Without further parley, broadside answers broadside and the battle is on.
Both ships head north, the Ranger having the weather-gage. This last gives Captain Paul Jones the nautical upperhand. In ship-fighting, the weather-gage is equivalent to an underhold in wrestling.
There is a swell on, and the two ships roll heavily. They shape their course side by side, keeping within musket-reach of each other. The breeze is on the starboard quarter, and a little faster than the ships. By this good luck, the smoke of the broadsides is sent drifting ahead, and the line of sight between the ships kept free. On they crawl, broadside talking to broadside; only the Americans are smarter with their guns, and fire three to the Drake’s two.
Twilight now invests the scene in gray, as the sun sinks behind the close, dark Irish headlands to the west. Night, cloudless and serene, comes down; the round, full moon shines out, and its mild rays mingle and merge with the angry glare of the battle-lanterns. Captain Paul Jones from his narrow quarterdeck watches the Drake through his night glass.
“Good! Very good!” he murmurs, as the Drake’s foremast is splintered by a round shot. Then, to the Salem man who has the wheel: “Bring us a little closer, Mr. Sargent; a little closer in, if you please.”
Captain Paul Jones again rivets his glass upon the Drake. An exclamation escapes him. It comes upon him that his gunners are having advantage of the roll of the ships, and time their broadsides so as to catch the Drake as, reeling to port, she brings up her starboard side. By this plausible manouvre, those sagacious ones who train the Ranger’s guns are sending shot after shot through and through the Drake, between wind and water, half of them indeed below the water-line. Captain Paul Jones, through his glass, makes out the black round shot-holes; they show as thick as cloves in the rind of a Christmas ham.
“Why!” he exclaims, “this doesn’t match my book! I must put a stopper on such work.”
Shutting up his glass, Captain Paul Jones leaps from the after flush-deck down among his sailors. Drunk with blood, grimed of powder, naked to the waist, the black glory of battle in their hearts, they merrily work their guns. It is as he beheld from the after-deck. The Ranger rolls to port as the Drake, all dripping, is fetching up her starboard side.
“Fire!” cries the master-gunner, and “Fire!” runs the word along the battery.
The long nines respond with flame and bellow!