“Back!” cried the intrepid John Paul Jones, presenting his heavy pistols in their faces. “Keep back!” This ready action and the coolness of the man filled the angry mob with fear. With cries of alarm they fled back to their former positions at the head of the pier. The brig was now wrapped in a solid sheet of flame; and as there was nothing that demanded the further detaining of the Ranger’s boats, the captain sprang into one of them, followed by Ethan, and they pushed off. Immediately the crowd surged down the pier; some sprang to fight the flames; others stood at the harbor’s edge and shrieked their threats of vengeance; but the tars in the rapidly-receding boats only answered by a derisive laugh. Some one released the guard at the fort; the hastily-driven spikes were wrenched from one or two of the guns; and they were loaded and trained upon the boats. But by the time their sullen reports broke upon the morning air the Americans were out of range; and in a very little while later the dashing sloop-of-war, under a press of white canvas, had disappeared beyond the vision of those upon the shore. CHAPTER XI ON ST. MARY’S ISLE Expresses dashed about and signal fires burned along the coast from one end of England to the other. Fear fell upon the folk of every commercial port and fishing hamlet. Invasion had been the very last thing that the British had thought possible; no enemy had set his foot upon their soil before in the memory of living man; and now that the despised Americans had accomplished the feat, a wave of mingled fear and fury swept through the “tight little isle.” The British had thought it very right and proper to burn and destroy along the American coast; they considered it a rather quick and effective method of suppressing the rebellious subjects of the king. But when the youthful republic sent this daring sailor, Paul Jones, across the sea and through him applied the torch to British property and in a British harbor, the thing seemed vastly different. Pirate was the mildest term they could find for the chief of the Ranger; and indeed so they affect to regard him to this day. Parliament was appealed to by the populace, and it was implored to have armed vessels sent out after the daring Yankee, and to scour the seas until he was either taken or sunk. News of all this reached John Paul Jones through vessels that he captured in the Irish Channel; but he only laughed and glanced proudly about at his trim, swift, well-armed ship. “It is about time that our friend the Lascar was due at St. Mary’s Isle,” said he to Ethan, one evening as they sat in the cabin talking over the secret dispatch and its probable fate. “I am thinking of heading for there and giving you a chance to see.” “Do,” said the lad eagerly. “Think what the loss of this paper might mean to our country. We should use every means in our power to recover it; and St. Mary’s Isle offers at least a possibility.”