’Tis common for her to go out in the country, though I can’t see why she should choose this day. Your pass—”

“Damnation!” exclaimed Peale. “You made a mistake! The pass was forged! That coach must come back!” And, without further parley he put a spur to his horse and dashed onward. He half expected to have a bullet sent after him; but as the semi-darkness took him under cover no rifle report sounded in his ears and finally, looking back, he saw the sentry standing in the roadway, an indistinct, uncertain figure. His ruse had worked.

“’Tis the same as has been done by reckless officers on our own lines,” he muttered. “The British guard is no less gullible than the American.”

He urged his mount to as fast a pace as the rutted, unreliable road would allow, expecting at every bend to catch a view of the coach. It had gone on at a better rate than expected, and with some small concern he began to count the odds yet ahead of them. The road was patrolled at intervals by outguards and dragoons, and sooner or later he must encounter one or the other unless he turned aside.

Thus thinking, he found himself thrust without warning into the jaws of a trap. Riders loomed not twenty yards away—four of them—and in another five paces he saw a pack of dogs being led behind. This was Tremble returning home!

He jammed his hat farther on his head and rode boldly up to the group, giving way to the side of the highway. The rain was falling in torrents and the wind fairly drove his breath into his lungs. By the half-light he saw the riders straighten and turn toward him; and by viewing the size of their figures he picked upon the slight one on the far side as being Tremble.

The near man drew up as if to talk. Peale shouted a meaningless phrase into the teeth of the wind, pointed and kept on. The other man tarried, then gave his horse the rein. They forged southward and soon were lost. And at the next turn Peale saw the lumbering coach making hard progress in the mud.

Coming abreast the driver, he held up his hand and motioned to the side of the road. When the driver hesitated, Peale drew his sword and at that the horses swerved and the coach wheels, reaching the soft shoulder, sank deep and were stuck. Jane Welch put her head out of the door; Peale rode alongside, threw back the latch and opened it.

“Your arm!” said he.

She understood. Balancing herself on the coach step, she gave her arm and in a moment had swung outward and was sitting in front of Peale. He hesitated one moment, debating as to the coachman. But it was dark and the storm seemed in no way abating. Pursuit could not be particularly dangerous in the next hour. And so he forgot the man and drove his mount off the road and through the brush.

There was a field ahead and this he took, traveling at the best speed possible. They were met by a fence which they skirted for fifty yards before finding a gap. The storm pounded them on all quarters, ceaseless, stinging in its force. Southward the thunder muttered, following the less frequent flashes of lightning. Out of this turbulence they saw the winking of a light, toward which the girl pointed.

“That’s Tory—I know them!” said she, raising her voice against the wind. “You had better go around it.”

He nodded and guided the horse into a ditch swollen with water. The ground rose sharply and fell away with equal abruptness. In front of them was the Hudson, a river of strength always, and now whipped and lashed by the gale sweeping through the gorge. They had a view of the immediate stretch out from the shore and could see the waves driving in upon the gravel. The girl turned a wondering face to him.

“Where are we going?”

He stopped the horse and slid off, offering her his arm. Once on the ground, he pointed directly beneath them. There, drawn beyond the water’s reach, was an overturned boat and beside it lay a pair of oars.

“Fortune is with us! There is your Tory’s skiff. I had expected to look farther. Here is our escape from Manhattan Isle.”

It was not much more than an hour later when the sodden afternoon was giving way to a premature night. Captain Tremble stood before the general with the look of a man bitterly disappointed. His usually severe face was even darker and his lips were nothing more than sharp edges.

“Give me leave to observe, sir, that I have never approved the freedom allowed suspicious characters within this city. It is here proved. This Jane Welch well duped us.”

The general frowned.

“She bore excellent character, Mr. Tremble.”

“I did not believe it and had I been given the support of any officer at all I should have searched that house last night. But, knowing the general infatuation for the girl—”

“Tut, sir,” broke in the general testily. “We can not all have your penetration of mind.”

The captain drew himself up rather stiffly.

“I do not mean to call any officer’s ability into question.”

“But,” continued the general, “this girl and this spy must be overtaken. ’Tis a most flagrant flouting of his majesty’s forces. I want them back here to suffer their fate. The coachman said they turned to the left, riverward. And now comes the word from Mr. Symmes that his boat is missing. There’s a piece of addition for ye.”

“Give me twenty horse and I shall bring them back,” said Tremble.

“Get your dinner, sir, and I shall have a barge to put you over the river with an order on the dragoons stationed there.”

“Let me disregard the dinner, sir. The sooner started the better.”

