Page:Paine--Lost ships and lonely seas.djvu/46

24 a series of distresses from December 20 to the 20th of June, a period of one hundred and ninety-two days. Every attention was paid to the sufferers that generosity warmed with pity and fellow-feeling could dictate, on board the Fame. They were transferred from this ship to the brig Dromio and arrived in the United States in safety.

Here the curtain falls. I for one should like to hear more incidents of this astonishing cruise of the derelict Polly and also to know what happened to Captain Cazneau and Samuel Badger after they reached the port of Boston. Probably they went to sea again, and more than likely in a privateer to harry British merchantmen, for the recruiting officer was beating them up to the rendezvous with fife and drum, and in August of 1812 the frigate Constitution, with ruddy Captain Isaac Hull walking the poop in a gold-laced coat, was pounding the Guerrière to pieces in thirty minutes, with broadsides whose thunder echoed round the world.

"Ships are all right. It is the men in them," said one of Joseph Conrad's wise old mariners. This was supremely true of the little brig that endured and suffered so much, and among the humble heroes of blue water by no means the least worthy to be remembered are Captain Cazneau and Samuel Badger, able seaman, and Moho, the Indian cook.