In obedience with this order, at midnight, Captain Jones, having delivered to the French ambassador the ships and prizes which were deemed to belong to the French king, took command of the Alliance, and surrendered the Serapis to Captain Cottineau of the Pallas. The eccentric if not insane Landais quarrelled with almost every one who approached him. He challenged Captain Cottineau to a duel. He was a very accomplished swordsman. Very unwisely, Captain Cottineau, who was not particularly skilful with that weapon, allowed his insulting opponent, in addition to many other wrongs and outrages, the privilege of thrusting his sword through his opponent’s body, inflicting a very painful, disabling, and dangerous wound. Landais then sent a similar challenge to Captain Jones, who very properly replied by sending officers to arrest him. Upon this he fled and made his way to Paris, where we shall again hear of him. Extracts from Captain Jones’s letters will show, better than any description, the noble character of this truly noble man; a man who has been strangely misrepresented. He wrote to the Marquis de Lafayette, from the Serapis, at the Texel, on the 28th of October, 1779: “The late brutalities of the Britons in America fill me with horror and indignation. They forget that they are men. And I believe that nothing will bring them to their senses but the most exemplary retaliation. “I wish to answer, very particularly, the points which you have propounded. 1st, I never meant to ask a reward for my services, either from France or America. Consequently the approbation of the Court and of the Congress is all the gratification I can wish for. 2d, I yet intend to undertake whatever the utmost exertion of my abilities will reach in support of the common cause, as far as any force that may in future be intrusted to my direction may enable to succeed.” One of the London journals, of September 29th, 1779, gives the following amusing exaggeration of the force under Captain Jones’s command, and of the terror his achievements had inspired: “An express has arrived from Aymouth with information that Paul Jones was off there with five ships of war and two thousand troops; that on the 19th they appeared off Sunderland and put the inhabitants into great confusion, as they expected them to land every hour, or destroy the ships in the harbor.” Another London journal gives the following account of this celebrated cruise: “On Saturday noon two gentlemen of the corporation of Hull arrived express at the Admiralty, with the alarming account that the celebrated American Corsair, Paul Jones, had entered the river Humber, on Thursday last, and chased a vessel within a mile of the pier, where he sunk, burned, and destroyed sixteen valuable vessels, which threw the whole town and neighborhood into the utmost consternation.