These eager crowds were cheated of the spectacle, however, for the _Chesapeake_ bore away to the eastward after rounding Boston Light and dropped hull down until her sails were lost in the summer haze, with the _Shannon_ in her company as if they steered for some rendezvous. They were firing when last seen and the wind bore the echo of the guns, faint and far away. It was most extraordinary that three weeks passed before the people would believe the tidings of the disaster. A pilot who had left the _Chesapeake_ at five o'clock in the afternoon reported that he was still near enough an hour later to see the two ships locked side by side, that a fearful explosion had happened aboard the _Chesapeake_, and that through a rift in the battle smoke he had beheld the British flag flying above the American frigate. This report was confirmed by a fishing boat from Cape Ann and by the passengers in a coastwise packet, but the public doubted and still hoped until the newspapers came from Halifax with an account of the arrival of the _Chesapeake_ as prize to the _Shannon_ and of the funeral honors paid to the body of Captain James Lawrence. The tragic defeat came at an extremely dark moment of the war when almost every expectation had been disappointed and the future was clouded. Richard Rush, the American diplomatist, wrote, recalling the event: I remember--what American does not!--the first rumor of it. I remember the startling sensation. I remember at first the universal incredulity. I remember how the post-offices were thronged for successive days by anxious thousands; how collections of citizens rode out for miles on the highway, accosting the mail to catch something by anticipation. At last, when the certainty was known, I remember the public gloom; funeral orations and badges of mourning bespoke it. "Don't give up the ship"--the dying words of Lawrence--were on every tongue. It was learned that the _Chesapeake_ had followed the _Shannon_ until five o'clock, when the latter luffed and showed her readiness to begin fighting. Lawrence was given the choice of position, with a westerly breeze, but he threw away this advantage, preferring to trust to his guns with a green crew rather than the complex and delicate business of maneuvering his ship under sail. He came bowling straight down at the _Shannon_, luffed in his turn, and engaged her at a distance of fifty yards. The breeze was strong and the nimble American frigate forged ahead more rapidly than Lawrence expected, so that presently her broadside guns had ceased to bear.