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.”
