Fortunately, Captain Cottineau saw that more glory was to be obtained by fighting the enemy than in quarrelling with the flag officer, and he gallantly sailed to meet the smaller British frigate. The _Alliance_ was held aloof. The _Vengeance_ was too far away to take part in the battle. In the movements of the fighting ships that followed, the wind was so light that they merely drifted over the oil-smooth water. The sun sank out of sight behind the hills and daylight faded away into darkness so that even the lofty towers of canvas were seen only as the faintest shadows. But each side was hunting for the other, and eventually, in the profound silence of a night at sea, the _Bonhomme Richard_ and the _Serapis_ drew near each other. When but ten yards away from each other a voice from the _Serapis_ demanded: “What ship is that?” “I can’t hear what you say,” replied Jones, wishing to get nearer before opening fire. For a moment the ships drifted on in silence as before, and then the voice was heard once more through the night: “What ship is that? Answer, or I shall be under the necessity of firing into you.” Instead of answering the hail, Captain Jones in a low voice passed the word to fire, and the next instant the spurting flames from the American guns were answered, as it were, in the same breath by those of the British, and the night battle was begun. It was then exactly seven o’clock. At the first fire two of the three eighteen-pounders in the lower-deck broadside of the _Bonhomme Richard_ burst. “We could see that as we sighted for our next broadside, because we could see how they hove up the gun-deck above them,” wrote Capt. Francis Heddart, who was a midshipman on the _Serapis_ during the fight. And the midshipman and his men noted with glee that thereafter none of these, the heaviest guns on the Yankee’s ship, was fired. The crews of the two guns that burst were all either killed or seriously wounded, and the men on that deck were called up to the main deck to help work the guns there. And most remarkable results followed on this move. [Illustration: The Engagement between the _Bonhomme Richard_ and _Serapis_. _From an engraving by Hamilton of a drawing by Collier._] The _Serapis_ had entered the fight close-hauled on the port tack and to leeward. The _Bonhomme Richard_, running free, sailed across the enemy’s bow and then came to the wind, while the enemy veered off a little, and thereafter for one hour the two ships drifted side by side, drawing slowly nearer to each other, while the men, with desperate energy, worked their guns. But there was a vast difference in the guns. “We had ten eighteen-pounders in each battery below,” wrote an officer of the _Serapis_ afterward. “I do not see why any shot should have failed.”