hey were enraged, and as their heads rose above the gunwales they
shouted, "No quarter!"

"No quarter!" replied the Americans, discharging their pistols in their
faces and pressing them back into the water with their pikes. The
assailants displayed great bravery and made desperate efforts to board
the privateer; but the Americans needed not the incentive of the warning
that no quarter would be given to fight with all the vigor and skill at
their command. The struggle was a furious one, but in the end the
British were so decisively defeated that only two of the boats returned
to the ships. The others, filled with dead and wounded, drifted ashore.

[Illustration: BRITISH ATTACK ON SULLIVAN ISLAND.]

(_Our Last Naval Engagement with England_.)

In this brief but terrific struggle there were only two Americans killed
and seven wounded, while the enemy acknowledged a loss of thirty-four
killed and eighty-six wounded, the former including the leader of the
expedition.

Admiral Cochrane was so incensed by the rough treatment his men had
received that he determined to throw neutrality to the winds and destroy
the defiant privateer. Nothing more was attempted that evening, but in
the morning the _Carnation_ advanced to the attack of the _General
Armstrong_. This gave the latter a chance to bring its Long Tom into
play, and it was served with such unerring accuracy that not a shot
missed. Before the brig could come to close quarters she was so crippled
that she was obliged to withdraw.

The three ships now closed in. It would have been folly to fight them.
So Captain Reid scuttled his ship, lowered his boats and rowed ashore.
The enemy were disposed to follow him thither, but he and his men took
refuge in an old stone fortress and dared the Englishmen to do so. Upon
second thought they decided to leave the Americans to themselves.

This wonderful exploit was celebrated in song, one stanza of which ended
thus:

"From set of sun till rise of morn, through the long September night,
Ninety men against two thousand, and the ninety won the fight;

In the harbor of Fayal the Azore."

While the victory of itself was one of the most remarkable of which
there is any record, it resembled that of Perry on Lake Erie in its
far-reaching consequences. Admiral Cochrane found his ships so crippled
that he returned to England to refit. He then sailed for New Orleans,
which he reached a few days after