University of Virginia Library

16. CHAPTER XVI.
IN WHICH ISRAEL IS SAILOR UNDER TWO FLAGS, AND IN
THREE SHIPS, AND ALL IN ONE NIGHT.

AS running down channel at evening, Israel walked
the crowded main-deck of the seventy-four, continually
brushed by a thousand hurrying wayfarers, as if he were
in some great street in London, jammed with artisans,
just returning from their day's labor, novel and painful
emotions were his. He found himself dropped into the
naval mob without one friend; nay, among enemies,
since his country's enemies were his own, and against
the kith and kin of these very beings around him, he
himself had once lifted a fatal hand. The martial bustle
of a great man-of-war, on her first day out of port, was
indescribably jarring to his present mood. Those sounds
of the human multitude disturbing the solemn natural
solitudes of the sea, mysteriously afflicted him. He murmured
against that untowardness which, after condemning
him to long sorrows on the land, now pursued him
with added griefs on the deep. Why should a patriot,
leaping for the chance again to attack the oppressor, as

at Bunker Hill, now be kidnapped to fight that oppressor's
battles on the endless drifts of the Bunker Hills
of the billows? But like many other repiners, Israel
was perhaps a little premature with upbraidings like
these.

Plying on between Scilly and Cape Clear, the Unprincipled—which
vessel somewhat outsailed her consorts—
fell in, just before dusk, with a large revenue cutter close
to, and showing signals of distress. At the moment, no
other sail was in sight.

Cursing the necessity of pausing with a strong fair
wind at a juncture like this, the officer-of-the-deck shortened
sail, and hove to; hailing the cutter, to know what
was the matter. As he hailed the small craft from the
lofty poop of the bristling seventy-four, this lieutenant
seemed standing on the top of Gibraltar, talking to some
lowland peasant in a hut. The reply was, that in a sudden
flaw of wind, which came nigh capsizing them, not
an hour since, the cutter had lost all four foremost men
by the violent jibing of a boom. She wanted help to
get back to port.

“You shall have one man,” said the officer-of-the-deck,
morosely.

“Let him be a good one then, for heaven's sake,”
said he in the cutter; “I ought to have at least two.”

During this talk, Israel's curiosity had prompted him
to dart up the ladder from the main-deck, and stand right
in the gangway above, looking out on the strange craft.
Meantime the order had been given to drop a boat.
Thinking this a favorable chance, he stationed himself

so that he should be the foremost to spring into the boat;
though crowds of English sailors, eager as himself for
the same opportunity to escape from foreign service,
clung to the chains of the as yet imperfectly disciplined
man-of-war. As the two men who had been lowered in
the boat hooked her, when afloat, along to the gangway,
lsrael dropped like a comet into the stern-sheets, stumbled
forward, and seized an oar. In a moment more, all
the oarsmen were in their places, and with a few strokes
the boat lay alongside the cutter.

“Take which of them you please,” said the lieutenant
in command, addressing the officer in the revenue-cutter,
and motioning with his hand to his boat's crew, as if
they were a parcel of carcasses of mutton, of which the
first pick was offered to some customer. “Quick and
choose. Sit down, men”—to the sailors. “Oh, you
are in a great hurry to get rid of the king's service,
ain't you? Brave chaps indeed!—Have you chosen your
man?”

All this while the ten faces of the anxious oarsmen
looked with mute longings and appealings towards the
officer of the cutter; every face turned at the same
angle, as if managed by one machine. And so they were.
One motive.

“I take the freckled chap with the yellow hair—him,”
pointing to Israel.

Nine of the upturned faces fell in sullen despair, and
ere Israel could spring to his feet, he felt a violent thrust
in his rear from the toes of one of the disappointed
behind him.

“Jump, dobbin!” cried the officer of the boat.

But Israel was already on board. Another moment,
and the boat and cutter parted. Ere long, night fell,
and the man-of-war and her consorts were out of
sight.

The revenue vessel resumed her course towards the
nighest port, worked by but four men: the captain,
Israel, and two officers. The cabin-boy was kept at the
helm. As the only foremast man, Israel was put to it
pretty hard. Where there is but one man to three
masters, woe betide that lonely slave. Besides, it was
of itself severe work enough to manage the vessel thus
short of hands. But to make matters still worse, the
captain and his officers were ugly-tempered fellows.
The one kicked, and the others cuffed Israel. Whereupon,
not sugared with his recent experiences, and maddened
by his present hap, Israel seeing himself alone at
sea, with only three men, instead of a thousand, to contend
against, plucked up a heart, knocked the captain
into the lee scuppers, and in his fury was about tumbling
the first-officer, a small wash of a fellow, plump overboard,
when the captain, jumping to his feet, seized him
by his long yellow hair, vowing he would slaughter
him. Meanwhile the cutter flew foaming through the
channel, as if in demoniac glee at this uproar on her
imperilled deck. While the consternation was at its
height, a dark body suddenly loomed at a moderate
distance into view, shooting right athwart the stern of
the cutter. The next moment a shot struck the water
within a boat's length.

