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From this wary attitude Porter in vain tried to force his antagonist by varied provocations; but, although the exchange of official insults, verging closely at times upon personal imputations, caused bitterness to take the place of the first friendly courtesies, Hillyar was too old an officer, and his reputation for courage too well known, to allow his hand to be thus forced.
He was not afraid to risk a duel with the Phoebe even with this handicap in armament, but the sloop-of-war Cherub was a formidable vessel for her size and the Essex, Junior, which was only a converted merchantman, was of small account in a hammer-and-tongs action between naval ships. For his part, Captain Hillyar had no intention of letting the Yankee frigate escape him.
But the distortion which the character of Emma Burton undergoes, and the caricature of Gerty Neville, are, after all, easily pardonable faults in a story rich in noble thought and sympathy, bright with pretty, audacious nonsense, and containing such real personages as Jim Burton and his father and mother, Erne Hillyar, and the Honourable Jack Dawson.
He made no attempt to avoid a meeting but on the contrary rather courted a fight with his old friend Hillyar, whom he had known socially on the Mediterranean station. For an officer of Porter's temper and training the capture of British whalers was a useful but by no means glorious employment. He believed the real vocation of a frigate of the American navy was to engage the enemy.
As has before been said, Captain Hillyar was an old friend of Porter's. The two men had been thrown together in the Mediterranean, and the American had been a frequent visitor in the other's house at Gibraltar.
Taking no account of the Cherub, the disparity of force is sufficiently obvious. Although, from the assurances Hillyar had made to him in conversation, Porter had hoped that the neutrality of the port might be regarded, the manner in which the enemy's vessels approached his new anchorage gave serious reason to fear an attack.
Hillyar was experiencing what Radstock had remarked: "Gain his esteem, and there is nothing he will not dash through to put you forward." "Gain his esteem, and you will have nothing to fear, for I know not a more honourable man existing, or one who would more readily do you justice in all respects."
Whether Hillyar counted upon his own seamanship to extricate his ship from the awkward position in which he had placed her, or whether, as the Americans believed, he intended to attack if circumstances favored, he soon saw that he had exposed himself to extreme peril.
At times it descends in furious gusts down the ravines which cleave the hillsides, covering the city with clouds of dust and whirling sand and pebbles painfully in the faces of those who walk the streets. On the 28th of March, 1814, such a blast descended upon the Essex, whose captain had by that time come to despair of forcing Hillyar to single combat.
Memoir of Sir Thomas Hardy, in Clarke and M'Arthur's Life of Nelson vol. iii. p. 234. Hillyar was then engaged to a lady in Malta. As Lady Nelson's first marriage was in 1779, Josiah Nisbet could not have been eighteen when made a commander, in 1797. Phillimore's "The Last of Nelson's Captains," p. 146. Flag-officers had a share in all prizes taken by vessels of their squadrons. Davison.
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