In this ceremonious fashion, as gentlemen were wont to meet with pistols to dispute some point of honor, did the _Chesapeake_ sail out to fight the waiting _Shannon_.

The news spread fast and wide and thousands of people, as though they were bound to the theater, hastened to the heights of Malden, to Nahant, and to the headlands of Salem and Marblehead, in hopes of witnessing this famous sight.

They assumed that victory was inevitable.

Any other surmise was preposterous.
These eager crowds were cheated of the spectacle, however, for the _Chesapeake_ bore away to the eastward after rounding Boston Light and dropped hull down until her sails were lost in the summer haze, with the _Shannon_ in her company as if they steered for some rendezvous.

They were firing when last seen and the wind bore the echo of the guns, faint and far away.