give them a chance for themselves
all around and blowing up overhead. Fighting at sun-down, fighting at dark,
Ten o’clock at night, the full moon well up, our leaks on the
gain, and five feet of water reported,
The master-at-arms loosing the prisoners confined in the
after-hold to give them a chance for themselves. The transit to and from the magazine is now stopt by the sentinels,
They see so many strange faces they do not know whom to trust. Our frigate takes fire,
The other asks if we demand quarter?
If our colors are struck and the fighting done? Now I laugh content, for I hear the voice of my little captain,
We have not struck, he composedly cries, we have just begun
our part of the fighting. Only three guns are in use,
One is directed by the captain himself against the enemy’s
main-mast,
Two well serv’d with grape and canister silence his musketry
and clear his decks. The tops alone second the fire of this little battery, especially
the main-top,
They hold out bravely during the whole of the action. Not a moment’s cease,
The leaks gain fast on the pumps, the fire eats toward the
powder-magazine. One of the pumps has been shot away, it is generally thought
we are sinking. Serene stands the little captain,
He is not hurried, his voice is neither high nor low,
His eyes give more light to us than our battle-lanterns. Toward twelve there in the beams of the moon they surrender
to us. 36 Stretch’d and still lies the midnight,
Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness,
Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking, preparations to pass
to the one we have conquer’d,
The captain on the quarter-deck coldly giving his orders
through a countenance white as a sheet,
Near by the corpse of the child that serv’d in the cabin,
The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and
carefully curl’d whiskers,
The flames spite of all that can be done flickering aloft and
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