nnon_ crept closer.
Catspaws of wind ruffled the water, and first one ship and then the
other gained a few hundred yards as upper tiers of canvas caught the
faint impulse. The _Shannon_ was a crack ship, and there was no better
crew in the British navy, as Lawrence of the _Chesapeake_ afterwards
learned to his mortal sorrow. Gradually the _Shannon_ cut down the
intervening distance until she could make use of her bow guns.

At this Captain Hull resolved to try kedging his ship along, sending a
boat half a mile ahead with a light anchor and all the spare rope on
board. The crew walked the capstan round and hauled the ship up to the
anchor, which they then lifted, carried ahead, and dropped again. The
_Constitution_ kept two kedges going all through that summer day, but
the _Shannon_ was playing the same game, and the two ships maintained
their relative positions. They shot at each other at such long range
that no damage was done. Before dusk the _Guerriere_ caught a slant of
breeze and worked nearer enough to bang away at the _Constitution_,
which was, indeed, between the devil and the deep sea.

Night came on. The sailors, British and American, toiled until they
dropped in their tracks, pulling at the kedge anchors and hawsers or
bending to the sweeps of the cutters which towed at intervals and were
exposed to the spatter of shot. It seemed impossible that the
_Constitution_ could slip clear of this pack of able frigates which
trailed her like hounds. Toward midnight the fickle breeze awoke and
wafted the ships along under studding sails and all the light cloths
that were wont to arch skyward. For two hours the men slept on deck
like logs while those on watch grunted at the pump-brakes and the hose
wetted the canvas to make it draw better.

The breeze failed, however, and through the rest of the night it was
kedge and tow again, the _Shannon_ and the _Guerriere_ hanging on
doggedly, confident of taking their quarry. Another day dawned, hot and
windless, and the situation was unchanged. Other British ships had
crawled or drifted nearer, but the _Constitution_ was always just beyond
range of their heavy guns. We may imagine Isaac Hull striding across the
poop and back again, ruddy, solid, composed, wearing a cocked hat and a
gold-laced coat, lifting an eye aloft, or squinting through his brass
telescope, while he damned the enemy in the hearty language of the sea.
He was a nephew of General William Hull, but it would ha