asioned the gunner
to run aft on the poop, without my knowledge, to strike the colors.
Fortunately for me a cannon-ball had done that before by carrying away
the ensign staff: he was, therefore, reduced to the necessity of
sinking--as he supposed--or of calling for quarter; and he preferred
the latter."

Indeed, the petty officers were little to be blamed for considering
the condition of the "Richard" hopeless. The great guns of the
"Serapis," with their muzzles not twenty feet away, were hurling solid
shot and grape through the flimsy shell of the American ship. So close
together did the two ships come at times, that the rammers were
sometimes thrust into the port-holes of the opposite ship in loading.
When the ships first swung together, the lower ports of the "Serapis"
were closed to prevent the Americans boarding through them. But in the
heat of the conflict the ports were quickly blown off, and the iron
throats of the great guns again protruded, and dealt out their
messages of death. How frightful was the scene! In the two great ships
were more than seven hundred men, their eyes lighted with the fire of
hatred, their faces blackened with powder or made ghastly by streaks
of blood. Cries of pain, yells of rage, prayers, and curses rose
shrill above the thunderous monotone of the cannonade. Both ships were
on fire; and the black smoke of the conflagration, mingled with the
gray gunpowder smoke, and lighted up by the red flashes of the
cannonade, added to the terrible picturesqueness of the scene.

The "Richard" seemed like a spectre ship, so shattered was her
framework. From the main-mast to the stern post, her timbers above the
water-line were shot away, a few blackened posts alone preventing the
upper deck from falling. Through this ruined shell swept the shot of
the "Serapis," finding little to impede their flight save human flesh
and bone. Great streams of water were pouring into the hold. The
pitiful cries of nearly two hundred prisoners aroused the compassion
of an officer, who ran below and liberated them. Driven from the hold
by the inpouring water, these unhappy men ran to the deck, only to be
swept down by the storm of cannon-shot and bullets. Fire, too,
encompassed them; and the flames were so fast sweeping down upon the
magazine, that Capt. Jones ordered the powder-kegs to be brought up
and thrown into the sea. At this work, and at the pumps, the prisoners
were kept employed until the end of the action.