As far as his deeds are concerned, Paul Jones appears in the popular consciousness as he really was,—a bolt of effectiveness, a desperate, successful fighter, a sea captain whose habit was to appear unexpectedly to confound his enemies, and then to disappear, no one knew where, only to reappear with telling effect. He has been the hero of the novelists, who, expressing the popular idea, have pictured him with essential truth. A popular hero, indeed, he was, and will remain so, justly, in the memory of men.