The steady and uninterrupted broadside of the Serapis had now silenced every gun on the Bon Homme Richard, except two small nine-pounders on the spar deck.
“But there’s another gun on the quarter-deck, my lads,” cried Paul Jones, “and she’s not so big we can’t haul her over.”
At this the men rallied with a cheer, and as quick as thought the gun was dragged across the deck, Paul Jones himself helping.
“Now we will make play on her mainmast, boys,” said he, and, pointing the gun himself, a shot whizzed out and struck the Serapis’s mainmast, fair and square. Her rigging had caught fire, and the masts, being painted white, were plainly visible against the background of fire and smoke.
“A good shot!” shouted the men.
The shot had not been large enough to shatter the great spar, but half a dozen others following caused it to weaken plainly.
And so, with three nine-pounders against the twenty great guns and thirty small ones of the Serapis, Paul Jones maintained the honor of the American flag, and gave no sign of surrender.
The American tops, though, were well served, and Paul Jones saw that the decks of the Serapis were being swept by the musketry fire of the Bon Homme Richard, which was but little injured aloft, although her hull was almost a wreck. He could see on the deck of the Serapis the tall figure of Captain Pearson, and, although men were falling at every moment around him, he seemed to possess a charmed life. Besides small arms, the Americans in the Bon Homme Richard’s tops had hand grenades, which they threw on the Serapis’s decks with unerring aim. But, although the decks were swept, the frigate’s batteries were uninjured, her hull was sound, and she worked beautifully in the light breeze that blew fitfully. Meaning, therefore, to rake the Bon Homme Richard, she worked slowly past, keeping her luff, intending to fall broadside off and cross the Bon Homme Richard’s forefoot. But there was not sea room enough, and the Serapis, answering her helm perfectly, came up to the wind again, to keep from fouling her adversary. This movement brought the ships in line, and, the Serapis losing headway, the Bon Homme Richard’s jib boom touched her; so the two ships lay for a minute in this singular position, where neither could fire a gun.
It was then about eight o’clock. The moon, which was rising, passed into a cloud, and a dense mass of sulphurous smoke enveloped both ships. Not a gun was fired for several minutes, and a strange and awful silence suddenly followed the frightful uproar of battle.
In the midst of the darkness and silence a voice shouted from the stern of the Serapis: