Imagine what Jones would have done under similar circumstances! Indeed, we do not have to imagine what he would have done, for as it happened the Alliance had on two occasions fired full upon him, and he was actually in the dilemma which Pearson imagined he might fall into, and yet it only re-enforced his already resolute determination to continue the fight more fiercely than ever. A nice point this: with Pearson the Alliance was an imaginary danger, with Jones a real one! While the presence of the Alliance, therefore, explains in a measure Pearson's surrender, it does not enhance his reputation for dogged determination. The unheard-of resistance which he had met from the Richard, the persistence with which the attack was carried on, the apparently utterly unconquerable nature of his antagonist--of whose difficulties on the Richard he was not aware, for there was no evidence of faltering in the battle--the frightful attack he had received, and his isolation upon the deck filled with dead and dying men, broke his own power of resistance. There were two things beaten on that day--the Richard and Pearson; one might almost say three things: both ships and the captain of one. It is generally admitted, even by the English, that the result would have been the same if the Alliance had never appeared on the scene. No, it was a fair and square stand-up fight, and a fair and square defeat.[20] The conduct of Landais has presented a problem difficult of solution. It has been surmised, and upon the warrant of his own statement, that he would have thought it no harm if the Richard had struck to the Serapis, and he could have had the glory of recapturing her and then forcing the surrender of the English frigate; but whether he really meant by his dastardly conduct to compel this situation from which he trusted he could reap so much honor, is another story. Most of the historians have been unable to see anything in his actions but jealousy and treachery. The most eminent critic, however, who has treated of the battle[21] has thought his actions arose from an incapacity, coupled with a timidity amounting to cowardice, which utterly blinded his judgment; that he was desirous of doing something, and felt it incumbent upon him to take some part in the action and that his firing into the Richard was due to incompetency rather than to anything else. With all deference, it is difficult to agree with this proposition. The officers of the squadron, in a paper which was prepared less than a month after the action, bore conclusive testimony that while it is true that he was an incapable coward, he was, in addition, either a jealous traitor, or--and this is the only other supposition which will account for his action--that he was irresponsible, in short, insane. This is a conclusion to which his own officers afterward arrived, and which his subsequent career seems to bear out. At any rate, this is the most charitable explanation of his conduct which can be adopted.