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.”