“Lying, lying,” said Paul Jones, turning to his officers. “Would that we had such a vessel in our little navy! She is British, depend upon it. Her lines tell it too plainly.”
The Solebay though imagining that she was weathering on the chase and sure to capture the saucy American, soon hauled down her American colors and ran up the Union Jack.
The officers saw by the light in Paul Jones’s eyes that he still had a trump card to play. All this time he was walking the quarter-deck with his light and springy step, his face wearing a smile. Presently he called out himself to Bill Green, at the wheel:
“Give her a good full, quartermaster.”
“A good full, sir,” replied Bill in a sailor’s musical singsong.
Paul Jones then ordered the square sails and then the studding sails set.
“Hooray for Cap’n Paul Jones!”
The next moment the helm was put up, and before the astonished people on the Solebay knew what was happening, the American sloop of war ran directly under her enemy’s broadside and went off dead before the wind. The keen eyes of Paul Jones had noticed that in the Solebay’s fancied certainty of capturing the American she had not even cast loose and manned her batteries in broadside, thinking a shot or two from her bow guns would bring the Providence to when she was overhauled. But the Providence had a captain the like of which the Solebay had never met before, and he could dare and do unlooked-for things.
In vain the frigate came about in haste and confusion. Her prey was gone, and the Americans were cheering and jeering.