“Put the prisoners to the pumps. They are doubtless so terror-stricken that they are at their wits’ end, and a determined man like you, Dale, can manage the whole hundred of them”—for there were not less than a hundred in the hold.
Dale was the very man to carry out this audacious order. He instantly ran below, and, just as Paul Jones had foreseen, the bold promptness of one determined officer, armed and resolute, cowed them all. They went to work at the pumps, when, if they had retained their senses, they might have stepped on board the Serapis.
In a minute or two more Dale was again on deck, and, going up to the commodore, said calmly but in a loud voice, so that the men around could hear him:
“She’s not sinking, sir. I have put that coward of a carpenter to work with an honest man to watch him, and everything will shortly be right.”
This very much reassured the men, who had no idea of the terrible destruction below.
Within a few minutes Danny Dixon came up to the young lieutenant with a solemn face.
“Mr. Dale, please, sir,” he said, “I can’t git no more powder. The gangway to the powder room is all chock-a-block, and the sentinels won’t let me pass. I ain’t afeerd o’ the fire, though its blazin’ pretty close to the magazine. I ain’t afeerd o’ that, sir, but I can’t—”
Before Danny had finished speaking Dale saw a dozen strange faces crowding up the companion way. In an instant the truth flashed upon him—some of the prisoners had escaped from the hold. Drawing his pistol, he marched them immediately back, where again they went to work at the pumps.
Meanwhile numbers of the men were called from their quarters to put out the fire in the magazine. Upon going to it, with Danny Dixon following at his heels, Dale found that the reason the sentinels would not let any one pass to the magazine was on account of the number of strange faces, which they, too, knew to be the prisoners, crowding around, and who might have easily captured the magazine. But Dale, animated by the spirit of his commander, with two or three resolute men like himself kept down both the fire and the water in the hold. As a matter of fact, the Bon Homme Richard was on fire continuously almost from the very beginning of the engagement.