The general favored him with an extraordinarily long glance and then reached for quill and paper.

“You live well up to your reputation. I believe you will get them.”

“There can be no question of that,” answered Tremble coldly. “I make it a matter of personal honor. They will not dupe me again.”

VII — BLIND MAN’S BUFF

They crouched beneath the shelter of an oak, watching the glint of a farm house light some hundred yards away. Both were drenched, for the passage of the river was a tempestuous affair and the unchecked wind drove the raindrops through their clothes like so many knives. The ascent of the palisades on the western side was almost as difficult, and they wandered like lost children until a rugged pathway presented itself in the ever blackening night.

Overhead the tree branches cracked ominously, and now and again a weaker member came dashing down. The girl stood beside the trunk of the oak, shielded thus and by Peale’s body.

“There is our next point of attack,” he decided, indicating the farm light. “Give me your hand. I believe I can make out a path ahead.”

“The rain is slacking, or else the wind’s dying.”

It seemed so, for as they stumbled toward the beacon the wind ripped less gustily across the parapets of the palisades. Peale waded boot-high through grass and came to a very muddy yard—the yard between barn and house most probably. Going onward at a sedate pace, he listened for dogs, blessing the tumult of the evening as he did so.

The light was of a sudden cut off from their view; passing onward, they again met it and stopped. The door of the place was directly in front of them. Peale left the girl with a whisper and advanced to the adjoining window. Between the drapes he had a view of a man sitting alone before the kitchen blaze, head bowed a little and lips moving soundlessly over the passages of a book. He was well past middle age, as evidenced from his very gray hair, and he seemed to be quite settled of conscience, else he would have closed his shutters long ago. Peale, sweeping the place with a curious eye, returned to the girl and led her to the door, rapping vigorously on the panels.

It came wide open after a brief moment. The farmer stood across the threshold, holding a candle high and shielding it with a palm. Before either of them could say so much as an apology he was speaking gravely.

“Come in to the fire.”

The fugitives passed through to the kitchen while their host shot the door’s bolt. Peale reached for the girl’s cloak and held it near the fire; water began to puddle on the stones. The farmer removed the book he had been reading from the chair—Peale saw it to be the Bible—and beckoned the girl to sit.

“Drenchin’ wet, the both o’ ye. Let me knock up a stronger blaze. ’Tis well I let the coffee kettle simmer. Nawt a minute now an’ y’ll both have a hot drink o’ it.”

It struck Peale a little odd. He noted that when he removed his own cloak the farmer gave the British uniform but one short glance, after which his placid face changed not a whit. Certainly he was either a bold man or a very discreet one. At any rate, he poked the fire and presently had poured them both coffee, well mixed with cream.

“Sugar,” said he, offering the drink, “I can’t offer ye—and well ye should know why, with both armies payin’ its weight a’most in gold. Anyhow, it’ll sarve to keep off the chills. My lady, y’d best draw a little closer to the heat.”

“You are very obliging,” remarked Peale. “One would think we were expected.”

“Ain’t it the Lord’s command to entertain strangers?”

“Tory and rebel alike?” parried Peale.

The farmer’s mild face set in rather resolute lines.

“That’s a distinction the Bible knows nawthin’ about.”

“I vow,” said Peale, “but you are a strange gentleman. Do you not run the risk of being called easy in politics?”

“Easy?” The farmer’s temper was roused. “Nawt a bit of it! I have politics a-plenty. Reckon I could ask the same o’ ye.”

“You see the uniform,” replied Peale, pointing to his borrowed regimentals.

“Eh! What of it? Is it likely a British officer would be flounderin’ around this unsettled country in the dark o’ night—an’ afoot?”

“Then let’s consider the other side of the case,” said Peale. This mild looking farmer was a great deal shrewder than first appearance indicated. “If my politics are doubtful it is the same with most Jersey civilians.”

“True enough,” agreed the farmer. “An’ why? Because, friend, we’re harried first by one side, then t’other. Never a sure day do we know, nor a peaceful night do we own. ’Tis all right for the soldier inside his camp to speak ill of the citizen for not holdin’ a faster allegiance. Put yourself in between fire for a month and y’ll see the reason we seem fickle.”

“To come to business,” said Peale, “have you got a team and wagon?”

The farmer hesitated, then with some reluctance admitted he had.

“We need it,” continued Peale, “with you to guide us. We must put ourselves well to westward before daylight.”

It was not a pleasant prospect for the farmer and he mulled it over in his mind at great length, finally coming to a mild dissent. The weather was vile, the streams they had to cross were badly swollen and at any juncture they might be taken up by partisan troops.

“You see,” broke in Peale with a trace of irony, “I am discovering your politics after all. As for discomfort and danger, look you to this lady. Are you less able to share such adventures than she? If you are a patriot, you will go of your own free will. But if you are comfortably Tory then I must confess I’ll have to induce you with other weapons than persuasion.”

The farmer shrugged his shoulders.

“If ye put it thataway, I’m your man. We’ll hitch up. Ma’am, I’m a widower. If y’ll go into the bedroom and raise the chest cover y’ll find all my ol’ woman’s clothes. Better put on suthin’ warm.”

Peale accompanied him to the barn and held the lantern while the team was hitched.

Some twenty minutes later they were traveling over a black, uncertain road toward the Hackensack River. It was nothing more than a flat, springless farm wagon, uncomfortable in every respect and open to the steady fall of rain which now came straight down out of the sky. Peale and the farmer sat in the seat; behind and below this a place had been made for the girl, shielded by their bodies and wrapped in a piece of ship’s canvas.

Peale held a well shrouded lantern for emergencies.

“Bear off to the right,” he directed. “’Tis not discretion to take the road through Bergen or New Ark.”

“So I’m to travel every cow path an’ git stuck in every mire?” grumbled the farmer. “Well, y’ll not make great progress.”

“Bear off.”

The farmer had some confidence the first few miles and they jolted away from the Hudson at a brisk pace. Peale lost sense of time; the night turned to a more impenetrable black, the water sluiced about them. Nothing was said, save that at long intervals the farmer urged his horse on with a “G’yup, Leader—Pull, —— ye, Prince.”

And after what appeared to be six miles, but could not have been much more than three, he halted the team and clambered down from the seat with a very brief comment.

“Hackensack.” He vanished beyond for some minutes, reappearing with a word of encouragement. “Luck’s with ye, my boy. Tide’s out an’ the ford won’t be so bad. Ma’am if you don’t want to git wetter—”

Peale abandoned the seat and lifted the girl into it. The farmer set the brakes; they slid down a sharp embankment, wheels skidding. Water muttered through the spokes and as the driver released the brakes he began to berate the horses:

“G’yup—Prince—Leader! Tarnation ain’t ye ever been in water afore? G’yup!”

The river slapped the wagon bed and surrounded Peale’s boots. They were swung downstream, team and all. The farmer, unmindful of his company, swore roundly and lashed out with his whip. Perched thus between defeat and victory, the horses struck a sand bar and dug in. The wagon came to a halt that very nearly knocked all of them into the water. The whip lashed again and then they were splashing to the shore. They climbed the far bank and once more settled to a steady gait.

“Dangerous chances ye take by keepin’ to the back roads,” warned the farmer. “That ford now—we made it by no more’n a lick an’ a promise.”

“’Tis plenty. We got across,” replied Peale quite simply.

In something less than an hour they reached the Passaic; here a very rude bridge spanned the stream, the work of the near-by settlers. They crossed gingerly, feeling the rush of current sway the whole structure. Once beyond, Peale was offered the choice of a main highway to Morristown or a lesser road that swung south. He chose the latter and they jolted onward, silence settling.

They had now entered a land of great uncertainty, situated between the outposts of both armies and belonging to neither. Each week saw some raid, British or American; no man knew just when a company of dragoons might swoop down, confiscate a few supplies, overturn a wagon train and dash back for shelter. And when hoofs drummed in the distance it was always uncertain until the party came to view which side was to present itself. The inhabitants, accustomed to these swift, unexpected forays, had long past learned to conceal all livestock and all grain; and they hid their true allegiance behind countenances either artful or suspicious.

It was a strip of territory full of peril for the fugitives. At no place, short of their own outguards, could they show their faces without the risk of betrayal. They could count on absolutely no help, and at every hint of traffic on the roads, were under the necessity of hiding.

Jeffry Peale grew more and more apprehensive as the night wore on and the wagon made increasingly poor progress over the abominable highways. The farther they went, the greater appeared the farmer’s caution. Perhaps two hours beyond the crossing of the Passaic he stopped his wagon and crawled down, taking the lantern with him. When he returned from a short reconnaissance of the road he offered Peale another choice of directions.

“Reached the hills. If ye go on straight it’s nigh fifteen miles to Morristown, with the Passaic to cross again. Er ye can branch south to’rd Springfield. What’s in yer mind?”

“South. My destination’s—” Peale was about to announce the location of his brigade’s headquarters, but checked himself. It helped nothing to give the man his true course. So he contented himself with repeating. “Turn south. And press the team a little faster. We’ve made poor progress the last hour.”

