"I don't hear you," replied our commodore, for he had not yet got his
distance.

Again came the hail: "What ship is that?"

John Paul Jones leaned forward over the rail.

"Pass the word below to the first lieutenant to begin the action, sir."

Hardly were the words out of my mouth before the deck gave a mighty leap,
a hot wind that seemed half of flame blew across my face, and the roar
started the pain throbbing in my ears. At the same instant the screech
of shot sounded overhead, we heard the sharp crack-crack of wood rending
and splitting,--as with a great broadaxe,--and a medley of blocks and
ropes rattled to the deck with the 'thud of the falling bodies. Then,
instead of stillness, moans and shrieks from above and below, oaths and
prayers in English and French and Portuguese, and in the heathen
gibberish of the East. As the men were sponging and ramming home in the
first fury of hatred, the carpenter jumped out under the battle-lanthorn
at the main hatch, crying in a wild voice that the old eighteens had
burst, killing half their crews and blowing up the gundeck above them.
At this many of our men broke and ran for the hatches.

"Back, back to your quarters! The first man to desert will be shot
down!"

It was the same strange voice that had quelled the mutiny on the John,
that had awed the men of Kirkcudbright. The tackles were seized and the
guns run out once more, and fired, and served again in an agony of haste.
In the darkness shot shrieked hither and thither about us like demons,