Four months slip by; it is April, and the idle Ranger rides in the harbor of Brest. Morose, sore with inactivity, Captain Paul Jones seeks out Doctor Franklin at the philosopher’s house in Passy.
“This lying by rusts me,” Captain Paul Jones is saying as he and Doctor Franklin have a turn in the garden. The latter likes the thin French sunshine, and gets as much of it as he may. “Yes, it rusts me—fills me with despair!”
“What would you do, then?” asks Doctor Franklin, his coarse, shrewd face quickening into interest. “Have you a cruise mapped out?”
“Now I thought, if you’ve no objections, I’d just poke the Ranger’s nose into the Irish Sea, and take a look at Whitehaven. You know I was born by the Solway, and the coast I speak of is an old acquaintance.”
“I see no objection, Captain, save the smallness of your ship.”
“That is easily answered; for I give you my word, Doctor, the little Ranger can sail round any English ship on the home station. I shall be safe, no fear; for what I can’t whip I can run from.”
“Have you spoken to my brother commissioners?”
Doctor Franklin looks up, a grim, expectant twinkle in his gray eyes. Captain Paul Jones cracks his fingers in angry impatience.
“Forgive me, Doctor, if I’m frank to the frontiers of rudeness. Of what avail to speak to Mr. Dean, who is asleep? Of what avail to speak to Mr. Lee, who surrounds himself with British spies like that creature Thornton, his private secretary? I ask you plain questions, Doctor, for I know you to be a practical man.”
The philosopher grins knowingly.
“Please do not speak of British spies to Commissioner Lee, Captain Jones. My task in France is enough difficult as it stands.”
“And on that account, Doctor, and on that alone, I have so far refrained from saying aught to Mr. Lee. But I tell you I misdoubt the man. His fellow Thornton I know to be in daily communication with the English admiralty! he clinks English gold in his pockets as the wage of his treason. This, were there no one save myself to consider, I should say in the face of Arthur Lee; ay! for that matter in the face of all the Lees that ever hailed from Virginia. I tell you this, Doctor, for your own guidance.” Then, following a pause: “Not that it sets politely with my years to go cautioning one so much my superior in age, wisdom and experience.”
The philosopher glances up from the violets.
“Possibly, Captain Jones, I have already given myself that caution. However, concerning your proposed cruise: I shall leave all to your judgment. Certainly, our warships, as you say, were meant for battle-work, and not to waste their lives junketing about French ports.”
“One thing, doctor,” observes Captain Paul Jones, at parting: “Tell your fellow commissioners that I’ve cleared for the west coast of Ireland, with a purpose to go north-about around the British islands. If you let them hear I’m off for Whitehaven, I give you my honor that, with the spy Thornton selling my blood to the English admiralty, I shall have the whole British fleet at my heels before I reach St. George’s Channel.”
Captain Paul Jones, in command of the Ranger, drops in at Whitehaven. With twenty-nine of his lads he goes ashore of a dripping morning, pens up the sleepy garrisons of the two forts, and spikes their guns. Then, having spikes to spare, he makes useless a shore battery, while the ballad-mongering Midshipman Hill, with six men, chases inland one hundred coast guardsmen and militia.
Captain Paul Jones, waxing industrious, attempts to burn the shipping which crowds the tidal basin at Whitehaven. In these fire-lighting efforts he succeeds to the extent of five ships; after which he rows out to the Ranger. Thereupon the people and militia, who crowd the terror-smitten hills round about, come down into their town again.
Captain Paul Jones crosses now to the north shore of the Solway for a morning call upon the Earl of Selkirk. He schemes to capture that patrician, and trade him back to the English for certain good American sailors whom they hold as prisoners. The plan falls through, since the noble earl is not at home. In lieu, the Ranger’s crew take unto themselves the Selkirk plate, which Captain Paul Jones subsequently buys from them, paying the ransom from his own purse, and returns with his compliments gallantly expressed in a letter to the earl.
From the Solway, the little Ranger stands west by north across the Irish Sea. Off Carrickfergus she finds the Drake, an English sloop of war that is two long nines the better than the Ranger in her broadsides, and thirty-one men stronger in her crew. To save trouble, the Ranger is hove to off the mouth of Belfast Lough, and waits for the Drake to come out. This the English ship does slowly and with difficulty, being on the wrong side of wind and tide.
“The sun is no more than an hour high,”
The Story of Paul Jones suggests Lieutenant Wallingford wistfully. “Shouldn’t we go to meet them, sir?”
Captain Paul Jones shakes his head.
“We’ve better water here,” says he. “Besides, the moon will be big; we’ll fight them by the light of the moon.”
Slowly, reluctantly, the Drake forges within hail. She is in doubt about the Ranger.
“What ship is that?” cries the Drake.
Captain Paul Jones puts his speaking-trumpet to his lips.
“The American ship Ranger,” he replies. “Come on; we’re waiting for you.”