“Nawt a bit d’ye think o’ the team,” grumbled the farmer.

“A great deal I think of them,” contradicted Peale. “But somewhat more of our own hides. Press on.”

They turned, the road if anything worse than that which they left, and the texture of the night as black as the bottom of a well. One comfort, indeed, came to them; the rain fell off and after another hour or so of miserable travel turned to a dense mist that hung suspended in the air. The farmer noted it with a prophecy. “I know this land right well. T’morrer the fog’ll be thick enough to cut with a knife. Won’t see a dozen steps in front o’ ye.”

Peale crawled from the seat and knelt beside Jane Welch.

“I can’t help but think of all the misery I have brought upon you.”

“Don’t. This is the sauce of a very uneventful life to me.”

“I wish I could believe it,” he muttered. “But it’s no weather to expose you to.”

“Ah, but Jeffry, I am strong. Do you know, I was raised on a farm and did all the chores a boy would do? La, I’m not afraid. Don’t vex yourself. Don’t think of me as a woman this night.”

“And how shall I think of you, then?”

“As—a comrade.”

“Well,” said he, speaking rather low, “I have thought of you in many ways—Jane.”

Several minutes later she began again.

“I see Captain Tremble’s face as clearly as if he stood before me.”

“And it’s a face that augurs no good to us,” replied Peale. “I sh’d be willing to wager my commission he’s abroad in the Jerseys this moment, not far from our trail.”

“Might he overtake us?”

“If we tarried too long in this contrivance. Are you at all warm?”

“Jeffry Peale, will you stop worrying about me?”

Nevertheless he tucked the tarpaulin around her and, feeling unusual pleasure at having done it, clambered back on the seat.

Thereafter there passed between the party not a dozen words in four or five hours. Once the farmer stopped his horses to give them a breathing spell and they sat still and frigid. In that dreariest of periods, just before daybreak, the driver began a vigorous complaint.

“Look ’ee now. Hain’t I gone fur enough to suit ye? A turrible hard trip it’s been—and I’ve got to do it all over again.”

Peale nodded in the darkness.

“Stop the team.” He vaulted to the road and was gone for better than five minutes. Presently his voice rose from the wagon side. “Your journey’s over. Give me your hand, Jane.”

He lifted her to the ground, hearing her catch a breath.

“My body seems to have gone asleep. Oh, it will pass.”

Peale spoke to the farmer.

“Sorry to say I haven’t a penny. If you will give me your name I shall see—”

“Nawt a bit o’ that,” replied the driver in a suppressed, emphatic voice. “I’ll have no name o’ mine harked about. I’m peaceful. Let it go.”

There was a rustle of cloth; the girl caught Peale’s fist and pressed some solid coin into it.

“Let the gentleman have it. We are very grateful.”

The farmer muttered a short thanks. With a great deal of caution and much murmuring at his team he got the wagon around. They heard it slushing off, unseen, and in a very short time even the echoes were lost in the night’s thick air.

“I pity the man,” confessed Peale. “But pity is a poor article for us to be spending now. Come, we’ve not far to go.”

“Within the lines?”

“No, not that good. I judge we’re something like five miles away. But there’s a farmhouse and barn a short distance off. I’ve been past it many times before.”

“Patriot?”

“Lord, a man can’t tell about politics in this region. No, I suspect the fellow is strongly Tory. It makes no difference. We are going to use his barn for a few hours.”

She was tired and, without knowing that she did it, leaned a little against him. They walked two or three hundred yards and entered a lane that brought them within hand’s reach of a barn before they were aware of it. Peale fumbled for the door catch; not finding it, he put his arms to the nearest aperture and brought the portal away from the wall sufficiently to admit the girl and himself.

It fell back into place with a small protest. They were within shelter again, and presently buried in hay, feeling the first comfortable warmth since leaving the house on the Hudson. It was just beginning to get light. Afar, a dog barked.

Captain Tremble stopped the troop at dawn and rode alone to the house door, leaning over to knock with the butt of his pistol. After a great deal of delay a head appeared out of the window.

“What ye want?”

“Have you seen a man and woman riding along this road—the man wearin’ British regimentals?”

“Nary,” answered the citizen, pulling a nightcap from his head. “But I heerd a wagon pass summat beyant midnight.”

“Going which way, sir?”

The citizen waved his hand westward. Tremble fixed his sharp eyes on the informer and inquired in a ringing voice—

“Are you loyal or rebel, sir?”

“As to that,” grumbled the citizen, “it ain’t none o’ your business. But I’m Tory, if it’ll ease ye any.”

“So?” sneered Tremble. “A blessed fickle lot all you Jerseymen are. I should not misdoubt greatly if ye harbored rebels yourself.”

“Yer privileged to come an’ look,” replied the citizen tartly, and withdrew from the window.

Tremble debated this course in his mind a moment. But the man had not seemed averse to inspection and so he turned away, loath to waste time.

Gaining the road, he led the troop onward at a rather rapid pace, considering the fact they had traveled very hard the past ten hours. Man and beast alike were coated with reddish mud and all were uncomfortably chilled. The fog pressed about them with increased density, seeming more like rain suspended in mid-air. Indeed, it was so thick that it burned their lungs. Two paces in front the highway vanished behind the gray, clammy wall.

Not much later Tremble burst through this wall and came unexpectedly upon a team and wagon greatly spattered with mud, the gray-haired driver half asleep in the seat. He came awake with a jump when Tremble issued a ringing “Halt!”

“Where, sir, have you been?” he demanded.

“Morristown,” replied the driver promptly.

It was the guide who had conducted Peale and Jane Welch so far during the previous night. But if he was alarmed at the sudden appearance of a British patrol he did not show it. Instead, he stretched himself and returned the captain’s fiercely antagonistic look with admirable serenity.

“Morristown!” thundered the captain. “Within the enemy’s lines, eh? Trafficking with the rebels at midnight! D’ye know I could hang you properly for that?”

“For a-goin’ to see my son who’s held prisoner there?” asked the farmer very mildly. “I’m a respectable subject o’ the king, mister, but I’ve noticed you gentlemen soldiers make little distinction between one side or t’other when it comes to plain citizens. Y’d as soon sack my house as the greatest rebel’s.”

“And so I would,” replied Tremble with the utmost frankness. “This —— country is a nest of snakes. Have ye seen a fugitive couple pass by? Man an’ woman—the man doubtless wearin’ British regimentals?”

The farmer shook his head.

“Nawt a bit.”

Tremble wasted no more time with him. Within the half-hour he had reached another house and had propounded the same query in a like tone of ferocity. No, the citizen had seen no such fugitives. But he had heard a wagon creak past not more than an hour or two ago, just before daylight, bound southward in the direction of American outposts. Tremble considered it at some length and finally turned to his sergeant.

“’Tis our game, I’ll lay ten guineas it is. Forward.”

And he put the weary troop to a very fast gait. He was at that moment not more than three miles from the two, and rapidly closing up the distance.

They had been comfortably swathed in the hay, Peale and Jane Welch, for twenty minutes or so, listening to the crunch of bovine teeth and the stamp of hoofs, when a small side door opened and a short, very stout farmer came in with a milk bucket. Peale had only to part the hay in front of him to command a perfect view, for he was directly above the mangers.

The farmer took a pitchfork and threw down a small amount of hay for each of the three cows in the barn and then did the like operation for a pair of sleek draft animals and one scrubby looking saddlenag. Peale cast a covetous eye on this last. With a great deal of caution he brought out a pistol and after letting the farmer milk the first cow, rose from the hay.

There was no need to issue warning. The farmer heard the noise above him and reared back quite frightened. Even before daring to cast his eyes upward to the mow, his free arm reached for a pitchfork. Then he found himself looking directly into the muzzle of a pistol.

“No racket, my friend,” said Peale. He helped the girl up—at which the farmer was frankly astonished—and together they slid to the flooring.

“’Tis most extraordinarily abrupt,” added Peale, “but unavoidable.”

“I’m a stout Tory,” broke in the farmer, noting the British uniform. “If yer runnin’ from the rebels, y’d better keep very low. There’s been a patrol established on this road, an’ it comes by every mornin’ early.”

“So? Well, we’ve had no breakfast and that milk looks—”

The farmer was willing enough to oblige his unbidden guests.

Peale took the bucket and tipped it up to the girl’s mouth, smiling. “I had never expected to offer you refreshment under these circumstances, Jane.”

“Is it not the unusual that people cherish?” she asked. She drank until want of breath stopped her; a drop of the milk clung to the tip of her nose. “La, I must look like the cat that forgot to clean his whiskers,” she added ruefully, and began to scrub her face with a handkerchief.

She was somewhat paler than usual and the long, disagreeable ride had left its mark in her eyes. Still, she had an answering smile for him. Woman-like she began to study herself and the sight of the hay clinging to her skirt was enough to set her to a furious cleaning.

The farmer eyed the both with a species of greediness.

“I’m a stout Tory,” he repeated, “but yer in dangerous country, friends. Washington’s had cavalry scourin’ the country a-main since Tuesday. Why, I vow I dunno. ’Tis but four odd miles to the outguards. ’Tain’t my business what yer after, sir; but for two gold crowns I’ll to’t they won’t find ye.”

