CHAPTER VIII—THE PLANTER TURNS LIEUTENANT
It was Mr. Adams who opposed you. The best place I could make was that of lieutenant. Mr. Adams wouldn’t hear of you as a captain; and since, with General Washington, Virginia and the Southern Colonies have been given control of the Army, his claim of the Navy for Massachusetts and the Northern Colonies finds general consent. Commodore Hopkins and four of the five captains, beginning with Mr. Adams’ protégé Dudley Saltonstall, go to New England. The most that I could make Mr. Adams agree to, was that you should be set at the head of the list of lieutenants.”
“I am sorry, sir, that Mr. Adams holds a poor opinion of me.” This with a sigh. “It was my dream to be a captain, and have a ship of my own. However, I am here to serve the cause, rather than promote the personal fortunes of Paul Jones. Let the list go as it is; the future doubtless will bring all things straight. I am free to say, however, that from the selections made by Mr. Adams, as you repeat them, I think he has provided for more courts-martial than victories.” The two gentlemen in talk are Mr. Hewes, member of the Colonial Congress from North Carolina, and Planter Paul Jones. Mr. Hewes is old and worn and sick, and only his granite resolution keeps him at the seat of government.
“Mr. Hancock,” continues Mr. Hewes, “is also from Massachusetts, and as chairman of our committee he gave Mr. Adams what aid he could. There’s one honor you may have, however; I arranged for that. The issuance of the commissions is with Mr. Hancock, and if you’ll accompany me to the Hall you will be given yours at once. That will make you the first, if not the highest, naval officer of the Colonies to be commissioned.”
“On what ship am I to serve?”
“The Alfred, Captain Saltonstall.”
Raw and bleak sweep the December winds through the bare streets, as the two go on their way to the Hall, where Congress holds its sittings. Fortunately, as Lieutenant Paul Jones phrases it, the wind is “aft,” and so Mr. Hewes, despite his weakness, makes better weather of it than one would look for.
“I’ll have a carriage home,” says he, panting a little, as the stiff breeze steals his breath away.
“I can’t,” breaks forth Lieutenant Paul Jones, after an interval of silence—“I can’t for the life of me make out how I incurred the enmity of Mr. Adams. I’ve never set foot in Boston, never clapped my eyes on him before I came to this city last July.”
Mr. Hewes smiles. “You sacrificed interest to epigram,” says he. Lieutenant Paul Jones glares in wonder. “Let me explain,” goes on Mr. Hewes, answering the look. “Do you recall meeting Mr. Adams at Colonel Carroll’s house out near Schuylkill Falls?”
“That was last October.”
“Precisely! Mr. Adams’ memory is quite equal to last October. The more, if the event remembered were a dig to his vanity.”
“A dig to his vanity!” repeats Lieutenant Paul Jones in astonishment. “I cannot now recall that I so much as spoke a word to the old polar bear.”
“It wasn’t a word spoken to him, but one spoken of him. This is it: Mr. Adams told an anecdote in French to little Betty Faulkner. Later you must needs be witty, and whisper to Miss Betty a satirical word anent Mr. Adams’ French.”
“Why, then,” interjects Lieutenant Paul Jones, with a whimsical grin, “I’ll tell you what I said. ‘It is fortunate,’ I observed to Miss Betty, ‘that Mr. Adams’ sentiments are not so English as is his French. If they were, he would far and away be the greatest Tory in the world.’”
“Just so!” chuckles Mr. Hewes. “And, doubtless, all very true. None the less, my young friend, your brightness cost you a captaincy. The mot was too good to keep, and little Betty started it on a journey that landed it, at a fourth telling, slap in the outraged ear of Mr. Adams himself. Make you a captain? He would as soon think of making you rich.”
The pair trudged on in silence, Mr. Hewes turning about in his mind sundry matters of colonial policy, while Lieutenant Paul Jones solaces himself by recalling how it is the even year to a day since that Norfolk ball, when he smote upon the scandalous nose of Lieutenant Parker.
“Now that I’m a lieutenant like himself,” runs the warlike cogitations of Lieutenant Paul Jones, “I’d prodigiously enjoy meeting the scoundrel afloat. I might teach his dullness a better opinion of us.”
Lieutenant Paul Jones for months has been hard at work; one day in conference with the Marine Committee, leading them by the light of his ship-knowledge; the next busy with adz and oakum and calking iron, repairing and renewing the tottering hulks which the agents of the colonies have collected as the nucleus of the baby navy. Over this very ship the Alfred, on which he is to sail lieutenant, he has toiled as though it were intended as a present for his bride. He confidently counted on being made its captain; now to sail as a subordinate, when he looked to have command, is a bitter disappointment. Sail he will, however, and that without murmur; for he is too much the patriot to hang back, too strong a heart to sulk. Besides, he has the optimism of the born war dog.
