The officers and men were as anxious to get away from the inhospitable
Texel as was Paul Jones, and the sight, day after day, of the low-lying,
monotonous landscape, the frozen dikes, and the pale, wintry sky was
dreary enough to them. Dale kept the wardroom in a good humor, though,
and Bill Green spent much of his enforced leisure, as usual, in learning
songs which he claimed to have composed.
At last, as Christmas approached, it was known on board that they were
ready to sail, and that a day or two at most would find them at sea. The
officers and men were all on board, and no more shore leave was granted.
The wind was already veering round to the east, and although they would
have to wait for the wind, there would be no waiting for weather, for
the fouler the weather the fairer the chance of running the gauntlet of
the British fleet, which would then be dispersed, each ship looking out
for herself. Therefore the Americans prayed for bad weather as ardently
as sailors usually pray for good.
On Christmas night there was great jollification aboard. Paul Jones
dined in the wardroom by invitation of the officers, and afterward
announced to them:
“Gentlemen, in forty-eight hours we shall be at sea, with our best
American ensign flying, and then we can take care of ourselves.”
A burst of cheering followed this. The only person present besides the
officers of the ship was the celebrated Captain Cunningham, who had
suffered horrors in an English prison. Paul Jones had at last succeeded
in having Cunningham exchanged, and was taking him to France as a
passenger.
The jollity aft was quite equaled by the fun forward, and from the
foks’l sounds of cheering, laughing, shouting, and the noisy clatter of
feet, as the sailors danced reels and hornpipes, was plainly audible.
Danny Dixon, who waited behind Paul Jones’s chair, when asked what the
noise meant, whispered artfully:
“Please, sir, Mr. Green he’s got a new song, all about ‘a Yankee ship
and a Yankee crew, tally hi ho, you know.’ It’s a beautiful song.”
“Is it?” cried Paul Jones, whose spirits rose high at the prospect of
once more taking his ship to sea. “Gentlemen, shall we send for Green to
give us a new patriotic song he has?”
“Yes, yes,” they all exclaimed, “a song, by all means!”
Danny therefore was sent after Bill, who was found trolling forth in his
rich baritone to the admiring foks’l people, and occasionally getting up
and shaking a leg to give emphasis to his music.
“Mr. Green,” said Danny, going up to him, “you must report to the cap’n
immediate for a song. He knows as how you’ve got a good ’un, and the
cap’n and the officers wants to hear it—that there one about a Yankee
ship and a Yankee crew.”
“Sho!” said Bill with an affectation of great reluctance, “I knows as
you wuthless, tale-bearin’ lubberly boy went and told the cap’n I had a
new song, and I’ve a great mind to give you the cat for it.”
“Lord, Mr. Green, I ain’t done no harm,” said Danny apologetically, who
understood the case perfectly, and knew there was no danger of the cat.
“The cap’n knows you sing grand, and ’twarn’t my fault he axed for you.”
“Well, mates,” said Bill, rising with a delighted grin, “it’s mighty
hard on me havin’ to leave you. I’d ruther not sing if I could help it,
but orders is orders, you know. Howsomedever, young’un,” he remarked to
Danny, “the very next time you gits me in a singin’ scrape like this,
I’m a-goin’ to skin you, mind that!”
“Yes, sir,” answered Danny very meekly.
The officers were all sitting around the table with pipes, and full of
talk, laughter, and jollity, when Bill Green’s handsome figure and face
appeared in the wardroom door. Bill, as usual, pretended to be quite
overcome with bashfulness, and twiddled his cap modestly.
“Give him a glass of punch to wet his whistle,” cried Paul Jones, and
Danny Dixon officiously filled a glass from the punch bowl and handed it
to him.
After gulping down the punch, Bill cleared his throat and remarked that
he “had thunk out a little song and had wrote it out”—Bill forgot that
the wardroom officers knew he could not write a line—“and as the men got
arter him to sing it, he had tried it oncet or twicet, and he’d do his
best to pipe it up reg’lar.”
