Part 15 (2/2)
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 gla.s.s 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, pa.s.sed the Isle of Man towards the c.u.mberland sh.o.r.e, 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 s.h.i.+fted and blew fresh with a violent sea.
”I won't call on old friends in foul weather,” said Captain Paul to Israel. ”We'll saunter about a little, and leave our cards in a day or two.”
Next morning, in Glentinebay, on the south sh.o.r.e of Scotland, they fell in with a revenue wherry. It was the practice of such craft to board merchant vessels. The Ranger was disguised as a merchantman, presenting a broad drab-colored belt all round her hull; under the coat of a Quaker, concealing the intent of a Turk. It was expected that the chartered rover would come alongside the unchartered one. But the former took to flight, her two lug sails staggering under a heavy wind, which the pursuing guns of the Ranger pelted with a hail-storm of shot. The wherry escaped, spite the severe cannonade.
Off the Mull of Galoway, the day following, Paul found himself so nigh a large barley-freighted Scotch coaster, that, to prevent her carrying tidings of him to land, he dispatched her with the news, stern foremost, to Hades; sinking her, and sowing her barley in the sea broadcast by a broadside. From her crew he learned that there was a fleet of twenty or thirty sail at anchor in Lochryan, with an armed brigantine. He pointed his prow thither; but at the mouth of the lock, the wind turned against him again in hard squalls. He abandoned the project. Shortly after, he encountered a sloop from Dublin. He sunk her to prevent intelligence.
Thus, seeming as much to bear the elemental commission of Nature, as the military warrant of Congress, swarthy Paul darted hither and thither; hovering like a thundercloud off the crowded harbors; then, beaten off by an adverse wind, discharging his lightnings on uncompanioned vessels, whose solitude made them a more conspicuous and easier mark, like lonely trees on the heath. Yet all this while the land was full of garrisons, the embayed waters full of fleets. With the impunity of a Levanter, Paul skimmed his craft in the land-locked heart of the supreme naval power of earth; a torpedo-eel, unknowingly swallowed by Britain in a draught of old ocean, and making sad havoc with her vitals.
Seeing next a large vessel steering for the Clyde, he gave chase, hoping to cut her off. The stranger proving a fast sailer, the pursuit was urged on with vehemence, Paul standing, plank-proud, on the quarter-deck, calling for pulls upon every rope, to stretch each already half-burst sail to the uttermost.
While thus engaged, suddenly a shadow, like that thrown by an eclipse, was seen rapidly gaining along the deck, with a sharp defined line, plain as a seam of the planks. It involved all before it. It was the domineering shadow of the Juan Fernandez-like crag of Ailsa. The Kanger was in the deep water which makes all round and close up to this great summit of the submarine Grampians.
The crag, more than a mile in circuit, is over a thousand feet high, eight miles from the Ayrs.h.i.+re sh.o.r.e. There stands the cove, lonely as a foundling, proud as Cheops. But, like the battered brains surmounting the Giant of Gath, its haughty summit is crowned by a desolate castle, in and out of whose arches the aerial mists eddy like purposeless phantoms, thronging the soul of some ruinous genius, who, even in overthrow, harbors none but lofty conceptions.
As the Ranger shot higher under the crag, its height and bulk dwarfed both pursuer and pursued into nutsh.e.l.ls. The main-truck of the Ranger was nine hundred feet below the foundations of the ruin on the crag's top:
While the s.h.i.+p was yet under the shadow, and each seaman's face shared in the general eclipse, a sudden change came over Paul. He issued no more sultanical orders. He did not look so elate as before. At length he gave the command to discontinue the chase. Turning about, they sailed southward.
”Captain Paul,” said Israel, shortly afterwards, ”you changed your mind rather queerly about catching that craft. But you thought she was drawing us too far up into the land, I suppose.”
”Sink the craft,” cried Paul; ”it was not any fear of her, nor of King George, which made me turn on my heel; it was yon c.o.c.k of the walk.”
”c.o.c.k of the walk?”
”Aye, c.o.c.k of the walk of the sea; look--yon Crag of Ailsa.”
CHAPTER XVI.
THEY LOOK IN AT CARRICKFERGUS, AND DESCEND ON WHITEHAVEN.
Next day, off Carrickfergus, on the Irish coast, a fis.h.i.+ng boat, allured by the Quaker-like look of the incognito craft, came off in full confidence. Her men were seized, their vessel sunk. From them Paul learned that the large s.h.i.+p at anchor in the road, was the s.h.i.+p-of-war Drake, of twenty guns. Upon this he steered away, resolving to return secretly, and attack her that night.
”Surely, Captain Paul,” said Israel to his commander, as about sunset they backed and stood in again for the land ”surely, sir, you are not going right in among them this way? Why not wait till she comes out?”
”Because, Yellow-hair, my boy, I am engaged to marry her to-night. The bride's friends won't like the match; and so, this very night, the bride must be carried away. She has a nice tapering waist, hasn't she, through the gla.s.s? Ah! I will clasp her to my heart.”
<script>