e he captured several ships;
sending one, a prize, back to Brest. He was in waters with which he
had been familiar from his youth, and he made good use of his
knowledge; dashing here and there, lying in wait in the highway of
commerce, and then secreting himself in some sequestered cove while
the enemy's ship-of-war went by in fruitless search for the marauder.
All England was aroused by the exploits of the Yankee cruiser. Never
since the days of the Invincible Armada had war been so brought home
to the people of the tight little island. Long had the British
boastfully claimed the title of monarch of the seas. Long had they
sung the vainglorious song,--

"Britannia needs no bulwarks,
No towers along the steep;
Her march is o'er the mountain waves,
Her home is on the deep."

But Paul Jones showed Great Britain that her boasted power was a
bubble. He ravaged the seas within cannon-shot of English headlands.
He captured and burned merchantmen, drove the rates of insurance up to
panic prices, paralyzed British shipping-trade, and even made small
incursions into British territory.

The reports that reached Jones of British barbarity along the American
coast, of the burning of Falmouth, of tribute levied on innumerable
seaport towns,--all aroused in him a determination to strike a
retaliatory blow. Whitehaven, a small seaport, was the spot chosen by
him for attack; and he brought his ship to off the mouth of the harbor
late one night, intending to send in a boat's crew to fire the
shipping. But so strong a wind sprung up, as to threaten to drive the
ship ashore; and Jones was forced to make sail, and get an offing. A
second attempt, made upon a small harbor called Lochryan, on the
western coast of Scotland, was defeated by a like cause.

But the expedition against Lochryan, though in itself futile, was the
means of giving Jones an opportunity to show his merits as a fighter.
Soon after leaving Lochryan, he entered the bay of Carrichfergus, on
which is situated the Irish commercial city of Belfast. The bay was
constantly filled with merchantmen; and the "Ranger," with her ports
closed, and her warlike character carefully disguised, excited no
suspicion aboard a trim, heavy-built craft that lay at anchor a little
farther up the bay. This craft was the British man-of-war "Drake,"
mounting twenty guns. Soon after his arrival in the bay, Jones learned
the character of the "Drake," a