“Have you gear for that sway-back nag?” demanded Peale. Then his eyes caught sight of bridle and saddle hanging on a peg. “Yes, I see you have. I shall be forced to ask the loan of it.”

“Ridin’ in broad day?” exclaimed the farmer. “Oh, no, sir. ’Tis folly! Stay here till night. I’ll see ye well pertected—fer two crowns, gold.”

“And what if I haven’t two crowns, gold?”

The farmer’s countenance became much less friendly.

“How much have’ee, then?”

“Come. Enough of this barterin’. Saddle the horse and we’ll be gone.”

“An’ wot shall I get in return?”

“You’ll be paid in due time. Hurry.”

The farmer dropped his milk bucket and went toward the horse with a great deal of grumbling.

“’Tis the last I’ll see o’t. An’ no money, either. Godfrey’s bells, but I like it little enough!”

Peale opened the door and the farmer, after saddling, led the mount into the foggy morning, still protesting. Though he was obviously a sharp and unscrupulous fellow, Peale could not help but pity him a little. The settlers of this debated land suffered a great deal; he made a note that the man should be recompensed for the trouble.

The fog, if anything, had thickened, and though the road was not more than twenty feet away it stood shrouded. Peale bent his ear one way and then another and called to the girl. Getting into the saddle, he reached for her arms and swung her up before him.

“What’s your name, friend?”

“Tull,” responded the fellow, very surly. His eyes sparkled. “I vow, I ain’t goin’ to consider myself bound to secrecy if the rebels should happen along. No, I ain’t.”

“I should say,” remarked Peale, “that judging from your very amiable temper you might consider yourself bound for a very debatable region.” The horse skittered away at a mincing pace and the farmer was lost in the fog. As they swung southward on the road, however, they found him bellowing. “Hey! ’Tis the wrong direction, jackanapes! Turn back!” And when he heard the hoofbeats continue unchecked, he was beside himself. “So, I been gulled, eh? Oh——!”

He was still ranging around the barnyard when Captain Tremble rode out of the fog not a quarter hour later. At the very first sight of the rank of British uniforms he related the whole story. Captain Tremble surveyed him with a blasting eye.

“Ye assume too much grief, yokel. ’Tis not that you love the royal; it’s because you lost a horse. A condemned, infernal land o’ snakes, this! A little solid money and y’d as soon cry for Mr. Washington’s rabble. On, dragoons! We’ll have our fine birds within twenty minutes!”

VIII — BLADE AND BLADE

Peale traveled with as much speed as the nag would allow, which was not a great deal, considering the beast’s lack of stamina and the burden it had to carry. The road had seen a great deal of traffic and was in execrable condition, deeply rutted and pock-marked throughout by other hoofs sinking to the fetlock. Over this the unfortunate animal slipped and grunted.

“We should make as good time walking, I swear,” remarked Peale. “Should have requisitioned one of the man’s plough horses. Less spirit in a nag I have never seen. A decent feed of grain would founder the poor brute.”

“We have been fortunate,” interposed the girl, clinging to his arm. “Are we not within sight of safety?”

“’Tis but a dim sight,” said he, throwing an arm toward the fog. “Well, it has been a cloak to us. Without it we should never have ventured abroad.”

He stopped the horse and turned in the saddle; but there was no sound he could definitely distinguish, so he resumed travel and began a calculation of the distance yet to go.

“We have covered a mile—which makes it something like three miles to Maxwell’s outguards, I should judge. ’Tis a dangerous neighborhood for British horse to invade. Yet with this fog they might safely do it. I have a feeling Tremble is not far behind. The man is stubborn. Press along, Bluegrass! Now where is that sound?”

He did not pause this time, though it trembled on his eardrums, something too vague to place, and too distinctive to dismiss.

“If we are overtaken, Jane, you will drop—”

Then the troop was upon him without further warning. The fog, long useful, had played him false and blanketed the approach of the dragoons until they were within striking distance. The swash of hoofs and the clinking of furniture rose from a vague echo to a plain alarm. He stopped the horse.

“Down! Into the brush! I’ll run them out and come back. If not, make your way—”

She was half across the road. The nag trembled at the haunches and sprang on as he drew his pistols and glanced behind. The van of the dragoons dashed through the swirling curtain, Tremble foremost, dark face grimly satisfied.

“Halt, sir! Sergeant, aside into that brush! The girl’s taken cover!”