Without further parley, broadside answers broadside and the battle is on.
Both ships head north, the Ranger having the weather-gage. This last gives Captain Paul Jones the nautical upperhand. In ship-fighting, the weather-gage is equivalent to an underhold in wrestling.
There is a swell on, and the two ships roll heavily. They shape their course side by side, keeping within musket-reach of each other. The breeze is on the starboard quarter, and a little faster than the ships. By this good luck, the smoke of the broadsides is sent drifting ahead, and the line of sight between the ships kept free. On they crawl, broadside talking to broadside; only the Americans are smarter with their guns, and fire three to the Drake’s two.
Twilight now invests the scene in gray, as the sun sinks behind the close, dark Irish headlands to the west. Night, cloudless and serene, comes down; the round, full moon shines out, and its mild rays mingle and merge with the angry glare of the battle-lanterns. Captain Paul Jones from his narrow quarterdeck watches the Drake through his night glass.
“Good! Very good!” he murmurs, as the Drake’s foremast is splintered by a round shot. Then, to the Salem man who has the wheel: “Bring us a little closer, Mr. Sargent; a little closer in, if you please.”
Captain Paul Jones again rivets his glass upon the Drake. An exclamation escapes him. It comes upon him that his gunners are having advantage of the roll of the ships, and time their broadsides so as to catch the Drake as, reeling to port, she brings up her starboard side. By this plausible manouvre, those sagacious ones who train the Ranger’s guns are sending shot after shot through and through the Drake, between wind and water, half of them indeed below the water-line. Captain Paul Jones, through his glass, makes out the black round shot-holes; they show as thick as cloves in the rind of a Christmas ham.
“Why!” he exclaims, “this doesn’t match my book! I must put a stopper on such work.”
Shutting up his glass, Captain Paul Jones leaps from the after flush-deck down among his sailors. Drunk with blood, grimed of powder, naked to the waist, the black glory of battle in their hearts, they merrily work their guns. It is as he beheld from the after-deck. The Ranger rolls to port as the Drake, all dripping, is fetching up her starboard side.
“Fire!” cries the master-gunner, and “Fire!” runs the word along the battery.
The long nines respond with flame and bellow!
Then they race crashingly inboard with the recoil, and are caught by the breeching tackle. With that the smoky work is all to do over again. The brawny sailor men—from Nantucket, from Martha’s Vineyard, from Sag Harbor, from New London and Barnstable and Salem and Boston and Portsmouth they are—shirtless and shoeless, barefoot and stripped to the belts, ply sponge and rammer. Again each black-throated gun is ready with a stomachful of solid shot.
“Show ‘em your teeth, mates!”
The guns rattle forward on their carriages. The quick port-tires stand ready, blowing their matches. There is a brief pause, as the master-gunner waits for that fatal downward roll to port which offers and opens the Drake’s starboard side almost to the keel.
“Ah! I see, Mr. Starbuck,” begins Captain Paul Jones sweetly, addressing the master-gunner. “Your effort is to hull the enemy.”
“Fire!” cries the master-gunner, for just then the Ranger is reeling down to port, while the Drake is coming up to starboard, and he must not waste the opportunity.
The long nines roar cheerfully, spouting fire and smoke. Then comes that crashing inboard leap, to be caught up short by the tackle. Again the sponges; again the rammers; with the busy shot-handlers working in between. And all the while the little powder monkeys, lads of eleven and twelve, go pattering to and fro, with cartridges from the magazines.
“Why, yes, sir!” responds the master-gunner, now finding time to reply to the comment of Captain Paul Jones; “as you says, we’re trying to hull her, sir.”
Captain Paul Jones makes out three new holes below the Brake’s plankslieer, the hopeful harvest of that last broadside.
“May I ask,” demands Captain Paul Jones, who as a mere first effect of battle never fails of a rippling amiability, “may I ask, Mr. Starbuck, your design in thus aiming below the water-line?”
“Saving you presence, Captain, we designs to sink the bitch.”
“Precisely! That is what I surmised! To a quick seaman like yourself, Mr. Starbuck, a word will do. I don’t want her sunk, d’ye see! I want to bring her into France as an object-lesson, and show the Frenchmen what Americans can do. Under the circumstances, Mr. Starbnck, I shall be obliged if you let her hull alone. It will take Mr. Hitchburn, our carpenter, a week as it is “—this comes off reproachfully—“to stop the holes you’ve already made. And so, Mr. Starbnck, from now on comb her decks and cut her up in the spars as much as ever you like; but please keep off her hull.”
“Ay, ay, sir!” says the master-gunner, saluting. Then: “Pass the word that we’re to leave her hull alone. Cap’n has set his heart on catching her alive.”
With that the plan of attack finds reversal, the Ranger firing as she comes up to port and when only a narrow streak of the Drake’s starboard beam is visible above the waves.
