better part of
valor' may, I think, be changed to 'Impudence is--or may be,
sometimes--the better part of discretion.'"

Two kinds of news greeted the slippery sailor when he arrived in port.
One was a letter from Thomas Jefferson, enclosing his commission as
Captain in the Continental Navy, by Act of Congress. The other--an
epistle from his agents in Virginia, informing him that, during the
month of July previous, his plantation had been utterly ravaged by an
expedition of British and Tories (Virginians who sided with England in
the war) under Lord Dunmore. His buildings had all been burned; his
wharf demolished; his livestock killed; and every one of his
able-bodied slaves of both sexes had been carried off to Jamaica to
be sold. The enemy had also destroyed his growing crops; cut down his
fruit trees; in short, nothing was left of his once prosperous and
valuable plantation but the bare ground.

"This is part of the fortunes of war," said Jones. "I accept the
extreme animosity displayed by Lord Dunmore as a compliment to the
sincerity of my attachment to the cause of liberty."

Bold words, well spoken by a bold man!

"But," continued the able sailor, "I most sadly deplore the fate of my
poor negroes. The plantation was to them a home, not a place of
bondage. Their existence was a species of grown-up childhood, not
slavery. Now they are torn away and carried off to die under the
pestilence and lash of Jamaica cane-fields; and the price of their
poor bodies will swell the pockets of English slave-traders. For this
cruelty to those innocent, harmless people, I hope sometime, somehow,
to find an opportunity to exact a reckoning."

Again bold sentiments,--and the reckoning, too, was forthcoming.

"I have no fortune left but my sword, and no prospect except that of
getting alongside of the enemy," wrote the impoverished sea-captain to
a Mr. Hewes.

This prospect also was to soon have ample fulfilment.

Ordered to take command of the _Alfred_, Captain Jones made a short
cruise eastward, in 1776, accompanied by the staunch little
_Providence_. The journey lasted only thirty-three days, but, during
that time, seven ships of the enemy fell into the clutches of the two
American vessels.

"Aha!" cried Captain Jones, as he rubbed his hands. "This looks more
propitious for our cause. We have taken the _Mellish_ and the
_Biddeford_. Let us break into them and see how much of the King's
treasure has been secured."

And