The ships are slowly closing, watchful as wrestlers striving for holds, the Richard edging down with the wind, the Serapis holding on.
“What ship is that?” hails Captain Pearson.
There is no reply.
“What ship is that?” comes the second hail.
The response is a storm of solid shot from the Richard’s flaming broadside.
As the Richard goes into action, Commodore Paul Jones swings his glass along the eastern horizon. The Pallas is going down the wind, in hot pursuit of the Countess of Scarboro, yawing and firing its bow-chaser as it runs; while far out to sea lies the traitor Landais, sulking or skulking, it matters little which, his coward topsails just visible against the moonlit sky-line.
With the wind aft, the Richard and the Serapis head northwest, both on the port tack. The moon makes the scene as light as day; the sea is as evenly smooth as a ballroom floor. The Richard goes over on the starboard tack, the Serapis holding as she is; the ships approach each other, the Richard keeping the weather-gage. For twenty minutes it is broadside and broadside as fast as men may handle sponge and rammer. As in the hour of the Drake and Ranger, the Yankees show smarter with their guns.
When the battle begins, the Richard has to its broadside three eighteen-pounders, as against the Serapis’ ten. With the first fire, two of the Richard’s three explode, killing half the men that serve them, and tearing open the main gun-deck immediately above. Lieutenant Mayrant, who has command in the gunroom where the three eighteens are mounted, reports the disaster to Commodore Paul Jones. The latter receives the news beamingly, as though it were the enemies’ eighteen-pounders, and not his own, that have been put out of action.
“Then we have only the twelve-pounders and the long nines to fight him with,” says Commodore Paul Jones. “It is now a thirty-two-gun ship against a forty-four. We shall beat him; and the honor will be the greater.” Then, observing Lieutenant Mayrant to be severely wounded in the head, he becomes concerned for that young gentleman. “Better go below to Brooks,” says he, “and have your wounds dressed.”
“I must get square for Portsea jail first,” replies Lieutenant Mayrant, who is of those exchanged ones enlisted at Nantes.
Lieutenant Dale, forward with the twelve-pounders, comes aft to ask about the exploded eight guns.
“They were rotten when the Frenchmen sold them to us,” says Lieutenant Dale bitterly.
“Ay!” responds Commodore Paul Jones. “I’d give half the prize money I shall get from yonder ship to have those Frenchmen here.” Meanwhile the Serapis—not yet a prize—is fiercely belching flame and smoke, while her shot tear the vitals out of the Richard.
The ships have been fighting half an hour—rough broadside work; the Richard with its lighter metal has had the worst of the barter. They have sailed, or rather drifted, a mile and a half, edging closer to one another as they forge slowly to the north and west.
The Serapis, being the livelier ship, has fore-reached on the Richard, and Captain Pearson sees the chance to luff across the latter’s bows. Having torn the Richard open with a raking broadside, Captain Pearson will then go clear around the Yankee, put the Serapis upon the starboard tack, and claim in his turn the weather-gage. It is a brilliant thought, and Captain Pearson pulls down his helm to execute it. Already he sees victory in his fingers. He is radiant; it will make him a Knight Commander of the Bath.
While Captain Pearson is manoeuvring for that title, the hot broadside dispute proceeds with unflagging fury. Only the Richard is beginning to bleed and gasp; those ten eighteen-pounders of the Serapis overmaster its weaker batteries. Also, by this time they are doubly weak; for more than half of the Richard’s twelve-pounders have been dismounted, and the balance are so jammed with wreckage and splinters as to forbid them being worked. Lieutenant Dale reports the crippled condition of the Richard’s broadside to Commodore Paul Jones, where the latter stands on the after-deck, in personal command of the French marines, whose captain has crept below with a hurt knee.
“We have but three effective twelve-pounders left,” says Lieutenant Dale.
“Three?” retorts Commodore Paul Jones, cheerfully. “Now, well-aimed and low, Dick, much good damage may be worked with three twelve-pounders.”
Lieutenant Dale wipes the blood and sweat and powder-stains from his face, salutes, and goes back to his three guns; while Commodore Paul Jones, alive to the enemy’s new manouvre, takes the wheel from the quartermaster.
To check the ambitious Pearson in his efforts to luff across his forefoot, Commodore Paul Jones pays off the Richard’s head a point. The check is not alone successful, but under the influence of that master hand, the Richard all but gets the Serapis’ head into chancery.
