nder way and told those of his sixty men who survived to prepare
for a second tussle. Fortunately another Yankee privateer joined the
chase and together they subdued the armed brig Hannah. When the Argo
safely convoyed the two prizes into New Bedford, "all who beheld her
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 1799 as a captain in the American Navy.

In several notable instances the privateersmen tried conclusions with
ships that flew the royal ensign, and got the better of them. The hero
of an uncommonly brilliant action of this sort was Captain George Geddes
of Philadelphia, who was entrusted with the Congress, a noble privateer
of twenty-four guns and two hundred men. Several of the smaller British
cruisers had been sending parties ashore to plunder estates along the
southern shores, and one of them, the sloop of war Savage, had even
raided Washington's home at Mount Vernon. Later she shifted to the
coast of Georgia