For two days and three nights the Ariel swung to that single anchor, and passively endured the tremendous buffeting of wind and waves within a short distance of the mighty reefs upon which, if she had struck, every soul on board must have perished. For the greater part of this time the motion of the mastless ship was so violent that the most experienced seaman could not keep his legs upon the deck. On the 12th the gale had sufficiently moderated to permit the crew to erect jury masts under which they could regain the harbor. The cable was hove short, but the anchor could not be weighed, as it was probably caught upon a rock. Indeed, nothing but a rock hold would have saved them; so the cable was cut, and the battered Ariel limped back to L'Orient, which she reached on the 13th of October. The gale was one of the most severe with which that storm-bound coast had ever been visited within the memory of man. The whole shore was strewed with wrecks and the bodies of drowned men. The merchant ships of the convoy were lost, with hundreds of other vessels. That the Ariel, in the most dangerous position which could possibly have been imagined even, escaped without loss of life was due to the Providence of God and the brilliant seamanship of her captain. Long afterward Richard Dale wrote thus of his commander's conduct in these trying circumstances: "Never saw I such coolness and readiness in such frightful circumstances as Paul Jones showed in the nights and days when we lay off the Penmarques, expecting every moment to be our last; and the danger was greater even than we were in when the Bon Homme Richard fought the Serapis." Two months were required to put the Ariel in shape for sea once more. All the arms which she was carrying out for the use of the army had been so damaged by water as to be useless. They were left behind and their place supplied by other cargo. During this interval, when not occupied in superintending the repairs to the ship, Jones amused himself with his usual prolific correspondence. He had also a spirited encounter with one Thomas Truxtun, afterward the distinguished naval officer, at that time master of a privateer called the Independence. Truxtun entered the harbor of L'Orient flying a pennant, the use of which was restricted by act of Congress to regularly commissioned vessels of war, except in the case of privateers cruising alone. A sharp correspondence was carried on between Jones and Truxtun, who was a mere boy at the time. Truxtun at first refused to haul down the offending pennant, but was finally induced to do so by Richard Dale and two heavily armed boats' crews from the Ariel. Jones was not to be trifled with, and Truxtun received a good lesson in subordination and obedience to law--always of value to a privateer.[36]