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We were still ignorant of the cause of this treatment, when the master of an English whaler came alongside with his men armed to the teeth. He told us that he had a letter of marque, and that on the strength of it, having fallen in with a Spanish merchantman some way to the south-west, he had chased and captured her, and found a large number of dollars on board.
Ganteaume does not possess either the intriguing character of Truguet or the valorous one of Villeneuve. Before the Revolution he was a mate of a merchantman, but when most of the officers of the former royal navy had emigrated or perished, he was, in 1793, made a captain of the republican navy, and in 1796 an admiral.
The school became so big that I had to take a new house that in which you now sit and sought about for a teacher to help me. Long before that time poor Ned Grove had been drowned at sea. Your old friend Natty there had become the first mate to a merchantman, and helped to support his grandmother.
The owners of the John o' Gaunt were delighted and gave John Paul and his five sailors the ten per cent. share of the cargo which the salvage laws entitled them to. In addition they offered him the command of a splendid full-rigged new merchantman which was to sail between England and America, and a tenth share of all profits.
In an old dog-eared copy of Monteith's Geography, I remember a picture of a half-dozen pirate prahus attacking a merchantman off a jungle-bordered shore. A blazing sun hung high in the heavens above the fated ship, and, to my youthful imagination, seemed to beat down on the tropical scene with a fierce, remorseless intensity.
The Confederates had quite a fleet of swift, light vessels of insignificant armament, often only a single gun, with which they occasionally made a descent upon some coaster or merchantman, running close inshore, and dragged her in as a prize. With these swift steamers, too, they effectually controlled all navigation of the sounds.
"Hillo!" was the reply. "Make more sail, sir, and run into the body of the fleet, or I shall fire into you: why don't you, sir, keep in the wake of the commodore?" No answer. "What meant you by hauling your wind just now, sir?" "Yesh, yesh," at length responded a voice from the merchantman. "Something wrong here," said Mr. Splinter.
Harry and David could see in the far distance a large ship, which from her narrow yards and the cut of her sails Harry said he thought was really a merchantman, which of course the Frenchman took her to be. "But suppose she is not," said David.
She was now making her way to the west by a circuitous route to avoid the British squadron, and, at the same time, with a view to pick up an English merchantman or two. Fritz and Jack being citizens of a sister republic, and subjects of a neutral power, were received on board with a hearty welcome, and with the hospitality due to their interesting position.
But while in the ordinary merchantman there are decidedly "no more cats than can catch mice," hardly, indeed, sufficient for all the mousing that should be done, in men-of-war and whaleships the number of hands carried, being far more than are wanted for everyday work, must needs be kept at unnecessary duties in order that they may not grow lazy and discontented.
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