"The English have got the ship!" came from every side in wild confusion.
"This is the Richard," shouted Jones at the top of his voice at the first fire. "Hold your fire! Show the private signals there!" he cried hastily to the faithful Brooks; but the Alliance paid no attention to these and other warning cries. As the three broadsides were delivered by the American frigate, the men, in their perfectly excusable terror at this treacherous blow in the back, actually began to break from their quarters and leave the guns. That was never to be thought of under any circumstances.
"Back!" shouted Jones, promptly. "Back to your quarters, every mother's son of you! Shoot the first man that flinches from the guns!" Dale and De Weibert and the midshipman gallantly seconded his orders; and the Alliance, sailing away toward the Pallas and delivering no more shot upon them, the conflict was resumed. That the men could be got to the guns again after this frightfully unsettling attack, was a supreme testimony to the quality of their officers, and to their own as well.
Indeed, upon the part of the Serapis the battle had never been intermitted. The long eighteens of her main battery had simply silenced and dismounted, knocked to pieces, and put out of action nearly all the twelves on the main-deck of the Richard. The starboard side of the American had been beaten in, and the port side beaten out by the heavy fire at close range until the British were literally firing through a hole; the shot hurtling through the air and falling harmlessly in the water far on the farther side. The underpinning of the upper decks of the ship was of course nearly knocked to pieces. Why the decks did not fall in and the whole thing collapse was a mystery.
There had been no fighting at all on the berth-deck since the bursting of the three guns, but poor little Payne had hung grimly to his post. One by one the men of the guarding squad had been picked off by stray shot until there were none left but he and the master-at-arms. Several shot from the British had entered below the water-line of the Richard, and she was making water fast. There was nearly four feet of water in the hold then, and it was rising. The prisoners below were in a wild state of terror. Imprecations, curses, appeals, had come up through the gratings over the hatchway, to which the young man had turned a deaf year.
To the other dangers of the battle, fire now added its devastating touch. In fact, both ships were aflame in several places. The burning gun-wads had lodged in the chains and other inflammable positions, and writhing, tossing, serpent-like torches threw their hot light over the scene of terror. As the smoke drifted down the hatchway, the prisoners in the hold could stand it no longer. There was a sudden rush below toward the opening; the gratings were splintered and broken by the thrust of a piece of timber; a head or two appeared in the clear; hands clutched at the combings.
"Back!" shouted Payne, trying to steady his boyish voice.
"No! D--n your baby face!" shouted the first prisoner, furiously, clutching desperately at the combing, while he was being lifted up in the arms of the men below. "D'ye think we'll stay here and be drowned like bloody rats in a hole!"
With white lips and a sinking heart the boy thrust his pistol full into the man's face, and with a trembling finger pulled the trigger. He did the like to the next man with a second pistol. To seize the musket of a dead marine and point it at the third, was the work of a second. Awed by this resolution and the promptitude of his action, the other prisoners fell back for the time. The sweat stood out on the forehead of the young midshipman. He had shot a man--two men--in cold blood! It seemed like murder. But he had done his duty. The words of the captain rang in his ear: "Keep them down!"
It was hot--hot as hell--on the berth-deck. The smoke poured in thick, suffocating clouds between decks. The wavering reflections from the flames on every side accentuated the horror. Bands of men flitted by ghost-like, here and there, with buckets of water, striving to fight the flames; lances of light leaped across the deck from the protruding muzzles of the guns on the Serapis, piercing the gloomy darkness with angry flashes. Bullets, grape, splinters of timber, solid shot, bits of torn humanity, whistled past his head. He was wild, crazy; the hugeness of the tragedy about him oppressed him direfully. There was a weight in his bosom, a choking in his throat; the bitter, acrid taste of the burned powder was in his mouth; the sickening smell of reeking blood pervaded his being; he longed to throw down his weapon and fly, anywhere, to get a respite from the infernal demand upon him. But he was a sailor, the son of a race of fighters. He held on. The deep roar of the guns above him told him that the battle was still going on. Suddenly out of the smoke appeared the burly form of the carpenter, wounded, blotched with red and gray, leaping forward, crying in terror-stricken accents,--