Mr. Hewes thinks it would not. Since Mr. Hewes’ manner in thus thinking is just a trifle iron-bound, not to say acrid, Mr. Hancock decides that, after all, there may be more peril in waiting for Captain Saltonstall than in going forward with Lieutenant Jones. Whereupon, Mr. Hewes, Mr. Hancock and Lieutenant Jones depart for the _Alfred_, which lies at the foot of Chestnut Street. In the main hall of Congress the three pick up Colonel Carroll, Mad Anthony Wayne. Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Livingston, and Mr. Morris. These gentlemen, regarding the event as the formal birth of the new navy, decide to accompany the others in the rôle of witnesses. The flag is ready in the lockers of the _Alfred_--a pine tree, a rattlesnake, with the words “_Don’t Tread on Me_.” Lieutenant Paul Jones, as he shakes out the bunting, surveys the device with no favoring eye. [Illustration: 0113] “I was ever,” observes Lieutenant Paul Jones, looking at Mr. Hewes but speaking to all--“I was ever curious to know by whose queer fancy that device was adopted. It is beyond me to fathom how a venomous serpent could be regarded as the emblem of a brave and honest people fighting to be free.” After delivering this opinion, which is tacitly agreed to by the others, the flag is bent on the halyards, and “broken out.” Also, a ration of grog is issued to the crew--so far as the _Alfred_ is blessed with a crew--by way of fixing the momentous occasion in the forecastle mind. The crew cheers; but whether the cheers are for the grog, or Lieutenant Paul Jones who orders it, or the rattlesnake pine tree ensign that causes the order, no one may say. Following the “breaking out,” the grog and the cheers, Mr. Hewes, Mr. Hancock and their fellow-statesmen, retire--the day being over cold--to the land, while Lieutenant Paul Jones, now and until the coming of Captain Saltonstall in command of the _Alfred_, remains aboard to take up his duty as a regularly commissioned officer in the regular navy of the colonies. CHAPTER IX--THE CRUISE OF THE “PROVIDENCE” Four ships--the _Alfred_, Captain Saltonstall, in the van, with Commodore Hopkins in command of the squadron--sail away on a rainy February day. They clear Cape Henlopen, and turn their untried prows south by east half south. The fell purpose of Commodore Hopkins is to harry the Bahamas. It will be nowhere written that Commodore Hopkins, in his designs upon the Bahamas, in any degree succeeds. Eight weeks later, the four ships come scudding into New London with the fear of death in their hearts. An English sloop of war darted upon them, they say, off the eastern end of Long Island, and they escaped by the paint on their planks.