every Englishman who shows his head. Handgrenades are pitched into the port-holes to destroy the gunners at their guns. Away out on the yardarm of the Bon Homme Richard crawls a daring sailor who drops a bomb through the hatchway of the Serapis, where it explodes a row of cartridges lying on the main deck. Twenty-eight of the English are killed or desperately wounded.

The

This is the turning-point in the battle. British can not recover from the blow. Their fire slackens. The American ship is really in the worse plight of the two; but they fight on with ferocious persistence, and the British do not know that the Americans are about to sink.

An English prisoner makes his way from Jones's ship to the Serapis to tell them there to fight onthat the Richard is beaten.

He is too late by the merest fraction of time. Pearson has lost heart. He tears down his flag, and calls out that he has struck.

Richard Dale, of the American ship, knows the value of hurry, of decision, and he gives Pearson no chance to reconsider.

Even while the British lieutenant is trying to wedge in a word of remonstrance, and doing his best to tell his superior officer the true state of affairs on the Richard, the importunate Dale hastens Pearson on board the American ship, a pris

oner.

For fear the lieutenant may run below and start the Serapis to firing again, Dale forces him to follow Pearson.

After all the heroism, the skill, and the carnage, the final result turns on the nerve of Jones and the presence of mind of Dale.

It is a death-strewn deck where the short, slender Jones, hatless, bleeding from a wound in the face, and begrimed with powder stains, stands proudly with his drawn sword in his hand to receive the formal surrender of the British captain.

The light of the autumn moon is above him; the light of his burning ship is behind him. His poor old Richard is a wreck, torn almost into splinters; it is filling with water; it is literally choked with the dead; the deck upon which he stands is slippery with blood.

But it is the Englishman who gives up his sword, and it is the Stars and Stripes that still flies at the masthead.

After the Serapis surrenders to the Richard, it is the Richard which sinks. Jones and his crew and his English prisoners all pass over to the captured Serapis.

The two vessels have hardly been loosened from their long death-grapple before the Richard slowly settles to her long home in the deep.

This victory, won in sight of the English coast, resounds throughout the civilized world.

The Empress of Russia and the Kings of Denmark and of France honor him with ribbons and orders of merit which amount to nothing, and pensions which were never paid; but so far as fame is a reward, Paul Jones reaps it. He is spoken of with admiration in every gazette, café, salon, and street group in the Old World and the New.

In generous England he is denounced as a pirate; and Holland is asked to give him up that he may be hung. The Dutch refuse; but, to save that people from the effects of British wrath, Jones seeks safety in France.

NOTE. It is well known that Admiral Paul Jones served for a short time Catherine of Russia, in her naval warfare against the Turks. Official jealousy embittered his career and denied to him his just recognition. Disgusted with the Russian service, the great sea-captain returned to Paris, where he spent his last days. He lived modestly, and much alone, but not in want as has been stated. He received many marks of friendship from Americans who were in Paris, and was not neglected in his last illness. Gouverneur Morris drew up his last will, and was one of the regular visitors during the final days. But Jones was alone when he died; and the American Minister, Gouverneur Morris, did not attend the funeral. Paul Jones was no friend to the French Revolution, but the Revolutionary government did what the American Minister did not do-honored the dead hero by attending his funeral.

It certainly was a queer spectacle-Gouverneur Morris issuing orders for the cheapest, most private burial, and then hastening away to preside at a dinner-party; while the French Assembly takes official notice of the death, selects a deputation of twelve members to attend the burial, and provides a military escort to follow the body of the immortal warrior to his grave.

In his diary, Morris tries to defend himself. He intimates that Jones left such a small estate that the heirs would have had the right to grumble had there been a public funeral. Yet the estimated value of Jones's estate was $30,000; and this included more than $6,000 in the Bank of North America. Morris knew this, for he had scheduled the property. There is no evidence that Morris was justified in his extreme

anxiety lest the heirs should grumble; and the fact that Jones was so cheaply and obscurely buried that his grave can not now be found, and could not be marked with a monument even if Congress wanted to mark it, is due to Gouverneur Morris, the American Minister who ordered the cheapest and most private funeral-to Morris the cold-hearted snob who preferred to guzzle wine with brother snobs at a dinner-table, rather than represent his country in paying the last sad token of respect to the bravest seaman that ever fought under our flag.

CHAPTER XVIII

WAR IN THE SOUTH

THE war grows more savage. The French alliance enrages Great Britain, and the English begin to ravage, burn, slay in cold blood, committing every outrage known to war.

Prisoners are barbarously maltreated, women suffer nameless wrongs, men who have surrendered are mercilessly butchered.

This frightful change in the methods of the war is felt most in the South.

British marauders break into Virginia, and go out unhurt, Patrick Henry being Governor. They break in again and sack Richmond, the traitor Arnold in command, and go forth unpunished, Mr. Jefferson being Governor.

Virginia has been stripped, exhausted, to supply Washington at the North and Gates at the South; yet many accuse Mr. Jefferson of negligence and incompetence for not rallying a home-guard and giving battle to save Richmond.

Had Mr. Jefferson been a John Sevier, James Robertson, or Andrew Jackson, he might have done