He now crowded on all possible sail, until the _Bon Homme Richard_ had come within pistol shot of the _Serapis_. It was then seven o'clock and the moon was just rising in a clear blue sky. Off some distance, the _Countess_ had begun to run away, and the little _Pallas_ was making after her fiercely. Paul Jones was thus left practically alone to meet his big antagonist of the bristling guns and well-trained, perfectly-disciplined crew. As the _Bon Homme Richard_ approached him, Captain Pearson, of the _Serapis_, hailed; but there was no reply. "I don't like this fellow's looks, for all he is apparently less powerful than ourselves," observed the British commander to his first officer. Uneasily he used his night-glass again. "I wonder if it can be the blood-thirsty pirate, Paul Jones," he added a moment later. Then he ordered his sailing-master to hail again. "This is His Majesty's ship _Serapis_, forty-four guns. What ship is that?" Still no answer. Once more the hail came over the water, sharper, more peremptorily. "This is His Maj----" By this time Paul Jones had the _Bon Homme Richard_ where he wanted her; he gave a low signal to Richard Dale, who commanded the _Richard's_ gun-deck, and Lieutenant Dale cried, "Blow your matches, boys!" At his words the gunners touched a tiny flame to the touch-hole of each big gun on the port side, and a heavy broadside was poured into the enemy ship. But the British captain was not far behind. Before the echoes had died out his own guns spat fire with a roar, and great clouds of smoke drifted up and began to envelope the combatants. Following this the discharges came fast and furious, both the American and British crews working their guns with the utmost vigor. From the beginning the fight seemed to go against the _Bon Homme Richard_. There was hardly any stage of the three and a half hours' desperate combat at which Paul Jones would not have been excused in lowering his flag--had he not been the prodigious fighter he was. Hardly had the battle well begun when two of the rust-pitted old 18-pounders exploded, killing the men working them and rendering the whole battery useless for the rest of the action. Perceiving this, and anxious to take advantage of the loss of defense on the lower gun-deck resulting, Captain Pearson attempted again to pass the bow of the _Richard_ and rake her. On the other hand, Commodore Jones's whole effort was to close with the enemy and board him, for he knew now that it was only a question of time, if he did not succeed, before his old shell of a vessel would be sunk.