one man, evidently badly wounded, leaning
over the rail. When they gained the deck, he was no longer visible.
No immediate search appears to have been made for him, but finding the
ship practically deserted, a great number of Indians came off in their
canoes and got aboard. They were making preparations to search and
pillage the ship, when there was a terrific explosion, and the
ill-fated _Tonquin_ blew up with all on board. In her ending she
carried sudden destruction to over two hundred of the Indians.

It is surmised that the four unwounded men left on the ship realized
their inability to carry the _Tonquin_ to sea, and determined to take
to the boat in the hope of reaching Astoria by coasting down the shore.
It is possible that they may have laid a train to the magazine--the
_Tonquin_ carried four and a half tons of powder--but it is generally
believed, as a more probable story, on account of the time that elapsed
between their departure and the blowing up of the ship, that Lewis, who
was yet alive in spite of his mortal wounds, and who was a man of
splendid resolution and courage as well, {277} realizing that he could
not escape death, remained on board; and when the vessel was crowded
with Indians had revenged himself for the loss of his comrades by
firing the magazine and blowing up the ship. Again, it is possible
that Lewis may have died, and that Weeks, the armorer, the other
wounded man, made himself the instrument of his own and the Indians'
destruction. To complete the story, the four men who had escaped in
the boats were pursued, driven ashore, and fell into the hands of the
implacable Indians. They were tortured to death.

Such was the melancholy fate which attended some of the participants in
the first settlement of what is now one of the greatest and most
populous sections of the Union.

[1] I have seen a man at the wheel of the old _Constellation_ on one of
my own cruises similarly injured.

{281}

IV

John Paul Jones

Being Further Light on His Strange Career[1]

One hundred and eighteen years ago a little man who had attracted the
attention of two continents, and who, in his comparatively brief career
of forty-five years, had won eternal fame for himself among the heroes
of the world, died in Paris, alone in his room. He had been ill for
some time, and his physician, calling late in the evening, found him
prone upon his bed, sleeping a sleep from which no call to battle wou