commodore paul jones drops overboard his cocked hat. orderly jack downes rushes into the cabin and gets another. returning, he offers it to commodore paul jones, who waves it away with a laugh.
“chuck it through the skylight, jack,” he says; “i’ll fight this out in my scalp.” then, glancing forward at the sailors, naked to the waist: “if it were not for the looks of the thing, i’d off coat and shirt, and fight in the buff like yonder gallant hearties.”
there is a sudden smashing of the richard’s bulwarks, a splintering of spars; a sleet of shot, grape and solid and bar, tears through the ship! in the wake of that hail of iron comes the thunder of the guns—loud and close aboard! commodore paul jones looks about in angry wonder; that broadside was not from the serapis!
“it’s the alliance!” cries lieutenant dale, rushing aft. “landais is firing on us!”
not half a cable-length away lies the alliance, head to the wind, topsails back, half hidden in a curling smother of powder-smoke. there comes but the one broadside. even as commodore paul jones looks, the traitor’s head pays slowly off; a moment later the sails belly and fill, and the alliance is running seaward before the wind. commodore paul jones grits out a curse.
“landais! was ever another such a villain out of hell!”
the villain landais makes off. there is no time for maledictions; besides, a court-martial will come later for that miscreant. just now captain pearson, with his serapis, claims the attention of commodore paul jones.
the tackle takes the strain; the lashings, and that fortunate starboard anchor of the serapis, hold the ships together. captain pearson sees the peril, and the way to free himself.
“cut away that sta’board anchor!” he cries. then, as a seaman armed with a hatchet springs forward, he continues: “the ring-stopper, man! cut the shank-painter and the ring-stopper; let the anchor go!”
commodore paul jones snatches a firelock from one of the agitated french marines. steadying himself against a backstay, he raises the weapon to his shoulder and fires. the ball goes crashing through the seaman’s head as he raises his hatchet to cut free the anchor. another leaps forward and grasps the hatchet. seizing a second firelock, commodore paul jones stretches him across the anchor’s shank, where he lies clutching and groaning and bleeding his life away. as the second man goes down, those nearest fall back. that fatal starboard anchor is a death-trap; they want none of it! commodore paul jones, alert as a wildcat and as bent for blood, keeps grim watch, firelock in fist, at the backstay.
“i turned those hitches with my own hands,” says he; “and i’ll shoot down any englishman who meddles with them.”
the french marines, despite the hardy example of commodore paul jones, are in a panic. their captain cammillard is wounded, and has retired below. now their two lieutenants are gone. besides, of the more than one hundred to go into the fight, no more than twenty-five remain. these, nerve-shattered and deeming all as lost, are fallen into disorder and dismay. the centuries have taught them to fear these sullen english. the lesson has come down to them in the blood of their fathers who fought at crécy, poitiers, blenheim, ramillies, and malplaquet that these bulldog islanders are unconquerable! panic grasps them at the moment of all moments when commodore paul jones requires them most.
seeing them thus shaken and beaten in their hearts, commodore paul jones—who knows frenchmen in their impulses as he knows his own face in a glass—adopts the theatrical. he rushes into their midst, thundering:
“courage, my friends! what a day for france is this! we have these dogs of english at our mercy! courage but a little while, my friends, and the day is ours! oh, what a day for france!” as adding éclat to that day for france, commodore paul jones snatches a third firelock from the nearest marine, and shoots down a third briton who, hatchet upraised, is rushing upon that detaining anchor. following this exploit, he wheels again upon those wavering marines, and by way of raising their spirits pours forth in french such a cataract of curses upon all englishmen and english things that it fairly exhausts the imagination of his hearers to keep abreast of it.
pierre gerard, the little breton sailor who, with jack downes, acts as orderly to commodore paul jones, is swept off his feet in admiration of his young commander’s fire and profane fluency. little pierre takes fire in his turn.
“see!” he cries, addressing jack downes, who being from new hampshire understands never a word of pierre’s french, albeit he takes it in, open-mouthed, like spring water; “see! he springs among them like a tiger among calves! ah, they respond to him! yes, in an instant he arouses their courage! they look upon him—him, who has bravery without end! name of god! to see him is to become a hero!”
it is as the excitable little pierre recounts. the french marines, lately so cowed, look upon commodore paul jones to become heroes. with shouts and cries they crowd about him valorously. he directs their fire against the english, who man the long-nines in the open waist of the serapis. the fire of the recovered frenchmen drives those english from their guns. thereupon the french go wild with a fierce joy, and are all for boarding the serapis. commodore paul jones has as much trouble restraining them from rushing forward as he had but a moment before to keep them from falling back.
captain pearson has never taken his eyes from that fatal starboard anchor, holding him fast to the richard. there it lies, his own anchor—the key-stone to the arch of his ruin! if it take every english life aboard the serapis, it must be cut away! he orders four men forward in a body, to cut shank-painter and ring-stopper.
there comes an instant volley from the recovered french marines, led by commodore paul jones, who fires with them. before that withering volley the four hatchet-men fall in a crumpled, bloody heap. the fatal anchor still holds; the ships grind side by side.
captain pearson orders forward more men, and still more men, to cut away that anchor, which is as an anchor of death, tying him broadside and broadside to destruction. fourteen men die, one across the other, under the fire of commodore paul jones and his french marines—each of the latter being now a volcano of fiery valor! the last to perish is lieutenant popplewill; he dies honorably at the hands of commodore paul jones himself, who sends a musket ball through the high heart of the young dreadnought just as he reaches those fatal fastenings.
while this labor of death and bloody slaughter goes on above, the smashing work of the serapis’ eighteen-pounders has not ceased between decks. as the two ships come together, the lower-tier gun crews of the serapis are shifted from the port to the starboard batteries. they attempt to run out the guns, and are withstood by the port-lids, which refuse to be triced up, the richard grinding them so hard and close as to hold them fast.
