Page:Harris Dickson--The black wolf's breed.djvu/257

Rh give my real name and station. The chance was desperate, yet not one whit more desperate than I.

The Seamew sailed more than three weeks behind Le Dauphin, armed with letters of marque from the King commissioning her to prey upon Spanish commerce in southern seas, and especially to take part in any expedition against Havana or Pensacola.

Our voyage wore on drearily enough to me, almost without incident. After four weeks of sky and sea we rounded the southernmost cape of Florida and turned into the Mexican Gulf. I grew more and more impatient and full of dread. Le Dauphin had twenty-three days the start of our faster vessel, and Biloxi was probably at that moment in a fever of warlike preparation. It was just possible, too, that the Spaniards had not yet been informed of the war, and nothing had been so far done by them.

Cruising by Pensacola harbor, just outside the Isle de Santa Rosa, a pine-grown stretch of narrow sand which for twenty-five leagues protects that coast, Levasseur called me to him.

"Do you know, my lad, what vessels those are at anchor in the harbour?"

Two of them I recognized as I would my own tent, two French men-of-war which Bienville had long been expecting from France. The rest were Spaniards, full-rigged, four ships, and six gunboats. Levasseur put the Seamew boldly about and entered the harbor. He signaled the Frenchmen, lowered a boat, and sent his lieutenant aboard the flagship with credentials and a