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.