“Given open war,” thinks he, “what more should one ask than a cutlass, and the chance to use it? Once we’re aboard an enemy, it shall go hard, but I carve a captaincy out of the situation.”
Congress is not in session upon this particular day, and Mr. Hewes leads Lieutenant Paul Jones straight to Chairman Hancock of the Marine Committee. That eminent patriot is in his committee room. He is big, florid, proud, and, like all the Massachusetts men since Concord and Lexington, a bit puffed up. No presentation is needed; Mr. Hancock and Lieutenant Paul Jones have been acquainted for months. The big merchant-statesman beams pleasantly on the new lieutenant. Then he draws Mr. Hewes into a far window.
“I can’t see what’s got into Adams,” says Mr. Hancock, lowering his voice to a whisper. “He burst in here a moment ago, and declared that he meant to move, at the next session, a reconsideration of the appointment of our young friend.”
“And now where pinches the shoe?”
“He says that Paul Jones isn’t two years out of England; that his sympathies must needs lean toward King George.”
“It will be news if the patriotism of Mr. Adams himself stands as near the perpendicular as does that of Paul Jones!”
“And next he urges that our friend is a man of no family.”
“Now, did one ever hear such aristocratic bosh! The more, since our cause is the cause of human rights, and our shout ‘Democracy!’ I shall take occasion, when next I have the honor to meet Mr. Adams”—here the eyes of the old North Carolinian begin to sparkle—“to mention this subject of families, and remind him that it might worry the Herald’s College excessively, if that seminary of pedigrees were called upon to back-track his own.”
“No, no, my dear sir!” and the merchant-statesman, full of lofty mollifications, makes a soothing gesture with his hands. “For all our sakes, say nothing to Mr. Adams! You recall what Doctor Franklin remarked of him: ‘He is always honest, sometimes great, but often mad.’ Let us suppose him merely mad; and so forgive him. We may do it the more easily, since I told him that, even if his objections were valid, he was miles too late, the question of that lieutenancy having been already passed upon and settled. Let us forget Adams, and give Paul Jones his commission.”
As Lieutenant Paul Jones receives his commission from Mr. Hancock, the latter remarks with a smile:
“You have the first commission issued, Lieutenant Jones. If the simile were permissible concerning anything that refers to the sea, I should say now that, in making you a lieutenant, we lay the corner stone of the American Navy.”
Lieutenant Paul Jones bows his thanks, but speaks never a word. This silence arises from the deep emotions that hold him in their strong grip, not from churlishness.
“And now,” observes Mr. Hewes, who is thinking only of heaping extra honor on his young friend, “since we have a fully commissioned officer to perform the ceremony, suppose we make memorable the day by going down to the Alfred and ‘breaking out’ its pennant. Thus, almost with the breath in which we commission our first officer, we will have also commissioned our first regular ship of war.”
“Would it not be better,” interposes Mr. Hancock, thinking on the possible angers of Mr. Adams, “to wait for the coming from Boston of Captain Saltonstall?”
Mr. Hewes thinks it would not. Since Mr. Hewes’ manner in thus thinking is just a trifle iron-bound, not to say acrid, Mr. Hancock decides that, after all, there may be more peril in waiting for Captain Saltonstall than in going forward with Lieutenant Jones. Whereupon, Mr. Hewes, Mr. Hancock and Lieutenant Jones depart for the Alfred, which lies at the foot of Chestnut Street. In the main hall of Congress the three pick up Colonel Carroll, Mad Anthony Wayne. Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Livingston, and Mr. Morris. These gentlemen, regarding the event as the formal birth of the new navy, decide to accompany the others in the rôle of witnesses.
The flag is ready in the lockers of the Alfred—a pine tree, a rattlesnake, with the words “Don’t Tread on Me.” Lieutenant Paul Jones, as he shakes out the bunting, surveys the device with no favoring eye.
“I was ever,” observes Lieutenant Paul Jones, looking at Mr. Hewes but speaking to all—“I was ever curious to know by whose queer fancy that device was adopted. It is beyond me to fathom how a venomous serpent could be regarded as the emblem of a brave and honest people fighting to be free.”
After delivering this opinion, which is tacitly agreed to by the others, the flag is bent on the halyards, and “broken out.” Also, a ration of grog is issued to the crew—so far as the Alfred is blessed with a crew—by way of fixing the momentous occasion in the forecastle mind. The crew cheers; but whether the cheers are for the grog, or Lieutenant Paul Jones who orders it, or the rattlesnake pine tree ensign that causes the order, no one may say.
Following the “breaking out,” the grog and the cheers, Mr. Hewes, Mr. Hancock and their fellow-statesmen, retire—the day being over cold—to the land, while Lieutenant Paul Jones, now and until the coming of Captain Saltonstall in command of the Alfred, remains aboard to take up his duty as a regularly commissioned officer in the regular navy of the colonies.
CHAPTER IX—THE CRUISE OF THE “PROVIDENCE”
Four ships—the Alfred, Captain Saltonstall, in the van, with Commodore Hopkins in command of the squadron—sail away on a rainy February day. They clear Cape Henlopen, and turn their untried prows south by east half south. The fell purpose of Commodore Hopkins is to harry the Bahamas.
It will be nowhere written that Commodore Hopkins, in his designs upon the Bahamas, in any degree succeeds. Eight weeks later, the four ships come scudding into New London with the fear of death in their hearts. An English sloop of war darted upon them, they say, off the eastern end of Long Island, and they escaped by the paint on their planks.
Lieutenant Paul Jones of the Alfred is afire with anger and chagrin at the miserable failure of the cruise, and goes furiously ashore, nursing a purpose of charging both Commodore Hopkins and Captain Saltonstall with every maritime offence, from sea-idiocy to cowardice. He is cooled off by older and more prudent heads. Also, Commodore Hopkins is summarily dismissed by Congress, while Captain Saltonstall takes refuge behind the broad skirts of his patron Mr. Adams. Thus, that first luckless cruise of the infant navy, conceived in ignorance and in politics brought forth, achieves its dismal finale in investigations, votes of censure, and dismissals, a situation which goes far to justify those December prophecies of Lieutenant Paul Jones, that Mr. Adams, by his selections for commodore and captains, arranged for more courts-martial than victories.
It has one excellent result, however; it teaches Congress to give Lieutenant Paul Jones the sloop Providence, and send him to sea with a command of his own. With him go his faithful blacks, Scipio and Cato; also, as “port-fire,” a red Indian of the Narragansett tribe, one Anthony Jeremiah of Martha’s Vineyard.
The little sloop—about as big as a gentleman’s yacht, she is—clears on a brilliant day in June. For weeks she ranges from Newfoundland to the Bermudas—seas sown with English ships of war. Boatswain Jack Robinson holds this converse with Polly his virtuous wife, when the Providence again gets its anchors down in friendly Yankee mud.
“And what did you do, Jack?” demands wife Polly, now she has him safe ashore.
“I’ll tell you what he—that’s the captain—does, when first we puts to sea. He’s only a leftenant—Leftenant Paul Jones; but he ought to be a captain, and so, d’ye see, my girl, I’ll call him captain. What does the captain do, says you, when once he’s afloat? As sure as you’re on my knee, Polly, no sooner be we off soundings than he passes the word for’ard for me to fetch him the cat-o’-nine-tails—me being bo’sen. Aft I tumbles, cat and all, wondering who’s to have the dozen.
“‘Chuck it overboard, Jack!’ says he, like that.
“‘Chuck what, capt’n?’ says I, giving my forelock a tug.
“‘Chuck the cat!’ says he.
“‘The cat?’ says I, being as you might say taken a-back, and wondering is it rum.
“‘Ay! the cat!’ he says. Then, looking me over with an eye like a coal, he goes on: ‘I can keep order aboard my ship without the cat. Because why; because I’m the best man aboard her,’ he says; and there you be.”
“And did the cat go overboard, Jack?”
“Overboard of course, Polly. And being nicely fitted with little knobs of lead on the nine tails of her, down to the bottom like a solid shot goes she. And so, d’ye see, we goes cruising without the cat.”
“Did you take no prizes?”
“We sunk eight, and sent eight more into Boston with prize crews aboard. Good picking, too, they was.”
“And you had no battles then?”
“No battles, Polly; and yet, at the close of the cruise, we’re all but done for by a seventy-four gun frigate off Montauk. The captain twists us out of the frigate’s mouth by sheer seamanship.”
“Now how was that, Jack!” cries Polly, breathless and all ears.
“We comes poking ‘round the point, d’ye see, and runs blind into her. We beats to wind’ard; so does the frigate. And she lays as close to the wind as we—and closer, Polly. Just as she thinks she has only to reach out and snap us up, the captain—he has the wheel himself—wears suddenly round under easy helm, and gets the wind free. This sort o’ takes the frigate by surprise, and, instead of wearing, she starts to box about. She’s standing as close-hauled as her trim will bear at the time. So, as I says, as he wears ‘round, the frigate jams her helm down, and luffs into the teeth of the gale. There’s a squall cat’s-pawing to wind’ard that she ought to have seen, and would if she’d had our captain. But she never notices. So, d’ye see, my girl, the frigate don’t hold her luff, and next the squall takes her in the face. She loses her steering way, gets took aback; and we showing a clean pair of heels, with the wind free, on the sloop’s best point of sailing. And there you be: We leaves the frigate to clear her sheets and reeve preventers at her leisure—we snapping muskets at her from our taffer-rail, by way of insult, Polly!”
“Your captain’s too daring, Jack,” says Polly, who is a prudent woman.
