Paul Jones determined to wait for night to complete his design, and when it grew too dark for the Ranger to be distinguished from another ship he ordered the men mustered on deck. Then, in a few decisive words, he announced his plan to them.
“We shall have a chance,” he said, “to avenge some of the dreadful burnings practiced uselessly upon our own coasts; but this will not be useless. The fleet now collected at Whitehaven is the coal fleet for Ireland. To destroy it would be to embarrass the enemy greatly. I call for thirty volunteers to assist me in this patriotic work. No man need go unless he wants to. But those who share with me the danger of this enterprise will also share with me the glory.”
It seemed as if every man on the deck shouted “I, sir,” and “I!” and “I!” and “I!” and loud among the voices sounded the piping treble of little Danny Dixon. Paul Jones raised his hand to command silence.
“I shall have to choose thirty men, because I can not take you all. I shall take the strongest and most active men.”
At that he told off thirty men, including Bill Green, the quartermaster. But when the number was selected, and the men had gone forward, Paul Jones noticed that Danny, the cabin boy, lingered.
“If you please, sir,” said Danny, diffidently, “you surely ain’t a-goin’ to leave me behind, sir?”
“Why, you are nothing but a lad,” answered Paul Jones. “This is an enterprise for men, not boys.”
“I know it, sir. But I ain’t afraid o’ nothin’.”
Paul Jones was about to reply, but at that moment Mr. Stacy, the sailing master, came up hurriedly, to say that at the rate the wind was rising and shifting it was necessary to claw off the land, and he thought a landing would be impossible that night. A few minutes convinced Paul Jones that his sailing master was right, and that the enterprise would have to be postponed. The Ranger was driving furiously before the wind, and at every lurch she buried her nose deep in the foaming waves. The gale shrieked angrily, and a bank of coppery clouds in the west darkened ominously. The ship was therefore brought about, and under straining canvas she beat her way back to the mouth of the Solway.
No man slept on the Ranger that night. The weather was thick, and Paul Jones was averse to running into the open sea for safety. The next morning dawned clear, but windy. The ship was close enough to the shores of Scotland to be seen from a hundred hamlets, and her situation became too risky to let anything escape that could tell on her. A revenue wherry was seen, chased and cannonaded, but escaped. A coasting vessel was overhauled, her crew taken out of her, and she was then scuttled and sunk; so was a Dublin schooner, while a cutter seen off the lee bow was chased into the Clyde, and up as far as the Rock of Ailsa. The weather still prevented a descent upon the coast, but Paul Jones boldly awaited his chance to make it, in spite of the enemies that swarmed around him.