Читать книгу The Captain from Connecticut онлайн

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Josiah knew nothing of his death for some months, for he was at sea in the Constellation with Truxtun. Josiah could remember with peculiar vividness those early battles, with the Insurgente and the Vengeance. He could remember as well the colour and the heat and the rain of the West India islands, where Truxtun had displayed the Stars and Stripes--the memories were a little overlayed by others, of Tripoli and Algiers and Malta, but they were still keen enough. He found himself wondering whether he would see those islands again, and then checked himself with a hard smile, for he was under orders to proceed there at present. The immediate problem of weathering Montauk Point and breaking the British blockade had for the moment driven the equally difficult problems of the future clean out of his head. But it was as well that he could smile--most of the times when his weakness had lured him into going back over old memories he could not smile at all.

He shook himself, now that the spell was broken, back into his proper state of mind. He lifted the traverse board into the dim light of the binnacle--he realised that he must have been standing on deck motionless during two or three hours. The Delaware had held her course steadily during those hours, and must be well out into the Sound now. New Haven must be on their larboard beam. He could feel his way about Long Island Sound as surely as he could about his own cabin, thanks to his years in the Coastguard Service and to further years commanding one of the gunboats on which Mr. Jefferson had lavished so much of the national income in an attempt to buy security cheap.