Captain Paul Jones remains among the sailors, canvassing in a gratified way the results of this change. While thus engaged, port-fire Anthony Jeremiah grins up at him, meanwhile blowing his match to keep it lighted.
“You enjoy yourself, I see, Jerry,” remarks Captain Paul Jones, who, as observed, is never so affable as when guns are crashing, blood is flowing, and splinters flying.
“Me like to hear the big guns talk, Captain,” responds the Indian. “It gives Jerry a good heart.”
Captain Paul Jones again swings his glass on the Drake. He is just in time to see her fore and main topsail-yards come down onto the caps by the run. The last broadside does that. In an instant, he is running aft.
“Down with your helm, Mr. Sargent!” he roars. “Pull her down for every ounce that’s in you, man!”
Quartermaster Sargent, thus encouraged, climbs the wheel like a squirrel; the Ranger’s topsails shiver; then, yielding to her helm, she slowly luffs across the helpless stern of the Drake.
“Aboard with those sta’board tacks!” shouts Captain Paul Jones. Then, turning again to the wheelman: “Steady, Mr. Sargent; keep her full!”
There is a skurry across the Ranger’s decks, as the men rush from the port to the starboard battery.
“Stand by, Mr. Starbuck,” calls ont Captain Paul Jones, “to rake her as we cross her stern.”
“Ay, ay, sir!” returns the master-gunner. “She shall have it for’ard and aft, as my old gran’am shells peas cods!”
“Steady, Mr. Sargent!” and again Captain Paul Jones cautions the alert wheelman. “Keep her as she is!”
The guns are swung, and depressed so as to tear the poor Drake open from stern-post to cutwater at one discharge. The Ranger gathers head; slowly she makes ready to cross her enemy’s stern so close that one might chuck a biscuit aboard. It is a moment fraught of life and death for the unhappy Drake.
With her captain and first officer already dead, the situation proves beyond the second officer, on whom the responsibility of fighting or surrendering the ship devolves. His sullen British soul gives way; and he strikes his colors just in time to avoid that raking fire which would else have snuffed him off the face of the sea.
“Out-fought, out-manoeuvred, and out-sailed!” exclaims Captain Paul Jones.
Lieutenant Hall, flushed of combat, comes up.
“We have beaten them, Captain!” exults Lieutenant Hall.
“We’ve done more than that, Mr. Hall,” responds Captain Paul Jones. “We have defeated an aphorism, and made a precedent. For the first time in the history of the sea, a lighter ship, with a smaller crew and a weaker battery, has whipped an Englishman.”
It is a notable gathering that assembles at Doctor Franklin’s house in Passy. Mr. Adams and his wife have just arrived, and the doctor presents them to Madame Brillon and Madame Houdetot, already there.
“Mr. Adams is but recently come from America,” the doctor whispers. “He takes Mr. Dean’s place as a member of our commission.”
Madame Houdetot talks with Mrs. Adams; and because of her bad English and the other’s bad French they get on badly.
“Mr. Lee sends his compliments,” observes Mr. Adams, loftily, to Doctor Franklin, “and regrets that he cannot come. He heard, I understand, that Captain Paul Jones is to be here, and does not care to meet him.”
“No?” responds the doctor, evincing scanty concern at the failure of Mr. Lee to come. “Now I do not wonder! I hear that Captain Jones thrashed Mr. Lee’s secretary in a tavern at Nantes, and our proud Mr. Lee, I suppose, resents it.”
“Thrashed him!” exclaims Mr. Adams, in high tones; “Captain Jones seized a stick and beat him like a dog, applying to him the while such epithets as ‘liar!’ and ‘spy.’ Mr. Lee’s secretary has left France through fear of him.”
The portly doctor lifts his hands at this; but underneath his deprecatory horror, hides a complacency, a satisfaction, as though the violence of Captain Jones will not leave him utterly unstrung.
“He fights everybody,” says the good doctor, resignedly; “on land as well as on sea. Nor can I teach him the difference between his own personal enemies, and the enemies of his country.”
“He seems a bit unruly,” observes the pompous Mr. Adams; “a bit unruly, does this Captain Jones of yours. I’m told he sold the Drake, and what other ships were captured on his recent cruise, in the most high-handed, masterful way.”
“What else was he to do? When a road becomes impassable, what is your course? You push down a panel of fence and go cross-lots. Captain Jones had two hundred prisoners to feed, besides his own brave crew of one hundred and eighteen. We had no money to give him. Were they to starve? I’m not surprised that he sold the ships.”
“I’m surprised that the Frenchmen bought them,” returns Mr. Adams. “Captain Jones could give no title.”
Doctor Franklin’s keen eyes twinkle.
“He could give possession, Mr. Adams. And let me tell you that in France, as everywhere else, possession is nine parts of the law.”
Madame Brillon draws Mr. Adams aside, while Doctor Franklin welcomes the beautiful royal girl—the Duchess de Chartres; to whom he later presents Mr. Adams and Mrs. Adams. Madame Houdetot leaves Mrs. Adams with the girl-Duchess and talks aside with Doctor Franklin.
“I did not know,” she whispers, with an eye on the girlish Duchess, “that you received calls from royalty.”
“The Duchess de Chartres has been with her great relative, the king, upon the business of Captain Jones. She comes to meet the captain, whom we every moment expect.”
“She is in love with him!—madly in love with him!” says Madame Houdetot. “All the world knows it.”
The doctor, who at seventy-two is a distinguished gallant, smiles sympathetically.
“Did I not once tell you that Captain Jones, the invincible among men, is the irresistible among women!”
“Something of the sort, I think. But you have heard of the duchess and your irresistible, invincible one, had you not?”
“My dear madam, I am a diplomat,” replies the doctor, slyly. “And it is an infraction of the laws of diplomacy to tell what you hear.”
“They have been very tender at the duchess’s summer house near Brest.”
“And the husband—the Duke de Chartres!”
“A most excellent gentleman! A most admirable husband of most unimpeachable domestic manners! Believe me, I cannot laud him too highly! Every husband in Prance should copy him! He honors his wife, and—stays aboard his ship, the Saint Esprit.” After a pause the gossipy Madame Houdetot continues: “No doubt the duke considers his wife’s rank. Is the great-granddaughter of the Grande Louis to be held within those narrow lines that confine the feet of other women?”
“Who is this Mr. Adams?” asks Madame Brillon, coming up. “Is he a great man?”
Doctor Franklin glances across where the austere Mr. Adams is stiffly posing, with a final thought of impressing the sparkling Duchess de Chartres.
“Rather he is a big man,” replies the philosopher. “Like some houses, his foundations cover a deal of ground; but then he is only one story high. If you could raise Mr. Adams another story, he would be a great man.”
The good doctor goes over, and becomes polite to Mrs. Adams; for the enlightenment of that lady of reserve and dignity, he expands on France and the French character. Suddenly the door is thrown open, and all unannounced a queer figure rushes in. She is clad in rumpled muslin and soiled lutestring. Her hair is frizzed, her face painted, her cap awry, and she is fair and fat and of middle years. This remarkable apparition embraces Doctor Franklin, kisses him resoundingly, first on the left cheek then on the right, crying:
“My flame!—my love!—my Franklin!”
The seasoned doctor receives this caressing broadside steadily, while the desolated Mrs. Adams sits round-eyed and stony.
“It is the eccentric Madame Helvetius,” explains Madame Brillon in a low tone to Mrs. Adams. “They call her the ‘Rich Widow of Passy.’ She and the good doctor are dearest friends.”
“Eccentric!” Mrs. Adams perceives as much, and says so.
Doctor Franklin returns to Mrs. Adams, whom he suspects of being hungry for an explanation, while the buoyant Madame Helvetius, as one sure of her impregnable position, wanders confidently about the room.
“You should become acquainted with Madame Helvetius,” submits the doctor pleasantly. “Wise, generous, afire for our cause—you would dote on her.”
Mrs. Adams icily fears not.
“Believe me; you would!” insists the doctor. “True! her manners are of her people and her region. They are not those of Puritan New England.”
Mrs. Adams interrupts to say that she has never before heard so much said in favor of Puritan New England.
“And yet, my dear Mrs. Adams,” goes on the good doctor, as one determined to conquer for Madame Helvetius the other’s favorable opinion, “you would do wrong to apply a New England judgment to our friend. Her exuberance is of the surface.” Then, quizzically: “A mere manner, I assure you, and counts for no more than should what she is doing now.”
Mrs. Adams lifts her severe gaze at this to Madame Helvetius. That amiable French woman is in rapt and closest converse with Mr. Adams, hand on his shoulder, her widowed lips to his ear. Mr. Adams is standing as one frozen, casting ever and anon a furtive glance, like an alarmed sheep, at Mrs. Adams. For an arctic moment, Mrs. Adams is held by the terrors of that spectacle; then she moves to her husband’s rescue.
Madame Helvetius comes presently to Doctor Franklin.
“What an iceberg!” she remarks, with a toss of the frizzed head towards Mr. Adams. “Does he ever thaw!” Then, as her glance takes in Mrs. Adams: “Poor man! He might be August, missing her. It is she who congeals him.”
And now he, for whom they wait, is announced—Captain Paul Jones. He has about him everything of the salon and nothing of the sea. His amiable yet polished good breeding wins on Mrs. Adams, and even the repellant wintry Mr. Adams is rendered urbane. Captain Paul Jones becomes the instant centre of the little assemblage. And yet, even while he gives his words to the others, his glances rove softly to the girl-Duchess, who stands apart, as might one who for a space—only for a space—permits room to others. The girl-Duchess is polite; she grants him what time is required to offer his greetings all around. Then, in the most open, obvious way, as though none might criticise or gainsay her conduct, she draws him into a secluded corner. They make a rare study, these two; he deferential yet dominant, she proud but yielding.
“Did you see the king?” he asks.
“See him? Am I not, too, a Bourbon?” This comes off with fire.
“Surely! Of course you saw him!” responds Captain Paul Jones, recalling his manner to one of easy matter-of-fact. “Your royal highness will pardon my inquiry.”
The girl-Duchess objects petulantly to the “Royal Highness.”
“From you I do not like it,” she says. “From you”—and here comes a flood of softness, while her black eyes shine like strange jewels—“from you, as you know, my friend, I would have only those titles that, arm-encircled, heart to heart, a man gives to the one woman of his sou’s hope.”
Her voice sinks at the close, while her eyes leave his for the floor. His presence is like a gale, and she bends before him as the willow bends before the strong wind. Meanwhile, as instructive to Mr. Adams, the loud Doctor is saying:
“No, sir; you must have a wig. No one sees the king without a wig.”
“We talked an hour—the king and I,” goes on the girl-Duchess, recovering herself. “I read him your letter; he was vastly interested. Then I told him how the Ranger had been called to America. Also I drew him pictures of what you had done; and how bravely you had fought, not only your enemies, but his enemies and the enemies of France. And, oh!”—here again the black eyes take on that perilous softness—“I can be eloquent when I talk of you!”
Captain Paul Jones looks tender things, as though he also might be eloquent, let him but pick subject and audience. Altogether there is much to support the gossip-loving Madame Houdetot, in what she has said concerning that summer house at Brest. The voice of the good Doctor again takes precedence.
“Until then, it had been an axiom of naval Europe that no one on even terms, guns and men and ship, could whip the British on the ocean.”
The Doctor and Mr. Adams are discussing the Ranger and the Drake, a topic that has been rocking France.
“Yes,” goes on the girl-Duchess, with a further dulcet flash of those eyes, fed of fire and romance, “you are to have a ship. Here is the king’s order to his Minister of Marine—the shuffler De Sartine. Now there shall be no more shuffling.” She gives Captain Paul Jones the orders. “The ship is the Duras, lying at l’Orient.”
“The Duras!” exclaims Captain Paul Jones. “An ex-Indiaman!—a good ship, too; she mounts forty guns.” Then, as his gaze rests on Doctor Franklin, laying down diplomatic law and fact to Mr. Adams, who listens with a preposterously conceited cock to his head: “What say you, my friend—my best, my dearest friend! Let us re-name the Duras for the good Doctor. Shall we not call it the Bon Homme Richard?”
The girl-Duchess looks her acquiescence as she would have looked it to any proposal from so near and sweet and dear a quarter. Thus the Bon Homme Richard is born, and the Duras disappears. The Doctor, unconscious of the honor done him, is saying to Madame Helvetius, whose fat arm is thrown across his philosophic shoulder:
“With pleasure, madam! It is arranged; I shall dine at your house to-morrow.”
The girl-Duchess and Captain Paul Jones hear nothing of these prandial arrangements for the morrow. They are again conversing; and, for all they talk constantly, they say more with their eyes than with their lips.
“Lastly,” and here the words of the girl-Duchess grow distinct, “your ship, they tell me, will need refitting. That will take money, my friend; and so I hand you this letter to my banker, Gourlade, instructing him to put ten thousand louis to your credit.”
Captain Paul Jones puts the letter of credit aside.
“You do not understand!” he says. “De Chaumont has——”
“You must take it!” interrupts the girl-Duchess, her eyes beginning to swim. “You shall not put to sea, and risk your life, and the ship not half prepared!”
“I shall more easily risk my life a thousand times, than permit you to give me money.”
As Captain Paul Jones says this, a resentful red is burning on his brow. Doctor Franklin breaks in from over the way, with:
“You should not too much listen to Mr. Lee, sir. I tell you that the French merchants have offered to send Captain Jones to sea as admiral of an entire fleet of privateers, and he refused. Have my word, sir; the last thing he thinks on is money.”
The girl-Duchess is gazing reproachfully at Captain Paul Jones. At last she speaks slowly and with a kind of sadness:
“I do not give you money—do not offer it. What! money and—you! Never!” Then proudly: “I give my money to the Cause.” After this high note is struck, the flash dies down; the black eyes again go wavering to the floor, while the voice retreats to the old soft whisper. “It is my heart —only my heart that I give to you.”
The strident, unmollified tones of Mr. Adams get possession of the field. He is condemning the French press.
“They declare, sir,” he is saying, “that I am not the celebrated Mr. Adams; that I am a cipher, a fanatic and a bigot.”
Doctor Franklin laughs. “What harm is there in the French papers, sir?” he returns. “Give them no heed, sir, give them no heed!”
Madame Brillon makes preparations to depart; Madame Houdetot, Mrs. Adams and the rest adopt her example. And still the girl-Duchess holds Captain Paul Jones to herself:
“I am to have one evening—one before you go?” she pleads; and her tones are a woman’s tones and deeply wistful; and are not in any respect the tones of a Bourbon.
“One evening? You shall have every evening—ay! and every day.”
“Remember!” and as she makes ready to go the girl-Duchess takes firmer command of her manner and her voice; “remember! You have promised to lay an English frigate at my feet.”
“That I shall do; or lay my bones away in the Atlantic!”
The girl-Duchess shivers at this picture, and as though for reassurance steals her slim hand into his.
“Not that!” she pleads. His strong brown fingers close courageously on the slender ones. “I cannot bear the thought! In victory or defeat, come back!” Then, sighing rather than saying: “Come back to me—my untitled knight of the sea!”
Captain Paul Jones goes down to l’Orient to begin the overhaul and refit of the Richard. The ship is twenty years old, and he finds it shaken and worn by time and weather. It is not a good ship, not a ship on which a prudent commander would care to stake his life and reputation; but it is the best he can get, and Captain Paul Jones accepts it, shrugging his shoulders. He has been so beaten upon by disappointments, so carked and rusted by delays, since his old ship Ranger spread its sails for home, and left him as it were an exile on French shores, that rather than further endure such heart-eating experiences he is ready to embrace the desperate. As the work of refitting progresses, Doctor Franklin comes over from Passy.
“The ship is old, Doctor,” says Captain Paul Jones, as he and Doctor Franklin canvass the situation. “That, however, is the least of my troubles. What causes me most uneasiness is the crew. Out of a whole muster of three hundred and seventy-five, no more than fifty are Americans.”
“Then you do not trust the French? Surely you don’t mean to say they are not brave men?”
“Brave enough—the French; but that is not the point. They are not good water fighters. By nature they are too hysterical, too easily excited, to both sail and fight a ship. Those English whom we go to meet are born water dogs, stubborn and cool; and the only ones afloat who, man for man, may match them are Americans.”
“And of Americans you have but fifty?”
“Only fifty.” Then, with a heartfelt oath: “I would give my left hand to have back my old crew of the Ranger.”
Captain Paul Jones begins pacing to and fro, his thoughts running regretfully on the Ranger, and those stout hearts with whom he fought the Drake. But the Ranger and those stout, tarry ones are half a world away; and in the end he returns perforce to the Richard, and what poor tools in the way of crew are offered him by Fate. There is, too, a matter of gravity which he desires to lay before the Doctor’s older and more prudent judgment. For Captain Paul Jones, so unmanageable by others, defers to the sagacious Doctor, and accepts his opinions and follows his commands with closed eyes.
“This Captain Pierre Landais, Doctor,” he begins, “who is to sail the Alliance in my company?”
“Yes?” interrupts the Doctor.
“You know him?—you have confidence in him?”
The Doctor purses his lips, but says never a word.
“Then I’ll tell you what I think!” cries Captain Paul Jones, who reads distrust in the good Doctor’s pursed but silent lips; “I’ll tell you what I think, and what I’ll do. Already I’ve had some dealings with this Landais. The fellow is mad—vanity-mad. Jealous, insubordinate, he has twice taken open occasion to disobey my orders. This I have stomached in silence—being on French shores. I now warn you that as soon as I find myself in blue water, at a first sign of rebellion against my authority, I’ll clap the fellow in irons. By heaven! I’ll string him to his own yard arm, sir; make a tassel of him for the winds to play with, if it be required to preserve a discipline which his example has already done much to break down.”
Doctor Franklin meets this violent setting forth concerning the recalcitrant Landais with a negative gesture of unmistakable emphasis.
“You must do nothing of the kind, Paul!” he replies. “Captain Landais, as you say, is doubtless mad—vanity-mad. But he is also French; and we must do nothing to estrange from our cause French sympathy and French assistance. I urge you to bear with Landais in silence, rather than jeopardize us with King Louis.”
Captain Paul Jones growlingly submits. “It will result disastrously, Doctor,” he says. “We shall yet suffer for it, mark my word.” Then, disgustedly: “I marvel that the Marine Committee in Philadelphia should turn over to such a madman a brisk frigate like the Alliance.
“Your friend, the Marquis de Lafayette, had something to do with it, I think. You observe that on his present visit to France, it is Landais with his Alliance who brings him.”
Captain Paul Jones says no more, but seems to accept Landais as he accepts the Richard, desperately. His final comment shows the uneasy complexion of his thought.
“We shall do the best we can, Doctor,” he says.
“Young as I am, I have lived long enough to know that one can’t have all things ordered as he would.”
Captain Paul Jones, now commodore, clears for the Irish coast on a bright, clear day in June. Besides the Richard, he has with him the Alliance, thirty-two guns, Captain Landais; the Pallas, twenty-eight guns, Captain Cottineau; and the Vengeance, twelve guns, Captain Ricon. Four days later he returns limping into l’Orient for repairs, the Richard having been fouled by the Alliance through the criminal carelessness or worse of Captain Landais.