Being defeated in his luff, Captain Pearson next discovers that his brisk antagonist has put him in a dilemma. If he holds on, the Richard will run him down; he can already see the great, black cutwater rearing itself on high, as though to crush him and cut him in two. If he pays off the head of the Serapis, and avoids being run down, the Richard will still foul and grapple with him. Lieutenant Mayrant’s bandaged head shows above the Richard’s hammock nettings, as, with grappling irons ready for throwing, he musters a party of boarders—cutlass and pistol and pike—to have them in hand the moment the ships crash together. That title of Knight Commander of the Bath, and the star and garter that go with it, do not look so near at hand. Also, the Serapis, at this closer range, begins to feel the musket-fire from the Richard’s tops. One after another, three seamen are shot down at the wheel of the Serapis.
In this desperate emergency, Captain Pearson, good sailorman that he is, neither holds on nor pays off, but with everything thrown aback attempts to box-haul his ship. It may take the sticks out by the roots, but he must risk it. The chance is preferable to being either run down or boarded.
The Serapis is a new ship, fresh from the yards, and her spars and cordage stand the strain. Captain Pearson backs himself slowly out of the trap. He grazes fate so closely that the Richard, answering some sudden occult movement of the helm, runs its bowsprit over the larboard quarter of the Serapis, into its mizzen rigging.
“Stand by with those grappling irons!” shouts Commodore Paul Jones.
Lieutenant Mayrant throws the grapples with a seaman’s accuracy; they catch, as he means they shall, in the mizzen backstays of the Englishman. But the ships have too much way on. The Richard forges ahead; the Serapis, every sail flattened, backs free; the lines part. Before Lieutenant Mayrant can take his jolly boarders over the Richard’s bows, the ships have swung apart, and fifty feet of open water yawn between them.
The Serapis falls to leeward; at the end of the next five minutes both ships are back in their old positions, with their broadside guns—or what are left of them—at that furious work of hammer and tongs.
At this crashing business of broadsiding, the Richard has no chance, and Commodore Paul Jones—a smile on his dauntless lips, eyes bright and glancing like those of a child with a new toy—stands well aware of it. He must board the Englishman, or he is lost. As showing what Captain Pearson’s eighteen-pounders can do, the Richard’s starboard battery—being the one in action—shows nine of its twelve-pounders dismounted from their carriages; while, of the one hundred and forty-three officers and men who belong with the main gun-deck battery under Lieutenant Dale, eighty-seven lie dead and wounded. The gun-deck itself, a-litter with dismounted guns and shot-smashed carriages and tackle, is slippery with blood, and choked by a red clutter of dead and wounded sailors.
Commodore Paul Jones turns to his orderly,
Jack Downes. “Present my compliments to Lieutenant Dale,” says lie, “and ask him to step aft.”
Bloody, powder-grimed, Lieutenant Dale responds.
“Dick,” observes Commodore Paul Jones, “he’s too heavy for us. We must close with him; we must get hold of him. Bring what men you have to the spar-deck, and serve out the small arms for boarding.”
The breeze veers to the west, and freshens up a bit. This helps the Richard sooner than it does the Serapis; Commodore Paul Jones, having advantage of it, wears and makes directly for his enemy. This move, like a stroke of genius, brings him within one hundred feet of the Serapis, directly between it and the wind. It is his purpose to blanket the enemy, and steal the breeze from him. He succeeds; the Serapis loses way.
It is now the turn of Commodore Paul Jones to go across his enemy’s forefoot, and retort upon the Serapis that manouvre which Captain Pearson attempted against the Richard. But with this difference: Captain Pearson’s purpose was to rake; Commodore Paul Jones’ purpose is to board; for he lias now no guns wherewith to rake.
The Serapis is held as though in irons, canvas a-flap, by the blanket of the Richard’s broad sails. Slowly yet surely, like the coming of a doom, the Richard forges across the other’s head. The design of Commodore Paul Jones is to lay the Serapis aboard, lash ship to ship, and sweep the Englishman’s decks with his boarders. These, armed to the teeth, as ready for the rush as so many hunting dogs, Lieutenant Mayrant is holding in the waist.
