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.”