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.
[Illustration: 0143]
“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.