the Drake, Jones saw that he would have to bring
the cruise to a close. His crew of 139 men had, through the necessity of
manning the several merchant prizes and the Drake, been reduced to
eighty-six men, and he consequently put into Brest, reluctantly, on the
8th of May, 1778. He was there met by the great French fleet, then
actually at war with England, and he and his prize were admired by
visiting French officers. From that time Jones, hated in England, was a
hero in France, feted whenever he was at the capital, and favored by
fair ladies.

He was a hero, however, with a thorny path all through life. He arrived
at Brest with a miserably clothed, wholly unpaid, discontented, and
partly mutinous crew. During the voyage his first lieutenant, Simpson,
had stirred up dissatisfaction among the men, and had refused to obey
orders, for which Jones had him put in irons. The unpaid men, not
assigning their troubles to the true but unseen cause, the poverty of
the government, easily believed that their captain was responsible for
all their ills. Under no conditions, however, was Jones likely to be
popular with the greater number of his men, for the energetic man was
bent on making them, as well as himself, work for glory to the
uttermost, and the common run of seamen care more for ease and pelf than
for fame. Jones's unpopularity with the crew of the Ranger is attested
by a passage from the diary of Ezra Green, one of Jones's officers, on
the occasion, at a later period, of the Ranger's sailing back to
America: "This day Thomas Simpson, Esq., came on board with orders to
take command of the Ranger; to the joy and satisfaction of the whole
ship's company."

With the impulsive inconsistency which, in spite of his shrewdness,
sometimes marked his conduct, Jones alternately demanded a court-martial
for Simpson and recommended him to the command of the Ranger, he himself
hoping for a more important vessel; it was Jones's own conduct, as much
as any other circumstance, which finally resulted in the sailing away of
the Ranger under the mutinous Simpson. With the frankness customary with
him when not writing to anybody particularly distinguished, Jones wrote
Simpson, at one stage of their quarrel: "The trouble with you, Mr.
Simpson, is that you have the heart of a lion and the head of a sheep."

Even more annoying to the imperious and high-handed Jones than the
trouble with Simpson was the manner in which, on his arrival at Brest,