3.56, or more than one
hundred per cent.

It was all a grand adventure, in fact, and the word was aptly chosen to
fit this ocean trade. The merchant freighted his ship and sent her
out to vanish from his ken for months and months of waiting, with the
greater part of his savings, perhaps, in goods and specie beneath her
hatches. No cable messages kept him in touch with her nor were there
frequent letters from the master. Not until her signal was displayed by
the fluttering flags of the headland station at the harbor mouth could
he know whether he had gained or lost a fortune. The spirit of such
merchants was admirably typified in the last venture of Elias Hasket
Derby in 1798, when unofficial war existed between the United States and
France.

American ships were everywhere seeking refuge from the privateers under
the tricolor, which fairly ran amuck in the routes of trade. For this
reason it meant a rich reward to land a cargo abroad. The ship Mount
Vernon, commanded by Captain Elias Hasket Derby, Jr., was laden with
sugar and coffee for Mediterranean ports, and was prepared for trouble,
with twenty guns mounted and fifty men to handle them. A smart ship and
a powerful one, she raced across to Cape Saint Vincent in sixteen days,
which was clipper speed. She ran into a French fleet of sixty sail,
exchanged broadsides with the nearest, and showed her stern to the
others.

"We arrived at 12 o'clock [wrote Captain Derby from Gibraltar] popping
at Frenchmen all the forenoon. At 10 A.M. off Algeciras Point we were
seriously attacked by a large latineer who had on board more than one
hundred men. He came so near our broadside as to allow our six-pound
grape to do execution handsomely. We then bore away and gave him our
stern guns in a cool and deliberate manner, doing apparently great
execution. Our bars having cut his sails considerably, he was thrown
into confusion, struck both his ensign and his pennant. I was then
puzzled to know what to do with so many men; our ship was running large
with all her steering sails out, so that we could not immediately bring
her to the wind, and we were directly off Algeciras Point from whence I
had reason to fear she might receive assistance, and my port Gibraltar
in full view. These were circumstances that induced me to give up the
gratification of bringing him in. It was, however, a satisfaction to
flog the rascal in full view of the English fleet who were to leeward."

CHAPTER V.