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“Your activity has pleased me extremely, and my confidence in you is such, that if Captain Saltonstall should be unable to reach here by the time the ships can get away, I shall hoist my flag on this ship, and give you the command of her.”

A flush rose in Paul Jones’s dark face, and he bowed with the graceful courtesy that always distinguished him.

“Thank you, commodore,” he said, “and may I be pardoned for hoping that Captain Saltonstall may not arrive in time? And when your flag is hoisted on the Alfred, there will be, I trust, a flag of the United Colonies to fly at the peak, and I aspire to be the first man to raise that flag upon the ocean.”

Commodore Hopkins smiled.

“If the Congress is as slow as I expect it to be, it will be some time yet in adopting a flag; and there will not be time to have one made for the ship before we sail.”

“I think there will, sir,” replied Paul Jones.

The young lieutenant had good reason for his expectation. The Congress had practically decided upon the flag, and Paul Jones, out of his own pocket, had bought the materials to make one. Bill Green was an expert with the needle, boasting that he could “hand, reef, and steer a needle like the best o’ them tailor men,” and was fully capable of making a flag.