Boys ran about stacking the sacks of powder or distributing buckets of pistols ready for the boarding parties.

And against the masts the cutlasses and pikes stood ready.
Captain John Dacres of the ill-fated _Guerriere_ was an English gentleman as well as a gallant officer.

But he did not know his antagonist.

Like his comrades of the service he had failed to grasp the fact that the _Constitution_ and the other American frigates of her class were the most formidable craft afloat, barring ships of the line, and that they were to revolutionize the design of war-vessels for half a century thereafter.

They were frigates, or cruisers, in that they carried guns on two decks, but the main battery of long twenty-four-pound guns was an innovation, and the timbers and planking were stouter than had ever been built into ships of the kind.