With the words Wannashego hurried off, reloading his weapon as he ran. Paul Jones was thunderstruck. After a moment he muttered, "Poor Burden, your very importance in this conflict has caught the eagle eye of that young redskin and spelled your doom!"
The fighting continued fiercely. Twice was the ensign of the _Drake_ shot away, and twice the gallant British tars rehoisted it. The enemy's fore and main topsail yards were completely riddled, the main topgallant mast and mizzen gaff hung up and down the spar, her jib dragged over her lee into the water, and her mainsails were a sieve of holes.
Never had Paul Jones seen men fight more tigerishly or with better aim than his were now doing. As the two ships were going off the wind, which was light, they both rolled considerably and together; in other words, when the _Ranger_ went down to port the _Drake_ came up to starboard. Quite early in the action, the Scotch captain had noticed that his quarter-gunners had caught the _Drake's_ period of roll and were timing to fire as their muzzles went down and the enemy's came up. By this practice they were hulling the British ship prodigiously below her water-line and everywhere below her rail.
"What are you firing in that fashion for?" demanded Paul Jones of Midshipman Starbuck.
"That is not my object," said the captain sharply. "Cease this destruction of the ship, and conduct yourselves so as to capture her instead."
The alert fellows instantly changed their tactics, and soon had the _Drake_ an unmanageable log on the water, with her crew crying for quarter. When, after the desperate fighting of a little more than an hour, an accounting was taken it was found that the _Ranger_ had suffered very little from the inaccurate fire of the British. True, she had lost two lives, among these Lieutenant Wallingford, and had six wounded; but her opponent had lost her commander and nineteen others killed, with twenty-eight officers and men wounded. The only officer remaining to strike her flag had been her second-lieutenant.
With a towline fastened to her prize, the _Ranger_ now passed out of the lough and up St. George's Channel. About midnight she hove to, and there under the starlight the dead heroes of the conflict were sewn up in canvas and consigned to the deep with a fitting burial service.