With John Paul Jones

After their captors had them securely trussed up with strong ropes, they paid very little attention to Ethan or his companion. Something at sea seemed to interest them greatly, and, filled with curiosity, the two struggled to see what it could be.

“Look how the Ranger’s men are dragging at the sweeps,” said Ethan.

“They pull like mad,” agreed Longsword as he sat up in the sand in spite of his bonds. “And look how the officers are urging them on!”

“Something has happened,” said the lad.

“Something will happen within the next half hour,” said one of the Englishmen who stood near. “His Majesty’s frigate Thunderer is going to have a word to say in this matter pretty soon.”

“An English ship!” cried both captives.

“Ay, and a smart craft, too, with plenty of guns and men. She’s been lying further up behind the headland; but we’ve sent word and she’s coming down.”

As the man spoke there came the deep boom of a gun; the Ranger, with her sails filled, went flying seaward; from around the headland swept the huge, dark hull and towering sail spread of a British ship-of-war, a column of white smoke arising from her bow.

“The Yankee are running away,” cried a voice. “They can rob defenceless people, but they won’t stand and fight.”

“What’s the matter wid them?” growled Longsword as he watched the Ranger. “Sure our ship can beat that fellow wid ease.”

“And she’s going to do it,” cried Ethan. “Look there. She only stood out for sea-room.”

Sure enough the American vessel now wore around and opened fire; from that distance the puffs of smoke from her sides could be seen long before the reports were heard; and when they did come, they were dull and sullen and ominous.

“Hello,” cried one of the men on the beach, “that Yankee can shoot a bit.”

At the first fire the Thunderer’s bowsprit hung limply, her foresails trailing in the sea; a clutter of spars and a broken topmast hung over the deck, and the rent canvas flapped helplessly and wrapped itself about the masts and shrouds.

The Ranger then stood in to take up a more effective position; but the skipper of the British frigate seemed to already have more than enough of the fight; and making what sail he could he quickly scuttled back in the direction from which he had come. The Englishmen were much wrought up over this defeat; but Ethan and Longsword were well pleased.

“She came out like a conqueror,” said the lad, “and she went back like a hen caught in a shower of rain.”

“You keep quiet,” growled one of the men. “You’ll have all the trouble you can attend to in a few moments without making more for yourself.”

“I and my companion are to be treated as prisoners of war, I suppose,” said Ethan.

“You are to be treated just as this gentleman sees fit,” answered the man.

As he spoke, he pointed to a newcomer who came sauntering coolly along, his eyes turned seaward upon the Ranger, which was dressing her yards and about to put to sea.

“Danvers!” exclaimed Ethan, instantly recognizing the jetty hair and the remarkable pallor.

The man turned and darted a swift, searching look at the boy as the cry reached his ears. Then his face lighted up in triumph and he laughed in a short, sharp way that bespoke malicious satisfaction.

“So, it is you, my young friend, is it?” he cried, advancing toward them. “I had heard that my men had made a capture, but had no idea that it was any one but a brace of seamen.” He stood looking down at them, a smile showing his white, even teeth, and one hand tapping the hilt of his sword. “So,” he went on after a pause, “you have joined with the Lascar, have you?”

“Joined with him,” repeated Ethan in surprise.

“Ay, and don’t seek to deceive me. I am not Monsieur Fochard.”

Ethan and the Irish dragoon laughed at this, and Danvers glowered at them blackly.

“You have seen Monsieur Fochard, then,” smiled the young American.

“Less than a half hour after you had gone. Your trick was a most clever one; I am an admirer of cleverness, even when it is displayed against me, and I beg of you to accept my congratulations.”

Despite the man’s evident anger, it seemed as though he meant this; as an adept in trickery himself, he was forced to admiration at Ethan’s apparent excellence in this line.

“But tell me,” he went on, bending over them, “how did you know that Fochard was concerned in this matter? and how did you learn that I was to visit him upon the night you and this man,” indicating Longsword, “impersonated Wheelock and myself?”

Ethan smiled, but shook his head. It was plain that the man was mystified, and, of course the lad had no desire to enlighten him.

“That,” he replied, “is a secret.”

Danvers bent his brows still more, and his lips tightened.

“A secret—yes, I suppose it is. And you thought to have the later developments a secret, too, didn’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean with regard to the man Siki.”

“This,” said Ethan in a puzzled way, “is the second time within a very few minutes that you have hinted a mysterious something about this slippery Lascar. But I don’t just grasp your meaning.”

“You may evade the fact as you please,” said Danvers, “but it remains the same. I’ll tell you what I have found out. When you discovered who had the dispatch that night in your visit to the secret agent, Fochard, you conceived the idea which you and your friend, Captain Jones, have so admirably carried out.”

“And what was that?”

“To seek the Lascar, and enter into a compact with him to sell the dispatch.”

Ethan turned white; his eyes blazed and he struggled desperately with the stout ropes that bound him.

“If I were free,” he gasped, “I’d make you regret those words.”

“Oh, spare me any heroics,” sneered the British spy. “I know that both you and that Scottish renegade, John Paul Jones, profess a most lofty patriotism. But neither of you can deceive me.”

“That,” cried Longsword, who had not been able to speak before, so great was his astonishment, “is the most bla’guardly accusation I ever heard in me life, so it is. D’ye mean to say that this lad whom I held in me two arms as a babe, would sell his country to your mad old king?”

“If the price of his treachery were sufficient, of course he would,” jeered Danvers. “It was the end of country and all else when he knew that ten thousand pounds would be gained by the delivery of the dispatch. I have met many men; and I am a fair judge of these little things, believe me.”

“If I were as sharp as you,” growled the Irish trooper, “I’d be afraid to associate wid meself, so I would.”

