“Captain Paul Jones, sir.”
“Pardon me for not first giving my name. I’m Elijah Hall, who is to sail second officer with you in yon Ranger.”
Captain Paul Jones and Lieutenant Hall fall into instant and profound confab of a deeply nautical complexion, a confab quite beyond a landsman’s comprehension, wherein such phrases as “flush-decks,” “short poop-deck,” “bilges,” “futtocks,” and “knees” abound, and are reeled off as though their use gives our two ship-enthusiasts unbridled satisfaction. At last Lieutenant Hall remarks, pointing to three long sticks:
“There’re her masts, sir. They were taken out of a four-hundred-ton Indiaman, and are too long for a three-hundred-ton ship like the Ranger. I was thinking I’d cut’em off four feet in the caps.”
“That would be a sin!” exclaims Captain Paul Jones, voice almost religious in its fervent zeal. “Three as fine pieces of pine as ever came out of Norway, too! I’d be afraid to cut’em, Mr. Hall; it would give the ship bad luck. I’ll tell you what! Fid them four feet lower in the hounds; it will amount to the same thing, and at the same time save the sticks.”
Captain Paul Jones goes at the congenial task of fitting out the Ranger with his usual day-and-night energy. When he finds her over-sparred, with her masts too long, he still refuses to cut them down, but shortens yard and bowsprit, jib-boom and spankerboom. He doesn’t like the Marine Committee’s armament of twenty six-pounders, and proceeds to mount four six-pounders and fourteen long nines.
“One nine-pounder is equal to two six-pounders,” says Captain Paul Jones; “and, since it’s I who must put to sea in the Ranger, and not the Marine Committee, nine-ponnders I’ll have, and say no more about it.”
The New Hampshire girls, on the Fourth of July, come down to the Ranger, and present Captain Paul Jones a flag—red, white, and blue—quilted of cloth ravished from their virgin petticoats. The gallant mariner makes the New Hampshire girls a speech.
