# The Story of John Paul Jones/Chapter 2

Layout 2
CHAPTER II LAND HO!
The crew of the good bark “Friendship” were an exceedingly jolly company of men, who drank their grog and spun their yarns in the cabin at night, and called “ship ahoy” and “heave ho” and any number of other incomprehensible things which the young apprentice could never understand. But the graceful ship seemed to obey her masters very well indeed for all the queer things they said about her, for she reared and lurched but still went gaily on her way, riding over the rolling ​waves as if she were accustomed to these things and were not to be disturbed by them at all.
As the last faint vestige of his native shore faded into a pale shadow, and then, as they sped further from it, seemed to dissolve into the air, until nothing was visible about them but the sea, the little sailor must have felt that he was quite alone in the great world. But it was not long before he began to conjure up within his mind the wondrous sights that he would see upon the mystic shores that he was going to visit and these imaginings filled his heart with hope and joyous expectation as the days rolled on.
One morning, when he was standing near the deck-rail dreaming of the new life which was now unfolding itself before him, a sailor stopped and asked him if he had ever been to sea before.
“I have been across the channel,” he replied, “but never on a long voyage.”
“Well, I’ll tell yer what, then,” said the seaman, “you’ve never been in a reg’lar storm.”
​“No sir, and I do not want to be in a storm,” answered the boy. “Do you think that we shall have a storm?”
“Think?” shouted the man in great astonishment, “why, Lord bless me, I know we’ll have one—we’re heading right for one. You see that dark spot over yonder? Well, that’s the Azores. You’ll see that spot will turn into land tomorrow and the next day we’ll pass it and then it will blow like His Royal Highness the devil was holding court—for there’s always a storm about those islands—and has been ever since 1564.”
“What makes it?” asked the boy.
“Well, some thinks as the devil uses the place to hold his parliaments, and that the noise is made by the angry members when his infernal majesty vetoes bills. But there’s not much truth in that opinion. All I know is as it’s always storming there.”
The prospect of passing through the region ​while these tempestuous debates were being carried on was not at all reassuring to our young hero, and he asked whether the storms were usually regarded as dangerous.
“Well,” replied the man, “that ’ud be hard to say. Some vessels have been wrecked along there and some has went down.”
“And was that long ago?”
“Yes, years ago—the crews would all be dead now anyway—even if they hadn’t a drowned, so it’s just the same as if it never happened.”
This was not a very encouraging reflection, philosophical as it was, and the little boy was on the point of asking whether it would not be possible to vary the ship’s course a little, so as to go round the storm and not straight through it, when the seaman, seating himself upon a windlass, volunteered to tell the more authentic version as to the cause of this chronic storm.
“You’ve heard of Ribault,” said he. “Well, it’s some of his men, or one of ’em in particular, as causes these storms.”
​“Why, Ribault’s men must all be dead,” urged the boy.
“Yes, but one of ’em’s ghost isn’t—did yer ever see a French ghost?”
“No, I never have,” answered young John.
“Well, they’re the worst kind—I can tell yer that. Now this Ribault, when he sailed from France in that year, left a party of Huguenots and some sailors some where in Florida and he came back home to France. Well, these people that he left tried to make a settlement and they quarreled, for everybody wanted to be governor, and some of ’em up and says, ‘We’ll go back home—that’s what we’ll do?’ So they rigged up a sort o’ boat and started back to France. Well, as any one might know, that boat drifted about on the ocean one way and the other until, if ye’d believe it, she was half way across and then she went down and the crew of her took to the two small boats that they’d fetched along. Well, now, one of those ​life-boats was picked up by an English schooner, and her men who were freezing and starving were fetched to England and stood up before Queen Elizabeth, being great curiosities. And then they told their story, and that’s how Queen Bess got the notion in ’er head to send Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake out exploring and colonizing on the western continent. But what became of the other life-boat no man saw. She must have gone down close upon those Azore Islands, for one of her passengers—a French Huguenot—swam to the shore and waited for some boat to come along and pick him up. He hailed and called and danced day after day and month after month, but no boat came near enough to notice him, until finally he died after standing on the edge of that shore and waving his hands and yelling at the top of his lungs for seven years. But having more power as a ghost than he had had when he was only a man, he just kept right on standing there, ​and summoned up all the imps and spirits of the sea to make a great storm for him in hopes of wrecking some vessel and getting her attention. For that ghost could do anything but swim. And there the spirit of that French Huguenot has been standing from that day to this, one hundred and ninety-four years, stirring up the ocean and the wind and brewing a great gale that never stops, in the hopes of getting off the island. And they do say as on dark and blustering nights you can hear that Huguenot moaning and wailing amid the wind and storm, and see his anxious, ashy face glaring through the gale when the lightning brightens up the dark sky. But being a French Huguenot, nobody pays any attention to him, least wise those as comes from France, for the French king says that as he and his crazy band wanted to own a land and have their own kind of religion in it, so now he has one all by his self and he ought to be contented to stay there.”
​Young John Paul had no comment to make on this extraordinary tale except the comment of two wondering eyes and a rather doubtful expression of countenance. But on the next day the truth of, at least, part of the seaman’s tale was very certainly confirmed, for as they neared the islands it became apparent that a dreadful storm was overhanging the gallant little bark. The sky became black and the raging of the ocean was quite terrible to behold. Great watery mountains came rolling in from afar and burst madly into fearful cavernous valleys, into which the little vessel plunged as if she were disappearing forever into the unknown depths of the ocean. In the midst of the terrific gale and tremendous breakers, weird uncanny noises could he faintly heard over the lonely sea. The boy fancied that amid these sounds he could hear a hollow voice which seemed to come from far away, and once or twice he thought he saw a fleshless face with dreadful eyes staring at the ​“Friendship” as she weathered through the raging storm. But soon the little vessel passed the haunted shores and turned her prow straight toward fair Virginia, the colony of the gallant Raleigh and the name-sake of old England’s greatest queen. From this point on, the course of the “Friendship,” unlike the course of her sister attribute, “true love,” ran very smoothly indeed, and before many more days had passed the fresh sweet-scented air, wafted from the luxurious garden of the South, could be felt on the decks of Mr. Younger’s ship.