know, one of those queer old poops you see in old pictures.  She was, therefore, a good deal higher than we; for our quarter-deck had followed the fashion and come down.  We fought twenty guns on our lower deck, twenty on our upper deck, and on the forecastle and quarter-deck we had ten little things,—­fifty guns,—­not unusual, you know, in a vessel rated as a forty-four.  We had twenty-two in broadside.  I remember I supposed for some time that all French ships were black, because the Richard was.

“As I said, I was on the main deck, aft.  We were all lying stretched out in the larboard ports to see and hear what we could, when Captain Pearson himself hailed, “What ship is that?” I could not hear their answer, and he hailed again, and then said, if they did not answer, he would fire.  We all took this as good as an order, and, hearing nothing, tumbled in and blazed away.  The Poor Richard fired at the same time.  It was at that first broadside of hers, as you remember, that two of Jones’s heavy guns, below his main deck, burst.  We could see that as we sighted for our next broadside, because we could see how they hove up the gun-deck above them.  As for our shot, I suppose they all told.  We had ten eighteen-pounders in that larboard battery below.  I do not see why any shot should have failed.

“However, he had no thought of being pounded to pieces by his own firing and ours, and so he bore right down on us.  He struck our quarter, just forward of my forward gun,—­struck 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,