The breast of the young commodore is on fire with anger over the delay, and the vicious clumsiness that caused it. He burns to destroy Landais, as the mean reason of his troubles, but the thought of Doctor Franklin restrains him. Also, as events unfold, that enforced return to l’Orient proves of good fortune, and he forgets his chagrin in joy over the flattering new turn in his affairs. Doctor Franklin has succeeded in bringing about an exchange of prisoners, and barters to the British admiralty one hundred and nineteen Englishmen, captured in the Drake and other prizes taken by the Ranger, for one hundred and nineteen Americans held by King George. While Commodore Paul Jones is curing the damage done the Richard by the evil Landais, those exchanged Americans are landed under a cartel in Nantes. He goes down to Nantes and enlists one hundred and fifteen of them for the Richard.
Before Commodore Paul Jones weighs anchor for a second start, he goes over to Passy for a final word with Doctor Franklin. The pair walk in the Doctor’s favorite garden, now a wilderness of foliage and flowers, the Doctor serene, the boy commodore cloudy, taciturn and grim. His resolution has set iron-hard to do or die; the cruise shall be a glorious one or be his last. Doctor Franklin asks about his plans.
“I shall make for the west coast of Ireland,” says he, “and go north about the British islands. Wind and weather favoring, I may sack a town or two by way of retaliation for what the foe has done to us. They will find that I have not forgotten Lord Dunmore, and my ruined plantation by the Rappahannock.”
“The waters you will sail in are alive with British ships of war. With your poor force it seems a desperate cruise.”
“Desperate, yes; but, Doctor, we are in no shape to play cautious. We are weak; therefore we must be reckless.”
“It is a strange doctrine,” muses the Doctor. “And yet I will not say but what it smells of judgment. I have faith in you, Paul; it teaches me to hope that, when next I greet you, I shall greet a victor.”
“Doctor,” returns Commodore Paul Jones, and his tones are grave with meaning, “I shall not disappoint you. Nor do I care to conceal from you my resolution. When I sail, I sail looking for battle; and I shall not hesitate to engage an enemy superior to my force. The condition of our cause is such that, to sustain it, we need a striking, ay! a startling naval success, and I shall do all I know, fight all I know, to bring it to pass. More; my mind is made up: If I fail, I fall; I shall return victorious or I shall not return.”
It is daybreak on a day in middle August when Commodore Paul Jones, with the Richard as flagship of the little squadron of four, puts the Isle of Groaix astern, and points for the open ocean. His course is west by north, so as to weather Cape Clear, and fetch the Irish coast close aboard. With winds light and baffling, the squadron’s pace is slow; it is nine days out of France before Cape Clear is sighted. Then it creeps northward along the Irish coast, Commodore Paul Jones vigilant and alert. He takes a prize or two, and one after the other sends into French ports the British ships Mayflower and Fortune. The young commodore’s brow begins to clear; those prizes comfort him vastly. At least the cruise shall not be registered as altogether fruitless.
It is the last day of August; the Hebrides lie off the Richard’s starboard beam. A stiff gale from the northwest sets in, and the squadron is driven east by north under storm staysails. This dovetails with the desires of Commodore Paul Jones; wherefore he welcomes the gale as friendly weather. Also, it gives him a chance to try out the Richard, which shows lively with the wind abaft the beam, but dull to the confines of despair when sailing on a wind. Close-hauled, the Richard makes more lee than headway.
“Which means, Dick,” says Commodore Paul Jones judgmatically, to Lieutenant Richard Dale—“which means, Dick, that we must have the weather-gage before we lock horns with an enemy.”
Off Cape Wraith, Commodore Paul Jones is so fortunate as to take two further prizes. He turns them over to Captain Landais, with orders to send them into Brest. The Frenchman, who only receives an order for the purpose of breaking it, sends them into the port of Bergen, where the Norwegians promptly turn them over to the English, on an argument that they do not officially know of any government called the United States.
Commodore Paul Jones works slowly and cautiously southward along the east coast of Scotland. Off the Firth of Forth he decides to attack the Port of Leith, and stands in for that fell purpose. An adverse gale, seconded by off-shore currents, comes to the rescue of the threatened Scotchmen; in the teeth of his best seamanship Commodore Paul Jones and his squadron are driven out to sea. Thus the chance passes, and the sack of Leith is abandoned. It is a sore setback to the hopes of Commodore Paul Jones; but it lifts a load from the Scottish heart, to whom the Stars and Stripes have brought visions of pillage and torch and desolation. The news flies over England; beacons burn on each headland; while every semaphore is telling that the dreaded Paul Jones is hawking at the English coasts. The word causes a tremendous loss of British sleep.
Off Spurn Head our industrious young commodore sinks one collier and chases another ashore. Being full of curiosity, he takes a peep into the mouth of the Humber, and discovers a frightened fleet of British merchant vessels. The merchantmen are in a flutter at the sight of the Richard’s dread topsails; the frigate that it conveying them has its work cut out, to nurse them into anything like calmness.
