were astonished that a vessel of her diminutive size could suffer
so much and yet get safely to port."

Men fought and slew each other in those rude and distant days
with a certain courtesy, with a fine, punctilious regard for the
etiquette of the bloody game. There was the Scotch skipper of the
Betsy, a privateer, whom Silas Talbot hailed as follows, before
they opened fire:

"You must now haul down those British colors, my friend."

"Notwithstanding I find you an enemy, as I suspected," was the
dignified reply, "yet, sir, I shall let them hang a little bit
longer,--with your permission,--so fire away, Flanagan."

During another of her cruises the Argo pursued an artfully
disguised ship of the line which could have blown her to kingdom
come with a broadside of thirty guns. The little Argo was
actually becalmed within short range, but her company got out the
sweeps and rowed her some distance before darkness and a favoring
slant of wind carried them clear. In the summer of 1780, Captain
Silas Talbot, again a mariner by title, was given the private
cruiser General Washington with one hundred and twenty men, but
he was less fortunate with her than when afloat in the tiny Argo
with his sixty Continentals. Off Sandy Hook he ran into the
British fleet under Admiral Arbuthnot and, being outsailed in a
gale of wind, he was forced to lower his flag to the great
seventy-four Culloden. After a year in English prisons he was
released and made his way home, serving no more in the war but
having the honor to command the immortal frigate Constitution in