It was now about half past ten o’clock. The pallid moon showed the whole dreadful scene. The Pallas, which had very gallantly made the Countess of Scarborough haul down her colors, had her hands full transferring the prisoners from the British ship. As the Alliance, which had been sailing around the combatants and had fired another broadside into the Bon Homme Richard, passed the Pallas, Captain Cottineau begged Landais to go to the assistance of the gallant Bon Homme Richard.
Captain Landais did indeed approach the Bon Homme Richard, but it was only to fire one last broadside, that did as much harm to the American as to the British ship. After that he hauled off and did no more damage.
Then the mainmast of the Serapis began to totter, and it was seen that it must soon go by the board. The small nine-pounders, worked under Paul Jones’s own eye, the shower of skillfully thrown hand grenades, and the sharpshooters in the Bon Homme Richard’s tops, made the deck of the Serapis so hot that scarcely a man dared show himself. On the quarter-deck especially was this so; and the brave Pearson, while keeping his place coolly, ordered the men forward, and remained the only man upon the quarter-deck of his ship.
The Bon Homme Richard now managed to bring one or two more guns to bear, although her hull was almost destroyed by the Serapis. Both ships were in a desperate case, but Paul Jones was no nearer surrender than he was at the beginning of the fight. Pearson, though, realized that he was in the last extremity, and then, and then only, with his own hand he managed to lower the flag he had caused to be nailed to the mast. His action was visible by the light of the full moon, and the lanterns that made blazing points of flame all over the two warrior ships in spite of the drifting clouds of black smoke.
Paul Jones’s first order was:
“Cease firing!” and his next words were, “Where is Dale?”
“Here, sir!” cried Dale, coming up. The young lieutenant’s face was blackened with powder, his epaulet was gone, and he was deathly pale with suppressed excitement.
“Go immediately on board that ship with such men as you may need, and bring off her captain and her ensign,” said Paul Jones.
There was no occasion for a bridge between the two fast-locked and burning ships. Dale ran to the gangway, and with one bound landed on the bloody deck of the Serapis.
Although the fire of the Bon Homme Richard had ceased, those upon the lower decks of the Serapis did not know that the colors had been struck, and they kept up their cannonade through the riddled hull of the Bon Homme Richard. The smoke still drifted in a sulphurous mass, but Dale at once distinguished Captain Pearson’s tall figure, as he stood calmly, with folded arms, on the quarter-deck. Going up to him, Dale removed his cap and said respectfully: