EXTRANEOUS ADVENTURES 293 



to Captain Anthony, who themselves secured them. The 

 prisoners scrambled up the side. With the captain still aboard 

 her, the whaleboat swung to the davits. 



And then the guardboat crossed the bow of the Catalpa. 



The whaler sailed slowly on but, soon after, the wind failed 

 completely and she lay becalmed until daybreak next morning, 

 when the Georgette, with a detachment of soldiers on board, 

 came out to her. Once a British gunner sent a shot across her 

 bows, and Captain Anthony, fearing lest the British colonel 

 send a boat to board the Catalpa, armed his men. But neither 

 the mailsteamer nor the guardboat had authority to board an 

 American vessel in defiance of the captain's refusal to admit 

 them; so, although there was a mighty exchange of verbal shot 

 and shell, the engagement never progressed beyond a war of 

 words. 



''May I come aboard your ship?'' 



''Not by a d d sight." 



"You've six British prisoners aboard." 



"You're mistaken; they're all free men." And so on. 



On August 19, 1876, when the Catalpa landed her passengers 

 at New York, Richardson, agent for the vessel, telegraphed 

 Captain Anthony to leave the vessel in New York and come 

 home. He reached New Bedford on a Sunday morning, and 

 thousands of people met him. His hair, which had been black 

 when he sailed, was gray; he had lost thirty-seven pounds in 

 weight. 



The committee that had sent out the vessel settled with the 

 crew according to an average of the oil taken by other vessels 

 that had sailed the same season; and to Captain Anthony, Mr. 

 Richardson, and Captain Hathaway, they gave the Catalpa 

 herself. The expedition cost besides the money raised to give 

 the escaped convicts a start in their new land, approximately 

 $30,000. 



The affair made a great to-do in its day. The Catalpa had 

 been decidedly the aggressor in her brush with England, and the 

 Fenian convicts were indeed lucky to get out of their scrape so 

 well. Angry leading articles in British journals did them no 



