O’er their smoking deck no starry flag shall stream;
They’ll sail no more—they’ll fight no more—for their gallant ship’s gone down!
Bear a hand!
A solemn silence followed as the last musical note died away on the waters. The waves and the lightly whistling wind had made a soft accompaniment for the sweet, sad music. Paul Jones listened to every word, and at the last “Bear a hand!” something like a groan burst from him. Hope had almost gone—despair was near to him. He stepped noiselessly from his place at the rail, and with bent head and folded arms began again to walk the quarter-deck. Dale, watching Paul Jones’s slight but sinewy figure as he walked up and down like a caged tiger, noticed the new expression on his face—an expression almost of hopelessness. Well might Paul Jones be hopeless, if this was to be the barren result of a cruise in which he had promised himself and those under him so much glory.
All the early hours of the night this ceaseless walk continued. It was Dale’s watch on deck, and he was relieved at midnight by Cutting Lunt, the only other sea lieutenant on the ship since Henry Lunt’s loss in the boat. Although not given to following the commodore unless invited, Dale looked after him wistfully as he went below. Once within the cabin, Paul Jones threw himself in a chair, and, resting his head on his hands, gave way to a silent paroxysm of despair. He knew not how long he sat in this agony of thought and feeling, but at last, raising his head, he saw his cabin boy, Danny Dixon, crouched in a corner, sound asleep. Although Danny’s orders were to leave the cabin and go to his hammock at ten o’clock, he was often found in the cabin at midnight, for which he always made the excuse that he had fallen asleep and did not know when it was six bells.
Something in the boy’s faithful and doglike attachment appealed to Paul Jones at this moment of supreme distress. “Poor little fellow!” he thought to himself, gazing at the boy’s sleeping figure. “There is one faithful soul who loves me, poor and unlettered and simple as he may be.”
He then rose, and, going forward, laid the boy’s head in a more comfortable position and threw a blanket over him.
“Let him rest; he will lie there until morning. And what would not I give for his sound and careless sleep!”
A few moments later a slight tap was heard at the cabin door, and Paul Jones himself opened it. There stood young Dale. His eyes dropped before the calm gaze of the commodore’s. He had come, led by an impulse of pity and veneration, but he knew not how to express it. In a moment or two Paul Jones spoke:
“Dale, I know why you have come. You feel for me in my misfortunes—for surely misfortune has followed this cruise. Know you, though, that while I want no man’s insulting pity, yours, which comes from the heart, is sweet to me.”