But Captain Jones thought differently.
“Don’t sink her!” he yelled to gunner Starbuck, above the din of battle. “I want to take her alive, instead of destroying her; for it will be much more to our advantage if we carry her as a visible prize into a French port.”
“All right, Cap’n!” shouted his men. “We’ll cripple her aloft!”
They now fired as the muzzles rose, and, so terrific were their broadsides, that the fore and main topsail-yards came tumbling across the starboard quarter, in a tangle of ropes, sails, and rigging.
“Rake her! Rake her!” shouted Jones to his men.
The Ranger luffed and crossed the stern of the Drake with the purpose of spanking a full broadside down her decks. The British boat was badly crippled and had lost steering way.
But, before the well-aimed guns belched another destructive volley into the shattered Englishman, a white flag went aloft, and a voice came: “Hold your fire. We surrender!” The Drake was a prisoner-of-war.
Thus Paul Jones had won a notable victory, and thus he had proved that the British were not invincible, and could be defeated, upon the sea, by their own cousins, as readily as upon the land.
When the Ranger lay in the harbor of Brest, a few days later, with the Drake alongside, boats crowded about in order to view the vessel which had captured another,—larger than herself. And, as the Ranger had taken three merchant ships on the way to the coast of France, the black eyes of the natives shone with beady lustre as they gazed upon the graceful hull of the victorious sloop-of-war from Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
“See Monsieur Jones,” said they, as they nudged each other. “Voilà! Here is a man who is better than our own sailors. Look at this American sea-devil!”