Part 2 — PAUL JONES.

“Steady, there, steady!” thundered the master of the merchantman, his voice seeming, however, in the fierce uproar of the gale, to die away into a whisper.

I looked ahead. A giant wave, towering as high as the yard arm, its angry crest hissing above us, and its dark green bosom seeming to open to engulph our fated bark, was rolling down toward us, shutting out half the horizon from sight, and striking terror into the stoutest heart. It was a fearful spectacle. Involuntarily I glanced around the horizon. All was dark, lowering, and ominous. On every hand the mountain waves were heaving to the sky, while the roar of the hurricane was awfully sublime. Now we rose to the heavens: now sunk into a yawning abyss. But I had little time to gaze upon the fearful scene. Already the angry billow was rushing down upon our bows, when the master again sang out, as if with the voice of a giant.

“Hold on all!” and as he spoke, the huge volume of waters came tumbling in upon us, sweeping our decks like a whirlwind, hissing, roaring, and foaming along, and making the merchantman quiver in every timber from bulwark to kelson. Not a moveable thing was left. The long boat was swept from the decks like chaff before a hurricane. For an instant the merchantman lay powerless beneath the blow, as if a thunderbolt had stunned her; but gradually recovering from the shock, she shook the waters gallantly from her bows, emerged from the deluge, and rolling her tall masts heavily to starboard, once more breasted the storm.

We had been a week at sea without meeting a single sail. During that time we had enjoyed a succession of favorable breezes, until within the last few days, when the gale, which now raged, had overtaken us, and driven us out into the Atlantic, somewhere, as near as we could guess, between the Bermudas and our port of destination. Within the last few hours we had been lying-to, under a close-reefed foresail; but every succeeding wave had seemed to become more dangerous than the last, until it was now evident that our craft could not much longer endure the continued surges which breaking over her bows, threatened momentarily to engulph us. The master stood by my side, holding on to a rope, his weather-beaten countenance drenched with spray, but his keen, anxious eye changing continually from the bow of his craft, to the wild scene around him.

“She can’t stand it much longer, Mr. Parker,” said the old man, “many a gale have I weathered in her, but none like this. God help us!”

“Meet it with the helm—hold on all,” came faintly from the forecastle, and before the words had whizzed past upon the gale, another mountain wave was hurled in upon us, and I felt myself, the next instant, borne away, as in the arms of a giant, upon its bosom. The rope by which I held had parted. There was a hissing in my ears—a rapid shooting like an arrow—a desperate effort to stay my progress by catching at a rope, I missed—and then I felt myself whirled away astern of the merchantman, my eyes blinded with the spray, my ears ringing with a strange, wild sound, and a feeling of sudden, utter hopelessness at my heart, such as they only can know who have experienced a fate as terrible as mine, at that moment, threatened to be.

“A man overboard!” came faintly from the fast-receding ship.

“Ahoy!” I shouted.

“Hillo—hil—lo—o,” was answered back.

“Ahoy—a—a—hoy!”

“Throw over that spar.”

“Toll the bell that he may know where we are.”

“Hillo—hi—il—lo!”

“Who is it?”

“Bring a lantern here.”

“Hil—l—o—o—o—o!”

“Can you see him?”

“It’s as dark as death.”

“God have mercy then upon his soul.”

I could hear every word of the conversation, as the excited tones of the speakers came borne to leeward upon the gale, but although I shouted back with desperate strength, I felt that my cries were unheard by my shipmates to windward. The distance between myself and the merchantman was meanwhile rapidly increasing, and every moment her dark figure became more and more shadowy. With that presence of mind which is soon acquired in a life of peril, I had begun to tread water the instant I had gone overboard; but I felt that my strength would soon fail me, and that I must sink, unaided, into the watery abyss. Oh! who can tell my feelings as I saw the figure of the merchantman gradually becoming more dim in the distance, and heard the voices of my friends, at first loud and distinct, dying away into indistinct murmurs. Alone on the ocean! My breath came quick; my heart beat wildly; I felt the blood rushing in torrents to my brain. The scene meanwhile grew darker around me. The faint hope I had entertained that the ship would be put about, gradually died away; and even while I looked, she suddenly vanished from my vision. I strained my eyes to catch a sight of her as I rose upon a billow. Alas! she was not to be seen. Was there then no hope? Young; full of life; in the heyday of love—oh! God it was too much to endure! I felt that my last hour had come. Already the waters seemed roaring through my ears, and strange, fantastic figures to dance before my eyes. In that hour every event of my life whirled through my memory! I thought of my childhood; of my mother in her weeds; of her prayers over her only child; and of the cold wintry day when they laid her in her grave, and told me that I was an orphan. I thought too of my boyhood; of my college life; of my early days at sea; of the eventful months which had just passed; of my hopes of a bright career or a glorious death, thus to be quenched forever; and of Beatrice, my own Beatrice, whom I was to see no more. Wild with the agony of that thought, I tossed my arms aloft, and invoked a dying blessing on her head. At that instant something came shooting past me, borne on the bosom of a towering wave. It was a lumbering chest, doubtless one of those thrown overboard from the merchantman. I grasped it with a desperate effort: I clambered up upon it; and as I felt its frail planks beneath me, a revulsion came over my bosom. The fisherman by his fireside, when the tempest howls around his dwelling, could not have felt more confident of safety than I now did, with nothing but this simple chest between me and the yawning abyss. Quick, gushing emotions swept through my bosom; I burst into tears; and lifting up my voice, there, alone, on the wide ocean, I poured forth my thanksgivings to God.

