up the bay. This in itself was not an unusual sight.
Many vessels during the course of a year arrived at, or departed from,
the chief city of the American continent. Not so many small traders or
coasting-vessels or ponderous East Indiamen, perhaps, as in the busy
times of peace before the war began; but their place was taken by
privateers and their prizes, or a ship from France, bringing large
consignments of war material from the famous house of Rodrigo Hortalez
& Co., of which the versatile and ingenuous [Transcriber's note:
ingenious?] M. de Beaumarchais was the _deus ex machina_; and once in a
while one of the few ships of war of the Continental navy, or some of
the galleys or gunboats of Commodore Hazelwood's Pennsylvania State
defence fleet. But the approaching ship was evidently neither a
privateer nor a vessel of war, neither did she present the appearance
of a peaceful merchantman. There was something curious and noteworthy
in her aspect which excited the attention of the port warden, and then
of the loungers along Front Street and the wharves, and speedily
communicated itself to the citizens of the town, so that they began to
hasten down to the river, in the cold of the late afternoon. Finally,
no less a person than the military commander of the city himself
appeared, followed by one or two aids, and attended by various bewigged
and beruffled gentlemen of condition and substance; among whose finery
the black coat of a clergyman and the sober attire of many of the
thrifty Quakers were conspicuous. Here and there the crowd was
lightened by the uniform of a militiaman or home guard, or the faded
buff and blue of some invalid or wounded Continental. In the doorways
of some of the spacious residences facing the river, many of the fair
dames for which Philadelphia was justly famous noted eagerly the
approaching ship. As she came slowly up against the ebb tide, it was
seen that her bulwarks had been cut away, all her boats but one
appeared to be lost, her mizzen topgallant mast was gone, several great
patches in her sails also attracted attention; there too was a
field-piece mounted and lashed on the quarter-deck as a stern-chaser.
The fore royal was furled, and two flags were hanging limply from the
masthead; the light breeze from time to time fluttering them a little,
but not sufficiently to disclose what they were, until just opposite
High Street, where she dropped her only remaining anchor, when a sudden