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 ancho............