There was more rushing and shouting from the decks above. Cox hastened up as fast as his weakened limbs would carry him. It was hand to hand now; cutlasses plying, men stabbing on the decks, growling and grovelling in their blood like fighting dogs. There was a party making an onslaught toward the bows. Cox drew his sword and joined them. The first thing he knew, they were slashing at him with their heavy blades. They were Englishmen! He did not know his own crew by sight. The firing had stopped; the summer breeze was blowing the smoke away. But what a sight and what a sound! The battered, reddened hulls, and the groans that rose in chorus! Of the further details there is little to relate. Poor Ludlow was killed at last by a cutlass in the hands of a British sailor; for after the flag had been hauled down, a second action had been started by a hot-headed boy firing at a British sentry placed at the gangway. The English, by mistake, had hoisted the captured flag uppermost, but it was soon discovered and hauled down again--the fight was over. The _Chesapeake_ has been reckoned one of England's dearest prizes. The sorrowful news of her defeat was carried quickly into Boston. The wise ones wagged their heads again. At the house of the Commandant of the navy yard at Charlestown, Bainbridge paced the room alone, deep lines of grief marking his rugged face, and on the floor above, a young girl lay insensible, for the word as first brought was that with the other officers James Cox had had his death. Captain Broke, the Englishman, had fought a gallant, manly fight, all honor to him! He was badly wounded, and, like poor Lawrence, it was thought that he would die. The latter, when he had heard the firing cease, had said to the surgeon:-- "Run to the deck. Tell them not to strike the colors! While I live they shall wave!" Brave Lawrence! They were the last words he ever spoke. Although he lingered four long suffering days, not a sound passed his lips. Broke, on the contrary, was raving in a delirium, and these were the words he kept repeating--words he must have spoken before the action had begun:-- "See the brave fellow! How grandly he brings his ship along! How gallantly he comes to action!" Ah, how Halifax rejoiced when the _Shannon_ sailed in there with a Yankee frigate under her lee. How the guns boomed, and how the city went mad with joy! And how England rejoiced, and the "Thunderer" thundered and the king clapped his hands! And how much they made of it! How proudly they preserved every relic of the captured ship! How they cherished her figurehead and exhibited her logbook! And they builded her timbers into an old mill, where they can show them to you to-day, scarred with cannon shot.