“That’s what I tells him, Polly. ‘Cap’n,’ says I, ‘discretion is the better part of valor.’ At that he gives me a wink. ‘So it is, my mate,’ says he, ‘and damned impudence is the better part of discretion. And now,’ says he, ‘the frigate being all but hulldown astern, you may take this wheel yourself, while I goes down to supper.’”
When Lieutenant Paul Jones is again on dry land, he finds two pieces of news awaiting him. One is a letter from Mr. Jefferson, enclosing his commission as a captain fully fledged. The other is old Duncan Macbean in person, and his sunken cheek and leaden eye tell of troubles on the far-off Rappahannock.
“It was Lord Dunmore,” says old Duncan, very pale, his voice a-quaver. “He heard of you among the ships, and wanted revenge.”
“And the villain took it!”
“Ay, he took it like! He burned mansion, barn, flour-mill—every building’s gone, and never stick nor stone to stand one a-top t’ither on the whole plantation.”
“What else?”
“He killed sheep and swine and cattle, and drove away the horses; there’s never the hoof left walking about the place. Nothing but the stripped land is left ye.”
“But the slaves?”
“His lordship took them, too, to sell them in Jamaica.”
Captain Paul Jones turns white as linen three times bleached. His eyes are hard as jade. Then he tosses up his hands, with a motion of sorrow.
“My poor blacks!” he cries. “The plantation was to them a home, not a place of bondage. Now they are torn away, to die of pestilence or under the lash, in the cane fields of Jamaica. The price of their poor bodies is to swell the pockets of our noble English slave-trader. This may be Lord Dunmore’s notion of civilized war. For all that I shall one day exact a reckoning.” Then, resting his hand on old Duncan’s shoulder: “However, we have seen worse campaigns, old friend! We’ll do well yet! I’ve still one fortune—my sword; still one prospect—the prospect of laying alongside the enemy.”
CHAPTER X—THE COUNSEL OF CADWALADER
Philadelphia is experiencing a cool June, and in a sober, Quakerish way shows grateful for it. The windows of General Washington’s apartments, looking out into Chestnut Street, are raised to let in the weather and the urbane sun, not too hot, not too cool, casts a slanting glance into the room, as though moved of a solar curiosity concerning the mighty one who inhabits them. The sun, doubtless, goes his way fully satisfied; General Washington himself is there, in casual talk with the Marquis de Lafayette.
There is a marked difference between the General and the Marquis; the former tall, powerful, indomitable—the type American; the latter nervous, optimistic, full of romantic heroisms—the type French. The General is speaking; his manner a model of the courteous and the suave. For the young Marquis is a peer of France, the head of a party, and may be held as carrying at his heels a third of French sentiment and French influence. It is not what he brings, but what he leaves behind him, that makes the young Marquis important.
The talk between the General and the Marquis is running on Captain Paul Jones.
“It surprises me,” the General is saying, “it surprises me, my dear Marquis, to learn that you know Captain Jones.”
“We meet—Captaine Jones and I,” responds Lafayette, in a choppy, fervent fashion of English, that carries something more than a mere flavor of Paris, “we meet, my dear General, in Alexandria by the Potomac, when I come North from the Carolina, where I disbark. Captaine Jones he assist in Alexandria to find horses to bring me here.”
“And you believe, as does he, that a best use that can be made of him is to give him a ship, and send him to Europe?”
“Certaine, General, certaine! Give him a good ship, and let him hawk at England with it. It should be a quick, smart ship, that they may not catch him. Give him such a vessel, General, and he will keep five hundred English boats at home to guard the British coasts.”
“You think, Marquis, that he would make a good impression in France?”
“The best, General; the best! Captaine Jones has—what you call?—the aplomb, yes, and the grace, the charm, the dash to captivate the fancy of my countrymen—ever brave, the French, they love a brave man like Captaine Jones! More, General, he speaks the French language, and that is most important.”
General Washington stalks up and down the polished, hardwood floor, wearing a thoughtful face. As he turns to speak, he is interrupted by an obsequious black attendant—one of those body slaves brought from Mount Vernon.
“Pardon, Gin’ral,” says the grizzled old darky, as he pokes his grinning head in at the door; “Cap’n Jones presents his comp’ments, sare; an’ can he come up?”
General Washington makes a sign of assent, and the grizzled old servitor smirks and smiles and bows himself backward into the hall.
There are two pairs of feet heard climbing the stair; the elastic step belongs to Captain Paul Jones, the more stolid is that of Mr. Morris, who, using the familiarity of a closest friendship, walks in on General Washington unannounced.
“The Marquis was just saying,” observes General Washington to Captain Paul Jones, when greetings are over and conversation, to employ a nautical phrase, has settled to its lines, “that he met you in Virginia as he came up.”