“Heave to, and send a boat on board!” roared a voice
almost as loud as the cannon.

“That's a war-ship,” cried the captain of the revenue
vessel, in alarm; “but she ain't a countryman.”

Meantime the officers and Israel stopped the cutter's
way.

“Send a boat on board, or I'll sink you,” again came
roaring from the stranger, followed by another shot,
striking the water still nearer the cutter.

“For God's sake, don't cannonade us. I haven't got
the crew to man a boat,” replied the captain of the cutter.
“Who are you?”

“Wait till I send a boat to you for that,” replied the
stranger.

“She's an enemy of some sort, that's plain,” said the
Englishman now to his officers; “we ain't at open war
with France; she's some bloodthirsty pirate or other.
What d'ye say, men?” turning to his officers; “let's
outsail her, or be shot to chips. We can beat her at
sailing, I know.”

With that, nothing doubting that his counsel would
be heartily responded to, he ran to the braces to get the
cutter before the wind, followed by one officer, while
the other, for a useless bravado, hoisted the colors at
the stern.

But Israel stood indifferent, or rather all in a fever of
conflicting emotions. He thought he recognized the voice
from the strange vessel.

“Come, what do ye standing there, fool? Spring to
the ropes here!” cried the furious captain.

But Israel did not stir.

Meantime the confusion on board the stranger, owing
to the hurried lowering of her boat, with the cloudiness
of the sky darkening the misty sea, united to conceal the
bold manœuvre of the cutter. She had almost gained
full headway ere an oblique shot, directed by mere chance,
struck her stern, tearing the upcurved head of the tiller
in the hands of the cabin-boy, and killing him with the
splinters. Running to the stump, the captain huzzaed, and
steered the reeling ship on. Forced now to hoist back
the boat ere giving chase, the stranger was dropped rapidly
astern.

All this while storms of maledictions were hurled on
Israel. But their exertions at the ropes prevented his
shipmates for the time from using personal violence.
While observing their efforts, Israel could not but say
to himself, “These fellows are as brave as they are
brutal.”

Soon the stranger was seen dimly wallowing along
astern, crowding all sail in chase, while now and then
her bow-gun, showing its red tongue, bellowed after them
like a mad hull. Two more shots struck the cutter, but
without materially damaging her sails, or the ropes immediately
upholding them. Several of her less important
stays were sundered, however, whose loose tarry ends
lashed the air like scorpions. It seemed not improbable
that, owing to her superior sailing, the keen cutter would
yet get clear.

At this juncture Israel, running towards the captain,
who still held the splintered stump of the tiller, stood full

before him, saying, “I am an enemy, a Yankee, look to
yourself.”

“Help here, lads, help,” roared the captain, “a traitor,
a traitor!”

The words were hardly out of his mouth when his voice
was silenced for ever. With one prodigious heave of his
whole physical force, Israel smote him over the taffrail
into the sea, as if the man had fallen backwards over a
teetering chair. By this time the two officers were hurrying
aft. Ere meeting them midway, Israel, quick as
lightning, cast off the two principal halyards, thus letting
the large sails all in a tumble of canvass to the deck.
Next moment one of the officers was at the helm, to prevent
the cutter from capsizing by being without a steersman
in such an emergency. The other officer and Israel
interlocked. The battle was in the midst of the chaos
of blowing canvass. Caught in a rent of the sail, the officer
slipped and fell near the sharp iron edge of the hatchway.
As he fell he caught Israel by the most terrible part in
which mortality can be grappled. Insane with pain, Israel
dashed his adversary's skull against the sharp iron. The
officer's hold relaxed, but himself stiffened. Israel made
for the helmsman, who as yet knew not the issue of the
late tussle. He caught him round the loins, bedding his
fingers like grisly claws into his flesh, and hugging him
to his heart. The man's ghost, caught like a broken cork
in a gurgling bottle's neck, gasped with the embrace.
Loosening him suddenly, Israel hurled him from him
against the bulwarks. That instant another report was
heard, followed by the savage hail—“You down sail at

last, do ye? I'm a good mind to sink ye for your scurvy
trick. Pull down that dirty rag there, astern!”

With a loud huzza, Israel hauled down the flag with
one hand, while with the other he helped the now slowly
gliding craft from falling off before the wind.

