They re-embarked without opposition, first releasing a few prisoners, as the boats could not carry them.
Just as Israel was leaping into the boat, he saw the man at whose house he had procured the fire, staring like a simpleton at him.
“That was good seed you gave me;” said Israel, “see what a yield,” pointing to the flames. He then dropped into the boat, leaving only Paul on the pier.
The men cried to their commander, conjuring him not to linger.
But Paul remained for several moments, confronting in silence the clamors of the mob beyond, and waving his solitary hand, like a disdainful tomahawk, towards the surrounding eminences, also covered with the affrighted inhabitants.
When the assailants had rowed pretty well off, the English rushed in great numbers to their forts, but only to find their cannon no better than so much iron in the ore. At length, however, they began to fire, having either brought down some ship’s guns, or else mounted the rusty old dogs lying at the foot of the first fort.
In their eagerness they fired with no discretion. The shot fell short; they did not the slightest damage.
Paul’s men laughed aloud, and fired their pistols in the air.
Not a splinter was made, not a drop of blood spilled throughout the affair. The intentional harmlessness of the result, as to human life, was only equalled by the desperate courage of the deed. It formed, doubtless, one feature of the compassionate contempt of Paul towards the town, that he took such paternal care of their lives and limbs.
Had it been possible to have landed a few hours earlier not a ship nor a house could have escaped. But it was the lesson, not the loss, that told. As it was, enough damage had been done to demonstrate—as Paul had declared to the wise man of Paris—that the disasters caused by the wanton fires and assaults on the American coasts, could be easily brought home to the enemy’s doors. Though, indeed, if the retaliators were headed by Paul Jones, the satisfaction would not be equal to the insult, being abated by the magnanimity of a chivalrous, however unprincipled a foe.