If this were all it would be bad enough, but worse comes with it. There are scores of cartridges cumbering the deck to the rear of the batteries; for the powder monkeys of the _Serapis_, earning their pay and allowances, have been bringing powder from the magazines much faster than the gunners can burn it in their eighteen-pounders. The exploding hand-grenade sets off this powder. There is a blinding sheet of flame; a report like smothered thunder; the deck of the _Serapis_ is all but torn from its timbers! Fifty of the crew are killed or crippled, while the slewed hatch-cover is blown overboard. No trouble now to hit that yawning black hatchway. With such a target there can be no talk of missing, and Midshipman Fanning and gunner Gardner, from their high perch on the main topsail yard, fill the stomach of the _Serapis_ with a bursting, death-dealing shower. And so the end comes tapping at the door. Lieutenant Mayrant, with his boarding party, stands waiting the signal. Commodore Paul Jones notes the devastation wrought by Midshipman Fanning’s hand-grenades. “Boarders away!” he cries. Lieutenant Mayrant and his men go swarming over the hammock nettings of the _Serapis_, the red Indian port-fire, Anthony Jeremiah, among the foremost. As Lieutenant Mayrant reaches the deck of the _Serapis_, an English sailor thrusts him through the thigh with a pike. Lieutenant Mayrant shoots the pikeman though the heart. The latter falls dead, pike rattling along the deck. “Remember Portsea jail, lads!” shouts Lieutenant Mayrant, as he strides limpingly across the body of the dead pikeman. “Remember Port-sea jail!” Nine in ten of the boarding party are of those ones exchanged at Nantes. With savage cries, they shout back, “Remember Portsea jail!” and the work of their vengeance is begun. Commodore Paul Jones has his eyes on Lieutenant Mayrant and his boarders. His attention is claimed by orderly Jack Downes, who plucks him by the elbow. “Beg pardon, sir!” says orderly Jack Downes. “Captain Landais with the _Alliance_.” Sure enough, the _Alliance_ for a second time has crept down upon them, unnoticed in the heat and absorbing fury of the fray. The consort ship is wearing across the _Richard_‘s bows. What will Landais do? Does he come as friend or foe? The Frenchman has his answer ready, and pours a broadside into the _Richard_ as he crosses. Then he sheers off, and again heads for the open ocean. That coward broadside kills and wounds Master’s Mate Caswell and seven men. Commodore Paul Jones is rigid with rage and wonder. “The man is mad!” says Lieutenant Dale. “I cannot understand!” returns Commodore Paul Jones. “There is still his crew! Why don’t they clap him in irons, or cut him down?” There is a shout from the deck of the _Serapis_. Captain Pearson, his last hope gone, has struck his colors with his own hand. The shout is from the wounded Lieutenant Mayrant, who hails Lieutenant Dale.