Meantime Yankee merchantmen were running the blockade with even more zest than they had enjoyed in evading their own embargo. At Hyannis, the Kutuzoff, with a full cargo of cotton and rice, came bowling into port followed close by a British privateer-schooner. The cargo safe landed, one hundred militia gathered to repel possible invasion and trained a four-pounder on the enemy who, after an unsuccessful attempt to destroy a beached British prize, prudently withdrew. At Hyannis, again the Yankee landed “upwards of a hundred packages of dry goods”; other boats, without benefit of revenue officers, landed stores of spirits and wine and other products from the South. Coasting vessels tried to keep up a desultory trade with Boston, though Boston was so thoroughly blockaded it was easier to make the run to New York. Fleets of whaleboats followed the old route that Bradford and De Rasieres had used, by way of Sandwich and Manomet, and so, on, hugging the shores of southern New England to their destination. Two Eastham captains, safely landing a whaleboat cargo of rye at Boston, were encouraged by success to exchange for a larger boat and cargo for the homeward voyage. At the Gurnet, however, they were brought to by a “pink-stern” schooner that was masquerading as a fisherman, but proved to belong to H.M.S. Spencer. One captain was sent to Boston for three hundred dollars ransom of their boat; the other, Mayo, was retained aboard the prize as pilot, and orders given him to cruise about the bay. In a stiff gale Mayo counselled taking shelter in the lee of Billingsgate Point, forthwith grounded the schooner on the Eastham flats, quieted criticism with assurance that they would soon be floating over the bar into the safety of inner waters, and advised the officers to go below that their number might not excite suspicion on shore. He had previously secured two pistols for himself and provided for the helplessness of the crew by giving them a gimlet to tap a barrel of rum. He then threw all available firearms overboard, and, when the officers presented themselves in alarm as the boat canted with the receding tide, held them off with his pistols, coolly walked ashore over the sands, and roused the militia who took boat and crew as prize. The crew, later, was allowed to escape to their frigate and the boat was awarded to Captain Mayo, who released it to its owners for two hundred dollars. But the town was not to come off so easily in the affair: for the British commander, in reprisal for the indignity to his men, threatened to destroy boats, buildings, and salt-works, if twelve hundred dollars were not forthcoming as the price of immunity and as recompense for the prisoners’ baggage. The town fathers decided to pay the sum, and made no such bad bargain as their receipt promised to hold Eastham scatheless for the duration of the war.