Once more the hail came over the water, sharper, more peremptorily. "This is His Maj——"
By this time Paul Jones had the Bon Homme Richard where he wanted her; he gave a low signal to Richard Dale, who commanded the Richard's gun-deck, and Lieutenant Dale cried, "Blow your matches, boys!" At his words the gunners touched a tiny flame to the touch-hole of each big gun on the port side, and a heavy broadside was poured into the enemy ship.
But the British captain was not far behind. Before the echoes had died out his own guns spat fire with a roar, and great clouds of smoke drifted up and began to envelope the combatants. Following this the discharges came fast and furious, both the American and British crews working their guns with the utmost vigor.
From the beginning the fight seemed to go against the Bon Homme Richard. There was hardly any stage of the three and a half hours' desperate combat at which Paul Jones would not have been excused in lowering his flag—had he not been the prodigious fighter he was. Hardly had the battle well begun when two of the rust-pitted old 18-pounders exploded, killing the men working them and rendering the whole battery useless for the rest of the action.
Perceiving this, and anxious to take advantage of the loss of defense on the lower gun-deck resulting, Captain Pearson attempted again to pass the bow of the Richard and rake her. On the other hand, Commodore Jones's whole effort was to close with the enemy and board him, for he knew now that it was only a question of time, if he did not succeed, before his old shell of a vessel would be sunk.
After the broadsiding had continued with unremitting fury for almost an hour, Captain Pearson made another effort to get across the Richard's bow. But he miscalculated, and the two vessels were brought so close together that the Richard ran into her enemy's weather quarter. Paul Jones was quick to make his first attempt to board, but the ships swung apart before the operation could be completed, and those who had reached the Serapis's rail had to leap back to save themselves from capture.
The Bon Homme Richard was now in a sad condition. Little of her starboard battery was left, and of the 140 odd officers and men stationed at the main gun-deck battery at the beginning, over eighty had been killed or wounded. Numerous holes low in the hull, made by the big balls of the Serapis's 18-pound guns, were letting in water at an alarming rate. Time and time again did the ship's carpenter and his mate stop these up, only to have new holes splinter through with a sickening sound.
It is no wonder that Captain Pearson, knowing his enemy was in great distress, thought that, when the crew of the other ship had failed to board him, Commodore Jones would be ready to surrender.
"Has your ship struck?" he called through his trumpet.
And then Paul Jones made his famous reply: