"What ship are you?" he shouted.
"I can't hear what you say," replied Jones, who wanted to get nearer.
That made the British captain suspicious. Nearer and nearer the two vessels drew on to each other.
"Hah," he said, "it is probably Paul Jones. If so there is hot work ahead."
Again the Serapis sent a hail.
"What ship is that? Answer immediately, or I shall be obliged to fire into you."
Paul Jones answered this time - with a broadside - and a terrible battle began. The carnage was awful. The decks were soon cumbered with dead and dying. The two ships were so near that the muzzles of the guns almost touched each other. Both were soon riddled with shot, and leaking so that the pumps could hardly keep pace with rising water. Still the men fought on.
Jones was everywhere, firing guns himself, encouraging his men, cheering them with his voice and his example. "The commodore had but to look at a man to make him brave," said a Frenchman, who was there. "Such was the power of one heart that knew no fear."
The sun went down over the green fields of England, and the great red harvest moon came up. Still through the calm moonlit night the guns thundered, and a heavy cloud of smoke hung over the sea. Two of the rotten old guns on the Bonhomme Richard had burst at the first charge, killing and wounding the gunners; others were soon utterly useless. For a minute not one could be fired, and the Captain of the Serapis thought that the Americans were beaten.
"Have you struck?" he shouted, through the smoke of the battle.