PAUL JONES 307 became no longer tenable ; her living freight was taken from her, and Jones, ia the forenoon of the 25th, " with inexpressible grief," saw her final plunge into the depths of the ocean. While the engagement of the Richard and Serapis was going on, the Pallas, better officered than the Alliance, captured the other English vessel, the Countess of Scarborough. The two prizes were carried to the Texel, where the squadron enjoyed the uneasy protection of Holland. Jones himself had a more satisfactory reception in an enthusiastic greeting on the Exchange at Amsterdam, and a bril- liant triumph, illuminated by the smiles of the fair sex, shortly after in Paris. In October, 1780, he left for America in the Ariel, bearing with him a gift from the king, a gold-mounted sword, with the inscription on the blade : Vindicati Maris Ludovicus XVI. Remtmerator Strenuo Vindici "Louis XVI., rewarder, to the valiant defender of a liberated sea." The voyage was interrupted, at its outset, by a severe storm off the harbor, in whiqh Jones displayed his usual heroism. The vessel was refitted, and after a partial action on the high seas with a mysterious stranger, reached Philadelphia in February, 1781. In 1787 he left America with the intention of serving under Louis. When he reached Paris, he was met by a proposition to enter the service of Catherine of Russia, in which he was induced to engage by prospects of rank and glory. On his journey to St. Petersburg, he had a characteristic adventure in his pas- sage from Stockholm to Revel, which he made while the navigation was inter- rupted by ice, traversing the sea, with great hardihood, in an open boat, extort- ing the labors of the boatmen by his threats of violence. He was well received by the Empress, who forwarded him to Potemkin, then in command on the Black Sea, in a war with the Turks. It is not necessary to recount the move- ments of a small squadron, with a divided command and jealous counsels, pre- sided over by a whimsical, despotic court favorite. Many as were the vexations encountered by Jones in the inefficient resources, the shifts and expedients of foreign allies, and the straits of the American commissioners, they were light compared with the stifling restraints of Russian tyranny. Jones did much fight- ing, in his command of the Wolodomer, on the Black Sea, against the Pasha, but retired with little glory. Persecution followed at St. Petersburg there was an assault upon his moral character, which was triumphantly disproved various projects flitted through his teeming mind, and his connection with the country closed after a residence of fifteen months. It is sad to watch the last years of Paul Jones, not, indeed, of age, but of growing weariness and disease, as he re- news his broken Russian hopes, and revives the old, faded, pecuniary claims on the French court. A gleam of sunshine appears in his aspirations to serve his country for he still looked across the Atlantic in the removal of the chains from the American sailors imprisoned at Algiers. His country listened to his cry ; he was charged to treat with the Regency for their ransom, but before the commission reached him, he had passed to that land where the weary cease from sighing, and prisoners are at rest Here, with Mercy bending over the scene, let