“Yes, General; I had been having a look at my plantation, which Lord Dunmore did me the honor to lay waste.”
“Was the destruction great?”
“The torch had been everywhere. The work could not have been more complete had his Lordship been a professional incendiary.” Captain Paul Jones shrugs his wide shoulders, as though dismissing a disagreeable subject, one not to be helped by talk: “You received my letter, General? I was so rash as to think you might aid me in getting the new frigate Trumbull.”
“Captain,” returns General Washington, “you will understand that my connection with the army makes any interference on my part in naval affairs a most delicate business. I must give my counsel in that quarter cautiously. As for the Trumbull; it is, I fear, already claimed by Mr. Adams for Captain Saltonstall.”
“Captain Saltonstall!” cries Captain Paul Jones in a fervor of bitterness. “General, hear me! I sailed lieutenant in the Alfred with Captain Saltonstall. I know him, and do not scruple to say that he is an incompetent coward. Since he went ashore in New London after that disgraceful cruise, he hasn’t shown his face aboard ship. He was ashamed to do so. Only Mr. Adams could have protected him from the court-martial he had earned. On my side—if I must plead my own cause—I’ve made two cruises since then, one in the Providence, one in the Alfred. I’ve taken twenty-four prizes; some of them by no means unimportant to the American cause.”
“Ah, yes!” interrupts General Washington, his steady face lighting up a trifle; “you mean the Mellish and the Bideford. I heard how you captured the winter equipment meant for Howe’s army—ten thousand uniforms, eleven hundred fur overcoats, eleven thousand blankets, besides a battery or two of field guns and six hundred cavalry equipments. You did us a timely service, Captain Jones. Many an American soldier was the warmer last winter, because of the Mellish and the Bideford.”
“I am glad,” says Captain Paul Jones, not without confusion, “to learn that I so much pleased you. It gives me courage to hope that you will come to my shoulder against Mr. Adams and his pet incompetent, Saltonstall.”
General Washington again dons his manner of grave inscrutability, and falls to his habit of striding up and down, hands locked beneath the buff-and-blue flaps of his coat.
“Captain Jones,” he suddenly breaks forth, “you are a sailor: What do you do afloat in case of a head wind!”
“A head wind?” repeats Captain Paul Jones. “Why, sir, if it’s no more than just a gale, I fall to tacking, sta’board and port. If it should be aught of a hurricane, now, I’d set a storm stays’l, heave to, and wait for weather.”
“Quite so!” returns the General, soberly. “Well, Captain Jones, one may find headwinds ashore as well as afloat. Now, in the matter of the Trumbull, I should advise you to ‘heave to,’ as you say, ‘and wait for weather.’ Mr. Adams insists on Captain Saltonstall; and it is not alone inconvenient, it’s impossible, with the Marine Committee made up as it is, to oppose him. Be patient, and you shall not in the end fare worse than your deserts.”
Captain Paul Jones wheels on Mr. Morris, who, with Lafayette, has kept silence, while giving interested ear to the conversation.
“You hear, Mr. Morris?” observes Captain Paul Jones, manner dogged and aggressive. “As I warned you in my letter, I shall now prefer charges against Captain Saltonstall—charge him with flat cowardice while in command of the Alfred, and demand a court-martial. Under the circumstances, I deem it my public duty so to do.”
Mr. Morris makes a gesture of dissent and repressive protest.
“My dear Captain,” expostulates Mr. Morris, his manner pleading, yet full of authority; precisely the manner of one who deals with a trained tiger which he is willing to coax, while firmly intending to control—“my dear Captain, hear reason! Your charges would be suppressed—pigeon-holed! The influence of Mr. Adams with the Marine Committee is supreme. It could, let me tell you, accomplish much more than merely silence your charges. It could go further, and force a resolution of confidence in Captain Salton-stall.”
“Then,” retorts Captain Paul Jones, inveterate as iron, “I’ve still a shot in my locker. I shall publish his cowardice over my own name; I shall placard every street corner; for I think the American people entitled to know the sort of servant they have had in Captain Saltonstall. They shall not risk a good ship and a brave crew, with a coward in the dark; and so I tell you!”
“Captain Jones,” observes General Washington, who, cool and unruffled, is a contrast to the disturbed Mr. Morris, “Captain Jones, as a gentleman, you realize what would be the result of a public charge of cowardice against Captain Saltonstall?”
“He would challenge you instantly!” breaks in Mr. Morris.
“Precisely!” says Captain Paul Jones, with just the preliminary glimmer of battle in his hard brown eyes. “As you say, sir, he would challenge me. And having challenged me, I should take pleasure in doing my best to kill him. I got a pair of Galway duelling pistols out of the Bideford; they were coming to Lord Howe. If I can lure Captain Saltonstall to the field, it shall go hard, but with one of those Irish sawhandles I rid the American navy of him. Once I have him at ten paces, it will take something more than the influence of Mr. Adams to bring him safely off.”
