“Captain Jones,” says the latter, speaking with a kindly gravity, “Mr. Morris and I have so pushed your affairs with the Marine Committee that to-morrow Congress will pass a double resolution, adopting a new flag, the stars and stripes, and appointing you to command the _Ranger_.” “The Ranger!” exclaims Captain Paul Jones, beginning to glow. “Thanks, General; a thousand thanks! And to you also, Mr. Morris, whom I shall never forget! The Ranger! I know her! She is being sparred and rigged at Portsmouth! New, three hundred tons; a beauty, too, they tell me! Gentlemen, I am off at once to Portsmouth! I must see to stepping her masts and mounting her batteries myself.” Captain Paul Jones, all eagerness, is on his feet, and even the wise, age-cold Mr. Morris begins to catch his fire. “Right!” cries Mr. Morris; “you shall start to-morrow!” “Captain Jones,” interrupts the General, laying a large detaining hand on the other’s arm, “you will go to Portsmouth and look after your ship. Also, while your destination is France, you must wait for orders to sail. I may have weighty despatches for the French King--news that will shake Europe.” June is as cool in Portsmouth as it is in Philadelphia. Cooler; for the New Hampshire breeze has in it the chill smell of those snows that lie unmelted in the mountains. Captain Paul Jones comes unannounced, eyes dancing like those of a child with a new toy, and seeks the wharf where the __Ranger__ is being fitted to her spars. From a convenient coign he looks the _Ranger_ over, and evinces a master’s appreciation. “Nose sharp! Plenty of dead-rise! Lean lines!” he murmurs. “With the wind anywhere abaft the beam, she should race like a greyhound! All, she’s a beauty, fit to warm the cockles of a sailor’s heart! See to the sheer of her!--as delicate as the lines of a woman’s arm!” Up comes a sturdy figure with an air of command, an officer’s hat on his head, a ship-carpenter’s adz in his hand. “This is Captain Jones?” “Captain Paul Jones, sir.” “Pardon me for not first giving my name. I’m Elijah Hall, who is to sail second officer with you in yon _Ranger_.” Captain Paul Jones and Lieutenant Hall fall into instant and profound confab of a deeply nautical complexion, a confab quite beyond a landsman’s comprehension, wherein such phrases as “flush-decks,” “short poop-deck,” “bilges,” “futtocks,” and “knees” abound, and are reeled off as though their use gives our two ship-enthusiasts unbridled satisfaction. At last Lieutenant Hall remarks, pointing to three long sticks: “There’re her masts, sir. They were taken out of a four-hundred-ton Indiaman, and are too long for a three-hundred-ton ship like the _Ranger_. I was thinking I’d cut’em off four feet in the caps.”