swerved a little out of her course, and a sort
of mushroom of smoke grew out of her side; there was a little gleam of
smouldering light hidden in its heart. The spitting bang followed again,
and something skipped along the wave-tops beside us, raising little
pillars of spray that drifted away on the wind. The schooner came back
on her course, heading straight for us; a shout like groaned applause
went up from on board us. Lumsden hid his face in his hands.

I could hear little Mercer shrieking out orders forwards. We were
shortening sail. The schooner, luffing a little, ranged abreast. A hail
like a metal blare came out of her.

"If you donn'd heef-to we seenk you! We seenk you! By God!"

Major Cowper was using abominable language beside me. Suddenly he began
to call out to someone:

"Go down... go down, I say."

A woman's face disappeared into the hood of the companion like a
rabbit's tail into its burrow. There was a great volley of cracks from
the loose sails, and the ship came to. At the same time the schooner,
now on our beam and stripped of her light kites, put in stays and
remained on the other tack, with her foresheet to windward.

Major Cowper said it was a scandal. The country was going to the
dogs because merchantmen were not compelled by law to carry guns. He
spluttered into my ears that there wasn't so much as a twopenny signal
mortar on board, and no more powder than enough to load one of his
duelling pistols. He was going to write to the Horse Guards.

A blue-and-white ensign fluttered up to the main gaff of the schooner; a
boat dropped into the water. It all went breathlessly--I hadn't time to
think. I saw old Cowper run to the side and aim his pistol overboard;
there was an ineffectual click; he made a gesture of disgust, and tossed
it on deck. His head hung dejectedly down upon his chest.

Lumsden said, "Thank God, oh, thank God!" and the old man turned on him
like a snarling dog.

"You infernal coward," he said. "Haven't you got a spark of courage?"

A moment after, our decks were invaded by men, brown and ragged, leaping
down from the bulwarks one after the other.

They had come out at break of day (we must have been observed the
evening before), a big schooner--full of as ill-favoured, ragged rascals
as the most vivid imagination could conceive. Of course, there had been
no resistance on our part. We were outsailed, and at the first ferocious
hail the halyards had been let go by the run,