tarily stood for an instant gazing upon the scene. The gray light of the dawn showed the crowded houses and thronged ships with a haggard distinctness.

แ

Spike and hammer, lad;-so,—now follow me along, as I go, and give me a spike for every cannon. I'll tongue-tie the thunderers. Speak no more!" and he spiked the first gun. "Be a mute,' and he spiked the second. "Dumfounder thee," and he spiked the third. And so, on, and on, and on; Israel following him with the bucket, like a footman, or some charitable gentleman with a basket of alms.

"There, it is done. D'ye see the fire yet, lad, from the south? I don't."

"Not a spark, Captain. But daysparks come on in the east."

"Forked flames into the hounds! What are they about? Quick, let us back to the first fort; perhaps something has happened, and they are there."

Sure enough, on their return from spiking the cannon Paul and Israel found the other boat back; the crew in confusion; their lantern having burnt out at the very instant they wanted it. By a singular fatality the other lantern, belonging to Paul's boat, was likewise extinguished. No tinder-box had been brought. They had no matches but sulphur matches. Loco-focos where not

then known.

The day came on apace.

Captain Paul," said the lieutenant of the second boat, "it is madness to stay' longer. See!" and he pointed to the town, now plainly discernible in the grey light.

"Traitor, or coward!" howled Paul, "how came the lanterns out? Israel, my lion, now prove your blood. Get me a light-but one spark!"

"Has any man here a bit of pipe and tobacco in his pocket?" said Israel.

A sailor quickly produced an old stump of a pipe, with tobacco.

"That will do;" and Israel hurried away towards the town.

"What will the loon do with the pipe?" said one. "And where goes he?"

cried another.

"Let him alone," said Paul.

The invader now disposed his whole force so as to retreat at an instant's warning. Meantime, the hardy Israel, long experienced in all sorts of shifts and emergencies, boldly ventured to procure, from some inhabitant of Whitehaven, a spark to kindle all Whitehaven's habitations in flames.

There was a lonely house standing somewhat disjointed from the town; some poor laborer's abode. Rapping at the door, Israel, pipe in mouth, begged the inmates for a light for his tobacco.

"What the devil," roared a voice from within; "knock up a man this time of night, to light your pipe? Begone!"

"You are lazy this morning, my friend," replied Israel; "it is daylight. Quick, give me a light. Don't you know your old friend? Shame! open the door."

In a moment a sleepy fellow appeared, let down the bar, and Israel, stalking into the dim room, piloted himself straight to the fire-place, raked away the cinders, lighted his tobacco, and vanished.

All was done in a flash. The man, stupid with sleep, had looked on bewildered. He reeled to the door; but dodging behind a pile of bricks, Israel had already hurried himself out of sight.

"Well done, my lion," was the hail he received from Paul, who, during his absence, had mustered as many pipes as possible, in order to communicate and multiply the fire.

Both boats now pulled to a favorable point of the principal pier of the harbor, crowded close up to a part of which lay one wing of the colliers.

The men began to murmur at persisting in an attempt impossible to be concealed much longer. They were afraid to venture on board the grim colliers, and go groping down into their hulls to fire them. It seemed like a voluntary entrance into dungeons and death.

murmurs.

"Follow me, all of you but ten by the boats," said Paul, without noticing their "And now, to put an end to all future burnings in America, by one mighty conflagration of shipping in England. Come on, lads! Pipes and matches in the van!"

He would have distributed the men so as simultaneously to fire different ships at different points, were it not that the lateness of the hour rendered such a course insanely hazardous. Stationing his party in front of one of the windward colliers, Paul and Israel sprang on board.

In a twinkling, they had broken open a boatswain's locker, and, with great bunches of oakum, fine and dry as tinder, had leaped into the steerage. Here, while Paul made a blaze, Israel ran to collect the tar-pots, which being presently

poured on the burning matches, oakum and wood, soon increased the flame.

66

"It is not a sure thing yet," said Paul, we must have a barrel of tar."

They searched about until they found one: knocked out the head and bottom, and stood it like a martyr in the midst of the flames. They then retreated up the forward hatchway, while volumes of smoke were belched from the after one. Not till this moment did Paul hear the cries of his men, warning him that the inhabitants were not only actually astir, but crowds were on their way to the pier.

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, (6 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.

Had it been possible to have landed a few hours earlier, not a ship nor a house could have escaped. But it was the lesson, not the loss, that told. As it was, enough damage had been done to demonstrate-as Paul had declared to the wise man in Paris-that the disasters caused by the wanton fires and assaults on the American coasts, could be easily brought home to the enemy's doors. Though, indeed, if the retaliators were headed by Paul Jones, the satisfaction would not be equal to the insult, being abated by the magnanimity of a chivalrous, however unprincipled a foe.

STEDINGK remained at the French

Court seven years after his return from America; seven years of almost uninterrupted luxury and charm, whose influence upon most men would have been effeminating. Moreover, he became as much a Frenchman as a Swede; and as we shall presently see, an unconquerable longing for France, although never tainting his loyalty, stood sometimes in the way of a graceful, ready decision in accepting Swedish honors and trusts, which the partiality of his sovereign heaped upon him. Gustavus well understood Stedingk's capacities. They were indeed of a high and brilliant order; but there had been a music in the parting words of Marie Antoinette, which remained long ringing in his ear, and he rose among the most prominent Swedes of the time, almost in spite of himself. Had he not possessed a nicer sense of honor and of loyal duty than some of his contemporaries, and had the Bourbons prospered in their legitimacy, we should have traced his career in a direction different from that in which we are now to follow him. Yielding at last to the wishes and to the counsel of Gustavus, he tore himself from the petit soupers of the queen, and from all those blandishments of her court, which, from his letters, must, indeed, have been seductive. "Remember, Monsieur de Stedingk," said Marie Antoinette, bidding him farewell,-"remember to depend upon me, and that no misfortune shall befall you!"-Poor queen! Six years after uttering this omnipotent assurance, she was dragged to the scaffold, through every vilest degradation.

