[Illustration: NOTE.--The accounts of the manœuvres differ widely, but it is agreed that the real fighting began at 6 o’clock with the _Constitution_ on the port quarter of the enemy. When fairly abeam, the mizzen-mast of the _Guerrière_ fell over to port, according to Allen, and dragged her nose up to the starboard side of the _Constitution_; when the _Constitution_ drove clear the two remaining masts of the _Guerrière_ fell. The _Constitution_ after repairs to her rigging, returned at 7 o’clock. ] As the men on the _Constitution_ ran to extinguish this fire Captain Dacres on the _Guerrière_ called away boarders, intending to climb along his bowsprit to reach the _Constitution’s_ quarter-deck, but when he saw the men on the _Constitution_ ready to receive him he thought differently about it. The Yankees then thought to board, and brave Lieutenant Bush, of the marines, jumped on the rail for the honor of leading the way, and there was shot dead by a British marine. For a few moments the two ships hung together, sawing up and down, while the bulk of each crew was massed for boarding and the topmen on each ship poured a galling fire into the other. Lieutenant Morris was shot through the body and Master Alwyn was but little less severely wounded. Captain Hull climbed part way upon the rail, but a big Yankee seaman dragged him back unceremoniously, and begged him not to do that unless he first took “off them swabs”--pointing to the captain’s gold epaulets. A sailor who fired a pistol at one of the enemy and missed him, threw the pistol with better, though not fatal, aim. He hit the fellow in the breast. And then the flag at the _Constitution’s_ mizzen-truck was shot down. The enemy cheered, but John Hogan shinned up and replaced it, although a number of British marines fired at him steadily all the time he was exposed. At last the larger spread of canvas on the _Constitution_ pulled her clear, and then, as she began to swing around into position to open fire again, both the main and the foremast of the _Guerrière_ that had been badly cut by the American shot went over the rail with a crash, and there she lay a helpless hulk. It was then exactly 6.23 o’clock, or about two hours since the firing of the first gun from the _Guerrière_. But from the time that the _Constitution_ fired her first broadside, it was less than thirty minutes. [Illustration: Action between the _Constitution_ and the _Guerrière_.--IV. _From the painting by Birch, at the Naval Academy, Annapolis._] Veering off for a brief interval, the _Constitution’s_ crew made hasty repairs to the rigging, and then came back with guns loaded. They found the _Guerrière_ in the trough of the sea rolling her main-deck guns under water with every passing swell.