Spain, now conceiving a violent taste for Gibraltar, Jamaica, and the two Floridas,—for the taking of which by England aforetime she was of course very critical upon Albion,—seized the opportunity of Britain’s multiplying engagements with America and France, to let her know that she desired an immediate return of these forced loans. England of course insisted that, if she was an international pawnbroker, she was not obliged to surrender articles taken in until she chose to give them up, or until payment was made with shot and shell. She resented and resisted the demand; resisted it when Spain stepped up to her coast with a large fleet, resisted it successfully for three years at the Gibraltar Rock itself, and resisted it wherever Spanish gentlemen appeared to assert it, either on sea or land. Meanwhile, on the 23d of September, 1779, Paul Jones, a Scotchman by birth, and who, like his apostolic namesake, had been “in shipwrecks often” and “in perils in the sea,” the first who ever displayed the American flag, now sailing the good ship “Bon Homme Richard,”—an old Indiaman converted into a war vessel,—after capturing with this old lugger twenty-three merchantmen, at last fell in with two heavy English frigates. Lashing his own ship to the larger one, he so laid on other strings that at the end of two hours he had thoroughly whipped both,—a whipping whose stinging recollections brought the color for a long time into even the ruddy cheek of Mr. Bull. CHAPTER IV. THE LAST TURN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WHEEL; ACCELERATIONS; SLOWINGS; THE GRIST. 1780–1783.