In a few moments a boat was alongside. As its commander
stepped to the deck he stumbled against the body
of the first officer, which, owing to the sudden slant of
the cutter in coming to the wind, had rolled against the
side near the gangway. As he came aft he heard the moan
of the other officer, where he lay under the mizzen shrouds.

“What is all this?” demanded the stranger of Israel.

“It means that I am a Yankee impressed into the king's
service, and for their pains I have taken the cutter.”

Giving vent to his surprise, the officer looked narrowly
at the body by the shrouds, and said, “This man is as
good as dead, but we will take him to Captain Paul as
a witness in your behalf.”

“Captain Paul?—Paul Jones?” cried Israel.

“The same.”

“I thought so. I thought that was his voice hailing.
It was Captain Paul's voice that somehow put me up to
this deed.”

“Captain Paul is the devil for putting men up to be
tigers. But where are the rest of the crew?”

“Overboard.”

“What?” cried the officer; “come on board the Ranger.
Captain Paul will use you for a broadside.”

Taking the moaning man along with them, and leaving
the cutter untenanted by any living soul, the boat now

left her for the enemy's ship. But ere they reached it
the man had expired.

Standing foremost on the deck, crowded with three
hundred men, as Israel climbed the side, he saw, by the
light of battle-lanterns, a small, smart, brigandish-looking
man, wearing a Scotch bonnet, with a gold band to it.

“You rascal,” said this person, “why did your paltry
smack give me this chase? Where's the rest of your
gang?”

“Captain Paul,” said Israel, “I believe I remember
you. I believe I offered you my bed in Paris some
months ago. How is Poor Richard?”

“God! Is this the courier? The Yankee courier?
But how now? in an English revenue cutter?”

“Impressed, sir; that's the way.”

“But where's the rest of them?” demanded Paul, turning
to the officer.

Thereupon the officer very briefly told Paul what Israel
told him.

“Are we to sink the cutter, sir?” said the gunner,
now advancing towards Captain Paul. “If it is to be
done, now is the time. She is close under us, astern;
a few guns pointed downwards will settle her like a
shotted corpse.”

“No. Let her drift into Penzance, an anonymous
earnest of what the whitesquall in Paul Jones intends
for the future.”

Then giving directions as to the course of the ship,
with an order for himself to be called at the first glimpse
of a sail, Paul took Israel down with him into his cabin.

“Tell me your story now, my yellow lion. How was
it all? Don't stand, sit right down there on the transom.
I'm a democratic sort of sea-king. Plump on the wool-sack,
I say, and spin the yarn. But hold; you want
some grog first.”

As Paul handed the flagon, Israel's eye fell upon his
hand.

“You don't wear any rings now, Captain, I see. Left
them in Paris for safety.”

“Aye, with a certain marchioness there,” replied Paul,
with a dandyish look of sentimental conceit, which sat
strangely enough on his otherwise grim and Fejee air.

“I should think rings would be somewhat inconvenient
at sea,” resumed Israel. “On my first voyage to the
West Indies, I wore a girl's ring on my middle finger
here, and it wasn't long before, what with hauling wet
ropes, and what not, it got a kind of grown down into
the flesh, and pained me very bad, let me tell you, it
hugged the finger so.”

“And did the girl grow as close to your heart, lad?”

“Ah, Captain, girls grow themselves off quicker than
we grow them on.”

“Some experience with the countesses as well as myself,
eh? But the story; wave your yellow mane, my
lion—the story.”

So Israel went on and told the story in all particulars.

At its conclusion Captain Paul eyed him very earnestly.
His wild, lonely heart, incapable of sympathizing with
cuddled natures made humdrum by long exemption from

pain, was yet drawn towards a being, who in desperation
of friendlessness, something like his own, had so fiercely
waged battle against tyrannical odds.

“Did you go to sea young, lad?”

“Yes, pretty young.”

“I went at twelve, from Whitehaven. Only so high,”
raising his hand some four feet from the deck. “I was
so small, and looked so queer in my little blue jacket,
that they called me the monkey. They'll call me something
else before long. Did you ever sail out of Whitehaven?”

“No, Captain.”

“If you had, you'd have heard sad stories about me.
To this hour they say there that I—bloodthirsty, coward
dog that I am—flogged a sailor, one Mungo Maxwell, to
death. It's a lie, by Heaven! I flogged him, for he was a
mutinous scamp. But he died naturally, some time afterwards,
and on board another ship. But why talk? They
didn't believe the affidavits of others taken before London
courts, triumphantly acquitting me; how then will they
credit my interested words? If slander, however much a
lie, once gets hold of a man, it will stick closer than
fair fame, as black pitch sticks closer than white cream.
But let 'em slander. I will give the slanderers matter
for curses. When last I left Whitehaven, I swore never
again to set foot on her pier, except, like Cæsar, at
Sandwich, as a foreign invader. Spring under me, good
ship; on you I bound to my vengeance!”

Men with poignant feelings, buried under an air of care-free
self-command, are never proof to the sudden incitements

of passion. Though in the main they may control
themselves, yet if they but once permit the smallest vent,
then they may bid adieu to all self-restraint, at least for
that time. Thus with Paul on the present occasion. His
sympathy with Israel had prompted this momentary ebullition.
When it was gone by, he seemed not a little to
regret it. But he passed it over lightly, saying, “You
see, my fine fellow, what sort of a bloody cannibal I am.
Will you be a sailor of mine? A sailor of the Captain
who flogged poor Mungo Maxwell to death?”

“I will be very happy, Captain Paul, to be sailor
under the man who will yet, I dare say, help flog the
British nation to death.”

“You hate 'em, do ye?”

“Like snakes. For months they've hunted me as a
dog,” half howled and half wailed Israel, at the memory
of all he had suffered.

“Give me your hand, my lion; wave your wild flax
again. By Heaven, you hate so well, I love ye. You
shall be my confidential man; stand sentry at my cabin
door; sleep in the cabin; steer my boat; keep by my
side whenever I land. What do you say?”

“I say I'm glad to hear you.”

“You are a good, brave soul. You are the first
among the millions of mankind that I ever naturally
took to. Come, you are tired. There, go into that
state-room for to-night—it's mine. You offered me your
bed in Paris.”

“But you begged off, Captain, and so must I. Where
do you sleep?”

“Lad, I don't sleep half a night out of three. My
clothes have not been off now for five days.”

“Ah, Captain, you sleep so little and scheme so much,
you will die young.”

“I know it: I want to: I mean to. Who would live
a doddered old stump? What do you think of my Scotch
bonnet?”

“It looks well on you, Captain.”

“Do you think so? A Scotch bonnet, though, ought
to look well on a Scotchman. I'm such by birth. Is the
gold band too much?”

“I like the gold band, Captain. It looks something
as I should think a crown might on a king.”

“Aye?”

“You would make a better-looking king than George III.”

“Did you ever see that old granny? Waddles about
in farthingales, and carries a peacock fan, don't he? Did
you ever see him?”

“Was as close to him as I am to you now, Captain.
In Kew Gardens it was, where I worked gravelling the
walks. I was all alone with him, talking for some ten
minutes.”

“By Jove, what a chance! Had I but been there!
What an opportunity for kidnapping a British king, and
carrying him off in a fast sailing smack to Boston, a hostage
for American freedom. But what did you? Didn't
you try to do something to him?”

“I had a wicked thought or two, Captain; but I got
the better of it. Besides, the king behaved handsomely
towards me; yes, like a true man. God bless him for

it. But it was before that, that I got the better of the
wicked thought.”

“Ah, meant to stick him, I suppose. Glad you didn't.
It would have been very shabby. Never kill a king,
but make him captive. He looks better as a led horse,
than a dead carcass. I propose now, this trip, falling on
the grounds of the Earl of Selkirk, a privy counsellor and
particular private friend of George III. But I won't hurt
a hair of his head. When I get him on board here, he
shall lodge in my best state-room, which I mean to hang
with damask for him. I shall drink wine with him, and
be very friendly; take him to America, and introduce
his lordship into the best circles there; only I shall have
him accompanied on his calls by a sentry of two disguised
as valets. For the Earl's to be on sale, mind; so much
ransom; that is, the nobleman, Lord Selkirk, shall have
a bodily price pinned on his coat-tail, like any slave up
at auction in Charleston. But, my lad with the yellow
mane, you very strangely draw out my secrets. And
yet you don't talk. Your honesty is a magnet which
attracts my sincerity. But I rely on your fidelity.”

“I shall be a vice to your plans, Captain Paul. I will
receive, but I won't let go, unless you alone loose the
screw.”

“Well said. To bed now; you ought to. I go on
deck. Good night, ace-of-hearts.”

“That is fitter for yourself, Captain Paul, lonely leader
of the suit.”

“Lonely? Aye, but number one cannot but be lonely,
my trump.”

“Again I give it back. Ace-of-trumps may it prove
to you, Captain Paul; may it be impossible for you
ever to be taken. But for me—poor deuce, a trey,
that comes in your wake—any king or knave may take
me, as before now the knaves have.”

“Tut, tut, lad; never be more cheery for another
than for yourself. But a fagged body fags the soul. To
hammock, to hammock! while I go on deck to clap on
more sail to your cradle.”

And they separated for that night.