From an engraving by Lerpinière after a drawing by Fitler.
John Paul Jones had been working these two with his own hands, loading one with double shot to cut down the enemy’s mainmast, and the other with grape and canister to sweep away the crew on her deck.
In this desperate strait and when just in the act of ordering another nine-pounder brought from the off side that he might use it on the crew of the Serapis, his chief surgeon came up from below to announce that the water was coming in so fast as to float the wounded, and to ask that the ship be surrendered before she sank with all hands.
Turning on the surgeon with perfect self-possession, Captain Jones replied, as if astounded at the request:
“What, Doctor! Would you have me strike to a drop of water? Here, help me get this gun over.”
The doctor ran back to the wounded without delay, but Jones got the gun over, and he served it, too.
A squad of twenty marines under Colonel de Chamilard had fled from the quarter-deck, where they had been stationed to pick off the enemy’s gun crews.
The enemy made an attempt to board. John Paul Jones, with a few men, pikes in hand, stopped him. The moonlight was now bright, and seeing this man before them—this “pirate”—they quailed.
Meantime matters had been going from bad to worse below decks on the Bonhomme Richard. Not only was she steadily filling with water; the blazing wads from the enemy’s guns had set her afire in several places. These fires spread rapidly in spite of the efforts of some men sent below.
And then came the Alliance under Captain Landais. Sailing across the bow of the Bonhomme Richard and the stern of the Serapis, of course, as they lay together, he fired a broadside. The forecastle of the Bonhomme Richard received the greater part of the projectiles, and Midshipman Caswell was killed, while ten or a dozen seamen were killed and wounded. Private signals were set, and a score of voices yelled to the Alliance that they were firing into the wrong ship; but coming down on the broadside of the Bonhomme Richard, she fired again, so that the cry arose: