Meanwhile the Arethusa was in eager pursuit of the Belle Poule; a fox-terrier chasing a mastiff! The Belle Poule was a splendid ship, with heavy metal, and a crew more than twice as numerous as that of the tiny Arethusa. But Marshall, its captain, was a singularly gallant sailor, and not the man to count odds. The song tells the story of the fight in an amusing fashion:—
"Come all ye jolly sailors
Whose hearts are cast in honour's mould,
While England's glory I unfold.
Huzza to the Arethusa!
She is a frigate tight and brave
As ever stemmed the dashing wave;
Her men are staunch
To their fav'rite launch,
And when the foe shall meet our fire,
Sooner than strike we'll all expire
On board the Arethusa.
"On deck five hundred men did dance,
The stoutest they could find in France;
We, with two hundred, did advance
On board the Arethusa.
Our captain hailed the Frenchman, 'Ho!'
The Frenchman then cried out, 'Hallo!'
'Bear down, d'ye see,
To our Admiral's lee.'
'No, no,' says the Frenchman, 'that can't be.'
'Then I must lug you along with me,'
Says the saucy Arethusa!"
As a matter of fact Marshall hung doggedly on the Frenchman's quarter for two long hours, fighting a ship twice as big as his own. The Belle Poule was eager to escape; Marshall was resolute that it should not escape, and, try as he might, the Frenchman, during that fierce two hours' wrestle, failed to shake off his tiny but dogged antagonist. The Arethusa's masts were shot away, its jib-boom hung a tangled wreck over its bows, its bulwarks were shattered, half its guns were dismounted, and nearly every third man in its crew struck down. But still it hung, with quenchless and obstinate courage, on the Belle Poule's quarter, and by its perfect seamanship and the quickness and the deadly precision with which its lighter guns worked, reduced its towering foe to a condition of wreck almost as complete as its own. The terrier, in fact, was proving too much for the mastiff.
Suddenly the wind fell. With topmasts hanging over the side, and canvas torn to ribbons, the Arethusa lay shattered and moveless on the sea. The shot-torn but loftier sails of the Belle Poule, however, yet held wind enough to drift her out of the reach of the Arethusa's fire. Both ships were close under the French cliffs; but the Belle Poule, like a broken-winged bird, struggled into a tiny cove in the rocks, and nothing remained for the Arethusa but to cut away her wreckage, hoist what sail she could, and drag herself sullenly back under jury-masts to the British fleet. But the story of that two hours' heroic fight maintained against such odds sent a thrill of grim exultation through Great Britain. Menaced by the combination of so many mighty states, while her sea-dogs were of this fighting temper, what had Great Britain to fear? In the streets of many a British seaport, and in many a British forecastle, the story of how the Arethusa fought was sung in deep-throated chorus:
"The fight was off the Frenchman's land;
We forced them back upon their strand;
For we fought till not a stick would stand
Of the gallant Arethuml!"
THE TRICK OF AN INDIAN SPY
By Arthur Quiller-Couch
It was in 1779, when America was struggling with England for her independence, and a division of the English redcoats were encamped on the banks of the Potomac. So admirably fortified was their position by river and steep woods, that no ordinary text-book of warfare would admit the possibility of surprising it. But Washington and his men did not conduct their campaigns by the book. "If you fight with art," said that general once to his soldiery, "you are sure to be defeated. Acquire discipline enough for retreat and the uniformity of combined attack, and your country will prove the best of engineers."
In fact, it was with a guerilla warfare, and little else, that the British had to contend. The Americans had enrolled whole tribes of Indians in their ranks and made full use of the Indian habits of warfare. The braves would steal like snakes about the pathless forests, and dashing unexpectedly on the outposted redcoats, kill a handful in one fierce charge, and then retreat pell-mell back into their shelter, whither to follow them was to court certain death. The injuries thus inflicted were not overwhelming, but they were teasing for all that. Day by day the waste went on—loss of sentinels, of stragglers, sometimes of whole detachments, and all this was more galling from the impossibility of revenge. In order to limit the depredations it was the custom of the British commanders to throw forward their outposts to a great distance from the main body, to station sentinels far into the woods, and cover the main body with a constant guard.