Mr. Morris’ brow colors; General Washington takes the situation more at ease. He even gives way briefly to a shadowy smile; for the great patriot, while not so inflammable, is quite as combative as any Captain Paul Jones of them all.
“You have taken advice on this?” asks General Washington, following a pause, during which everybody has had time to more or less digest Captain Paul Jones’ unique plan for improving the American navy. “I do not suppose you have gone to this decision without counsel?”
“Sir; I am, as you know, both prudent and conservative—no one more so. Certainly, I’ve taken counsel. I went to General Cadwalader; he expresses himself as in hearty accord with me. Indeed, it is understood between us that he shall act for me in any affair I may have with Captain Saltonstall.”
At the mention of General Cadwalader, General Washington smiles openly, while Mr. Morris groans and throws up his hands.
“Bless me! Cadwalader!” exclaims Mr. Morris, when he can command his tongue. “The worst firebrand in the country! Cadwalader, forsooth! who has ever had but one word of advice for every man—‘Fight!’” Then, abruptly descending upon Captain Paul Jones with all the authority of a father addressing a favorite but rebellious son: “Paul; listen! You believe me your friend?”
“Indubitably! I have no better friend.”
“Then let me tell you, Paul: In the name of that friendship this thing must end—absolutely end. If you’ve drawn up any accusation of cowardice against Captain Saltonstall, you must burn it and forget the whole affair. You must dismiss this subject from your mind. In Cadwalader you have invited the wrong kind of advice. I now give you the right kind. The General will tell you so; your friend, the Marquis, will tell you so. And forasmuch as you value my friendship you must obey me.”
Mr. Morris in his earnestness lays a paternal hand on the shoulder of Captain Paul Jones, his manner a composite of coax and command. Before the latter, who is visibly shaken by the friendly determination of Mr. Morris, can frame reply, Lafayette—who has been scrupulous to maintain a polite silence from first to last—interferes.
“Our good friend, Mr. Morris,” interjects Lafayette, “has been so generous as to refer to me. I could not have said a word without; since what you discuss is private and personal to yourselves as Americans, and of a character that forbids me, a Frenchman and an alien even though a friend, voicing my views. However, since Mr. Morris has so complimented me as to make his appeal in my name, I must—in all respect and friendship for Captain Jones, whom I admire—unite my voice with his. The more readily since I can take it upon myself to promise Captain Jones that if he will cross to France, with a letter I shall give him to my king, a fighting ship of frigate strength shall be his within the month.”
As he concludes, Lafayette, a blush reddening his cheek—for he is only a boy—extends two hands to Captain Paul Jones as though, fearful of having said too much, he would mutely apologize. Captain Paul Jones seizes the hands with a warmth equal to the other’s; and the incident, capping as it does the fatherly opposition of Mr. Morris, puts an end to that beautiful plan, so full of dire promise for Captain Saltonstall, which in their mutual belligerencies Captain Paul Jones and the fire-fed Cadwalader have formulated.
“Say that you will go to France, my friend!” urges the impulsive young Frenchman; “say that you will go! I will exhaust Auvergne, and all of France besides, but you shall have the promised ship.”
At this, General Washington interferes.
“Forbear, my dear Marquis!” says he. “Captain Jones shall go to France. But he shall go with an American crew, in an American ship, flying the American flag.” Then, to Captain Paul Jones: “Do me the honor, Captain, to hold yourself in readiness to obey any summons I may send. Believe me, I shall count myself as one without influence, if you do not hear from me within the week.”
Let us glance ahead two years for the final word of Captain Saltonstall. Captain Paul Jones, with his hard-won prize, the crippled Serapis, creeps into the Texel, and the earliest story wherewith the Dutch regale him is how Captain Saltonstall, weak, forceless, incompetent, has surrendered the new, thirty-two-gun frigate, Warren, to the English in Penobscot Bay. Captain Paul Jones hears the disgraceful news with set and angry face.
“I have just learned the miserable fate of the Warren,” he writes to Mr. Morris; “and hearing it I reproach myself. If I had obeyed the dictates of my sense of duty on a Philadelphia day you will recall, instead of yielding to the persuasions of the peacemakers, our flag might still be flying on the Warren!”
CHAPTER XI—THE GOOD SHIP RANGER
Four days of listless waiting go by, and Captain Paul Jones again finds himself and Mr. Morris closeted with General Washington.
“Captain Jones,” says the latter, speaking with a kindly gravity, “Mr. Morris and I have so pushed your affairs with the Marine Committee that to-morrow Congress will pass a double resolution, adopting a new flag, the stars and stripes, and appointing you to command the Ranger.”