“what!” cries lieutenant wright, who has command of the serapis’ eighteen-pounders; “the ports won’t open? open them with your round-shot, then, my hearties! fire!”
and so the broadside of the serapis is fired through its own planks and timbers, to open a way to the richard.
“there!” cries lieutenant wright exultantly, “that should give your guns a chance to breathe, my bucks! now show us how fast you can send your iron aboard the yankee!”
the english broadside men respond with such goodwill that they literally cut the richard in two between decks with their tempest of solid eighteen-pound shot.
while this smashing battery work goes forward, hammer and anvil, the serapis’ twelve-pounders are tearing and rending the richard’s upper decks, piling them in ruins. every twelve-pounder belonging to the richard is rendered dumb. only three long-nines remain in service. these are mounted on the quarter-deck, under the eye of commodore paul jones.
“suppose, mr. lindthwait, you train them on the enemy’s mainmast!” he observes to the midshipman, under whose command he places the three long-nines. “try for his mainmast, young man! it will be good gunnery practise for you; and should you cut the stick in two, so much the better.”
midshipman lindthwait serves his trio of long nines with so much relish and vivacious accuracy that he soon has the mainmast of the serapis cut half away. leaving him to his task, commodore paul jones again takes his french marines in hand, uplifts their souls with a fresh torrent of anti-english vituperation, and keeps them to the business of clearing the enemy’s deck.
one of the nine-pound shot of the industrious lindthwait, flying low, strikes the main hatch of the serapis, and slews the hatch cover to one side. it leaves a triangular opening, eighteen inches on its longish side, at one corner of the hatch. commodore paul jones has his hawklike eye on it instantly. he points it out to midshipman fanning and gunner henry gardner.
“there’s your chance, my lads!” he cries. “sharp’s the word now! lay aloft on the main topsail yard, with a bucketful of hand-grenades, and see if you can’t chuck one into her belly. a few hand-grenades, exploding among their eighteen-pounders below decks, would go far towards showing these english the error of their ways.”
off skurry midshipman fanning and gunner gardner, with three sailors close behind. a moment later they are racing up the shrouds like monkeys, two ratlins at a time. buckets of hand-grenades go with them, while lieutenant stack rigs a whip to the maintop to send them up a fresh supply.
the five lie out on the main topsail yard, like a quintette of squirrels, midshipman fanning, a bright lad from new london, getting the place of honor at the earring. the three sailors pass the hand-grenades, gunner gardner fires the fuse with his slow match, while midshipman fanning, perched at the farthest end of the yard, hurls them at that eighteen-inch triangle, where the hatch cover of the serapis has been shifted.
sixty feet below the hand-grenade quintette, commodore paul jones is again dealing out profane encouragement to his marines, for their ardor sensibly slackens the moment he takes his eye off them. they do good work, however—these frenchmen! under their fire the upper deck of the serapis becomes a slaughter-pen. one after another, seven men are shot down at the englishman’s wheel. this does not affect the serapis; since, locked together in the death grapple, both ships are adrift, and have paid no attention to their helms for twenty minutes. still, it does the frenchmen good to shoot down those wheelmen. also, it mortifies the pride of the english; for to be unable to stay at one’s own wheel is in its way a disgrace.
while commodore paul jones is uplifting his frenchmen, and improving their small-arm practice, orderly jack downes, who has been forward to lieutenant dale with an order, comes rushing aft.
“lieutenant dale, sir, reports six feet of water in our hold; and coming in fast, sir!”
orderly jack downes touches his forelock, face as stolid aw a statue’s, and not at all as though he has just reported the ship to be sinking. commodore paul jones smiles approval on stolid jack downes; he likes coolness and self-command. before he can speak, lieutenant mayrant comes aft to say that the richard is on fire.
“catches from the enemy’s wadding,” says lieutenant mayrant. “for you must understand, sir, that when the enemy’s eighteen-pounders are run out, their muzzles pierce through the shot-holes in our sides—we lay that close! as it is, they’ve set us all ablaze.”
“but you’ve got the flames in hand?” commodore paul jones puts the question confidently. he is sure that lieutenant mayrant wouldn’t be by his side at that moment unless the fire is under command.
“lieutenant stack, with ten men to pass the buckets, sir, are attending to it. it’s quite easy, the water in our hold being so deep. they have but to dip it up and throw it on the fire.”
“good!” exclaimed commodore paul jones. “now that’s what i call making one hand wash the other. we put out the flames that are eating us up with the water that is sinking us.”