A pair of dragoons forged ahead of the captain, swinging their carbines clear of the leather buckets. Peale fired at the foremost and saw him fall, the rest of the troop jamming up in the road. Tremble cried like a madman—

“On, you fools!” And presently he was to the fore again.

Peale heard the girl utter a short scream of alarm and surmised that she had been overtaken. It set his pulse racing, and of a sudden he swung from the highway and dashed into the brush, determined to make some sort of stand of it. That folly lasted but an instant—long enough for the leading dragoons to follow him into the thicket—and in a very clear vision he saw that for the present he had to count the girl out. There was a dossier resting beneath his coat which came before all else.

It could not be far off to American cavalry. Tremble had put himself in a convenient trap. Jaded horses—a long distance from the British lines—

The broad chest of a dragoon presented itself; a carbine exploded in his face, so near that he tasted powder smoke. Then he caught the fellow with his second pistol, dropped it and went to his sword. In the confusion he slipped farther through the brush and for a moment had the screening fog as shelter. Again a figure penetrated it and spurred up to where his own frightened mount was pitching—a gaudy non-commissioned officer with a leathern face.

The non-com crowded abreast and slashed down with his heavy saber. Peale ducked aside and parried. Out of the dragoon’s throat emerged a rusty shout. The momentum of the blade carried him off balance and, as he bent, Peale’s weapon flashed through the red tunic. Again he was away while the pursuit eddied and clamored. Captain Tremble’s voice rose to a frantic timbre.

The woods crashed under the fanwise spread of the dragoons. Peale turned his nag and raced for the road. Then, through the morning’s mist, came the thrum of other troops advancing at the gallop. The bushes were flailed flat beside him and Tremble sprang to view, hatless, eyes bitter-bright. He, too, had caught the approaching echo and now, balanced between pursuit and retreat he came to a halt, sword poised. His men were collecting out on the road to meet this unknown troop, the sergeant’s voice summoning them from all quarters. Peale drew his breath.

“Y’ve over-reached yourself, Tremble,” said he.

“Ha!” muttered Tremble, eyes cocked toward the distance. He was about to fling himself back toward his detachment and Peale knew it. So, swinging the sorry nag around, he blocked the captain’s passage.

“You came too far in search of satisfaction, sirrah,” he repeated. “There’s an American patrol come to investigate this hullabaloo. You’re done for. Dismount and show me your metal.”

The oncoming patrol swept by and without warning collided with the English dragoons. There was a shot or two and a ringing command that rang through the obscured area. Then blade beat upon blade and the lust after victory resounded high and imperious. Tremble scowled tremendously at his opponent.

“D’ye think your scurvy mounted men can beat me? No, sir! Do you surrender?”

“Dismount.”

“I shall kill you quick enough,” answered Tremble dropping from the saddle, itching to be with his party. “Hurry, man!”

They faced each other quite warily, circling slowly in the small glade, testing their footing on the sodden carpet of leaves, and reading such emotions as flashed to the surface of the opposite’s countenance. For quite as much does victory depend on the forward spirit as on the sensitive blade; and by that token Peale knew he had come upon a redoubtable foe.

That British captain knew no fear. His was an arrogant, zealous courage. His blade whipped over the intervening space and touched Peale’s weapon with a skimming sound. His knees bent and his free arm began to dance outward at his side.

“On guard, you fool! I have never yet missed my man.”

“You will need that breath later,” said Peale very grimly.

And with that they were met. Peale had selected his spot and was determined to hold it. Within the first three parries he had forgotten the resolution and was circling. Here was no bludgeoning opponent; the steel had a diabolical lightness about it. When he countered and closed he saw Tremble’s nut-brown face to be utterly expressionless save for a sparkle coming through half-shut eyes and a slight flare of nostrils. The man had well learned his lesson; he was a bundle of muscle, a storehouse of swift energy. Peale, stiffening his defense, withstood a slashing attack and drove home his point. He had broken up that advance. On retreating he found his vision obscured; there was blood dripping down his brow.

“Do you give?” demanded Tremble. “I most assuredly will kill you and I’d rather have the pleasure—ah, sir, take care!—of seeing you hang.”

It was not braggadocio. The man was serenely confident. On that confidence he harried Peale mercilessly around the glade, flicking away the other’s guard with careless effort. The American, worn down by twenty hours of constant travel, began to feel a treacherous weight steal along his shoulder and into his fingers.

That would never do! He could afford no handicaps with this master of the duello. Spurred by the knowledge of his weakness, he began to throw away caution. He closed. The glade rang with the sharp exchange. Of a sudden the gallant captain, unmindful of his slippery footing, made a long thrust and went down on a knee.

