“You are among friends,” said the speaker, in a voice slightly tinged with the Scotch accent, “we bear the flag of the Congress—but walk aft—you are drenched, exhausted—you need rest—I must delay my inquiries until you have been provided for—send the doctor to my cabin—and steward mix us a rummer of hot grog.”
During these rapid remarks the speaker, taking me by the arm, had conducted, or rather led me to a neat cabin aft, and closing the door with his last remarks, he opened a locker, and producing a suit of dry clothes, bid me array myself in them, and then vanished from the apartment.
In a few minutes, however, he re-appeared, followed by the steward, bearing a huge tumbler of hot brandy, which he made me drink off, nothing loth, at a draught.
From the first instant of his appearance, I had felt a strange, but unaccountable awe in the presence of the commanding officer, and I now sought to account for it by a rigid, but hasty scrutiny of his person, as he stood before me.
He was a short, thick-set, muscular man, apparently about thirty years of age, drest in a blue, tight-fitting naval frock coat, with an epaulette upon one shoulder, and a sword hanging by his side. But his face was the most striking part of him. Such a countenance I never saw. It had a fire in the eye, a compression about the lips, a distention of the nostrils, and a sternness in its whole appearance, which betokened a man, not only of strong passions, but of inflexible decision of character. That brow, bold, massy, and threatening, might have shaped the destinies of a nation. I could not withdraw my eyes from it. He appeared to read my thoughts, for smiling faintly, he courteously signed to the steward to take my glass, and when the door had closed upon him, said,
“But to what brother officer am I indebted for this honor?”
I mentioned my name, and the schooner in which I had sailed from New York.
“The Fire-Fly!” he said, with some surprise, “ah! I have heard of your gallantry in that brush with the pirates—” and then, half unconsciously, as if musing, he continued, “and so your name is Parker.”
“And yours?” I asked, with a nod of assent.
“Paul Jones!”