Chapter 15

THEY SAIL AS FAR AS THE CRAG OF AILSA.

Next morning Israel was appointed quartermaster--a subaltern selected
from the common seamen, and whose duty mostly stations him in the stern
of the ship, where the captain walks. His business is to carry the glass
on the look-out for sails; hoist or lower the colors; and keep an eye on
the helmsman. Picked out from the crew for their superior respectability
and intelligence, as well as for their excellent seamanship, it is not
unusual to find the quartermasters of an armed ship on peculiarly easy
terms with the commissioned officers and captain. This birth, therefore,
placed Israel in official contiguity to Paul, and without subjecting
either to animadversion, made their public intercourse on deck almost as
familiar as their unrestrained converse in the cabin.

It was a fine cool day in the beginning of April. They were now off the
coast of Wales, whose lofty mountains, crested with snow, presented a
Norwegian aspect. The wind was fair, and blew with a strange, bestirring
power. The ship--running between Ireland and England, northwards,
towards the Irish Sea, the inmost heart of the British waters--seemed,
as she snortingly shook the spray from her bow, to be conscious of the
dare-devil defiance of the soul which conducted her on this anomalous
cruise. Sailing alone from out a naval port of France, crowded with
ships-of-the-line, Paul Jones, in his small craft, went forth in
single-armed championship against the English host. Armed with but the
sling-stones in his one shot-locker, like young David of old, Paul
bearded the British giant of Gath. It is not easy, at the present day,
to conceive the hardihood of this enterprise. It was a marching up to
the muzzle; the act of one who made no compromise with the cannonadings
of danger or death; such a scheme as only could have inspired a heart
which held at nothing all the prescribed prudence of war, and every
obligation of peace; combining in one breast the vengeful indignation
and bitter ambition of an outraged hero, with the uncompunctuous
desperation of a renegade. In one view, the Coriolanus of the sea; in
another, a cross between the gentleman and the wolf.

As Paul stood on the elevated part of the quarter-deck, with none but his
confidential quartermaster near him, he yielded to Israel's natural
curiosity to learn something concerning the sailing of the expedition.
Paul stood lightly, swaying his body over the sea, by holding on to the
mizzen-shrouds, an attitude not inexpressive of his easy audacity; while
near by, pacing a few steps to and fro, his long spy-glass now under his
arm, and now presented at his eye, Israel, looking the very image of
vigilant prudence, listened to the warrior's story. It appeared