It was with no little difficulty I maintained my position on the chest, during the long hours which elapsed before the morning dawned. Now borne to the heavens, now hurried into the abyss below; now drenched with the surge, now whirled wildly onward, on the bosom of some wave, I passed the weary moments, in alternate efforts to maintain my hold, and ardent longings for the morning’s light. The gale, meantime, gradually diminished. At length the long looked-for dawn appeared, creeping slowly and ominously over the horizon, and revealing to my eager sight nothing but the white surges, the agitated deep, and the leaden colored sky on every hand. My heart sank within me. All through the weary watches of that seemingly interminable night, I had cheered my drooping hopes with the certainty of seeing the merchantman in the morning, and now, as I scanned the frowning horizon; and saw only that stormy waste on every hand, my heart once more died within me, and I almost despaired. Suddenly, however, I thought I perceived something flashing on the weather seaboard like the wing of a water-fowl, and straining my eyes in that direction, whenever I rose upon a wave, I beheld at length, to my joy, that the object was a sail. Oh! the overpowering emotions of that moment. The vessel was evidently one of considerable size, and coming down right toward me. As she approached I made her out to be a sloop of war, driving under close-reefed courses before the gale. Her hull of glossy black; her snowy canvass; and her trim jaunty finish were in remarkable contrast with the usual slovenly appearance of a mere merchantman. No jack was at her mast-head; no ensign fluttered at her gaff. But I cared not to what nation she belonged, in that moment of hope and fear. To me she was a messenger of mercy. I had watched her eagerly until she had approached within almost a pistol-shot of me, trembling momentarily lest she should alter her course. I now shouted with all my strength. No one, however, seemed to hear me. Onward she came, swinging with the surges, and driving a cataract of foam along before her bows. A look-out was idly leaning on the bowsprit. As the huge fabric surged down toward me another danger arose. I might be run down. Nerved to supernatural strength by the immanency of the peril, I raised myself half up upon my chest, and placing my hand to my mouth, shouted with desperate energy,

“Ahoy! a—a—hoy!”

“Hillo!” said the look-out, turning sharply in the direction of my voice.

“Ahoy! ship a—ho—o—y!”

“Starboard your helm,” thundered the seaman, discovering me upon my little raft, “heave a rope here—easy—easy—God bless you, shipmate,” and with the rapidity with which events are transacted in a dream, I was hoisted on board, and clasped in the arms of the warm-hearted old fellow, before he saw, by my uniform, that I was an officer. When he perceived this, however, he started back, and hastily touching his hat, said, with humorous perplexity,

“Beg pardon, sir—didn’t see you belonged aft——”

“An American officer in this extremity,” said a deep voice at my elbow, with startling suddenness, and as the speaker advanced, the group of curious seamen fell away from around me, as if by magic; while I felt, at once, that I was in the presence of the commanding officer of the ship.

“You are among friends,” said the speaker, in a voice slightly tinged with the Scotch accent, “we bear the flag of the Congress—but walk aft—you are drenched, exhausted—you need rest—I must delay my inquiries until you have been provided for—send the doctor to my cabin—and steward mix us a rummer of hot grog.”

During these rapid remarks the speaker, taking me by the arm, had conducted, or rather led me to a neat cabin aft, and closing the door with his last remarks, he opened a locker, and producing a suit of dry clothes, bid me array myself in them, and then vanished from the apartment.

In a few minutes, however, he re-appeared, followed by the steward, bearing a huge tumbler of hot brandy, which he made me drink off, nothing loth, at a draught.

