The squadron sailed from L’Orient in June, but owing to a collision between the Bon homme Richard and the Alliance it was forced to put back into the Groix roads for repairs.  Nails and rivets were with difficulty got to hold in the sides of the old Indianian.  On August 14th John Paul Jones again set sail for English waters, with the following vessels:  Alliance, thirty-six; Pallas, thirty; Cerf, eighteen; Vengeance, twelve; and two French privateers.  Owing to the humiliating conditions imposed upon him by the French Minister of Marine, Commodore Jones did not have absolute command.  In a gale on the 26th the two privateers and the Cerf parted company, never to return.  After the most outrageous conduct off the coast of Ireland, Landais, in the ‘Alliance’, left the squadron on September 6th, and did not reappear until the 23d, the day of the battle.

Mr. Carvel was the third lieutenant of the ‘Bon homme Richard’, tho’ he served as second in the action.  Her first lieutenant (afterwards the celebrated Commodore Richard Dale) was a magnificent man, one worthy in every respect of the captain he served.  When the hour of battle arrived, these two and the sailing master, and a number of raw midshipmen, were the only line-officers left, and two French officers of marines.

The rest had been lost in various ways.  And the crew of the ’Bon homme Richard’ was as sorry a lot as ever trod a deck.  Less than three score of the seamen were American born; near four score were British, inclusive of sixteen Irish; one hundred and thirty-seven were French soldiers, who acted as marines; and the rest of the three hundred odd souls to fight her were from all over the earth,—­Malays and Maltese and Portuguese.  In the hold were more than one hundred and fifty English prisoners.

This was a vessel and a force, truly, with which to conquer a fifty-gun ship of the latest type, and with a picked crew.

Mr. Carvel’s chapter opens with Landais’s sudden reappearance on the morning of the day the battle was fought.  He shows the resentment and anger against the Frenchman felt by all on board, from cabin-boy to commodore.  But none went so far as to accuse the captain of the ‘Alliance’ of such supreme treachery as he was to show during the action.  Cowardice may have been in part responsible for his holding aloof from the two duels in which the Richard and the Pallas engaged.  But the fact that he poured broadsides into the Richard, and into her off side, makes it seem probable that his motive was to sink the commodore’s ship, and so get the credit of saving the day, to the detriment of the hero who won it despite all disasters.  To account for the cry that was raised when first she attacked the Richard, it must be borne in mind that the crew of the ‘Alliance’ was largely composed of Englishmen.  It was thought that these had mutinied and taken her.

CHAPTER LII