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THE LOG CABIN LIBRARY. no 9
Mande’s face paled with evident anger, and Fanny instantly
saw-that there was a hidden meaning in all this talk, and that
there was an implied threat in her father’s words.. So she
thought it best to get Maude off alone, and said:
‘Maude, dear, have you not volatile salts in your chamber? I
have a sudden head-ache.”
“Yes, come with me,” said Maude, and the two gentlemen
were left, alone in the garden, to smoke an jafter-dinner pipe,
while Maude‘and Fanny went to'the chamber of the former.
‘Dear Maude, what is the matter between you and father? ‘I
‘know you were laughing at him, and his pride seemed to be ter-
ribly wounded.”
“Fanny, dear Fanny, you will not be angry with me? But
he made himself so ridiculous!’ What do .you think he did? I
do not believe you could guess it in a thousand trials.”
“What was it, Maude?” . _ .
“Why, Fanny, he actually:made love to me! And he did it in
such afunny way. He said, with a doleful sigh, I so resembled
his dear departed wife, that he could not keep me out of his
mind. He dreamed of me by night, he thought of me all day!
Oh, Fanny, forgive me, but how could I help laughing? . Your
mother was a brunette, and I ama blonde, Your mother was
over fifty when she departed, and I'am not quite nineteen!
That is what I meant by a rose blooming on’a snow-bank!”
Fanny was indignant. She loved Maude as a sister, and she
loved Maude’s brother with a devotion no words could express.
And she loved her mother’s memory so much she felt she could
almost hate any woman who would assume to fill that mother’s
lace. :
‘He must be insane, dear Maude! I only wonder you could
even laugh at his mad folly! I have a good mind to call for our
horses, and insist on our going right home!”
“You shall do no such thing, my darling little Black Eyes!
Yon are not to blame. And I know he will never dare such a
folly again. I langhed at him so heartily he could see there was
no use in his making love to me. Let there be peace as long as
peace can be.”
“To please you, Maude, I will stay.
I will be inseparable.
himself ridiculous again!”
Receiving a summons to join the gentlemen in a ride over the
plantation, they soon donned their riding-habits, and went
down. ~
'
But while here you and
Thus he will have no chance to make
CHAPTER XII.
THE YANKEE PILOT.
«‘What on earth shall I do now?”
+, This was the exclamation of: Captain Pemberton, when the
“wind died away as they had just shutin the southern point of
Staten Island, while the tide ebbing began to sweep them back
toward the sea from which they came.
_ “If there was nothing astern to look for us, I would say drop
an anchor and wait for a breeze,” said Jack Clewline, coolly,
scanning the sky in every direction. ‘As it is, that would be
folly, for if this calm lasts, right in here is where they would
come to look for us in their boats, and the boats of tbreo large
men-of-war, full of armed men, would give us more work than
we could well attend to.” :
“Well, what do you advise? Here we are dropping astern
every moment.” . |
“IT would lower my canvas. sir, and let her drop out of this
channel, get out our sweeps, of which we have twelve good ones,
and as soon as we can, clear the point of Staten Island down
there, which will be in twenty or thirty minutes, pull the vessel
close up the east shore of the island in the eddy, which always
makes close in shore. , Then we will bo ready to take the very
first of the flood tide, and should any wind come we will be
ready to take advantage of it. We may get past Hell Gate on
our way through Long Island Sound by sunrise, which is all I
have hoped for, at any rate,”
“Good! I adopt your plan, Jack—putit into execution at.
once.” : :
“Get the sweeps ready, and muffie them at the rowiig-pins,
while I take in sail, Mr. Clifton,” said Jack to the second officer.
‘Ay, ay, sir!” was the ready response. .
In a very few minutes the schooner, drifting out under bare
poles, had reached the lower point of the island, and now, with
three meu at each sweep, in almost dead silence, the schooner
was moved up along the shores of the island in the deep shadow
of its banks.
Before tney had moved two miles on this new course, lights
--weroe seen down toward Sandy Hook, and Clewline laughingly
said: \ .
“The honnds are on a false scent. - Those lights move toward
Amboy Bay. -
\
“Maybe two go zat way and one come zis way,” said Doctor
ila Berte, pointing to alight farther to the east.
