Two weeks out, they encountered by night a frigate-like craft, supposed to be an enemy.  The vessels came within hail, both showing English colors, with purposes of mutual deception, affecting to belong to the English Navy.  For an hour, through their speaking trumpets, the captains equivocally conversed.  A very reserved, adroit, hoodwinking, statesman-like conversation, indeed.  At last, professing some little incredulity as to the truthfulness of the stranger’s statement, Paul intimated a desire that he should put out a boat and come on board to show his commission, to which the stranger very affably replied, that unfortunately his boat was exceedingly leaky.  With equal politeness, Paul begged him to consider the danger attending a refusal, which rejoinder nettled the other, who suddenly retorted that he would answer for twenty guns, and that both himself and men were knock-down Englishmen.  Upon this, Paul said that he would allow him exactly five minutes for a sober, second thought.  That brief period passed, Paul, hoisting the American colors, ran close under the other ship’s stern, and engaged her.  It was about eight o’clock at night that this strange quarrel was picked in the middle of the ocean.  Why cannot men be peaceable on that great common?  Or does nature in those fierce night-brawlers, the billows, set mankind but a sorry example?

After ten minutes’ cannonading, the stranger struck, shouting out that half his men were killed.  The Ariel’s crew hurrahed.  Boarders were called to take possession.  At this juncture, the prize shifting her position so that she headed away, and to leeward of the Ariel, thrust her long spanker-boom diagonally over the latter’s quarter; when Israel, who was standing close by, instinctively caught hold of it—­just as he had grasped the jib-boom of the Serapis—­and, at the same moment, hearing the call to take possession, in the valiant excitement of the occasion, he leaped upon the spar, and made a rush for the stranger’s deck, thinking, of course, that he would be immediately followed by the regular boarders.  But the sails of the strange ship suddenly filled; she began to glide through the sea; her spanker-boom, not having at all entangled itself, offering no hindrance.  Israel, clinging midway along the boom, soon found himself divided from the Ariel by a space impossible to be leaped.  Meantime, suspecting foul play, Paul set every sail; but the stranger, having already the advantage, contrived to make good her escape, though perseveringly chased by the cheated conqueror.

In the confusion, no eye had observed our hero’s spring.  But, as the vessels separated more, an officer of the strange ship spying a man on the boom, and taking him for one of his own men, demanded what he did there.

“Clearing the signal halyards, sir,” replied Israel, fumbling with the cord which happened to be dangling near by.

“Well, bear a hand and come in, or you will have a bow-chaser at you soon,” referring to the bow guns of the Ariel.