Strange Yesterday by Howard Fast

“Perhaps,” John Preswick mused, almost to himself, “we can run before her until night, and then slide away on the tack.”
    Mr. Cortlandt joined them, venturing a remark that was both philosophical and optimistic. At the time they were flying no colors at all, and Mr. Cortlandt suggested that the frigate might indeed be one of the Americans riding beneath British colors, which was by no means unusual, now that war was upon the very horizon. He gave the order to run up the Stars and Stripes; but no sooner had the American pennant unfolded itself from the masthead than the frigate opened with a range shot from one of her long bow-chasers. Though it fell far short, Mr. Cortlandt ground his teeth in rage.
    â€œPirates!” he cried. “Damned pirates! There is no war to justify that! They did not even ask for our colors! They are going to run us down and sack us!”
    â€œPerhaps,” John Preswick considered, “war has been declared in England.”
    â€œNo! If any one declares, it will be America, and if it had the news would have been in New York before we sailed! This is the rankest piracy!”
    As Mr. Cortlandt ordered the decks cleared for action—their armament had increased to nine guns—John Preswick shrugged. It was a hopeless bit of bravado. As soon as the bow-chasers of the frigate came into range-long eighteens they would be in all probability—it would be over—all over. There was the girl.
    Why could he not see the reason of the matter—see that where the girl was concerned there was only one course to follow, that it was her life for the dozens aboard the ship, that she was as clear a death warrant, especially for the four officers, as could be found upon these waters? So apparent was the entire business that the officers did not even discuss it among themselves. When the time came they would kill her and drop her over the bow rail.
    What did it mean to him? Who was the girl?—and what if her name was Preswick? In America, surely, there were many Preswicks. He said to himself:
    â€œWhy, John Preswick, did you murder Lennox?” And he said:
    â€œWhy, John Preswick, did, you lie so brazenly and so cheerfully to your three senior officers?”
    Now he had time to think. Standing upon the poop-deck, watching the progress of the ship on their tail, he had much time to think. And yet he thought of only one thing, the girl—whom, it seemed, he had always known, and whose voice was wonderfully and strangely familiar. He could picture her as she had been the day before, crouching taut in the shadow of the poop, holding himself and Lennox at bay, chanting out with childish pride the valor of her name. He wondered what her reaction would be were she to know that the name was also his. He said to himself that she would never know. In her worship of that name there was something strangely beautiful—something he could not quite understand.
    It would hurt her, and he did not want her to be hurt. The night in the dining-hall, if she had screamed, he would have shot her through the heart, or in a place far more painful. He would have shot her mother with as little feeling. To him death was a very matter-of-fact thing, always a means to an end. While he rarely went out of his way to kill, he never went out of his way not to. As cheaply as he valued other lives, he valued his own. They played a game of doomed men. That they had played it for so long, was a gift from Goddess Luck.; now the game was over, for with sails bloated a British man-of-war stood behind them. He insisted to himself that the murder of the girl would not, could not, be a way out.
    He glanced behind him. The frigate was no nearer; perhaps they had even gained a little; perhaps they were not so surely doomed as he had thought. Mr. Cortlandt was dropping water and cargo over the bow. If they continued to gain, even slowly, by nightfall they might be able to slip away; and then the girl