A cock, escaped from a coop, having mounted a gun-slide, on the “Saratoga,” stretched his neck, flapped his wings, and crowed!
His defiance of the British was answered with a rousing cheer—the strain was broken—the depressed revived!
It was an omen presaging Victory, the Americans said.
Commodore Macdonough, himself, fired the first gun from the flagship. Death shrieked through the air, ugly and resistless; the ball fairly mowed down the men as it whizzed the entire deck-length of the “Confiance.”
The men on the Saratoga shivered as the smoke lifted and they saw the devastation and the gallant enemy advance, without reply. Then at the distance of a quarter of a mile Captain Downie anchored and the other British vessels came to.
The Americans continued to pound away—still the “Confiance” did not respond until secured. Then, with startling suddenness she seemed to point all her guns at the “Saratoga” and become a solid sheet of flame. The air rocked with the blazing of the cannon.
This broadside, from point-blank range, carried destruction to its target. It came terribly, and in turn sang its death-song to the Americans through the morning air.
When the eddying smoke cleared it seemed to Commodore Macdonough that he saw half his crew lying on the deck, stunned, wounded or killed by this one discharge—forty was the actual number, out of his two hundred and twelve men. Hammocks were cut to pieces in the netting and bodies cumbered the deck. But presently the “Saratoga” recovered and resumed her animated fire, steady as ever.
Fifteen minutes after the enemy anchored an English vessel was captured, and on Crab Island where there was a hospital and a battery of one gun, the “invalids” took a second.
Sometimes the galleys of the two navies would lie within a boat’s hook of each other and the sailors, not liking such close quarters, would rise from the sweeps, ready to spring into the water. It was close and hot—this little naval battle—but gradually, as the guns were injured, the cannonading ceased.