“All right, boys!” Ike Baldwin straightened them to attention with his command. “Here’s Cal and ’Lisha with the pitch. Now we can go.” Two young men, dark-haired and muscular, came panting up with a heavy keg between them, swung in a cradle of stout rope. Baldwin went on, speaking rapidly. “Cal and ’Lisha will tow the pitch out to the schooner. Got that now?” General murmurs of assent passed among the little group. “Aye,” murmured Johnny brightly, like a smart lad repeating catechism. Tom inclined his head and chewed nervously at a bit of grass he had picked up somewhere. It had a rank salty taste. He wished he knew exactly what he was supposed to do. “The rest of you ain’t going along for the swim, remember,” the relentless orders went on. “You’re there to help get the pitch aboard and spread it around on whatever parts of her is driest and most likely to burn. Don’t want her to go back into British service again. Don’t want the British to think they can come shooting amongst us any time they choose without having to pay.” He stood still for a moment, in a defiant attitude, waiting for his words to take effect. “How we going to kindle the pitch, Ike?” asked a voice at the rear of the group. “Flints and tinderboxes’ll be wetter’n a drowned cat ’fore we get there.” Isaac Baldwin frowned. Then his face cleared and he waved a nonchalant hand. “Likely there’ll be a cookfire in the galley,” he said. “She ain’t been abandoned long. Likely you’ll find a tinderbox there--or somewhere else aboard. Her crew must ha’ had some means to light a fire.” “Maybe,” said Tom. He stood thoughtfully for a moment, wondering how much time he would have before Ike Baldwin ordered them into the water. It would take a few minutes, the thing he wanted to do. Luck was with him, for Baldwin bent over just then to speak with Cal and ’Lisha who were tightening the cradle ropes about the keg. He looked up the hill in the direction he had come, then back at the creek again. Out beyond the stranded _Diana_, the guns of the sloop were still firing harmlessly away. After a moment of indecision, he turned and ran up the hill. He found the man he had been talking to a short time before, seated now on a tuft of marsh grass, his gun beside him. He was just in the act of filling a pipe, as Tom had gambled he would be. The New Hampshire man loped up and accosted him. “You with that pipe there!” The man did not look up. His fingers moved leisurely with flints and tinder. He lit the pipe, drew on it deeply, then took it from his mouth and asked, “Was you speaking to me?” “Yes. General Putnam gave out the word there was to be no smoking amongst the men. He sent me to collect every pipe I found lighted. Like this.” Tom’s hand reached forth lightning quick and snatched the pipe from its owner’s startled jaws. Then he sprinted off, down the Neck.