"\'But when shall I see Athens and the Acropolis again?\'
"\'Wretched man! doth not that satisfy thee which thou seest every day? Hast thou aught better or greater to see than the sun, the moon, the stars, the common earth, the sea?\'"
"Who would Hercules have been if he had sat at home?"
The Ranger was under full sail, and ran like a hound; she had cleared the Banks with all their snow squalls and thick nights, without let or hindrance. The captain\'s boast that he would land his dispatches and spread the news of Burgoyne\'s surrender in France in thirty days seemed likely to come true. The men were already beginning to show effects of constant vigilance and overwork; but whatever discomforts might arrive, the splendid seamanship of Paul Jones could only be admired by such thorough-going sailors as made up the greater portion of his crew. The younger members of the ship\'s company were full of gayety if the wind and work eased ever so little, and at any time, by night or day, some hearty voice might be heard practicing the strains of a stirring song new made by one of the midshipmen:—
"That is why we Brave the Blast
To carry the news to Lon-don."
There were plenty of rival factions and jealousies. The river men were against all strangers; and even the river men had their own divisions, their warm friendships and cold aversions, so that now and then some smouldering fire came perilously near an outbreak. The tremendous pressure of work alow and aloft, the driving wind, the heavy tumbling seas, the constant exposure and strain in such trying duty and incessant service of the sails, put upon every man all that he could well bear, and sent him to his berth as tired as a dog.
It takes but little while for a good shipmaster to discover who are the difficult men in his crew, the sea lawyers and breeders of dissatisfaction. The captain of the Ranger was a man of astonishing readiness both to blame and praise; nobody could resist his inspiriting enthusiasm and dominating presence, but in absence he was often proved wrong, and roundly cursed, as captains are, with solid satisfaction of resentment. Everybody cheered when he boldly declared against flogging, and even tossed that horrid sea-going implement, the cat, lightly over the ship\'s side. Even in this surprising moment, one of the old seamen had growled that when you saw a man too good, it was the time to look out for him.
"I dasen\'t say but it\'s about time to get a fuss going," said one of these mariners to a friend, later on. "Ginerally takes about ten days to start a row atween decks, \'less you \'re extra eased off with good weather."
"This bad weather\'s all along o\' Dickson," ventured his comrade; "if they\'d known what they was about, he \'d been the fust man they\'d hasted to set ashore. I know him; I \'ve knowed him ever since he was a boy. I see him get a black stripe o\' rage acrost his face when he seen Mr. Wallin\'ford come aboard, that mornin\'. Wallin\'ford\'s folks cotched him thievin\' when he had his fat chance o\' surveyor up country, after the old judge died. He cut their growth on his own account and done a sight o\' tricks, and Madam dismissed him, and would ha\' jailed him but for pity of his folks. I always wished she\'d done it; \'t would ha\' stamped him plain, if he\'d seen the inside o\' old York jail for a couple o\' years. As \'t was, he had his own story to tell, and made out how he was the injured one; so there was some o\' them fools that likes to be on the off side that went an\' upheld him. Oh, Dickson \'s smart, and some calls him pious, but I wish you\'d seen him the day Madam Wallin\'ford sent for him to speak her mind! That mornin\' we was sailin\' out o\' Porchmouth, I see him watch the young man as if he was layin\' for him like a tiger! There he is now, comin\' out o\' the cabin. I guess the cap\'n \'s been rakin\' him fore an\' aft. He hates him; an\' Simpson hates him, too, but not so bad. Simpson don\'t jibe with the cap\'n hisself, so he demeans himself to hark to Dickson more \'n he otherwise would. Lord, what a cur\'ous world this is!"
"What\'s that n\'ise risin\' out o\' the fo\'c\'s\'le now, Cooper? Le\' \'s go see!" and the two old comrades made haste to go below.
Paul Jones gave a hearty sigh, as he sat alone in his cabin, and struck his fist into the empty air. He also could hear the sound of a loud quarrel from the gun deck, and for a moment indulged a fierce hope that somebody might be well punished, or even killed, just to lessen the number of citizens in this wrangling village with which he had put to sea. They had brought aboard all the unsettled rivalries and jealousies of a most independent neighborhood.
He looked about him as he sat; then rose and impatiently closed one of his lockers where there was an untidy fold of crumpled clothing hanging out. What miserable surroundings and conditions for a man of inborn fastidiousness and refinement of nature!
Yet this new ship, so fast growing toward the disgusting squalor of an old one; these men, with their cheap suspicions and narrow ambitions, were the strong tools ready to his hand. It was a manly crew as crews go, and like-minded in respect to their country\'s wrongs.
