n was at work, the pen
that was to aid the cause of the Revolution. But when it looked to him
as though his country would not be able to throw off the kingly yoke,
he decided on a journey. He passed two years in the West Indies
writing of the _Beauties of Santa Cruz_ and the _House of Night_. Then
a longing for the home from which he received scant word came upon
him. He started homeward, only to be lured from his course by the
beauties of Bermuda, where he fell in love with the Governor's
daughter, remembered in his verse as the "Fair Amanda." He was still
writing, lolling his time away beneath tropical skies, when tardy news
came that the colonies had declared themselves free. Swiftly he threw
off the languor of repose, of love, of romance, and returned home.
The charm of the sea life was on him then, so taking out letters of
reprisal from the Continental Congress, Freneau the poet sailed over
the sea, actively aiding his country's cause by capturing British
merchantmen and sinking British ships for a year, until in 1780 he
had a ship of his own built. But on her first voyage disaster befell
her, and almost within sight of land the _Aurora_ was captured. When
Philip Freneau next saw New York it was as a prisoner on the hulk
_Scorpion_, as she lay anchored alongside another notorious
prison-ship, the _Jersey_, close by the Battery shore.

There never was such an energetic prisoner. Each moment was employed
for his country, if not with his sword at least with his pen, which
was quite as powerful a weapon.

[Illustration: The British Prison-Ship]

In those days of wretched misery and suffering, within view of the
city by day, in the noisome ship's hold by night, Freneau thought out
his best-remembered poem, _The British Prison-Ship_ and many another
line which in the later days of the Revolution was to rouse American
feeling; verse that was to be distributed to the American soldiers, to
be read by them on the march and by the light of the camp-fires; lines
that were to commemorate the victories and the heroism of the soldiers
of the Revolution; lines ridiculing each separate act of the British.

New York, in this time that the poet Freneau lay a prisoner, was not
as it had been in his college days. The battle of Long Island had been
fought, and Washington and his army had been driven from New York. And
on the night of the British entry a great fire had started in the
lower part of the city, swept away the house where