From the first instant of his appearance, I had felt a strange, but unaccountable awe in the presence of the commanding officer, and I now sought to account for it by a rigid, but hasty scrutiny of his person, as he stood before me.

He was a short, thick-set, muscular man, apparently about thirty years of age, drest in a blue, tight-fitting naval frock coat, with an epaulette upon one shoulder, and a sword hanging by his side. But his face was the most striking part of him. Such a countenance I never saw. It had a fire in the eye, a compression about the lips, a distention of the nostrils, and a sternness in its whole appearance, which betokened a man, not only of strong passions, but of inflexible decision of character. That brow, bold, massy, and threatening, might have shaped the destinies of a nation. I could not withdraw my eyes from it. He appeared to read my thoughts, for smiling faintly, he courteously signed to the steward to take my glass, and when the door had closed upon him, said,

“But to what brother officer am I indebted for this honor?”

I mentioned my name, and the schooner in which I had sailed from New York.

“The Fire-Fly!” he said, with some surprise, “ah! I have heard of your gallantry in that brush with the pirates—” and then, half unconsciously, as if musing, he continued, “and so your name is Parker.”

“And yours?” I asked, with a nod of assent.

“Paul Jones!”

For a moment we stood silently gazing on each other—he seeming to wish to pierce my very soul with his small, grey eye, and I regarding with a feeling akin to fascination, the wonderful man whose after career was even then foreshadowed in my mind.

“I see you are of the right stuff,” exclaimed this singular being, breaking the silence, “we shall yet make those haughty English weep in blood for their tyranny.”

I know not how it was; but from that moment I felt certain my companion would make his name a terror to his enemies, and a wonder to the world.

For some days we continued our course, with but little deviation; and every day I became more and more interested in the commander of the man-of-war. Although my situation as his guest brought me into closer contact with him than any one except his lieutenant, yet, after the first few hours of our intercourse, he became reserved and silent, though without any diminution of courtesy. His former career was little known even in the ward-room. He had been brought up, it was said, by the earl of Selkirk, but had left his patron’s house at the age of fifteen, and embarked in a seafaring life. Dark hints were whispered about as to the causes of his sudden departure, and it was said that the dishonor of one of his family had driven him forth from the roof of his patron. Upon these subjects, however, I made no ungenerous enquiries; but learned that he had subsequently been engaged in the West India trade as master, and that he had, on the breaking out of the war, come to America, and offered himself to Congress for a commission in our navy. Some deep, but, as yet unknown, cause of hatred toward the English, was said to have prompted him to this act.

As time passed on, however, I enjoyed many opportunities of studying his singular character, which, had I not felt my curiosity aroused, might have passed by unused. Often would I, in our slight conversations, endeavor to pierce into his bosom, and read there the history of all those dark emotions which slumbered there. But he seemed generally to suspect my purpose—at least he appeared always on his guard. He was ever the same courteous but unfathomable being.

We had run down as far south as the Bermudas, when, one day the look-out made five sail; and in an instant every eye was directed toward the quarter where the strangers appeared, to see if there was any chance of a prize.

“How bear they?” asked Paul Jones quickly, to the look-out at the mast-head.

“I can’t make out but one, and she seems a large merchantman, on a taut bowline.”

“Watch her sharp.”

“Ay, ay, sir.”

For some time, every eye was fastened upon the approaching sail, which, apparently unconscious of an enemy so near, kept blindly approaching us. At length her royals began to lift, her topsails followed rapidly, and directly the heads of her courses loomed up on the horizon. Every eye sparkled with the certainty of a rich prize.

“She’s a fat Indiaman, by St. George,” said our lieutenant, who had not yet so far forgot the country of his ancestors, as to swear by any saint but her patron one.

“I guess we’d better not be too sure,” said a cautious old quarter-master from Cape Cod, as he levelled a much worn spy-glass, and prepared to take a long squint at the stranger.

“By St. Pathrick,” said an Irish midshipman, in a whisper to one of his comrades, “but wont she make a beautiful prize—with the rale Jamaica, my boys, by the hogshead in her, and we nothing to do afther the capture, but to drink it up, to be shure.”

“The strange sail is a frigate,” said the look-out at the mast head, with startling earnestness.

“Too true, by G—d,” muttered the lieutenant, shutting his glass with a jerk; and as he spoke, the hull of the stranger loomed up above the horizon, presenting a row of yawning teeth that boded us little good, for we knew that our own little navy boasted no vessel with so large an armament.