“The Ranger!” exclaims Captain Paul Jones, beginning to glow. “Thanks, General; a thousand thanks! And to you also, Mr. Morris, whom I shall never forget! The Ranger! I know her! She is being sparred and rigged at Portsmouth! New, three hundred tons; a beauty, too, they tell me! Gentlemen, I am off at once to Portsmouth! I must see to stepping her masts and mounting her batteries myself.”
Captain Paul Jones, all eagerness, is on his feet, and even the wise, age-cold Mr. Morris begins to catch his fire.
“Right!” cries Mr. Morris; “you shall start to-morrow!”
“Captain Jones,” interrupts the General, laying a large detaining hand on the other’s arm, “you will go to Portsmouth and look after your ship. Also, while your destination is France, you must wait for orders to sail. I may have weighty despatches for the French King—news that will shake Europe.”
June is as cool in Portsmouth as it is in Philadelphia. Cooler; for the New Hampshire breeze has in it the chill smell of those snows that lie unmelted in the mountains. Captain Paul Jones comes unannounced, eyes dancing like those of a child with a new toy, and seeks the wharf where the __Ranger__ is being fitted to her spars. From a convenient coign he looks the Ranger over, and evinces a master’s appreciation.
“Nose sharp! Plenty of dead-rise! Lean lines!” he murmurs. “With the wind anywhere abaft the beam, she should race like a greyhound! All, she’s a beauty, fit to warm the cockles of a sailor’s heart! See to the sheer of her!—as delicate as the lines of a woman’s arm!”
Up comes a sturdy figure with an air of command, an officer’s hat on his head, a ship-carpenter’s adz in his hand.
“This is Captain Jones?”
“Captain Paul Jones, sir.”
“Pardon me for not first giving my name. I’m Elijah Hall, who is to sail second officer with you in yon Ranger.”
Captain Paul Jones and Lieutenant Hall fall into instant and profound confab of a deeply nautical complexion, a confab quite beyond a landsman’s comprehension, wherein such phrases as “flush-decks,” “short poop-deck,” “bilges,” “futtocks,” and “knees” abound, and are reeled off as though their use gives our two ship-enthusiasts unbridled satisfaction. At last Lieutenant Hall remarks, pointing to three long sticks:
“There’re her masts, sir. They were taken out of a four-hundred-ton Indiaman, and are too long for a three-hundred-ton ship like the Ranger. I was thinking I’d cut’em off four feet in the caps.”
“That would be a sin!” exclaims Captain Paul Jones, voice almost religious in its fervent zeal. “Three as fine pieces of pine as ever came out of Norway, too! I’d be afraid to cut’em, Mr. Hall; it would give the ship bad luck. I’ll tell you what! Fid them four feet lower in the hounds; it will amount to the same thing, and at the same time save the sticks.”
Captain Paul Jones goes at the congenial task of fitting out the Ranger with his usual day-and-night energy. When he finds her over-sparred, with her masts too long, he still refuses to cut them down, but shortens yard and bowsprit, jib-boom and spankerboom. He doesn’t like the Marine Committee’s armament of twenty six-pounders, and proceeds to mount four six-pounders and fourteen long nines.
“One nine-pounder is equal to two six-pounders,” says Captain Paul Jones; “and, since it’s I who must put to sea in the Ranger, and not the Marine Committee, nine-ponnders I’ll have, and say no more about it.”
The New Hampshire girls, on the Fourth of July, come down to the Ranger, and present Captain Paul Jones a flag—red, white, and blue—quilted of cloth ravished from their virgin petticoats. The gallant mariner makes the New Hampshire girls a speech.
“That flag,” cries he, “that flag and I, as captain of the Ranger, were born on the same day. We are twins. We shall not be parted life or death; we shall float together or sink together!”
These brave words, in the long run, find amendment. The petticoat flag of the pretty New Hampshire girls is the flag which, two years later, flies from the Richard’s indomitable peak when Captain Paul Jones cuts down the gallant Pierson and his Serapis. After that fight off Scarborough Head, Captain Paul Jones writes to the pretty New Hampshire girls—for he ever remembers the ladies—recounting the last destiny of their petticoat ensign. He is telling of the Richard’s death throes, as viewed from the blood-slippery decks of the conquered Serapis:
“No one was now left aboard the Richard but my dead. To them I gave the good old ship to be their coffin; in her they found a sublime sepulcher. She rolled heavily in the swell, her gun-deck awash to the port-sills, settled slowly by the head, and sank from sight. The ensign gaff, shot away in the action, had been fished and put in place; and there your flag was left flying when we abandoned her. As she went down by the head, her taffrail rose for a moment; and so the last that mortal eye ever saw of the gallant Richard was your unconquered ensign. I couldn’t strip it from the brave old ship in her last agony; nor could I deny my dead on her decks, who had given their lives to keep it flying, the glory of taking it with them. And so I parted with it; so they took it for their winding sheet.”
