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It was in this sheltered water that Macdonough awaited attack, his ships riding about a mile from the American shore batteries.
The decisive battle was therefore fought by four ships, the American Saratoga and Eagle, and the British Confiance and Linnet. It was then that Macdonough acquitted himself as a man who did not know when he was beaten. The Confiance, which must have towered like a ship of the line, had so cruelly mauled the Saratoga that she seemed doomed to be blown out of water.
Over in the corner between the two rooms could be found Bayard Taylor's chair his for years, from which he dispensed wisdom, adventure and raillery to a listening coterie King, MacDonough and Collins among them, while near the stairs, his great shaggy head glistening in the overhead light, Parke Godwin held court, with Sterling, Martin and Porter, to say nothing of still older habitues who in the years of their membership were as much a part of the fittings of the club as the smoke-begrimed portraits which lined its walls.
So many of his gunners were killed by the double-shotted broadsides that Macdonough jumped from the quarter-deck to take a hand himself and encourage the survivors. He was sighting a gun when a round shot cut the spanker boom, and a fragment of the heavy spar knocked him senseless. Recovering his wits, however, he returned to his gun.
Silenced, shot through and through, her decks strewn with dead, the Saratoga might then have struck her colors with honor. But Macdonough had not begun to fight. Prepared for such an emergency, he let go a stern anchor, cut his bow cable, and "winded" or turned his ship around so that her other side with its uninjured row of guns was presented to the Confiance.
In the afternoon the British officers came to the American flagship to complete the surrender. Macdonough met them courteously; and, on their offering their swords, put them back, saying, "Gentlemen, your gallant conduct makes you worthy to wear your weapons. Return them to their scabbards."
On Lake Champlain, where our superiority had for some time been undisputed, the British squadron lately came into action with the American, commanded by Captain Macdonough. It issued in the capture of the whole of the enemy's ships.
The "Confiance," in turn, was suffering from the well-directed fire of the "Eagle." The roar of the artillery was unceasing, and dense clouds of gunpowder-smoke hid the warring ships from the eyes of the eager spectators on shore. The "Confiance" was unfortunate in losing her gallant captain early in the action, while Macdonough was spared to fight his ship to the end.
MacDonough, too, passed through the ward, and the warm vibrations of his presence drove death from many a bed whose inmate's force ebbed low, whose soul was walking on the brink, was near surrender. Rolf did not fully realize it then, but long afterward it was clear that this was the meaning of the well-worn words, "He filled them with a new spirit."
Sir George had reckoned on but one obstacle in his march to Albany, an obstruction named MacDonough; but he now found there was another called Macomb.
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