“That is so.” said Clewline. ‘But out there, the ebb [tide is
strong, and if a vessel is not anchored, out she goes over the bar
to sea. There is no wind to help her, anyway. We are making
three knots an hour nowfand when the tide turns and we get
into it we'll make six till we pass Fort William, and in the East
River we'll make eight with sweeps and tide. | And if signs mean
anything, we'll have a north-easter in our chops before daylight.
It'll be just what we want, for reefed down in a narrow channel,
we can get away from the fastest square-rigged craft that ever
oated.”
For four long hours they toiled, and they were near the upper
end of Staten Island, when Clewline decided that the tide must
be on the turn, and therefore steered out toward the middle of
the bay. ‘
All this time there had been a dead calm—not breeze enough
to lift a flake of eider-down. Butaway to the south-east, instead
of the north-east, both Clewline and Pemberton regarded an
ominous-looking bank of clouds with anxiety.
Should the wind come out there, and any of those British
men- of-war be really in their wake now, that wind would bring
them up fast, aud they would be at their best point of sailing
while the Rattlesnake would be at her worst.
The men began to show signs of fatigue, for a steady strain at
those sweeps was no child’s.play; so when the flood tide had
surely made, Pemberton caused six cf the sweeps to be taken
in, and that relieved two-thirds of the men at a time,so they
could rest and be fit to relieve the others.
The night had been wearing away fast all this time, and day
was just dawning when Jack Clewline pointel out Fort William
to Pemberton, who was an entire stranger in those waters.
‘We'll soon be iu the East River, where the tide runs like a
mill-race, and we'll have enough of it, I hope, to carry us
through Hell Gate, for to go through it against the tide would
require better pilotage than mine.”
‘Monsieur Clewline, why you not look behind as well as be-
fore?” cried Le Berte. ‘‘We will ver soon ’ave zo wind and
somesing beside.” :
He pointed down the bay, and Pemberton was startled to see
a tall ship, evidently a large corvette, covered with canvas, ovi-
dently bringing « breeze with her.
. “Ready with our sails, men! Every reefout! We'll run them
up, so as to take the first breath of the breeze!” cried Clewline, :
cheerfully,
“Mr. Clifton, see that your guns are ready. Tell the armorer
to ldid all the small arms carefully. We'll run if we can, but
fight if we must. No corvette in the British navy can take the
Rattlesnake without feeling her fangs.”
This order from Captain Pemberton, given loud enough forall
hands to hear, was received with a cheer by the crew, and their.
oflicers knew well they would have noble support if it camo to
a contest. .
Sail was on the schooner as she moved up on the tide in the
narrow East River channel, but it was nearly a half-hour, and
all the men had breakfasted, before the wind filled the canvas
ou the spars.
And when it came in a good strong puff, though she shot'
ahead swiftly, the British man-ol-war was almost within gun-
shot and evidently gaining.
The people on shore looked in wonder on the strauge, pretty
eraft, and her yet stranger flag. They conld see her swivels and
long gun, all shining as brightly as polished brass could be
made, but when the corvette.in chase yawed slightly in her
course, and sent & huge iron shot ricochetting over the water up
the channel, they knew she was either a patriot or a pirate; and
such was the hatred felt for England and English tyranny in
almost every heart, that, no matter which, the sympathies of
nearly all who gazed on the chase, went with the sciiooner
At the moment the schooner was passing Corlear’s Hook, a
small skiff, rowed by a single man, who pniled a vigorons oar,
was seen to dart out ahead of the schooner, from a cove iu the
western shore. :
“That is a Hell Gate pilot. If we do not take him, the sloop-
of-war will.” said Clewline.
‘Haye a line ready to be'thrawn to that boat!” cried Pember-
ton, promptly. ‘We'll take him. Heaven grant there may be
no other for him/ for, with a free wind she spreads too!many
kites, and will outsail ns.” : .
In a couple of minutes a line was thrown to the pilot in his
skiff, and drawn up under the stern of the schooner, he sprang
aboard.
“That tarnal British cuss is after you, isn’t he?” was the first
exclamation the pilot made, and it stamped him as a genuine
Connectient Yankee, very likely born on the Sound.
“And he looked it, in his suit of homespun tow-cloth, his straw