“I was here when the Lascar came,” said Danvers to Ethan, and ignoring Longsword. “I saw him meet the earl; I overheard what they said.”

“Ah!” said Ethan, with an eagerness that he was unable to conceal.

“The fellow told the earl of the paper; he said that it was then in the possession of another. I met him afterward in the road; it was after dark, and I was soon squeezing his story from his throat.”

“And he told you——?”

“He told me how he sailed from France in the Ranger; how you were now leagued with him, and Jones, also; and you, he said, were the person who had the paper.”

“I understand the matter now,” said Ethan. “He told you what it suited him to have you believe.”

Danvers laughed.

“Oh, don’t try to throw the dust in my eyes like that,” he said. “I’m too old a hand for that sort of thing.”

Ethan at once saw that it would be the merest folly to attempt to convince the man of the Lascar’s deception, so he said nothing more.

“Our friend, Siki,” said Danvers, “is now safe on board the frigate, Drake, which is lying at Carrickfergus; she was in these waters at the time of my capture of him, and I had him sent aboard for safe keeping.”

“I suppose,” said Ethan after a short silence, “that we two are destined for some hulk or prison.”

“For a prison, you may be sure,” laughed the emissary of the crown, “but a private prison of my own. You’ll be safe enough there until I can end the whole matter. And now, where is the dispatch?”

“I only wish I could say,” said Ethan. “But I assure you I know nothing of its whereabouts.”

Danvers smiled coldly.

“Here, men!” he cried to some of his followers, who had withdrawn some little distance during the above conversation, “search these prisoners; and do it thoroughly.”

The men did as they were bidden; their search was complete, but, of course it resulted in nothing. Danvers bit his lip and was savage in his disappointment.

“Jones has it, then,” he said. “The villain; I’ll have it from him yet.”

“You seem very ready, Mr. Danvers, to apply harsh names to Americans.”

“Jones is not an American.”

“You are wrong. By accident of birth he was a Scotchman; but love of liberty and the willingness to dare death in her cause has made him American.”

“He is a rascally ex-slaver,” growled Danvers.

“If a lad of eighteen was a rascal for taking employment in a slave ship, then the English government must be a government of rascals for encouraging that hideous traffic that they might gain money by it.”

DANVERS CAME DOWN INTO THE HOLD

“How dare you!” cried the Englishman. “How dare you talk so against the king’s government while in the king’s country!”

“I have not stopped at words against the king’s government,” said Ethan proudly.

“No; I’ve heard of the doings of your pirate ship in the channel. But she’ll soon meet her fate. British ships and British tars are in search of her.”

Ethan laughed amusedly.

“You saw what happened to a British ship less than a half hour ago, did you not? The Ranger will not be so easily taken.”

Danvers was a man of violent temper; he could not answer this in the calm manner that he desired; so he turned away without a reply, and gave an order to his men in a low tone. In a few moments the young American and the Irishman were deposited in the bottom of a large skiff, still trussed up with the ropes, and were being rowed toward the Dee, where a small schooner-rigged tender lay. They were lifted on board of this vessel, which toward night made sail out of the harbor and down the coast.

Ethan and Longsword were eased of the ropes, but were at once ironed in the tender’s hold. It was dark there, not a ray of light penetrated anywhere; but they lay and listened to the beat of the channel waters against the sides, and talked in low tones.

“It looks,” said Longsword, gloomily, “as though we two were laid up for the rest of the war. Wid British irons upon our legs and arms things don’t seem very bright, me lad.”

“Don’t say that,” cried Ethan in a sharp, pained voice. “I can’t stand it, Shamus; the thought that we may be chained up in an English ship or a prison of some sort when our country needs every pair of hands that can oppose her foes, makes me desperate. It’s like despair itself!”

About an hour after the schooner had got well under way, Danvers came down into the hold with a lantern. He stood over them and stared coldly from one to the other.

“Ironed like thieves,” he said with a sneer. “It would delight the heart of your grandfather, old Clarette, boy, or your English father, to see you so, wouldn’t it?”

“They would be glad to think that I have suffered something for my country.”

“Your country!” snarled Danvers. “Bah, that nest of rats which you call a Congress will be broken up before long; the arch-traitor, Washington, will dangle from the end of a rope, while his tatterdemalions will be hunted through the woods like foxes.”

“That was said long ago,” replied Ethan. “But it is all as far from accomplishment as ever. The American people will never bow the knee to a king’s will again.”

Danvers had not yet overcome his anger of the day, and now he seemed upon the point of bursting into a blaze of fury. But with an effort he calmed himself; flashing the rays of the lantern into Ethan’s face, he said:

“Boy, somehow or other you have the knack of angering me, and when people anger me they are in danger, especially when they are enemies to the king. In certain crises I even possess the legal power of life and death; and were I so minded I could string you from the rigging of this vessel. What do you say to that?”

“Nothing,” returned Ethan, looking him unflinchingly in the eye.

“Ask me that question,” said Longsword, “and, faith, I’ll say plenty.”

“Be still, you Irish hound!” hissed the spy; “or I’ll have you stretched across a grating, and let you see how the boatswain can use the cat.”

“Arrah, don’t go to any bother on my account,” said the dragoon coolly. “I am willing enough to believe that the gentleman is an artist wid the cat-o’-nine-tails. Your word, sir, is enough for me.”

But Danvers paid no attention to him. Bending over Ethan, he said:

“For the last time, will you tell me where the dispatch is hidden?”

“For the last time,” said Ethan boldly, “I answer that I do not know.”

The emissary of the crown remained staring in his face for a moment; then he turned away; his footsteps sounded upon the ladder, the hatch above was closed and they were left once more in darkness.