n
deck, and recovering their lost ground. The carnage was fearful; the
dead and dying were everywhere; the decks were heaped with them; both
sides had lost an enormous proportion of men, and it seemed as though
the fight could only end in both parties being exterminated.

Roger and Harry were still fighting doggedly for their lives; but their
countrymen were now very widely separated from them, and their strength
was fast-failing them in face of the furious and persistent attack of
their four assailants.

They were driven back, and still back, until they were forced against
the port bulwarks, and could retreat no farther. Blow after blow was
aimed at them by their foes, and the best that they could do was to ward
off the blows, without daring to assume the offensive.

They were at their very last gasp, and had mentally resigned themselves
to death, when there came a tremendous shock, throwing the two lads off
their feet only just in time to avoid the final thrusts from the two
pirates, to which fortuitous circumstance they owed their lives. As
they lay on the deck, struggling to regain their footing, they were
trampled on and knocked over again by a swarm of men who were rushing in
over the port bulwarks. It was the _Tiger's_ crew, who had boarded in
the very nick of time. With this reinforcement the English very quickly
turned the tables; and, all massing in one body, swept the deck,
compelling the few surviving pirates--among whom was the redoubtable
Jose Leirya himself--to surrender at discretion.

The fierce conflict was at last over, and the pirate, long a terror in
the Caribbean Sea, was a captive, while his dreaded but beautiful
schooner, the _Black Pearl_, was a prize in the hands of the English.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

EXECUTION OF THE PIRATES--A RECONNAISSANCE BY NIGHT OFF LA GUAYRA.

At the commencement of the fight the pirate vessel had been manned by a
crew numbering well over one hundred men.

But now her dead lay upon her decks literally in heaps; and, alas! there
were also many English bodies lying among them. Only seventeen of the
crew of the _Black Pearl_ remained alive, among the survivors being Jose
Leirya himself. It was not due to cowardice, or any shrinking from
death on his own part, that he had survived the fight; on the contrary,
he had exhibited a fine degree of courage, and it was only by an
accident, for which he was in nowise responsible, that he was still
alive, and was now