Part 56

Upon one of his many voyages, the crew was reduced, by fever, to five or six hands. One of them was a huge mulatto named Munro--or "Mungo"--Maxwell. They became mutinous, and, as Captain Jones was the only officer who could keep the deck, it was found necessary to subdue the refractory seaman.

"Will you obey my orders?" cried Jones, picking up a belaying pin.

"You go sit down," cried Maxwell. "I no like you. Pish! I could kill you with one crack."

John Paul Jones did not answer, but walking towards the big black, he struck him just one blow with his pin. "Mungo" dropped to the deck and lay there. He never rose again.

Upon arriving at port, Captain Jones surrendered to the authorities, and asked for a trial. It was given him.

"Captain Paul," asked the Judge, "are you, in conscience, satisfied that you used no more force than was necessary to preserve discipline on your ship?"

"May it please the most Honorable Court, Sir," answered the doughty seaman, "it became imperative to strike the mutinous sailor, Maxwell. Whenever it becomes necessary for a commanding officer to hit a seaman, it is also necessary to strike with a weapon. I may say that the necessity to strike carries with it the necessity to kill, or to completely disable the mutineer. I had two brace of loaded pistols in my belt, and could easily have shot him. I struck with a belaying pin in preference, because I hoped that I might subdue him without killing him. But the result proved otherwise. I trust that the Honorable Court and the jury will take due account of the fact that, though amply provided with pistols throwing ounce balls, necessarily fatal weapons, I used a belaying pin, which, though dangerous, is not necessarily a fatal weapon."

The judge smiled and Captain Paul was acquitted.

The famous Lord Nelson once said: "A naval officer, unlike a military commander, can have no fixed plans. He must always be ready for the chance. It may come to-morrow, or next week, or next year, or never; but he must be always ready!" Nunquam non Paratus. (Never unprepared.)

Paul Jones kept a copy of this maxim in his head. He was always in training; always on the qui vive; always prepared. And--because he was always prepared--he accomplished what would seem to be the impossible.

Shortly placed in command of a sloop-of-war, the Alfred (one of the four vessels which constituted the American Navy), Lieutenant Jones assisted in an expedition against Fort Nassau, New Providence Island, in the Bahamas, which was a complete and absolute failure. On the way home, and when passing the end of Long Island, his boat was chased by the twenty-gun sloop-of-war Glasgow. The long shot kicked up a lot of spray around the fleet American vessel, but it was of no use. Jones got away and sailed into Newport Harbor, Rhode Island, with sails full of holes and stern-posts peppered with lead. But he was created a Captain; placed in command of the Providence--sloop-of-war, fourteen guns and one hundred and seven men--and soon harried the seas in search of fighting and adventure. With him were two faithful negro boys--Cato and Scipio--who followed him through the many vicissitudes of the Revolutionary War.

The seas traversed by the Providence were full of English cruisers--superior in size to the saucy American--but inferior in alertness and resources of her commander and her crew. She captured sixteen vessels--of which eight were sent to port and eight were destroyed at sea. Twice she was chased by British frigates, and, on one of these occasions, narrowly escaped capture.

As the little sloop was running into one of the many harbors of the coast, a fast-sailing frigate bore down upon her from the starboard quarter.

Whang!

Her bow-guns spoke and said "Heave to!"

But Captain Jones had heard this call before, and kept on upon his course.

"She's got me," said he. "But, as the breeze is fresh I may run away. Stand ready, Boys, and let go your tackle immediate, when I give the command!"

The helm was now put hard-up and the Providence crept into the wind. Closer and closer came the brig--now her bow-guns sputtered--and a shot ricochetted near the lean prow of the Providence. But the sloop kept on.

Suddenly--just as the brig drew alongside--Paul Jones swung his rudder over, wore around in the wind, and ran dead to leeward.

"Watch her sniffle!" cried the gallant Captain, as the brig chug-chugged on the dancing waves, and, endeavoring to box short about, came up into the wind. But fortune favored the American skipper. Just then a squall struck the Englishman; she lost steering way; and hung upon the waves like a huge rubber ball, while her Captain said things that cannot be printed.

When in this condition, Jones ran his boat within half gun-shot, gave her a dose of iron from one of his stern-guns, and--before the frigate could get squared away--was pounding off before the wind, which was the sloop's best point of sailing.

"Well," said the crafty John Paul, his face wreathed in smiles. "If the frigate had simply followed my manoeuver of wearing around under easy helm and trimming her sails as the wind bore, I could not have distanced her much in the alteration of the course, and she must have come off the wind very nearly with me, and before I could get out of range.

"I do not take to myself too great credit for getting away. I did the best that I could, but there was more luck than sense to it. A good or bad puff of wind foils all kinds of skill one way or the other--and this time when I saw the little squall cat's-pawing to windward--I thought that I would ware ship and see if the Britisher wouldn't get taken aback. The old saying that 'Discretion is the better part of valor' may, I think, be changed to 'Impudence is--or may be, sometimes--the better part of discretion.'"

Two kinds of news greeted the slippery sailor when he arrived in port. One was a letter from Thomas Jefferson, enclosing his commission as Captain in the Continental Navy, by Act of Congress. The other--an epistle from his agents in Virginia, informing him that, during the month of July previous, his plantation had been utterly ravaged by an expedition of British and Tories (Virginians who sided with England in the war) under Lord Dunmore. His buildings had all been burned; his wharf demolished; his livestock killed; and every one of his able-bodied slaves of both sexes had been carried off to Jamaica to be sold. The enemy had also destroyed his growing crops; cut down his fruit trees; in short, nothing was left of his once prosperous and valuable plantation but the bare ground.

"This is part of the fortunes of war," said Jones. "I accept the extreme animosity displayed by Lord Dunmore as a compliment to the sincerity of my attachment to the cause of liberty."

Bold words, well spoken by a bold man!

"But," continued the able sailor, "I most sadly deplore the fate of my poor negroes. The plantation was to them a home, not a place of bondage. Their existence was a species of grown-up childhood, not slavery. Now they are torn away and carried off to die under the pestilence and lash of Jamaica cane-fields; and the price of their poor bodies will swell the pockets of English slave-traders. For this cruelty to those innocent, harmless people, I hope sometime, somehow, to find an opportunity to exact a reckoning."

Again bold sentiments,--and the reckoning, too, was forthcoming.