Peale sprang back and dropped the point of his weapon, waiting.

It was a natural gesture, yet it came so much as a surprize to Tremble that he forebore rising for a second.

“Gallant, eh?” he snarled. “Whyn’t ye take advantage?”

“Up!”

“Ah, ye think ye need no advantage?”

And thereupon Tremble lost a measure of his confidence, never to regain it. The man was unafraid! He rose and assumed a more cautious posture. Thus Peale brought the battle to him and time after time was beaten away. The captain never moved a step. There was an endless repetition of movement. In darted the American’s blade, to be parried and thrown out. This was novice work! And the stealthy weight was tricking Peale. He was excessively hot and somewhat blurred of vision. He saw Tremble standing so sure and so solid. There must be an end of this!

The glade rang again, the steel snarled. Peale towered over his man. The captain broke—and broke again. Peale filled his lungs and sent a long, rollicking cry over Tremble’s head and drove. The steel whined. One blade wavered uncertainly—and was down. Down! Home, point!

“Touch,” said Tremble, imperturbably. He stood like a statue. “A touch for Mr. Peale.”

Down some distance in the road the fight lost its tenor and fell to a low note. A horse galloped toward the glade. Peale shook the persistent sweat out of his eyes and tried to draw a full breath. He was winded, useless of shoulder. He could not have lifted his weapon horizontal for all the mortal danger in the world. But there was no need to. Tremble’s face became quite saturnine and his legs failed him. Down he went in a heap. There was one burst of energy left in him and he used it characteristically. Up came arm and sword and he flung the blade straight at Peale, then fell back dead. The weapon missed its mark and dropped harmlessly on the leaf mold.

The leaves shivered and a ruddy youth burst through, in the saddle, and whirled around to keep from riding over Peale.

“Cornered, sir! What the ——?”

“Peale—of Maxwell’s brigade, Lieutenant,” explained the victor, shaking his head wearily. There was a tugging at his elbow and unexpectedly he found himself resting on the girl’s shoulder, quite glad to have the support. His muscles quivered.

“——!” exclaimed the patrol lieutenant. “It must have been a sight!”

“The best swordsman,” said Peale simply, “lost. My shout, I believe, took him off guard. Have you routed the party?”

“Somewhat!” said the lieutenant energetically.

“Pick us up, then,” said Peale. “I bear despatches for General Maxwell. The lady must find warm shelter very soon or she’ll take cold.”

“If I may observe,” said the officer, “y’ve a nasty cut there.”

“Come, no delay!”

The patrol leader rode to the highway and began to collect his men. From some particular source the girl had gotten a piece of cloth and wrapped it around Peale’s head.

“Infernal headache the captain bequeathed me,” said he. “My lady, you said you had folks around here. I shall have the pleasure of ordering these men to escort you there.”

“To the nearest tavern then.”

“But your folks—”

“I have no folks. Neither here nor elsewhere.”

His head cleared somewhat; he found himself looking at a very bedraggled girl whose eyes were at this moment sober and resigned. Her courage seemed to have deserted her. In truth, she was forlorn. And she answered his inspection with a very meek explanation.

“’Twas fiction I told you in New York. But I feared you would not care to be bothered with taking me if I said it elsewise. I am very grateful, Mr. Peale. To the first tavern, then, and I shall no longer be a burden—”

“Oh, ——,” exclaimed the harassed young man, entirely to himself. “That’s an ill-sounding reason.” He put a muddy finger under her chin. “After all’s passed am I to be thrown over like a worn shoe? Look you, Jane—there’s a chaplain in the brigade.”

“Take me to the first tavern sir! La, I’d not have you askin’ me while I looked like this! I’d think it was marriage out of pity!”

He led her to the road and in a moment both were riding south toward the American lines. He had been rebuffed, undoubtedly; but on a second glance he knew he had won another victory. He leaned over and spoke in a humble subdued tone.

“I shall send you home to my mother, then.”

“Jeffry, no. It’s not in me to be so far away. I follow you as close as fortune will let me. Do not other officers’ ladies make their homes on the edge of the camp?”

Transcriber’s Note

This story appeared in Adventure Magazine, July 15, 1927. It is believed to be in the public domain in the United States; copyright status may differ in other countries.

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Table of Contents

- Winds of Rebellion
- I — THE BLACK FRIGATE TAVERN
- II — OVER THE RIVER
- III — A CAPTAIN OF THE KING’S OWN
- IV — THE PRISON SHIP
- V — ESCAPE
- VI — A LIGHT IN THE STORM
- VII — BLIND MAN’S BUFF
- VIII — BLADE AND BLADE
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE