{"id":"01KG8AKMX6JSGG1ASW31B3A9G1","cid":"bafkreie7ihum6mqre7tdqsy2afs5sejqfagrfgps6dltflbojx47eva2vq","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":5626,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:05.591Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 6","source_file":"01KG89J1DKC9HHJRKY25JZBEXW","start_line":5571,"text":"throat and bowels, as it were, of the Richard—that it cleared\r\neverything before it. The men on the Richard’s covered gun-deck ran\r\nabove, like miners from the fire-damp. Collecting on the forecastle,\r\nthey continued to fight with grenades and muskets. The soldiers also\r\nwere in the lofty tops, whence they kept up incessant volleys,\r\ncascading their fire down as pouring lava from cliffs.\r\n\r\nThe position of the men in the two ships was now exactly reversed. For\r\nwhile the Serapis was tearing the Richard all to pieces below deck, and\r\nhad swept that covered part almost of the last man, the Richard’s crowd\r\nof musketry had complete control of the upper deck of the Serapis,\r\nwhere it was almost impossible for man to remain unless as a corpse.\r\nThough in the beginning, the tops of the Serapis had not been\r\nunsupplied with marksmen, yet they had long since been cleared by the\r\novermastering musketry of the Richard. Several, with leg or arm broken\r\nby a ball, had been seen going dimly downward from their giddy perch,\r\nlike falling pigeons shot on the wing.\r\n\r\nAs busy swallows about barn-eaves and ridge-poles, some of the\r\nRichard’s marksmen, quitting their tops, now went far out on their\r\nyard-arms, where they overhung the Serapis. From thence they dropped\r\nhand-grenades upon her decks, like apples, which growing in one field\r\nfall over the fence into another. Others of their band flung the same\r\nsour fruit into the open ports of the Serapis. A hail-storm of aerial\r\ncombustion descended and slanted on the Serapis, while horizontal\r\nthunderbolts rolled crosswise through the subterranean vaults of the\r\nRichard. The belligerents were no longer, in the ordinary sense of\r\nthings, an English ship and an American ship. It was a co-partnership\r\nand joint-stock combustion-company of both ships; yet divided, even in\r\nparticipation. The two vessels were as two houses, through whose\r\nparty-wall doors have been cut; one family (the Guelphs) occupying the\r\nwhole lower story; another family (the Ghibelines) the whole upper\r\nstory.\r\n\r\nMeanwhile, determined Paul flew hither and thither like the meteoric\r\ncorposant-ball, which shiftingly dances on the tips and verges of\r\nships’ rigging in storms. Wherever he went, he seemed to cast a pale\r\nlight on all faces. Blacked and burnt, his Scotch bonnet was compressed\r\nto a gun-wad on his head. His Parisian coat, with its gold-laced sleeve\r\nlaid aside, disclosed to the full the blue tattooing on his arm, which\r\nsometimes in fierce gestures streamed in the haze of the cannonade,\r\ncabalistically terrific as the charmed standard of Satan. Yet his\r\nfrenzied manner was less a testimony of his internal commotion than\r\nintended to inspirit and madden his men, some of whom seeing him, in\r\ntransports of intrepidity stripped themselves to their trowsers,\r\nexposing their naked bodies to the as naked shot The same was done on\r\nthe Serapis, where several guns were seen surrounded by their buff\r\ncrews as by fauns and satyrs.\r\n\r\nAt the beginning of the fray, before the ships interlocked, in the\r\nintervals of smoke which swept over the ships as mist over\r\nmountain-tops, affording open rents here and there—the gun-deck of the\r\nSerapis, at certain points, showed, congealed for the instant in all\r\nattitudes of dauntlessness, a gallery of marble statues—fighting\r\ngladiators.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 6"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJJRQ4SKWG11NYNT96ERE","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1DKC9HHJRKY25JZBEXW","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AKMX68QECNP1665GAHKMM","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AKMX6D02R9BCXED76XA11","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:11.174Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:17.225Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}