“That fellow is an English frigate,” calmly said Paul Jones, closing his telescope leisurely, “we shall have to try our heels.”

Every thing that could draw was soon set, and we went off upon a wind, hoping to distance our pursuer by superior sailing. But though, for a while, we deluded ourselves with this hope, it soon became apparent that the enemy was rapidly gaining upon us, and with a heavy cross sea to contend against, we found ourselves, in less than four hours, within musket shot of the frigate, upon her weather bow. During all this time the Englishman had been firing her chase guns after us, but not one of them, as yet, had touched us. The game, however, was now apparently over. Every one gave themselves up as lost, to die, perhaps, the death of rebels. Resistance would only inflame our captors. How astonished then, were we all to hear the captain exclaim,—

“Beat to quarters!”

The high discipline of the crew brought every man to his post at the first tap of the drum, though not a countenance but exhibited amazement at the order.

“Open the magazine!” said Paul Jones in the same stern, collected tone.

The order was obeyed, and then all was silent again. It was a moment of exciting interest. As I looked along the deck at the dark groups gathered at the guns, and then at the calm, but iron-like countenance of the daring commander, I felt strange doubts as to whether it might not be his intention to sink beneath the broadside of the frigate, or, grappling with the foe, blow himself and the Englishman up. My reverie, however, was soon cut short by a shot from the frigate whizzing harmlessly past us, overhead. The eye of the singular being standing beside me, flashed lightning, as he thundered,—

“Show him the bunting. Let drive at him, gunner,” and at the same instant our flag shot up to the gaff, unrolled, and then whipt in the wind; while a shot from one of our four pounders, cut through and through the fore-course of the enemy.

“Keep her away a point or two, quarter-master,” said the captain, again breaking in upon the ominous silence, now interrupted only by the report of the cannon, or the fierce dashing of the waves against the sloop’s bows.

“Does he mean to have us all strung up at the yard arm?” whispered the lieutenant to me, as he beheld this perilous bravado, yet felt himself restrained as much by the awe in which he held his superior, as by his own rigid notions of discipline, from remonstrating against the manœuvre.

Meantime, the frigate was slowly gaining upon us, and had her batteries been better served, would have soon riddled us to pieces; but the want of skill in her crew, as well as the violence of the cross sea, prevented her shot from taking effect. The distance between us, however, gradually lessened. We saw no hope of escape. Every resort had been tried, but in vain. Already the frigate was dashing on to us in dangerous proximity, and we could see the eager countenances of her officers apparently exulting over their prize. Our crew, meanwhile, began to murmur. Despair was in many faces: despondency in all. Only our commander maintained the same inflexible demeanor which had characterised him throughout the chase. He had kept his eye steadily fixed upon the frigate for the last ten minutes in silence, only speaking now and then to order the sloop to be kept away another point or two. By this means the relative positions of the two vessels had been changed so as to bring us upon the lee-bow of the enemy. Suddenly his eye kindled, and turning quickly around to his lieutenant, he said,—

“Order all hands to be ready to make sail,” and as soon as the men had sprung to their stations, he shouted—

“Up with your helm; hard,—harder. Man the clew garnets—board tacks—topsails, royals—and flying jib,—merrily all, my men.”

And as sheet after sheet of canvass was distended to the wind, we came gallantly around, and catching the breeze over our taffrail, went off dead before the wind, passing, however, within pistol shot of the enemy.

“Have you any message for Newport?” said Paul Jones, springing into the mizzen-rigging, and hailing the infuriated English captain, as we shot past him.

“Give it to him with the grape—all hands make sail—fire!” came hoarsely down from the frigate, in harsh and angry tones.

“Good day, and many thanks for your present,” said our imperturbable commander, as the discharge swept harmlessly by; and then leaping upon the deck, he ran his eye aloft.

“Run aft with that sheet—send out the kites aloft there, more merrily—we shall drop the rascals now, my gallant fellows,” shouted the elated captain, as we swept like a sea-gull away from the foe; while the men, inspired by the boldness and success of the manœuvre, worked with a redoubled alacrity, which promised soon to place us without reach of the enemy’s fire. The desperate efforts of the frigate to regain her advantage, were, meanwhile, of no avail. Taken completely by surprise, she could neither throw out her light sails sufficiently quick, nor direct her fiery broadsides with any precision. Not a grape-shot struck us, although the water to larboard was ploughed up with the iron hail. We soon found that we outsailed her before the wind, and in less than an hour we had drawn beyond range of her shot.