enoese, free any
prisoners there may be in the hold. I shall keep close to you, and you
can hear me, and tell me how many there are."

The Pluto was now edged away, till she was close to the other ship. The
crew, exulting in having turned the tables on the Genoese, and at the
prospect of recovering another of the lost galleys, clustered in the
waist, grasping their arms. The ship was not perceived until she was
within her own length of the other. Then there was a sudden hail:

"Where are you coming to? Keep away, or you will be into us. Why don't
you show your light?"

Francis shouted back some indistinct answer. Rinaldo pushed down the
helm, and a minute later the Pluto ran alongside the other vessel. Half
a dozen hands, told off for the work, sprang into her rigging, and
lashed the vessels together; while Francis, followed by the crew,
climbed the bulwarks and sprang on to the deck of the enemy.

Scarce a blow was struck. The Genoese, astonished at this sudden
apparition of armed men on their deck, and being entirely unarmed and
unprepared, either ran down below or shouted they surrendered, and in
two minutes the Venetians were masters of the vessel.

"Back to the Pluto," Francis shouted. "The vessels will tear their
sides out!"

Almost as suddenly as they had invaded the decks of the galley, the
Venetians regained their own vessel, leaving the lieutenant with his
fifty men on board the prize. The lashings were cut, the Pluto's helm
put up, and she sheered away from her prize. Her bulwarks were broken
and splintered where she had ground against the other vessel in the
sea, and Rinaldo soon reported that some of the seams had opened, and
the water was coming in.

"Set the carpenter and some of the hands to work, to caulk the seams as
well as they can from the inside, and set a gang to work at the pumps
at once. It is unfortunate that it is blowing so hard. If the wind had
gone down instead of rising, we would have recaptured the whole fleet,
one by one."

The Pluto was kept within a short distance of the captured vessel, and
Parucchi presently shouted out that he had freed two hundred prisoners.

"Arm them at once!" Francis shouted back. "Extinguish your light, and
board the vessel whose light you see on your starboard bow. I will take
the one to port. When you have captured her, lower the sails of both
vessels. I will do the same. You will keep a little head sail set, so
as to keep them before the wind; but