Doctor Franklin journeys down to Lyons, on some secret errand of his own; he will be gone a week. Commodore Paul Jones, at home with the good Marsan, drunk with love, forgets the blue of the ocean in the blue of Aimee’s eyes. One sun-filled afternoon he is disturbed by Lieutenant Dale, who stalks in with a scowl on his usually steady face.

“What is it, Dick?” asks Commodore Paul Jones, alive in a moment.

“Something too deep for me, Commodore, or I shouldn’t be here with the tangle. Commissioner Lee, with Landais, has taken the Alliance.”

“What?”

“It’s as I say. Lee declares that Doctor Franklin had no authority to depose Landais. He, Lee, has restored him to command, and the pair have possession of the ship.”

“What did you do?”

“I did nothing. I’m a sailor, and pretend to no knowledge of the limits of Mr. Lee’s authority. Speaking for myself, I refused to serve with Landais; and Lieutenants Stack, McCarty and Lunt, and Midshipman Lindthwait did the same. We came ashore, and Bo’sen Jack Robinson at the head of sixty of the crew came with us.” Commodore Paul Jones, while Lieutenant Dale talks, is thinking. What is to be done! Manifestly nothing. Doctor Franklin is out of reach. Without the Doctor’s authority no one can meddle with Arthur Lee, who still has his powers as a commissioner. Besides, there’s the Serapis; it is only a question of weeks when he, Commodore Paul Jones, will be given its command. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Dale and the others can disport themselves ashore, as he does. Let Lee and Landais keep the Alliance, since they already have it.

“You’ve done right, Dick,” he says. “Stay ashore then, and keep the lads together; we’ll wait for the Serapis. Also, King Louis has given Doctor Franklin the Ariel, a ship-sloop the size of the old Ranger. When I take the Serapis to sea, Dick, you shall sail Captain of the Ariel.”

Lieutenant Dale goes his way, and Commodore Paul Jones returns to Aimee, pleased in secret to think he may continue unhindered to sun himself in her smiles. It grinds a bit to think of the “dog Landais,” and the “traitor Arthur Lee,” in control of the Alliance. Still, all will come right; for is he not to have the Serapis? And while he waits, there is Aimee; and love is even sweeter than war. So he goes back to his goddess, with her deep eyes and red-gold hair, and puts such caitiff creatures as Lee and Landais outside his thoughts. It is for Congress to deal with them.

Commodore Paul Jones is not permitted to forget Lee and Landais. Within the hour, he is again called from the side of Aimee by his friend Genet, a noble upperling in the French foreign office.

“I come to tell you,” says Genet, “that Captain Landais and Monsieur Lee have got the Alliance.”

“I know!”

“They are to sail in three days.”

“Lieutenant Dale has told me.”

“He did not tell you that we have issued orders to Thevenard, who commands the forts at the barrier, to sink the Alliance, should she try to put to sea.”

“Sink the Alliance!” Commodore Paul Jones is thunderstruck. “My dear Genet, you jest.”

“No jest, my friend. The orders have been given. Should the Alliance attempt to pass the harriers, Thevenard will fire on it with all his hundreds of big guns, and snuff it out like a candle. It is by request of your Doctor Franklin.”

“Do you tell me that Doctor Franklin asks you to sink the Alliance?”

“He has asked us—for he had some inkling of the designs of Lee and Landais—to prevent them sailing away with the ship. We know of but one way to do that. We must sink it, since we have no ship here to arrest them. So we gave the orders to Thevenard. Those orders, however, we did not impart to Doctor Franklin; and, in good truth, I tell them to you now, not as a French official, but as a friend.”

“This must be stopped!” cries Commodore Paul Jones, his habits of decision and iron promptitude reassumed in a moment. “What! Sink two hundred brave, good men, to punish a pair of traitors? Never!”

Genet, who makes a cult of red tape, shrugs his shoulders and spreads his hands.

“It is too late,” he says. “There is Doctor Franklin’s request. I cannot countermand the orders to Thevenard until he withdraws his request.”

“I shall see Thevenard!”

Two hundred and eighty miles in fifty-four hours! An unprecedented thing! And yet Commodore Paul Jones does it, and rides into l’Orient in time to prevail on General Thevenard, who is his friend and his worshipper, to let the Alliance pass free. The forts would else have sunk th............