At last the Ranger is ready for sea; and still those belated despatches from General Washington for the French King do not come. One cold October day a horseman, worn and haggard, rides into Portsmouth. Stained, dust-caked, reeling in his saddle, he calls for Captain Paul Jones.
“Here,” responds that gentleman. “What would you have?”
“I come from General Washington,” cries the man. “Burgoyne has surrendered! Here are your despatches for France!”
Captain Paul Jones takes the packet, stunned for the moment by the mighty news.
“And now for food and drink,” says the man faintly, as with difficulty he slips to the ground. “One hundred and eighty miles have I rode in thirty hours. It was the brave news kept me going; the thought of those beaten English held me up like wine.”
“One hundred and eighty miles!” cries Captain Paul Jones. “Thirty hours!”
The man points to his mount, where it stands with drooping head and quivering flank.
“That is the tenth I’ve had. Horse flesh and hard riding did it!”
Ten minutes after the despatches are put in his hands, Captain Paul Jones is aboard the Ranger. Then comes the tramp of forty feet about the capstan. Twenty powerful breasts are pressed against the capstan bars, and the Ranger is walked up to its anchors, while aloft the brisk top-men are shaking out the sails.
“Anchor up and down, sir!” reports Boatswain Jack Robinson, who has left his Polly at home, while he sails with the Ranger.
“Anchor up and down!” repeats Captain Paul Jones. “Bring her home!”
With a “Heave ho!” the Ranger’s anchors are pulled out of Portsmouth sands. Captain Paul Jones himself takes the wheel and pays off its head before the breeze, already bellying the foresails.
“Give her every stitch you have, Mr. Hall,” says Captain Paul Jones. “We must be clear of the Isles of Shoals by daybreak.”
“And then?” asks Lieutenant Hall.
“East, by south, half east! And Mr. Hall, day and night, blow high, blow low, spread every rag you’ve got. Burgoyne has surrendered. Either I shall tear the sticks out of the Ranger, or spread that news in France in thirty days.”
“More haste, less speed!” murmurs the prudent Lieutenant Hall; and so, having eased his mind like a true seaman, he goes forward heatedly to spread sail.
The top-heavy little Ranger, with her acre of canvas, heels over until, with decks awash, she glides eastward like a ghost.
“Pipe all hands aft, Mr. Bo’sen!” commands Captain Paul Jones.
Boatswain Jack Robinson puts his whistle to his lips, and sends a shrill call singing through the ship. The crew come scampering aft; all save a contingent aloft, who race down by the backstays, claw under claw, as might so many cats. Some of our old friends of the Providence are there—the aquatic Scipio and Cato, with the little red Indian port-fire, Anthony Jeremiah.
“My men,” cries Captain Paul Jones, “we’re off for France. We shall meet nasty weather, for it’s the beginning of winter, and I shall steer the northern course. It is to be a case of crack-on canvas, foul weather or fair: and, since the ship is oversparred and cranky, we must mind her day and night. To make all safe, the watch shall be lap-watched, so as to keep plenty of hands on deck. This will double your work, but I shall also double your grog. Now, my hearties, let every man among you do his duty by flag and ship. Burgoyne has surrendered, and it’s for us to carry the word to France.”
“Shipmates,” observes Boatswain Jack Robinson, judgmatically, as the hands go tumbling forward, “shipmates, the old Ranger is a damned comfortable ship. ‘Double watches, double work!’ says the skipper; but also ‘Double grog!’ says he. Wherefore, I says again, the old Ranger is a damned comfortable ship.”
Eight bells now, breakfast; and the Isles of Shoals are vanishing over the Ranger’s stern. Suddenly a boyish voice strikes up:
“So now we had him hard and fast,
Burgoyne laid down his arms at last,
And that is why we brave the blast,
To carry the news to France.”
Captain Paul Jones pauses in his short quarterdeck walk, cocks his ear, and listens. The hoarse crew take up the chorus:
“Heigh ho! carry the news!
Go carry the news to London,
Tell old King George how he’s undone.
Oh, ho! carry the news!”
Boatswain Jack Robinson, observing Captain Paul Jones listening, becomes explanatory.
“Only a bit of a ditty, Cap’n; the same composed by Midshipman Hill, d’ye see, in honor of this here cruise. A right good ballid, too, I calls it; and amazin’ fine for a lad of twenty, who hardly knows a reef-point from a gasket.”
Vouchsafing this, Boatswain Jack Robinson rolls forward with walrus gait, chanting as he goes in a voice tuned by storms and broken across capstan bars, the hoarse refrain:
“Oh, ho! carry the news!”
And so the good ship Ranger plows eastward on her course. Eighteen hours out of twenty-four, Captain Paul Jones holds the deck. In the end he has his reward. Just thirty days after the Ranger’s anchors kissed the Portsmouth sands good-by, they go splashing into the dull waters of the Loire.