On board the Kearsarge the long wait had bred doubts of the martial temper of Captain Semmes, and aside from the preparations already made affairs had largely dropped back into the ordinary routine. Soon after ten o'clock the officer of the deck reported a steamer approaching from the city, but this was a frequent occurrence, and no attention was paid to the announcement. The bell was tolling for religious services when loud shouts apprised the crew that the long-looked-for Alabama was in sight. Captain Winslow hastily laid aside his prayer book and seized his trumpet. The fires were piled high with coal and the prow was turned straight out to sea. The fight must be to the death, and the vanquished was not to be permitted to crawl within the protection of the marine league. Moreover, the French government had expressed a desire that the battle should take place at least six or seven miles from the coast. Ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five minutes passed. The Alabama kept straight on, and the Kearsarge continued her apparent flight. Finally, at 10:50, when six or seven miles from shore, the Kearsarge wheeled and bore down upon her adversary. At a distance of a little over a mile the Alabama began the fight with her Blakely rifle, and at 10:57 she opened fire with her entire starboard broadside, which cut some of the Kearsarge's rigging but did no material damage. The latter crowded on all steam to get within closer range, but in two minutes a second broadside came hurtling about her. This was quickly followed by a third, and then, deeming the danger from a raking fire too great longer to allow the ship to present her bow to the enemy, Captain Winslow directed his vessel sheared, and fired his starboard battery. He then made an attempt to run under the Alabama's stern, which she frustrated by shearing, and thus the two ships were forced into a circular track round a common center, and the battle went on for an hour, the distance between them varying from a half to a quarter of a mile. During that time the vessels described seven complete circles. At 11:15 a sixty-eight pounder shell came through the bulwarks of the Kearsarge, exploding on the quarter deck and badly wounding three of the crew of the after pivot gun. Two shots entered the ports of the thirty-two pounders, but injured no one. A shell exploded in the hammock nettings and set fire to the ship, but those detailed for fire service extinguished it in a short time, and so thorough was the discipline that the cannonade was not even interrupted.