“And do you find it more to your taste than seafaring, Mr. Jones?” inquired Mr. Chase.

This brought forth a most vehement protest, and another quotation.

“Why, sir,” he cried, “to be

       ’Fixed like a plant on his peculiar spot,
        To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot,’

is an animal’s existence.  I have thrown it over, sir, with a right good will, and am now on my way to Philadelphia to obtain a commission in the navy soon to be born.”

Mr. Chase smiled.  John Paul little suspected that he was a member of the Congress.

“This is news indeed, Mr. Jones,” he said.  “I have yet to hear of the birth of this infant navy, for which we have not yet begun to make swaddling clothes.”

“We are not yet an infant state, sir,” Mr. Carroll put in, with a shade of rebuke.  For Maryland was well content with the government she had enjoyed, and her best patriots long after shunned the length of secession.  “I believe and pray that the King will come to his senses.  And as for the navy, it is folly.  How can we hope to compete with England on the sea?”

“All great things must have a beginning sir,” replied John Paul, launching forth at once, nothing daunted by such cold conservatism.  “What Israelite brickmaker of Pharaoh’s dreamed of Solomon’s temple?  Nay, Moses himself had no conception of it.  And God will send us our pillars of cloud and of fire.  We must be reconciled to our great destiny, Mr. Carroll.  No fight ever was won by man or nation content with half a victory.  We have forests to build an hundred armadas, and I will command a fleet and it is given me.”

The gentlemen listened in astonishment.

“I’ faith, I believe you, sir,” cried Captain Daniel, with admiration.

The others, too, were somehow fallen under the spell of this remarkable individuality.  “What plan would you pursue, sir?” asked Mr. Chase, betraying more interest than he cared to show.

“What plan, sir!” said Captain John Paul, those wonderful eyes of his alight.  “In the first place, we Americans build the fastest ships in the world,—­yours of the Chesapeake are as fleet as any.  Here, if I am not mistaken, one hundred and eighty-two were built in the year ’71.  They are idle now.  To them I would issue letters of marque, to harry England’s trade.  From Carolina to Maine we have the wood and iron to build cruisers, in harbours that may not easily be got at.  And skilled masters and seamen to elude the enemy.”

“But a navy must be organized, sir.  It must be an unit,” objected Mr. Carroll.  “And you would not for many years have force enough, or discipline enough, to meet England’s navy.”