“Don’t swear, Mr. Stacy,” said Jones. “In another moment we all may be in eternity, but let us do our duty.” They did their duty, and the ships were held hard and fast, and John Paul Jones emphasized his faith in what had been done by saying: “Well done, my brave lads. We have got her now.” And so they had in one way. One anchor of the _Serapis_ dropped over on the _Bonhomme Richard_, and was secured where it would help to hold her, and more lashings were passed elsewhere. Even when the _Serapis_ anchored she could not get away. But in the sense of capturing the _Serapis_, never was such a triumphant cry raised with a less hope of accomplishing the result. The ships now lay with their starboard sides together. During the last half hour or so the crew of the _Serapis_ had been working their port battery. When they ran across to work their starboard guns they were unable to open their ports amidships because the ships were touching each other, so they fired through their own closed ports, blowing the port-lids off. On the _Bonhomme Richard_ the men were no less determined. Their remaining guns were fought even with cheerful vigor. Lieut. Richard Dale used to tell how, on going down on the gundeck, he saw a gun’s crew of his men racing with a crew over in the _Serapis_ to see which would get loaded first. The ships were side to side and the guns were muzzle-loaders. Each crew, to get its charge set home, had to poke its long-handled rammer through the enemy’s port before it could be inserted into the gun’s bore. “Fair play, you damned Yankee,” roared an English gunner, poking his rammer through the Yankee’s port. “Mind your eye, Johnny Bull,” replied the Yankee, following the same movement. Alas! the “Johnny Bull” had been a trifle ahead of the “damned Yankee,” and firing his gun, he dismounted that on the _Bonhomme Richard_. The British were, in fact, soon quite as successful in their handling of the main-deck battery as they had been with that on the lower deck. Every twelve-pounder but one on the _Bonhomme Richard_ was silenced in one way and another, and so, too, were the little nine-pounders on the forecastle. There were then but two cannon left in service on the _Bonhomme Richard_, the two nine-pounders on the fighting side of the quarter-deck. [Illustration: The _Serapis_ and the _Bonhomme Richard_. _From an engraving by Lerpinière after a drawing by Fitler._] John Paul Jones had been working these two with his own hands, loading one with double shot to cut down the enemy’s mainmast, and the other with grape and canister to sweep away the crew on her deck. In this desperate strait and when just in the act of ordering another nine-pounder brought from the off side that he might use it on the crew of the _Serapis_, his chief surgeon came up from below to announce that the water was coming in so fast as to float the wounded, and to ask that the ship be surrendered before she sank with all hands.