“The vice-admiral demands impossibilities,” he said. “Can any ship get out of the road in such a wind as this?”
Then he called up an old Dutch pilot that he had kept on board for a week past—Peter Maartens.
“Maartens,” said he, “will you undertake to carry this ship out?”
The pilot, a stolid old Dutchman with a great beard, looked at Paul Jones very solemnly for a long time.
“Not if I keep sober,” he answered gravely; at which even the vice-admiral’s junior officer was forced to smile.
“Then I will have that statement written out, and you shall sign it,” promptly replied Paul Jones.
The paper was written and read to the pilot, who signed it in the presence of the Dutch lieutenant. For ten days they were left unmolested. Sir Joseph Yorke thought, however, that he had succeeded at last in ruining Paul Jones, for, forced to put out as soon as the wind permitted, there was a British squadron waiting for him at either entrance to the harbor. It seemed as if Paul Jones was at last destined to be caught. But Fortune favors the brave—and she had never yet deserted this daring sailor. Everything had been done with the insufficient means at hand to get the Alliance into good condition. Much of her sailing qualities had been destroyed by the crazy Landais’s method of ballasting. This was remedied, and the ship was in fairly good order. As Paul Jones wrote to Franklin: “The enemy still keeps a squadron cruising off here, but this will not prevent my attempts to depart whenever the wind will permit. I hope we have recovered the trim of the ship, which was entirely lost the last cruise; and I do not much fear the enemy in the long and dark nights of this season. The ship is well manned, and shall not be given away!”
How does the gallant spirit of Paul Jones ring in those last words!
About the middle of December the Dutch vice-admiral one day sent word to Paul Jones, desiring him to come on board the Dutch flagship. To this Paul Jones sent a polite but determined refusal. As the Dutch boat pulled off, he said, laughing, to Dale:
“Does that puppet of kings think that an American commodore will obey like a dog the orders of a Dutch admiral?”
Failing to get him on board, Vice-Admiral Reynst wrote him a peremptory note, asking if the Alliance was to be considered a French or an American vessel. If French, the captain’s commission was to be shown to the Dutch vice-admiral, the French flag and pendant displayed, and a gun fired to announce it. If American, the ship was to leave at the earliest possible moment.