He then began, his rich voice echoing musically through the low-pitched
wardroom. The officers soon caught the refrain, and whenever it came
they accompanied it with much clinking of glasses, and trolled out a
chorus, Dale leading. This was the song:
“A Yankee ship and a Yankee crew,
Tally hi ho, you know,
O’er the bright blue waves like a sea bird flew;
Sing hey aloft and alow.
Her wings are spread to the fairy breeze,
The sparkling spray is thrown from her prow,
Her flag is the proudest that floats on the seas,
Her homeward way she’s steering now.
A Yankee ship and a Yankee crew,
Tally hi ho, you know,
O’er the bright waves like a sea bird flew;
Sing hey aloft and alow.
“A Yankee ship and a Yankee crew,
Tally hi ho, you know,
With hearts on board both gallant and true,
The same aloft and alow.
The blackened sky and the whistling wind
Foretell the quick approach of the gale;
A home and its joys flit o’er each mind—
Husbands! lovers! ‘On deck there!’ a sail,
A Yankee ship and a Yankee crew,
Tally hi ho, you know;
Distress is the word—God speed them through!
Bear a hand, aloft and alow!
“A Yankee ship and a Yankee crew,
Tally hi ho, you know;
The boats all clear, the wreck we now view,
‘All hands’ aloft and alow.
A ship is his throne, the sea his world,
He ne’er sheers from a shipmate distressed.
All’s well—the reefed sails again are unfurled;
O’er the swell he is cradled to rest.
A Yankee ship and a Yankee crew,
Tally hi ho, you know,
Storm past, drink to ‘wives and sweethearts’ too,
All hands, aloft and alow!
“A Yankee ship and a Yankee crew,
Tally hi ho, you know,
Freedom defends, and the land where it grew—
We’re free, aloft and alow!
Bearing down is a foe in regal pride,
Defiance floating at each masthead;
One’s a wreck, and she bears that floats alongside
The Stars and Stripes, to victory wed.
For a Yankee ship and a Yankee crew,
Tally hi ho, you know,
Ne’er strikes to a foe while the sky is blue
Or a tar’s aloft or alow.”
Roars of laughter and applause greeted this, and Bill was compelled to
respond to an encore. The evening and a part of the night passed in
gayety and merriment, and the sober Dutchmen were much astonished at the
hilarity on the American ship. Paul Jones had had the ship dressed for
Christmas, and the British at the Texel were obliged to endure the sight
of an American flag flying from every masthead on the Alliance. At last,
two days after Christmas, Peter Maartens, the pilot, was sent for. The
weather was thick, and a tremendous gale seemed to be rising. When Paul
Jones proposed to take the ship out, Peter shook his head very solemnly.
“Any pilot who takes a ship out in this weather is likely to lose his
license, and I can’t risk it,” he said.
Peter had rather a weakness for the bottle, although it was said that he
was as good a pilot when he was half seas over as when he was quite
sober. It was Christmas time, and Peter was liable to yield to
temptation. Paul Jones was therefore not surprised when, as night was
falling, a few hours after, Peter Maartens’s boat hailed the ship, and
he announced that he was ready to carry her out. Immediately the anchor
was lifted, and within an hour the Alliance stood down the river in the
teeth of a northeast gale.
