Their armed protectors bravely steered from the land, making the disposition for battle.

Promptly accepting the challenge, Paul, giving the signal to his consorts, earnestly pressed forward.

But, earnest as he was, it was seven in the evening ere the encounter began.
Meantime his comrades, heedless of his signals, sailed independently along.

Dismissing them from present consideration, we confine ourselves, for a while, to the Richard and the Serapis, the grand duellists of the fight.
The Richard carried a motley, crew, to keep whom in order one hundred and thirty-five soldiers--themselves a hybrid band--had been put on board, commanded by French officers of inferior rank.

Her armament was similarly heterogeneous; guns of all sorts and calibres; but about equal on the whole to those of a thirty-two-gun frigate.