The Richard is half its length across the bows of the Serapis—still helpless, sails a-droop! Suddenly, by a twist of the helm, Commodore Paul Jones broaches the Richard to on the opposite tack, and doubles down on his prey. It is the beginning of the end. The jib-boom of the Serapis runs in over the poop-deck of the Richard; a turn is instantly taken on it with a small hawser by Lieutenant Dale, who makes all fast to the Richard’s mizzen-mast. The ships swing closer and closer together; at last the two rasp broadside against broadside, the Richard still holding its way. As they grind along, the outboard fluke of the Serapis’ starboard anchor catches in the Richard’s mizzen-chains. First one, then another gives way; the third holds, and the ships lie together bow and stern. Commodore Paul Jones is over the side like a cat; the next moment he lashes the Serapis to the Richard, and the death-hug is at hand.
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.”
Master-at-arms John Burbank looks over the Richard’s side, and makes a discovery. The ship has settled three feet below its trim. Thereupon he loses his head, which was never a strong head, but somewhat thick, and addled:
“The ship is sinking!” he shouts; then, being a humanitarian, he tears off the orlop-hatch, and calls to the two hundred prisoners shut up below to save themselves.
At the invitation of Humanitarian Burbank, the prisoners rush up. Fifty of them have gained the deck when Commodore Paul Jones perceives them. Pulling a pistol from his belt, he charges forward.
“Who released these prisoners?” he demands.
“The ship is sinking, sir,” replies Humanitarian Burbank. “I released them to give them a chance for their lives.”
Eye ablaze, Commodore Paul Jones snaps his pistol in the face of Humanitarian Burbank. Fortunately for that philanthropist, the priming has been shaken out; while the flint throws off a shower of sparks, the pistol does not explode. Upon its failure to fire. Commodore Paul Jones clubs the heavy weapon, and fells Humanitarian Burbank to the deck. The latter comes to presently, to find himself disrated on the ship’s books, and his addled pate more addled than before. As Humanitarian Burbank falls to the deck, Commodore Paul Jones makes a dash for the prisoners, who, two abreast, are pushing up from the deck below.
“Under hatches with them!” he cries.
This rouses Midshipman Potter, who brings up a half dozen cutlass men, and those of the prisoners not yet on deck are held below. The orlop-hatch is again fitted to its place, and Commodore Paul Jones breathes freer. Two hundred prisoners loose about his decks is not what he most desires.
“Set them to the pumps, Dick,” he says, addressing Lieutenant Dale. “Give them plenty of work.” Then, to the fifty prisoners who gained the deck: “Now, my men, to the pumps, all of you! I’ll have no idlers about!”
The prisoners go to the pumps readily enough—all save a stubborn merchant captain, whose ship was captured by the Richard off the port of Leith.
“Don’t ye go a-nigh the pumps, mates!” sings out the stubborn one. “Let the damned Yankee pirate sink!”
“Obey the Commodore, sare!” pipes up little Pierre Gerard, presenting a pistol at the head of the mutineer. “Obey the Commodore, or I shoot, sare!”
The stubborn Scotch captain does not understand little Pierre’s broken English, but the pistol is easily construed. For reply, he makes a quick grab at the weapon. Little Pierre, not to be caught napping, shoots him promptly through the head. As the stubborn one drops lifeless, the little Breton wheels on Commodore Paul Jones, lays his hand on his heart, and makes an apologetic bow.
“I shoot heem, sare, to relieve you of a disagreeable duty,” says little Pierre.
The other prisoners are not unimpressed by the fate of the stubborn one, and set to work briskly, if not cheerfully, at the clanking pumps.
As Commodore Paul Jones reaches the quarterdeck, following the incident wherein Humanitarian Burbank performs, and the stubborn Scotch captain dies, the ensign-gaff of the Richard is shot away, and the virgin petticoat flag of the pretty New Hampshire girls trails overboard. This gives rise to a misunderstanding. Gunner Arthur Randall, missing the ensign, and his hopes being somewhat low at the time, calls out to the Englishman:
“Cease firing! We’ve surrendered!”
Captain Pearson, on the quarter-deck of the Serapis, hears the cry. There could have come no more welcome news! Captain Pearson would have heard gunner Randall if the latter had spoken in a whisper! Face aglow with joy, Captain Pearson hails the Richard:
“Do you surrender?” he demands.
Commodore Paul Jones leaps to the rail of the Richard, and sustains himself by one of the afterbraces.
