“I made my first voyage at five,” answered Ethan, “and witnessed my first sea fight through an empty port-hole. At ten I swarmed up to the royal yards of my father’s ship with a musket as tall as myself and helped to beat off an Algerian corsair just off the African coast.”
Captain Jones held out his hand, which the boy promptly clasped.
“Good,” said the former. “I like that; and now sit down and tell me all that Mr. Hancock and Mr. Jefferson had to say about this business.”
They seated themselves at the cabin table and Ethan proceeded to relate all that the president of Congress and the great Virginian had told him. And all the while he watched the mobile face before him, and an undercurrent of thought examined the history of the sailor as he had heard it from Mr. Jefferson some months before.
John Paul Jones was born on July 6th, in the year 1747, in a cottage on the estate of Arbigland, in the county of Kirkcudbright, Scotland; and his parents had been very poor and humble people indeed. It was a stern, wild place; to the rear was a lofty and rugged mountain, to the front was the wide Solway, where as a child he could by daylight see the white sails of the ships, and by night hear the solemn strokes of their deep-toned bells. He came to love the sea with a great love; he played at being sailor when he scarce could toddle, and his favorite toys were the little ships which an elder brother would make for him.
He went to sea at the age of twelve, and at twenty was a captain in the Scottish merchantman, John, sailing out of Whitehaven. Coming to America to settle the estate of a brother who died in Virginia he had remained, and upon the breaking out of the war between the colonies and England he had entered the infant navy as first lieutenant of the Alfred.
When Ethan had finished he drew out the packet of papers sealed with the big splotches of red wax, and John Paul Jones locked it carefully away in a heavy, oaken chest.
“Mr. Hancock was right,” said he to Ethan. “Everything depends upon an alliance with France. With the help that her heavy fleets would render us, the troops that she could send now and then, and above all the embarrassment that a war between her and England would cause the latter country, we could gain a peace with perfect freedom and honor.”