  The American commissioners were so poorly provided with money that they could never secure Paul Jones a ship worthy of him, and the best they could do was to get the Ariel, a French sloop of war. But Richard Dale and Henry Lunt, together with nearly all the officers and men of the Bon Homme Richard, were available for the Ariel, so that Paul Jones had the same splendid company that had served under him in his last glorious cruise. A singular fatality seemed to attend all of Paul Jones’s departures from port. He could never get the ship he wanted, or one worthy of him; nor could he ever leave when he wished. Contrary winds detained him in the roads of Groix for several weeks. When the wind finally changed, on the morning of the 8th of October, there was every indication of squally weather. “Do you know,” said Paul Jones to Dale, whom he always treated with the utmost confidence, “I have private information that Sir James Wallace, in the Nonesuch line of battle ship, is waiting for me outside; and she, you know, is copper sheathed, and one of the finest ships in the world.” “But it is not written, Paul,” answered Dale, with an affectionate smile, “that Paul Jones is ever to be taken by the British.” The most affectionate intimacy had now grown up between the commodore and his young lieutenant; and although Paul Jones was some years older than Dale, the young lieutenant in private called his commander “Paul.” The wind increased in violence as they got out into the bay, and by nightfall it was a roaring tempest. Then came up a storm of which, Paul Jones himself wrote afterward, “until that night I did not fully conceive the awful majesty of tempest and of shipwreck. I can give no idea of the tremendous scene.... I believe no ship was ever before saved from an equal danger off the point of the Penmarque rocks.” These Penmarque rocks are among the most dangerous in the world, and lie between L’Orient and Brest. The gale continued to increase, and on the night of the 9th of October, when the Ariel had the Penmarques under her lee, the storm became utterly terrific. The sky was of a dreadful darkness, and the waves rushed up into great green mountain slopes, with a crest of white phosphorus that made a weird and awful glare upon the storm-swept ocean. Black as the sky was, it seemed to grow suddenly blacker, as a great mass of clouds went flying over to the northwest, where it formed a terrible bank that reached from the surface of the sea to the arch of the heavens. The edges were of a luminous green, and lightnings began to play upon the face of this awful cloud bank. It spread quickly over the sky like a great black pall, and then a blast burst forth. It was as if the cloud were a volcano, spouting wind, rain, hail, thunders, and lightnings. A vast grayish-white veil of rain was tossed by the screaming wind between heaven and earth, and rent by the forked lightning. The little Ariel, unable to show a single sail, staggered along, trembling and shuddering like a human thing in mortal terror and agony. The frightful buffeting of the waves had opened her seams, and water poured into her both from below and above. The shrieking of the wind through her cordage was like the howling of a thousand fiends. The guns broke loose from their fastenings, and rolled over the decks with a reverberation like the thunder which roared overhead. All night long this lasted, and no officer or man left his post that night or closed his eyes to sleep. The pumps were kept going, and every effort was made to bring the ship’s head to the wind, but in vain. It seemed as if Paul Jones was everywhere during those appalling hours of the night, always calm, cool, and unruffled. “We are in the hands of the good God,” he said to his men, “and if we have to meet Death, we might as well meet him with a bold face as a sheepish one.” As the guns rolled about the deck, adding a new horror and a new danger to that of rocks and waves and storm, Dale, who had the deck, turned to Paul Jones and said coolly: “Commodore, what shall we do about these guns?” “We can not afford to throw them overboard,” answered Paul Jones; “we may have to fight the British by the time this storm is over. The Nonesuch may not weather it, nor may we; this may be our last night of life, but if we should survive, and should meet the Nonesuch, both of us would make a shift to fight.” Dale said no more. As the ship would lurch forward into a black abyss, while above her hissed a mountain of water, the phosphorescent glare would cast a pale and unearthly light upon the horrors that encompassed her. The officers regarded her as a doomed ship, but the men had an unshaken confidence in the seamanship of their commander. In after years Dale declared: “Never saw I such coolness and readiness in such frightful circumstances as Paul Jones showed in the nights and days when he lay off the Penmarques, expecting every moment to be our last, and the danger was greater even than that we were in on the Bon Homme Richard when we fought the Serapis.” In the last extremity Paul Jones let go sea anchors in the open ocean. There the tortured ship rolled and pitched, her lower yardarms often buried in the water, and unable, even with the help of all the anchors, to get her head round to the wind. Toward three o’clock in the morning Paul Jones shouted out the order he was never known to give before—for he was averse to cutting away spars and throwing guns or stores overboard—“Make ready, Mr. Dale, to cut away the foremast!” The boatswain’s whistle could not be heard amid the confusion and the uproar, but Dale called to Bill Green, and in a few minutes the sailors were hacking the stout foremast away. It fell over the side with a frightful crash, and was swallowed up instantly. The helm was then put hard-a-lee, and the ship came up to the wind. But the mainmast was pitched out of the step and reeled about like a drunken man. As the great spar pounded the lower deck every soul on board expected it to crash through the ship’s bottom. At last Paul Jones ordered that, too, to be cut away, but before this could be done the chain plates gave way and the mast broke short off at the gun deck, taking the mizzenmast with it. The mizzenmast carried away the quarter gallery, and the scene of wreck was dreadful. The Ariel, now a dismasted hulk, rolled helplessly in the trough of the sea. Nothing more could be done but to keep the pumps going and to await their fate. Something of the indomitable spirit of Paul Jones seems to have inspired every man under him, for he afterward spoke of the steady, composed courage of his officers and men. Two days and three nights did he spend in the midst of these horrors, and when, on the 12th of October, the gale abated so that jury masts could be rigged, the ship was almost a wreck. But it was not destined that Paul Jones should perish on the ocean, and so he, without the loss of a single man, made his way back to L’Orient. It was considered the worst storm of the century, and the shores of Europe were strewed with wrecks and dead bodies for days and weeks afterward. |
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