Returning to port, he fitted out the _Mars_ with twenty odd guns and made a cruise in the English Channel. Here his prizes were numerous, and it is said that those he sent into Quiberon Bay “in a great measure laid the foundation of Lord Stormonth’s remonstrance to the French Court, against the admission into her ports of our armed vessels and cruisers”--a remonstrance that was not heeded, and so the French became involved in war with England to the great advantage of the colonies. Later still, while _en route_ to France in the _St. James_ of twenty guns, he beat off a ship of thirty-two guns that had been sent out expressly to capture him. A good story is told of this fight. A ball had passed through her side and lodged in her mainmast. “A fine forecastle man named Jack Sutton, perceiving the ball the moment it struck the mast, seized it, ran with it to a gunner, and said: ‘Here, gunner, take this shot, write post paid upon it, and send it back to the rascals.’” Capt. John Foster Williams was another daring privateer. In 1778, in the _Hazard_, that mounted fourteen four-pounders and two three-pounders, he captured the brig _Active_, that mounted eighteen six-pounders, six smaller guns, and ten one-pounder swivels. The fight lasted forty minutes, and the _Active_ lost thirty-three in killed and wounded to the _Hazard’s_ eight. In May, 1779, he was placed in the twenty-gun ship _Protector_, belonging to Massachusetts, and in June he fought the British privateer _Admiral Duff_, an equal ship, yardarm to yardarm, for an hour, when the enemy took fire and blew up. Only fifty-five of her crew were picked up. Returning from this cruise, he fell in with the thirty-two-gun frigate _Thames_, and after a running fire compelled her to haul off. And then there was Capt. Alexander Murray. In the _Revenge_, of eighteen guns, in 1780, he beat off two ships of the British navy, of which one mounted eighteen and the other sixteen guns. This was at the capes of the Chesapeake. Afterwards he took a cargo of tobacco from Richmond, Virginia, in a ship that had only five six-pounders for armament. At sea he fell in with a privateer of fourteen guns and 100 men. Murray, having so few guns, shifted them across the deck as occasion required, and blazed away. His ship, owing to the superior number of guns of the enemy, was eventually so cut up aloft that only the mainmast and bowsprit remained standing; nevertheless, Captain Murray beat off the enemy in spite of four desperate attempts to carry him by boarding. [Illustration: Alexander Murray. _From an engraving by Edwin of the painting by Wood._]