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The Pilot: Coffin

The impetuous Barnstable, fretting offshore with his enormous coxswain, Long Tom Coffin, had been nearly cut off from his schooner by an English cutter, but he scrambled aboard safely and the drum beat to quarters. While broadsides roared and the decks grew slippery with blood, the little fighting ships met and grappled. Before Barnstable could lead his boarders to the enemy's deck, Coffin tumbled into the sea. Shouting, "Revenge Long Tom!" the lieutenant rushed with his men upon the foe. It was fighting at close quarters and the issue was in doubt when the drenched and furious coxswain emerged from the sea and with his harpoon pinioned the English captain to his mast. In a few minutes the Americans were masters of the cutter. Cowering in that scene of bloodshed the victors discovered the crafty Dillon, who pleaded to be sent off as a hostage, promising to return in person or to have Griffith delivered in his stead.

His word of honor was trusted and he was sent away with Long Tom. He luckily overheard Dillon's treacherous plot to entrap Barnstable's waiting part. The resourceful old seaman gagged Borroughcliffe and drove Dillon, at the point of his harpoon, back to the waiting schooner. By this time, however, a battery on the cliff brought down the schooner's mainmast. She was driven from her course by heavy seas. The masts were felled and anchors dropped, but she plunged on like a bobbing cork in rapids. Barnstable would have stayed by his ship, but suddenly Long Tom seized him and hurled him over the bulwarks. "God's will be done with me," Coffin cried, above the wind's roar. Dillon's lifeless body was rolled upon the shore, but Long Tom's stayed with the sea to which he had dedicated his life.

Surprise succeeded surprise at the abbey. Barnstable marched his shipwrecked mariners into the building and they took possession, but they were soon made prisoners by the redcoats. Then the mysterious figure of the pilot appeared at the door and behind him loomed marines from the frigate. Colonel Howard, an unwilling prisoner, was marched away with Cecilia and Katherine, who could not be downcast at the triumph of their lovers.

Captain Borroughcliffe was freed, as was another inmate of the abbey, Alice Duscombe. She had recognized the pilot in his disguise when he was first captured. They had been lovers, but she was so stanch in her love for her king and she so hated bloodshed that she had broken her troth to this "Mr. Gray," whom she addressed as John. She reminded him that, did she but once call aloud his true name, the whole countryside would ring with it. What that name was is never revealed, but there was but one sea-rover who could strike stark terror into all English hearts.

On board the frigate repeated conferences were held between the captain, Griffith, and "Mr. Gray." Suddenly out of the fog drove a mountainous ship of the line. The drum beat aboard the frigate, sailors leaped nimbly about the deck, clearing for action. The women were led below and gradually order resolved itself out of the chaos of shouting men. A terrific roar filled the air as three tiers of guns blazed a broadside from the English ship. A few sails and ropes were cut, but the frigate's sailing power was hardly affected. One chance ball struck the captain and hurled him to death. Griffith succeeded to the command and he was appalled as he saw the frigate hemmed about. To the east loomed the great ship of war and far in the northeast the sails of another frigate. "What are we to do?" cried Griffith. "Fight them! Fight them!" shouted the pilot. "Let me proclaim your name to the men," Griffith appealed. But the pilot refused. "Should we come to a grapple," he said, "I will give forth the name as a war-cry and these English will quail before it." The ship of war was distanced, but she cut off a retreat and the frigate ahead had been reinforced by two others. The foremost maneuvered with the American frigate for position. Broadsides crashed and they grappled. The American guns raked her foe and left her helpless, with useless ropes dangling from shattered masts. The deck was cleared and as another enemy appeared, Griffith shouted, "Hoist away of everything!" Fifty men flew aloft upon the spars, and white canvas was spread from every mast. The frigate lunged ahead, but it could not outstrip its rival, and the halt to give battle had enabled the ship of the line to draw up.

Then for a few breathless moments the pilot leaped into command. Breakers loomed ahead, but he drove the vessel straight into the shoals, into narrow passages where white foam bubbled perilously close. The enemy dared not follow, and when night fell pursuit was hopeless.

Colonel Howard, fatally wounded in the battle, lived long enough to see Cecilia Howard and Katherine Plowden wedded by the chaplain to their lovers. His last words were spoken to Griffith. "Perhaps I may have mistaken my duty to America--but I was too old to change my politics or my religion; I--I--I loved the king--God bless him--" The frigate drove on to Holland, where the pilot landed in a small boat that dwindled into a black speck and disappeared in the setting sun. Twelve years later Cecilia Griffith saw her husband's face cloud as he read in the newspaper of the death of a great man, but not even then did he divulge his name. He had promised to keep it secret. He said only, "Our happiness might have been wrecked in the voyage of life had we not met the unknown Pilot of the German Ocean."