Chapter 14

IN WHICH ISRAEL IS SAILOR UNDER TWO FLAGS, AND IN THREE SHIPS, AND ALL
IN ONE NIGHT.

As running down channel at evening, Israel walked the crowded main-deck
of the seventy-four, continually brushed by a thousand hurrying
wayfarers, as if he were in some great street in London, jammed with
artisans, just returning from their day's labor, novel and painful
emotions were his. He found himself dropped into the naval mob without
one friend; nay, among enemies, since his country's enemies were his
own, and against the kith and kin of these very beings around him, he
himself had once lifted a fatal hand. The martial bustle of a great
man-of-war, on her first day out of port, was indescribably jarring to
his present mood. Those sounds of the human multitude disturbing the
solemn natural solitudes of the sea, mysteriously afflicted him. He
murmured against that untowardness which, after condemning him to long
sorrows on the land, now pursued him with added griefs on the deep. Why
should a patriot, leaping for the chance again to attack the oppressor,
as at Bunker Hill, now be kidnapped to fight that oppressor's battles
on the endless drifts of the Bunker Hills of the billows? But like many
other repiners, Israel was perhaps a little premature with upbraidings
like these.

Plying on between Scilly and Cape Clear, the Unprincipled--which vessel
somewhat outsailed her consorts--fell in, just before dusk, with a large
revenue cutter close to, and showing signals of distress. At the moment,
no other sail was in sight.

Cursing the necessity of pausing with a strong fair wind at a juncture
like this, the officer-of-the-deck shortened sail, and hove to; hailing
the cutter, to know what was the matter. As he hailed the small craft
from the lofty poop of the bristling seventy-four, this lieutenant
seemed standing on the top of Gibraltar, talking to some lowland peasant
in a hut. The reply was, that in a sudden flaw of wind, which came nigh
capsizing them, not an hour since, the cutter had lost all four foremost
men by the violent jibing of a boom. She wanted help to get back to
port.

"You shall have one man," said the officer-of-the-deck, morosely.

"Let him be a good one then, for heaven's sake," said he in the cutter;
"I ought to have at least two."

During this talk, Israel's curiosity had prompted him to dart up the
ladder from the main-deck, and stand right in the gangway above, looking
out on the strange craft. Meantime the order had been given to drop a
boat. Thinking this a favorable chance, he stationed himself so that he
should be the foremost to spring into the boat; though crowds of English
sailors, eager as himself for the same opportunity to escape from