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 manœuver 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.”