Paul Jones loved brave men. The braver they were the more he loved them. When he went ashore and happened to meet his old sailors—every one of whom he knew and called by his first name—they seldom failed to strip his pockets of the last shilling. He was generous to a fault and faithful to his friends. His time, his purse, his influence were always at the call of those who had served under him. A typical sea-dog: a brave fighter,—
Then, why not give three times three for John Paul Jones?
Are you ready?
THE ESCAPE
’Tis of a gallant, Yankee ship that flew the Stripes and Stars,
And the whistling wind from the west-nor’-west blew through her pitch-pine spars:
With her starboard tacks aboard, my Boys, she hung upon the gale;
On the Autumn night, that we passed the light, on the old Head of Kinsale.
It was a clear and cloudless eve, and the wind blew steady and strong,
As gayly, o’er the sparkling deep, our good ship bowled along;
With the foaming seas beneath her bow, the fiery waves she spread,
And, bending low her bosom of snow, she buried her lee cat-head.
There was no talk of short’ning sail, by him who walked the poop,
And, under the press of her pounding jib, the boom bent like a hoop!
And the groaning, moaning water-ways, told the strain that held the tack,
But, he only laughed, as he glanced aloft, at the white and silvery track.
The mid-tide met in the Channel waves that flow from shore to shore,
And the mist hung heavy upon the land, from Featherstone to Dunmore,
And that sterling light in Tusker Rock, where the old bell tolls each hour,
And the beacon light, that shone so bright, was quenched on Waterford tower.