He was a rather small, elastic, swarthy man, with an aspect as of a disinherited Indian Chief in European clothes. An unvanquishable enthusiasm, intensified to perfect sobriety, couched in his savage, self-possessed eye. He was elegantly and somewhat extravagantly dressed as a civilian; he carried himself with a rustic, barbaric jauntiness, strangely dashed with a superinduced touch of the Parisian _salon_. His tawny cheek, like a date, spoke of the tropic, A wonderful atmosphere of proud friendlessness and scornful isolation invested him. Yet there was a bit of the poet as well as the outlaw in him, too. A cool solemnity of intrepidity sat on his lip. He looked like one who of purpose sought out harm’s way. He looked like one who never had been, and never would be, a subordinate. Israel thought to himself that seldom before had he seen such a being. Though dressed à-la-mode, he did not seem to be altogether civilized. So absorbed was our adventurer by the person of the stranger, that a few moments passed ere he began to be aware of the circumstance, that Dr. Franklin and this new visitor having saluted as old acquaintances, were now sitting in earnest conversation together. “Do as you please; but I will not bide a suitor much longer,” said the stranger in bitterness. “Congress gave me to understand that, upon my arrival here, I should be given immediate command of the _Indien_; and now, for no earthly reason that I can see, you Commissioners have presented her, fresh from the stocks at Amsterdam, to the King of France, and not to me. What does the King of France with such a frigate? And what can I _not_ do with her? Give me back the “Indien,” and in less than one month, you shall hear glorious or fatal news of Paul Jones.” “Come, come, Captain,” said Doctor Franklin, soothingly, “tell me now, what would you do with her, if you had her?” “I would teach the British that Paul Jones, though born in Britain, is no subject to the British King, but an untrammelled citizen and sailor of the universe; and I would teach them, too, that if they ruthlessly ravage the American coasts, their own coasts are vulnerable as New Holland’s. Give me the _Indien_, and I will rain down on wicked England like fire on Sodom.” These words of bravado were not spoken in the tone of a bravo, but a prophet. Erect upon his chair, like an Iroquois, the speaker’s look was like that of an unflickering torch. His air seemed slightly to disturb the old sage’s philosophic repose, who, while not seeking to disguise his admiration of the unmistakable spirit of the man, seemed but illy to relish his apparent measureless boasting.