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- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:05.590Z
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- 3934
- text
- 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 woolsack, 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.”
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