deck over to
Lieutenant Wallingford, whose watch it was with Philip Wilton, and,
descending the poop-deck ladder, disappeared through the same door
which had received the two officers into the cabin.

Three weeks had elapsed since the raid upon the Wilton place, and the
scene had shifted from Virginia to the sea, or rather to the great bay
which gives entrance to it, from the Delaware River. It was a clear
cold day in the early part of December, and the American Continental
ship Ranger had just left her moorings off Philadelphia, with orders to
proceed to English waters; stopping at Brest to receive the orders of
the commissioners in Paris, and then, in case no better ship could be
found, to ravage the English Channel and coast, as a warning that like
processes, on the part of England on our own shores, should not go
unpunished.

John Paul Jones, who had already given evidence, not only of that
desperate courage and unyielding tenacity which had marked him as among
the most notable of sea officers the world has seen,--lacking nothing
but opportunity to have equalled, if not surpassed a Nelson--but of
consummate seamanship and great executive ability as well, had been
appointed to command the ship. Before proceeding on the mission,
however, an important undertaking had been allotted to him. The
commissioners had sent word from France, by a fast-sailing armed
packet, of the near departure of a transport from England, called the
Mellish, laden with two thousand muskets, twenty field-pieces, powder,
and other munitions of war, and ten thousand suits of winter clothes,
destined for the army that was assembling at Halifax and Quebec for the
invasion of the colonies, by way of the St. Lawrence River and Lake
Champlain.

Congress had transmitted the letter from France to Captain Jones, with
directions that he endeavor to intercept and capture this transport.
The destitution of the American army at this period of the war was
frightful: devoid of clothes, arms, provisions, powder,--everything, in
fact, which is apparently vital to the existence of an army;
continually beaten, menaced by a confident, well-equipped, and
disciplined enemy in overwhelming force, and before whom they had been
habitually retreating, they were only held together by the indomitable
will and heroic resolution of one man, George Washington. The fortunes
of the colonies were never at a lower ebb than at that moment, and
there was apparently nothing