Following the look into the Humber, that sets so many timid merchantmen to shivering, Commodore Paul Jones puts out to sea under doublereefs. He plans to stand off and on throughout the night, and swoop on those tremblers, like a hawk on a covey of quail, with the first gray streaks of dawn. The frigate will doubtless fight, but the optimistic young commodore reckons on making short work of that man-of-war. In the middle watch the little brig Vengeance runs under the Richard’s lee, bringing word of a nobler quarry. The Baltic timber fleet, fifty sail in all, convoyed by the Serapis and the Countess of Scarboro has just put into Bridlington Bay.
At this good news, Commodore Paul Jones gives up his designs touching the frightened covey of merchantmen in the Humber. He prefers the Baltic timber ships with the Serapis, the difference between the one and the other being the difference between deer and hare. He orders the Vengeance to stand out to sea, find the Alliance, and tell Captain Landais to join him off Scarboro’ Head.
“But do not,” says he to Captain Ricon, “give Captain Landais this notice in the guise of an order. He would make a point of disobeying, and seize on its reception as a pat occasion for insulting you.”
While the Vengeance stands eastward in search of the Alliance, Commodore Paul Jones signals the __Pallas__ to follow, and turns his bows for Scarboro’ Head, then forty miles away.
The Richard, the little Pallas close to its heels, cracks on canvas throughout the night. The winds are mere puffs and catspaws; still, slow as is their speed, daylight finds them within throwing distance of their destination. They are the wrong-side of the weather, however, and the whole day is wasted in beating inshore against the wind. Our young commodore must do all the work; for the English merchantmen, as though faint with fear at the sight of him, refuse to come out; while the Serapis and its consort stick close to them in their role of guardships. The sun goes down, night descends, and as yet our young commodore has not been able to get within reach of the foe; for at beating to windward the Richard is as dull as a Dutchman.
When darkness comes, it unlooses a land breeze. With that the merchantmen take heart of grace, and resolve to dare all and run for it. They rush out of Bridlington Bay, wind free, like a flock of seagulls. What is a fair wind for them is a headwind for the Richard and Pallas; with no one to molest them, the fifty timber ships show a clean pair of heels. Commodore Paul Jones makes no effort to chase; it would be seamanship thrown away. Besides, the Serapis has laid its sails aback, and is waiting to hear from him; while the Countess of Scarboro guarding the flanks of the fugitive timber ships, seems eagerly willing to try conclusions with the Pallas.
The temptation is too great; Commodore Paul Jones makes no least effort to resist it. Signaling the Pallas to close with and pull down the smaller ship, with his own eye on the Serapis, he begins manoeuvring for the upper hand. The sea is as smooth as glass; a great harvest moon shoots up in the cloudless sky. As when the Ranger fought the Drake, it is to be a fight by the light of the moon.
The Richard tacks starboard and port, the Serapis lying in wait. Decks cleared, guns shotted and run out, magazines open, men stripped and at their quarters, both ships are as ferociously ready as bulldogs. Commodore Paul Jones scans the Serapis through his glass.
“How heavy is he, Commodore?”
It is Dr. Brooke, surgeon of the Richard, who puts the question. He has been laying out his instruments and bandages in the cockpit, in readiness for a hard night’s work, and now pokes his nose on deck for a last breath of fresh air.
“Is that you, Doctor?” returns Commodore Paul Jones. The amiable tones bespeak that bland urbanity which is his dominant characteristic on the threshold of battle. “It’s the Serapis; a forty-four-gun ship of the Rainbow class, six months off the stocks.”
It should be observed that Commodore Paul Jones’ pet study is the British navy, and he knows more about it—ships, guns, and men—than does the king’s admiralty itself.
“Forty-four guns! Rainbow class!” repeats the worthy doctor, who himself is not without a working knowledge of ships and their comparative strengths. “Then she’s a stronger ship, with heavier metal, than the Richard?”
“As three is to two, Doctor,” replies Commodore Paul Jones, shutting up his glass and preparing for action. “None the less, we shall fight them and beat them just the same.”
Aboard the Serapis, Captain Pearson is holding his glass on the Richard, not a cable’s length away. Suddenly the Richard wears and backs its topsail, thereby bringing its broadside to bear upon the Serapis.
“That was a clever manoeuvre!” remarks Captain Pearson, admiringly, to Lieutenant Wright, who stands by his side. “It holds for him the weather-gage, and makes it impossible for me to luff across his hawse, without exposing my ship to be raked.”
“Who is he?” asks Lieutenant Wright; for the Serapis is just home from Norway, and the word that set all England to lighting beacons and doubling coast-guards has not reached it.
“Who is he?” repeats Captain Pearson, soberly. “He is Paul Jones; and, my word for it, Lieutenant, there is work ahead.”