How the gardener’s son fought the “Serapis”

When I came on deck the next morning our yards were a-drip with a clammy fog, and under it the sea was roughed by a southwest breeze.  We were standing to the northward before it.  I remember reflecting as I paused in the gangway that the day was Thursday, September the 23d, and that we were near two months out of Groix with this tub of an Indiaman.  In all that time we had not so much as got a whiff of an English frigate, though we had almost put a belt around the British Isles.  Then straining my eyes through the mist, I made out two white blurs of sails on our starboard beam.

Honest Jack Pearce, one of the few good seamen we had aboard, was rubbing down one of the nines beside me.

“Why, Jack,” said I, “what have we there?  Another prize?” For that question had become a joke on board the ‘Bon homme Richard’ since the prisoners had reached an hundred and fifty, and half our crew was gone to man the ships.

“Bless your ’art, no, sir,” said he. “’Tis that damned Frenchy Landais in th’ Alliance.  She turns up with the Pallas at six bells o’ the middle watch.”

“So he’s back, is he?”

“Ay, he’s back,” he returned, with a grunt that was half a growl; “arter three weeks breakin’ o’ liberty.  I tell ’ee what, sir, them Frenchies is treecherous devils, an’ not to be trusted the len’th of a lead line.  An’ they beant seamen eno’ to keep a full an’ by with all their ‘takteek’.  Ez fer that Landais, I hearn him whinin’ at the commodore in the round house when we was off Clear, an’ sayin’ as how he would tell Sartin on us when he gets back to Paree.  An’ jabberin to th’other Frenchmen as was there that this here butter-cask was er King’s ship, an’ that the commodore weren’t no commodore nohow.  They say as how Cap’n Jones be bound up in a hard knot by some articles of agreement, an’ daresn’t punish him.  Be that so, Mr. Carvel?”

I said that it was.

“Shiver my bulkheads!” cried Jack, “I gave my oath to that same, sir.  For I knowed the commodore was the lad t’ string ’em to the yard-arm an’ he had the say on it.  Oh, the devil take the Frenchies,” said Jack, rolling his quid to show his pleasure of the topic, “they sits on their bottoms in Brest and L’Oriong an’ talks takteek wi’ their han’s and mouths, and daresn’t as much as show the noses o’ their three-deckers in th’ Bay o’ Biscay, while Cap’n Jones pokes his bowsprit into every port in England with a hulk the rats have left.  I’ve had my bellyful o’ Frenchies, Mr. Carvell save it be to fight ’em.  An’ I tell ’ee ’twould give me the greatest joy in life t’ leave loose ‘Scolding Sairy’ at that there Landais.  Th’ gal ain’t had a match on her this here cruise, an’ t’ my mind she couldn’t be christened better, sir.”

I left him patting the gun with a tender affection.