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Life on a merchantman is rough enough to-day, and was still rougher at that time. To maintain discipline at sea requires a strong hand and a not too gentle tongue, and Jones was fully equipped in these necessaries. During the third voyage of the John, when fever had greatly reduced the crew, Mungo Maxwell, a Jamaica mulatto, became mutinous, and Jones knocked him down with a belaying pin.
"If that is the case, he is not the fellow we are in search of," answered Mr Norton. "A pirate would have his eyes about him." "Perhaps, as he is becalmed and cannot get away, he hopes, by apparent indifference to our approach, to deceive us as to his character," suggested Linton; "or he may have mistaken us for a merchantman, and expects to make a prize of us."
That cook of mine, who is a soft-hearted fellow, his neck always ready for the heel of a woman, has thrown overboard even the few stores we had left for you, the good Dame Charter having told him they were not fit to eat. And more, sir, even my men are grumbling. So I thought I would speak to you and explain that it would be necessary for us to overhaul a merchantman and replenish our food supply.
An attempt was made to avoid this, and boarding nettings were seen triced up above the bulwarks of the English ship. Again the Frenchman ran alongside. "They shall not foil us a second time," exclaimed the French captain; "no quarter if they do not yield." Harry and David trembled for the fate of their unfortunate countrymen on board the merchantman.
But had Franklin been caught in this little rebel craft, which had actually been captured from English owners and condemned as prize by rebel tribunals, and which now added the aggravating circumstance that she carried an armament sufficient to destroy a merchantman but not to encounter a frigate, he would have had before him at best a long imprisonment, at worst a trial for high treason and a halter.
At present it bids fair to become one of the deciding factors in determining the final issue of this war. The first authentically known case of an attack without warning by a German submarine against an allied merchantman was the torpedoing of the French steamship Amiral Ganteaume on October 26, 1914, in the English Channel. The steamer was sunk and thirty of its passengers and crew were lost.
But now sail was made as slowly aboard her as though she had been a short-handed merchantman, seven hands only for I counted them through my glass going aloft to shake out the reefs from her topsail, and to loose her topgallantsail and royal, while two more appeared to be as many as could be spared to lay out and loose her standing and flying-jibs.
After all, it might be as safe for us on board his ship as to be on a merchantman and be captured by pirates, which would be likely enough in those regions where we are obliged to go; and so I say let us see the man, and if he don't frighten us too much let us sail with him and get my father and Dickory." "It would be a terrible danger, a terrible danger," said Mr. Delaplaine.
Patricians and plebeians The discomforts of democracy Varieties of equality Social rights of beggars The coming peril Being dragged to the rich Frankness of vulgarity and hopelessness of destitution Villages rooted in the landscape Evanescence of the spiritual and survival of the material "Of Bebbington the holy peak" The Old Yew of Eastham Malice prepense interest History and afternoon tea An East-Indian Englishman The merchantman sticks in the mud A poetical man of the world Likeness to Longfellow Real breakfasts Heads and stomachs A poet- pugilist Clean-cut, cold, gentle, dry A respectable female atheist The tragedy of the red ants Voluptuous struggles A psalm of praise.
She soon was made out to be a merchantman. Both had a fair wind.
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