“Keep off a little, Mr. Stacy. The Drake evidently wishes for a personal interview with us, and I would like to oblige her. I think, though, we will come about, so as to show her as little as possible of ourselves, in order that she may come out as far as possible.”
The Ranger then went completely about, as if she were running away. Still she had thrown her main topsail aback and had hauled up her courses.
The Drake then determined to send out a boat to reconnoiter. As the Ranger’s stern was still kept toward the boat nothing could be discovered of her character, and the boat came on within hailing distance. The Ranger, however, did not hail. The boat continued to advance, and finally hailed. Stacy, under Paul Jones’s orders, answered the hail.
“What ship is that?” was called from the boat.
Paul Jones, standing at Stacy’s elbow, told him in a low voice what to say.
“The Mind-your-business-and-keep-off,” Stacy rattled off so fast that he could not possibly be understood.
The boat stopped for a moment and then pulled a little nearer, and the officer in it stood up and shouted in a clear voice:
“The worst we’ve seen for ten years,” bawled Stacy, pretending that he understood the hail to be about the voyage.
“You are a fool,” called the officer, examining the ship carefully as the boat rapidly pulled nearer and nearer, but still puzzled by her. “I asked the name of your ship.”
“Much obliged for your information,” Stacy answered, “particularly as it’s the hardest thing in the world generally for a respectable merchant vessel to get a civil word out of you cocky man-of-war’s people.”
By this time the boat was directly under the Ranger’s quarter, and there could be no pretense of not understanding the officer’s final hail.
“I ask you, for the third time, what ship is that?”
“And I answer, for the third time, she is the Lord Chatham, bound for Leith from Dublin, short of——”
“Water,” suggested Paul Jones. “That’s the only thing we are not short of.”
“Short of water,” continued Stacy; and then, prompted again by Paul Jones, he cried:
“Have you heard anything of that American cruiser which has been prowling about, capturing merchant ships and frightening the coast people out of their wits?”