It was a murky December night when, with a strong wind, the ship started
on her way toward the open sea. A perfectly new American ensign had been
run up for the occasion, and Sir Joseph Yorke had the mortification of
knowing that the ship went boldly out to run the gauntlet of her
enemies, without any disguise whatever. Dale, as first lieutenant, was
on deck. Bill Green was at the wheel. Peter Maartens’s orders, although
very judicious, were not very distinct, as he had been indulging in the
flowing bowl, and the first thing the Alliance knew she was afoul of a
Dutch merchantman. The Alliance dropped her best bower anchor, in the
effort to get clear, and in the wind, the darkness, and confusion, the
cable parted or was cut by the Dutchman. Peter Maartens then declared
that nobody but the devil himself would put to sea in such a gale, and
flatly refused to carry the ship out that night. However, he brought her
to anchor so close inshore that in the morning they were forced to cut
the cable themselves in order to get out, thus leaving both their bower
anchor and sheet anchor in the roads of Texel; but they were out of the
Dutch port, or purgatory, as Paul Jones himself expressed it, and under
close-reefed topsails they were heading for the ocean in the midst of a
roaring gale. But the American ensign flew as long as they were in sight
of land, and until they were three marine leagues out. The Alliance
hugged the shoals so close, in order to keep to windward of the
blockading British squadrons, that several times they had hard work in
clawing off. At last, however, they were clear.
Paul Jones, wrapped in a cloak and with a sou’wester pulled down over
his eyes, called to him Lieutenant Dale, who had the deck.
“Dale,” he said, carelessly, “what passage, think you, shall we take to
France?”
“The northward, I presume, sir,” replied Dale, astonished at the
question from his commander.
“And do the officers and crew expect we shall go north, and away from
the British Isles?”
“Certainly, sir,” replied Dale, still more surprised.
“Then,” said Paul Jones, laying his hand on Dale’s shoulder, “you may
depend upon it, if all my officers and men expect me to avoid the
English Channel, every British captain that is hunting for me likewise
will look for me to the northward. But I will sail through their
channel, under the very noses of their fleet at Spithead.”
“Sir,” said Dale, who was a very matter-of-fact young man, “surely
nobody will think of hunting for you in the lion’s mouth.”
Paul Jones at this laughed one of his rare laughs.
“You will go with me willingly into the lion’s mouth?” he said; to which
Dale replied coolly:
“Of course, sir.”
In spite of the bad weather the ship made a good run, and the next day,
it being perfectly clear, they passed boldly through the Straits of
Dover, and were in full sight of the whole magnificent British fleet in
the Downs. They then made the Isle of Wight, which they passed, and for
more than an hour they were within a very short distance of the fleet
assembled at Spithead. The forest of masts, the huge dark hulls of the
ships, the fluttering ensigns, made a lovely picture in the bright air
of December. What would not one of those brave British captains have
given to know that Paul Jones, the invincible, was sailing under their
very lee!
Paul Jones resorted to his usual ruse. The ports of the Alliance were
closed, her guns covered with spare sails and tarpaulins, she flew the
British ensign, her crew were kept below, and she presented the
appearance of a smart British merchant ship, or possibly a letter of
marque.
Two days was Paul Jones in the British Channel, much of the time in
sight of the chalk cliffs of England, and scarcely an hour of the night
or day that he was not in view of the British cruisers, which, as Dale
justly said, did not think it worth while to look for him in the lion’s
mouth. He kept well to windward, though, for this man, so daring in his
undertakings, yet carried the details out with the most consummate
prudence.
After getting clear of the channel, and in easy reach of the French
harbors, he cruised about off Cape Finistère for some days. A furious
January gale coming up in the Bay of Biscay, and having but one anchor
left, Paul Jones put into the port of Corunna, in Spain. The fame of his
exploits had preceded him, and he and his officers received the utmost
attention, especially from some Spanish naval officers there. Paul Jones
greatly admired the Spanish ships, which were sheathed with copper, and
expensively fitted; but, like Nelson, he had no great faith in the
ability of the Spaniards to take care of their fine ships.
On this cruise the Alliance seems to have been indeed a stormy petrel,
and encountered much bad weather, so that it was the 10th of February
before anchor was cast in the roads of Groix, before L’Orient.
Shouting multitudes received him. Letters of enthusiastic praise from
Franklin and Lafayette and many distinguished Americans and Frenchmen
awaited him, and he was hailed as the hope of the infant navy of his
country.