At this Captain Decatur eased off to give his sails a good full, and the British crew, seeing him do so, cheered. They supposed another frigate might have appeared and that the _United States_ was running. But their hopes were vain. The _United States_, having made swift repairs to braces and other rigging, tacked about and came back to the wrecked Englishman. Captain Carden called a council of his officers. The impetuous Lieutenant David Hope urged that they fight till she sank, but more sensible councils prevailed, and as the _United States_ ranged across the stern of the _Macedonian_ the Englishmen hauled down their flag. The battle had lasted one hour and a half all told, but the actual fighting, excluding the earlier shots fired “more to test the distance than to do injury,” lasted only an hour. Seeing the enemy’s flag hauled down, Captain Decatur sent Lieutenant John B. Nicholson to take charge of her, and afterward visited her himself. It was a mournful state of affairs that they found, even though they were flushed with victory. The officers and crews were fairly well acquainted with each other, for the _Macedonian_ had been in Norfolk before the war when the _United States_ was there and several visits had been exchanged. Lieutenant Nicholson on going into the ward-room found the surgeon at work there. “How do you do, Doctor?” he said. The surgeon looked up quickly at the sound of a familiar voice, and then, recognizing the lieutenant, said: “I have enough to do. You have made wretched work with us.” And Captain Decatur, in writing of the scene when he first boarded her, speaks of the “fragments of the dead scattered in every direction, the decks slippery with blood, one continuous agonizing yell of the wounded. A scene so horrible of my fellow-creatures, I assure you, deprived me of very much of the pleasure of victory.” [Illustration: The Battle Between the _United States_ and the _Macedonian_. (Drawn by a sailor who was on the _United States_.) _From the original drawing at the Naval Academy, Annapolis._] To add to the horror of the spectacle, some of the crew, taking advantage of the inevitable disorder, broke into the spirits-room and quickly got hilariously drunk. And so, singing and shouting and screaming, they went reeling about the decks, falling and smearing themselves with blood, and rising to sing and shout again in drunken glee, until enough of the American crew had come to confine them.