Her colour, if it flew, was invisible as yet, but her nationality was as certain as a goatee. Jonathan was at the helm and Jonathan was at the prow, and Hardy easily guessed that the condition of the York flying the flag of a rich relation was puzzling the intelligence of the gentleman whose legs are represented as clothed with the bunting of Stripes and Stars. Yes, Jonathan was puzzled, and like Paul Pry meant to intrude, whilst hoping that he didn't.
On a sudden she clewed up skysails, royals, and topgallantsails, boom-ended her studdingsails, and came surging with little more than the speed of the York on to the clipper's quarter within easy hail. A man stood on the rail holding on by the mizzen-rigging. No flag flew at the gaff end, but the word Yankee was writ in letters as big as the barque herself. The figure grasped an old-fashioned weapon for the conveyance of sound—a speaking-trumpet; he put it to his lips, and whilst a small crowd of men on the barque's forecastle, attired in dungaree and vary-coloured headgear, gazed at the York with the steadfast stare of sheep at a barking dog in a field, the man with the trumpet delivered his mind thus:
"Ho, the ship ahoy! What ship are you?"
Hardy, with one hand to his mouth, Julia meanwhile steering, roared back:
"The York, of London; bound to London."
This was all he said. He did not inquire the barque's name; it was no business of his to know it. But she was forging ahead, and the name under the counter in long white letters grew visible: Columbia—Boston.
"Where's your crew?" shouted the man with the trumpet.
"On deck," was the answer.
A man standing by the figure on the rail took the speaking-trumpet and replaced it by a telescope, which the figure levelled at Julia.