truck us hard, too. We
had just fired our second shot, and then he closed, so I could not
bring our two guns to bear. This was when he first tried to fasten
the ships together. But they would not stay fastened. He could not
bring a gun to bear,--having no forward ports that served
him,--till we fell off again, and it was then that Captain Pearson
asked, in that strange stillness, if he had struck. Jones
answered, 'I have not begun to fight.' And so it proved. Our sails
were filled, he backed his top-sails, and we wore short round. As
he laid us athwart-hawse, or as we swung by him, our jib-boom ran
into his mizzen-rigging. They say Jones himself then fastened our
boom to his mainmast. Somebody did, but it did not hold, but one
of our anchors hooked his quarter, and so we fought, fastened
together, to the end,--both now fighting our starboard batteries,
and being fixed stern to stem.

"On board the Serapis our ports were not open on the starboard
side, because we had been firing on the other. And as we ran
across and loosened those guns, the men amidships actually found
they could not open their ports, the Richard was so close. They
therefore fired their first shots right through our own port-lids,
and blew them off. I was so far aft that my port-lids swung free.

"What I said, in beginning this letter, will explain to you the
long continuance of the action after this moment, when, you would
say, it must be ended by boarding, or in some other way, very
soon. As soon as we on our main deck got any idea of the Richard's
main deck, we saw that almost nobody replied to us there. In
truth, two of the six guns which made her lower starboard battery
had burst, and Jones's men would not fight what were left, nor do
I blame them. Above, their gun-deck had been hoisted up, and, as
it proved the next day, we were cutting them right through. We
pounded away at what we could see,--and much more at what we could
not see,--for it was now night, and there was a little smoke, as
you may fancy. But above, the Richard's upper deck was a good deal
higher than ours, and there Jones had dragged across upon his
quarter a piece from the larboard battery, so that he had three
nine-pounders, with which he was doing his best, almost raking us,
as you may imagine. No one ever said so to me, that I know, bu