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Page 49
CHAPTER XV.
THEY SAIL AS FAR AS THE CRAG OF AILSA.
Next morning Israel was appointed quartermaster--a subaltern selected
from the common seamen, and whose duty mostly stations him in the stern
of the ship, where the captain walks. His business is to carry the glass
on the look-out for sails; hoist or lower the colors; and keep an eye on
the helmsman. Picked out from the crew for their superior respectability
and intelligence, as well as for their excellent seamanship, it is not
unusual to find the quartermasters of an armed ship on peculiarly easy
terms with the commissioned officers and captain. This birth, therefore,
placed Israel in official contiguity to Paul, and without subjecting
either to animadversion, made their public intercourse on deck almost as
familiar as their unrestrained converse in the cabin.
It was a fine cool day in the beginning of April. They were now off the
coast of Wales, whose lofty mountains, crested with snow, presented a
Norwegian aspect. The wind was fair, and blew with a strange, bestirring
power. The ship--running between Ireland and England, northwards,
towards the Irish Sea, the inmost heart of the British waters--seemed,
as she snortingly shook the spray from her bow, to be conscious of the
dare-devil defiance of the soul which conducted her on this anomalous
cruise. Sailing alone from out a naval port of France, crowded with
ships-of-the-line, Paul Jones, in his small craft, went forth in
single-armed championship against the English host. Armed with but the
sling-stones in his one shot-locker, like young David of old, Paul
bearded the British giant of Gath. It is not easy, at the present day,
to conceive the hardihood of this enterprise. It was a marching up to
the muzzle; the act of one who made no compromise with the cannonadings
of danger or death; such a scheme as only could have inspired a heart
which held at nothing all the prescribed prudence of war, and every
obligation of peace; combining in one breast the vengeful indignation
and bitter ambition of an outraged hero, with the uncompunctuous
desperation of a renegade. In one view, the Coriolanus of the sea; in
another, a cross between the gentleman and the wolf.
As Paul stood on the elevated part of the quarter-deck, with none but his
confidential quartermaster near him, he yielded to Israel's natural
curiosity to learn something concerning the sailing of the expedition.
Paul stood lightly, swaying his body over the sea, by holding on to the
mizzen-shrouds, an attitude not inexpressive of his easy audacity; while
near by, pacing a few steps to and fro, his long spy-glass now under his
arm, and now presented at his eye, Israel, looking the very image of
vigilant prudence, listened to the warrior's story. It appeared that on
the night of the visit of the Duke de Chartres and Count D'Estaing to
Doctor Franklin in Paris--the same night that Captain Paul and Israel
were joint occupants of the neighboring chamber--the final sanction of
the French king to the sailing of an American armament against England,
under the direction of the Colonial Commissioner, was made known to the
latter functionary. It was a very ticklish affair. Though swaying on the
brink of avowed hostilities with England, no verbal declaration had as
yet been made by France. Undoubtedly, this enigmatic position of things
was highly advantageous to such an enterprise as Paul's.
Without detailing all the steps taken through the united efforts of
Captain Paul and Doctor Franklin, suffice it that the determined rover
had now attained his wish--the unfettered command of an armed ship in
the British waters; a ship legitimately authorized to hoist the American
colors, her commander having in his cabin-locker a regular commission as
an officer of the American navy. He sailed without any instructions.
With that rare insight into rare natures which so largely distinguished
the sagacious Franklin, the sage well knew that a prowling _brave_, like
Paul Jones, was, like the prowling lion, by nature a solitary warrior.
"Let him alone," was the wise man's answer to some statesman who sought
to hamper Paul with a letter of instructions.
Much subtile casuistry has been expended upon the point, whether Paul
Jones was a knave or a hero, or a union of both. But war and warriors,
like politics and politicians, like religion and religionists, admit of
no metaphysics.
On the second day after Israel's arrival on board the Ranger, as he and
Paul were conversing on the deck, Israel suddenly levelling his glass
towards the Irish coast, announced a large sail bound in. The Ranger
gave chase, and soon, almost within sight of her destination--the port
of Dublin--the stranger was taken, manned, and turned round for Brest.
The Ranger then stood over, passed the Isle of Man towards the
Cumberland shore, arriving within remote sight of Whitehaven about
sunset. At dark she was hovering off the harbor, with a party of
volunteers all ready to descend. But the wind shifted and blew fresh
with a violent sea.
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