The rest is quickly told. The pirate ship was now soon captured, and the crew arrested. The latter were strictly guarded while on board the man-of-war, and were taken to Cape Coast Castle, where they underwent a long trial. Like many of the old smugglers, these pirates remained defiant and impenitent for a long time, but after some experience of the dull confinement in the castle and the imminence of death, they changed their disposition, “and became serious, penitent, and fervent in their devotions.” Their acts of robbery on sea had been so flagrant that there was no difficulty in bringing in a verdict of guilty.
We come now to consider the exploits of another historical character whose life and adventures will ever be of unfailing interest on both sides of the Atlantic. And yet, perhaps, this amazing Scotsman is to-day better known in America than in Great Britain. Like many another before him he rose from the rank of ordinary seaman to become a man that was to be had in great fear if not respect. His fame has been celebrated in fiction, and very probably many a story of which he has been made the hero had no foundation in fact.
There is some dispute concerning his birth, but it seems pretty certain that he was the son of John Paul, head gardener on Lord Selkirk’s estate near Kirkcudbright. Paul Jones first saw light in the year 1728. Brought up on the shores of the Solway Firth, it was only likely that he gave up being assistant to his father and preferred the sea to gardening. In his character there developed many of those traits which have been such marked characteristics of the pirate breed. To realise Paul Jones, you must think of a wild, reckless nature, burning with enthusiasm for adventure, yet excessively vain and desirous of recognition. He was a rebel, a privateer, a pirate and a smuggler; he was a villain, he was quarrelsome, he was petty and mean. Finally, he was a traitor to his country. When he died he had lived a most varied life, and had seen service on merchantman, slaver and man-of-war.
After making several voyages to the West Indies in a merchantman as ordinary and able-bodied seaman, he was promoted to rank of mate, and then rose to the rank of master. Soon after the rupture between England and America he happened to be in New England, and then it was that he succumbed to the temptation to desert his own national standard and to throw his aid on to the side of the revolutionists—for which reason he changed his real name of John Paul to that of Paul Jones. Notwithstanding that Jones has been justly condemned by biographers for having been a traitor, yet my own opinion is that this change arose far less from a desire to become an enemy of the British nation than from that overwhelming _wanderlust_, and that irrepressible desire for adventure to which we have already called attention. There are some men who have never had enough fighting. So soon as one campaign ends they are unhappy till another begins, so that they may find a full outlet for their spirits. To such men as these the daily round of a peaceful life is a perpetual monotony, and unless they can go forth to rove and wander, to fight or to explore, their very souls would almost cry out for freedom.