Читать книгу The Captain from Connecticut онлайн

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Peabody remembered Stephen Decatur's words of thanks to him when they met, sword in hand, on the deck of the captured Khaided-Din in Tripoli harbour, and how he himself had stood flushed and tongue-tied and unable to reply.

"I'll remember this in my report to the Commodore," said Peabody. "Now get those guns secured."

He realised now that he and everyone else on the quarterdeck were soaked to the skin by the spray which had come in through the gunports, and he was shuddering with cold and lack of exercise. His heavy pea-jacket was wet as a soaked sponge and hung like lead from his shoulders. Looking through his glass he could see men still hard at work on the two-decker's foretopsail yard; they looked like ants on a twig. It would be fully ten minutes before the two-decker got before the wind again; in ten minutes they would be a mile farther away; to regain that mile would take the two-decker at least two hours, if not more; and in less than four hours it would be dark. They were almost safe--as safe as any United States ship could be on a sea whose length and breadth was searched and scanned by the British fleet.