"All right, sir," said Brackett, more cheerily. "I've served on a cruiser. Men! All hands clear away for action! Cast loose the guns!"
He was in right good earnest, like the brave British seaman that he was, and the supply ship, in spite of having too much deck cargo, soon began to take on a decidedly warlike appearance. There was no audible grumbling among her crew as they went to their posts of duty, but a sharp observer might have noted that several of them, from time to time, cast wistful glances landward and then looked gloomily into each others' faces.
"They are hanging deserters," hissed another. "I saw one run up."
"I saw one flogged to death," came savagely from a third, "but I'll take my chance if I git one."
Mate Brackett was now busy with his glass, and he was telling himself how much he longed for a stronger breeze, coming from some other point of the compass.
"Hurrah!" he suddenly sang out. "Captain Watts, we're all right, now! British flag!"
"Keep to your guns!" roared back the captain. "I'll stand away from her, just the same. If you throw away the _Windsor_ I'll have you hung!"
More fiercely vehement than ever became now his apparent readiness for fighting. He called another man to the wheel and went out among the guns. He ordered up more muskets, pistols, pikes, cutlasses, and armed himself to the teeth, as if to repel boarders.
"They'd call me a Tory," he said to the mate. "They shoot Tories. I'm fighting for my life, if that there sail is a Yankee. Her flag's as like as not a trick to keep us from getting ready."
"We'll be ready," replied the mate; but all the men had heard the remark of Captain Watts concerning his chances.
Nearer and nearer, before the somewhat freshening breeze, came the strange schooner, with the merchant flag of Great Britain fluttering out to declare how peaceable and friendly was her character. Mate Brackett's glass could as yet discover no sign of evil, unless' it might be that a widespread old sail which he saw on the deck amidships had been put there to cover up the wrong kind of deck cargo.
"She hasn't any business that I know of to head for us," he said to his commander, suspiciously. "We must be ready to give her a broadside."