Presently the word was passed to let go the anchor; and the storm of oaths and exclamations which this involved, owing to some unexpected hindrance, grew so tiresome to the lieutenant that he left the place where he had been standing, to go below again. "Look, look, mon ami!" urged the captain eagerly; and Wallingford turned to see that the fog had driven away, while Paul Jones pointed toward a large town, and a forest of vessels lying in the bay before it,—a huge flock of shipping for such a port. The Irish Sea had emptied itself into Whitehaven, and the wind had gone down; not a sloop or a snow, and not a little brig in a hurry, could put to sea again that April night. "’T is old Whitehaven," said Paul Jones. "Now I ’ll show them that they have made an enemy! Now they ’ll know we are to be feared, not laughed at! I ’ll put an end to all their burnings in America. I ’ll harry their own coasts now, and frighten them back into their hills before I’m done. I ’ll sweep them off their own seas! My chance is in my hand!" Dickson presented himself at this moment. The captain would not have had him listening, and turned upon him angrily to hear what he had to say. "Thick as coasters in Portsmouth lower harbor in a northeast blow," commented the unwelcome officer, "but that’s no such handsome town as ours." "’T is a town of three hundred ships, mostly in the coal trade, and ranks close to Newcastle in Northumberland; ’t is a town large enough to be charged with six hundred men for his Majesty’s navy," and the captain scowled. "We need not take it for a poor fishing village till we have seen it better. A more uncertain coast, from the shifting sands, I do not remember to have known; but I can keep the main channels well enough through long acquaintance," he added, in a lower voice. "Now we are out of this dungeon of fog, thank God, and I shall creep in still and steady as a snail when I get ready." They could see the gleam of white cliffs now, as the fog rolled up the hills. "’T is full of poor miners there, burrowing like moles in the dark earth," said the captain pityingly,—"a wretched life for a Christian!" Then he went to his cabin, and called his officers about him, and gave orders for the night’s work. "I loved Britain as a man may only love his mother country; but I was misjudged, and treated with such bitter harshness and contempt in my younger days that I renounced my very birthright!" said Paul Jones, turning to Wallingford with a strange impulse of sadness when the other men had gone. "I cannot help it now; I have made the break, and have given my whole allegiance to our new Republic, and all the strength of me shall count for something in the building of her noble future. Therefore I fight her battles, at whatever cost and on whatever soil. Being a sailor, I fight as a sailor, and I am here close to the soil that bore me. ’T is against a man’s own heart, but I am bent upon my duty, though it cost me dear."