va from cliffs.

The position of the men in the two ships was now exactly reversed. For
while the Serapis was tearing the Richard all to pieces below deck, and
had swept that covered part almost of the last man, the Richard's crowd
of musketry had complete control of the upper deck of the Serapis, where
it was almost impossible for man to remain unless as a corpse. Though in
the beginning, the tops of the Serapis had not been unsupplied with
marksmen, yet they had long since been cleared by the overmastering
musketry of the Richard. Several, with leg or arm broken by a ball, had
been seen going dimly downward from their giddy perch, like falling
pigeons shot on the wing.

As busy swallows about barn-eaves and ridge-poles, some of the Richard's
marksmen, quitting their tops, now went far out on their yard-arms,
where they overhung the Serapis. From thence they dropped hand-grenades
upon her decks, like apples, which growing in one field fall over the
fence into another. Others of their band flung the same sour fruit into
the open ports of the Serapis. A hail-storm of aerial combustion
descended and slanted on the Serapis, while horizontal thunderbolts
rolled crosswise through the subterranean vaults of the Richard. The
belligerents were no longer, in the ordinary sense of things, an English
ship and an American ship. It was a co-partnership and joint-stock
combustion-company of both ships; yet divided, even in participation.
The two vessels were as two houses, through whose party-wall doors have
been cut; one family (the Guelphs) occupying the whole lower story;
another family (the Ghibelines) the whole upper story.

Meanwhile, determined Paul flew hither and thither like the meteoric
corposant-ball, which shiftingly dances on the tips and verges of ships'
rigging in storms. Wherever he went, he seemed to cast a pale light on
all faces. Blacked and burnt, his Scotch bonnet was compressed to a
gun-wad on his head. His Parisian coat, with its gold-laced sleeve laid
aside, disclosed to the full the blue tattooing on his arm, which
sometimes in fierce gestures streamed in the haze of the cannonade,
cabalistically terrific as the charmed standard of Satan. Yet his
frenzied manner was less a testimony of his internal commotion than
intended to inspirit and madden his men, some of whom seeing him, in
transports of intrepidity stripped themselves to their trowsers,
exposing their naked bodies to the as naked shot The same was