"I feel it in my breast that I shall some day be master in a great sea fight!" said the little captain as he sat alone, while the Ranger labored against the waves, and the light of heroic endurance came back to his eyes as he saw again the splendid vision that had ever led him on.
"Curse that scoundrel Dickson!" and his look darkened. "Patience, patience! If I were a better sleeper, I could face everything that can come in a man\'s day; I could face the devil himself. The wind\'s in the right quarter now, and the sea\'s going down. I \'ll go on deck and give all hands some grog,—I \'ll give it them myself; the poor fellows are cold and wet, and they serve me like men. We \'re getting past the worst," and again Paul Jones fell to studying his charts as if they were love letters writ by his lady\'s hand.
Cooper and Hanscom had come below to join the rest of their watch, and still sat side by side, being old shipmates and friends. There was an easy sort of comfort in being together. Just now they spoke again in low voices of young Mr. Wallingford.
"Young master looks wamble-cropped to me," said Hanscom. "Don\'t fancy privateerin\' so well as ridin\' a blood horse on Porchmouth Parade, and bein\' courted by the Tory big-bugs. Looks wintry in the face to me."
"Lord bless us, when he\'s old \'s we are, he \'ll l\'arn that spring al\'ays gets round again long\'s a creatur\' \'s alive," answered Cooper, who instinctively gave a general turn to the discussion. "Ary thing that\'s livin\' knows its four seasons, an\' I \'ve long maintained that after the wust o\' winter, spring usu\'lly doos come follerin\' right on."
"I don\'t know but it\'s so," agreed his mate politely. Cooper would have these fanciful notions, while Hanscom was a plain-spoken man.
"What I\'d like to know," said he, "yes, what I \'d like to ascertain, is what young Squire Wallin\'ford ever come for; \'t ain\'t in his blood to fight on our side, an\' he\'s too straight-minded to play the sneak. Also, he never come from cowardice. No, I can\'t make it out noway. Sometimes folks mistakes their duty, and risks their all. Bain\'t spyin\' round to do no hurt, is he?—or is he?"
There was a sharp suggestion in the way this question was put, and Cooper turned fiercely upon his companion.
"Hunscom, I be ashamed of you!" he said scornfully, and said no more. There was a dull warmth of color in his hard, sea-smitten face; he was an elderly, quiet man, with a round, pleasant countenance unaltered in the worst of weather, and a look of kindly tolerance.
"There\'s b\'en some consid\'able changin\' o\' sides in our neighborhood, as you know," he said, a few moments later, in his usual tone. "Young Wallin\'ford went to school to Master Sullivan, and the old master l\'arnt everybody he could l\'arn to be honest an\' square, to hold by their word, an\' be afeard o\' nothin\'."
"Pity \'t was that Dickson could n\'t ha\' got a term o\' such schoolin\'," said Hanscom, as they beheld that shipmate\'s unwelcome face peering down the companion.
"Sometimes I wish I was to home again," announced Cooper, in an unexpected fit of despondency. "I don\' know why; \'tain\'t usual with me to have such feelin\'s in the outset of a v\'y\'ge. I grow sicker every day o\' this flat, strivin\' sea. I was raised on a good hill. I don\' know how I ever come to foller the sea, anyway!"
The forecastle was a forlorn abiding-place at best, and crowded at any hour almost past endurance. The one hint of homeliness and decency was in the well-made sea chests, which had not been out of place against a steadier wall in the farmhouses whence most of them had come. They were of plain wood, with a touch of art in their rude carving; many of them were painted dull green or blue. There were others with really handsome escutcheons of wrought iron, and all were graced with fine turk\'s-heads to their rope handles, and every ingenuity of sailors\' fancywork.
There was a grumbling company of able seamen, their owners, who had no better place to sit than the chest tops, or to stretch at idle length with these treasuries to lean against. The cold sea was nearer to a man than when he was on deck and could reassure himself of freedom by a look at the sky. The hammocks were here and there sagging with the rounded bulk of a sleeping owner, and all jerked uneasily as the vessel pitched and rolled by turns. The air was close and heavy with dampness and tobacco smoke.
At this moment the great sea boots of Simon Staples were seen descending from the deck above, and stumbling dangerously on the slippery straight ladder.
"Handsomely, handsomely," urged a spectator, with deep solicitude.
"She \'s goin\' large now, ain\'t she? How\'s she headin\' now?" asked a man named Grant.
"She\'s full an\' by, an\' headin\' east by south half east,—same \'s we struck out past the Isles o\' Shoals," was the mirthful answer. "She can\'t keep to nothin\', an\' the cap\'n \'s got to make another night on\'t. But she \'s full an\' by, just now, all you lazy larbowlin............