The next day a British vessel hove in sight. Captain Jones found that the Richard proved to be a lumbering concern and a slow sailer. He therefore sent the swifter-winged cutter Cerf in pursuit of the stranger. It will be remembered that the Cerf carried but eighteen guns. The vessel proved to be a war-sloop of fourteen guns. A warm engagement took place. The thunders of this naval tempest swept the ocean far and wide. The Cerf was victorious. Grappling her battered and blood-stained prize, she was making her way back to the squadron when a large British frigate bore down upon her. The Cerf, maimed by the conflict, was compelled to abandon her prize, and escaping to the squadron, was sent back to L’Orient to refit. The next day three British ships-of-war were discerned far away to the windward. Jones, with his four vessels, bore down upon them. The frigates, seeing that they were outnumbered, escaped by superior sailing. A few days after this there was a fog. Though Captain Jones fired signal guns, to keep his squadron together, when the fog cleared away neither the Alliance nor the Pallas was anywhere to be seen. Captain Jones was thus left with but two vessels; and his own, the Richard, was so seriously damaged by the collision with the Alliance, that it was needful to make port as speedily as possible, at L’Orient, for repairs. When a few leagues from L’Orient, between Belle Isle and the Isle of Croix, he gave the Vengeance permission to run into the harbor while he moved slowly along with his disabled ship. Thus he was left alone. After the Vengeance had left him, in the night of the 31st of June, two British war-vessels attacked him. In his crippled state his vessel amounted to but little excepting a floating battery. But he served his guns so well and gave his foes so warm a reception, that they speedily retired. “They appeared at first,” writes Jones, “earnest to engage, but their courage failed, and they fled with precipitation, and to my mortification outsailed the Bon Homme Richard and got clear.” The Richard had proved a failure. Upon inspection at L’Orient, she was pronounced to be unworthy of the great alterations essential to fit her for a successful campaign. The ship was, however, tinkered up for temporary service, and again Captain Jones was sent forth to cruise in the Channel, with a small squadron, under circumstances which would have disheartened any man of ordinary temperament.