nd pistol in hand, surrounded them, and bade
them keep quiet. The lieutenant, with two stout seamen at his back,
then entered the castle, and sought out the mistress, who received him
with calm courtesy, with a trace of scorn, but with no sign of fear.

Briefly the lieutenant told his errand. The countess gave an order to
a butler, and soon a line of stout footmen entered, bearing the plate.
Heavy salvers engraved with the family arms of Lord Selkirk, quaint
drinking-cups and flagons curiously carved, ewers, goblets, platters,
covers, dishes, teapots, and all kinds of table utensils were there,
all of exquisitely artistic workmanship, and bearing the stamp of
antiquity. When all was ready, the lieutenant called in two of the
sailors from the lawn; and soon the whole party, bearing the captured
treasure, disappeared in the curves of the road.

This incident, simple enough in reality, the novelist Fenimore Cooper
has made the germ of one of his exquisite sea-tales, "The Pilot."
British historians have made of it an example by which to prove the
lawlessness and base ingratitude of Paul Jones. As may readily be
imagined, it stirred up at the time the most intense excitement in
England. Jones became the bugbear of timid people. His name was used
to frighten little children. He was called pirate, traitor,
free-booter, plunderer. It was indeed a most audacious act that he had
committed. Never before or since had the soil of England been trodden
by a hostile foot. Never had a British peer been forced to feel that
his own castle was not safe from the invader. Jones, with his handful
of American tars, had accomplished a feat which had never before been
accomplished, and which no later foeman of England has dared to
repeat. It is little wonder that the British papers described him as a
bloodthirsty desperado.

A few weeks later, the captured plate was put up for sale by the prize
agents. Capt. Jones, though not a rich man, bought it, and returned it
to the countess. Lord Selkirk, in acknowledging its receipt, wrote,--

"And on all occasions, both now and formerly, I have done you the
justice to tell that you made an offer of returning the plate very
soon after your return to Brest; and although you yourself were not
at my house, but remained at the shore with your boat, that you had
your officers and men in such extraordinary good discipline, that your
having given them the strictest orders to behave well,--to do no
injury of