Stedingk left France in 1787; and did not again revisit the scenes he loved so well, until, in command of the Swedish army and ambassador of the Swedish king, he repaired to Paris, to sign the gene

ral peace of 1814. Meantime, however, his fortunes were to lead through scenes equally momentous; he was to achieve victories, and sign treaties, which have made marks of greater meaning in Swedish annals, although less conspicuous upon the page of Europe. We must therefore return to 1787, and to Gustavus the Third, who was meditating his dishonorable aggressions upon an unoffending, unsuspecting neighbor. Stedingk had left the king almost an idol of his countrymen. He returned to find him detested. War was believed necessary to stimulate loyalty; and Russia, at war with the Porte, and her Polish frontier lined with troops (for Kosciusko was yet at large)—Russia, weak for the moment, was to be the victim. Without condescending to ordinary formalities, Gustavus secretly ordered his commanding-general in Finland to cross the frontier. The order was secret, because the constitution of Sweden forbade the king to make offensive war without the consent of the Diet. bad faith of Gustavus was practised therefore no less against Russia than against his own people, and the immediate consequence was revolt in his army, and entire defection in the House of Nobles. Thirty of the latter were arrested, and the submission of the remainder was only restored by a powerful demonstration on the part of the burghers and peasants. A story was current that the king had stooped to a trick to deceive his subjects; -that in order to persuade them that the war was a defensive war, he caused a troop of his own cavalry to dress themselves in Cossack costumes (supplied from his own fatal opera house) and to make a false attack upon his advanced guard. The story is questionable, but it served the turn of the conspirators, and chimes in singularly with the theatrical destiny

The

of the king. Whatever may be the truth of the anecdote, it is beyond question that a stratagem of some sort was resorted to.*

Stedingk rode at the head of his dragoons, second in command of the northern division. His superior officer, Hastfer, fell into disgrace, and Stedingk saved the campaign from ruin. Gustavus found himself beset with enemies from every quarter, and grateful for the trifling success achieved hy his favorite, we find him at various times writing ejaculations like these:-"A thousand thanks for your officers and their bravery. For yourself, my dear Stedingk, I embrace you with all my heart. You well know my friendship for you, and your glorious day at Porosalmi redoubles it. It is with extreme pleasure that I name you Grand Cross of the Sword;-you are the first of my soldiers to receive it. I add a pension warrant for a thousand dollars, but I pray you keep this a secret. Í would give you more, "mais le Béarnais est pauvre, although he has a good heart."

A little later again:-"Major Enchjelm arrived yesterday, my dear Stedingk, bringing your glorious news; news no longer of unlucky Stedingk, but of Stedingk the victorious, enriching my arsenal with trophies. To make you Major-General after such exploits is less to recompense you than to give you means to reap new glory. We have sung Te Deum for your victory, and all Sweden will sing it. But you are much too good and gallant, to give your prisoners their baggage. This is not the way the Russians themselves behave. They burn down my people's houses; they fire upon my flags of truce; they wantonly lay waste our fields, and their empress refuses to call me king.

*

* * It is time then to lay aside this knightly gallantry. But, after all, I should probably have done the like. If the Russians do not deserve it, it is none the less becoming in us."

Again, and yet later:-"You ask par

* Björnstierna, Tom. 1, p. 101.

+ Letter to Stedingk from the king (July, 14, 1790):

don for attacking the enemy with inferior forces; you know well, my dear Stedingk, that your actions render such apology extremely superfluous."

These were the current rewards of indefatigable and arduous exertion, as well as of consummate gallantry and skill; but the war was so faithless, and its results so little corresponding with its promise, that Gustavus wrote, as it were, in a penury of glory. His nobles revolted. Whole regiments went over to Catherine. The Danes invaded his southern shores; and a campaign, which no one doubted was to result in the fall of St. Petersburg, and the conquest of Livonia, was wellnigh confined to a few gallant, but profitless exploits of Stedingk.

At length, however, in the following year, Gustavus rallied; and, after three years of mortification, the contest was ended by a victory whose trophies were then unrivalled in the annals of war. The Swedish fleet had been driven from the gulf of Viborg, and the king, goaded to desperation, ordered his admiral (the brother of our Stedingk), to turn and face the pursuers. He declared his resolution to retreat no further. At Swensksund he exclaimed, "You shall give me a monument of victory or a tomb." The famous battle immediately followed. The Russians were much superior in force, but the trophies of the victorious Swedes were no less than fifty-three vessels of war, fourteen hundred guns, three hundred officers, and six thousand men, prisoners of war.t The best result of the victory, however, was peace. Gustavus, on leaving Stockholm, had publicly threatened to destroy every monument in Russia save one; he would spare, he said, the statue of Peter the Great, only to engrave his own name upon the pedestal. He returned, grateful that a lucky act of desperation enabled him again to look his people in the face.

The Empress Catherine, whom Stedingk was presently to know so well, confessed

592 guns.

17 do.

do.

1088 do.