“Surrender?” he repeats, his brow dark with rage. “Surrender? I would have you to know, sir, that we’ve just begun to fight!”
Back to the deck springs Commodore Paul Jones, while the face of Captain Pearson is stricken old and white. For the earliest time he realizes the desperate heart of that unconquerable one who has him in a death-grapple, and a premonition of his own defeat pierces his heart like a dagger of ice. As Commodore Paul Jones regains the deck, he observes Boatswain Jack Robinson who has waddled aft. The cloud of anger fades from his brow, and he breaks into a loud laugh that is tenfold worse than the cloud.
“Eh, Jack, old trump! What say you to quitting?” he cries.
“Why! as to surrenderin’, Commodore,” says Boatswain Jack Robinson, refreshing himself with a huge chew of tobacco, “I’m for sinkin’ alongside an’ seein’ ‘em damned first! Sink alongside, says I; an’ if the grapplin’ tackle holds, we’ll take ‘em with us to Davy Jones, d’ye see! An’ that’ll be a comfort!”
“There’s the heart of oak!” returns Commodore Paul Jones, in vast approval of Boatswain Jack Robinson’s turgid views; “and when we’re next ashore in New London, old shipmate, I’ll tell Polly all about it. Meanwhile, our ensign’s trailing astern. Set it aboard by the halyards, fish and splice the gaff, and put it back in its place. Give the Englishmen a sight of that red, white and blue flag, Jack; it takes the fight out of ‘em.”
“Ay, ay, sir!” responds Boatswain Jack Robinson, as he begins the task of recovering and replacing the ensign. “That flag does seem to let the whey out of a Britisher.”
This is gratuitous slander on the parts of both Commodore Paul Jones and Boatswain Jack Robinson; for those villified ones have been fighting for hours, and are still at it with the quenchless valor of so many mastiffs.
There is that at hand, however, that will daunt their iron courage and feed even their stout hearts to dismay. High up at the weather earring of the Richard’s main topsail yard, Midshipman Fanning has been faithfully practicing with hand-grenades at that inviting triangular hole, where the hatch-cover of the Serapis was shot-slewed to one side. It is not an easy mark, that black, three-cornered hole, and thus far Midshipman Fanning has missed. It is now that success crowns his work; a smoking, spitting hand-grenade goes cleanly through, and fetches up on the Serapis’s lower gun deck. The explosion instantly occurs; it is as though the fuse were carefully timed for it.
If this were all it would be bad enough, but worse comes with it. There are scores of cartridges cumbering the deck to the rear of the batteries; for the powder monkeys of the Serapis, earning their pay and allowances, have been bringing powder from the magazines much faster than the gunners can burn it in their eighteen-pounders. The exploding hand-grenade sets off this powder. There is a blinding sheet of flame; a report like smothered thunder; the deck of the Serapis is all but torn from its timbers! Fifty of the crew are killed or crippled, while the slewed hatch-cover is blown overboard. No trouble now to hit that yawning black hatchway. With such a target there can be no talk of missing, and Midshipman Fanning and gunner Gardner, from their high perch on the main topsail yard, fill the stomach of the Serapis with a bursting, death-dealing shower. And so the end comes tapping at the door.
Lieutenant Mayrant, with his boarding party, stands waiting the signal. Commodore Paul Jones notes the devastation wrought by Midshipman Fanning’s hand-grenades.
“Boarders away!” he cries.
Lieutenant Mayrant and his men go swarming over the hammock nettings of the Serapis, the red Indian port-fire, Anthony Jeremiah, among the foremost.
As Lieutenant Mayrant reaches the deck of the Serapis, an English sailor thrusts him through the thigh with a pike. Lieutenant Mayrant shoots the pikeman though the heart. The latter falls dead, pike rattling along the deck.
“Remember Portsea jail, lads!” shouts Lieutenant Mayrant, as he strides limpingly across the body of the dead pikeman. “Remember Port-sea jail!”
Nine in ten of the boarding party are of those ones exchanged at Nantes. With savage cries, they shout back, “Remember Portsea jail!” and the work of their vengeance is begun.
Commodore Paul Jones has his eyes on Lieutenant Mayrant and his boarders. His attention is claimed by orderly Jack Downes, who plucks him by the elbow.
“Beg pardon, sir!” says orderly Jack Downes. “Captain Landais with the Alliance.”
Sure enough, the Alliance for a second time has crept down upon them, unnoticed in the heat and absorbing fury of the fray. The consort ship is wearing across the Richard’s bows. What will Landais do? Does he come as friend or foe? The Frenchman has his answer ready, and pours a broadside into the Richard as he crosses. Then he sheers off, and again heads for the open ocean. That coward broadside kills and wounds Master’s Mate Caswell and seven men. Commodore Paul Jones is rigid with rage and wonder.
“The man is mad!” says Lieutenant Dale.
“I cannot understand!” returns Commodore Paul Jones. “There is still his crew! Why don’t they clap him in irons, or cut him down?”
There is a shout from the deck of the Serapis. Captain Pearson, his last hope gone, has struck his colors with his own hand. The shout is from the wounded Lieutenant Mayrant, who hails Lieutenant Dale.
“Stop the firing, sir,” cries Lieutenant May-rant, for the Richard’s top-men are still blazing away merrily. “He has struck his flag. Come on board, and take possession!”
Lieutenant Dale leaps to the deck of the beaten Serapis. He sends Captain Pearson aboard the Richard. Downcast, eye full of dejection, Captain Pearson approaches Commodore Paul Jones. “With bowed head, saying never a word, he tenders the conqueror his sheathed sword. Commodore Paul Jones takes it and gives it to Midshipman Potter, who is at his elbow.
“I accept your sword, Captain,” says Commodore Paul Jones. “And I bear testimony that you have worn it to the glory of the English navy.”
Captain Pearson makes no response. Bowed of head, mute of lip, he stands before Commodore Paul Jones, despair eating his heart.
Commodore Paul Jones goes aboard the beaten Serapis. “Cut free that sta’board anchor!” he cries. The piled dead and wounded are lifted aside, and that fatal anchor, which for two hours of blood has been as the backbone of battle, goes splashing into the ocean. The ships rock apart; as they separate, Commodore Paul Jones takes a sharp survey of the Richard. The survey brings little hope; his good ship that has fought so well for him lies in the water four smothering feet below its trim.
“There are eight feet of water in the hold,” replies Lieutenant Dale, whom he hails. “The pumps choke; there’s no chance to save the ship.”
Then arises a sudden rending and tearing aboard the Serapis; there is a great swish! and a snapping of cordage. It is the mainmast crashing to port, a tangle of ropes and spars.
“Beg pardon, sir,” says a voice at the elbow of Commodore Paul Jones. “I’d have had it down an hour ago, but there was neither wind nor swell to help me. I had to cut it in two shot by shot to drop it, sir.”
Commodore Paul Jones breaks into a smile. “Ah, yes; I remember, Mr. Lindthwait! I set you at that mainmast with the three long nines. I wish now that I’d given you another target. However, you did extremely well. It should teach you, too, my lad, that a nine is as good as an eighteen, if you’ll only go close enough. That’s it; there’s the whole secret of success in war. Be sure and go close enough, and you will conquer.”
Midshipman Lindthwait salutes respectfully, and lays away that golden rule of the battle art in his memory.
The removal of the Richard’s wounded is begun. The calm, windless sea assists; at last no one is left aboard the shot-pierced Richard but the dead.
Sixty lionhearts, who gave their lives for victory, are laid side by side on the deck. The petticoat flag flies proudly from the ensign gaff. Commodore Paul Jones, from the deck of the Serapis, watches the Richard to the last. The tears dim his sight, and he is driven more than once to dash them away; for a sailor loves his ship as though it were a woman.
The Richard settles by the head; the stern is lifted clear of the water. Then, as though seized by some impulse, the Richard, bows first, dives for the bottom of the sea. The last that is seen, as the stout old ship goes down, is the virgin petticoat flag of the pretty Portsmouth girls. Commodore Paul Jones, bare of head, tears blinding his eyes, waves a last farewell.
“Good-bye, my lads!” he cries. “And you, too, my Richard; good-bye!”
The Pallas comes up, breeze aft. The little ship throws its head into the wind, and Captain Cot-tineau hails Commodore Paul Jones.
“I have the honor, sir,” says Captain Cottineau, “to report the enemy’s surrender of his ship.”
Captain Cottineau points with his speaking-trumpet to the Countess of Scarboro a furlong astern, the stars and stripes above the Union Jack.
