As he sprang out of the smoke towards the rail of the collier, he saw the sun risen, with thousands of the people.  Individuals hurried close to the burning vessel.  Leaping to the ground, Paul, bidding his men stand fast, ran to their front, and, advancing about thirty feet, presented his own pistol at now tumultuous Whitehaven.

Those who had rushed to extinguish what they had deemed but an accidental fire, were now paralyzed into idiotic inaction, at the defiance of the incendiary, thinking him some sudden pirate or fiend dropped down from the moon.

While Paul thus stood guarding the incipient conflagration, Israel, without a weapon, dashed crazily towards the mob on the shore.

“Come back, come back,” cried Paul.

“Not till I start these sheep, as their own wolves many a time started me!”

As he rushed bare-headed like a madman, towards the crowd, the panic spread.  They fled from unarmed Israel, further than they had from the pistol of Paul.

The flames now catching the rigging and spiralling around the masts, the whole ship burned at one end of the harbor, while the sun, an hour high, burned at the other.  Alarm and amazement, not sleep, now ruled the world.  It was time to retreat.

They re-embarked without opposition, first releasing a few prisoners, as the boats could not carry them.

Just as Israel was leaping into the boat, he saw the man at whose house he had procured the fire, staring like a simpleton at him.

“That was good seed you gave me;” said Israel, “see what a yield,” pointing to the flames.  He then dropped into the boat, leaving only Paul on the pier.

The men cried to their commander, conjuring him not to linger.

But Paul remained for several moments, confronting in silence the clamors of the mob beyond, and waving his solitary hand, like a disdainful tomahawk, towards the surrounding eminences, also covered with the affrighted inhabitants.

When the assailants had rowed pretty well off, the English rushed in great numbers to their forts, but only to find their cannon no better than so much iron in the ore.  At length, however, they began to fire, having either brought down some ship’s guns, or else mounted the rusty old dogs lying at the foot of the first fort.

In their eagerness they fired with no discretion.  The shot fell short; they did not the slightest damage.

Paul’s men laughed aloud, and fired their pistols in the air.

Not a splinter was made, not a drop of blood spilled throughout the affair.  The intentional harmlessness of the result, as to human life, was only equalled by the desperate courage of the deed.  It formed, doubtless, one feature of the compassionate contempt of Paul towards the town, that he took such paternal care of their lives and limbs.