Commodore Paul Jones congratulates Captain Cottineau, and tells him to make sail for Dunkirk with his prize. Captain Cottineau, observing the helpless Serapis, its deck a jungle of cordage and broken timbers, replies that if Commodore Paul Jones doesn’t mind he’d sooner stand by. Commodore Paul Jones doesn’t mind, and so Captain Cottineau, with the Pallas and the captured Scarboro stands by. The loyalty of Captain Cottineau flushes the bronzed cheek of Commodore Paul Jones. It is a change from the villain Landais! Ah, yes! Landais! The brow of Commodore Paul Jones turns black with anger; for a moment he forgot the scoundrel. He runs his glass along the horizon to seaward. There is no sign of the Alliance. Long ago the traitor Landais turned his recreant bows for France.
An off-shore gale springs up; adrift and helpless, the Serapis is carried seventy miles towards the coast of Norway. This is fortunate; it carries the ship outside the search of those twenty frigates and ships of the line, which are already furiously ransacking the English coast in quest of Commodore Paul Jones.
The wind veers to the southwest, and blows a hurricane. The Serapis is all but thrown upon the coast of Denmark, and has work to keep afloat. With one hundred and six wounded, and the dead who went down with the Richard, Commodore Paul Jones is short of hands to work his ship. At the best, no more than one hundred and fifty are fit for duty. In the end the battered Serapis makes the Texel, and a common sigh of relief goes up from those seven hundred and twelve souls—crew and wounded and prisoners—who are aboard the ship.
And now Commodore Paul Jones must lay aside his sword for chicane, abandon his guns in favor of diplomacy. His anchors are hardly down in Dutch mud, before Sir Joseph Yorke, English Ambassador to Holland, demands the Serapis from the Dutch authorities. Also, he declares that they must arrest Commodore Paul Jones “as a rebel and a pirate.”
The Dutch display a wish to argue the case with Sir Joseph, while Commodore Paul Jones double-shots his guns and runs them out; for much in the way of repairs has been effected aboard the Serapis, and although it can’t sail it can fight.
Sir Joseph, at the grinning insolence of the Serapis’ broadsides—ports triced up and muzzles showing—almost falls in an apoplectic fit. Purple as to face, he sends a second time to the Dutch, to learn whether or no he is to have the Serapis and the rebel and pirate Paul Jones.
For five days the Dutch drink beer, smoke pipes, and think the matter over. Then they tell Sir Joseph that, while they don’t know what to call Commodore Paul Jones, they have decided not to call him a pirate. Rebel, he may be; but in that role of rebel King George and Sir Joseph must catch him for themselves. The most the Dutch will do is order the Serapis to leave the Texel. At this the empurpled Sir Joseph becomes more empurpled than ever. It is the best he can get, however; and since, during the night, a fleet of British men of war, hearing of the whereabouts of Commodore Paul Jones, have invested the mouth of the Helder and are waiting for him to come out, he begins to be a trifle comforted. If the Dutch will but drive the “rebel” from the port, it should do nicely; the English fleet outside will snap him up at a mouthful.
Commodore Paul Jones refuses to be driven out. He sits stubbornly by his anchors, decks cleared, guns shotted, boarding nettings up—an insult to the purple Sir Joseph and a frowning defiance to the Dutch! The Dutch and Sir Joseph look at him, and then at each other. They agree that he is either the most exasperating of rebels, or the most insolent of pirates, or the most impertinent of guests, according to their various standpoints.
Meanwhile, the French Ambassador is bestirring himself. He makes a stealthy visit to Commodore Paul Jones. The French king has sent him, post-haste, a commission as Captain in the French marine. The French Ambassador tenders the commission. Upon accepting it, Commodore Paul Jones can run up the French flag. The Dutch will respect the tri-color, and there will come no more orders for the Serapis to quit the Texel.
Commodore Paul Jones declines the French commission. Neither will he run up the French flag. “I am an officer of the American Navy,” says he, “and the French tri-color no more belongs at my masthead than at General Washington’s headquarters. I shall stand or fall by the Stars and Stripes. Also, here at the Texel I stay, until I’m ready to leave; that I say in the teeth of Dutchman and Englishman alike.”
When this hardy note goes ashore, the Dutch look solemn, Sir Joseph retires with the gout, while the English outside the mouth of the Hel-der, stand oft and on, gnashing their iron teeth.